text
stringlengths 174
640k
| id
stringlengths 47
47
| dump
stringclasses 17
values | url
stringlengths 14
1.94k
| file_path
stringlengths 125
142
| language
stringclasses 1
value | language_score
float64 0.65
1
| token_count
int64 43
156k
| score
float64 2.52
5.34
| int_score
int64 3
5
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
- Method pipe
File pipe(void|int required_properties)
This function creates a pipe between the object it was called in and an object that is returned.
- Parameter required_properties
Binary or (`|()) of required
The resulting pipe may be used for inter process communication.
The resulting pipe supports nonblocking I/O.
The resulting pipe supports shutting down transmission in either direction (see close()).
The resulting pipe is buffered (usually 4KB).
The resulting pipe is bi-directional.
The resulting pipe supports communication "backwards" (but not necessarily "forwards", see PROP_BIDIRECTIONAL).
The default is
The two ends of a bi-directional pipe are indistinguishable.
If the File object this function is called in was open to begin with, it will be closed before the pipe is created.
Calling this function with an argument of 0 is not the same as calling it with no arguments.
- See also
|
<urn:uuid:46f9d73c-5e55-4e70-afbd-ff44a6c82d77>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://pike.lysator.liu.se/generated/manual/modref/ex/predef_3A_3A/Stdio/File/pipe.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.808643
| 209
| 2.9375
| 3
|
This 2006 photo shows the northbound Southeast Expressway (I-93) at the rebuilt EXIT 20 (I-90 / Massachusetts Turnpike) in Boston. At this point, I-93 transitions to the John F. Fitzgerald Expressway / Central Artery. (Photo by Steve Anderson.)
FROM DOWNTOWN BOSTON TO THE SOUTH SHORE: In 1948, William F. Callahan, commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Public Works (MassDPW), proposed a controlled-access route to link downtown Boston with towns and cities along the South Shore. The Southeast Expressway was to not only provide commuter access to the South Shore, but also facilitate traffic movements headed to and from Cape Cod.
The 1948 Master Highway Plan for the Boston Metropolitan Area described the Southeast Expressway as follows:
One of the most densely populated sections within the metropolitan area borders the bays and harbors from Boston to Quincy and the southeast. It is apparent that a desirable location should lie generally along the waterfront.
Traffic through this area is presently served by the Old Colony Parkway, a four-lane facility restricted to pleasure vehicles, and by Dorchester and Neponset avenues, both narrow, inadequate arteries serving truck traffic. Improvements or expansion of these latter facilities has been difficult because of the thickly populated areas through which they pass. The large resort areas lying to the east and south of Quincy generate heavy peak volumes of weekend traffic that now must pass through or around this city.
In selecting a route for the Southeast Expressway, the utilization of the Old Colony Parkway for part of the distance had been considered, and on the basis of stage construction, it is recommended that those sections of this artery so designated be adjusted to accommodate all classes of vehicles until such time the entire expressway is completed.
Under the original plan, the 11.8-mile-long Southeast Expressway was to begin at the Inner Belt (I-695) in the vicinity of Massachusetts Avenue in South Boston. Continuing south along Dorchester Bay, the expressway was to parallel Old Colony Parkway and the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad. After crossing the Neponset River over a moveable bridge, the expressway was to veer to the west side of Quincy, and turn southeast toward Main Street (MA 18) in Weymouth.
Interchanges were to be built at the following locations:
Inner Belt (I-695), South Boston
Columbia Road, Dorchester Freeport Street, Dorchester Gallivan Boulevard (MA 203), Dorchester Adams Street, Milton Furnace Brook Parkway, Quincy Independence Avenue, Braintree Union Street, Braintree Main Street (MA 18), Weymouth
Another interchange may have been proposed with the Yankee Circumferential Highway (MA 128); however, no specific location was provided in the 1948 Master Highway Plan.
The Southeast Expressway was to carry approximately 50,000 vehicles per day (AADT) from downtown Boston south to the Neponset River, and approximately 15,000 vehicles per day from the Neponset River south to Weymouth. The route was not part of the original Interstate network proposed by the Federal Bureau of Public Roads (BPR). Instead, the route was to carry a state designation (MA 3), and therefore, its $28 million cost was to be financed 50-50 by the Federal and state governments.
This 2003 photo shows the northbound Southeast Expressway (I-93, US 1, and MA 3) at the Adams Street underpass in Milton. (Photo by Jim K. Georges.)
DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION: For the most part, the Southeast Expressway adhered to the design conventions recommended in the 1948 Master Highway Plan: six 12-foot-lanes separated by a variable median, 12-foot-wide emergency shoulders and flanking service roads within a 300-foot-wide right-of-way. Most of the route was to be constructed on embankments of varying height to keep the grade line well above the frequent high tides. However, along the depressed sections through Quincy, the six-lane expressway was to be constructed within a 170-foot-wide right-of-way.
The original expressway design called for creating a parkway-like atmosphere, complete with lush landscaping and stone-arch overpasses. When the expressway was constructed, however, the MassDPW constructed conventional steel-girder and concrete overpasses. Moreover, a fixed-level bridge - not a moveable bridge - was built over the Neponset River.
Construction of the Southeast Expressway began in 1954, in tandem with the connection to the John F. Fitzgerald Expressway (Central Artery) through downtown Boston. On June 30, 1959, the six-lane Southeast Expressway and Central Artery both opened to traffic. The new expressway also provided links to the recently opened Yankee Circumferential Highway (MA 128); south of this point, the MassDPW was extending the Southeast Expressway as the Pilgrims Highway (MA 3) to Cape Cod.
In contrast, the timing of the opening of the expressway link appeared to be a metaphor for commuter rail service in the late 1950's. Within days, the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad ceased South Shore commuter rail service on the Old Colony line (which ran parallel to the new Southeast Expressway), citing steadily declining ridership as a cause for failure. In years to time, however, chronic congestion on the expressway would renew calls for mass transit on the South Shore.
This 2003 photo shows the southbound Southeast Expressway (I-93, US 1, and MA 3) approaching EXIT 15 (Columbia Road) near the Uphams Corner neighborhood of Boston. (Photo by Jim K. Georges.)
CHANGES IN DESIGNATION: Originally opened as part of MA 3, the Southeast Expressway added the extended I-93 designation in the early 1970's upon the recommendation of the Boston Transportation Planning Review (BTPR). The BTPR advocated the cancellation of the Southwest Expressway (I-95) through Canton-Milton-Boston, and suggested the Southeast Expressway as a substitute Interstate corridor. In 1989, the Southeast Expressway added the (relocated) US 1 designation.
RELIEF AND RECONSTRUCTION: As early as 1968, transportation planners considered a variety of improvements along the Southeast Expressway corridor to relieve congestion. Citing the impracticality of upgrading existing routes such as MA 3A (Hancock Street) and Morrissey Boulevard to provide a continuous, high-standard arterial route, the MassDPW suggested providing additional expressway lanes, and reconstructing entrance and exit ramps (which would be metered to control access).
In 1971, with traffic volumes exceeding 110,000 vehicles per day, the MassDPW tested exclusive bus lanes (XBL) along the left lanes of the Southeast Expressway during the morning and evening peak travel periods. The two-month trial of the XBL lanes, in which the six-lane expressway was reconfigured 4-2 (northbound-southbound) during the morning rush and 4-2 (southbound-northbound) during the afternoon rush, met with mixed reviews. Traffic cones separated the exclusive bus lanes from opposing flows, raising safety concerns.
The XBL lanes, another recommendation from the ambitious BTPR project of the early 1970's, were to be implemented on a permanent basis in place of the canceled Southwest Expressway (I-95). Specifically, the BTPR made the following recommendation:
As an alternative to expressway construction in the Southwest Corridor, the development of separate new reversible lanes in the Southeast Expressway corridor, possibly at a second level. If such lanes were constructed, at least one would be designed for exclusive or controlled bus use during peak periods.
More lasting relief along the Southeast Expressway corridor did not come until the 1980's, when more Federal Interstate financing became available for the route. From 1984 to 1987, the MassDPW reconstructed the entire 8.3 miles of the expressway EXIT 18 (Massachusetts Avenue) south to EXIT 7 (MA 3 / Pilgrims Highway). A fourth travel lane was added in each direction, bringing the total capacity to eight lanes, and additional space was set along a six-mile-long stretch for a future reversible HOV lane. In addition, the MassDPW provided new decks for 15 bridges along the route.
In 1995, after one year of construction, the Massachusetts Highway Department (MHD) completed the construction of a six-mile-long reversible HOV lane. The HOV lane is separated from the regular travel lanes by moveable concrete barriers. Before the morning rush, two computer-controlled transfer machines move 12 miles of concrete barrier (weighing a total of 28,500 tons) a distance of 14 feet across the roadway to create an additional lane in the northbound direction. The process is reversed in the southbound direction for the evening rush. When it opened, the reversible HOV lane was reserved for buses, motorcycles and vehicles with three or more occupants. The restriction has since been loosened to vehicles with two or more occupants.
The Southeast Expressway corridor received additional relief with the MHD conversion of the existing emergency shoulders as travel lanes from the Neponset River Bridge south to EXIT 7 (MA 3 / Pilgrims Highway). The use of the shoulders, which is permitted only during the morning and afternoon peak travel periods, has come under criticism from transportation safety experts.
According to the MHD, the Southeast Expressway carries approximately 200,000 vehicles per day (AADT).
This 2003 photo shows the southbound Southeast Expressway (I-93, US 1, and MA 3) approaching the "Braintree Split" (EXIT 7 / MA 3-Pilgrims Highway). (Photo by Jim K. Georges.)
SOURCES: Master Highway Plan for the Boston Metropolitan Area, Massachusetts Department of Public Works (1948); "A Report of Progress," Massachusetts Department of Public Works (1962); "Inner Belt and Expressway System," Massachusetts Department of Public Works (1962); Recommended Highway and Transit Plan, Massachusetts Department of Public Works (1968); "The Massachusetts Highway Story," Massachusetts Department of Public Works (1969); "Rush Hour Lanes for Buses Are Tested on Expressway on Boston," The New York Times (7/11/1971); Boston Transportation Planning Review: Final Study Summary Report, Massachusetts Department of Public Works (1972); "Southeast Expressway: Corridor Transportation Management for Highway Reconstruction," Federal Highway Administration and Massachusetts Department of Public Works (1986); "Highway Needs Cause Safety Breakdown" by Mac Daniel, The Boston Globe (2/10/2002); Barrier Systems, Incorporated; Massachusetts Highway Department; Dan Moraseski; Scott Moore; George Sanborn; Paul Schlichtman; Alexander Svirsky; Yanni Tsipis.
I-93, US 1, and MA 3 shields by Ralph Herman. Lightposts by Millerbernd Manufacturing Company. HOV signs by C.C. Slater.
|
<urn:uuid:9a538ee8-b5e4-4fa8-9072-499bcb1b3d22>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.bostonroads.com/roads/southeast/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.946367
| 2,289
| 2.890625
| 3
|
Growing Native Plants
Correa 'Dusky Bells' nom. cult. APNI
Correa 'Dusky Bells' ACRA Registration
Correa ‘ Dusky Bells ’ belongs to the Rutaceae family which includes the commercial citrus fruits. The Australian endemic genus Correa is a small group within this family.
The genus Correa is named after the Portuguese botanist Correia de Serra. Correa ‘ Dusky Bells ’ is a probable hybrid of C. reflexa and C. pulchella. It is thought that it may have been cultivated for at least 50 years. In 1986, its registration with Australian Cultivar Registration Authority (ACRA) was applied for by W. R. and G. M. Elliott, though the cultivar was received by the authority in 1980. Its synonyms are: Correa ‘Pink Bells’, Correa ‘Carmine Bells’, Correa ‘Rubra’ and Correa sp. (Pink).
Correa reflexa, a parent species of Correa ‘Dusky Bells’, ranges from southern Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, eastern South Australia and Tasmania. Correa pulchella is pretty much restricted to South Australia. Both of the parent species are mostly distributed in temperate regions. Therefore, it can be inferred that Correa ‘Dusky Bells’ is not likely to grow well in the hot tropics such as northern Queensland.
It is an attractive evergreen shrub which grows to 1m high and to 2-4 m in diameter. The entire plant is stellate hairy. Leaves have stellate hairs and the older leaves lose hairs. The leaves are to 4.5 cm long, and 2.5 cm wide; narrow oval (elliptic) or lance-shaped (lanceolate) to egg-shaped leaf (ovate). The beautiful bell-shaped flowers are up to 2.5cm long. The four fused petals are pale carmine pink.
Hybrid Correas have a tendency to be more compact and heavy flowering than the wild species, which makes them a desirable gardening plant. Correa ‘Dusky Bells’ is drought and frost tolerant. It is great for a shaded environment. It prefers somewhat shady situations rather than full sun. It also attracts birds to the gardens. Many of the Correa species are pollinated by birds such as honey eaters as it normally has a lot of nectar.
Flowering time is from March to September. However, it also flowers sporadically displaying its lovely bell-shaped flowers throughout a year.
In general, growing Correa ’Dusky Bells’ is easy. It prefers moist soil, though it is drought tolerant. It grows wells on friable, well-drained and fertile loam. Propagation of this plant is possible by cutting. If it grows tall or wide, you can prune the plant. Regular pruning is good for the plant. As you could see from the distribution map it is not likely to grow well in the tropics. It is best to avoid humid areas. Scale infestation of Correa due to insidious black smut was reported, but it is not common.
Correa ‘Dusky Bells’ is an excellent evergreen garden plant. It is easy-to-grow, drought and frost tolerant and beautiful.
Correa – after Correia de Serra, a Portuguese botanist and diplomat (1751 – 1823)
'Dusky Bells' – was a name used in the nursery industry for this cultivar for many years, and adoped when it was formally registered with ACRA.
Text by BoKyung Choi (2007 Botanical Intern)
McCarthy, N. 2001. Correas-Wild Fuchsia, Native Plants for New South Wales 36 (1): 19
Payne, B. 1999. Pacific Horticulture 60(3): 20
Elliot, W. 1984. Encyclopedia of Australian Plants Vol. 3: 96-97, Lothian Publishing Company, Melbourne
ACRA: Australian Cultivar Registration Authority. Available at http://www.anbg.gov.au/acra [accessed February 5th, 2007]
|
<urn:uuid:e81f7406-3055-40f2-a3ab-55b55d108bff>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://anbg.gov.au/gnp/interns-2007/correa-dusky-bells.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.94001
| 898
| 3.15625
| 3
|
Henry V: The Criterion Collection (1944)
Laurence Olivier's 1944 Henry V is one of the most notable Shakespearean adapations of cinema, and for several reasons. Before Henry V, few films based on Shakespeare's plays made any sort of impact, and many were considered to be dismal failures. Much of this can be attributed to the difficulties of adapting works created for the theater to the complex langugage of cinema, something that Olivier (who rightly can be compared to Orson Welles) was a natural at, despite his substantial background in live performance and scant experience with motion pictures. And as Welles made his mark with his first film, Citizen Kane, and its unusual narrative structure, Olivier, along with scenarists Dallas Bower and Alan Dent, grounded Henry V in a clever framing device, staging the first act in a replica of the Globe Theater, where the viewers not only take in the exposition (wherein King Henry plans his invasion of France), but also the flavor of Elizabethean stage productions, with its grandiose actors and raccous audiences. It is when King Henry (Olivier) prepares his voyage that the literal theater setting is cast aside, exchanged for a broad cinematic environment, which retains elements of theater (the painted backgrounds clearly are for stylistic effect, even if forced by a limited budget) but allows Olivier to exploit the open space where stage becomes soundstage. In addition to the framing device, Henry V is also remarkable for being the first Shakespearean film to be shot in color, and to this day, because of its agressively broad pallette, it remains the most colorful of all. Perhaps what's most surprising about Henry V is that it wasn't created simply to render Shakespeare on the screen and line the pockets of its producers, but it was a clear work of propoganda, arriving as the Allies began to turn the tide of war against Nazi-occupied Europe. As a rule, art and propoganda are uncomfortable bedfellows (the former non-judgemental and inquisitive, the latter hopelessly simplified and didactic), but Henry V is a ready-made script to rally the masses with little modern embellishment. Scenes are cut in this version (most notably Henry's discovery of English traitors), but be the era Shakespeare's or Olivier's, the "Into the breech" and "St. Crispian's Day" speeches could make the most feeble-hearted of men seek honor in battle, and Olivier does both of them panoramic justice here (for fun, compare them to Branagh's 1989 version to see which you prefer). Criterion's DVD edition of Henry V offers a clean transfer (in the original 1.33:1) from a print that could use some restorative work but still retains much of its original Technicolor quality. Audio is in the original mono (DD 1.0), and features include an informative, scholarly commentary by film historian Bruce Eder, a chart of British monarchs from the Plantagenets through the Tudors, a look at illustrations from the medieval Book of Hours, which reportedly influenced the art direction on Henry V, a photo gallery, the original theatrical trailer, and color bars. Keep-case.
Back to Quick Reviews Index:
Back to Main Page
|
<urn:uuid:0da8376b-8a36-40c7-9e9c-8d2b4ffbcd89>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://dvdjournal.com/quickreviews/h/henryv44.q.shtml
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.959453
| 678
| 2.53125
| 3
|
Hurricane Sandy struck another heavy blow to Haiti on October 23, 24, 2012. At least 54 people died and dozens more are missing. Several tens of thousands of people were flooded out of their homes or earthquake survivor camps.
There are some 370,000 people stuck in appalling conditions in the camps while hundreds of thousands more have gone back to damaged homes or whatever other inadequate shelter they can find.
Canada’s media reports, and doesn’t report, on Sandy in Haiti
The Montreal daily La Presse assigned Gabrielle Duchaine to report from Haiti in the aftermath of the hurricane. Her reporting was the most substantive to appear in Canada. She wrote two informative articles on the difficult conditions she observed in the south of Haiti where Hurricane Sandy struck hardest, including dealing a severe blow to food production.
According to preliminary estimations by Haitian government officials, 70 percent of the crop that was ready to be harvested in the south of the country was destroyed, including bananas, beans, rice, avocado and corn. Cattle were also lost. The losses amount to more than $100 million.
Compounding the food problem, areas in the north of Haiti experienced drought conditions earlier this year, while the drought in the U.S. Midwest this past summer has sent prices of corn and other staples soaring. United Nations officials say that one million people in Haiti--one tenth of the population--are now threatened by food insecurity.
Here is the translated introduction to one of the articles by Duchaine:
When Hurricane Sandy descended on the U.S. east coast, all eyes were turned to New York and the huge reserves of emergency assistance that were deployed. Yet, some 2,500 km from there in Haiti, the population was left to its own means to deal with the full force of the elements. The result: an unceasingly heavy outcome with more than 100 deaths, tens of thousands of affected people, new outbreaks of cholera, and, especially, the destruction of some 70 percent of the country's food harvests in the south of the country. Now that the waters have receded, the grumbling is growing louder in communities where people are still waiting for assistance...
Protests were already on the rise in Haiti over rising food prices and an ineffective national government seen to have little sympathy or plan to get the country out of its downward, post-earthquake economic and social spiral. Protst will only deepen in the months ahead.
The Globe and Mail published several short articles from Haiti on Oct. 30 and Nov. 2 reporting on the damage to food production caused by the hurricane. Radio Canada (French CBC) broadcast a brief radio news report from an AFP journalist in Haiti.
The website of Montreal's English language daily The Gazette (one cog in Canada's largest newspaper chain, Postmedia) contains several short, perfunctory news reports on Sandy's aftermath in Haiti. Meanwhile, the site features dozens of substantive articles on Sandy's impact on the United States.
Cholera threat and UN denial
A Nov. 1 feature article in the Toronto Star, Canada's largest circulation daily, reported tangentially on the hurricane. The article was a personal profile of Nigel Fisher, the Canadian west coast resident who is the UN’s humanitarian coordinator in Haiti.
The article reported Fisher’s typical upbeat message on Haiti, to the effect, 'Yes, things are bad, but we are doing the best we can.' Titled Nigel Fisher, caretaker of the world’s children , the article reports:
Fisher was at his Port-au-Prince office on Wednesday [Oct 31] at 6:30 a.m., juggling yet another set of crisis logistics in the hard-luck country, where he has overseen earthquake relief and recovery since 2010.
A call to the Haitian prime minister was on his agenda because, in addition to handling the newest human casualties from Sandy, a food shortage now looms. A drought early in the year stunted crops before they had a chance to mature. Then, a damaging summer storm reduced harvest estimates by about 40 per cent - a worrisome situation even before the massive hurricane struck last week.
"Sandy just about finished it off," Fisher says. "So on top of everything else that this poor country faces, now we're facing a real problem of food security throughout the winter."
The article concludes:
"I feel so much of the news that comes out about Haiti is all about disaster and hopeless and yet, I've been here almost three years now and I've seen a lot of change."
He believes it's vital to tell donors in wealthy countries such as Canada about progress in tough places, not just stories about sadness and hardship. He cites the fact that, while the number of Haitians remaining in camps, 350,000, seems "a heck of a lot," about 2 million were displaced by the earthquake. "That means 80 per cent have gone home." *
After a year, the worst of cholera's infectious surge is over, with Haiti and its island neighbour, the Dominican Republic, working together on disease-eradication plans. Fisher reports that more children are in school than before the earthquake. Vaccination rates for kids are up too. "There are always points of light."
The UN’s moral standing among the Haitian people is at an all-time low, not only because its soldiers recklessly introduced the cholera bacteria into the country but also because the agency has since denied responsibility and, to this day, refuses to undertake rapid and meaningful redress, notably in building clean water delivery systems.
In May 2011, a scientific panel convened by Ban Ki-moon five months earlier published its findings , saying that the cholera bacteria likely originated at a UN military base at Mirebalais, Haiti that was staffed by recently-arrived soldiers from Nepal. The strain of cholera was identified as the one prevalent in cholera-endemic Nepal. But the report then went on to say that the spread of the bacteria (the epidemic) was caused by a "confluence of circumstances."
One of the UN’s point men on the cholera file is Fisher himself. He has insisted that the agency’s culpability is unproven. He says finding the source of the epidemic is secondary; what's important is to treat the victims. But as the evidence has mounted and become incontrovertible, the UN response has shifted.
One of the world’s leading cholera experts, Daniele Lantagne of Harvard University, was a member of the 2011 panel and she recently said after studying new scientific data that the "most likely" source of the outbreak was the UN base at Mirebalais. Hers was only the latest in a string of epidemiological studies to pinpoint the source of the epidemic as being UN soldiers.
Fisher voiced the new response of the UN to cholera accusations recently to the BBC’s Mark Doyle:
"I know there's new information there," Mr. Fisher said. "But the investigation is still with the [UN's New York] legal office, so I'm not able to say anything at this time until that's gone through the due process."
But one year after legal action was undertaken on behalf of the past and future victims of cholera, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's office has yet to issue a statement as to how it intends to deal with the legal action. In addition to denial mode, then, the UN is by all appearance in 'stall' mode as well.
A resurgence of cholera infections is feared after Hurricane Sandy. La Presse’s Duchaine reported from Les Cayes in the south of Haiti that the local hospital received dozens of infected patients following the storm that brought four days of intense rain. Doctor Joseph Yves Domercant, director of the hospital, told Duchaine that he expects many more victims.
Jonathan Watts reports in The Guardian recently that Haiti has more cholera cases than the rest of the world combined. According to the World Health Organization , Haiti was recording increasing cholera cases even before the latest hurricane. Six hundred thousand people have been infected and more than 7,500 have died since the start of the epidemic in October 2010.
Showcasing sweatshop labour
One week before Hurricane Sandy struck, Bill and Hillary Clinton were in Caracol, northern Haiti to showcase the recently-opened clothing factory complex of south Korea’s SAE-A.
The Caracol Industrial Park is touted to eventually employ tens of thousands of workers. It is a centerpiece of the "Open For Business" theme of the government of President Michel Martelly and Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe. The U.S. and Canada say that "Open For Business," which is a polished-up version of the failed, sweatshop labour model of the declining years of the Duvalier tyranny in Haiti, is key to the country's economic future.
The Caracol park was built on prime agricultural land on the opposite side of the country from the earthquake zone. The land was provided by the Haitian government. The installations–factory buildings, electricity supply, housing for workers–were paid through grants from the U.S. government and the Inter-American Development Bank.
SAE-A has shifted production to Haiti from a factory it closed in Guatemala where workers were seeking to form a union in the face of stiff opposition by the company.
A report by the Better Work international agency that was released in October shows that 21 of the 22 sweatshop factories surveyed in Haiti (not including Caracol because it is just getting off the ground) were failing to pay the country’s factory minimum wage of US$5 per day.
What you can do
One of the most effective ways to express solidarity with the Haitian people is to support the Under Tents housing rights campaign. If you haven’t already done so, please sign its international petition demanding action on housing from the Haitian government and its international backers, including Canada. You can also read about other ways to support the campaign.
The Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti and its partner office in Haiti is spearheading the legal action on behalf of cholera victims. Find out more about that case and how you can support it, here .
Partners In Health Canada has recently launched an awareness and action campaign for global health, including in Haiti, called ‘Prove what is possible.’ Check out that campaign here .
For complete information on Haiti: www.canadahaitiaction.ca .
* Nearly half of the structures in Port au Prince were rendered unsafe to inhabit by the 2010 earthquake. Many of the people who left earthquake survivor camps moved back into these damaged homes. UN agencies do not track what happens to those who have left camps.
Postscript: On November 13, 2012, the Boston Globe print daily published an editorial , 'UN must make amends for cholera that organization brought to Haiti.' The editorial criticizes the UN for "foot dragging" on the legal action against it that seeks measures to halt the spread of cholera.
|
<urn:uuid:44080243-3cb1-4219-a1f7-7552b2016e0d>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://rabble.ca/print/blogs/bloggers/roger-annis/2012/11/hurricane-sandy-another-blow-haiti
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.966661
| 2,304
| 2.859375
| 3
|
Patients treated with appropriate antibiotics in the early stages of Lyme disease usually recover rapidly and completely. Antibiotics commonly used for oral treatment include doxycycline, amoxicillin, or cefuroxime axetil. Patients with certain neurological or cardiac forms of illness may require intravenous treatment with drugs such as ceftriaxone or penicillin. For detailed recommendations on treatment, consult the 2006 Guidelines for treatment developed by the Infectious Diseases Society of America.
Approximately 10-20% of patients (particularly those who were diagnosed later), following appropriate antibiotic treatment, may have persistent or recurrent symptoms and are considered to have Post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome (PTLDS). The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has funded several studies on the treatment of Lyme disease which show that most patients recover when treated with a few weeks of antibiotics taken by mouth. For details on research into what is sometimes referred to as “chronic Lyme disease” and long-term treatment trials sponsored by NIH, visit the NIH Lyme Disease web site.
Additional information on prolonged treatment for Lyme disease is also available.
|
<urn:uuid:d5d834f3-7880-4a34-ad07-4bee3210ea84>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.cdc.gov/lyme/treatment/index.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.947809
| 228
| 3
| 3
|
KNOXVILLE — Lego blocks are becoming more popular with teachers as a way to educate students about engineering concepts.
Although Lego building competitions have been around for years, the tiny snap-together pieces are now being used to create high-tech objects like computerized robots that can roll around, pick things up and kick balls.
The Knoxville News Sentinel reports the popularity of making Lego creations in the classrooms and taking them to competitions seems to be growing.
The newspaper reports the Tennessee Valley Fair Lego Competition had 100 entries this year, compared to just 25 last year. And the website of FIRST Lego League says Tennessee had 89 competition teams this fall compared to 51 last year. Teams work from a Lego kit series called Mindstorms and use gears, levers, pulleys and computerized building bricks to construct robots.
“It’s Legos on steroids,” said fourth-grade teacher Lisa Buckner, who mentors a Lego team called the Ningineers at Robertsville Middle School in Oak Ridge. The team recently won a state competition and will go in April to the world festival.
“It’s not like the bag of Legos I had leftover in my garage from my childhood,” said Buckner. “These can be used to teach engineering concepts to children.”
Robin Marsh, a local Lego educator who teaches the Mindstorms series at homeschool cooperatives, says she intends to expand classes she offers beginning next year.
“The Lego classes have become so popular, we have outgrown all our venues,” said Marsh, who has 10 years of experience teaching with Legos. “There’s just so much interest and talent in Legos, but a lot of times kids don’t know what to do with it.”
Marsh said the Lego projects are especially good for those who don’t do well in a traditional classroom.
“They might not excel in school, but you put them in a room with Legos, and the light goes on,” she said.
In addition, she said they can inspire children toward careers in science and technology.
“Just like a great painting inspires an artist, a great Lego build will spark and add to a builder’s creativity,” said Marsh. “My goal is to encourage Lego talent and funnel those students onto energy and science.”
|
<urn:uuid:631a49e7-7833-4ced-ba9f-fe71253781d7>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://columbiadailyherald.com/sections/news/state/online-extra-legos-becoming-more-popular-teaching-tool.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.965665
| 494
| 3.03125
| 3
|
Assassination of John F. Kennedy
|Assassination of John F. Kennedy|
President Kennedy with his wife, Jacqueline, and Governor of Texas John Connally in the presidential limousine, minutes before the President's assassination.
|Date||November 22, 1963
12:30 p.m. (Central Time)
|Target||John F. Kennedy|
|Attack type||Sniper style assassination|
|Weapon(s)||6.5 × 52 mm Italian Carcano M91/38 bolt-action rifle|
|Deaths||1 killed (President Kennedy)|
|Injured (non-fatal)||2 wounded (Governor Connally and James Tague)|
|Perpetrator||Lee Harvey Oswald|
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, was assassinated at 12:30 p.m. Central Standard Time (18:30 UTC) on Friday, November 22, 1963, in Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas. Kennedy was fatally shot while traveling with his wife Jacqueline, Texas Governor John Connally, and Connally's wife Nellie, in a presidential motorcade. A ten-month investigation in 1963–64 by the Warren Commission concluded that Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, and that Jack Ruby also acted alone when he killed Oswald before he could stand trial. Although the Commission's conclusions were initially supported by a majority of the American public, polls conducted between 1966 and 2003 found that as many as 80 percent of Americans have suspected that there was a plot or cover-up.
In contrast to the conclusions of the Warren Commission, the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) concluded in 1978 that Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. The HSCA found the original FBI investigation and the Warren Commission Report to be seriously flawed. While agreeing with the Commission that Oswald fired all the shots which caused the wounds to Kennedy and Connally, the HSCA stated that there were at least four shots fired (only three of which could be linked to Oswald) and that there was "...a high probability that two gunmen fired at [the] President." The HSCA did not identify any other person or group involved in the assassination besides Oswald, but they did specifically say the CIA, the Soviet Union, organized crime, and several other groups were not involved, although they could not rule out the involvement of individual members of those groups. Kennedy's assassination is still the subject of widespread debate and has spawned numerous conspiracy theories and alternative scenarios.
Route to Dealey Plaza
President Kennedy's motorcade route through Dallas was planned to give him maximum exposure to Dallas crowds before his arrival, along with Vice-President Lyndon Johnson and Texas Governor John Connally, at a luncheon with civic and business leaders in that city. The White House staff informed the Secret Service that the President would arrive in Dallas via a short flight from Carswell Air Force Base in Fort Worth to Dallas Love Field airport. The Dallas Trade Mart had been preliminarily selected for the luncheon and the final decision of the Trade Mart as the end of the motorcade journey was selected by President Kennedy's friend and appointments secretary Kenneth O'Donnell. Leaving from Dallas' Love Field, 45 minutes had been allotted for the motorcade to reach the Dallas Trade Mart at a planned arrival time of 12:15 PM. The actual route was chosen to be a meandering 10-mile route from Love Field to the Trade Mart which could be driven slowly in the allotted time.
Special Agent Winston G. Lawson, a member of the White House detail who acted as the advance Secret Service Agent, and Secret Service Agent Forrest V. Sorrels, Special Agent In Charge of the Dallas office, were most active in planning the actual route. On November 14, Lawson and Sorrels attended a meeting at Love Field and drove over the route which Sorrels believed best suited for the motorcade. From Love Field, the route passed through a portion of suburban Dallas, through the downtown area along Main Street, and finally to the Trade Mart via a short segment of the Stemmons Freeway. For the President's return to Love Field, from which he planned to depart for a fund-raising dinner in Austin later in the day, the agents selected a more direct route, which was approximately 4 miles (some of this route would be used after the assassination). The planned route to the Trade Mart was widely reported in Dallas newspapers several days before the event, for the benefit of people who wished to view the motorcade.
To pass through downtown Dallas, a route west along Dallas' Main Street, rather than Elm Street (one block to the north) was chosen, because this was the traditional parade route, and provided the maximal building and crowd views. The Main Street route precluded a direct turn onto the Fort Worth Turnpike exit (which served also as the Stemmons Freeway exit), which was the route to the Trade Mart, because this exit was accessible only from Elm Street. The planned motorcade route thus included a short one-block turn at the end of the downtown segment of Main Street, onto Houston Street for one block northward, before turning again west onto Elm, in order to proceed through Dealey Plaza before exiting Elm onto the Stemmons Freeway. The Texas School Book Depository was situated at this corner of Houston and Elm.
On November 22, after a breakfast speech in Fort Worth, where President Kennedy had stayed overnight after arriving from San Antonio, Houston and Washington, D.C. the previous day, the president boarded Air Force One, which departed at 11:10 and arrived at Love Field 15 minutes later. At about 11:40, the presidential motorcade left Love Field for the trip through Dallas, which was running on a schedule about 10 minutes longer than the planned 45 minutes, due to enthusiastic crowds estimated at 150,000–200,000 persons, and two unplanned stops directed by the president. By the time the motorcade reached Dealey Plaza they were only 5 minutes away from their planned destination.
Shooting in Dealey Plaza
At 12:29 p.m. CST, as President Kennedy's uncovered limousine entered Dealey Plaza, Nellie Connally, then the First Lady of Texas, turned around to President Kennedy, who was sitting behind her, and commented, "Mr. President, you can't say Dallas doesn't love you," which President Kennedy acknowledged.
From Houston Street, the presidential limousine made the planned left turn onto Elm Street, allowing it access to the Stemmons Freeway exit. As it turned on Elm, the motorcade passed the Texas School Book Depository. Shots were fired at President Kennedy as they continued down Elm Street. A clear majority of witnesses recalled hearing three shots. A minority of the witnesses did recognize the first gunshot blast they heard as a weapon blast, but there was hardly any reaction to the first shot from a majority of the people in the crowd or those riding in the motorcade itself. Many later said they heard what they first thought to be a firecracker or the exhaust backfire of a vehicle just after the President started waving.
Within one second of each other, President Kennedy, Governor Connally, and Mrs. Kennedy, all turned abruptly from looking to their left to looking to their right, between Zapruder film frames 155 and 169. Connally, a World War II military veteran like the President (and unlike the President, a longtime hunter), testified he immediately recognized the sound of a high-powered rifle, then he turned his head and torso rightward attempting to see President Kennedy behind him. Governor Connally testified he could not see the President, so he then started to turn forward again (turning from his right to his left). Connally testified that when his head was facing about 20 degrees left of center, he was hit in his upper right back by a bullet, fired in a gunshot from which Connally testified he did not hear the muzzle blast. When Governor Connally testified to this, the doctor who operated on him measured his head facing direction at 27 degrees left of center. After Connally was hit he then shouted, "Oh, no, no, no. My God. They're going to kill us all!"
Mrs. Connally testified that just after hearing a first loud, frightening noise that came from somewhere behind her and to her right, she immediately turned towards President Kennedy and saw him with his arms and elbows already raised high, with his hands in front of his face and throat. She then heard another gunshot and John Connally started yelling. Mrs. Connally then turned away from President Kennedy towards her husband, then another gunshot sounded and she and the limousine's rear interior were now covered with fragments of skull, blood, and brain matter.
According to the Warren Commission, and the House Select Committee on Assassinations, as President Kennedy waved to the crowds on his right with his right arm upraised on the side of the limo, a shot entered his upper back, penetrated his neck, slightly damaged a spinal vertebra and the top of his right lung, exited his throat nearly centerline just beneath his larynx, then nicked the left side of his suit tie knot. He then raised his elbows and clenched his fists in front of his face and neck, then leaned forward and towards his left. Mrs. Kennedy (already facing him) then put her arms around him in concern. Governor Connally also reacted after the same bullet penetrated his back just below his right armpit, creating an oval entry wound, impacted and destroyed four inches of his right fifth rib bone, exited his chest just below his right nipple creating a two-and-a-half inch oval sucking-air chest wound, then entered just above his right wrist, impacted and cleanly shattered his right radius bone into eight pieces, exited just below the wrist at the inner side of his right palm, and entered his left inner thigh. The Warren Commission theorized that the "single bullet" (see single bullet theory) struck sometime between Zapruder frames 210 to 225, while the House Select Committee theorized it occurred exactly at Zapruder frame 190.
According to the Warren Commission, a second shot struck the President at Zapruder film frame 313 (the Commission made no conclusion as to whether this was the second or third bullet fired) when the presidential limousine was passing in front of the John Neely Bryan north pergola concrete structure (the House Select Committee concluded that the final shot was a fourth shot and that there were two shooters, one of whom missed). Each group concluded that this shot entered the rear of President Kennedy's head (the House Select Committee determined the entry wound to be four inches higher than the Warren Commission), then exploded out a roughly oval-shaped hole from his head's rear and right side. Head matter, brain, blood, and skull fragments, originating from Kennedy, covered the interior of the car, the inner and outer surfaces of the front glass windshield and raised sun visors, the front engine hood, the rear trunk lid, the followup Secret Service car and its driver's left arm, and motorcycle officers riding on both sides of the President behind him. Mrs. Kennedy then reached out onto the rear trunk lid. After she crawled back into her limousine seat, both Governor Connally and Mrs. Connally heard her say more than once, "They have killed my husband," and "I have his brains in my hand."
United States Secret Service Special Agent Clint Hill was riding on the left front running board of the followup car, immediately behind the Presidential limousine. Hill testified he heard one shot, then, as documented in other films and concurrent with Zapruder frame 308, he jumped off into Elm Street and ran forward to try to get on the limousine and protect the President. (Hill testified to the Warren Commission that after he jumped into Elm Street, he heard two more shots.) After the President had been shot in the head, Mrs. Kennedy began to climb out onto the back of the limousine, though she later had no recollection of doing so. Hill believed she was reaching for something, perhaps a piece of the President's skull. He jumped onto the back of the limousine while at the same time Mrs. Kennedy returned to her seat, and he clung to the car as it exited Dealey Plaza and accelerated, speeding to Parkland Memorial Hospital.
Governor Connally, riding in the same limousine in a seat in front of the President and three inches more to the left than the President, was also critically injured but survived. Doctors later stated that after the Governor was shot, his wife pulled him onto her lap, and the resulting posture helped close his front chest wound (which was causing air to be sucked directly into his chest around his collapsed right lung).
James Tague, a spectator and witness to the assassination, also received a minor wound to his right cheek while standing 531 feet (162 m) away from the Depository's sixth floor, easternmost window, 270 feet (82 m) in front of and slightly to the right of President Kennedy's head facing direction, and more than 16 feet (4.9 m) below the top of the President's head. Tague's injury occurred when a bullet or bullet fragment with no copper casing struck the nearby Main Street south curb. When Tague testified to the Warren Commission and was asked which of the three shots he remembered hearing struck him, he stated it was the second or third shot. When the Warren Commission attorney pressed him further, Tague stated he was struck concurrent with the second shot.
Aftermath in Dealey Plaza
The presidential limousine was passing a grassy knoll on the north side of Elm Street at the moment of the fatal head shot. As the motorcade left the plaza, police officers and spectators ran up the knoll and from a railroad bridge over Elm Street (the triple underpass), to the area behind a five-foot (1.5 m) high stockade fence atop the knoll, separating it from a parking lot. No sniper was found. S. M. Holland, who had been watching the motorcade on the triple underpass, testified that "immediately" after the shots were fired, he went around the corner where the overpass joined the fence, but did not see anyone running from the area.
Lee Bowers, a railroad switchman sitting in a two-story tower, had an unobstructed view of the rear of the stockade fence atop the grassy knoll during the shooting. He saw a total of four men in the area between his tower and Elm Street: a middle-aged man and a younger man, standing 10 to 15 feet (3.0 to 4.6 m) apart near the triple underpass, who did not seem to know each other, and one or two uniformed parking lot attendants. At the time of the shooting, he saw "something out of the ordinary, a sort of milling around," which he could not identify. Bowers testified that one or both of the men were still there when motorcycle officer Clyde Haygood ran up the grassy knoll to the back of the fence. In a 1966 interview, Bowers clarified that the two men he saw were standing in the opening between the pergola and the fence, and that "no one" was behind the fence at the time the shots were fired.
Meanwhile, Howard Brennan, a steamfitter who was sitting across the street from the Texas School Book Depository, notified police that as he watched the motorcade go by, he heard a shot come from above, and looked up to see a man with a rifle make another shot from a corner window on the sixth floor. He said he had seen the same man minutes earlier looking out the window. Brennan gave a description of the shooter, which was broadcast to all Dallas police at 12:45 p.m., 12:48 p.m., and 12:55 p.m.
As Brennan spoke to the police in front of the building, they were joined by Harold Norman and James Jarman, Jr., two employees of the Texas School Book Depository who had watched the motorcade from windows at the southeast corner of the fifth floor. Norman reported that he heard three gunshots come from directly over their heads. Norman also heard the sounds of a bolt action rifle and cartridges dropping on the floor above them.
Of the 104 earwitnesses in Dealey Plaza who are on record with an opinion as to the direction from which the shots came, 54 (51.9%) thought that all shots came from the direction of the Texas School Book Depository, 33 (31.7%) thought that all shots came from the area of the grassy knoll or the triple underpass, 9 (8.7%) thought all shots came from a location entirely distinct from the knoll or the Depository, 5 (4.8%) thought they heard shots from two locations, and 3 (2.9%) thought the shots came from a direction consistent with both the knoll and the Depository.
Additionally, the Warren Commission said of the three shots they concluded were fired that "a substantial majority of the witnesses stated that the shots were not evenly spaced. Most witnesses recalled that the second and third shots were bunched together."
Lee Harvey Oswald
Lee Harvey Oswald, reported missing to the Dallas police by Roy Truly, his supervisor at the Depository, was arrested approximately 70 minutes after the assassination for the murder of Dallas police officer J. D. Tippit. According to witness Helen Markam, Tippit had spotted Oswald walking along a sidewalk in the residential neighborhood of Oak Cliff, three miles from Dealey Plaza. Officer Tippit had earlier received a radio message which gave a description of the suspect being sought in the assassination and called Oswald over to the patrol car. Helen Markam testified that after an exchange of words, Tippit got out of his car and Oswald shot him four times. Oswald was next seen by shoe store manager Johnny Brewer "ducking into" the entrance alcove of his store. Suspicious of this activity, Brewer watched Oswald continue up the street and slip into the nearby Texas Theatre without paying. Brewer alerted the theater's ticket clerk, who telephoned police at about 1:40 pm.
According to one of the arresting officers, M.N. McDonald, Oswald resisted arrest and was attempting to draw his pistol when he was struck and forcibly restrained by the police. He was charged with the murders of President Kennedy and Officer Tippit later that night. Oswald denied shooting anyone and claimed he was a patsy who was arrested because he had lived in the Soviet Union. Oswald's case never came to trial because two days later, while being escorted to a car for transfer from Dallas Police Headquarters to the Dallas County Jail, he was shot and killed by Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby, live on American television. Arrested immediately after the shooting, Ruby later said that he had been distraught over the Kennedy assassination and that killing Oswald would spare "…Mrs. Kennedy the discomfiture of coming back to trial."
A 6.5 × 52 mm Italian Carcano M91/38 bolt-action rifle was found on the 6th floor of the Texas School Book Depository by Deputy Constable Seymour Weitzman and Deputy Sheriff Eugene Boone soon after the assassination of President Kennedy. The recovery was filmed by Tom Alyea of WFAA-TV. This footage shows the rifle to be a Carcano, and it was later verified by photographic analysis commissioned by the HSCA that the rifle filmed was the same one later identified as the assassination weapon. Compared to photographs taken of Oswald holding the rifle in his backyard, "one notch in the stock at [a] point that appears very faintly in the photograph" matched, as well as the rifle's dimensions.
The previous March, the Carcano rifle had been bought by Oswald under the name "A. Hidell" and delivered to a post-office box Oswald rented in Dallas. According to the Warren Commission Report, a partial palm print of Oswald was also found on the barrel of the gun, and a tuft of fibers found in a crevice of the rifle was consistent with the fibers and colors of the shirt Oswald was wearing at the time of his arrest.
President Kennedy declared dead in the emergency room
The staff at Parkland Hospital's Trauma Room 1 who treated President Kennedy observed that his condition was "moribund" (a mortal wound), meaning that he had no chance of survival upon arriving at the hospital. Dr. George Burkley, the President's personal physician, stated that a gunshot wound to the skull was the cause of death. Dr. Burkley signed President Kennedy's death certificate.
At 1:00 p.m., CST (19:00 UTC), after all heart activity had ceased and after Father Oscar Huber had administered the last rites, the President was pronounced dead. "We never had any hope of saving his life," one doctor said. Father Huber told The New York Times that the President was already dead by the time he arrived at the hospital, and he had to draw back a sheet covering the President's face to administer the sacrament of Extreme Unction. President Kennedy's death was officially announced by White House Acting Press Secretary Malcolm Kilduff at 1:33 p.m. CST (19:33 UTC). Kilduff was acting press secretary on the trip because Pierre Salinger was traveling to Japan with half the Cabinet, including Secretary of State Dean Rusk. Governor Connally, meanwhile, was taken to emergency surgery, where he underwent two operations that day.
A few minutes after 2:00 p.m. CST (20:00 UTC), President Kennedy's body was placed in a casket and taken from Parkland Hospital and driven to Air Force One. The casket was then loaded aboard the airplane through the rear door, where it remained at the rear of the passenger compartment, in place of a removed row of seats. The body was removed before a forensic examination could be conducted by the Dallas County Coroner, who had jurisdiction. At that time, it was not a federal offense to kill the President of the United States, although it was a federal crime to conspire to injure a federal officer while he was acting in the line of duty. Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson, who became President upon President Kennedy's death, and had been riding two cars behind President Kennedy in the motorcade, refused to leave for Washington without President Kennedy and his widow.
The autopsy was performed, beginning at about 8 p.m. and ending at about midnight EST at the Bethesda Naval Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland. The choice of autopsy hospital in the Washington, D.C. area was made at the request of Mrs. Kennedy, on the basis that John F. Kennedy had been a naval officer.
The body of President Kennedy was brought back to Washington, D.C. and placed in the East Room of the White House for 24 hours. On the Sunday after the assassination, his coffin was carried on a horse-drawn caisson to the U.S. Capitol to lie in state. Throughout the day and night, hundreds of thousands lined up to view the guarded casket. Representatives from over 90 countries attended the state funeral on Monday, November 25. After the Requiem Mass at St. Matthew's Cathedral, the late President was laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.
Recordings of the assassination
No radio or television stations broadcast the assassination live because the area through which the motorcade was traveling was not considered important enough for a live broadcast. Most media crews were not even with the motorcade but were waiting instead at the Dallas Trade Mart in anticipation of President Kennedy's arrival. Those members of the media who were with the motorcade were riding at the rear of the procession.
The Dallas police were recording their radio transmissions over two channels. A frequency designated as Channel One was used for routine police communications. A second channel, designated Channel Two, was an auxiliary channel, which was dedicated to the President's motorcade. Up until the time of the assassination, most of the broadcasts on this channel consisted of Police Chief Jesse Curry's announcements of the location of the motorcade as it wound through the streets of Dallas.
President Kennedy's last seconds traveling through Dealey Plaza were recorded on silent 8 mm film for the 26.6 seconds before, during, and immediately following the assassination. This famous film footage was taken by garment manufacturer and amateur cameraman Abraham Zapruder, in what became known as the Zapruder film. Frame enlargements from the Zapruder film were published by Life magazine shortly after the assassination. The footage was first shown publicly as a film at the trial of Clay Shaw in 1969, and on television in 1975. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, an arbitration panel ordered the U.S. government to pay $615,384 per second of film to Zapruder's heirs for giving the film to the National Archives. The complete film, which lasts for 26 seconds, was valued at $16 million.
Zapruder was not the only person who photographed at least part of the assassination; a total of 32 photographers were in Dealey Plaza. Amateur movies taken by Orville Nix, Marie Muchmore (shown on television in New York on November 26, 1963), and photographer Charles Bronson captured the fatal shot, although at a greater distance than Zapruder. Other motion picture films were taken in Dealey Plaza at or around the time of the shooting by Robert Hughes, F. Mark Bell, Elsie Dorman, John Martin Jr., Patsy Paschall, Tina Towner, James Underwood, Dave Wiegman, Mal Couch, Thomas Atkins, and an unknown woman in a blue dress on the south side of Elm Street. Still photos were taken by Phillip Willis, Mary Moorman, Hugh W. Betzner Jr., Wilma Bond, Robert Croft, and many others. The lone professional photographer in Dealey Plaza who was not in the press cars was Ike Altgens, photo editor for the Associated Press in Dallas.
An unidentified woman, nicknamed the Babushka Lady by researchers, might have been filming the Presidential motorcade during the assassination. She was seen apparently doing so on film and in photographs taken by the others.
Previously unknown color footage filmed on the assassination day by George Jefferies was released on February 19, 2007 by the Sixth Floor Museum, Dallas, Texas. The film does not include depiction of the actual shooting, having been taken roughly 90 seconds beforehand and a couple of blocks away. The only detail relevant to the investigation of the assassination is a clear view of President Kennedy's bunched suit jacket, just below the collar, which has led to different calculations about how low in the back President Kennedy was first shot (see discussion above).
After arresting Oswald and collecting physical evidence at the crime scenes, the Dallas Police held Oswald at the police headquarters for interrogation. Oswald was questioned all afternoon about both the Tippit shooting and the assassination of the President. He was questioned intermittently for approximately 12 hours between 2:30 p.m., on November 22, and 11 a.m., on November 24. Throughout this interrogation Oswald denied any involvement with either the assassination of President Kennedy or the murder of Patrolman Tippit. Captain Fritz of the homicide and robbery bureau did most of the questioning, keeping only rudimentary notes. Days later, he wrote a report of the interrogation from notes he made afterwards. There were no stenographic or tape recordings. Representatives of other law enforcement agencies were also present, including the FBI and the Secret Service, and occasionally participated in the questioning. Several of the FBI agents present wrote contemporaneous reports of the interrogation.
During the evening of November 22, the Dallas Police Department performed paraffin tests on Oswald's hands and right cheek in an apparent effort to determine, by means of a scientific test, whether Oswald had recently fired a weapon. The results were positive for the hands and negative for the right cheek. Because of the unreliability of these tests, the Warren Commission did not rely on the results of the test in making their findings.
Oswald provided little information during his questioning. When confronted with evidence which he could not explain he resorted to statements which were found to be false. Dallas authorities were not able to complete their investigation into the assassination of President Kennedy because of interruptions from the FBI and the murder of Oswald by Jack Ruby.
The FBI was the first authority to complete an investigation. On November 24, 1963, just hours after Oswald was fatally shot, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover said that he wanted "something issued so we can convince the public that Oswald is the real assassin." On December 9, 1963, only 17 days after the assassination, the FBI report was issued and given to the Warren Commission. Then, the FBI stayed on as the primary investigating authority for the commission.
The FBI stated that only three bullets were fired during the Kennedy assassination; the Warren Commission agreed with the FBI investigation that only three shots were fired but disagreed with the FBI report on which shots hit Kennedy and which hit Governor Connally. The FBI report claimed that the first shot hit President Kennedy, the second shot hit Governor Connally, and the third shot hit President Kennedy in the head, killing him. In contrast, the Warren Commission concluded that one of the three shots missed, one of the shots hit President Kennedy and then struck Governor Connally, and a third shot struck President Kennedy in the head, killing him.
Criticism of FBI
The FBI's murder investigation was reviewed by the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1979. The congressional Committee concluded:
- The Federal Bureau of Investigation adequately investigated Lee Harvey Oswald prior to the assassination and properly evaluated the evidence it possessed to assess his potential to endanger the public safety in a national emergency.
- The Federal Bureau of Investigation conducted a thorough and professional investigation into the responsibility of Lee Harvey Oswald for the assassination.
- The Federal Bureau of Investigation failed to investigate adequately the possibility of a conspiracy to assassinate the President.
- The Federal Bureau of Investigation was deficient in its sharing of information with other agencies and departments.
Criticism of Secret Service
Sgt. Davis, of the Dallas Police Department, believed he had prepared stringent security precautions, in an attempt to prevent demonstrations like those marking the Adlai Stevenson visit from happening again. The previous month, Stevenson, the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, was assaulted by an anti-UN demonstrator. But Winston Lawson of the Secret Service, who was in charge of the planning, told the Dallas Police not to assign its usual squad of experienced homicide detectives to follow immediately behind the President's car. This police protection was routine for both visiting presidents and for motorcades of other visiting dignitaries. Police Chief Jesse Curry later testified that had his men been in place, they might have been able to stop the assassin before he fired a second shot, because they carried submachine guns and rifles.
An investigation by the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) in 1979 concluded that "the Secret Service was deficient in the performance of its duties." The HSCA stated:
- That President Kennedy had not received adequate protection in Dallas.
- That the Secret Service possessed information that was not properly analyzed, investigated, or used by the Secret Service in connection with the President's trip to Dallas.
- That the Secret Service agents in the motorcade were inadequately prepared to protect the President from a sniper.
The HSCA specifically noted:
No actions were taken by the agent in the right front seat of the Presidential limousine [ Roy Kellerman ] to cover the President with his body, although it would have been consistent with Secret Service procedure for him to have done so. The primary function of the agent was to remain at all times in close proximity to the President in the event of such emergencies.
The President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, known unofficially as the Warren Commission, was established on November 29, 1963, by President Lyndon Johnson to investigate the assassination. Its 888-page final report was presented to President Johnson on September 24, 1964, and made public three days later. It concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the killing of President Kennedy and the wounding of Texas Governor John Connally, and that Jack Ruby also acted alone in the murder of Oswald. The Commission's findings have since proven controversial and been both challenged and supported by later studies.
The Commission took its unofficial name—the Warren Commission—from its chairman, Chief Justice Earl Warren. According to published transcripts of Johnson's presidential phone conversations, some major officials were opposed to forming such a commission, and several commission members took part only with extreme reluctance. One of their chief reservations was that a commission would ultimately create more controversy than consensus, and those fears proved valid. The Commissions were printed off at Doubleday book publishing company located in Smithsburg, Maryland.
Ramsey Clark Panel
In 1968, a panel of four medical experts appointed by Attorney General Ramsey Clark met in Washington, D.C. to examine various photographs, X-ray films, documents, and other evidence pertaining to the death of President Kennedy. The Clark Panel determined that President Kennedy was struck by two bullets fired from above and behind him, one of which traversed the base of the neck on the right side without striking bone and the other of which entered the skull from behind and destroyed its upper right side.
The United States President's Commission on CIA activities within the United States was set up under President Gerald Ford in 1975 to investigate the activities of the CIA within the United States. The commission was led by Vice-President Nelson Rockefeller, and is sometimes referred to as the Rockefeller Commission.
Part of the commission's work dealt with the Kennedy assassination, specifically the head snap as seen in the Zapruder film (first shown to the general public in 1975), and the possible presence of E. Howard Hunt and Frank Sturgis in Dallas. The commission concluded that neither Hunt nor Sturgis were in Dallas at the time of the assassination.
Church Committee is the common term referring to the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, a U.S. Senate committee chaired by Senator Frank Church, to investigate the illegal intelligence gathering by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) after the Watergate incident. It also investigated the CIA and FBI conduct relating to the JFK assassination.
Their report concluded that the investigation on the assassination by FBI and CIA were fundamentally deficient and the facts which have greatly affected the investigation had not been forwarded to the Warren Commission by the agencies. It also found that the FBI, the agency with primary responsibility on the matter, was ordered by Director Hoover and pressured by unnamed higher government officials to conclude its investigation quickly. The report hinted that there was a possibility that senior officials in both agencies made conscious decisions not to disclose potentially important information.
United States House Select Committee on Assassinations
As a result of increasing public pressure caused partly by the finding of the Church Committee, the United States House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) was established in 1976 to investigate the assassinations of President Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr.. and the shooting of Governor George Wallace. The committee was both controversial and divided amongst themselves. The first chairman, Thomas N. Downing of Virginia retired in January 1977 and was replaced by Henry B. Gonzalez on February 2, 1977. Gonzalez sought to replace Chief Counsel Richard Sprague. Eventually both Gonzalez and Sprague resigned and Louis Stokes became the new chairman. G. Robert Blakey was then appointed Chief Counsel and his deputy Robert K. Tanenbaum resigned soon afterwards.
The Committee investigated until 1978, and in 1979 issued its final report, concluding that President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. The Committee concluded that previous investigations properly investigated Oswald's responsibility but did not adequately investigate the possibility of a conspiracy, and that the Warren Commission presented its conclusions too definitively. The Committee also found that the FBI and CIA were deficient in sharing information. Furthermore the Secret Service did not properly analyze information it possessed prior to the assassination and was inadequately prepared to protect the President.
Although the HSCA concluded that President Kennedy was "probably" assassinated as the result of a conspiracy it did not offer the name of any person or group it thought had conspired with Oswald. Instead the HSCA listed several organizations that it did not think were involved, including the governments of the Soviet Union and Cuba, organized crime groups and anti-Castro groups, but noted that it could not rule out the involvement of any individuals of these groups.
Four of the twelve committee members wrote dissenting opinions. Chris Dodd did not think that Oswald fired all three shots from the depository and wanted more investigation into the matter. Three other members did not think there was a second shooter or a conspiracy. According to Robert W. Edgar the committee was swayed at the last minute by the introduction of acoustic analysis of a Dictabelt recording of radio transmissions made by the Dallas Police Department. Prior to that a draft of the committee's report said "the available scientific evidence is insufficient to find that there was a conspiracy." The final report said: "Scientifically, the existence of the second gunman was established only by the acoustical study, but its basic validity was corroborated or independently substantiated by the various other scientific projects." Three dissenters, Edgar, Devine and Sawyer, were not convinced by the Dictabelt analysis. Subsequent examinations of the recording by the National Academy of Sciences, by the FBI, and by the Justice Department disputed the Dictabelt evidence, and in turn the NAS's analysis was contested by Donald Thomas, see Dictabelt evidence relating to the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
The HSCA made several accusations of deficiency against the Secret Service, the Department of Justice, the FBI, the CIA and the Warren Commission. The accusations encompassed organizational failures, miscommunication, and a desire to keep certain parts of their operations secret. Furthermore, the Warren Commission expected these agencies to be forthcoming with any information that would aid their investigation. But the FBI and CIA only saw it as their duty to respond to specific requests for information from the commission. The HSCA found the FBI and CIA were deficient in performing even that limited role.
The House Select Committee on Assassinations was conducted mostly in secret. They issued a public report but much of its evidence was sealed for 50 years under Congressional rules. In 1992, Congress passed legislation to collect and open up all the evidence relating to Kennedy's death, and created the Assassination Records Review Board to further that goal.
Sealing of assassination records
All of the Warren Commission's records were submitted to the National Archives in 1964. The unpublished portion of those records was initially sealed for 75 years (to 2039) under a general National Archives policy that applied to all federal investigations by the executive branch of government, a period "intended to serve as protection for innocent persons who could otherwise be damaged because of their relationship with participants in the case.” The 75-year rule no longer exists, supplanted by the Freedom of Information Act of 1966 and the JFK Records Act of 1992. By 1992, 98% of the Warren Commission records had been released to the public. Six years later, at the conclusion of the Assassination Records Review Board's work, all Warren Commission records, except those records that contained tax return information, were available to the public with only minor redactions. The remaining Kennedy assassination related documents are scheduled to be released to the public by 2017, twenty-five years after the passage of the JFK Records Act. The Kennedy autopsy photographs and X-rays were never part of the Warren Commission records and were deeded separately to the National Archives by the Kennedy family in 1966 under restricted conditions.
Several pieces of evidence and documentation are described to have been lost, cleaned, or missing from the original chain of evidence (e.g., limousine cleaned out on November 24, Connally's clothing cleaned and pressed, Oswald's military intelligence file destroyed in 1973, Connally's Stetson hat and shirt sleeve gold cufflink missing).
Jackie Kennedy's blood-splattered pink and navy Chanel suit that she wore on the day of the assassination is in climate controlled storage in the National Archives. Jackie wore the suit for the remainder of the day, stating "I want them to see what they have done to Jack" when asked aboard Air Force One to change into another outfit. Not included in the National Archives are the white gloves and pink pillbox hat she was wearing.
Assassination Records Review Board
The Assassination Records Review Board was not commissioned to make any findings or conclusions. Its purpose was to release documents to the public in order to allow the public to draw its own conclusions. From 1992 until 1998, the Assassination Records Review Board gathered and unsealed about 60,000 documents, consisting of over 4 million pages. All remaining documents are to be released by 2017.
From the day of the assassination, many Americans suspected that a conspiracy, and not a lone gunman, was responsible for President Kennedy's death. Polls taken that day through November 27, 1963 by Gallup showed 52 percent believing "some group or element" was behind the assassination.
Before the Warren Commission issued its report which concluded Oswald acted alone, several books had already been published suggesting a conspiracy was behind the assassination. Within a few months of the assassination, lawyer Mark Lane, who had been hired by Oswald’s mother Marguerite to represent Oswald’s interests before the Warren Commission, had formed his Citizens' Committee of Inquiry on the assassination and was speaking in the United States and Europe in early 1964, challenging the work of the Warren Commission, even before it had published its findings.
Upon the publication of the Warren Report in September, 1964, only a minority 31.6 percent of Americans rejected the conclusion that Oswald had acted alone, with 55.5 percent accepting the Report's conclusion. But since then, public opinion has consistently shown majorities, often large majorities, believing a conspiracy had been in place. In 1966, Lane's Rush to Judgment was published, spending six months on The New York Times best-seller list. The book accused the Warren Commission of "being biased towards its conclusions before the facts were known," and cited evidence found within the 26 volumes of the Warren Report and in his interviews with witnesses which seemed to suggest bullets coming from multiple directions striking the president and hence a conspiracy. The Freedom of Information Act was also passed that year, which had the effect of permitting researchers greater access to once-secret government files, particularly those connected to the Warren Commission..
Many researchers were now investigating the assassination, most of whom believed the Warren Report was at best inaccurate and at worst a lie. In July 1966, in commenting on Edward Jay Epstein's book Inquest, which focused on the inner workings of the Warren Commission, Richard N. Goodwin became the first of Kennedy’s inner circle to publicly call for a review of the Warren Report. That November, former assistant to the president and Pulitzer-prize winning author Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. called on Congress to initiate a new inquiry. That same month, Life magazine called for a new investigation as did The Saturday Evening Post the following January. The New York Times, in an editorial dated November 25, 1966, did not call for a re-investigation, but said that the Warren Commission and its staff should address "the many puzzling questions that have been raised... There are enough solid doubts of thoughtful persons."
In 1967, Six Seconds in Dallas by Josiah Thompson was published. The book was the first to focus on many technical aspects not previously discussed by other authors, such as firearms, bullet trajectories, medical and photographic evidence. Thompson, who was a consultant to Life magazine, had unique access to a first-generation print of the Zapruder film and was the first to suggest that President Kennedy was struck by two near-simultaneous bullets to the head, one from the rear, the other from the right front.
That March, New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison announced he would prosecute local businessman Clay Shaw for the murder of President Kennedy, and, galvanized, many Warren Commission critics descended on New Orleans. Public interest in the trial was high, with a Harris poll that May showing nearly two of three Americans saying they were following the investigation. The same poll indicated 66 per cent believed there was a conspiracy, compared to 44 percent who believed that in a Harris poll done in February.
Garrison was also notable for being among the first to assert that there were two conspiracies: The first conspiracy being the one which engineered the assassination of the president; the second conspiracy being the deliberate cover-up by the Warren Commission to hide the true facts of the assassination.
Shaw was acquitted in March, 1969, and the conspiracy movement was dealt a blow as Garrison’s trial was widely seen as a debacle, with many researchers denouncing Garrison as a fraud and megalomaniac. Further, as conspiracy theorist Robert Anson put it, because of Garrison, "bills in Congress asking for a new investigation were quietly shelved." Nevertheless, the trial opened new avenues of investigations for the movement, particularly with previously unexplored New Orleans connections and links of others to Oswald.
The year 1973 saw the release of the film Executive Action starring Burt Lancaster, the first Hollywood depiction of events surrounding the assassination. In the film, three gunmen shoot President Kennedy in a conspiracy led by right-wing elements and military/industrial interests. That year also saw the formation of the Assassination Information Bureau. The influential group spoke to ever-growing audiences at hundreds of colleges throughout the United States, urging a reopening of the investigation, and was ultimately instrumental in the realization of that goal in 1977.
In March 1975, Good Night America broadcast, for the first time, the Zapruder film, with an audience of millions watching. Almost immediately, with the film showing a backward snap of President Kennedy’s head, indicating to many a shot from the right front and hence a conspiracy, there were new demands for a re-investigation. The findings of the Rockefeller Commission that year and the Church Committee the next year added impetus to calls for a new inquiry, which was realized by the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) from 1977 to 1979. That investigation concluded President Kennedy "was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy."
While the HSCA’s conclusion was welcomed by many in the conspiracy community, the HSCA’s inability to name any players in the conspiracy they identified, and their actions in sealing much of their documentation, left many in the community frustrated.
Numerous books, television shows and articles continued to appear. Writing in 2007, Vincent Bugliosi said, "close to one thousand books" had been published on the subject of the assassination, of which "over 95 percent" were pro-conspiracy. Some notable books to 1990 were Anthony Summer’s "Conspiracy," David Lifton's best-selling Best Evidence, both published in 1980, and Henry Hurt’s Reasonable Doubt in 1985. They remain prominent in the conspiracy community to this day. The Summer and Hurt books recite many of the prominent conspiracy theories to that time, while Lifton argues that President Kennedy’s wounds were altered before the autopsy to frame Oswald. Jim Marrs published Crossfire in 1989, the same year High Treason, by Robert J. Groden and Harrison Livingstone was published. The latter book argued the autopsy photos were altered to give the appearance that wounds were caused by shots from a single gunman.
By the late 80s, interest in the subject among the general public was waning. One theory for this from writer Pete Hamill was that by 1988, "an entire generation had come to maturity with no memory at all of the Kennedy years." In 1991, Oliver Stone's film JFK introduced the subject – and many of the attendant conspiracy theories – to a new generation of Americans. The sudden renewed interest in the assassination led to the passage by Congress of the JFK Records Act in 1992. The Act created the Assassination Records Review Board to implement the Act’s mandate to release all sealed documents related to the assassination. Thousands of documents were released between 1994 and 1998, providing new material for researchers.
To date, there is no consensus on who, among many players, may have been involved in a conspiracy to kill President Kennedy. Those often mentioned as being part of a conspiracy include Jack Ruby, organized crime as an organization or organized crime individuals, the CIA, the FBI, the Secret Service, the KGB, right-wing groups or right-wing individuals, President Lyndon Johnson, pro- or anti-Castro Cubans, the military and/or industrial groups allied with the military.
Elsie Dorman Film
Reaction to the assassination
The assassination evoked stunned reactions worldwide. Before the President's death was announced, the first hour after the shooting was a time of great confusion. Taking place during the Cold War, it was at first unclear whether the shooting might be part of a larger attack upon the U.S., and whether Vice-President Lyndon Johnson, who had been riding two cars behind in the motorcade, was safe.
The news shocked the nation. Men and women wept openly. People gathered in department stores to watch the television coverage, while others prayed. Traffic in some areas came to a halt as the news spread from car to car. Schools across the U.S. dismissed their students early. Anger against Texas and Texans was reported from some individuals. Various Cleveland Browns fans, for example, carried signs at the next Sunday's home game against the Dallas Cowboys decrying the city of Dallas as having "killed the President."
The event left a lasting impression on many Americans. As with the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor before it and the September 11, 2001 attacks after it, asking "Where were you when you heard about President Kennedy's assassination" would become a common topic of discussion.
Artifacts, museums and locations today
The plane serving as Air Force One is on display at the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, Ohio where tours of the aircraft are offered including the rear of the aircraft where President Kennedy's casket was placed and the location where First Lady Mrs. Kennedy stood in her blood stained pink dress while Vice-President Lyndon Johnson was sworn in as President. The 1961 Lincoln Continental limousine is at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan.
Equipment from the trauma room at Parkland Memorial Hospital where President Kennedy was pronounced dead, including a gurney, was purchased by the federal government from the hospital in 1973 and stored by the National Archives at an underground facility in Lenexa, Kansas. The First Lady's pink suit, the autopsy report and X-rays are stored in the National Archives facility in College Park, Maryland and access is controlled by a representative of the Kennedy family. The rifle used by Oswald, his diary, bullet fragments, and the windshield of Kennedy's limousine are also stored by the Archives. The Lincoln Catafalque, which President Kennedy's coffin rested on while he lay in state in the Capitol, is on display at the United States Capitol Visitor Center.
The three acre park within Dealey Plaza, the buildings facing it, the overpass, and a portion of the adjacent railyard including the railroad switching tower were designated part of the Dealey Plaza Historic District by the National Park Service on October 12, 1993. Much of the area is accessible to visitors including the park and grassy knoll. Though still an active city street, the spot where the presidential limousine was located at the time of the shooting is approximately marked with an X on the street. The Texas School Book Depository now draws over 325,000 visitors each year to the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza operated by the Dallas County Historical Foundation. There is a re-creation of the sniper’s nest on the sixth floor of the building.
Some items were intentionally destroyed by the U.S. government at the direction of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy such as the casket used to transport President Kennedy's body aboard Air Force One from Dallas to Washington which was dropped by the Air Force into the sea as "its public display would be extremely offensive and contrary to public policy." Other items such as the hat worn by Jack Ruby the day he shot Lee Harvey Oswald and the toe tag on Oswald's corpse are in the hands of private collectors and have sold for tens of thousands of dollars at auctions.
Jack Ruby's gun, owned by his brother Earl Ruby, was sold by the Herman Darvick Autograph Auctions in New York City on December 26, 1991, for $220,000.
- "Testimony of Mrs. John Bowden Connally, Jr". Warren Commission Hearings, Volume IV. Assassination Archives and Research Center. pp. 146–149. Retrieved 26 November 2012.
- "Testimony of Gov. John Bowden Connally, Jr". Warren Commission Hearings, Volume IV. Assassination Archives and Research Center. pp. 129–146. Retrieved 26 November 2012.
- Fonzi, Gaeton (1 August 1966). "The Warren Commission, The Truth, and Arlen Specter". Greater Philadelphia Magazine. University of Rhode Island. Retrieved 26 November 2012.
- Langer, Gary (November 16, 2003). "John F. Kennedy’s Assassination Leaves a Legacy of Suspicion". ABC News. Retrieved May 16, 2010.
- Murphy, Jarrett (November 21, 2003). "40 Years Later: Who Killed JFK?". CBS News. Retrieved 26 November 2012.
- Stokes 1979, p. 2.
- Stokes 1979, pp. 90–93.
- House Select Committee on Assassinations Final Report, pp. 65-75.
- "Testimony of Kenneth P. O'Donnell". Warren Commission Hearings, Volume VII. Assassination Archives and Research Center. pp. 440–457. Retrieved 26 November 2012.
- Warren 1964, chpt. 2, p. 31.
- Warren 1964, chpt. 2, p. 40.
- McAdams, John (2012). "Changed Motorcade Route in Dallas?". The Kennedy Assassination. Marquette University. Retrieved 26 November 2012.
- "November 22, 1963: Death of the President". John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. Retrieved 26 November 2012.
- Carr, Heather. "What time was President Kennedy shot? When was Lee Harvey Oswald arrested?". About.com Dallas. Retrieved 26 November 2012.
- McAdams, John (2012). "Dealey Plaza Earwitnesses". The Kennedy Assassination. Marquette University. Retrieved 26 November 2012.
- Warren 1964, chpt. 2, p. 49. Although some close witnesses, dependent on their viewing angle, recalled seeing the limousine slow down, nearly stop, or completely stop, the Warren Commission, based on the Zapruder film, found that the limousine had an average speed of 11.2 miles per hour over the 186 ft of Elm Street immediately preceding the fatal head shot.
- Roberdeau, Donald (11 November 2012). "The Dealey Plaza Map". Men of Courage: JFK Assassination Evidence, Discoveries & Suspects. p. 5. Retrieved 17 December 2012. "Additional research from the Zapruder film has determined that the car's speed to specifically slow from 14.4 mph to 8.3 mph. See the "Limo Speed" notations, written on Main Street in the upper right map area."
- Roberdeau, Donald (August 2009). "Graph of Head-facing Directions, Head-facing Changes, & Head-facing Changes in Speeds of the Kennedy's (sic) and Connally's (sic) at the Start of the Attack". Men of Courage: JFK Assassination Evidence, Discoveries & Suspects. p. 2. Retrieved 27 November 2012.
- "Testimony of Mrs. John F. Kennedy". Warren Commission Hearings, Volume V. Assassination Archives and Research Center. 5 June 1964. pp. 178–181. Retrieved 26 November 2012.
- Warren 1964, chpt. 1, pp. 18–19.
- Stokes 1979, pp. 41–46.
- "Testimony of Dr. Robert Roeder Shaw". Warren Commission Hearings, Volume IV. Assassination Archives and Research Center. 21 April 1964. pp. 101–117. Retrieved 26 November 2012.
- Monroe, Monte L. (January–February 2012). "Waggoner Carr investigates the JFK assassination". Texas Techsan (Lubbock: Texas Tech Alumni Association): 23–31. "Texas Attorney General Waggoner Carr attempted a state-level investigation but received no cooperation from the Warren Commission. In the end, Carr generally endorsed the Warren Commission's findings."
- "Testimony of Bobby W. Hargis". Warren Commission Hearings, Volume VI. Assassination Archives and Research Center. 8 April 1964. pp. 293–296. Retrieved 26 November 2012.
- Abraham Zapruder WFAA-TV Interview (Friday 11/22/1963) on YouTube
- "Testimony of Clinton J. Hill, Special Agent, Secret Service". Warren Commission Hearings, Volume II. Assassination Archives and Research Center. pp. 132–144. Retrieved 26 November 2012.
- Zapruder film: frames 370, 375, 380, 390.
- "Testimony of James Thomas Tague". Warren Commission Hearings, Volume VII. Assassination Archives and Research Center. 23 July 1964. pp. 552–558. Retrieved 26 November 2012.
- "Testimony of Clyde A. Haygood". Warren Commission Hearings, Volume VI. Assassination Archives and Research Center. 9 April 1964. pp. 296–302. Retrieved 26 November 2012.
- Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 6, pp. 244–245, Testimony of S. M. Holland.
- Rahn, Kenneth A., Sr. (November 2001). "Up by the Triple Underpass 1". Ken and Greg's Excellent Adventure: Dallas. Retrieved 27 November 2012. "See photos 1, 4, 7, and 8."
- "Commission Exhibit 2118: View From North Tower of Union Terminal Company, Dallas, Texas". Warren Commission Hearings, Volume XXIV. Assassination Archives and Research Center. p. 548. Retrieved 25 November 2012.
- Warren Commission Hearings, Testimony of Lee E. Bowers, Jr.
- Myers, Dale K. (2008). "The Testimony of Lee Bowers, Jr". Secrets of a Homicide: Badge Man. Oak Cliff Press. Retrieved 26 November 2012.
- Myers, Dale K. (14 September 2007). "Lee Bowers: The Man Behind the Grassy Knoll". Secrets of a Homicide: JFK Assassination. Oak Cliff Press. Retrieved 26 November 2012.
- Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 3, p. 143, Testimony of Howard Brennan.
- Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 3, p. 145, Testimony of Howard Brennan.
- McAdams, John (November 22, 1963). "The JFK Assassination Dallas Police Tapes: History in Real Time". The Kennedy Assassination. Marquette University. Retrieved 26 November 2012.
- Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 17, p. 209, CE 494, Photograph of James Jarman, showing his position at a fifth floor window of the Texas School Book Depository.
- Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 17, p. 202, CE 485, Photograph of Harold Norman, Bonnie Ray Williams, and James Jarman, Jr. showing their positions on the fifth floor of the Texas School Book Depository as the motorcade passed.
- Warren Commission Hearings, Testimony of Bonnie Ray Williams. Warren Commission Hearings, Testimony of James Jarman, Jr.
- Warren Commission Hearings, Testimony of Harold Norman.
- Warren Commission Hearings, Testimony of Welcome Eugene Barnett.
- Warren Commission Hearings, Testimony of Forrest V. Sorrels.
- Not included in the 51.9% are two earwitnesses who though the shots came from the TSBD, but from a lower floor or at street level, and who are thus included in the 8.7%. Included in the 31.7% is a witness who thought the shots came from "the alcove near the benches".
- Warren 1964, chpt. 3, p. 110.
- Testimony of Roy Truly, Warren Commission Hearings and Exhibits, vol. 3, p. 230.
- Testimony of Helen Markham, Warren Commission Hearings and Exhibits, vol. 3, p. 307.
- Testimony of Johnny Calvin Brewer, 7 H 3–5.
- Testimony of Julia Postal, 7 H 11.
- Testimony of M.N. McDonald, Warren Commission Hearings and Exhibits, vol. 3, p. 300.
- Tippit murder affidavit: text, cover. Kennedy murder affidavit: text, cover.
- Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 20, p. 366, Kantor Exhibit No. 3 — Handwritten notes made by Seth Kantor concerning events surrounding the assassination.
- Lee Oswald claiming innocence (film), YouTube.com.
- Lee Oswald's Midnight Press Conference, YouTube.com. Archived July 18, 2011 at the Wayback Machine
- Testimony of Jack Ruby, Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 5, pp. 198–200.
- "John F. Kennedy Assassination Homepage :: Warren Commission :: Report :: Page 645". Jfk-assassination.de. December 5, 2004. Retrieved July 31, 2010.
- "Tom Alyea, "Facts and Photos"". Jfk-online.com. December 19, 1963. Archived from the original on July 25, 2010. Retrieved July 31, 2010.
- "Addendum: Report on an Examination of Photographs of the Rifle Associated with the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy". HSCA Appendix to Hearings - Volume VI. Assassination Archives and Research Center. pp. 66–107. Retrieved 26 November 2012.
- Warren 1964, chpt. 4, pp. 125–126.
- Warren 1964, chpt. 4, p. 129.
- Warren 1964, chpt. 4, p. 118.
- Warren 1964, chpt. 4, p. 122.
- "Testimony of Lt. J. C. Day". Warren Commission Hearings, Volume IV. Assassination Archives and Research Center. p. 260. Retrieved 25 November 2012.
- Warren 1964, chpt. 4, p. 124.
- "Shaneyfelt Exhibit No. 24". Warren Commission Hearings, Volume XXI. Assassination Archives and Research Center. p. 467. Retrieved 25 November 2012.
- Warren 1964, chpt. 3, p. 79.
- "Biographical sketch of Dr. George Gregory Burkley, Arlington National Cemetery". Arlington National Cemetery. Retrieved April 28, 2009.
- "History Matters Archive — MD 6 – White House Death Certificate (Burkley – 11/23/63), pg". History-matters.com. Archived from the original on July 29, 2010. Retrieved July 31, 2010.
- Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 110, Number 3, January 2007, pp. 380–393. Retrieved October 20, 2008.
- "Testimony Of Dr. Robert Nelson Mcclelland". Jfkassassination.net. Retrieved July 31, 2010.
- Associated Press 1963, p. 15
- "Biographical sketch of Malcolm MacGregor Kilduff, Jr.". Arlington National Cemetery. Archived from the original on March 29, 2009. Retrieved April 28, 2009.
- Associated Press 1963, p. 19
- Rusk, Dean (1990). Rusk, Richard; Papp, Daniel S., eds. As I Saw It. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. p. 296. ISBN 0-393-02650-7.
- "Johnson Feared a Plot in Dallas". The New York Times. Associated Press. December 24, 1963. p. 6. "Mr. Kilduff was the White House press man in charge at Dallas because Pierre Salinger, the chief press secretary, was traveling to Japan with members of the Cabinet."
- Bugliosi 2007, pp. 92f–93f.
- 18 U.S.C. § 372
- Warren 1964, chpt. 8, pp. 454–456.
- Article II of the United States Constitution, Section 1, Clause 6
- Associated Press 1963, pp. 29–31
- United Press International; American Heritage Magazine (1964). Four Days: The Historical Record of the Death of President Kennedy. American Heritage Publishing Company.
- Raymond, Jack (November 23, 1963). "President's Body Will Lie in State". The New York Times. p. 1.
- Raymond, Jack (November 24, 1963). "Kennedy's Body Lies in the White House". New York Times. p. 1.
- Wicker, Tom (November 25, 1963). "Grieving Throngs View Kennedy Bier". The New York Times. p. 1.
- Associated Press 1963, p. 91
- Wicker, Tom (November 26, 1963). "Kennedy Laid to Rest in Arlington". The New York Times. p. 1.
- Zaid, Mark; James Lesar, and Charles Sanders (November 23, 1998). "Zapruder Film Civil Suit Filed". Assassination Research. Retrieved 27 November 2012.
- Inverne, James (June 11, 2004). "Think you know your film facts?". The Guardian (London). Retrieved May 6, 2010.
- Friedman, Rick (November 30, 1963). "Pictures of the Assassination Fall to Amateurs on Street". Editor & Publisher: 17.
- "A World Listened and Watched". Broadcasting (Washington, DC: Broadcasting Publications): 36–40, 46. December 2, 1963. Retrieved 27 November 2012.
- Schonfeld, Maurice W. (July–August 1975). "The shadow of a gunman". Columbia Journalism Review. Retrieved 27 November 2012.
- A different person than the so-called "Babushka Lady".
- "George Jefferies Film". George Jefferies Collection. Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza. Retrieved 26 November 2012.
- "Museum Releases Newly Discovered Film of JFK Motorcade" (Press release). Dallas, Texas: Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza. 19 February 2007. Retrieved 26 November 2012.
- Warren 1964, chpt. 4, p. 180.
- "Report of Capt. J. W. Fritz, Dallas Police Department". Warren Report. Assassination Archives and Research Center. pp. 599–611. Retrieved 25 November 2012.
- "Captain Will Fritz's notes of LHO interrogation". JFK Lancer Productions & Publications. Retrieved 25 November 2012. "Captain Fritz told the Warren Commission that “I kept no notes at the time” of his several interrogations of Oswald (4 H 209). However, many years later, someone discovered a little over two and a half pages of Fritz’s contemporaneous handwritten notes at the National Archives. Fritz also said that “several days later” he wrote more extensive notes of the interrogations (4 H 209)."
- Warren 1964, chpt. 4, pp. 180–195.
- "Reports of Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation". Warren Report. Assassination Archives and Research Center. pp. 612–625. Retrieved 25 November 2012.
- For testimony relating to the interrogation sessions, see 4 H 152–153, 157 (Curry); 4 H 207–211, 217, 221–231, 239–240 (Fritz); 4 H 355–357 (Winston Lawson); 4 H 466–470 (James Hosty, Jr.); 7 H 123–127 (Elmer Boyd); 7 H 164–182 (Sims); 7 H 309–318 (James Bookhout); 7 H 320–321 (Manning Clements); 13 H 58–62 (Sorrels); 7 H 590 (Kelley); 7 H 296–306 (Holmes); CE 1982.
- Stokes 1979, p. 244.
- Stokes 1979, pp. 227–261.
- Warren Commission Hearings, Testimony Of Jesse Edward Curry.
- Stokes 1979, p. 227.
- Stokes 1979, pp. 229–35.
- Stokes 1979, pp. 234–35.
- Baluch, Jerry T. (November 30, 1963). "Warren Heads Probe into Assassination". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Associated Press.
- Mohr, Charles (September 25, 1964). "Johnson Gets Assassination Report". The New York Times. p. 1.
- Roberts, Chalmers M. (September 28, 1964). "Warren Report Says Oswald Acted Alone; Raps FBI, Secret Service". The Washington Post. p. A1.
- Lewis, Anthony (September 27, 1964). "Warren Commission Finds Oswald Guilty and Says Assassin and Ruby Acted Alone". The New York Times. p. 1.
- Pomfret, John D. (September 28, 1964). "Commission Says Ruby Acted Alone in Slaying". The New York Times. p. 17.
- Beschloss, Michael R. (1997). "Taking Charge: The Johnson White House Tapes, 1963-1964". New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-684-80407-7.
- "Paperback Version is Fast Seller Here". The New York Times. September 28, 1964. p. 14.
- 1968 Panel Review of Photographs, X-Ray Films, Documents and Other Evidence Pertaining to the Fatal Wounding of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas. Archived 30 July 2007 at WebCite
- "Rockefeller Commission Report". Assassination Archives and Research Center. Retrieved 26 November 2012.
- McAdams, John. "E. Howard Hunt and Frank Sturgis: Were Watergate Conspirators Also JFK Assassins?". The Kennedy Assassination. Marquette University. Retrieved 26 November 2012.
- "Book V: The Investigation of the Assassination of President J.F.K.: Performance of the Intelligence Agencies". Assassinations Archive and Research Center. Retrieved February 6, 2011.
- "Book V: The Investigation of the Assassination of President J.F.K.: Performance of the Intelligence Agencies". Assassinations Archive and Research Center. Retrieved February 6, 2011.
- Stokes 1979, pp. 483–511.
- Stokes 1979, p. 84.
- "1. The Problem of Secrecy and the Solution of the JFK Act". Final Report of the Assassination Records Review Board. September 1998.
- Bugliosi 2007, pp. 136–137.
- National Archives Deputy Archivist, Dr. Robert H. Bahmer, interview in New York Herald Tribune, December 18, 1964, p. 24
- Final Report of the Assassination Records Review Board (1998), p.2.
- ARRB Final Report, p. 2. Redacted text includes the names of living intelligence sources, intelligence gathering methods still used today and not commonly known, and purely private matters.
- Assassination Records Review Board, exhibit MD 112, Deed-of-Gift Letter from Burke Marshall (Kennedy Family Attorney) to Lawson B. Knott, Jr. (Administrator of General Services) dated October 29, 1966.
- HSCA Record 180-10075-10174, January 6, 1964, p. 4, memo from Secret Service chief James J. Rowley to Warren Commission general counsel J. Lee Rankin. Before the interior of the limousine was cleaned, it was photographed, and a metal detector was used to find bullet fragments.
- "Testimony of Robert A. Frazier". Warren Commission Hearings, Volume V. Assassination Archives and Research Center. pp. 63–65. Retrieved 26 November 2012.
- Stokes 1979, pp. 222–224.
- Justine Picardie, Coco Chanel: The Legend and the Life, London: HarperCollins, 2010, p. 306.
- Delia M. Rios, Newshouse News Service, November 22, 2003 In Mrs. Kennedy's Pink Suit, an indelible memory of public grief.
- "Final Report of the Assassination Records Review Board, Chapter 4". Fas.org. May 30, 2008. Retrieved July 31, 2010.
- "Assassination Records Review Board: Unlocking the Government's Secret Files on the Murder of a President". Mcadams.posc.mu.edu. Retrieved July 31, 2010.
- Bugliosi 2007, p. 989f.
- Bugliosi 2007, p. 990.
- Bugliosi 2007, pp. 1001–02.
- The Washington Post, October 19, 1964.
- Bugliosi 2007, p. xv.
- Bugliosi 2007, p. 1002.
- Lane, Mark (1966). Rush to Judgment: A Critique of the Warren Commission's Inquiry into the Murders of President John F. Kennedy, Officer J. D. Tippit and Lee Harvey Oswald. London: Bodley Head. p. 71. LCCN 66067594.
- Bugliosi 2007, p. 993.
- The New York Times, July 24, 1966, p. 25.
- Bugliosi 2007, p. 994.
- Bugliosi 2007, p. 995.
- "66% in Poll Accept Kennedy Plot View," The New York Times, May 30, 1967, p. 19.
- Bugliosi 2007, p. xx.
- Anson, Robert S. (1975). They've Killed the President!: The Search for the Murderers of John F. Kennedy. New York: Bantam Books. p. 119. LCCN 77373985.
- Bugliosi 2007, p. 996.
- Bugliosi 2007, p. 974.
- Bugliosi 2007, p. xiv.
- Bugliosi 2007, p. 997.
- Zelizer, Barbie (1992). Covering the Body: The Kennedy Assassination, the Media, and the Shaping of Collective Memory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. p. 121. ISBN 0-226-97970-9.
- Associated Press 1963, p. 16
- Associated Press 1963, p. 29
- "Browns Set Back Cowboys, 27 to 17". The New York Times. Associated Press. November 25, 1963. p. 35.
- Loftus, Joseph A. (November 25, 1963). "Ruby is Regarded as 'Small-Timer'". The New York Times. p. 12.
- Brinkley, David (2003). Brinkley's Beat: People, Places, and Events That Shaped My Time. New York: Knopf. ISBN 978-0-375-40644-7.
- White, Theodore H. (1965). The Making of the President, 1964. New York: Atheneum Publishers. p. 6. LCCN 65018328.
- Dinneen, Joseph F. (November 24, 1963). "A Shock Like Pearl Harbor". The Boston Globe. p. 10. – via Boston Globe Archive (subscription required)
- Keen, Judy (November 20, 2009). "JFK 'relics' stir strong emotions". USA Today. Retrieved November 20, 2009.
- "The Catafalque". History of Capitol Hill. Architect of the Capitol. Retrieved 26 November 2012.
- "Dealey Plaza Historic District". National Historic Landmarks Program. National Park Service. Retrieved 26 November 2012.
- "Q: Why is it called The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza?". Frequently Asked Questions. Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza. Retrieved 26 November 2012.
- "Documents State JFK's Dallas Coffin Disposed At Sea". JFK Lancer Independent News Exchange. Retrieved October 2, 2012.
- Goldberg, Barbara (December 26, 1991). "Jack Ruby's Gun Sold For $220,000". Associated Press. Retrieved 2013-02-15. Unknown parameter
- Associated Press (1963). The Torch Is Passed: The Associated Press Story of the Death of a President. New York: Associated Press. LCCN 64001351.
- Bugliosi, Vincent (2007). Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy. New York: Norton. ISBN 978-0-393-04525-3.
- Kelin, John (2007). Praise from a Future Generation: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy and the First Generation Critics of the Warren Report. foreword by H. C. Nash. San Antonio, Tex: Wings Press. ISBN 978-0-916727-32-1.
- Manchester, William (1967). The Death of a President: November 20-November 25, 1963. New York: Harper & Row. LCCN 67010496.
- Stokes, Louis (1979). "Report of the Select Committee on Assassinations of the U.S. House of Representatives". Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office.
- Sturdivan, Larry M. (2005). The JFK Myths: A Scientific Investigation of the Kennedy Assassination. St. Paul, MN: Paragon House. ISBN 978-1-55778-847-4.
- Thompson, Josiah (1967). Six Seconds in Dallas: A Micro-Study of the Kennedy Assassination. New York: Bernard Geis Associates. LCCN 67023577.
- Trask, Richard B. (1994). Pictures of the Pain: Photography and the Assassination of President Kennedy. Danvers, Mass: Yeoman Press. ISBN 978-0-9638595-0-1.
- Waldron, Lamar; Hartmann, Thom (2005). Ultimate Sacrifice: John and Robert Kennedy, the Plan for a Coup in Cuba, and the Murder of JFK. New York: Carroll & Graf. ISBN 978-0-7867-1441-4.
- Warren, Earl (1964). "Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy". Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office.
|Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Assassination of John F. Kennedy|
- "The President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection". National Archives and Records Administration.
- Breaking News of John F. Kennedy's Assassination. New York, NY: NBC News. November 22, 1963.
- "JFK Assassination Photo Chronology".
- "November 22, 1963: Death of the President". John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.
- "Topic: Assassination of John F. Kennedy". YouTube.
|
<urn:uuid:2712416f-b0e8-4dca-a6bf-723d10fb5dff>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JFK_assassination
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.951159
| 16,460
| 3
| 3
|
SOME writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.
Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamities is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer! Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise. – Common Sense
Why does anyone care anything about these people? Instead of mobs with torches and pitchforks; these murderous, in-bred, psychopaths get your adoration.
I’m sure most of the 750 million people who watched Charles’ and Diana’s wedding are divorced now. How many of you can have your ex-wife publicly murdered and get away with it? How many dead bodies can be found at your house before you get sent to prison?
I know it is difficult to get over local or long standing prejudices, yet if we will suffer ourselves to examine the component parts of the English constitution, we shall find them to be the base remains of two ancient tyrannies, compounded with some new republican materials.
First.- The remains of monarchical tyranny in the person of the king.
…The two first, by being hereditary, are independent of the people; wherefore in a constitutional sense they contribute nothing towards the freedom of the state.
…There is something exceedingly ridiculous in the composition of monarchy
…How came the king by a power which the people are afraid to trust, and always obliged to check? Such a power could not be the gift of a wise people, neither can any power, which needs checking, be from God
…though we have and wise enough to shut and lock a door against absolute monarchy, we at the same time have been foolish enough to put the crown in possession of the key.
…The prejudice of Englishmen, in favor of their own government by king, lords, and commons, arises as much or more from national pride than reason.
…MANKIND being originally equals in the order of creation, the equality could only be destroyed by some subsequent circumstance
…the distinction of men into KINGS and SUBJECTS. Male and female are the distinctions of nature, good and bad the distinctions of heaven; but how a race of men came into the world so exalted above the rest, and distinguished like some new species, is worth enquiring into, and whether they are the means of happiness or of misery to mankind.
…Government by kings was first introduced into the world by the Heathens, from whom the children of Israel copied the custom. It was the most prosperous invention the Devil ever set on foot for the promotion of idolatry. The Heathens paid divine honors to their deceased kings, and the Christian world hath improved on the plan by doing the same to their living ones. How impious is the title of sacred majesty applied to a worm, who in the midst of his splendor is crumbling into dust!
As the exalting one man so greatly above the rest cannot be justified on the equal rights of nature, so neither can it be defended on the authority of scripture; for the will of the Almighty, as declared by Gideon and the prophet Samuel, expressly disapproves of government by kings.
Monarchy is ranked in scripture as one of the sins of the Jews, for which a curse in reserve is denounced against them. The history of that transaction is worth attending to.
…it unanswerably follows that original sin and hereditary succession are parallels. Dishonorable rank! Inglorious connection! Yet the most subtle sophist cannot produce a juster simile.
…To the evil of monarchy we have added that of hereditary succession; and as the first is a degradation and lessening of ourselves, so the second, claimed as a matter of right, is an insult and an imposition on posterity. For all men being originally equals, no one by birth could have a right to set up his own family in perpetual preference to all others for ever, and though himself might deserve some decent degree of honors of his contemporaries, yet his descendants might be far too unworthy to inherit them. One of the strongest natural proofs of the folly of hereditary right in kings, is, that nature disapproves it, otherwise she would not so frequently turn it into ridicule by giving mankind an ass for a lion.
Secondly, as no man at first could possess any other public honors than were bestowed upon him, so the givers of those honors could have no power to give away the right of posterity, and though they might say, “We choose you for our head,” they could not, without manifest injustice to their children, say, “that your children and your children’s children shall reign over ours for ever.” Because such an unwise, unjust, unnatural compact might (perhaps) in the next succession put them under the government of a rogue or a fool. Most wise men, in their private sentiments, have ever treated hereditary right with contempt; yet it is one of those evils, which when once established is not easily removed; many submit from fear, others from superstition, and the more powerful part shares with the king the plunder of the rest.
This is supposing the present race of kings in the world to have had an honorable origin
…England, since the conquest, hath known some few good monarchs, but groaned beneath a much larger number of bad ones
… But it is not so much the absurdity as the evil of hereditary succession which concerns mankind. Did it ensure a race of good and wise men it would have the seal of divine authority, but as it opens a door to the foolish, the wicked; and the improper, it hath in it the nature of oppression. Men who look upon themselves born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent; selected from the rest of mankind their minds are early poisoned by importance; and the world they act in differs so materially from the world at large, that they have but little opportunity of knowing its true interests, and when they succeed to the government are frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any throughout the dominions.
Another evil which attends hereditary succession is, that the throne is subject to be possessed by a minor at any age; all which time the regency, acting under the cover of a king, have every opportunity and inducement to betray their trust. The same national misfortune happens, when a king worn out with age and infirmity, enters the last stage of human weakness. In both these cases the public becomes a prey to every miscreant, who can tamper successfully with the follies either of age or infancy.
…In England a king hath little more to do than to make war and give away places; which in plain terms, is to impoverish the nation and set it together by the ears. A pretty business indeed for a man to be allowed eight hundred thousand sterling a year for, and worshipped into the bargain! Of more worth is one honest man to society, and in the sight of God, than all the crowned ruffians that ever lived. – Common Sense
2 billion sleep-walking sheep watched two ne’er do wells get married on T.V.
Next – the public consummation.
Now, Her Highness is knocked up in the Royal Family Way. Oh yes, Celebrate, you filthy peasants, but don’t you dare call the hospital to ask if Kate is still throwing up. They’ll kill you for that.
Two Australian DJ’s called the hospital on-air. Mel Greig, (a woman) gave her best QEII impersonation and the nurse who answered the phone believed it and put the call through. The Duchess didn’t answer. Her attending nurse answered and also believed she was talking to the Queen.
It’s all fun and games until someone gets murdered by a hit-man
Jacintha Saldanha, the nurse who first answered the prank call was apparently so distraught over being fooled by these shock jocks, she was so overwrought with shame because she had helped those two Australian descendants of criminals to dare mock her gods of the English throne, this troubled her so much, that she felt that she would be better of dead and thus killed herself.
Can you hear the sarcasm in my voice?
The shock jocks will not be on-air until, further notice. Maybe being out of work, and the shame and guilt of this situation will drive them to commit “suicide” also.
In short, monarchy and succession have laid (not this or that kingdom only) but the world in blood and ashes. ‘Tis a form of government which the word of God bears testimony against, and blood will attend it. – Common Sense
- Map: Which of the world’s monarchies allow female royal succession (washingtonpost.com)
- U.K. Gets Commonwealth Consent to Change Royal Succession … – Bloomberg (bloomberg.com)
Public School Defends Posting Nativity Scene, Air Force Base Won’t Remove Nativity Scene, Menorah, Bill Press Tells Tebow: ‘S-T-F-U!’ About Jesus, Cops Summoned To Florida Elementary School After Girl Kisses Boy, Senate legalizes bestiality in the Armed Forces, A new study shows that mothers who return to the workforce are happier than mothers who choose to stay at home to raise their kids.
I reckon those mothers spent so much time away from home; they forgot who their kids were and wound up making out with them in public. Did you see the mother and son rolling around on the gym floor like they were going to make a baby right there in front of everybody? Her new grandsonson? His new little sisdaughter?
Stupid principal said that normal red-blooded, freedom-loving, God-fearing Americans are upset because we saw the video on YouTube and took it out of context. Oh, sorry Principal Wollersheim. We took it out of context. I’m glad you explained the whole situation to us. Oh wait; you gave no explanation. What is wrong with you? I recall public displays of affection being disallowed at every school I’ve attended. I don’t think context matters.
Principal Wollersheim; I don’t accept your weak apology with the stupid little smirk on your fat face. I’ll accept your apology right before your sentencing. You are guilty of the same crimes committed by the strip-search scammer, David R. Stewart. I pray that the people of your county in Minnesota are calling your Superintendent and demanding your termination. I pray that next, they call the D.A.’s office and demand you be charged and dragged into court.
Newt Gingrich’s statement about poor kids working in their schools outraged people. Rush Limbaugh made a good point about this when he asked; why were people upset about suggesting schoolkids working? Aren’t many Americans unemployed and desiring work? Isn’t the President pushing a “Jobs Bill” now? Limbaugh asked, isn’t public school preparation and training for work? Well, if suggesting schoolkids work is controversial, then maybe public school isn’t about work. Maybe it is all about indoctrination.
If this man doesn’t rot in prison; this will be one more proof to us that there is an agenda to dumb down the American people so that we will accept anything that is imposed upon us.
|
<urn:uuid:405761ee-3d00-4934-9c64-cf2ea3dbd302>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://freedomfighterusa.wordpress.com/tag/government/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.963598
| 2,517
| 2.515625
| 3
|
We all had a great time working with and through the Samorost games over this last month. What I found myself wondering though, was why it had such an impact on the students’ writing. Was it just a case of grabbing their collective imagination, was it that they worked on the game as a class – problem solving together and collectively solving the game, or was it the fact that it was a game that the students found so engaging?
The class and I used De Bono’s thinking hats to organize our thoughts about the games (see previous post and individual student posts) but this didn’t really answer my questions.
I have explored narratives with many age groups over the years: we’ve used stories and texts to inspire, we’ve looked at paintings and pictures to set scenes and watched movies to see characters and explore story lines. I have always tried to share whatever was available to help my students “put pictures and experiences in their heads” to use in their writing. Sometimes results were encouraging, but never has the quality of ALL student writing been as high as it was this month, using Samorost.
Tim Rylands’ blog and website are inspirational, and his success with using MYST with students to help their creative writing encouraged me to have a go at using some form of game to try out his ideas – albeit in a small and isolated way.
So I knew that this had been tried before, that success had been documented before, but still no real why was this so?
What often happens when I’m unsure about things: I ask my class what they think.
This is what they came up with:
- the scenes and environments are out of the ordinary – they appeal to you because they are different/ unexpected
- the environments show great detail which you can describe
- you are within the scene, not static, there are hidden things that you don’t expect
- it is surprising – keeps you active
- the game aspects – you think differently in a game rather than in a book – you are actually DOING IT
- it could really be happening to you
- you are part of what is happening
- you control where you go – in a picture or book you have to stay where the character is
- you choose what happens to you – you make the adventure
- the sounds give you the mood and the atmosphere
- it’s interactive – you use all of your senses
Interesting, don’t you think?
Games are very important to these students. They like being the centre of the game, in control, and making decisions. It gives them the experiences that they could possibly write about. They have sensory experiences to recall, they have scenery to describe, choices they’ve made, places they have explored. Experiences ready and waiting to be articulated, discussed, expanded upon, labelled, thought about, talked about, shared and finally written about. Cool!
|
<urn:uuid:ef7ccffd-7588-4324-8d14-f955f344b7ea>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://kpericles.edublogs.org/2007/06/27/wondering-why/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.981618
| 613
| 3.140625
| 3
|
Color fringes can be very annoying, especially in stitched panoramas. Since they often appear nearer to the edges of single images they are near to any seam between two images in the panorama. Even worse, they change color where they cross the seam.
Hence chromatic aberration should be corrected if visible otherwise, at least for full screen or printed panoramas where you allow to zoom in to the native camera resolution. While correction is relatively easy CA can not be automatically determined like f.e. barrel distortion. Only visual judgement can give you enough control of the result. Unfortunately it needs some experience to do this.
What it is
Chromatic aberration is a common lens error visible in images as colored fringes or colored blur along edges. It is caused by a different refractive index of glass for light at different wavelength. There is a nice description with lots of links on wikipedia:Chromatic aberration.
Another good description is found on Paul van Walree's page.
Different refractive index means different Focal Length for a single lens. This would lead to different focal planes for different colors. You would have to focus differently for red, blue or green. This effect is called longitudinal chromatic aberration (LCA). If you have a fringe near the image center that changes color if you defocus slightly, this is most likely longitudinal chromatic aberration. This type:
- can not be corrected by software
- gets less if stopped down
- is dependent from focus distance.
When a lens is corrected for longitudinal chromatic aberration, different colors focus more or less in the same point on the optical axis, but they might focus in different distances off axis resulting in images of different size for different colors. This type is called lateral or transverse chromatic aberration (TCA). If you have complementary colored fringes progressively more from the center to the corners, this is most likely transverse chromatic aberration (although there are some exceptions as the example below illustrates). This type:
- can be corrected by software
- does not change by stopping down (stopping down would perhaps make the fringes sharper and lead to the impression TCA is reduced)
- is dependent from focus distance.
What it is not
Digital photography introduced some new types of color fringes, that are not lens chromatic aberration. They are frequently confused with TCA and unfortunately they occur often mixed with TCA. These effects might be visible as purple or blue fringes and are visible around overexposed areas in most cases.
They might have different causes:
- By sensor overflow visible as blooming. This blooming often has a purple color because of the bayer pattern of the sensor: If a sensor cell overflows to the neighboring cells all cells are affected the same. There are 50% green but only 25% red and 25% blue sensor cells. Hence blue and red are weighted more resulting in purple fringes around overexposed areas. Since CMOS sensors are not prone to overflow this affects only CCD sensors.
- By chromatic aberration and other errors in the micro lenses that are in front of the sensor.
- By reflections between the sensor and the protective glass (that might be coated and hence reflects colored).
- By interpolation errors or anti moire filters.
- By partial color saturation: Blue sky f.e. might be clipped to pure white because all color channels are saturated. If there is a blurred dark object in the image the sensors in the blur region receive only part of the light and hence don't saturate. The blur region appears blue. This is the only effect that applies to analog film as well.
How to avoid
LCA can be avoided if shot stopped down. Purple or blue fringes might benefit from stopping down, too. They can be avoided in most cases if you expose for the highlights (i.e. don't overexpose). TCA can only not be avoided if you can use a better lens. Fixed Focal Length lenses are less prone to TCA than cheap zoom lenses. Converters are often very bad. You can avoid TCA while stitching if you don't use the corners where it is most prominent.
How to distinguish
If you want to correct color fringes by software you need to know which type they are. If all of the following points are met your image most likely contains true TCA:
- Corners should show most color fringes whereas the center should show none.
- Color fringes should be not only at the edges of overexposed areas but at lower contrast edges, too.
- Color fringes should be of complementary color (red-cyan, blue-yellow or purple-green) on opposite sides of a dark or bright area.
- Color fringes should be in all corners the same direction pointing out from the center.
Difficulties to view
If you want to test your lens for CA the subject you shoot is critical. The visibility of TCA highly depends on the colors forming contrast edges. Here two artificial examples to illustrate this. In both images TCA was introduced by sizing one channel to 101%. In the upper image this was the red channel causing red-cyan fringes in the lower image sizing the blue channel to 101% caused blue-yellow fringes.
Please have a close look at the half with the azure background in both images. The cyan fringes in the upper image are not visible at all with dark green foreground, the red fringes turn into an almost invisible dark brown.
In the lower image both blue and yellow fringes are invisible on the more saturated yellow background. Where it turns to a lighter shade of yellow the blue fringes appear purple. The yellow fringes are green on the azure background.
This shows that the best subject for CA determination is composed of neutral greys, black and not overexposed white. The following example is a quite good one - not overexposed, grey sky and no saturated colors.
Example with true TCA
This image is reduced to 30% but still shows heavy TCA as a result of the usage of a cheap wide angle converter:
Here a crop of the upper left corner, enlarged to 200%. To verify this is true TCA you can simply cycle through the color channels (f.e. by pressing Ctrl+1, Ctrl+2 and Ctrl+3 in Photoshop). If the whole image content in areas with more or less neutral colors seems to move this is true TCA:
switch on GIF animation to see the different channels in the right image
The whole image content seems to move if channels change. This is clearly due to TCA. As you can see, the channels have different sharpness. This is most likely due to longitudinal CA.
For comparison a similar sized and enlarged crop from the center:
There are no color fringes in the center. A good indicator of true TCA.
You can try to correct TCA by hand in one corner in Photoshop to see whether it is worth the effort to correct it in total:
- crop to a corner with visible TCA
- enlarge by 200% to 400%
- flatten image if needed.
- try to nudge the red and the blue channel in order to minimze fringes. To do this, in the channels palette:
- Click the red channel to make it the active one.
- Click the small eye symbol of the RGB channel in order to make all colors visible
- Choose the move tool from the tools palette
- Nudge the red channel with the arrow keys until the fringes are blue-yellow
- repeat the same for the blue channel and nudge to optimum
- repeat for the red channel if there are still red-green fringes
Here is the above example after using this technique.
The remaining light blue fringes can not be corrected. They are most likely not lens TCA but an effect as described under What it is not.
Example with no TCA but purple fringes
This image is reduced to 40%. It shows purple fringes but no chromatic aberration:
Here the enlargement of the upper left corner and the moving channels:
(switch on GIF animation to see the different channels in the right image)
As you can notice, the details on the grey tree don't move at all. It's only the left (outside) side of the overexposed sky areas that changes.
This crop (lower left corner) is from a frequently used combo: Nikon D70 with Nikkor 10.5mm full frame fisheye (image (c) Andrey Ilyin). At the first glance this looks like normal red-cyan TCA. But if you try to correct this one, it will drive you nuts. Have a close look on the moving channels:
(switch on GIF animation to see the different channels in the right image)
As you can see part of the image details move but part doesn't (the blade of grass in the center). If you minimize the fringes there will be new fringes or even double details with different color:
This weird kind of colored fringes is definitely not lens CA. I can only think of some effects of bayer interpolation, but this is wild guess.
How to correct
In many cases it would be enough to adjust the size of the color channels to correct for TCA. However, correction might not always be satisfactory even if it is of the true tCA type. This might have different causes:
- There might be a rest of LCA in the image. In this cases one or two color channels can be blurred. This is partly the case in the Example with true TCA. You can try to selectively sharpen the questionable channels. Since unsharp masking works best on gaussian blur but CA blur is more of the radial blur type this probably won't work very good.
- Images where JPEG compressed (too much). If you shift the color channels of previously jpeg compressed images you emphasize the jpeg artifacts. It is a better idea to work on TIFF images converted directly from RAW or scanned directly.
- Adjustment is too coarse. Depending on the resolution of the image sub-pixel alignment might be necessary.
The most convenient way to correct TCA is to use a tool like the Adobe Raw Converter, Picture Window Pro or PTLens offer. You zoom into a corner with good details and use a pair of sliders to adjust the image size for the red channel (red-cyan fringes) and the blue channel (blue-yellow fringes - the purple-green type is a mixture of red-cyan and blue-yellow type). Both ways allow for sub-pixel adjustment.
This technique (including sub pixel adjustment) can be peformed by hand with any image editor that can make size adjustments to single channels. If the step size is too large, the image can be upsampled prior to correction.
However, if you use one of those easy approaches look closely at different areas of the image - especially different distances from the image center. It could well be that correction in one area causes fringes in another one. If this is the case TCA in this image doesn't follow an easy linear scheme and hence can't be corrected this way - see next paragraph.
Panorama tools Radial Shift filter allows for separate correction of red, green and blue channel using a third degree polinomial. This kind of curve should be complex enough to correct for any kind of non-linear TCA.
Unfortunately it was very difficult to estimate the correct values until 2004 when Jim Watters and Erik Krause found a way to determine suitable correction coefficients using different calculation approaches.
Alternatively the correction coefficients can be calculated entirely with hugin and PTOptimizer, for more details see this hugin tutorial on correcting TCA. For more precise results, octave (script on the hugin page: ) can be used to calculate the coefficients rather than PTOptimizer. An alternative to the Radial Shift filter is fulla which can also correct TCA, barrel distortion and vignetting at the same time.
Erik Krause 17:18, 2 May 2005 (EDT)
- Wikipedia:Chromatic aberration
- dpreview on chromatic aberration
- Michel Thoby's article Illusion and reality - How does TCA look like?
|
<urn:uuid:80ace4f9-c6f0-41f7-b835-9af2b9418872>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://wiki.panotools.org/index.php?title=Chromatic_aberration&oldid=13735
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.91775
| 2,570
| 3.46875
| 3
|
|| Home | Contents |||| T. Eugene "Bull" Connor ||
|| Boswell Amendment | Dixiecrats | Montgomery Bus Boycott | Birmingham Demonstrations| 16th Street Baptist Church | March on Washington|
| Selma-to-Montgomery March | Alabama's Response to Civil Rights Movement| George Wallace and Civil Rights |
William A. Nunnelley, Samford University
Theophilus Eugene "Bull" Connor was born in Selma, Alabama, on July 11, 1897. His father was a railroad telegrapher, and after Connor's mother died when he was eight, Eugene traveled around the country with his father, who had jobs in more than 30 states. Connor's schooling was neglected and he never graduated from high school, but he learned the craft of telegraphy from his father. Connor used his ability to read telegraph ticker reports to work for early radio stations, and later became a sportscaster in Birmingham. Making a name for himself, he moved into politics, being elected to the Alabama legislature in 1934 and to the position of Commissioner of Public Safety in Birmingham in 1937. He served four consecutive terms, skipped one term, then was re-elected in 1957 and 1961. Over the years, Connor became known as an outspoken segregationist. Birmingham votersthe majority of them white during this era of segregationsupported him for many years. But by 1962, a majority had grown tired of his reactionary politics and voted to change Birmingham's form of government from City Commission to Mayor-Council primarily to oust Connor and his two fellow commissionersMayor Art Hanes and Commissioner of Public Improvements J. T. Waggoner. The commissioners sued to keep their jobs, but on May 23, 1963, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that the newly elected Birmingham City Council was the city's legal government. Connor thus left office after more than 26 years on the City Commission. In 1964, he won the first of two terms as President of the Alabama Public Service Commission. He retired after losing the race for a third term in 1972, and died March 10, 1973.
One of the most enduring images of the Civil Rights Movement is that of Birmingham firemen and policemen using water hoses and police dogs against African-American demonstrators in 1963 Birmingham. The episode came during the first week of May, following a month of peaceful demonstrations by Birmingham's African-American community against their city's segregation ordinances. Civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., who described Birmingham as "the most segregated city in America," organized the demonstrations with the help of local civil rights leader Fred L. Shuttlesworth and others. "Bull" Connor tried to stop the growing demonstrations, and gained lasting infamy when he resorted to using the water hoses and dogs. Televised reports of police dogs lunging at African-American citizens and people being washed down the streets by water from powerful fire hoses dramatized the plight of African-Americans in segregated areas. The events in Birmingham helped mobilize the administration of President John Kennedy to begin efforts leading to the most far-reaching civil rights legislation in history, the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The name "Bull" Connor thus came to symbolize hard-line Southern racism. Ironically, Connor's heavy-handed defense of segregation in 1963 Birmingham actually hastened the passage of America's Civil Rights Act.
Nunnelly, William A. Bull Connor. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1991.
|
<urn:uuid:7affc3cc-1afc-4046-91d8-b0af54e2340c>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.alabamamoments.state.al.us/sec62.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.972385
| 704
| 2.84375
| 3
|
Study on the use of radioactively contaminated materials in the construction of residential buildings in Gabon and Niger
In their study “Potential use of radioactively contaminated mining materials in the construction of residential homes from open pit uranium mines in Gabon and Niger” for the European Parliament, Tanja Srebotnjak and Sebastian Veit analyse the pollution of local environments, the known use of radioactively contaminated construction materials originating from old uranium mines in Gabon and Niger, and their impact on human health. The study examines the practices used in the exploration of uranium and the process of elimination and storage of contaminated materials.
The study “Potential use of radioactively contaminated mining materials in the construction of residential homes from open pit uranium mines in Gabon and Niger” [pdf, 1.9 KB, English] is based on interviews with experts, civil society organisations, medical staff, and government officials from the field trip to Gabon, as well as other sources, e.g., The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), Greenpeace International, The Commission for Independent Research and Information on Radioactivity (CRIIRAD), and others.
Furthermore, Tanja Srebotnjak and Sebastian Veit investigate whether practices are in line with national or international legal requirements. To protect people from the harmful effects of radiation the World Health Organization (WHO) and many national governments have established guidelines and regulations on the maximum permissible short-term and annual exposure of individuals. The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) is a widely used reference for information on the management and health effects of radioactivity in emergencies, in the environment, at the workplace, and inside the home. A few standards for workers protection, environmental quality and emergency management plans have been applied in both Niger and Gabon. However, an assessment of the extent to which these standards were applied, implemented and reinforced was not at the core of this study.
In sum, the study indicates that despite some positive effects from uranium exploration and exploitation (such as infrastructure development and income generation), it has posed, and continues to pose, risks to the health of the local population and environment.
The project was part of the Framework Contract Development Policy.
- Ecologic Institute Publication: Study on the use of radioactively contaminated materials in the construction of residential buildings in Gabon and Niger
- Ecologic Institute Project: Framework Contract Development Policy
- Ecologic Institute Project: International Trade Policy in the Context of Climate Change Imperatives
Keywords: Development, Foreign Policy, Development Policy, Environment Policy, Governance, Foreign Policy Committee, European Parliament, Sustainability, Sustainable Development, uranium, health, enviornment, Niger, Gabon
|
<urn:uuid:3819a4f8-b005-477d-ae46-1d38d997fd8d>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.ecologic.eu/3815
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.899779
| 559
| 2.703125
| 3
|
Science Fair Project Encyclopedia
Misapplied to Greek mythology
A "demigod", a "half-god," is a modern distinction that is meant to identify a person whose one parent was a god and whose other parent was human, such as the heroes of Greek mythology. Nineteenth-century popularizers of classical mythology like Thomas Bulfinch used the term "demigod" freely, and its definition has passed into popular dictionaries . Greeks had no such category, however, which consequently introduces unnecessary confusion. For the Greek concept, see Hero.
Part of the dual nature of Greek heroes, that gave rise to the "demigod" conception of them, a repeated theme in the story of their birth, is a double paternity: one father is a "king" of some kind, and another is a god. The hero's mother manages to lie with king and god in the same night (mother of Theseus) or to be visited secretly by the god (DanaŽ, mother of Perseus), and the seed of the two fathers is mixed in her womb (not a modern biological possibility, but one that was firmly established in Antiquity). Thus the heroes have liminal qualities that enable them to have great strength, to cross the threshold between the worlds of the living and the dead yet return safely, and to mediate long after their death between human and divine. (Ruck and Staples 1984, part 3; Kerenyi 1959).
Zeus became the father of many heroes as a result of his dalliances, and after death they were accorded honors, especially among those Greeks who claimed to be their descendents and, through them, to have claims on the protection and patronage of a god. The veneration of heroes was part of chthonic rites in the religion of Greece. An exception was Heracles, who was accepted in the passage of time among the Twelve Olympians. Such "demigods" were usually mortal, but were pre-eminent among humans, and some had unusual powers.
In the following list of "demigods", however, the range from deified historic figures, to culture-heroes and city founders, to minor primeval chthonic deities, illustrates the limitations of "demigod" applied to Greek mythology:
- Alexander the Great
- The Dioscuri, Castor and Polydeuces
- Heracles (also known by the Roman spelling, Hercules)
- Perseus (mythology)
Applied to Hinduism and Buddhism
The term "demigod" is sometimes used to refer to minor gods, and devas in Hinduism, though this is not the proper definition of the term here either.
The contents of this article is licensed from www.wikipedia.org under the GNU Free Documentation License. Click here to see the transparent copy and copyright details
|
<urn:uuid:8d591d8d-51c8-4fbc-bc3c-79f96f62d3e8>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.all-science-fair-projects.com/science_fair_projects_encyclopedia/Demigod
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.957998
| 587
| 3.5
| 4
|
Bronze bucket found at early Iron Age cemetery at Hallstatt, Austria, about 6th century BC.
Learn more about Hallstatt with a free trial on Britannica.com.
Hallstatt, Upper Austria is a village in the Salzkammergut, a region in Austria. It is located near the Hallstätter See (a lake). At the 2001 census it had 946 inhabitants. Peter Scheutz has been mayor of Hallstatt since 1993.
The name Hall is most probably from the old Celtic name for salt, the salt mines near the village being an important factor. Salt was a valuable resource, so the region was historically very wealthy. It is possible to tour the world's first known salt mine, located above downtown Hallstatt.
The village also gave its name to the early Iron Age Hallstatt culture and is a World Heritage Site for Cultural Heritage. Hallstatt is a popular tourist attraction owing to its small-town appeal and can be toured on foot in ten minutes.
However this secluded and inhospitable landscape nevertheless counts as one of the first places of human settlement because of the rich sources of natural salt, which have been mined for thousands of years, originally in the shape of hearts. Some of Hallstatt's oldest archaeological finds, such as a shoe-last celt, date back to around 5000 BC. In 1846 Johann Georg Ramsauer discovered a large prehistoric cemetery close by the current location of Hallstatt. Ramsauer's work at the Hallstatt cemeteries continued till 1863, unearthing more than 1000 burials. It is to his credit and to the enormous benefit of archaeology that he proceeded to excavate each one with the same slow, methodical care as the first. His methods included measuring and drawing each find, in an age before color photograph, he produced very detailed watercolors of each assemblage before it was removed from the ground. In the history of Archaeology Ramsauer's work at Hallstatt helped usher in a new more methodic way of doing Archeology. In addition, one of the first blacksmith sites was excavated there. Active trade and thus wealth allowed for the development of a highly developed culture, which, after findings in the Salzberghochtal, was named the Hallstatt culture. This lasted from approximately 800 to 400 BC, and now the town's name is recognised worldwide.
There are to date no recorded notable events took place in Hallstatt during Roman rule or the early Middle Ages. In 1311, Hallstatt became a market town, a sign that it had not lost its economic value. Today, apart from salt production, which since 1595 is transported for 40 kilometers from Hallstatt to Ebensee via a brine pipeline, tourism plays a major factor in the town's economic life. Tourists are told that Hallstatt is the site of "the world's oldest pipeline, which was constructed 400 years ago from 13,000 hollowed out trees. There is so little place for cemeteries that every ten years bones used to be exhumed and removed into an ossuary, to make room for new burials. A collection of elaborately decorated skulls with the owners' names, professions, death dates inscribed on them is on display at the local chapel.
|
<urn:uuid:10ca7c54-edf5-4820-b9c5-87881b469fcb>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.reference.com/browse/hallstatt
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.971629
| 688
| 3.234375
| 3
|
Sixteen Tons was one of three games commissioned by the Art History of Games conference, put on by Savannah College of Art & Design and Georgia Tech in January 2010. A game for four players designed for a gallery setting, Sixteen Tons was created by architect Nathalie Pozzi and game designer Eric Zimmerman. kraft paper softwall + softblock flexible furniture system was used to create a temporary, enclosed space for gameplay.
“On its surface, Sixteen Tons looks like a large-scale boardgame, in which players move very heavy pieces around a four-by-four grid, trying to maneuver their pieces into a winning position. This core gameplay is complicated by the fact that players can pay each other with real money. Playing the game becomes an experience that critically blurs work and play, as the real value of money is grafted onto the artificial meanings of the game, and player identity shifts fluidly back and forth from cooperation to competition.”
Sixteen Tons is named after the folk song made famous in 1955 by Tennessee Ernie Ford about coal mining and debt bondage.
|
<urn:uuid:8be4e895-dc63-4a7e-993d-7bf06e51a6a8>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://molodesign.com/news/molos-kraft-softwall-%C2%B7-sixteen-tons-art-history-of-games-%E2%80%93-atlanta-georgia-100310/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.979601
| 225
| 2.578125
| 3
|
- Rodentia -this order contains between 2000 and 3000 species of rodent—roughly half of all mammal species.
- Lagomorpha -this order contains Leporidae (hares and rabbits) and Ochotonidae (pikas).
- Scandentia -this order contains the family Tupaiidae, the tree shrews.
- Primates -this order contains lemurs, monkeys and apes (including humans).
- Dermoptera - this order is small, containing Colugos, arboreal gliding mammals found in South-east Asia. Formerly known as flying lemurs, there are just two species in a single genus, which makes up the entire family Cynocephalidae.
|
<urn:uuid:d33f45a3-7b31-4f0c-9035-207ecaa5fea6>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://species.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Euarchontoglires
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.873813
| 154
| 3.046875
| 3
|
1941. Gelatin silver print, 6 15/16 x 7 1/2" (17.6 x 19.1 cm)
In 1938 Walker Evans went underground to photograph passengers on the New York City Subway. Interested in capturing the everyday routines of anonymous people, Evans wanted to catch his subjects unaware. “The guard is down and the mask is off,” he wrote, “even more than when in lone bedrooms (where there are mirrors). People’s faces are in naked repose down in the subway.”1 Between 1938 and 1941, using a hidden camera, Evans photographed his subjects in these unguarded moments. Evans solicited the company of his friend, the photographer Helen Levitt, in the belief that his activities would be less noticeable if someone accompanied him.
In order to create his clandestine photographs, he orchestrated a way of taking photographs “undercover.” He painted the shiny chrome of his camera black and hid it under his coat so that the camera lens surreptitiously peeked out between two buttons. Despite the public setting of the subway, Evans managed to capture people lost in their own thoughts and moods, displaying a range of human emotions. With these black-and-white photographs, Evans managed to pull off a complicated feat: creating truly unposed portraits.
The visual or narrative focus of a work of art.
The context or environment in which a situation occurs.
A representation of a particular individual.
A state of mind or emotion, a pervading impression.
|
<urn:uuid:f431b402-f560-4951-9d4a-8b731eb5164a>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/walker-evans-subway-portraits-1938-41
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.953358
| 317
| 2.96875
| 3
|
Computer-Assisted Orthopedic Surgery
Computer-assisted surgery is designed to help the orthopedic surgeon in minimally invasive and traditional knee replacement procedures. This surgery uses powerful digital imaging and information-processing systems that provide surgeons in-depth information when it matters most: during surgery. Specifically, the system assists the surgeon in properly aligning the implants, which increases surgical accuracy. Computer-assisted surgery provides surgeons with an even higher degree of accuracy and control than ever before, and can help reduce your pain and recovery time.
|
<urn:uuid:db2c080f-ea48-4677-ae4b-145abcdc92f4>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.sjo.org/Our-Services/Orthopedics/Hip-and-Knee/Computer-Assisted-Orthopedic-Surgery.aspx?LargeFonts=true
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.928298
| 106
| 2.515625
| 3
|
Summary: Need help learning German?
Is grammar a problem?
Thousands of students like you have found the solution in the clear, simple text of English Grammar for Students of German. This easy-to-use handbook is specifically designed to teach you the English grammar you need in order to learn German grammar more quickly and efficiently.
Look at the features of what you'll find in a typical section:
* an explanation of a concept as it app ...show morelies to English
* a presentation of the same concept as it applies to German
* the similarities and differences between the two languages, stressing common pitfalls for English speakers
* step-by-step instructions on how to select the correct form
* review exercises with answer key
More prices and sellers below.
|
<urn:uuid:0e0103d8-164a-4eb4-8da1-dfaeb8d3f8e3>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.textbooks.com/English-Grammar-for-Students-of-German-A-Study-Guide-for-Those-Studying-German-4th-Edition/9780934034319/Cecile-Zorach-and-Charlotte-Merlin.php?mpcond=VeryGood
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.930422
| 158
| 2.53125
| 3
|
Tweeting about health
A tweet that might seem like too much information can actually be used for the greater good, experts said.
Researchers at Johns Hopkins University filtered through more than 2 billion tweets and, after cutting out the ones about “Beiber fever,” they found that 1.5 million tweets are related to health. They included tweets about the flu, cancer and depression, among others.
Professor Mark Dredze says using Twitter t track what people are saying about their health can help experts better understand what people are sick with and how they’re self-treating.
“So we know for example, according to our study that people are using Benadryl to treat allergies, but they're also using it to treat insomnia at night,” he said.
The study also found out about popular misconceptions, like using antibiotics to treat the flu or using antibiotics incorrectly. Dredze says this information can help experts clear up some misconceptions and tailor messages to what people are tweeting about.
Researchers say using Twitter to track health and illnesses has its limits. For example, Twitter is mostly used by younger generations which limits the amount of information about seniors’ health concerns.
Also, people who use twitter typically comment about an illness only once – making it impossible to track specifics.
While Tiffany Chan doesn’t always appreciate the tweets about feeling sick, she agrees there can be some use in tweeting about your health.
“It's really nice to know about certain remedies … if I hear someone has had success with a particular medication,” she said.
RecommendedRecent Facebook Activity
Only On 7
Now you can get customized weather right down to your street! Plan your day and week ahead with ABC7's Interactive 7-day forecast!
TBD Blogs What you need to read
The Market Report
@TBD On Foot
Best of TBD In case you missed it
Here's a visual look at the eight most delicious, disgusting meals in the country.
|
<urn:uuid:6f8ea050-174f-4ce6-b069-435f60e88576>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.wjla.com/articles/2011/07/tweeting-about-health-63849.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.943029
| 411
| 3.03125
| 3
|
The perception that racism is a major problem in American society has dropped sharply from a decade ago. Yet 45 years after Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, and on the eve of Barack Obama's historic inauguration, many black Americans still report personal experiences of racism – underscoring the challenges in race relations that remain.
Twenty-six percent of Americans call racism a "big problem" in the United States, half what it was, 54 percent, in a 1996 poll, and down sharply among blacks and whites alike. At the same time, barely over one in three say blacks have in fact achieved racial equality, the goal King expressed in a speech at the Lincoln Memorial on Aug. 28, 1963.
Blacks, moreover, remain twice as likely as whites to call racism a big problem (44 percent vs. 22 percent), and only half as likely to say African-Americans have achieved equality. A key reason: Three-quarters of blacks in this ABC News/Washington Post poll personally have experienced racial discrimination. Far fewer whites, but still 30 percent, say the same; it rises to 68 percent of other non-whites.
For African-Americans those experiences include so-called "shopping while black" and "driving while black": In the most common one, 60 percent have felt that a storekeeper or shop clerk was trying to make them feel unwelcome solely because of their race.
Thirty-seven percent also say they've been stopped by the police because of their race. Thirty-five percent say they've been denied a job because of their race; 20 percent, denied housing. Others say these have occurred to a family member or friend.
In all, 74 percent of blacks report personal experience of discrimination in at least one of these areas; 44 percent, in two or more of them. And these experiences are more prevalent among blacks than they are among other non-white Americans.
Tomorrow, the day after Martin Luther King Day, Obama will become the nation's first African-American president, taking the oath of office on the Bible used by Abraham Lincoln at his inauguration in 1861. Among other expectations, an ABC poll earlier this month found that 58 percent of Americans think Obama will improve race relations.
DISCONNECT – In addition to the experience of racism, there's a disconnect between blacks and whites in the perception of racial equality within their own community. Large majorities of whites think blacks in their area receive equal treatment in housing, hiring, shopping and criminal justice. Far fewer blacks say the same.
The gaps are vast: In hiring, 83 percent of whites think blacks in their area have an equal chance to get a job for which they're qualified; just 38 percent of blacks agree. Eighty-one percent of whites see equal opportunity in housing; that drops to 47 percent of blacks. In shopping, again 83 percent of whites see equal treatment, vs. 44 percent of blacks.
When it comes to criminal justice, substantially fewer whites – 60 percent – say blacks in their community receive equal treatment by the police. But the fewest blacks – only 22 percent – share that view.
Using the negative results, 76 percent of blacks say African-Americans in their community are denied equal treatment by the police, 60 percent say they lack equal hiring opportunities, 54 percent say they're not treated equally by retailers and half say they lack equal treatment in housing.
|
<urn:uuid:c1e32d8f-b207-4012-9fb5-01b56ae68678>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://abcnews.go.com/PollingUnit/Politics/story?id=6674407&page=1
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.964841
| 686
| 3.203125
| 3
|
Indigestion Causes, Symptoms and Remedies
Indigestion or medically referred to as Dyspepsia is one of the common bowel ailments affecting at least 20% of the United States population every year. This functional disease has specific causes; can be identified through distinctive symptoms and remedies are available in abundance.
PHOTO BY FLICKR.COM/RENNETT STOWE
Indigestion Causes - Determine to Diagnose
There are several factors that are attributed to indigestion causes
. Very often, gastrointestinal and non-gastrointestinal diseases such as thyroid, diabetes, extreme kidney disease and hyperparathyroidism are related to indigestion. Gastroesophageal reflux disease occurs when gastric contents move through the food pipe causing damage to the organ. This eventually results in dyspepsia. Drugs are the second most important indigestion causes. Certain non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs like ibuprofen, estrogen and antibiotics have been reported to cause indigestion in certain individuals. Stomach produces a strong acid for digesting food and layer of mucus that lines the stomach and oesophagus protects these organs against the acid. Where the mucus layer is damaged, the acid can infect tissues beneath. Lifestyle factors causing indigestion include over consumption of alcohol, anxiety and stress, smoking, certain foods like chocolate, coffee and obesity. In certain women, pregnancy is also considered as a reason for indigestion.
Symptoms of Indigestion - Distinctive Signs
Indigestion is often easily recognized because of distinctive symptoms or signs, the disease exhibits. These symptoms of indigestion
clearly indicate trouble in the stomach area. Such signs are common and associated with your digestive tract. You could be suffering from indigestion when you experience one or more of the following factors: discomfort, fullness and pain in the upper abdomen or chest, heartburn, flatulence resulting in belching or burping, stomach ache, nausea, bloating of stomach, nausea, appetite loss, acid regurgitation and uncontrolled burping. Usually, duration of symptoms of indigestion is dependent upon the inherent cause. While some subside quickly with minimal or no medical intervention, others such as unexplained weight loss, continuous signs especially if you are 55 years or older, severe and worsening pain and specks of blood in vomit demand visits to GP at the earliest.
Indigestion Remedies - Long and Short-Term
There are several over-the-counter medications that you can buy from your neighborhood pharmacist. Such indigestion remedies include antacids containing aluminum or magnesium for neutralizing stomach acid and medications containing alginate. Your medical practitioner can suggest a proton pump inhibitor for two weeks. Taking prokinetics even when symptoms continue to occur beyond two weeks is another remedy. Where lifestyle triggers are the prominent cause of indigestion, remedies usually need to be spaced out to ensure the problem does not arise again. It is important to shed excessive weight, cut down intake of fatty foods like beverages and alcohol, avoiding smoking, minimizing stress and eating slowly.
|
<urn:uuid:ce166cd8-a7be-4915-a541-1960b2ab872b>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.amillionlives.net/indigestion-causes-symptoms-and-remedies.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.922131
| 660
| 3.078125
| 3
|
The fruit resembles a mandarin orange; is round, oblate, or obovate, of irregular surface, the base becoming furrowed and slightly necked with age, the apex rounded or faintly nippled; 1 3/4 to 2 1/2 in (4.5-6.25 cm) wide, 1 5/8 to 2 1/4 in (4.1-5.7 cm) high; peel is reddish-orange, with large oil glands, thin, easily removed; pulp has limelike aroma, is deep-orange, in 8 to 10 segments having tender walls and separating readily from each other; melting, very juicy; flavor exceedingly sour but suggestive of orange; there may be 6-18 seeds, small, green within.
The tree is fast-growing, more or less spreading, reaching 15 to 20 ft (4.5-6 m); has short thorns; the flower buds and petals are purple-tinted. It is more cold-tolerant than the lime and in California has endured freezes better than the lemon. Unfortunately, it is highly subject to scab. It bears abundantly, from November through winter, and the fruits remain on the tree in good condition. It is a casual dooryard tree in Florida and a minor commercial fruit tree in California. Until the late 1930s, it was much used in Brazil and Argentina as a rootstock but trees budded onto it proved to be short-lived It is grown to some extent in Australia and the Hawaiian Islands, rarely in Trinidad where it was introduced from Montserrat in 1920.
In India, mandarin orange juice is improved by adding 20-40% Rangpur juice. Small, whole fruits can be candied or pickled, but the Rangpur is not fully appreciated until it is made into marmalade. This product is superb and rivals or excels that made from the sour orange.
2) Kusiae or kusiae lime is presumably a form of the Rangpur though it is even more limelike in aroma. It is believed to have evolved in India where virtually identical fruits are called nasaran and nemu tenga. Hawaiians believe that early Spanish settlers planted it on Kusiae, or Strongs Island, in the Caroline Islands of Micronesia. In 1885, Henry Swinton introduced it into Hawaii where it was described and pictured by Gerrit Wilder in 1911. Budwood was taken from Wilder's garden in Honolulu to the Citrus Experiment Station at Riverside, California, in 1914.
The fruit is oval, oblate or round, furrowed and sometimes faintly necked at the base, the apex rounded or with a slight pointed nipple; 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 in (4-6.25 cm) wide; the peel is deep-yellow with prominent oil glands, medium-thick to thin, leathery, easily removed; pulp is honey-yellow, in 8 or 9 segments having tender walls; melting, somewhat less acid than the true lime and not so rich in flavor; contains 6 to 10 small seeds; the abundant juice is colorless, transparent.
The tree is vigorous, of bushy habit, branched to the ground, but reaching 10 to 20 ft (4.5-6 m) in height; has only a few small thorns and oval to lanceolate leaves; new growth is pale-green; sends up many root sprouts, forming thickets. It is generally grown from seeds and seedlings may be less thorny and seedy than their parents; can be grafted onto sour orange or other non-sprouting citrus rootstocks to avoid root suckers. Fruiting begins in 1 1/2 to 3 years and the tree is nearly everbearing and prolific. In Hawaii, 11-year-old trees have borne 2,000 fruits, nearly 200 lbs (90.5 kg) per tree. The Kusiae lime is cold-tolerant, immune to withertip but prone to scab and root-rot. It is a common dooryard fruit tree in Hawaii and also grown in Trinidad, little-known elsewhere.
3) Otaheite, or Otaite, orange, or Otaheite Rangpur, formerly known as C. otaitensis Risso & Poit. (syn. C. taitensis Risso), is now thought to be a non-acid form of the Rangpur. Its origin is unknown. It was introduced into France from Tahiti by way of England in 1813; was being grown in Paris by the botanist Noisitte in 1915. It was catalogued by a San Francisco nurseryman in 1882.
The fruit is oblate to spherical, 1 1/2 to 2 in (4-5 cm) wide, furrowed and rounded or slightly necked at the base, the apex rounded or with a flat nipple; peel is orange with small oil glands; thin; pulp is orange, in 7 to 10 segments, juicy, slightly limelike in aroma and flavor but bland with scarcely any acidity; seedless, or with 3 to 6 small, abortive seeds.
The tree is a dwarf, spreading, thornless, with oblong to elliptic, finely-toothed leaves having narrowly-winged petioles; the new growth is deep-purple; flowers are fragrant and purple outside. Grown from cuttings or airlayers, the tree is widely sold in the United States as a potted "miniature orange", especially in the Christmas season when it bears flowers and fruits concurrently.
|
<urn:uuid:cafa0f70-c355-444a-806e-747a0db70780>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/morton/mandarin_lime.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.954396
| 1,170
| 3.125
| 3
|
Mahayana, Hinayana, and Theravada Compared
By Ron Epstein
"'Mahayana' means 'great vehicle.' 'Hinayana' means' 'small vehicle' or 'lesser vehicle'. 'Theravada' means 'teaching of the elders.'
Mahayana and Hinayana began not as separate schools but as alternative intentions and goals, which were a matter of personal choice. The adherents of each lived and practiced together. It took many centuries for those differences to coalesce into different schools, which eventually spread into different geographic areas.
The Theravada School of Buddhism, which is found in Sri Lanka and most of Southeast Asia, should not be called 'Hinayana', because Hinayana originally referred to the commitment of individuals, not to a school of Buddhism. Later it became incorrectly used as an inappropriate and pejorative term for the Theravada. Theravada is sometimes referred to as Southern Buddhism, while Mahayana is sometimes called Northern Buddhism, because it came to be found in China, Korea, Japan, and Tibet.
What then are the different goals? The goal of the Hinayana practitioner is that of ending attachment to self and, thereby, becoming an Arhat, who undergoes no further rebirth. Although those on the path of the Arhat help others, often extensively, that help ends with the entering of nirvana because the Arhat is not reborn. The Mahayana practitioner does not treat Arhatship as an ultimate goal, and is on the Path of the Bodhisattva, which leads to becoming a Buddha. A Buddha is replete with perfect wisdom (whereas the wisdom of the Arhat is seen as limited and imperfect) and universal compassion. The Bodhisattva is reborn voluntarily in order to aid all living beings to become enlightened. The realization of Buddhahood includes not only realization of the emptiness of self but also of the emptiness of dharmas, that is, of the entire psychophysical world. Emptiness is a Buddhist technical term that refers to the lack of real, permanent, inherent nature in any one, any thing, or any concept. Roughly speaking, it means that there are no real essences of people (i.e. selves) or of 'things' (dharmas).
The various Mahayana schools accept all of the teachings that are found in the Theravada canon; however, the Theravada school rejects the Mahayana Sutras and does not recognize the "expansive" teachings of the Mahayana about Bodhisattvas and about the Buddhas of the other directions. The Theravada primarily discusses the historical Buddha Shakyamuni, while the Mahayana pays comparatively more attention than the Theravada to other Buddhas, who stretch infinitely into the past and who are also found in other world-systems. The scriptures of the Theravada do mention Buddhas prior to the Buddha Shakyamuni and Buddhas in other world-systems, and also the path of the Bodhisattva.
Mahayana emphasizes compassion more than the Theravada and recommends
that we universalize it. Mahayana also
Further Comments on Mahayana and Theravada
Western scholars often analyze Mahayana, Theravada, and their antecedent schools in Western historical and social evolutionary perspective, an approach that makes little sense from a Buddhist point of view. (It is true that the two schools did develop historically and evolve socially, but that is not central to the Buddhist way of looking at things.) A Buddhist analysis emphasizes alternate choices for pathway to enlightenment and different levels of enlightenment.
Some Western scholars have erroneously tried to claim that Mahayana
is primarily a religion for laymen and Theravada is a priamarily monastic
religion. Both Mahayana and Theravada have as their foundation strong
Both Mahayana and Theravada have little use for intellectual speculation. Though rational thought is valued and has its place on the Buddhist Path, in itself it will not take one to enlightenment. Nonetheless, Buddhist logicians were the most advanced in the world until relatively recently.
The cosmologies of Mahayana and Theravada are quite similar. In Mahayana scriptures, the realms of Bodhisattvas and Buddhas are described in greater detail.
In Mahayana Buddhism the Buddha is not considered to be a savior . Buddhists of some schools do talk about self effort and other power. Yet, according to Buddhist teaching, that distinction ultimately does not hold up, because the distinction between self and other is unreal. Likewise, for the same reason, no clear dividing line exists between prayer and meditation. Although no equivalent to grace is found in Mahayana, the aid of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas is an important reality. Yet Buddhists do not consider Buddhas and Bodhisattvas to be separate, ultimately, from themselves, from their own true minds. In both Mahayana and Theravada, enlightenment is not contingent upon others. If the Buddha had been able to grant enlightenment, he certainly would have enlightened all living beings.
From "Clearing Up Some Misconceptions about Buddhism," Ron Epstein, Institute for World Religions and San Francisco State University. Published in Vajra Bodhi Sea: A Monthly Journal of Orthodox Buddhism, Feb., 1999, pp. 41-43.
|
<urn:uuid:4148bd4a-c9bc-4655-94e0-cad3a42052b1>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://dharmanet.org/Epstein.htm
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.949872
| 1,118
| 2.9375
| 3
|
There is also a podcast with Q.D. Atkinson on the new study, as well as a website by the authors on their research; the FAQ/Controversies section seems particularly useful.
I don't hold high hopes that, despite the mounting evidence, this will dissuade people from arguing for a steppe PIE origin. And, it shouldn't. Only a vigorous debate will resolve the issue conclusively. And, since IE languages appear on the archaeological record long after their split under any scenario, this may be one of those problems that will never be solved to everyone's satisfaction.
I don't agree with all the details of the authors' model, but certainly they place the PIE homeland near to where I believe it was. Resistance to an Anatolian origin will become more convincing if adherents of different homeland solutions manage to put their ideas in quantitative form. Expert opinion is valuable, but very knowledgeable linguists and/or archaeologists have placed the PIE homeland all the way from Central Europe to Bactria-Sogdiana and from the Pontic-Caspian steppe to Mesopotamia. So, one has to wonder why expert opinion has such a high variance, but every quantitative effort to solve the problem has come up with a single solution.
As I wrote recently:
My own working hypothesis would derive the earliest Proto-Indo-Europeans with groups living in Neolithic eastern Anatolia and northern Mesopotamia. There are details to be fleshed out, such as when this group of people reached the Balkans (pending ancient DNA from the region), and how they interfaced with the populations living in the north of the Black and Caspian seas (e.g., via a trans-Caucasus movement or a counterclockwise spread around the Caspian).late in prehistory. In any case, whether the PIE homeland was in Southern or Eastern Anatolia, the results of this paper explicitly reject the Kurgan Pontic steppe hypothesis.
The distribution for the root location lies in the region of Anatolia in present-day Turkey. To quantify the strength of support for an Anatolian origin, we calculated the Bayes factors (21) comparing the posterior to prior odds ratio of a root location within the hypothesized Anatolian homeland (11) (Fig. 1, yellow polygon) with two versions of the steppe hypothesis—the initial proposed Kurgan steppe homeland (6) and a later refined hypothesis (7) (Table 1). Bayes factors show strong support for the Anatolian hypothesis under a RRW model.
As the earliest representatives of the main Indo-European lineages, our 20 ancient languages might provide more reliable location information. Conversely, the position of the ancient languages in the tree, particularly the three Anatolian varieties, might have unduly biased our results in favor of an Anatolian origin. We investigated both possibilities by repeating the above analyses separately on only the ancient languages and only the contemporary languages (which excludes Anatolian). Consistent with the analysis of the full data set, both analyses still supported an Anatolian origin (Table 1).
The West Asian origin of the Proto-Indo-Europeans makes excellent sense in the light of the genetic evidence. But, as I hint at the above paragraph, the tempo of their expansion into Europe remains to be clarified. I strongly suspect, on the basis of the Iceman and Swedish Neolithic TRB farmer (Gok4) whose DNA has been published that the earliest Neolithic was not Indo-European, because these individuals lack the "West Asian" autosomal component.
Dimini and Vinča in the Balkans? I tend to think that a reasonable proposition, because the 8.2 kiloyear event may have transposed a second set of Neolithic farmers into Europe, of Halafian origin. Or, did they appear later, during the Copper and Bronze Ages with the spread of metallurgy? Until we get ancient DNA from the Balkans and Anatolia, we won't know for sure. But, Y-haplogroups J2, and R1 so conspicuously absent from Neolithic Europe down to 5ka (and in the case of J2, completely missing from the record altogether) must have entered Europe at some point. Did they take the fast train into Europe post-5ka, or did they lurk in both Anatolia and Europe pre-5ka? Thanks to the BEAN project we might find out.
The idea that ~5ka something happened in Europe is also supported by the paper:
Despite support for an Anatolian Indo- European origin, we think it unlikely that agriculture serves as the sole driver of language expansion on the continent. The five major Indo-European subfamilies—Celtic, Germanic, Italic, Balto-Slavic, and Indo-Iranian—all emerged as distinct lineages between 4000 and 6000 years ago (Fig. 2 and fig. S1), contemporaneous with a number of later cultural expansions evident in the archaeological record, including the Kurgan expansion (5–7).So, while the deepest prehistory of Indo-European is firmly rooted in Anatolia during the early Neolithic, this is not inconsistent with something important happening in Europe during c. 5ka. But this was a secondary phenomenon, not the earliest seat of the Indo-Europeans. Also, I would not particularly relate this to the Kurgan expansion, but more probably to the arrival of metallurgical "guilds" with higher social complexity.
We tend to think of the Neolithic farmers, but it is quite likely that people kept coming into Europe since its initial colonization. After all, the people who came to the Americas in 1492 were the vanguard of many others who followed them. The same must have happened in Europe as well: a continuous process of settlement by various groups at different times, at least until the Bronze and Iron Ages when everyone, all over West Eurasia, seem to have become very quarrelsome and more than willing to use their swords, spears, axes, and arrows to dissuade newcomers who ventured into their territory.
Coverage of the new paper elsewhere: NY Times, Nature, Gene Expression, John Hawks.
Mapping the Origins and Expansion of the Indo-European Language Family
Remco Bouckaert et al.
There are two competing hypotheses for the origin of the Indo-European language family. The conventional view places the homeland in the Pontic steppes about 6000 years ago. An alternative hypothesis claims that the languages spread from Anatolia with the expansion of farming 8000 to 9500 years ago. We used Bayesian phylogeographic approaches, together with basic vocabulary data from 103 ancient and contemporary Indo-European languages, to explicitly model the expansion of the family and test these hypotheses. We found decisive support for an Anatolian origin over a steppe origin. Both the inferred timing and root location of the Indo-European language trees fit with an agricultural expansion from Anatolia beginning 8000 to 9500 years ago. These results highlight the critical role that phylogeographic inference can play in resolving debates about human prehistory.
|
<urn:uuid:a005c70e-a0f2-490c-a486-7da885ca2699>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2012/08/proto-indo-european-homeland-in.html?showComment=1347558801381
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.942792
| 1,470
| 2.609375
| 3
|
I heard that butter is better for you than margarine. Is this true?
No, definitely not! In fact, in my opinion, butter may be the worst dairy product of all. It’s nothing but congealed grease. Since it’s the fattiest part of milk, it carries the most pollutants. This is because many pollutants are fat-loving, fat-soluble chemicals. It can also directly contribute to a dramatic increase in heart disease, a condition which begins in the first five years of a child’s life even though it may not kill until many years later. I don’t think children, or anyone for that matter, should eat butter.
Let’s be very clear about another popular misconception. Margarine isn’t any better than butter. Even though it’s a vegetable product, margarine is greasy and full of “trans fats”. Trans fats, which are liquid vegetable oils that have been hydrogenated to make them spreadable and to increase their stability, have been proven to increase the incidence of cancer. A study by the Harvard School of Public Health states that margarine is associated with a 70% increase in the risk of heart disease in women. Dr. Walter Willet, who authored a study published in a British medical journal, Lancet, in March, 1993, advocates the use of soybean, corn or canola oil to replace the partially hydrogenated vegetable fats found in most margarine.
Researchers have found that when women eat four or more teaspoons of margarine a day, they are at significantly greater risk for heart disease than women who eat two teaspoons or less during the same period. Furthermore, they have discovered that this increased risk is also present when the hydrogenated vegetable fats are consumed in breads and cookies.
Be safe! Stay away from butter and margarine and the processed foods that contain them. You and your children will be healthier without them!
Be gentle as you are making dietary improvements for your family. Some families do well with a drastic and complete change and some require a more gradual approach that leads them to a very occasional indulgence of a favorite food. Find what works for your family as you walk this path to improving your health by improving your foods.
|
<urn:uuid:2270c6a1-10be-4884-81d8-0e65cf0a3af9>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://drjaygordon.com/nutrition/dangerousfood/buttervsmargarine
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.965788
| 464
| 2.71875
| 3
|
The area that includes modern Delray Beach Florida was first mentioned in history during the Seminole Wars.
The area was known as Orange Grove Haulover.
The spot got the name from its old orange groves, likely left by Spaniards who populated New World trade routes with citrus to prevent scurvy amongst Spanish sailors.
One such part-time horticulturalist was Juan Ponce De Leon.
Maybe the explorer was the inspiration for America's Johnny Appleseed, who followed centuries later. Juan was a "Juanito Citrus-Seed" who ordered his men to plant the fruit wherever they landed.
By the 1860s, Wisconsin native and Florida's lieutenant governor William Gleason bought many acres in this area and began selling to enterprising settlers.
In 1876, Orange Grove House of Refuge #3 was built in Delray.
Houses of Refuge were lonely outposts offering sustenance to castaways. They were built by the US Life-Saving Service after countless ships and people were lost to Florida's remote and treacherous shores.
These stations were usually manned by a single keeper and his family. These modest buildings saved many lives for decades before being integrated into the US Coast Guard's network of rescue stations.
In 1894 William Linton, postmaster of Saginaw, Michigan, bought a tract of land just west of the Orange Grove House of Refuge, and began selling plots in what he hoped would become a farming community. Initially, this community was named after Linton. Linton Road in Delray is a reminder of this heritage.
In 1896 Henry Flagler extended his Florida East Coast Railroad south from West Palm Beach to Miami, with a station at Linton.
Many of his workers were African-Americans, working class John Henrys who built much of Florida's railroads and stayed behind when the task was done.
The Linton settlers began to achieve success with truck farming of winter vegetables for the northern market. A hard freeze in 1898 was a setback, and many of the settlers left, including William Linton.
Partly in an attempt to change the community's luck, or leave behind a bad reputation, the settlement's name was changed in 1901 to Delray. It was named after the Detroit neighborhood of Delray. Delray is the anglicized spelling of "Del Rey," which is Spanish for "of the king".
The Detroit neighborhood was named after the Mexican-American War's Battle of Molino del Rey.
Many of the little old houses and cottages in Delray Beach Florida are still reminiscent of Michigan neighborhoods.
Delray Beach's beautiful beaches, fertile soil and inexpensive land attracted many blacks in the South who worked on Florida's railroads and phosphate mines.
With the completion of the railroad, Delray Beach Florida farmers were doing well exporting their beans, fruits, and other goods.
Bahamian workers settled in the area and convinced their relatives to emigrate as well.
By the turn of the century, Delray's affordable lots and strategic location attracted Japanese pineapple farmers who estabslished Yamato Colony, where Boca Raton Airport and Florida Atlantic University sit today. Delray Beach FL quickly became one of the Florida's most multicultural cities.
This melange of cultural influences is still apparent in Delray Beach today.
I lived on my boat for a brief period at Delray Harbor Club on the Intracoastal Waterway. I was within a walk of many great dining and cultural opportunities.
That's Delray Harbor Club in the photo below. It was a great little place to live with a nice swimming pool that was available to residents and marina guests.
The city has beautiful Japanese gardens at Morikami Museum on the west side of town.
Many musical events take place in Delray like the Roots Cultural Festival feature black folk arts and Bahamian steel drum players.
DELRAY BEACH FL RESTAURANTS
DELRAY BEACH FL ATTRACTIONS
DELRAY BEACH FL HOTELS
|
<urn:uuid:9041d4a2-418a-41ab-9223-613553146b53>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.florida-backroads-travel.com/delray-beach-florida.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.978013
| 828
| 2.953125
| 3
|
Cecile Andrews is a Seattle-based author and community educator focusing on simplicity, sustainability and the slow life.
We think that if we’re rich, we’ll be happy. In truth, after a certain point, more money does not correlate with greater happiness. In fact, it could hinder it, particularly as the income gap grows. (The biggest predictor of the health of a nation, as measured in longevity, is the wealth gap. Even the rich person in this country does not live as long as the average person in Denmark, where the gap is small.)
The biggest contributor to happiness is connection with others, something that has continued to decline.
Our consumerism is destroying the planet: polluting, using up resources, and causing global warming/climate crisis.
Our goal is to create a belief system that moves from “Every man for himself” to one in which “We’re all in this together.”
Simplicity as Clarity: Living an uncluttered life, reducing chaos in terms of things as well as emotions.
Simplicity as True Wealth: Reducing outer wealth so we can increase inner wealth.
Simplicity as the examined life: Making conscious choices about our behavior for the well-being of people and the planet.
Simplicity Circles: An Approach to Personal and Social Change
Assumptions: We learn and change best when we learn from each other. We learn best when we examine our own lives, with books and experts ideas used only as a catalyst. In Simplicity there are no experts; the wisdom is in the people.
Money: Simplicity helps people save money and stay out of debt.
Things: Simplicity helps reduce clutter and consumerism.
Work: Simplicity helps us find a way to do our true work and reduce our “false” work.
Time: We’re meant to be enjoying and savoring our lives. Simplicity helps us find more time for things that matter and learn to move in a leisurely fashion that allows us to feel and think deeply.
Connection with Others: Happiness comes from connection with others with empathy, community, and joie de vivre.
Connection with Nature: If we don’t love nature, we won’t save it; we’ll only love nature when we engage with it.
Reflection (taking time to think about what you can learn from your life)
Conversation (the essential skill for happiness and democracy)
Focus and Flow: In an age of distraction we’re less and less able to experience depth. Reduce rushing and multi-tasking.
Circle Format: Meet weekly and discuss these points. (Periodically talk first in twos or threes)
I. What did you do this week to simplify your life? What did you have difficulty with? (Consider money, time, connection with others, nature, and the universe.)
II. What new insights did you have about simplicity? (From reading, self, and media.) Keep a journal.
III. How much did you use simplicity skills? (Reflection, Conversation, and Focus/flow)
IV. Bring a quotation to share
|
<urn:uuid:e15d9692-f63f-4f18-b72c-6e647c7ea8f9>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://cecileandrews.blogspot.com/2010/06/happiness.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.942791
| 670
| 2.59375
| 3
|
The next generation in night vision for the U.S. military may be something that is already a commercial success in such applications as noninvasive medical examinations and silicon wafer inspection.
DARPA is betting on an indium gallium arsenide crystal and shortwave infrared (SWIR) sensor technology developed by Sensors Unlimited (SUI) that works in a wavelength somewhere between the visible and thermal bands. SUI, a subsidiary of Goodrich, has signed a three-year contract with DARPA to develop prototypes of lightweight helmet- and vehicle-mounted cameras based on SWIR technology.
Incorporating advanced materials and circuitry, the cameras detect reflected light at wavelengths invisible both to the human eye and current night-vision technology. The cameras with a resolution of 640x512 pixels will weigh less than 10 grams, or 0.35 ounces, light enough to use on hand-launched unmanned air vehicles and other small conveyances. There are other cameras operating on SWIR wavelengths that are made of different materials, but they need to be mechanically cooled--and that adds weight.
SWIR cameras operate in starlight conditions, relying on illumination from "atmospheric night glow," a phenomenon created by hydroxyl ion emissions in the shortwave infrared portion of the spectrum, according to SUI. (Night sky radiance emits five to seven times more illumination than starlight.)
But it really pays off in target recognition. "Humans are very recognizable, with the typical difference being that all hair shows as white due to the lack of moisture in hair," the company says. "Conversely, skin shows darker, due to its high moisture content."
|
<urn:uuid:e4dccd87-d937-4e21-8462-854544588b69>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13639_3-9846350-42.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.944409
| 338
| 3.046875
| 3
|
The Invisible Man is a science fiction novella by H.G. Wells published in 1897. Wells' novel was originally serialised in Pearson's Magazine in 1898, and published as a novel the same year. The Invisible Man of the title is Griffin, a scientist who theorises that if a person's refractive index is changed to exactly that of air and his body does not absorb or reflect light, then he will be invisible. He successfully carries out this procedure on himself, but cannot become visible again, becoming mentally unstable as a result. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Invisible_Man You may find these other books by H. G. Wells of interest (published by Cricket House Books): The War of the Worlds, ISBN 1452818983; The Time Machine, ISBN 1452818282; and The Island of Dr. Moreau, ISBN 1452818630.
|
<urn:uuid:a85b1bb1-09ec-4e43-9a4e-b81fb56cc65a>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.americanpoems.com/store/1052-1000-1451599749-The_Invisible_Man.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.911408
| 187
| 2.640625
| 3
|
Kashmir Saivism, with its potent stress on man's recognition of an already existing oneness with Siva, is the most single-mindedly monistic of the six schools. It arose in the ninth century in Northern India, then a tapestry of small feudal kingdoms. Maharajas patronized the various religions. Buddhism was still strong. Tantric Shaktism flourished toward the Northeast. Saivism had experienced a renaissance since the sixth century, and the most widespread Hindu God was Siva. According to the traditions of Kashmir Saivism, Lord Siva originally set forth sixty-four systems, or philosophies, some monistic, some dualistic and some monistic theistic. Eventually these were lost, and Siva commanded Sage Durvasas to revive the knowledge. Sage Durvasas' "mind-born sons" were assigned to teach the philosophies: Tryambaka (the monistic), Amardaka (the dualistic) and Shrinatha (monistic theistic). Thus, Tryambaka at an unknown time laid a new foundation for Kashmir Saiva philosophy. Then, it is said, Lord Siva Himself felt the need to resolve conflicting interpretations of the Agamas and counter the encroachment of dualism on the ancient monistic doctrines. In the early 800s, Shri Vasugupta was living on Mahadeva Mountain near Srinagar. Tradition states that one night Lord Siva appeared to him in a dream and told him of the whereabouts of a great scripture carved in rock. Upon awakening, Vasugupta rushed to the spot and found seventy-seven terse sutras etched in stone, which he named the Siva Sutras. Vasugupta expounded the Sutras to his followers, and gradually the philosophy spread. On this scriptural foundation arose the school known as Kashmir Saivism, Northern Saivism, Pratyabhijna Darshana ("recognition school"), or Trikashasana ("Trika system"). Trika, "three," refers to the school's three-fold treatment of the Divine: Siva, Shakti and soul, as well as to three sets of scriptures and a number of other triads. Kashmir Saivite literature is in three broad divisions: Agama Shastra, Spanda Shastra and Pratyabhijna Shastra. Agama Shastra includes works of divine origin: specifically the Saiva Agama literature, but also including Vasugupta's Siva Sutras. The Spanda Shastra, or Spanda Karikas (of which only two sutras are left), are both attributed to Vasugupta's disciple Kallata (ca 850-900). These elaborate the principles of the Siva Sutras. The Pratyabhijna Shastra's principle components are the Siva Drishti by Vasugupta's disciple, Somananda, and the Pratyabhijna Sutras by Somananda's pupil, Utpaladeva (ca 900-950). Abhinavagupta (ca 950-1000) wrote some forty works, including Tantraloka, "Light on Tantra," a comprehensive text on Agamic Saiva philosophy and ritual. It was Abhinavagupta whose brilliant and encyclopedic works established Kashmir Saivism as an important philosophical school. Kashmir Saivism provides an extremely rich and detailed understanding of the human psyche, and a clear and distinct path of kundalini-siddha yoga to the goal of Self Realization. In its history the tradition produced numerous siddhas, adepts of remarkable insight and power. It is said that Abhinavagupta, after completing his last work on the Pratyabhijna system, entered the Bhairava cave near Mangam with 1,200 disciples, and he and they were never seen again. Kashmir Saivism is intensely monistic. It does not deny the existence of a personal God or of the Gods. But much more emphasis is put upon the personal meditation and reflection of the devotee and his guidance by a guru. Creation of the soul and world is explained as God Siva's abhasa, "shining forth" of Himself in His dynamic aspect of Shakti, the first impulse, called spanda. As the Self of all, Siva is immanent and transcendent, and performs through his Shakti the five actions of creation, preservation, destruction, revealing and concealing. The Kashmir Saivite is not so much concerned with worshiping a personal God as he is with attaining the transcendental state of Siva consciousness. An esoteric and contemplative path, Kashmir Saivism embraces both knowledge and devotion. Sadhana leads to the assimilation of the object (world) in the subject (I) until the Self (Siva) stands revealed as one with the universe. The goal-liberation-is sustained recognition (pratyabhijna) of one's true Self as nothing but Siva. There is no merger of soul in God, as they are eternally nondifferent. There are three upayas, stages of attainment of God consciousness. These are not sequential, but do depend upon the evolution of the devotee. The first stage is anavopaya, which corresponds to the usual system of worship, yogic effort and purification through breath control. The second stage is shaktopaya, maintaining a constant awareness of Siva through discrimination in one's thoughts. The third stage is shambhavopaya in which one attains instantly to God consciousness simply upon being told by the guru that the essential Self is Siva. There is a forth stage, anupaya, "no means," which is the mature soul's recognition that there is nothing to be done, reached for or accomplished except to reside in one's own being, which is already of the nature of Siva. Realization relies upon the satguru, whose grace is the blossoming of all sadhana. Despite many renowned gurus, geographic isolation in the Kashmir Valley and later Muslim domination kept the following relatively small. Scholars have recently brought the scriptures to light again, republishing surviving texts. The original parampara was represented in recent times by Swami Lakshman Joo. Today various organizations promulgate the esoteric teachings to some extent worldwide. While the number of Kashmir Saivite formal followers is uncertain, the school remains an important influence in India. Many Kashmir Saivites have fled the presently war-torn Valley of Kashmir to settle in Jammu, New Delhi and elsewhere in North India. This diaspora of devout Saivites may serve to spread the teachings into new areas.
The comments are owned by the author. We aren't responsible for their content.
|
<urn:uuid:530a13c0-6b16-48cc-a099-7e8c54005043>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://hinduismtoday.com/modules/smartsection/item.php?itemid=3245
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.954923
| 1,390
| 3.21875
| 3
|
Canis Major, the Big Dog
Plus the planets for March.
Our sky during winter evenings has some of the brightest constellations in the heavens. Orion, Taurus, Canis Minor and Gemini all have first-magnitude stars that light up our cold, chilly nights. But the constellation with the brightest star in the sky is Canis Major, the Big Dog, with its brilliant star Sirius. The name Sirius is derived from the Ancient Greek Seirios ("glowing" or "scorcher"), and at magnitude -1.4, it is a scorcher to the eye.
Sirius is a slightly variable spectral class A1 star that is twice the mass of our Sun, but puts out 25 times the light and heat. But the thing that really makes this star shine in our sky is that it is only 8.6 light-years away from us. The Egyptians based their calendar on the helical rising of Sirius, the first day that Sirius appears in the morning just before the Sun. This always signaled the annual flooding of the Nile River.
In Greek mythology, Canis Major and Canis Minor are the big and little hunting dogs belonging to the great hunter, Orion. Both dogs are ready to help Orion find and catch his prey, which may be Lepus, the Hare, which crouches at Orion's feet. It is also possible that Canis Major is helping Orion fight Taurus, the Bull, who is also nearby.
One of the few deep-sky objects in Canis Major is NGC 2359 (New General Catalog number 2359), known more commonly as Thor's Helmet. This nebula is an emission nebula that is shaped like a helmet, with vertical sides and a rounded top. It also sports two wings, one on either side, similar to the helmet that the Norse god Thor is often pictured wearing. It is eight minutes-of-arc by eight minutes-of-arc in size, roughly a quarter of the size of the Moon in our sky.
At the center of the Thor's Helmet nebula is a Wolf-Rayet star. This type of star is massive, some 20 times the mass of our Sun or more. It has already passed the stable part of its life on the main sequence (where our Sun is now) and is starting down the road to being a supernova. As it gets older, a star starts blowing off the gas in its outer atmosphere. The gas travels outward at a high speed as a stellar wind until it encounters the gas and dust that exists throughout our galaxy. Thor's Helmet is the bubble formed by the stellar wind, with the surface of the bubble composed of the galactic gas and dust piling up as the bubble's surface expands into space, pushed by the stellar wind.
Wolf-Rayet stars get their name from astronomers Charles Wolf and Georges Rayet. In 1867, they were surveying the spectra of the stars in Cygnus with the 16-inch Foucault telescope at the Paris Observatory. They discovered three stars that had continuous spectra with broad emission lines. The light from a star can be broken up into its different colors. An incandescent light bulb has a continuous spectrum, looking much like a rainbow with no bright or dark lines. This is what Wolf and Rayet saw in the spectra of these three stars, but they also saw bright areas in the spectrum, like broad lines at specific colors.
Bright lines in a spectrum are generated by the atoms of specific elements (like hydrogen, helium, carbon, oxygen and nitrogen) that are excited by ultraviolet light from the star and release light in the particular color associated with that element. The lines are broadened by the rapid motion of the atoms in the gas, indicating that the gas around a Wolf-Rayet star was moving at an amazing 180 to 1,500 miles per second.
Normally, an element would glow in one very specific color (narrow spectrum line). But when you have that element's gas atoms moving at many different high speeds, each atom will have a different Doppler shift depending on its speed along our line of sight. If the atom happens to be moving perpendicular to our line of sight, its line-of-sight speed is zero; it will have no Doppler shift and the color is the element's normal color. An atom coming straight at us has all its speed, causing a large Doppler shift of the element's color toward the blue. An atom traveling directly away from us shifts the color toward the red. Atoms traveling at angles between directly toward us, perpendicular to us and directly away from us all spread out the narrow spectrum line into the broad spectrum lines seen in Wolf-Rayet stars.
The Planets for March 2013
This month we have two planets too near the Sun to be seen. Mars and Venus are both on the other side of the Sun from us and will not be visible for a few months.
Still high in the western sky as it gets dark is the planet Jupiter. Moving slowly eastward just north of the Hyades star cluster in Taurus, Jupiter shines at magnitude -2.3. Jupiter's disc is 37.3 seconds-of-arc across. The King of the Planets sets around 1 a.m. MDT.
Saturn is moving westward in western Libra. Glowing with its characteristic yellowish light, the magnitude +0.3 Ringed Planet rises around 10:45 p.m. MDT and is visible the rest of the night. Saturn's disc is 18.2 seconds-of-arc across and the Rings are 41.3 seconds-of-arc across. They are tilted down 19.1 degrees from our line of sight with the northern face showing.
Mercury is in the morning sky during the later half of the month. Having been in the evening sky last month, Mercury passes between the Sun and the Earth on March 4. The next day it leaves Pisces and enters central Aquarius, where it spends the rest of the month. Mercury will reach its greatest distance from the Sun on March 31, when it can be found eight degrees above the east-southeast horizon as it gets dark. At that time, it will be magnitude +0.3. The Messenger of the Gods' disc will be 7.6 seconds-of-arc across and 50% illuminated (half full). As we go into April it will become more illuminated (fuller).
Comet C/2011 L4 (PANSTARRS) will be in our evening sky this month. This comet. named after the telescope that discovered it in June 2011, has been moving up from the south and should be visible low in the west around March 12. Then it will be four degrees left of the 2% illuminated crescent Moon, just 10 degrees above the western horizon as it gets dark. PANSTARRS is expected to be first magnitude and sport a visible tail. This comet is "new" in that this is its first time in the inner Solar System, making its appearance very unpredictable. It could break apart and fizzle out, or produce a large quantity of dust, creating a spectacular tail. For the rest of the month, it will continues to move northward (to the right) as it moves away from the Sun and rapidly to fades from sight.
The astronomical season of spring begins on March 20, when the Sun passes through the celestial equator going north. In the southern hemisphere, the season of fall begins as the Sun becomes lower in their sky. But for us, denizens of the northern hemisphere, the days are getting longer and the nights shorter, so maker the most of the shortening nights and "keep watching the sky"!
Watch the Skies
March 4, 6 a.m. — Mercury between Earth and Sun (inferior conjunction)
2:53 p.m. — Last Quarter Moon
March 10, 2 a.m. — Daylight Savings Time begins
March 11, 1:51 p.m. — New Moon
March 19, 11:27 a.m. — First Quarter Moon
March 20, 5:02 a.m. — March Equinox, spring begins in the Northern Hemisphere
March 27, 3:27 a.m. — Full Moon
March 31, 4 p.m. — Mercury greatest distance west of Sun (28 degrees)
An amateur astronomer for more than 40 years, Bert Stevens is co-director
of Desert Moon Observatory in Las Cruces.
|
<urn:uuid:dcf99337-fd0f-443b-a743-90970bbd734c>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.desertexposure.com/201303/201303_starry_dome.php
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.942795
| 1,743
| 3.3125
| 3
|
Latest news from Loughborough University
20 July 2011 | PR 11/94
Helping children explore the world of reading
A new edition of the popular guide to children’s fiction designed to help young people explore the world of reading has just been published by Loughborough University.
Who Next...? includes listings for over 750 children’s authors to help signpost young readers to new material when they have exhausted the works of their favourite writers.
With a foreword by children’s author and library campaigner Alan Gibbons, this latest guide includes a new section on those writing for teenagers; and for the first time authors who write short stories and those whose titles are available as ebooks are identified.
The guide also gives information on graphic novels, talking books and titles suitable for dyslexic or reluctant readers.
Who Next…? has been developed primarily as an information source for parents, teachers and librarians to help encourage children to enjoy reading.
When a child has completed the works of their favourite author, you can simply look them up to find a list of others who write in a similar way, and whose work will supply the answer to the question ‘what can I read now?’ The most popular titles by each author are listed, along with their best-known characters and series, to give an idea of where to start.
The book is arranged in four age groups corresponding to the Key Stages: 5‑7 years, 8-11 years, 12-14 years and 14+ years. There are links between the age groups, and information on genres and prize winners.
The editors – Viv Warren and Mary Yardley – are experienced children’s librarians and, to refine their selections, have drawn on a team of expert advisers with first-hand knowledge of children’s reading.
Claire Creaser, Director of LISU – the University’s Department of Information Science research and consultancy centre responsible for publishing the book, said:
"Research by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has shown that reading for pleasure is one of the most important elements in determining a child's academic and social success.
“Finding a way through the maze of books available for children of all ages can be daunting, even for the most dedicated parent or teacher. That is where Who Next…? comes in. Compiled by expert children's librarians it provides a signpost when children are ready to move on, with suggestions for new authors and new titles to try.
"We are particularly pleased that we have been able to include a section for teenage readers in this new edition, which is something that librarians have been asking for.
“Sustaining reading for pleasure with this age group can prove challenging at a time in their lives when the pressures of school work, not to mention social networking and other activities, combine to squeeze reading for pleasure off the agenda for many."
Who Next...? is available to buy direct from LISU, priced £21.99. For further information call 01509 635680 or email firstname.lastname@example.org
For all media enquiries contact:
Senior PR Officer
T: 01509 228697
Notes for editors:
1. Who next…? a guide to children’s authors, paperback, ISBN 9781905499403 is published at £21.99 (post paid UK with a 10% discount for schools and a 25% trade discount and for orders over 10 copies).
2. A jpeg image of the front cover of Who Next…? is available upon request.
3. Review copies of Who Next…? are available for the media upon request.
4. Co-editor Viv Warren was formerly Head of Library Services to Children and Young People in East Sussex. Now retired, she is on the governing board of several schools and has acted as co-ordinator for Family Learning events. Mary Yardley was formerly Head of Information Management in East Sussex and is currently working for Dorset School Library Service.
5. LISU is a national research and consultancy centre which aims to promote good management practice in information, cultural and academic services, through providing independent advice and support for advocacy, performance evaluation and enhancement. It is based in the Research School of Informatics and the Department of Information Science at Loughborough University. For further information visit: http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/dis/lisu
Loughborough is one of the country’s leading universities, with an international reputation for research that matters, excellence in teaching, strong links with industry, and unrivalled achievement in sport and its underpinning academic disciplines.
6. Loughborough is one of the country’s leading universities, with an international reputation for research that matters, excellence in teaching, strong links with industry, and unrivalled achievement in sport and its underpinning academic disciplines.
It was awarded the coveted Sunday Times University of the Year 2008-09 title, and is consistently ranked in the top twenty of UK universities in national newspaper league tables. In the 2010 National Student Survey, Loughborough was voted one of the top universities in the UK, and has topped the Times Higher Education league for the UK’s Best Student Experience every year since the poll's inception in 2006. In recognition of its contribution to the sector, the University has been awarded six Queen's Anniversary Prizes.
Loughborough is also the UK’s premier university for sport. It has perhaps the best integrated sports development environment in the world and is home to some of the country’s leading coaches, sports scientists and support staff. It also has the country’s largest concentration of world-class training facilities across a wide range of sports.
It is a member of the 1994 Group of 19 leading research-intensive universities. The Group was established in 1994 to promote excellence in university research and teaching. Each member undertakes diverse and high-quality research, while ensuring excellent levels of teaching and student experience.
|
<urn:uuid:027cd466-d024-4a81-9ea0-3889506e970c>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.loughborough.ac.uk/service/publicity/news-releases/2011/94_Who_Next.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.952899
| 1,244
| 2.890625
| 3
|
A computer is a piece of hardware that's used to surf the Internet, type reports, play games and do other tasks such as storing photos, business plans and other types of media. The first technical computer was created in 1946 and weighed approximately 30 tons.
While the first computer weighed 30 tons, the first personal computer was much smaller and became available to consumers in 1950. The Simon, a desktop computer, sold over 300 units at approximately $300 each. That may not seem like a lot of money but back in the 1950's, it was huge. The cost of computers fluctuate from time to time due to technological advances, the size of memory, speed and the type of processor.
Many companies and businesses use computers on a regular basis to store data and files as well as to communicate with other businesses and employees. Other institutions, such as schools, hospitals and libraries, use computers for similar purposes. Personal computers, or PCs, are typically used to store personal documents such as music, home videos, homework or work assignments, photographs and other documents such as income tax files.
Computers have made certain technologies, such as digital cameras and digital pictures, possible as well as other types of technology. They have even made certain types of media more accessible and made it possible for families and friends to reconnect or reunite while still remaining hundreds of miles apart, if not on completely separate continents. Users can also trace family trees, research and verify historical events within their family tree or within their own community.
As newer technology emerges, computers will continue to get better, faster, smaller and more useful. It seems as if there is no limit as to what computers can do and how they can help individuals as well as companies.
|
<urn:uuid:16f9c50e-ab6c-40a3-a7d9-9d3a7e0a84bb>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.reference.com/browse/computer
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.973943
| 348
| 3.328125
| 3
|
"The Government have clearly sent the message to Shell, ‘you can do whatever you want’. Fortunately due to protest, the refinery remains unconnected to the gas field. If, as Shell planned, gas had been flowing by now, we would potentially all be dealing with a gas leak and explosion.”
A celebrated writer felt representative democracy was rotten as it left people out of key decisions in society
A FORMER “best friend” described him as “false, vain as Satan, ungrateful, cruel, hypocritical and wicked”. He arranged for his five children to be given over to a foundling hospital immediately after their birth. He was vain, truculent, obsessive and solitary.
He changed his religion several times, probably opportunistically. And yet when he died he was one of the most admired people in his country of residence, and his remains were later moved to a distinguished resting place in the nation’s capital. His ideas were among the most formative of his and later ages.
This was Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a native of Geneva and one of the philosophers whose writings inspired the French Revolution and, later, the struggle for liberty and equality around the world. He was an authority on music, a composer of operas and a writer of fiction and of some of the most influential works ever on political philosophy. His central ideas remain profoundly relevant, not least in Ireland right now.
Among those ideas is the contention that private property is iniquitous. He wrote: “The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, thought up the statement ‘this is mine’ and found people simple enough to believe him . . . was the real founder of civil society.” And for him that civil society was exploitative and unjust. He insisted “the fruits of the Earth belong to us all and the Earth itself to nobody”.
That identification of private property as the root of inequality is/was crucial and challenged directly a then prevalent view, attributed to English philosopher John Locke, that private property was a “natural right”. Unhappily, Locke’s view has prevailed in our culture, where the “right” to private property is viewed as close to sacrosanct. Hence the embedded view that what we “earn” is ours and ours alone, even though what we “earn” is derived from social interactions and is determined almost entirely by the arbitrariness of market forces.
It was because of private property that Rousseau was able to begin his most influential work, The Social Contract, with the dramatic opening line: “Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains.” Another memorable contribution to political philosophy was his idea of the sovereignty of the people. There was always the tension between the “sovereign” and “subjects”. He resolved that tension with the idea that the people themselves were the sovereign and, at the same time, subjects. Thereby, in a sense, they were subject to themselves, which Rousseau believed to be the essence of liberty.
The idea of the people being sovereign is part of our political jargon, but Rousseau had a far stronger notion of what was meant by “a sovereign people” than is nowadays commonly allowed. It was that the people themselves decide on all the fundamental issues of their society, deciding on the basis of the common good, not on the basis of their factional self-interests. He regarded representative democracy, the version of democracy we have here and that prevails throughout most of the world that is called democratic, as a corruption of the people’s sovereignty for it removed them from decision-making, except at periodic elections when they were momentarily free, and thereafter, once more, mere subjects.
I think his distrust of representative democracy was well-founded, for we see in our own country and elsewhere sovereignty is sub-contracted to a political class which decides on all major issues. Here these include the bank guarantee of September 2008 which has had such disastrous consequences for our society, and the surrender of sovereignty to the troika in December 2010.
But the degradation of sovereignty is more profound than that. During the fiscal treaty referendum campaign Simon Coveney, who was managing the Fine Gael campaign, casually dismissed reports the newly elected president of France, François Hollande, was promising to renegotiate the fiscal treaty – he said there was a parliamentary election campaign under way in France and one couldn’t treat election promises seriously. The implication here was that even where the people have this attenuated exercise of sovereignty, it in fact means nothing at all because they are voting on a bogus basis.
Even on the odd occasion when our “rulers” defer to us by way of a referendum it is done regretfully and condescendingly, and then, where possible, coercively, as with the fiscal treaty referendum.
But even more so, the sovereignty of the people is hollowed out almost entirely by the relentless encroachments of the EU into the arena of our national sovereignty. As I am writing this, there is a report on the radio on the imminence of initiatives to give the EU indefinite discretion over banking and budgetary policies and what is called a “political union” which no doubt will involve even more encroachment.
The idea of democracy was to make the people sovereign. The modern trajectory of democracy has been to make people subjects again – a condition Rousseau argued was an abrogation of sovereignty.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau was born in Geneva 300 years ago tomorrow, on June 28th, 1712.
|
<urn:uuid:e9e41e7b-15cd-4e8e-800e-ffc6fd61aecf>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.shelltosea.com/content/periodic-elections-corruption-peoples-sovereignty
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.981119
| 1,169
| 2.9375
| 3
|
Spring National Monument, a little known gem of the National Park
System, is rich with American Indian, early explorer and Mormon
water of Pipe Spring has made it possible for plants, animals, and
people to live in this dry, desert region. Ancestral Puebloans and
Kaibab Paiute Indians gathered grass seeds, hunted animals, and
raised crops near the springs for at least 1,000 years. In the 1860s
Mormon pioneers brought cattle to the area and by 1872 a fort (Winsor
Castle) was built over the main spring and a large cattle ranching
operation was established. This isolated outpost served as a way
station for people traveling across the Arizona Strip, that part
of Arizona separated from the rest of the state by the Grand Canyon.
It also served as a refuge for polygamist wives during the 1880s
their way of life was greatly impacted, the Paiute Indians continued
to live in the area and by 1907 the Kaibab Paiute Indian Reservation
was established, surrounding the privately owned Pipe Spring ranch.
In 1923 the
Pipe Spring ranch was purchased and set aside as a national monument.
Today the Pipe Spring National Monument - Kaibab Band of Paiute
Indians Visitor Center and Museum explains the human history of
the area over time. Daily tours of Winsor Castle, summer "living
history" demonstrations, an orchard and garden, and a half-mile
trail offer a glimpse of American Indian and pioneer life in the
Longhorns! - These Texas Longhorns have a long
history at Pipe Spring
Amazing Junior Ranger - This
young woman has taken more than 235 Junior Ranger Programs. Wow.
Events 2011- Ranger Tours and Talks, and much
more throughout the summer
Pipe Spring: Great things to do here, time needed
for a visit, travel directions, Arizona Strip information, etc.
a Virtual Tour of Winsor Castle or of the Visitor
Center and Cultural Museum.
Ranger Information or try the Cultural History
to Do - Explore on your own or take a Ranger
|
<urn:uuid:003caf1b-dd0e-49ce-8eb7-80b43e0700c4>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.zionpark.org/pipe_spring.php
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.919418
| 439
| 3.40625
| 3
|
Over the next two weeks on the Cooper-Hewitt Design Blog, students from an interdisciplinary graduate-level course on the Triennial taught by the Triennial curatorial team blog their impressions and inspirations of the current exhibition,‘Why Design Now?’.
What does it mean to want everyone to have access to knowledge about everything businesses and government are doing? Is the act of living with transparent things merely a tugging at the will to become invisible, to have less impact on the environment? Is the image of nothing richer than the image of excess? Does nothing cost less than something? Is the age of transparency an extension of the era of free? Will people eventually become divided into two invisible classes: one whose information is linked to their every move and one that is impossible to trace?
In a world where the museum has become the cathedral for the secular, the design of spaces, objects, clothing, tools, and communication is unveiling itself by becoming see-through or literally clear. Perhaps today’s consumers are trying to devise a way to leave their consumption behind, but have not yet resolved how to do without certain things. Instead of eliminating the production of objects and built spaces, they have made a move to remove the externality of things.
Corruption has become exceedingly unbearable in recent decades. Its undeniable presence in government has ravaged countries and befuddled international relations. Citizens have risen up and demanded a clearer understanding of what happens in town halls, capitols, and parliaments around the globe. This call for transparency is a demand for greater explanation and access. Because of this movement, now is the time for unleashing cameras in presidential boardrooms and social networking from senate meetings.
Together, these sentiments are driving the world of design toward transparency. Although it is not clear whether these transparent designed objects and spaces have a positive impact on the environment or politics, the symbolic message is there for all to see, so long as everyone continues to look.
School of Visual Arts Design Criticism MFA program
|
<urn:uuid:52bef9d9-9235-469e-aa79-aeb63e4f2246>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.cooperhewitt.org/es/conversations/2010/08/03/transparency
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.952799
| 413
| 2.59375
| 3
|
On January 31, 1770, Lord North ascended to the Prime Ministership of Great Britain. He was favored by King George III and his strength in leadership did return some stability to the Parliament following a series of disastrous Prime Ministerships.
The Stamp Act and all of the Townshend Duties, save the one on tea, had been repealed. The Declaratory Act still stood, although it was little more than a statement.
For about three years, Lord North managed to restrain the activities of the Parliament so as not to feed American colonial resentment. He brought this about, in part, by finding other mechanisms to generate revenue to pay off Britain's massive national debt (see the Seven Years' War.)
He successfully employed a lottery to raise revenue without increasing English land taxes, and removing the pressure to resume or increase taxes on the colonies. However, in an effort to salvage the East India Tea Company, North miscalculated the strength of colonial sentiments. The Tea Act of 1773, designed to rescue the near bankrupt company, was to generate capitol from the colonies by shipping surplus tea there directly and selling it through a network of consignment agents. The intention was to remove the Townshend tea duty (the last remaining "external tax".) Lord North intervened on this point however the tax was not eliminated, but merely reduced by half. The patriot movement in Massachusetts saw this act as creating a practical monopoly on the sale of tea for the East India Company, and as a shallow ploy to mollify the colonies into the continued payment of taxes to Britain. Agitation in Massachusetts proceeded anew, eventually bringing about the Boston Tea Party. This lead to the Coercive Acts (Intolerable Acts) which were calculated to force Massachusetts into compliance with British authority, but ultimately brought on the War of Independence.
|
<urn:uuid:a66ceadd-0dfd-4e73-b93f-eb1a7363b538>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.ushistory.org/Declaration/related/lordnorth.htm
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.972022
| 368
| 3.96875
| 4
|
Sleep medicine is a medical specialty or subspecialty devoted to the diagnosis and therapy of sleep disturbances and disorders. From the middle of the 20th century, research has provided increasing knowledge and answered many questions about sleep-wake functioning. The rapidly evolving field has become a recognized medical subspecialty in some countries. Dental sleep medicine also qualifies for board certification in some countries. Properly organized, minimum 12-month, postgraduate training programs are still being defined in the United States. In some countries, the sleep researchers and the physicians who treat patients may be the same people.
The first sleep clinics in the United States were established in the 1970s by interested physicians and technicians; the study, diagnosis and treatment of obstructive sleep apnea were their first tasks. As late as 1999, virtually any American physician, with no specific training in sleep medicine, could open a sleep laboratory.
Disorders and disturbances of sleep are widespread and can have significant consequences for affected individuals as well as economic and other consequences for society. The US National Transportation Safety Board has, according to Dr. Charles Czeisler, member of the Institute of Medicine and Director of the Harvard University Medical School Division of Sleep Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital, discovered that the leading cause of fatal-to-the-driver heavy truck crashes is fatigue-related (fatigue – 31%, alcohol and other drug use – 29%), and sleep deprivation has been a significant factor in dramatic accidents, such as the Exxon Valdez oil spill, the nuclear incidents at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island and the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger.
Scope and classification
Competence in sleep medicine requires an understanding of a plethora of very diverse disorders, many of which present with similar symptoms such as excessive daytime sleepiness, which, in the absence of volitional sleep deprivation, "is almost inevitably caused by an identifiable and treatable sleep disorder," such as sleep apnea, narcolepsy, idiopathic hypersomnia, Kleine-Levin syndrome, menstrual-related hypersomnia, idiopathic recurrent stupor, or circadian rhythm disturbances. Another common complaint is insomnia, a set of symptoms that can have many causes, physical and mental. Management in the varying situations differs greatly and cannot be undertaken without a correct diagnosis.
ICSD, The International Classification of Sleep Disorders, was restructured in 1990, in relation to its predecessor, to include only one code for each diagnostic entry and to classify disorders by pathophysiologic mechanism, as far as possible, rather than by primary complaint. Training in sleep medicine is multidisciplinary, and the present structure was chosen to encourage a multidisciplinary approach to diagnosis. Sleep disorders often do not fit neatly into traditional classification; differential diagnoses cross medical systems. Minor revisions and updates to the ICSD were made in 1997 and in following years. The present classification system in fact follows the groupings suggested by Nathaniel Kleitman, the "father of sleep research," in his seminal 1939 book Sleep and Wakefulness.
The revised ICSD, ICSD-R, placed the primary sleep disorders in the subgroups (1) dyssomnias, which include those that produce complaints of insomnia or excessive sleepiness, and (2) the parasomnias, which do not produce those primary complaints but intrude into or occur during sleep. A further subdivision of the dyssomnias preserves the integrity of circadian rhythm sleep disorders, as was mandated by about 200 doctors and researchers from all over the world who participated in the process between 1985–1990. The last two subgroups were (3) the medical or psychiatric sleep disorder section and (4) the proposed new disorders section. The authors found the heading "medical or psychiatric" less than ideal but better than the alternative "organic or non-organic," which seemed more likely to change in the future. Detailed reporting schemes aimed to provide data for further research. A second edition, called ICSD-2, was published in 2005.
MeSH, Medical Subject Headings, a service of the US National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health, uses similar broad categories: (1) dyssomnias, including narcolepsy, apnea, and the circadian rhythm sleep disorders, (2) parasomnias, which include, among others, bruxism (tooth-grinding), sleepwalking and bedwetting, and (3) sleep disorders caused by medical or psychiatric conditions. The system used produces "trees," approaching each diagnosis from up to several angles such that each disorder may be known by several codes.
DSM-IV-TR, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, Text Revision, using the same diagnostic codes as the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD), divides sleep disorders into three groups: (1) primary sleep disorders, both the dyssomnias and the parasomnias, presumed to result from an endogenous disturbance in sleep-wake generating or timing mechanisms, (2) those secondary to mental disorders and (3) those related to a general medical condition or substance abuse.
Recent thinking opens for a common cause for mood and sleep disorders occurring in the same patient; a 2010 review states that, in humans, "single nucleotide polymorphisms in Clock and other clock genes have been associated with depression" and that the "evidence that mood disorders are associated with disrupted or at least inappropriately timed circadian rhythms suggests that treatment strategies or drugs aimed at restoring 'normal' circadian rhythmicity may be clinically useful."
A 16th-century physician wrote that many laborers dozed off exhausted at the start of each night; sexual intercourse with their wives typically occurring in the watching period, after a recuperative first sleep. Anthropologists find that isolated societies without electric light sleep in a variety of patterns; seldom do they resemble our modern habit of sleeping in one single eight-hour bout. Much has been written about dream interpretation, from biblical times to Freud, but sleep itself was historically seen as a passive state of not-awake.
The concept of sleep medicine belongs to the second half of the 20th century. Due to the rapidly increasing knowledge about sleep, including the growth of the research field chronobiology from about 1960 and the discoveries of REM sleep (1952–53) and sleep apnea (first described in the medical literature in 1965), the medical importance of sleep was recognized. The medical community began paying more attention than previously to primary sleep disorders, such as sleep apnea, as well as the role and quality of sleep in other conditions. By the 1970s in the US, and in many western nations within the two following decades, clinics and laboratories devoted to the study of sleep and the treatment of its disorders had been founded. Most sleep doctors were primarily concerned with apnea; some were experts in narcolepsy. There was as yet nothing to restrict the use of the title "sleep doctor," and a need for standards arose.
Basic medical training has paid little attention to sleep problems; according to Benca in her review Diagnosis and Treatment of Chronic Insomnia (2005), most doctors are "not well trained with respect to sleep and sleep disorders," and a survey in 1990–91 of 37 American medical schools showed that sleep and sleep disorders were "covered" in less than two (2) hours of total teaching time, on average. Benca's review cites a 2002 survey by Papp et al. of more than 500 primary care physicians who self-reported their knowledge of sleep disorders as follows: Excellent – 0%; Good – 10%, Fair – 60%; and Poor – 30%. The review of more than 50 studies indicates that both doctors and patients appear reluctant to discuss sleep complaints, in part because of perceptions that treatments for insomnia are ineffective or associated with risks, and:
|“||Physicians may avoid exploring problems such as sleep difficulties in order to avoid having to deal with issues that could take up more than the normal allotted time for a patient.||”|
Also, an editorial in the American College of Chest Physicians' (pulmonologists') journal CHEST in 1999 was quite concerned about the Conundrums in Sleep Medicine. The author, then chair of her organization's Sleep Section, asked "What is required to set up a sleep laboratory? Money and a building! Anyone can open a sleep laboratory, and it seems that just about everyone is." On the accreditation process for sleep laboratories, she continues: "This accreditation, however, is currently not required by most states, or more importantly, by most insurance carriers for reimbursements... There is also an American Board of Sleep Medicine (ABSM) that certifies individuals as sleep specialists. This certification presumably makes those individuals more qualified to run a sleep laboratory; however, the certification is not required to run a laboratory or to read sleep studies." Her concern at the turn of the century was:
|“||Not all patients with hypersomnia have sleep apnea, and other diagnoses may be missed if the physician is only trained to diagnose and treat sleep apnea. Also, when a physician runs a sleep laboratory, they are "assumed" to be a sleep expert and are asked to evaluate and treat all types of sleep disorders when they are not adequately trained to do so.||”|
In the UK, knowledge of sleep medicine and possibilities for diagnosis and treatment seem to lag. Guardian.co.uk quotes the director of the Imperial College Healthcare Sleep Centre: "One problem is that there has been relatively little training in sleep medicine in this country – certainly there is no structured training for sleep physicians." The Imperial College Healthcare site shows attention to obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSA) and very few other disorders, specifically not including insomnia.
Training and certification
The World Federation of Sleep Research & Sleep Medicine Societies (WFSRSMS) was founded in 1987. As its name implies, members are concerned with basic and clinical research as well as medicine. Member societies in the Americas are the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM), the Sleep Research Society of the United States (SRS), the Canadian Sleep Society (CSS) and the Federation of Latin American Sleep Societies (FLASS). WFSRSMS publishes the Journal of Sleep Research, the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, SLEEP and Sleep and Biological Rhythms and promotes both sleep research and physician training and education.
The Colleges of Medicine of South Africa (CMSA) provide the well-defined specialty Diploma in Sleep Medicine of the College of Neurologists of South Africa: DSM(SA), which was first promulgated by the Health Professions Council in 2007. The newly formed South African Society of Sleep Medicine (SASSM) was launched at its inaugural congress in February 2010. The society's membership is diverse; it includes general practitioners, ENT surgeons, pulmonologists, cardiologists, endocrinologists and psychiatrists.
WFSRSMS members in Asia include the Australasian Sleep Association (ASA) of New Zealand and Australia and the Asian Sleep Research Society (ASRS), an umbrella organization for the societies of several Asian nations.
The European Sleep Research Society (ESRS) is a member of the WFSRSMS. The Assembly of National Sleep Societies (ANSS), which includes both medical and scientific organizations from 26 countries as of 2007, is a formal body of the ESRS. The ESRS has published European Accreditation Guidelines for SMCs (Sleep Medicine Centres), the first of several proposed guidelines to coordinate and promote sleep science and medicine in Europe.
United States
The American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM), founded in 1978, administered the certification process and sleep medicine examination for doctors until 1990. Its independent daughter entity the American Board of Sleep Medicine (ABSM) was incorporated in 1991 and took over the aforementioned responsibilities. As of 2007, the ABSM ceased administering its examination, as it conceded that an examination process recognized by the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) was advantageous to the field. Candidates who passed the ABSM exam in 1978–2006 retain lifetime certification as Diplomates of that organization.
The American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology (ABPN), and the corresponding boards of Internal Medicine, of Pediatrics, and of Otolaryngology (ear, nose and throat, ENT) now administer collectively the Sleep Medicine Certification exam for their members. Each board supervises the required 12 months of formal training for its candidates, while the exam is administered to all of them at the same time in the same place. For the first five years, 2007–2011, during "grandfathering," there was a "practice pathway" for ABSM certified specialists while additional, coordinated requirements were to be added after 2011. The ABPN provides information about the pathways, requirements and the exam on its website. Additionally, there are currently four boards of the American Osteopathic Association Bureau of Osteopathic Specialists that administer Sleep Medicine Certification exams. The American Osteopathic boards of Family Medicine, Internal Medicine, Neurology & Psychiatry, and Ophthalmology & Otolaryngology grant certificates of added qualification to qualified candidate physicians.
Sleep medicine is now a recognized subspecialty within anesthesiology, internal medicine, family medicine, pediatrics, otolaryngology, psychiatry and neurology in the US. Certification in Sleep Medicine by the several "Member Boards" of the ABMS shows that the specialist:
|“||has demonstrated expertise in the diagnosis and management of clinical conditions that occur during sleep, that disturb sleep, or that are affected by disturbances in the wake–sleep cycle. This specialist is skilled in the analysis and interpretation of comprehensive polysomnography, and well-versed in emerging research and management of a sleep laboratory.||”|
Pulmonologists, already subspecialists within internal medicine, may be accepted to sit for the board and be certified in Sleep Medicine after just a six-month fellowship, building on their knowledge of sleep-related breathing problems, rather than the usual twelve-month fellowship required of other specialists.
Sleep dentistry (bruxism, snoring and sleep apnea), while not recognized as one of the nine dental specialties, qualifies for board-certification by the American Board of Dental Sleep Medicine (ABDSM). The resulting Diplomate status is recognized by the AASM, and these dentists are organized in the Academy of Dental Sleep Medicine (USA). The qualified dentists collaborate with sleep doctors at accredited sleep centers and can provide several types of oral appliances or upper airway surgery to treat or manage sleep-related breathing disorders as well as tooth-grinding and clenching.
Laboratories for sleep-related breathing disorders are accredited by the AASM, and are required to follow the Code of Medical Ethics of the American Medical Association. The new and very detailed Standards for Accreditation are available online. Sleep disorder centers, or clinics, are accredited by the same body, whether hospital-based, university-based or "freestanding"; they are required to provide testing and treatment for all sleep disorders and to have on staff a sleep specialist who has been certified by the American Board of Sleep Medicine and otherwise meet similar standards.
Diagnostic methods
The taking of a thorough medical history while keeping in mind alternative diagnoses and the possibility of more than one ailment in the same patient is the first step. Symptoms for very different sleep disorders may be similar and it must be determined whether any psychiatric problems are primary or secondary.
The patient history includes previous attempts at treatment and coping and a careful medication review. Differentiation of transient from chronic disorders and primary from secondary ones influences the direction of evaluation and treatment plans.
The Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS), designed to give an indication of sleepiness and correlated with sleep apnea, or other questionnaires designed to measure excessive daytime sleepiness, are diagnostic tools that can be used repeatedly to measure results of treatment.
A sleep diary, also called sleep log or sleep journal, kept by a patient at home for at least two weeks, while subjective, may help determine the extent and nature of sleep disturbance and the level of alertness in the normal environment. A parallel journal kept by a parent or bed partner, if any, can also be helpful. Sleep logs also can be used for self-monitoring and in connection with behavioral and other treatment. The image at the top of this page, with nighttime in the middle and the weekend in the middle, shows a layout that can aid in noticing trends
An actigraph unit is a motion-sensing device worn on the wrist, generally for one week. It gives a gross picture of sleep-wake cycles and is often used to verify the sleep diary. It is cost-efficient when full polysomnography is not required.
Polysomnography is performed in a sleep laboratory while the patient sleeps, preferably at his or her usual sleeping time. The polysomnogram (PSG) objectively records sleep stages and respiratory events. It shows multiple channels of electroencephalogram (EEG), electrooculogram (EOG), electrocardiogram (ECG), nasal and oral airflow, abdominal, chest and leg movements and blood oxygen levels. A single part of a polysomnogram is sometimes measured at home with portable equipment, for example oximetry, which records blood oxygen levels throughout the night. Polysomnography is not routinely used in the evaluation of patients with insomnia or circadian rhythm disorders, except as needed to rule out other disorders. It will usually be a definitive test for sleep apnea.
A Multiple Sleep Latency Test (MSLT) is often performed during the entire day after polysomnography while the electrodes and other equipment are still in place. The patient is given nap opportunities every second hour; the test measures the number of minutes it takes from the start of a daytime nap period to the first signs of sleep. It is a measure of daytime sleepiness; it also shows whether REM sleep is achieved in a short nap, a typical indication of narcolepsy.
When sleep complaints are secondary to pain, other medical or psychiatric diagnoses, or substance abuse, it may be necessary to treat both the underlying cause and the sleep problems.
When the underlying cause of sleep problems is not immediately obvious, behavioral treatments are usually the first suggested. These range from patient education about sleep hygiene to cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). Studies of both younger and older adults have compared CBT to medication and found that CBT should be considered a first-line and cost-effective intervention for chronic insomnia, not least because gains may be maintained at long-term follow-up. Sleep physicians and psychologists, at least in the US, are not in agreement about who should perform CBT nor whether sleep centers should be required to have psychologists on staff. In the UK the number of CBT-trained therapists is limited so CBT is not widely available on the NHS.
Behavioral therapies include progressive relaxation, stimulus control (to reassociate the bed with sleepiness), limiting time-in-bed to increase sleep efficiency and debunking misconceptions about sleep.
Pharmacology is necessary for some conditions. Medication may be useful for acute insomnia and for some of the parasomnias. It is almost always needed, along with scheduled short naps and close follow-up, in the treatment of narcolepsy and idiopathic hypersomnia.
Chronic circadian rhythm disorders, the most common of which is delayed sleep phase disorder, may be managed by specifically timed bright light therapy, timed oral administration of the hormone melatonin, and/or chronotherapy. Stimulants may also be prescribed. When these therapies are unsuccessful, counseling may be indicated to help a person adapt to and live with the condition. People with these disorders who have chosen a lifestyle in conformity with their sleeping schedules have no need of treatment, though they may need the diagnosis in order to avoid having to meet for appointments or meetings during their sleep time.
Continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machines and oral appliances are used nightly at home to manage sleep-related breathing disorders such as apnea. In some cases, upper airway surgery generally performed by an otolaryngologist/head & neck surgeon or occasionally an oral and maxillofacial surgeon is indicated. In mild cases in obese people, weight reduction may be sufficient. The treatments prevent airway collapse, which interrupts breathing during sleep. A 2001 study published by Hans-Werner Gessmann in the Journal of Sleep Medicine and Sleep Psychology found that patients who practiced a series of electrical stimulations of specific tongue muscles for 20 minutes a day showed a marked decline in sleep apnea symptoms after three months. Patients experienced an average of 36% fewer apnea episodes after successfully completing the treatments.
See also
- International Classification of Sleep Disorders
- National Sleep Foundation
- Environmental noise health effects
- Polysomnographic technician
- Reversed vegetative symptoms
- Sleep hygiene
- Sleep study
- Sundowning (dementia)
- White noise machine
- Bingham, Roger; Terrence Sejnowski, Jerry Siegel, Mark Eric Dyken, Charles Czeisler, Paul Shaw, Ralph Greenspan, Satchin Panda, Philip Low, Robert Stickgold, Sara Mednick, Allan Pack, Luis de Lecea, David Dinges, Dan Kripke, Giulio Tononi (February 2007). "Waking Up To Sleep" (Several conference videos). The Science Network. Retrieved 2008-01-25.
- Kvale, Paul A.; Peter D. Wagner; Lawrence J. Epstein (2005). "Pulmonary Physicians in the Practice of Sleep Medicine". Chest (American College of Chest Physicians) 128 (6): 3788–90. doi:10.1378/chest.128.6.3788. PMID 16354845. Retrieved 2008-07-27. "The field of sleep medicine is in a time of rapid growth and maturation."
- The Royal Australasian College of Physicians (August 2006). "Requirements for Physician Training 2004". Retrieved 2008-07-28.
- Ramirez, Armando F.; Elaine C. Bell (March 2007). "Osteopathic Specialty Board Certification". J Am Osteopath Assoc. (The American Osteopathic Association) 107 (3): 117–125. PMID 17485568. Retrieved 2008-07-27.
- Collop NA (March 1999). "Conundrums in sleep medicine". Chest 115 (3): 607–8. doi:10.1378/chest.115.3.607. PMID 10084459.
- Ohayon MM (September 2007). "[Prevalence and comorbidity of sleep disorders in general population]". Rev Prat (in French) 57 (14): 1521–8. PMID 18018450. "The International Classification of Sleep Disorders lists more than 80 different sleep disorder diagnoses."
- Sigurdson K, Ayas NT (January 2007). "The public health and safety consequences of sleep disorders". Can. J. Physiol. Pharmacol. 85 (1): 179–83. doi:10.1139/y06-095. PMID 17487258.
- Summers MO, Crisostomo MI, Stepanski EJ (July 2006). "Recent developments in the classification, evaluation, and treatment of insomnia". Chest 130 (1): 276–86. doi:10.1378/chest.130.1.276. PMID 16840413.
- National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute Working Group on Problem Sleepiness, David F. Dinges, Chair (August 1997). "Working Group Report on Problem Sleepiness" (PDF). National Institutes of Health. Retrieved 2008-07-27.
- Czeisler, Charles A. (2003). "Pathophysiology and Treatment of Circadian Rhythm Sleep Disorders" (Video). MedScape. pp. Slide 10 of 32. Retrieved 2008-10-22.
- "Sleep, Performance, and Public Safety". Division of Sleep Medicine at Harvard Medical School and WGBH Educational Foundation. December 2007. Retrieved 2008-07-27.
- Mahowald, M.W. (March 2000). "What is causing excessive daytime sleepiness?: evaluation to distinguish sleep deprivation from sleep disorders". Postgraduate Medicine 107 (3): 108–23. doi:10.3810/pgm.2000.03.932. PMID 10728139. Archived from the original on May 30, 2008. Retrieved 2008-07-27.
- Mahowald, M.W. (March 2000). "What is causing excessive daytime sleepiness?: evaluation to distinguish sleep deprivation from sleep disorders". Postgraduate Medicine 107 (3): 108–23. doi:10.3810/pgm.2000.03.932. PMID 10728139. Retrieved 2008-10-06.
- American Academy of Sleep Medicine (2001). International classification of sleep disorders, revised: Diagnostic and coding manual (PDF, 208 pgs). Chicago, Illinois: American Academy of Sleep Medicine. ISBN 0-9657220 Check
|isbn=value (help). Archived from the original on 2007-09-27. Retrieved 2008-07-27.
- Thorpy MJ (June 2005). "Which clinical conditions are responsible for impaired alertness?". Sleep Med. 6 Suppl 1: S13–20. doi:10.1016/S1389-9457(05)80004-8. PMID 16140241.
- "Medical Subject Headings". Updated 14 January 2008. Retrieved 2008-07-27.
- Sleep Disorders at eMedicine
- Kennaway, David J. (2010). "Schizophrenia: a multisystem disease?" (Review). Journal of Psychopharmacology (SagePub) 24 (5): 5–14. doi:10.1177/1359786810372980. PMC 2951587. PMID 20663803. Retrieved 2010-11-05.
- page 3 of Bower, Bruce (25 September 1999). "Slumber's Unexplored Landscape". Science News. Retrieved 2008-07-27.
- Bower, Bruce (25 September 1999). "Slumber's Unexplored Landscape". Science News. Retrieved 2008-07-27.
- Kleitman, Nathaniel (1938, revised 1963, reprinted 1987) Sleep and Wakefulness (Introduction). The University of Chicago Press, Midway Reprints series, ISBN 0-226-44073-7
- Stores, G (2007). "Clinical diagnosis and misdiagnosis of sleep disorders". Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry 78 (12): 1293–7. doi:10.1136/jnnp.2006.111179. PMC 2095611. PMID 18024690.
- Benca RM (March 2005). "Diagnosis and treatment of chronic insomnia: a review". Psychiatr Serv 56 (3): 332–43. doi:10.1176/appi.ps.56.3.332. PMID 15746509.
- Wollenberg, Anne (July 28, 2008). "Time to wake up to sleep disorders". Guardian News and Media Limited. Retrieved 2008-08-03.
- "Sleep services". Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust. 2008. Retrieved 2008-08-02.
- The Colleges of Medicine of South Africa (CMSA). "Diploma in Sleep Medicine of the College of Neurologists of South Africa: DSM(SA)". Retrieved 2010-02-05.
- HEALTH PROFESSIONS COUNCIL OF SOUTH AFRICA (16 March 2007). "Government Gazette, Board Notices, Raadskennisgewings, BOARD NOTICE 22 OF 2007" (PDF). Retrieved 2010-02-06.
- The South African Society of Sleep Medicine (2010). "SASSM". Retrieved 2010-02-06.
- Organising & Scientific Committee (2009). "1st Annual Congress of the South African Society of Sleep Medicine 2010 (SASSM 2010)". Retrieved 2010-02-05.
- "American Board of Sleep Medicine: About the ABSM". Retrieved 2008-07-21.
- American Academy of Sleep Medicine (2008). "Board Certification in Sleep Medicine – Previous (1978–2006)". Retrieved 2008-07-27.
- "Initial Certification in the Subspecialty of Sleep Medicine". 2007–08. Retrieved 2008-07-27.
- "Specialties & Subspecialties". American Osteopathic Association. Retrieved 23 September 2012.
- "American Board of Medical Specialties: Recognized Physician Specialty and Subspecialty Certificates". Retrieved 2008-07-21.
- Joint, ad hoc committee formed by the American Thoracic Society, the American College of Chest Physicians, the American Sleep Disorders Association and the Association of Pulmonary-Critical Care Medicine Program Directors (1994). "Statement about Training of Pulmonary Physicians in Sleep Disorders" (PDF, 5 pgs). Retrieved 2008-07-27.[dead link]
- "About AADSM". Academy of Dental Sleep Medicine. 2008. Retrieved 2008-07-22.
- "About the ADBSM". American Board of Dental Sleep Medicine. Retrieved 2008-07-22.
- "Standards for Accreditation of Laboratories for Sleep Related Breathing Disorders." (PDF, 17 pgs). American Academy of Sleep Medicine. December 2007. Archived from the original on December 18, 2007. Retrieved 2008-07-27.
- Cataletto, Mary E.; Gila Hertz (September 7, 2005). "Sleeplessness and Circadian Rhythm Disorder". eMedicine from WebMD. Retrieved 2008-08-03.
- Johns MW (1991). "A new method for measuring daytime sleepiness: the Epworth sleepiness scale". Sleep 14 (6): 540–5. PMID 1798888.
- Polysomnography: Overview and Clinical Application at eMedicine
- Dictionary | Definition of Temazepam
- Jacobs, Gregg D.; Edward F. Pace-Schott; Robert Stickgold; Michael W. Otto (September 27, 2004). "Cognitive Behavior Therapy and Pharmacotherapy for Insomnia: A Randomized Controlled Trial and Direct Comparison" (Full text). Archives of Internal Medicine 164 (17): 1888–1896. doi:10.1001/archinte.164.17.1888. PMID 15451764. Retrieved 2008-08-04.
- Barclay, Laurie (June 27, 2006). "Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Better Than Zopiclone for Chronic Insomnia" (Medscape CME). Retrieved 2008-08-04.
Sivertsen B, Omvik S, Pallesen S et al. (June 2006). "Cognitive behavioral therapy vs zopiclone for treatment of chronic primary insomnia in older adults: a randomized controlled trial". JAMA 295 (24): 2851–8. doi:10.1001/jama.295.24.2851. PMID 16804151.
- Perlis, Michael L.; Michael T. Smith (15 February 2008). "How can we make CBT-I and other BSM services widely available?" (Editorial). J Clin Sleep Med (American Academy of Sleep Medicine) 4 (1): 11–13. PMC 2276824. PMID 18350955.
- Kenny, T. (2011). Cognitive Behavioural Therapy.
- Rowley, James A.; Nicholas Lorenzo (September 7, 2005). "Insomnia". eMedicine from WebMD. Retrieved 2008-08-04.
- Barclay, Laurie; Charles Vega (November 5, 2007). "Guidelines Issued for Management of Circadian Rhythm Sleep Disorders". Medscape medical news. Retrieved 2008-08-04.
- Kayumov, Leonid; Gregory Brown, Ripu Jindal, Kenneth Buttoo, Colin M. Shapiro (January 1, 2001). "A Randomized, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Crossover Study of the Effect of Exogenous Melatonin on Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome" (Full text). Psychosomatic Medicine 63 (1): 40–48. PMID 11211063. Retrieved 2008-08-04. "Exposure to bright light in the morning and avoidance of light in the evening would be expected to advance sleep onset, but a significant proportion of DSPS patients are not able to wake up before noon and sometimes awaken even later... The findings to date regarding melatonin treatment of DSPS are promising but limited."
- "DSPS – Delayed Sleep-Phase Syndrome". Retrieved 2008-08-04. "But while the treatments may be effective for some people, a large proportion of DSPS sufferers are not able to achieve and maintain a normal sleep-wake schedule."
- Dagan Y, Abadi J (November 2001). "Sleep-wake schedule disorder disability: a lifelong untreatable pathology of the circadian time structure". Chronobiol. Int. 18 (6): 1019–27. doi:10.1081/CBI-100107975. PMID 11777076. "Patients suffering from SWSD disability should be encouraged to accept the fact that they suffer from a permanent disability, and that their quality of life can only be improved if they are willing to undergo rehabilitation. It is imperative that physicians recognize the medical condition of SWSD disability in their patients and bring it to the notice of the public institutions responsible for vocational and social rehabilitation."
- Obstructive Sleep Apnea-Hypopnea Syndrome at eMedicine
- Gessmann, H.-W.: The Tongue Muscle Training (ZMT®) in nCPAP Patients with Obstructive Sleep Apnea Syndrome (OSAS), Journal of Sleep Medicine and Sleep Psychology, PIB Publisher, Duisburg, 2001
- Randerath, W., Galetke, W., Domanski, U., Weitkunat, R., Rühle, K.-H.: Tongue muscle training by electrical neurostimulation in the treatment of obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome . Somnologie, Blackwell Verlag Berlin, Vol. 8, p. 14, Feb. 2004
Further reading
- American Academy of Sleep Medicine. The International Classification of Sleep Disorders: Diagnostic and Coding Manual. 2nd ed. American Academy of Sleep Medicine, 2005.
- National Academy of Sciences: Institute of Medicine (US) Committee on Sleep Medicine and Research; Colten HR, Altevogt BM, editors. Sleep Disorders and Sleep Deprivation: An Unmet Public Health Problem. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 2006. Chapter 5 (full text): Improving Awareness, Diagnosis, and Treatment of Sleep Disorders,
- The Sleep Centre, Imperial College Healthcare NHS A five-minute video following a patient with obstructive sleep apnoea through diagnosis and treatment
- Directory of AASM-accredited sleep centers in the United States
|
<urn:uuid:0d7a49d9-81a7-48da-8f8d-0fc85e5681b4>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_medicine
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.893936
| 7,304
| 2.796875
| 3
|
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. March 11, 1999 -- Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq: MLNM) has cloned the first gene that can suppress diet-induced obesity in mice. The gene may have strong implications in developing therapies to intervene in human obesity, the authors note in their report, which appears in the March 11, 1999 issue of Nature.
The scientists found that while the gene, called mahogany (mg), produces a protein (MG) in many tissues of the body, its activity in a specific region of the brain's hypothalamus is particularly interesting because of that region's role in body weight regulation.
"The cloning of the mahogany gene and the identification of its protein product are major first steps in achieving a better understanding of their roles in controlling weight based on the amount of fat in a diet," said Karen Moore, Ph.D., director of genetic systems at Millennium. Because of the great similarity between mouse and human metabolism, the scientists expect to find that the gene plays a similar role in people.
Mice with a mutation in their mg gene maintain a healthy weight whether they eat a high fat (42 percent fat) or low fat (9 percent fat) diet with the same amount of calories. In contrast, mice with a normal mg gene gain excess weight on the high fat diet. Such diet-induced obesity differs from forms of genetically-induced obesity in which weight gain occurs even when mice are fed a normal diet. Genetically induced obesity in mice has been linked to mutations in the obese (ob), diabetes (db), tubby (tub), fat (fat) and agouti-yellow (Ay) genes. Mice with a mutation in their mg gene can suppress the genetic induced obesity of agouti-yellow mice but not that of ob, db, tub and fat mice.
The structure of the large MG protein is complex and can occur in two major
forms. One form spans the cell wall leaving multiple sections of the protein to
project outside the cell, which may function as receptors to which small
proteins called peptide
Contact: Marion E. Glick
|
<urn:uuid:6c1ece7c-3c99-4281-b63f-55c7a79f9279>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://news.bio-medicine.org/biology-news-2/Millennium-Clones-Diet-Induced-Obesity-Gene-13393-1/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.946927
| 438
| 3.15625
| 3
|
This course consists of a critical examination of the origins and development of contemporary political thought. Extensive analysis of several major political philosophical works by theorists associated with particular contemporary political ideologies, such as democracy, liberalism, conservatism, socialism, Marxism, anarchism, fascism, and Nazism. Critical analysis of the normative concepts that stimulated these theorists: The nation-state, nationalism, political authority, political obligation, civil rights, natural rights, natural law, consent, social contract, liberty, equality, property, justice, political participation, representation, constitutionalism, monarchy, privacy, and individualism. This particular course will analyze political theoretical concepts, normative principles and issues from the interconnected interdisciplinary perspectives of politics (political systems), culture, religion, and social philosophy (social systems), and ethical theory (behavioral systems). This course is designed to demonstrate to students the linkage between diverse political philosophical systems of thought and various forms of social and political behavior, public policies, and political institutions.
|
<urn:uuid:e7b5dba2-e022-478e-94f1-dcafa9d68d8b>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://ustudies.semo.edu/handbook/courseview.aspx?cid=408
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.919697
| 194
| 2.65625
| 3
|
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. The ringing or sounding of bells.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. The ringing of a bell or of bells; a sound like that of ringing bells.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A tinkling sound, as of a bell or bells.
- n. the sound of a bell ringing
- Noun of action from tintinnabulate, from Latin tintinnabulum ("a bell"), from tintinō, a reduplicated form of tinniō ("ring, jingle"). (Wiktionary)
- From tintinnabulum. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
“I just like the sound of the word tintinnabulation and if you look it up in the OED, it simply describes a sound made by the ringing of a bell.”
“It is an example of what Mr. Pärt calls tintinnabulation, a slow, introspective style, with the strings playing in a high register, that often evokes the pealing of bells.”
“It's that tripping, multi-syllabic word that sounds like a bell clanging: "tintinnabulation" that I love so much.”
“I've been looking for a way to work "tintinnabulation" into a post for a while -- very nicely done...and the fish looks delicious too!”
“I also love Edgar Allen Poe's "tintinnabulation" from his poem, The Bells (excerpt below):”
“Few settings would fail to be improved by the introduction of floating translucent orbs and music made by means of metaphysical tintinnabulation.”
“Prayer is a pure negotiation with angels on the right, two wrong too and hope, an accommodation in place of stroke, tintinnabulation of one billion clocks, stopped by a gong of long-held reservations.”
“Cave honors his own definition with songs that truly "resonate with the susurration of sorrow, tintinnabulation of grief" like "Straight to You", "Nobody's Baby Now", and the slayer "Into My Arms".”
“Today at Boing Boing Gadgets, the morning started with the shrill tintinnabulation of a green tea telephone, which we profusely stabbed with a handy philips head.”
“She lunged for her bag and retrieved the source of the tintinnabulation.”
These user-created lists contain the word ‘tintinnabulation’.
Just a list of words
compartmentalisation, compartmentalization, counterrevolution..., counterrevolutionary, electroencephalogram, electroencephalog..., electroencephalog..., electroencephalog..., electroencephalog..., electroencephalog..., institutionalisation, institutionalization and 634 more...
Words chosen as favorites for the Twitter hashtag #faveword.
Things that give you a warm fuzzy sort of feeling.
please make up a new one-word band and post it to this list. thanks!
I enjoy collecting words, for I have no fear of them ever running out.
a couple words
List of most of the words I've learned
Looking for tweets for tintinnabulation.
|
<urn:uuid:3abfc2fc-f003-4698-8996-aed41c541cb4>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.wordnik.com/words/tintinnabulation
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.872442
| 730
| 3.203125
| 3
|
Programming Languages: In layman’s terms, what are the major programming languages, and what are they used for?
(reposted from this Quora answer because it’s just great)
Programmers have a surprisingly intimate relationship with the programming languages they use. Your programming language will frustrate you, and enlighten you. Over time you will learn your programming language’s inner workings and little quirks. It will get inside your head, too, and change the way your mind works.
Choose the right programming language and together you will create something new and beautiful. Choose wrongly and things can get very messy indeed.
In other words, choosing a programming language is much like choosing a romantic partner…
(Note: I’m a straight guy. If you’re not, feel free to do a mental find/replace with whatever you’re into).
PHP is your teenage sweetheart, the girl you first awkwardly fumbled around with that one summer. Just don’t try and start a more serious relationship - this girl has serious issues.
Perl is PHP’s older sister. She might be a bit old for you, but she was pretty popular back in the 90s. In a long-term relationship with Larry Wall, so her standards have dropped, and she’s looking seriously fugly now. “I don’t care what y’all say, I still love her!”, he says. No-one else does.
Ruby is the cool kid of the scripting family. When you first saw her, she took your breath away with her beauty. She was fun, too. At the time she seemed a bit slow and ditzy - though she’s matured a lot in the last few years.
Python is Ruby’s more sensible sister. She’s elegant, classy, and sophisticated. She’s perhaps too perfect. Most guys are like “dude, how can you not like Python!?”. Sure, you like Python. You just consider her the boring version of the edgy and romantic Ruby.
Java is a successful career woman. Some people who’ve worked with her feel she owes her position less to ability and more to her knack for impressing the middle-management types. You might feel that she’s the sensible type you should settle down with. Just prepare for years of “NO THAT DOESNT GO THERE GOD YOU ALWAYS USE THE WRONG TYPE INTERFACE AND YOU MISSED A SEMICOLON” nagging.
C++ is Java’s cousin. Similar to Java in many ways, the main difference being she grew up in a more innocent time and doesn’t believe in using protection. By “protection”, I mean automatic memory management, of course. What did you think I meant?
C is C++’s mom. Mention her name to some old grey beard hackers and they’re sure to reminisce with a twinkle in their eye.
Objective C is another member of the C family. She joined that weird church a while back, and won’t date anyone outside of it.
Haskell, Clojure, Scheme and their friends are those hipster, artsy, intellectual girls you probably spent a blissful college summer with a few years ago. The first girls who really challenged you. Of course, it could never have become something more serious (you tell yourself). Though you’ll always be left asking “what if?”
You might be put off C# due to her family’s reputation. But they’ve gone legit, the last few years, they tell you. Once you’re one of us, you’re one of us, you hear? You need a database? Her brother MSSQL will hook you up. Need a place to stay? Heck, her daddy will even buy you your own mansion on Azure avenue. What’s that, you’re having second thoughts about all these overly friendly relatives? No, you can never leave. You’re part of the family, now, ya hear?
Source - quora.com
- onesideisgreatness reblogged this from appliedmathemagics
- champbob likes this
- darkaaron likes this
- thegoldnsnitch likes this
- mad-n-mat reblogged this from appliedmathemagics
- mad-n-mat likes this
- hm0880 reblogged this from appliedmathemagics
- kennylule likes this
- myflashgamebase likes this
- foresthillbilly reblogged this from jesswang
- ridikulusreasons reblogged this from keyvoon
- ridikulusreasons likes this
- jesswang reblogged this from acoloredcanvas and added:
- keyvoon reblogged this from acoloredcanvas
- acoloredcanvas reblogged this from sulfurargonaluminiumiodine
- sulfurargonaluminiumiodine reblogged this from mangofarmer
- mangofarmer reblogged this from loveablegeek
- maneatingbadger reblogged this from worldiary
- xplusplus reblogged this from worldiary
- worldiary reblogged this from loveablegeek
- harwood91 reblogged this from loveablegeek
- loveablegeek reblogged this from appliedmathemagics
- loveablegeek likes this
- theresmoreinasmile reblogged this from appliedmathemagics
- indiguy likes this
- murray-gold reblogged this from appliedmathemagics
- murray-gold likes this
- bocadebuho reblogged this from appliedmathemagics
- intothecontinuum likes this
- jamieskywalker reblogged this from psychomath
- psychomath reblogged this from appliedmathemagics
- a10k likes this
- cs61a-ob likes this
- modus-trollens likes this
- paulynomial likes this
- hullabalooooooo likes this
- bnfluoguanzhong reblogged this from ardentsonata
- ardentsonata reblogged this from spetharrific
- breakingthemask likes this
- nuffthemighty reblogged this from spetharrific and added:
- ardentsonata likes this
- spetharrific reblogged this from appliedmathemagics
- mrthebatman likes this
- recursiverecursion likes this
- synacious likes this
- four-phosphoryloxy likes this
- thegrimsqueaker likes this
- gentlegiant91 reblogged this from appliedmathemagics
- explodingdiode reblogged this from appliedmathemagics
- suchanoodboy likes this
|
<urn:uuid:d6bd090e-c00a-4ef0-97da-b55d73210a63>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://appliedmathemagics.tumblr.com/post/40613159581/programming-languages-in-laymans-terms-what-are-the
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.937284
| 1,484
| 2.765625
| 3
|
The explosion of orders for videoconferencing systems is a clear indication that remote meetings are becoming a “mission critical” tool in our post-9/11 world. But whether the videoconferencing star remains bright will depend in large part on organizers who can produce an effective videoconferencing experience. Users need to take the time to understand how videoconferencing works in order to understand its limitations and its potential. A good place to start is with a piece of equipment called a codec.
Compare and Contrast
The job of the codec (which stands for encoder/decoder) is to compress the constant stream of signals from the video cameras and microphones. Once compressed, the signals can be sent over ISDN circuits to the far site without using an unruly amount of bandwidth.
As soon as the connection is made, the codec encodes the image sent to it by the video camera, writes it into memory, and sends it off to the far-site codec. This first image is called the “key frame.” The far-site codec receives the key frame, writes it into its memory, and displays it on the far site monitor. Then, the sending codec compares subsequent images (30 times per second) to the original and notes which parts have changed. The sending codec only transmits the parts of the image that are new, and the receiving codec pastes those changes into the image in its memory and displays the composite image. The bottom line: Only motion is transmitted. With this clever technology, bandwidth requirements are minimized because the static parts of the image are not resent.
This is a key concept to understand for a successful videoconference, because the less things move in the image, the smoother the motion looks to the viewer. When the camera sends a lot of new information to the codec, the codec sends out a new key frame. When this happens, the connection circuits are jammed with data, and the codec bogs down, sometimes transmitting as slowly as one frame every two seconds as it struggles to keep up with the flood of changing information. Of course, this dramatically reduces the effectiveness of the conference and can be quite distracting to the viewer.
Don't Move a Muscle
What looks like motion to a video camera? Well, obvious motion such as participants rocking or swiveling in their chairs. Solution: chairs that don't move around as much. Another factor that can be controlled is the panning, tilting, zooming, and focusing of a remote-control camera. This can be addressed by programming the system and educating the operators. What if the camera can “see” an open door or hallway where people walk past? That's motion too, and the solution is obvious: Give the camera as much of a fixed, unchanging image as possible.
Let's consider less obvious motion. What if the camera is vibrating a little bit? Yep, that's motion. Some office buildings have “post-tension” floors that vibrate and shake when people walk across them. If a stable room or floor cannot be found, you'll need to reduce traffic near the meeting room. I'm unaware of gyroscopically stabilized VTC cameras or lenses that could help solve the problem.
Are there windows in the room? Even clouds passing in front of the sun and changing the light levels and colors in the room appear as motion to the camera. Try blackout curtains on all windows, or use an interior room.
Is the camera's auto-iris turned on? Each time the camera adjusts to changing light levels from papers moving around, shadows, and so on, the codec has to build new key frames. Solution? Get good lighting (ideally 80 percent reflected), and turn off the auto-iris.
By understanding how the codec reacts, we can make its job easier, and the quality of the videoconference will be far less distracting. We'll address audio issues in the next issue. In the meantime, e-mail me your questions and ideas for future articles.
Jeff Loether is founder of Electro-Media Design Ltd., a Rockville, Md. — based technology consulting and design services firm. Contact him at (301) 309-0110, firstname.lastname@example.org, or visit www.electro-media.com.
Videoconferencing Systems: Three Tiers
Desktop systems use a computer and a small monitor-top video camera, are typically for internal desk-to-desk communications, and are “IP” based, meaning they use the enterprise LAN and can communicate with other IP-based systems outside the enterprise via the Internet.
Portable (or roll-about) systems have one or two video monitors and, commonly, one camera on top of the monitors. They may have other accessories such as a document camera, electronic whiteboard, scanner, printer, or second room camera. These elements are usually assembled on a cart to be rolled to various rooms as needed. And typically these system connect to digital ISDN telephone lines; three ISDN lines is considered the “business standard” connection rate.
Built-in systems are ordinarily found in board rooms, distance-learning facilities, and other dedicated videoconferencing rooms.
|
<urn:uuid:a033fe77-c022-4ede-b616-5975d383771b>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://meetingsnet.com/ar/meetings_audiovisual_codec_moment
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.932475
| 1,084
| 3.03125
| 3
|
Information architecture is the work that goes into creating intuitive navigation schemes for software. Information architecture generally applies to websites, but can also apply to web applications, mobile applications, and social media software.
Ideally, a website or application’s navigation scheme makes it easy for users to find desired information or functionality. On a website, the information architecture can also add important context to the current page (for example when a user begins their visit deep within the website, having come directly from a search engine).
A “bricks and mortar” architect must balance the (often competing) demands of aesthetics, structural integrity, heating, lighting, water supply and drainage when creating building blueprints. Similarly, an information architect must create navigation schemes for software that are at once concise, descriptive, mutually-exclusive, and possessive of information scent. Both types of architect seek to create spaces for humans that are safe, predictable, enjoyable, and inspiring.
Tips for creating usable navigational systems:
- Be easy to learn.
- Be consistent throughout the website.
- Provide feedback, such as the use of breadcrumbs to indicate how to navigate back to where the user started.
- Use the minimum number of clicks to arrive at the next destination.
- Use clear and intuitive labels, based on the user’s perspective and terminology.
- Support user tasks.
- Have each link be distinct from other links.
- Group navigation into logical units.
- Avoid making the user scroll to get to important navigation or submit buttons.
- Not disable the browser’s back button.
Steps to developing an intuitive website information architecture:
- Find out what the mission or purpose of the website is: why will people come to your site?
- Determine the immediate and long-range goals of the site: are they different?
- Pinpoint the intended audiences and conduct a requirements analysis for each group.
- Collect site content and develop a content inventory.
- Determine the website’s organizational structure, which can include:
- narrow and deep
- broad and shallow
- Create an outline of the site, which can include:
- Content Inventory: a hierarchical view of the site content, typically in a spreadsheet format, which briefly describes the content that should appear on each page and indicates where pages belong in terms of global and local navigation.
- Site Maps: visual diagrams that reflect site navigation and main content areas. They are usually constructed to look like flowcharts and show how users will navigate from one section to another. Other formats may also indicate the relationships between pages on the site.
- Create a visual blueprint of the site, which can include:
- Wireframes: rough illustrations of page content and structure, which may also indicate how users will interact with the website. These diagrams get handed off to a visual designer, who will establish page layout and visual design. Wireframes are useful for communicating early design ideas and inform the designer and the client of exactly what information, links, content, promotional space, and navigation will be on every page of the site. Wireframes may illustrate design priorities in cases where various types of information appear to be competing.
- Define the navigation systems:
- Global navigation: Global navigation is the primary means of navigation through a website. Global navigation links appear on every page of the site, typically as a menu located at the top or side of each web page.
- Local navigation: Local links may appear as text links within the content of a page or as a submenu for a section of the website. Local navigation generally appears in the left-hand margin of a web page and sometimes is placed below the global navigation.
- Conduct user research:
|
<urn:uuid:d56d4763-a0f9-4362-9f0a-eab5d9075953>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.usabilityfirst.com/about-usability/information-architecture/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.88603
| 764
| 3.234375
| 3
|
The first written reference to the word "hockey" in relation to playing the sport on ice was in 1825, in the text of a letter (reprinted from H.D. Traill's The Life of Sir John Franklin, R.N., 1896). The letter from Franklin to Roderick Murchison, dated November 6, 1825, states:
"Till the snow fell the game of hockey played on the ice was the morning's sport."
However, There is no clear evidence that the people playing "hockey for the morning sport" were wearing skates.This is believed to be a game of "field hockey", which took place while the Arctic explorer and his men were wintering at Fort Franklin (now known as Deline) on the shore of Great Bear Lake in a region now known as the Northwest Territories.
The second written reference to "hockey on ice", was to an 1846 publication referring to the game being played in 1839 at Chippewa Creek (also known as the Welland River, which flows into the Niagara River from the west). Skates might have been used practising the game. The reference was made in the publication: "The Echoes From the Backwood; Or Sketches Of Transatlantic Life", written by Capt. R.G.A. Levinge, published in London, by Henry Colburn. [ More ]
The next known "first-source" written reference to the word "hockey" in relation to playing the sport on ice was by Sir Arthur Henry Freeling, a British officer, who's diary entry of January, 1843 in Kingston, Ont., noted: "Began to skate this year, improved quickly and had great fun at hockey on the ice.
Astley, Sir John Dugdale. Fifty Years of My Life: in the world of
sport at home and abroad, 1894. Volume 1 of 2.
There is a passage in the book where John Dugdale Astley talks about his days in Oxford, playing hockey-on-the-ice as early as 1846. He wrote the following:
“one of the best games in my humble opinion that man can play. That was an on-ice version of field hockey in which all players were required to shoot right-handed and offside rules varied.”
hockey on the ice with Prince Albert and in front of Queen Victoria,
featuring one of the earliest references to tripping (?) and to music
at a game, among others…
Astley, Sir John Dugdale. Fifty Years of My Life: in the world of
sport at home and abroad, 1894. Volume 1 of 2, pp. 171-173.
"Just previous to Christmas we had a lot of hard weather, and
with some first-rate ice, which gave me ample opportunity of playing
my favourite game of hockey on the ice. Our other battalion was then
quartered at Windsor, and it reached my ears that a match was to be
played on the pond on the slopes below the Terrace of Windsor Castle,
and, though I really had no business there, I felt very keen to show
my powers before Royalty (the Royal family being at the Castle); so I
smuggled myself down to the pond, and, as I was known to be useful at
the game, Dudley de Ros of the 1st Life Guards and I tossed up for
sides. The pond – as I recollect it – was an oval one with an island
in the centre, on which the band of our regiment was stationed. At
one end of the pond her Gracious Majesty was seated, surrounded by
several ladies of the court, watching the game with evident interest.
The Prince Consort – who was a beautiful and graceful figure-skater –
kept goal for the opposite side, and Lord Listowel (father of the
present Earl) kept ours. I don't think that I ever enjoyed a game
more, and it was that day I first had the honour off making the
acquaintance of the Prince of Wales. The game waxed fast and furious
and I am afraid that I was sufficiently wanting in respect to
interfere once, at least, with the Prince Consort's equilibrium in my
eagerness to get a goal.
The edges of the pond sloped up to where Her Majesty was sitting, and
in a desperate rally with De Ros I lost my balance and came down in a
sitting posture, the impetus I had on carrying me right up to the
Queen's feet, and the hearty laughter which greeted my unbidden
arrival is still vividly impressed upon my mind.
It was altogether a glorious afternoon's sport, but as the ice was
beginning to thaw, and the surface was to a certain extent covered in
water, I was wet to the skin, and only escaped a rheumatic attack by
imbibing in plenty of deliciously mulled port-wine, which was served
in a conservatory under the terrace. To this decoction, I suppose I
must attribute my audacity in venturing to go down to the Foot-Guards
barracks, where I received a jobation from the C.O. for having the
effrontery to take part in a game to which I was not asked; but as I
had played well I was not cashiered on this occasion.
The following record shows the foot-races in which I took part prior
to the Crimea …."
Astley also tells of his trip to Switzerland in the winter of 1847,
but doesn't mention skating or hockey; he likely learned to skate
around that time or earlier on British ice during the hard winters of
the early 1840s, possibly earlier (he was born in 1828).
Certainly, Prince Albert had a habit of falling through the ice at
Windsor or Frogmore and, on one occasion, caught a serious cold that
had the papers worried that his life might be in danger. I have the
articles for these events…
The Prince of Wales (mentioned by Astley) appears to have taken part
in the game; he played again in 1895, in the famous game with the
Stanley brothers (recorded in Patton's Ice Hockey, etc.).
1853 or 1855
The brothers William (1812-1894) and Edmund Meredith (1817-1899) alleged to have played in one of the earliest games of ice hockey to have been recorded. It took place in 1853 (or 1855) and was said to have been later written up in the 'Montreal Star' in an article entitled "Thirty Years Ago Today". It was copied from a newspaper article in the family papers of EAM kept at the National Archives in Ottawa.
[ NOTE: SIHR members have not been able to substantiate the Meredith claim. Nor have we been able to locate any articles in the Quebec Chronicle or the Montreal Star ]
Strange as it may appear to McGill men and others, there was a great hockey match played in Quebec in the early fifties, when the first principal Dr Edmund Meredith (in fact he was the third principal of McGill University), brother of the late Chief Justice Sir Wm. Meredith, of Quebec who was a very fast skater, might have been called a forward, as might have been his old chum, the late E.H. Steel, while the late Grant Powell (a cousin of Edmund’s wife, Frances Jarvis) was the captain. Their opponents were the Civil Service Club, of Quebec. The hockey sticks were cut from the Gorna Bush; the puck was a piece of oak, and the goals were a mile and a half apart on clear ice, not often found between Quebec and the Island of Orleans. The Quebec Chronicle of that day had a good account of the match.
Biography of William Collis Meredith on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Collis_Meredith)
Biography of Edmund Allen Meredith on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Allen_Meredith)
The next oldest written reference was in an 1857 medical journal -- The Medical Chronicle -- which was published in Montreal. In the May, 1857 issue (Vol. 4, No. 12), a clinical lecture by Dr. W. Lawrence was discussing a hockey-related injury treated in England "In the winter of 1850, it appears, the patient was playing on the ice; while engaged in some game, the precise nature of which I do not understand, and termed 'hocky' -- a game, as I learn (and you will correct me if I'm wrong,) where there is hard hitting of a ball, or hard hitting of a hard ball, which struck the side of the leg, or tibia, of this poor young man. He says he did not make anything of it at the time, nor did he interrupt his playing; he even went on in the excitement of the game till he unluckily got a second blow, but this time with the "hockey" stick, on the identical same spot".
London Society – An Illustrated Magazine, published in London, England, had the following article on ice hockey.
The various games that are played on the ice are mostly unworthy of a true skater's attention, and have the further drawback of seriously annoying those who use the skate for its legitimate purpose.
Hockey, for example, ought to be sternly forbidden, as it is not only annoying, but dangerous. In its right place, hockey is a noble game, and deserving of every encouragement, but on the ice it is in its wrong place, and should be prohibited. Any weak place in the ice is sure to give way if the ball should happen to pass over or near it; for the concourse of fifty or a hundred persons all converging • upon the same point is a test which no ice, save the very strongest, is able to bear. Even the 'express trains/ so popular on the Serpentine, on a fine frosty night, are not nearly so dangerous as hockey, because they distribute the weight over a large surface with tolerable equality. Moreover, when a mass of human beings precipitates itself recklessly in any direction where a ball may happen to run, accidents are certain to follow. The indifferent skaters, or those who are only walking on the ice, are knocked down, and often severely injured by others falling on them ; and if the ice should give way, as is likely to happen by reason of their accumulated weight, a fatal result is almost a necessary consequence.
The unfortunate man, whose sad death I have lately mentioned, was knocked down during one of these hockey matches. The game moreover, is by no means what it ought to be, in as much as it is impossible to enforce the rules in such a miscellaneous assembly. No one keeps to any particular side, or aims at any particular goal ; and any one who happens to have a stick, hits the ball in any direction that seems easiest. I should be truly glad to see the police interfere whenever hockey is commenced. Again, when a party of really good skaters are indulging themselves with a quadrille, and performing the many graceful evolutions of which this charming art is capable, it is more than annoying to have the whole proceeding broken up by the irruption of a disorderly mob armed with sticks, and charging through the circle of skaters and spectators, to the imminent, danger of all.
Reference to hockey in an early book. Digitized version is fourth edition, dated 1886, however a French translation dating from 1867 has the exact same text, which thus appears to date from the first edition (1865).
Quote is from Chapter XIV: Modern savages [sic] – continued; Esquimaux.
The Esquimaux [sic] are not altogether without music. They have a kind of drum, and sing both alone and in chorus. They are acquainted with several kinds of games, both of strength and skill, and are fond of dances, which are often very indecent. One of their games resembled our cat’s cradle, and Kane saw the children in Smith’s Sound playing hockey on the ice. The Esquimaux have also a great natural ability for drawing. […]
A book was published in England in 1869 titled "A System of Figure-Skating - Being the Theory and Practice of the Art as Developed in England, With a Glance at Its Origin and History". The authors were H.E. Vandervell and T. Maxwell Witham, members of the London Skating Club.
The book contains three references to hockey:
In Chapter III ("General Directions"), there are various considerations about equipment. On page 64, the authors write: "We must absolutely forbid the use on the ice of the walking-stick, as it is utterly useless as an artificial support for the learner, and excessively dangerous to every one in his immediate vicinity. We cannot conceive how any skater can take delight in skating about with such a thing flying in all directions. It is only useful when hockey is in the case."
Chapter XIII is about "Nondescript Figures". On page 254, a figure is described as "Straight and Curved Lines with Both Feet on the Ice". The short paragraph goes as follows: "We see this combination used by the many who run and race about, and play hockey, which generally noisy game on the ice is hardly interesting for the skater, who aims at a higher branch of his art."
Further in the same chapter is the "Small Loop". The authors mention that "this figure is rarely practised in England", perhaps because the skater may "require skates rather more curved". However, the authors point out, American and Canadian skaters use "highly curved skates", so they have more extensively developed the loop. Follows a quote from "The Field", Jan. 18, 1868, on "how to do the figure from a Canadian point of view".
The quote ends as follows: "It is a rapid rotary pirouette, not very graceful, but showing the great powers of a strong skater. The body from the hips is leaned forward, and the balancing leg off the ice raised almost horizontally, the hurley (ice hockey) stick often tucked under the arm - sometimes as many as ten or a dozen or more revolutions being turned."
March 3 and 4th, 1875
The first reported indoor game of organized hockey was in Montreal on March 3, 1875. A post-game article was printed in The (Montreal) Gazette. Halifax did not report an indoor game until 1883 (eight lacrosse club players vs. nine other lacrosse club players). There was no mention of a referee in either game.
The Montreal Gazette report of the March 3, 1875 game is well known, however, a second also exists. Below is the game report from the Montreal Daily Witness (March 4, 1875, p.2, under "CITY ITEMS"):
Hockey in the Victoria Skating Rink. - Last evening a game of hockey was played in the Victoria Skating Rink between two nines, Messrs Torrance (Captain), Meagher, Potter, Goff, Barnston, Gardner, Griffin, Jarvis, and Whiting; and Messrs Creighton (Captain), Campbell, Campbell, Esdaile, Joseph, Henshaw, Chapman, Powell and Clouston. The game is generally played with a large rubber ball, each side striving to knock it through the bounds of the other's field. In order to spare the heads and nerves of the spectators, last evening, a flat piece of board was used instead of a ball; it slid about between the players with great velocity; the result being that the Creighton team won two games to one for the Torrance. Owing to some boys skating about during the play, an unfortunate disagreement arose; one little boy was struck across the head, and the man who did so was afterwards called to account, a regular fight taking place in which a bench was broken and other damage caused. It was the intention of the players to have another game, but this disgraceful affair put a stopper on it.
March 4, 1875
The first published reference to a puck-like object was in The (Montreal) Gazette of March 4, 1875, where it was noted that instead of the usual rubber ball, "a flat, circular piece of wood piece of wood" was created which "slid about between the players with great velocity".
The first published use of the word puck was on Feb. 7, 1876 when The (Montreal) Gazette reported on a hockey game between the Montreal Football Club and the Victoria Skating Rink club.
The playing rules for the game of "hockey on the ice" were first printed in The (Montreal) Gazette on Feb. 27, 1877.
The first mention of rules in a newspaper article was in the McGill University Gazette of April 1, 1877, where it was noted that J.G.A. Creighton, captain of the Victorias, "especially distinguished himself" by playing offside in a 1-0 win over McGill.
The first documented evidence of hockey games played with umpires and then referees were in Montreal. Philip D. Ross (a former McGill player and future inductee to the Hockey Hall of Fame) noted in his diary that he had acted as one of the umpires in a game reported in The (Montreal) Gazette to take place Jan. 15, 1879.
Rules of the National Skating Association of Great Britain. In a copy which
appears to be a later (second?) edition, published between 1880-1882,
for the NSA, which was founded in 1879.
Among to the "Objects" of the Association is "To provide Rules and
Regulations for the Game of Hockey on the Ice".
Pages 15-16 list 17 rules for "Hockey on the Ice … As played in the
Fens" [the Cambridge area]
Pages 17-18 list 17 rules for Hockey "As played in Metropolitan District"
In both cases the game is more along the lines of bandy, but strictly
defines the kinds of sticks that may be used, the kind of skates
("club skates" vs speed/fen skates), number of players, dimensions of
the playing surface and goals, etc.
A two-page article, "Hockey, and How to Play it", from October 1883 (Source unknown)
The article starts by referring to a companion article on rounders
published in October 1880. It discusses two versions of the game, the "school code", which is clearly a "dry land" hockey and "the ice
code". It looks like it is written for a London schools readership.
This one is more narrative in nature, although it does include a list
of twelve rules, and is again, more akin to bandy in nature.
This paper will show that:
- "hockey on ice" was practised in Chippewa Creek ( Welland River) 1839.
- skates might have been used practising the game.
It may also be the first reference of men of African descent using skates.
The discovery was made July 10th 2008 in "The Echoes From the Backwood; Or Sketches Of Transatlantic Life"
written by Capt. R.G.A. Levinge.
Quoting Volume II, chapter XIX; "Upper Canada - Niagara District",
"During the winter, the skating on Chippewa Creek was excellent and
added not a little to our amusement. Large parties contested games of
hockey on ice, some forty or fifty beeing ranged on each side. A
ludicrous scene, too, was afforded by the instruction of a black
corps in skating: from the peculiar formation of a negro´s foot, and
the length of his heel, they were constantly falling forward; it was
impossible to keep them on their skates, and down they came in whole
sections. They might have done admirably on snow-shoes, but it was
lamentable to witness the dreadful "headers" they suffered from the
Sir Richard George Augustus Levinge.
Born - Westmeath, Ireland, 01 November 1811.
Died - in Brussels, Belgium, 28 September 1884.
Soldier, writer and artist.
Seventh baronet, first Master of the Westmeath Hunt, Ireland.
Entered the army, 1828; lieutenant, 1834; lieutenant-colonel in the
succeeded to baronetcy, 1848; high sheriff for ath, 1851; M.I for ro.
Vi-stin.-.ith, 1857 and SS'J;
"The Echoes From the Backwood; Or Sketches Of Transatlantic Life",
published, London 1846, by Henry Colburn,
two volumes - 293 pp and 258 pp - chronological story.
Both volumes are downloadable from Google Books.
From 1835 to 1837, the author, a British army officer of the 43rd
Regiment, was stationed in St. John, New Brunswick. Struck by the
great prosperity of the province and the lack of promotion of the
many advantages awaiting the prospective settler, Levinge undertakes
to remedy the situation in the first volume of this work. He offers
hints to the emigrant, information regarding wages and costs of
provisions, clothing, livestock, farming implements, agricultural
produce, and reports on trade and the proposed railway. Levinge was
also a great sporting enthusiast, and he provides some interesting
anecdotes of his hunting and fishing excursions in New Brunswick,
Nova Scotia, and Upper Canada.
The second volume relates a trip to the United States and his
impressions of the social and political situation in Upper and Lower
Canada, where he was posted during the Rebellion of 1837-38, and Lord
The last two chapters in Volume II, refers to 1839, after the final
suppression of the Rebellion.
Sir Richard Levinge returned to England in summer 1839.
The 43rd British Light Infantry (Foot) - Monmouthshire Light Infantry
went to New Brunswick in 1835, and was one of the regiments
despatched from New Brunswick to Quebec, overland on horse-sleighs,
in the depth of the winter December 1837, on the occasion of the
insurrection in Lower Canada.
The regiment was employed in Canada until 1844, when it removed to
Nova Scotia, and came home in 1846.
- In July 1838, - 43rd Regiment left Lower Canada for Niagara
- July 17 1838, - John Lambton, Lord Durham (1792-1840), reviews the
43rd and other
regulars at Niagara Falls, Ontario; a show of force to impress
American sympathizers of the
- In December 1838 the Rebellion was quashed.
A well known painting was made by the author, Sir Richard Levinge,
depicting "The '43rd Light Infantry', As They 'Turn Out' In Their
Sleighs, At The 'Falls of Niagara'.1839".
"The 43rd Light Infantry was in the Niagara frontier in 1839. This
wonderful winter scene was drawn by a member of the regiment, Sir
Richard Levinge, and it clearly shows a pleasure trip to the falls in
The "Black Corps"
December 11 1837, Niagara Ontario - A corps of "Africans" was raised
out of the 400 black residents of Niagara; a company of 50 men was in
arms by December 15. A second African company was later raised in
Niagara, and the two joined together to form the "Coloured Corps"
with a combined strength of about 130 men. The unit guarded the
frontier from Chippewa to Drummondville during the winter 1837-38.
Ohter written works by Sir Richard Levinge:
- "Historical Notices of the Levinge Family 1853."
- "Historical Records of the Forty-third Regiment, Monmouthshire Light Infantry, hire Light Infantry 1868."
Among several paintings from Canada:
- "A meeting of the Sleigh Club at the barracks, St. John, New
National Archives of Canada, C-042256
- "Sleighing in New Brunswick c. 1838". National Gallery of Canada
Hockey on Ice was practised at Chippewa Creek winter 1839.
The point of time of the event can be fixed - regarding the above
Many pair of skates were available - enough to equip "whole sections
of the Black Corps".
Therefore skates may have been used playing Hockey on Ice,
It might also be the first reference of coloured men using skates (in
a humiliating way - but in a language of it's time)
The author does not describe Hockey on Ice in words of a new
invention - he seems to be quite familiar with the game - indicating
the existence of the game earlier than 1839.
Also the name of the game seems to have existed prior to 1839.
A number of British soldiers seems to have had earlier experience of
Hockey on Ice - either on skates or on foot - from their origin in
Great Britain or from their placement in Canada
A number of British soldiers had the knowledge of skating - from
their origin in Great Britain or from their placement in Canada -
enough knowledge to instruct beginners.
Was only the British Regiment enjoying the game of Hockey on Ice - or
was is a mix of soldiers and local inhabitants?
From where did the Regiment get the large number of skates ?
43rd was a Light Infantry using sledges and snow-shoes in the winter -
but skates ?
As we can imagine, it does not seems likely, that skates were in the
equipment of 43rd Regiment.
Therefore, most probably, skates were borrowed from the local
population - indicating that those were commonly used in the area.
That gives a possibility that the game of Hockey on Ice - on skates -
may have been practised in the area earlier than 1839.
The same discussion might be applied regarding the sticks - used for
playing Hockey on Ice.
They might have been fabricated by the Regiment from tree branches -
or borrowed by the local population - indicating earlier local
existence of the game - either on skates or on foot.
End of text
© SIHSS/SIHR, July 10th 2008
|
<urn:uuid:202a3206-5460-4db3-bbc0-87dfe29f4ddc>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.losthockey.com/origins_main.cfm
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.970406
| 5,605
| 3
| 3
|
On July 4, 1862, a young mathematician by the name of Charles Dodgson, better-known as Lewis Carroll, boarded a boat with a small group, setting out from Oxford to the nearby town of Godstow, where the group was to have tea on the river bank.
The party consisted of Carroll, his friend Reverend Robinson Duckworth, and the three little sisters of Carroll's good friend Harry Liddell—Edith (age 8), Alice (age 10), and Lorina (age 13). To entertain the children, Dodgson fancied a story about a whimsical world full of fantastical characters, and named his protagonist Alice.
Alice Liddell loved the story so she asked Dodgson to write it down for her, which he did when he soon sent her a manuscript under the title of Alice's Adventures Under Ground.
Alice in Wonderland was always my favorite story. Now I know why.
|
<urn:uuid:4ae5ffd9-a495-4b9f-91b8-82c2c7284bc4>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://dodsonandross.com/blogs/carlin-ross/2012/07/real-alice-wonderland
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.959849
| 190
| 2.578125
| 3
|
A serious pollution incident in eastern China has raised important questions about legal compliance, local governance and public participation, writes Ma Jun.
On February 20, tap water plants in the city of Yancheng, Jiangsu province, were closed after the water was contaminated by a phenol compound. Large areas of the city, which is home to 200,000 residents, were left without drinking water. The incident reveals serious failings in China’s water management system, and it is worth a closer look.
There is nothing special about Yancheng. A survey of drinking water sources carried out in 2007 by the Jiangsu environment bureau found problems in every single city in the province. Sources of pollutants were identified in 13 of the 18 sources of tap water for the provincial capital, Nanjing, and in seven of eight sources for the city of Wuxi.
Water pollution statistics for the entire country were issued by the China National Environmental Monitoring Centre in June 2006. Drinking water sources were below standard in just over one-in-five key environmental protection cities. Polluted tap water is a direct threat to the health and lives of residents. According to the government, an environmental incident occurs once every two days on average, 70% of which involve water pollution.
Yancheng draws its tap water from rivers that include the Mangshe River. The extraction points are all surrounded by polluting industries. As early as 2003, local media outlets exposed the dangers posed by the 51 industrial firms that are based in or around areas that are supposed to be protected as sources of drinking water. Eleven of those firms were subsequently closed or relocated.
As has happened elsewhere, a cycle of treatment and pollution was set in motion. The city dealt with the heavy polluters near drinking-water sources, yet it still approved the construction of new projects. Many outlets for waste-water were located upstream of water extraction points on the Mangshe River and Xinxianggang River. According to Article 34 of China’s 2002 Water Law, it is illegal to construct sewage outlets in protected drinking water sources. However, in Yancheng, not only were sewage outlets located in protected areas, but also the waste came from very polluting chemical companies, including the polluters in this particular case, Yancheng Biaoxin Chemicals.
Photo by Woocool
After the 2007 algae bloom in Taihu Lake, the State Environmental Protection Administration (now the Ministry of Environmental Protection) and the provincial environment authorities demanded stronger oversight. Yancheng decided to close or relocate at least one-third of key chemical plants that were upstream or near protection areas. The remaining two-thirds were supposed to be dealt with in 2008.
In the meeting that set out the plan, one city leader described the threat from chemical plants as a time bomb threatening water security in Yancheng. He cited a chemical leak at Longfeng Aromatics, strange odours coming from the river in 2004 and 2005 and a waste leak from Anhu Agricultural Chemicals in 2007.
However, one year later Yancheng extended the deadline for closing or relocating 10 of the firms until the end of 2009. These firms included Biaoxin. Indecision and delay meant a serious incident was permitted to happen. On February 20, Biaoxin dumped 30 tonnes of phenol-contaminated effluent into the Mangshe River. The water that reached the tap water plants breached limits on volatile phenols by a factor of 100; 200,000 residents had their water cut off.
This may have been the behaviour of a rogue enterprise, but behind the incident lay weak supervision and enforcement, and a local government that illegally allowed waste outlets to be built near water sources. It is a problem that could have been predicted when dangerous industries were allowed to operate on the river. The locals describe it thus, “keep the rat poison by the stove and something is bound to go wrong.”
Laws have been decreed and policies issued at the highest levels. The environment authorities have put systems in place and launched crackdowns. There is no doubt that water security is an issue that is taken seriously. In practice, however, the environmental authorities are weak. Environmental protection policies are subordinate to the broader economic picture. Environmental impact assessments can be breached if they are a barrier to investment. Once a crackdown has ended, polluting industries can pick up where they left off – as long as it will benefit GDP growth. Faced with the choice between economic growth and protecting water resources, local governments favour the economy. This choice reflects a problem in their understanding of development.
Northern Jiangsu is underdeveloped, and some local governments talk about embracing a rapid, “pole-vault” model of development. Seeking quick economic gains, they have courted profitable, yet polluting, chemical industries. Yancheng has established nine chemical industrial parks.
In northern Jiangsu, chemical industrial parks were in need of tenants; in the south, tougher environmental regulation put pressure on heavily polluting companies. Consequently, a number of firms relocated to the province’s northern coastline.
These movements saw government income in northern Jiangsu rise by 33.9% in 2008, compared to 21.1% for the province as a whole. The majority of subdivisions under the administration of Yancheng city saw their incomes rise by over 40%.
However, an over-reliance on the chemical industry brought environmental pressures. Clean rivers became channels of effluent. In the wake of the Yancheng incident, it is hard not to ask why this was permitted to happen. The area is now covered in chemical industrial parks; even if they are kept away from water sources, what about waste that is released upstream? How do you prevent pollution downstream?
Responding to these questions, a local environmental official told reporters that it is normal to meet basic needs before protecting the environment. An official with the local investment office commented that western countries have shown the feasibility of polluting first and cleaning up later; it is an unavoidable development model, he said. The media summarised his position as, “it is better to be poisoned than poor”.
These views are not unique to Yancheng. Some see environmental problems as the normal consequences of an early stage of economic growth, which will be naturally resolved through further development. However, when pollution is a direct threat to the health and lives of the people, why should we wait? It is mostly the officials – who can afford to drink bottled water, live apart from polluters and eat uncontaminated foods – who think it is best to run the risk of dying. It is vulnerable social groups who suffer most from water and air pollution.
The Chinese central government is aware of the imbalance regarding economic development and environmental protection. The “scientific view of development” was developed in order to achieve balanced and sustainable growth. “It is better to be poisoned than poor” does not fit with the scientific view of development.
The Yancheng incident will spur emergency measures: releasing water from reservoirs to flush out the pollution; finding new water sources; and relocating chemical plants. Similar events have triggered similar reactions in the past. But we must be aware of the limitations of this approach: extra water only dilutes the pollution and washes it downstream; new water sources lead to over-extraction and diminished concerns about local water pollution; the relocation of plants only moves the problem closer to the sea or into rural areas.
If we want to drink clean water, we need to control pollution and stop projects that contaminate our rivers. This requires widespread participation in environmental management and policymaking. Understanding the environmental costs and benefits of various projects will help us find a balance and a negotiated compromise between different interests. We have no time to waste: to protect our water we need a new type of decision-making. It will test the will and the capacity of government at all levels to implement the scientific view of development.
Ma Jun is director of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs
Frontpage photo by Woocool
|
<urn:uuid:76251e48-a88b-45d0-b91b-59780faa41db>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/show/single/en/2847
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.968136
| 1,643
| 2.84375
| 3
|
- Program F will get input in array A[1..n] and he will create the output array B[1..n].
- Program G will get the input array B which has the program F created and create from him the output array C[1..n]
Log-space is the program which use O(log n) bites of memory. Here are some conditions you have to keep:
- You have to use only variable which has to be simple integer type. (for example int in C++, longint in Pascal)
- Allowed range of integer is defined: if n is a size of input then we can save into variables only values which are polymonial sized based on n.
- for example: we can have variable which can take on value -n...n, values -3n^5...3n^5 also values -4...7 but we can't have variable which will take on values 0...2^n
- Any other types of variables aren't allowed. (array and iterators aren't allowed too)
- Exception from the rules about has input and output. Input will be available in special variables(mostly arrays) which can your program only read and the output can your program only write to other special variables. (so you can't read from output, and you can't increase values of input variables etc.)
- Your programs can't use recursion.
Example of log-space program written in Pascal (so everyone can understand it) which will find the largest number in array of integers
n- input variable, the number of elements A- input variable, the array of integers m- output variable, the position of maximum i.j- working variables
- var n: integer;
- A: array [1..n] of integer;
- m: integer;
- i, j: integer;
- j := 1;
- for i := 2 to n do
- if A[i] > A[j] then j := i;
- m := j;
|
<urn:uuid:b91af814-1195-4d10-b788-53781df3c13b>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.go4expert.com/forums/log-space-program-proof-t29261/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.87136
| 425
| 3.671875
| 4
|
Addiction is a disorder of the will, yet treatment for alcoholism and other addictions often comes with decidedly mixed messages about willpower and abstinence. On the one hand, newly sober addicts and alcoholics often hear the news that two of every three of them will ultimately relapse. There is a frightening sense of inevitability in this not-so-hopeful message. On the other hand, this folk wisdom can also be heard echoing through the rooms of recovery: “Relapse is not a requirement.”
Not a requirement, yet two of three will fail. This seeming contradiction can be confusing to those struggling to shake their compulsions in early sobriety. It reflects a larger debate about the nature of addictions: Are they a medical disease, rooted in the genes and inevitably expressed in the brain’s aberrant biochemistry? Or are they a failure of self-control that can be corrected by acting more responsibly?
Philosophers have been pondering the nature of free will for centuries, and that debate will probably not be resolved in the rehab clinic. But mounting evidence is making one thing clear: The belief in free will—or the disbelief—is itself a powerful cognitive force, shaping everything from aggression to honesty to feelings of personal responsibility. The newest findings from this line of research are now suggesting that attitudes toward free will (or genetic determinism) may actually influence the intention to act voluntarily (or lack of it), right down in the brain’s motor neurons.
Psychological scientist Davide Rigoni of the University of Padova, Italy, wanted to see if weakening people’s belief in free will might have an effect on volition and intent, as reflected in the brain’s electrical activity. To explore this question, he recruited a group of volunteers and had some of them read a passage from Nobel laureate Francis Crick’s book The Astonishing Hypothesis, which argues that free will is a delusion—and furthermore that there is scientific consensus behind this view. This exercise has been shown in previous research to attenuate belief in free will, and indeed it did so in these volunteers to varying degrees. The other volunteers also read from the text, but nothing about free will.
Then Rigoni hooked them all up to an EEG, and recorded electrical signals in their brains as they were executing voluntary movements. Specifically, he measured an electrical spike that indicates “readiness” to act—a preconscious spike that comes up to 2 full seconds before actual movement. This signal precedes only actions that have the subjective feeling of being willed for a particular moment.
The results were clear and provocative. As described in a forthcoming issue of the journal Psychological Science, the brain’s readiness signal was reduced in those with a weakened belief in free will. What’s more, the signal varied with the force of these beliefs, being weakest in those who were most skeptical about free will. The effect was clear a full second before the volunteers made a conscious decision to move, suggesting that abstract beliefs are shaping intent at a basic, preconscious level.
This is the first evidence that high-level beliefs can influence basic motor processes, and the findings could help explain why such beliefs lead to antisocial and irresponsible acts. Putting less effort into our actions could lead to a diminished sense of responsibility for those actions, and this depleted sense of responsibility could in turn lead to careless behavior—cheating in life, lack of discipline, even relapse.
Wray Herbert’s book, On Second Thought: Outsmarting Your Mind’s Hard-Wired Habits, explores these psychological issues in detail. Excerpts from his two blogs—“We’re Only Human” and “Full Frontal Psychology”—appear regularly in Scientific American Mind and The Huffington Post.
Leave a comment below and continue the conversation.
|
<urn:uuid:e82ff473-5724-4afc-9aac-e68c991db24d>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/were-only-human/a-sobering-message-about-free-will.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.95202
| 795
| 2.84375
| 3
|
How do we measure 'progress'?
I could truthfully tell you that 46 percent of high school students had sex in 2009, and horrify you. Or I could tell you this percentage has fallen from 54 percent in 1991 and make you feel things are at least going in the right direction.
I can tell you that almost one in 12 (8.1 percent) of all American youth aged 16-24 lacks a high school credential of any kind, and we could fear for our state and country. Or, I could tell you that, 20 years ago, that percentage was 11 percent and is actually getting better.
In both cases, the second piece of data is vitally important in assessing our society’s health — because without it, you don’t know if things are getting better or worse. Yet, it is common practice today in public debate to cite a single number, without context, which I argue cheapens the discussion.
One of the significant weaknesses of social metrics stems from the fact that most historic measurement systems emerged from what was easy to count, such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This flawed statistic actually rises if a child is hit by a car and requires extensive healthcare — because it only counts economic activity, and the child lost no wages, but the doctors gained them — surely a flawed measurement system! Yet this is exactly the system used in political debates when GDP is brought up.
Some communities have tons of data such as arrest records, false fire alarms, graduation rates and so forth scattered throughout the files of many different agencies — making the task of assessing the community difficult.
One additional challenge faced by such efforts is that many record-keeping programs report on failures — number of violent crimes, traffic accidents, deaths due to smoking, days of unhealthy air quality and the like. These are called “lagging indicators” — they report on things that have already occurred, over which we have no control.
Other indicators that are more predictive are called “leading indicators” — examples of these might be children entering the second grade knowing their alphabet (predictive of future success in school), the percentage of pregnant women who are overweight (because the children of overweight moms have more health problems) or percentage of teens who do not smoke (because smoking teens have high disease rates later in life). These “leading indicators” are often not collected, or if collected, are not the stuff of headlines.
Some communities have recognized the opportunity to collect and trend both “lagging” and “leading” indicators over time, so they can identify emerging problems, and applaud and support successful interventions. The city of Jacksonville, Fla., has been a pioneer in this area and is worth imitating. Since 1985, the Jacksonville Community Council Inc. (JCCI) has been developing a system to track indicators of the quality of life in Jacksonville and surrounding communities.
The JCCI Quality of Life Progress Report measures over 100 indicators in nine areas, or elements, of the quality of life, including education, economy, natural environment, social environment, arts and culture, health, government, transportation and public safety. Detailed reference data, including charts and graphs, are also provided for those wishing to explore these trends further. The document serves as a roadmap for community improvement, telling local leaders where the community is now compared to others, how far it has come and where attention is needed.
For example, in Jacksonville, the public health records revealed that “births to teen moms per 1,000 teens” steadily dropped from a high of 25 in 1989 to a low of 10 in 2007. The records showed that the St. Johns River is getting cleaner, but other indicators such as the HIV infection rate and number of homeless are getting worse. As a consequence, attention is being focused on these areas.
The report is updated annually and often drives the agenda of local government and other groups. The Pew Partnership for Civic Change, the United Nations, the international Community Indictors Consortium and the National Association of Planning Councils have highlighted JCCI’s work.
The majority of work in collecting the data, analyzing it, and presenting it to the community is done by citizen volunteers supported by a small professional staff. Production costs include printing of the report, creation of a CD-ROM with the full report, reference data, and other important information, as well as posting on the JCCI website.
An effort like this could be undertaken in every community in America and would surely improve our quality of life. It is an ideal project for a local college, Rotary Club or similar organization.
We are not powerless to fix the problems facing our country, and we don’t have to to wait on others. All it takes is sustained local leadership, a willingness do some hard work and the guts to face the facts uncovered.
For more information, go to www.jcci.org/
|
<urn:uuid:e942b29e-685b-4611-b29e-68ffff78b468>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.theoptimisticfuturist.org/index.php/25-publishedarticles/152-how-do-we-measure-progress.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.955051
| 1,009
| 2.90625
| 3
|
The Rudolph Rule refers to simple ways you can make information stand out and guide your audience to important details -- the way Rudolph the reindeer's red nose stood out from the other reindeers' and led them. If you're presenting a piece of relevant data in a list, why not make the data of interest a different color from the list? Or circle it in red? "The human brain is a difference detector," Kosslyn noted. The eye is immediately drawn to any object that looks different in an image, whether that's due to color, size, or separation from a group. He showed us a pizza with one piece pulled out slightly, noting that our eyes would immediately go to the piece that was pulled out (which was true). Even small differences guide your audience to what's important.Link, Link to Clear and to the Point
I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.
|
<urn:uuid:abe2cc30-1221-439c-99eb-dc3b592e0b10>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://boingboing.net/2008/02/22/cognitive-science-vs.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.951977
| 252
| 2.765625
| 3
|
Web de Anza
Web de Anza presents material relating to Juan Bautista de Anza's two expeditions into Alta California that resulted in the settlement of San Francisco in 1776. The site is under development, but it is easy to navigate. Visitors will find a 700-word background essay on the historical context of the expeditions and links to seven other sites about de Anza and California history. Primary source material currently includes eight diaries and two letters, available in English and Spanish and indexed by date. This material is supplemented by a gallery of 11 portraits, 14 images of scenery relevant to De Anza's expeditions, and drawings and photographs of nine objects such as a musket of the kind that De Anza probably used.
The site also includes six photographs of re-enactments of events in de Anza's expedition. An Atlas section provides 10 trail route maps, and 20 maps of the area of de Anza's expedition. The site provides useful material for students of California history, religion, and Native Americans at every level, from elementary to graduate school.
|
<urn:uuid:15a26c28-3988-4151-af73-e539902e9526>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://teachinghistory.org/history-content/website-reviews/23070
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.930046
| 222
| 3.5625
| 4
|
Reports on 'gay' animal research criticised
Talking sex The media's coverage of scientific research into same-sex animal behaviour promotes negative stereotypes of gay and lesbians, say researchers.
"People who identify with these minority groups in a human population see themselves presented for titillation, humour and not to be taken seriously," says Barron.
He and Brown identified 11 recent scientific papers on key areas of same-sex animal behaviour research. They then searched for media coverage of these papers and chose 48 representative press reports to analyse in detail.
"Consistently any scientific report of same-sex sexual contact in any animals is reported as gay or lesbian behaviour," says Barron. "It's presented for titillation, often for humour, regardless of what the science actually is."
"Gay and lesbianism is more than same-sex copulation in humans. Let's not turn this animal behaviour into something that it isn't," he says. "Scientists would never call it gay."
And Barron says in many cases the animals in the scientific study didn't even copulate but simply showed some form of atypical male or female behaviour.
"It's not just a simplification but a gross misrepresentation of the science and it's having a negative effect," he says.
Barron says sometimes the media portray homosexuality as something that is a result of a genetic fault and then coverage "goes from being derogatory to downright dangerous".
He quotes a study in which female mice that had a certain gene knocked out exhibited some male typical sexual behaviour.
"The Telegraph presented this as 'Female mice can be turned lesbian by deleting gene'," says Barron.
"If we're saying we can induce lesbian behaviour by a mutation then we are, by extension, saying lesbian behaviour is a pathology," he says. "That's neither an accurate or positive message about lesbians. It perpetuates profoundly homophobic attitudes."
Another study of neurobiological features associated with male-male sexual behaviour in domestic rams was reported in the media under the headlines "Brokeback Mutton" and "Gay sheep may help explain biology of homosexuals".
Barron says media reports portrayed the research as being part of an effort to "cure" homosexuality in sheep, which "could pave the way for breeding out homosexuality in humans".
Appeal to scientists
Barron says scientists can make a difference by being careful about what they say to journalists.
"When scientists themselves ... used the term 'gay', 'lesbian', 'she-male', 'transvestite' or 'drag' it was lept on by the popular media," says Barron.
He contrasts this with reports on the work of researcher Lindsay Young, who studied pairs of female albatross involved in caring for their young.
While one press report referred to "Lesbian albatrosses", most used the term "same-sex couples" and reported Young's active denial that the findings were relevant to humans.
She was regularly quoted as saying "Lesbianism is a human term. The study is about albatross. The study is not about humans."
Barron says Young managed to get a lot of media coverage despite not sensationalising her research.
"Research on sexual behaviour in animals does not need to be sensationalised to catch public attention," conclude Barron and Brown.
Science in the media expert, Dr Joan Leach of the University of Queensland, welcomes the study and agrees some of the examples of media coverage given by Barron and Brown are "outrageous", but thinks their analysis of the problem is simplistic.
She says reports on scientific research have to prove newsworthiness in a very competitive media environment, which likely encourages sensationalism.
But beyond this, it is not just the media that is to blame for such coverage, says Leach.
She says press officers and press releases play a major role in shaping the messages about research.
And scientists themselves are pressured to think about the impacts and implications of their research when talking to journalists, says Leach.
"Scientists are in a double bind," she says. "They have all been to media training and been told to make their work relevant ... and interesting to the general public. Talking about sex is definitely a way to do that," says Leach.
And Leach says in some fields of research - for example evolutionary psychology - scientists are actively linking human behaviour to animal behaviour.
"You read this stuff not just about gay behaviour but about female versus male behaviour and it's irritating," she says.
"I get really tired of evolutionary psychology explanations that my behaviour has to do with hunters and gatherers."
|
<urn:uuid:8bbf31d3-4166-4374-9de6-d64c28171993>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2012/08/09/3562615.htm?topic=health
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.961893
| 944
| 2.578125
| 3
|
Is located in Tambon Khun Khlong, 28 kilometers north of the town, turn left 1 kilometer before arriving in the Phra Phutthabat district.
The important historical site here is “Lord Buddha’s Footprint” that was found on a stone panel near Suwan Banpot Hill or
Satchaphanthakhiri Hill. Lord Buddha’s Footprint measures 21 inches wide, 5 feet long, and 11 inches deep.
The footprint was discovered during the reign of King Songtham of Ayutthaya. The footprint had 108 religious aspects, so he commanded a temporary Mondop be built to cover the footprint and it has been refurbished several times.
The Mondop is a square building, has a seven-tier castle roof and each is roofed with green glazed tiles.
Hua Hin Today Travel Co., Ltd.,
58 Naresdamri Road, Prachuap Khirikhan, 77110 Hua Hin, Thailand, TAT TRAVEL LICENSE No.12/01384
Copyright © 2011 - 2013 asiabethere.com, All rights reserved, No part of this site may be reproduced without our written permission.
|
<urn:uuid:61fa7f27-8d2c-4c1b-a0a8-9db80e7fa43b>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.asiabethere.com/f/e/thailand/central_thailand/tourist_attractions_sightseeing_saraburi/wat_phra_phutthabat_temple.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.926904
| 249
| 2.78125
| 3
|
Reports & Consumer Guides
Focus Pocus: Report Body
The FDA withholds information from pregnant women on mercury-contaminated fish, citing "focus groups" as justification
FDA takes the industry line
Internal FDA focus group transcripts considered together with publicly available FDA documents point to a complete collapse of the government's efforts to protect the public from mercury. The agency is failing to regulate mercury levels in seafood, has shut down its mercury monitoring program, has not issued an enforceable limit for mercury in fish, and has not implemented the mercury education program that it promised.
Instead, the agency has adopted a series of policies that mirror the positions of the seafood industry, contradict the recommendations of the National Academy of Sciences, ignore significant new findings from the Centers for Disease Control that confirm elevated levels of mercury in the blood of the human population, and reject the positions of the participants in their focus group sessions. One is hard pressed to find a single important policy decision related to mercury in seafood where the agency has not adopted the industry line (Table 3). For example:
· Only the tuna industry and the FDA reject all existing peer reviewed epidemiological and animal studies that show mercury is toxic at very low doses, and instead use a single study as justification for not adopting more protective standards. The National Academy of Sciences advised: "because there is a large body of evidence showing adverse neurodevelopmental effects, including well-designed epidemiological studies, the committe concludes that an RfD should not be derived from a study...that did not observe any association with [mercury]." (NAS 2000) The U.S. EPA agrees with the NAS and has developed a mercury safety standard about an order of magnitude more stringent than FDA's unenforceable action level (EPA 2000).
· Only the tuna industry and the FDA argue that there is no need to protect pregnant women from mercury in seafood because women do not eat much fish (Table 3). The U.S. EPA safety standard protects all women regardless of how much fish they eat (EPA 2000). The NAS estimated that 60,000 pregnant women a year eat enough fish to put their babies at risk (NAS 2000). Blood montitoring results from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that 10 percent of American women of childbearing age eat sufficient fish to have mercury in their bodies at levels that put a fetus at increased risk for adverse neurological effects (CDC 2001). And pregnant women in FDA's focus groups describe how they increased their canned tuna consumption dramatically during pregnancy to satisfy their protein needs or other dietary concerns.
· Only the tuna industry and the FDA say that women will stop eating fish when given detailed information on fish to avoid during pregnancy (Table 3). When presented with draft health advisories, participants in FDA's own focus groups said that they would keep eating fish but avoid those with high mercury levels (Table 1 and Table 2).
1. FDA fails to set mercury regulation at level that protects public health
Seafood that is technically "safe" according to FDA's mercury action level is actually endangering public health. In a focus group session held in Boston, a senior FDA scientist that supposedly safe seafood could put a fetus at risk for neurological damage: " the action levels that we have in place for fish are not protective enough for this - the fetuses" (Macro International, Inc. 2000i - Boston, Nov 8, 8 pm, pg 65).
In the same focus group, a woman whose child has Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder pressed an FDA scientist: "I mean, now you find a lot of Attention Deficit Disorder and they're really not saying where it is coming from But maybe it could be coming from eating too much fish - you know - I mean, is that a possibility?" The scientist replies, "Yes, that's why we're - yes, that is a possibility. That is why we're interested in this." "So my daughter is on medication, now, because I ate fish " FDA's scientist responds, "- now that we have this research, that now is a possibility." (Macro International, Inc. 2000i - Boston, Nov 8, 8 pm, pp 70-71)
In spite of these admissions, FDA has no plans to strengthen their action level for mercury in seafood, and has based their advisory to pregnant women on this same action level (one part per million of mercury in fish) that they admit does not protect the fetus.
2. FDA fails to justify their unprotective action level and advisory
Transcripts undercut FDA claims that consumer reactions justify withholding information
FDA's Dr. Michael Bolger claimed in a national news story (Burros 2001) that the FDA-sponsored focus groups proved "it was difficult to communicate to people the concept that there are safe fish, unsafe fish and some fish that should be eaten infrequently. When given such detailed information, members of the focus groups said they would stop eating fish altogether." Even though this is one of FDA's primary reasons for providing such a severely limited advisory to pregnant women, the focus group transcripts do not support this assertion.
In the 267 pages of transcripts from the final three focus groups, which were the only groups that were presented information in a form similar to FDA's final advisory, 80 percent of comments relating to seafood consumption (30 of 37 comments) indicated that after hearing FDA's proposed advisory, people would continue to eat seafood or would avoid just the high mercury fish (Table 1). Only seven individual comments support FDA's claim to the press. These seven individual comments came from, at most, three women in a focus group of pregnant women (Shawna, Monica, and an unidentified participant who echoed Monica's statement and may have been Monica speaking again). The remaining four comments came from, at most, three people pretending to be pregnant, one of them a man named Trevor (Table 2).
What some focus group participants did say was that they would stay away from moderately-contaminated tuna and would choose to eat low-mercury fish instead. "Gee, I don't think I'm going to eat tuna," said a pregnant woman in a Denver focus group after hearing that pregnant women should limit their consumption of canned tuna. (Macro International Inc. 2000g - Denver, Oct 17, 6 pm, pg 75). A woman in a Boston focus group describes how she will avoid fish with any consumption warning attached to them: "my inclination would be to go with things that aren't going to cause any risk of harm - but still eat fish." (Macro International, Inc. 2000i - Boston, Nov 8, 8 pm, pg 25)
And contrary to what FDA's Bolger told the public, between the first and the 11th focus group, FDA came a long way toward finding ways to communicate the hazards of mercury in seafood without turning people off to seafood. One pregnant woman in a Calverton focus group summed up the information like this: "My advice would be not to eat the mackerel, the shark and the swordfish. But, I would also put in a note; you should limit your intake of the tuna and then, you know, eat the rest of the fish in moderation. Don't consume large quantities of fish. Don't assume that you can." (Macro International, Inc. 2000j - Calverton, MD, Nov 14, 6 pm, pg 59). That is the message FDA was supposed to be trying to convey: that some - not all - fish are unacceptably high in mercury.
Further undercutting Bolger's claim are the reactions from male consumers in the focus groups. Most were completely comfortable with continuing to eat seafood after hearing it contains mercury. A grandfather from Calverton correctly points out that FDA's message to pregnant women was not intended for men: "Well, we haven't read anything yet that it is a negative thing to do unless you are pregnant. So, based on what we've read so far, I don't think I would change anything at this point." (Macro International, Inc. 2000k - Calverton, MD, Nov 14, 8 pm, pg 31). A Calverton father of two teenage sons is unimpressed with the level of risk mercury poses to him: "I've been in traffic here and there, played the dodge car show, see, and I guess my time was up five years ago, maybe twenty years ago, you never know. But, to make a long story short, I'll eat anything." (Macro International, Inc. 2000k - Calverton, MD, Nov 14, 8 pm, pg 33).
Of the approximately 100 people included in all 11 focus groups, only a handful voiced the opinion that they would stop eating seafood after hearing that it contains mercury. And some of those participants' remarks are difficult to interpret. For example, during one focus group, a participant is asked how she would respond to hearing that canned tuna consumption should be limited to four three-ounce servings a week. She replies, "I would never buy it again. I would cut back if I ate a lot. I would cut back on it quite a bit. I'd have it occasionally." (verbatim, Macro International, Inc. 2000g - Denver, October 17, 6 pm, pg 32).
In some cases, as focus group participants were led through information over the course of their session, their perceptions evolved. In a Calverton, Maryland focus group the moderator introduced the issue of mercury in fish by reading an excerpt from the National Academy of Sciences study that speaks to the risks. One participant's response: "once I read this article right here, then I'm going to stop eating fish. . . . Because it's - like it says small amounts. You don't know how many amounts, what quantity or what. So, I will stop eating fish, and I will call me a lawyer." (Macro International, Inc. 2000a - Calverton, October 11, 6 pm, pg 43) But later, after learning that farm-raised catfish and trout are considered safe, a participant considers backtracking on her original position:
"It seems like it's tempting, it's really, really tempting. It does. But - I mean, I don't want to sit up here - Once I set my mind to something, then I pretty much stick to it. But, you know, if it's saying that it's no mercury concern for these species, for farm-raised catfish or trout, to be honest and realistically speaking, it's a small possibility that I might have like a little teenie piece of the freshwater catfish or trout, just a little, teenie piece." (Macro International, Inc. 2000a - Calverton, October 11, 6 pm, pp 96-97)
A participant named Trevor in a Boston focus group said that if he were a pregnant woman, "I would not eat fish for the first trimester." (Macro International, Inc. 2000i - Boston, Nov 8, 8 pm, pg 24). To be conservative, we counted this as one of the people who would avoid fish entirely.
3. Focus group transcripts show that, contrary to what FDA says, some pregnant women eat significant amounts of tuna
The defense FDA offers in dropping tuna from its advisory is that fish is a small portion of the diet, and therefore the risk is not significant. Specifically, FDA cites a tuna trade association study purporting to show that "canned tuna consumption is not as great as anecdotal observations would indicate For this reason, the agency concluded that specific advice for canned tuna was not necessary and should be subsumed within the advice dealing with fish consumption in general." (FDA 2001b).
Two problems with this logic jump out immediately. First, the amount of tuna women eat should have no impact on whether they receive sound advice about safe consumption levels. And if, in fact, women don't eat much tuna, then advising them on safe consumption levels should raise few issues about the advisory's economic impact on the seafood industry.
On top of that, the focus groups strongly contradict the industry's contention that fish consumption, particularly for pregnant women, is overestimated.
One woman in a Calverton focus group describes the canned tuna diet prescribed to her by her doctor: "But see, when I had my first son I had gestational diabetes and I was put on a very strict diet. One of the things that I could eat was a can of tuna, and I think two tablespoons of mayonnaise, was my lunch every day for I think - well, while I was - five days a week. Okay, so every day, five days a week for lunch forseven weeks of my pregnancy. You know, so for seven weeks I'm eating more than they recommend." She reveals to the group that her baby was born prematurely and died of SIDS shortly after birth, a condition that has not been linked to mercury exposure. (Macro International, Inc. 2000j - Calverton, MD, Nov 14, 6 pm, pp 34-35,37).
Another pregnant woman recalls that her canned tuna consumption the previous summer probably exceeded FDA's safe level: "I ate during the summer a lot more tuna because I would just throw it on some lettuce and call it a salad. It was light. It was quick for work. It was done. So, now that I think about that, I did eat probably more than a can and a half in one week during the summer." (Macro International, Inc. 2000j - Calverton, Nov 14, 6 pm, pg 41).
Also, according to FDA's focus group research, the convenience of canned tuna can make it a preferred food for busy pregnant women: "for me it was what was most convenient. What was most convenient was taking a can of tuna fish, my two things of mayonnaise and my half an apple to work every day for lunch. That was what was convenient for me. " (Macro International, Inc. 2000j - Calverton, MD, Nov 14, 6 pm, pg 37.) And the price of canned tuna makes it a preferred food for others: "I just bought a whole bunch of it because it was on sale, too. They were like 39, 49 cents - you know - use your Safeway or Giant bonus card," a sentiment that another woman in the group sums up as "It is real cheap." (Macro International, Inc. 2000a - Calverton, October 11, 6 pm, pg 75).
A pregnant woman in an Calverton focus group describes how she ate tuna to lose weight before pregnancy: "I was doing it before I got pregnant because I was planning to get pregnant. As part of doing the Adkins Diet, you can have stuff like that with fish or your chicken, as much of that as you want to consume. So, I ate a lot of that bag of salad, can of tuna, hard-boiled egg, that was my lunch, or salmon or whatever" (Macro International, Inc. 2000j - Calverton, MD, Nov 14, 6 pm, pp 52).
Further undercutting FDA's faulty rationale is a major study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showing that ten percent of women of childbearing age (about 7,000,000 women) have mercury in their bodies at levels that may put a fetus at risk for adverse nervous system effects (CDC 2001 and (NAS 2000). FDA's low consumption estimates are irrelevant in the face of these direct measurements showing that 7,000,000 women have higher mercury exposure than FDA thought.
4. Contrary to FDA's claims, focus group participants wanted even more detailed information about mercury in seafood
A consistent theme throughout the focus groups was that participants wanted more information so that they could make informed decisions for themselves.
For example, when the moderator asks one group, "And what do they need to say in terms of telling you about the risks but, also, on the other hand, not over-scaring you?" a participant replies, "They need to tell you the truth. They can tell you - you know, if it is not good for you, then don't eat it. You know, they just need to tell you exactly what the study said - what the truth is. Then you can make up you own mind." Another participant adds, "And you need the facts to know whether or not you want to go ahead with this. There are no facts in this," or, as one women in the Boston group said about FDA's reluctance to give complete information: "Why don't they tell us?" (Macro International, Inc. 2000i - Boston, Nov 8, 8 pm, pp 46-47 and Macro International, Inc. 2000j - Calverton, MD, Nov 14, 6 pm, pp 37-8.)
Despite this strong consumer feedback from FDA-sponsored research, the agency severely limited its advisory, eliminating any reference to tuna and a number of additional fish that the agency's own data show have even higher levels of mercury than does tuna, including sea bass, orange roughy, halibut, red snapper, grouper, and mahi mahi (FDA 2001c).
5. FDA and the tuna industry reject all peer reviewed science that shows low level mercury toxicity
Timing of meetings with lobbyists suggest industry won deletion of health warning
Additional public documents show that FDA, by leaving their lax mercury consumer advisory in place, has followed the advice of the tuna trade association over the recommendations of the National Academy of Sciences. Specifically, the U.S. Tuna Foundation urged FDA to consider data from a study that the NAS recommended against using in deriving health standards for mercury.
The use of data from this single study (the "Seychelle Islands study") results in the most lax safety standard possible. FDA met privately with the Seychelle Island scientists as they crafted their new advisory to pregnant women, but met with none of the scientists involved in the other, more sensitive studies (FDA 2001d).
In a November 6, 2000 U.S. Tuna Foundation meeting with FDA, industry advised the agency to use the Seychelle Islands data and leave a lax safety standard in place, and then warned of legal implications if FDA strengthened the mercury action level: "Canned tuna and other fishery products have been sold in the U.S. for more than a century. In recent years, FDA has repeatedly confirmed the safety of these products. Any change in this policy will be seen as an admission that earlier statements were inaccurate and will put in doubt the safety of these products. This would encourage spurious lawsuits to be filed against seafood producers by individuals who will now believe that the seafood product they thought was safe carried the risk of neurodevelopmental deficits." (U.S. Tuna Industry, 2000)
In sharp contrast to the tuna industry's recommendations, the National Academy of Sciences recommends: "because there is a large body of scientific evidence showing adverse neurodevelopmental effects, including well-designed epidemiological studies, the committee concludes that [safety standards] should not be derived from a study, such as the Seychelles study, that did not observe any associations with [mercury]" ((NAS 2000). In particular, the Academy cites the two major studies of children (in the Faroe Islands and New Zealand) that found evidence of adverse neurological effects at very low levels of maternal mercury exposure.
FDA chose to take the advice of the tuna industry over the National Academy of Sciences. On May 9, 2001 the NAS mercury committee chairman commented to The New York Times: "I had thought the F.D.A. would pay more attention to our report." (Burros 2001)
6. FDA fails to test and enforce
FDA does not monitor seafood or enforce mercury safety standards, but it admits to participants that mercury poses a real risk to a fetus
Despite FDA's admissions that mercury poses a real risk to the fetus, the agency abandoned its mercury testing program in 1998, going from testing a few hundred fish a year to testing no domestic seafood whatsoever (GAO 2001). When a focus group participant pressed FDA's scientist on the issue of testing: "Is the FDA considering inspecting fish the way the Department of Agriculture inspects meat?" FDA's scientist replies, "We don't do that. That's not the way we regulate things. What we tend to do is set standards, and that it is illegal not to adhere to the standards. So, if we identify a fish that exceeds the standard, that's violative and we can take action against it." "But is it periodically checked, across the board?" he is asked. "But we don't do proactive testing," he replies. (Macro International, Inc. 2000i - Boston, November 8, 8 pm, pg 61)
Later in the focus group session, FDA's senior scientists points out that, while "It's true that there is no proactive inspection system for fish, [t]he actual context for this information is that we do have these standards for mercury levels that can be in fish. They've been set, you know, 20 years ago." (Macro International, Inc. 2000i - Boston, Nov 8, 8 pm, pg 64)
These standards are non-enforceable action levels that, by FDA's own admission in these focus groups, are upheld by the Agency through a program that involves no testing.
One focus group exchange expresses the hope that commercially sold seafood is tested and safe: "I guess you could take a tester with you and put the fish in it, see how much, oh, 14%, throw it away." (Laughter) "We're hoping the FDA will do that for us." (Macro International, Inc. 2000g - Denver, Oct 17, 6 pm, pg 93) But after hearing first-hand how FDA fails to regulate seafood or test fish or warn consumers, a Boston focus group member advises the attending senior FDA scientist: "So my reaction is don't worry about the fishing industry. Just get the information out there. People will continue to eat fish because they like it and it's good for them. And, eventually, it will sort out; which fish isn't good for pregnant women." (Macro International, Inc. 2000i - Boston, November 8, 8 pm, pg 91)
By failing to test, FDA protects fishing industry - beyond tuna
Even by the agency's own relaxed health criteria, the limited available monitoring data show that many types of fish might pose health risks to pregnant women. In spite of this, FDA plans no further testing and plans no interim warnings to pregnant women.
A pregnant woman from Calverton hears about the problem of mercury in seafood for the first time during her focus group session, and is immediately concerned about the fish she ate early in pregnancy: "This is new to me, because in the beginning of my pregnancy it was still summer and we live at the beach, and my husband was fishing every night so we were having fresh fish every night for dinner. You know, for a good month during the first part of my pregnancy, you know, we've had, you know, as a side dish we'd have fish or as a main course we would have fish because there was tons of fish. I didn't know about this." (Macro International, Inc. 2000j - Calverton, Nov 14, 6 pm, pg 16).
Before she is given FDA's proposed lists of high and low mercury fish, she notes to the group, "This child's doomed." Later in the session the moderator reads the list of fish that should be avoided or eaten only in moderation during pregnancy, a list that includes tuna steaks and canned tuna and other even higher mercury species. The woman exclaims, "I am home free" - she ate bluefish from the Bay in the early months of her pregnancy, which appears nowhere on FDA's advisory (Macro International, Inc. 2000j - Calverton, MD, Nov 14, 6 pm, pp 31,33).
As it turns out, however, she may have consumed up to 10 times the amount of mercury that FDA considers safe for her baby. The two samples of bluefish that have been tested by the agency since its inception show about the same average mercury level (0.30 parts per million, or ppm) as the 191 tuna steaks in the Agency's database (0.32 ppm) (FDA 2001c). The Agency's draft advice for pregnant women was to limit tuna steak consumption to 18 ounces per month. If this woman ate 6 ounces of bluefish for 30 days, she would have eated 180 ounces of fish, exposing her fetus to 10 times the agency's "safe" dose of mercury.
FDA's monitoring data shows that many other types of fish that do not appear on the agency's advisory have levels of mercury even higher than tuna. Specifically, red snapper, marlin, orange roughy, and grouper are among the fish with average mercury levels higher than the levels in tuna steaks. Fish with mercury levels higher than what is found in canned tuna include all of those, as well as cod, mahi mahi, perch, pollock, halibut, and bluefish (FDA 2001c).
7. FDA has failed to educate the public about the hazards of mercury
FDA research finds pregnant women aren't getting the information it has already announced
FDA has failed to implement the consumer education program it promised more than a year ago, and has a long history of failing to educate the public about mercury in seafood. Since September 1994 FDA has had in place a consumer advisory warning of high levels of mercury in shark and swordfish, which counsels both pregnant women and the general population to limit their consumption of these fish (FDA 1994). Although this advisory had been in place for a full six years prior to FDA's focus group meetings, very few participants were familiar in any way with the notion that seafood can contain mercury, let alone which types of seafood have high levels.
At the outset of each focus group, participants were asked what they knew about sources of mercury exposure or, in a separate question, pollutants in fish. In each of two groups, a participant mentioned swordfish as a concern, and in two other groups tuna - but not swordfish - was mentioned as a concern. Environmental and consumer groups, not the FDA, have tried to alert the public to mercury in tuna.
This result, while not statistically significant, gives an indication that the few environmental and consumer groups who try to alert pregnant women about mercury in tuna, may have had as big an impact on public education as the FDA. It also indicates that public interest and consumer groups can no longer assume that FDA will succeed in educating the public about the very high mercury fish, the four fish that are now black-listed for pregnant women (shark, swordfish, king mackerel, and tilefish).
One of the two mentions of swordfish was dismissive: "I think they took - what was it - swordfish off the market. That was a while back. They claimed that it had a lot of mercury, but I think a lot of that is maybe a little exaggerated." (Macro International, Inc. 2000k - Calverton, MD, Nov 14, 8 pm, pp 8 and 9).
In another focus group the extent of knowledge about mercury in fish came from a woman who knew that "There was a mercury contaminant some time ago." (Macro International, Inc. 2000c - Calverton, October 12, 6 pm, pg 12) One woman sums up the agency's failure to educate the public in this way: "this is my fifth pregnancy and I haven't heard - never, ever, you know, in nine years heard anything about this So, why aren't we being informed?" (Macro International, Inc. 2000j - Calverton, MD, Nov 14, 6 pm, pg 38)
Women told FDA to distribute information through doctors, but officials admitted they'll rely on industry to publicize product hazards
Even though women in the focus groups identify their doctors as their primary source of health-related advice during pregnancy, FDA officials admit in the transcripts they will rely on the seafood industry, not women's obstetricians, to convey the health advisories for mercury.
Echoing the opinion of many women in the FDA focus groups, a pregnant woman in a Denver focus group advises FDA to use doctors as an information conduit: "Well, if it's only meant toward the pregnant women or women that are nursing a child, I think it should be given out during your visits with your doctor or care provider... That way you know right up front as soon as you're pregnant what's good and what's not." (Macro International, Inc. 2000e - Denver, Oct 16, 6 pm, pg 45)
Another pregnant woman questions an FDA scientist on how the Agency will get information to pregnant women: "Did you say, do you plan to notify OBs and pediatricians? I mean, because I am a nursing mother. . . it would be really nice if when I went in to take my baby in for its two week appointment my pediatrician says, oh, by the way - or some kind of literature. Your first OB appointment, you go in and the doctor hands you all this literature, and even in the new literature I've gotten I never heard anything about it. What are your stops?" (Macro International, Inc. 2000j - Calverton, MD, Nov 14, 6 pm, pg 84)
An FDA official explains why the agency does not plan to use doctors to convey to pregnant women the dangers of mercury in seafood, but they offer no evidence to justify their implication that doctor-based education initiatives would fail: "They have a lot of things to warn you about, and there's competition to get on their agenda. This particular threat is not high on their agenda. They quite reasonably argue that there's lots of other things that they need to talk about in terms of more importance. So, it's hard because you have to compete with a lot of other risks to get on their agenda." (Macro International, Inc. 2000j - Calverton, MD, Nov 14, 6 pm, pg 85)
Then in an exchange that involves a participant questioning an FDA scientist on why the Agency is worrying about the effects of the health advisory on the seafood industry, the scientist reveals that "The industry is probably going to be one of the major ways that this information gets put out." (Macro International, Inc. 2000i - Boston, Nov 8, 8 pm, pg 97) Federally-mandated, industry-driven consumer education has worked to some extent for alcohol and tobacco, which carry warning labels required by federal law, but it will be difficult at best for FDA to convince the seafood industry to voluntarily provide consumers with warnings about the risk their mercury-contaminated products pose to pregnant women.
Only one pregnant woman mentions that she might call "Sea King" to learn if their mercury-contaminated products cause birth defects. (Macro International, Inc. 2000g - Denver, Oct 17, 6 pm, pg 59). The seafood industry, however, has yet to warn women of the potential dangers of mercury. In fact, the industry used a recent study on the benefits of fish consumption (specifically, of Omega 3 fatty acids) to promote tuna consumption for pregnant women: "...this new study adds to the long list of startling health benefits scientists believe Omega-3s fatty acids provide to pregnant women and small children. The most convenient, economical source of Omega-3s for moms and kids is, quite simply, canned tuna!" (U.S. Tuna Foundation, 2001). This press release provides a clear indication that the tuna industry has no plan to protect its customers from the dangers of mercury by steering them toward safer fish.
|
<urn:uuid:fe9de95f-04d6-4bf7-b0e6-47dd7e2497e5>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.ewg.org/node/16760/related/clip
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.965239
| 6,581
| 2.671875
| 3
|
Cedarbrae Collegiate Institute Facts and Figures
|Total number of students:||1322|
|Primary language other than English:||54%|
|Students born outside of Canada:|
|Students living in Canada for 2 years or less||5%|
|Students living in Canada for 3 - 5 years||7%|
* Calculation does not include students for whom language information is missing.
EQAO - or the Education Quality and Accountability Office - is an independent agency of the Ontario government. Its provincial assessment program for primary, junior and secondary students provides parents, teachers and the public with information about student achievement that will help improve teaching and learning.
TDSB Schools all have annual budgets to support classroom programs. Money provided is based on the school budget model. The school budget model has been developed through a process involving Principals, Vice Principals, Superintendents, school office budget staff, Trustees and staff from the central Budget and Revenue Department. Although a model is used to determine budget amounts, schools do have flexibility in administering the budget.
|
<urn:uuid:4e6d2db2-c183-4e47-9ffd-4557b1dbed9f>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.tdsb.on.ca/schools/factsfigures.asp?schno=4124&schoolId=1124&Status=L
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.91254
| 225
| 3.015625
| 3
|
People with a history of smoking have a high risk of lung cancer – a disease with a five-year relative survival rate (for smokers and non-smokers combined) of only 15.8 percent. Previous attempts at developing a test to find lung cancer early, when it is easier to treat, have not been able to demonstrate a decrease in mortality rates. Now, a study sponsored by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) has determined that low-dose helical computed tomography (CT) scans can reduce lung cancer mortality for current and former heavy smokers. In the nation-wide study, which included over 53,000 participants, researchers found 20 percent fewer lung cancer deaths among those who were screened with low-dose helical CT (also known as spiral CT) compared with those who were screened with chest X-rays. In addition, deaths from all-causes (including lung cancer) were seven percent lower in those who received the low-dose helical CT scans.
“This is the first time that we have seen clear evidence of a significant reduction in mortality with a lung screening test in a randomized controlled trial. The fact that low-dose helical CT provides a decided benefit will be a result that will have implications for the screening and management of lung cancer for many years to come,” said Christine Berg, M.D., NLST project officer for the NCI, in a press release.
In September 2002, the NCI launched the largest lung cancer screening study ever conducted. The National Lung Screening Trial, or NLST, compared the effects of two lung cancer screening procedures, low dose helical CT and chest X-ray, in reducing mortality in current and former heavy smokers aged 55 to 74. Unlike previous trials, the NLST was a randomized control trial, the gold standard in clinical trials. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two comparable groups – chest X-ray or helical CT – and received three annual screenings based on their assigned technology. The groups were followed for at least five years beyond the final screening. (Read an article in this publication from the launch of the trial in 2002)
“The results of this trial provide objective evidence of the benefits of low-dose helical CT screening in an older, high-risk population and suggest that if low-dose helical CT screening is implemented responsibly, and individuals with abnormalities are judiciously followed, we have the potential to save thousands of lives,” said Denise Aberle, M.D., NLST national principal investigator for ACRIN, in an NCI press release. “However, given the high association between lung cancer and cigarette smoking, the trial investigators reemphasize that the single best way to prevent lung cancer deaths is to never start smoking, and if already smoking, to quit permanently.”
Low dose helical CT, which was introduced in the 1990’s, uses computer-controlled X-rays to scan the entire chest in about 7-15 seconds during a single, breath-hold. The CT scanner rotates around the person, who is lying still on a table as the table passes through the center of the scanner.
A computer creates images from the X-ray information coming from the scanner and assembles these images into a series of two-dimensional slices of the lung at very small intervals so that increased details within the organs of the chest can be identified. Virtually all hospitals and free-standing radiology facilities in the United States now have a helical CT machine, which are routinely used for diagnostics. While some facilities do perform helical CT scans for the purpose of screening for lung cancer, such practice has not been previously supported by evidence and is not currently covered by most insurance providers.
Screening with CT scans comes with its own risks. Radiation exposure from repeated CT scans can lead to illness, including cancer, and people who get false-positive results may be subjected to unnecessary surgical procedures. It’s important to note that most abnormalities detected with CT screening are not cancer, even in people who are at high risk.
There are over 94 million current and former smokers in the United States who are at high risk for lung cancer. In 2010, it is estimated that 222,520 people will be diagnosed with, and 157,300 will die from lung cancer, the leading cause of cancer death in the United States.
More information about the new results of the NLST is available in National Lung Screening Trial – Initial results: Questions and Answers and Fast Facts on NLST. For more information on lung cancer and screening, please visit our Lung Cancer Homepage.Print This Post
|
<urn:uuid:77286b86-1f8f-453f-9d03-adf6589cec6f>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://benchmarks.cancer.gov/2010/11/lung-cancer-screening-using-helical-ct-vs-chest-x-ray-reduces-deaths-among-current-and-former-heavy-smokers/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.963491
| 944
| 2.78125
| 3
|
Monday, June 13, 2011
How the River Jordan got its name
This is the Baptist Church in Braybrooke. It is still open - indeed services are held there and at the Church of England's infinitely grander All Saints on alternate Sundays. And it may just explain the name of a local river.
The River Jordan rises near Desborough, flows through Braybrooke and Little Bowden (where I live) to join the Welland near Market Harborough railway station. "Jordan" is an unlikely and rather modern name for such a short stream - river names tend to be among the most ancient words in the language.
In Braybrooke I came across the story because they had no pool at their church, the Baptists of Braybrooke used the river that ran through the village and it therefore came to be known as the Jordan.
There are problems with this theory. The strongest might appear to be that the Baptist church is not by the Jordan, but it looks as though it might well have been once. The lane outside is supposed to have been the site of Bowden Bridge and downstream in Little Bowden the course of the Jordan has been radically altered over the years.
What I would like to know is how a Braybrooke nickname came to be used for the river in Little Bowden and Market Harborough too. But it is an appealing theory and I would very much like it to be true.
|
<urn:uuid:1789401d-231d-4d67-89ba-519727518273>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://liberalengland.blogspot.com/2011/06/how-river-jordan-got-its-name.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.984305
| 290
| 2.9375
| 3
|
Kevin Drum calls into question the idea that assassins usually fail to achieve their objectives, arguing, among other things:
John Wilkes Booth may not have saved the Confederacy, but in the longer term he was probably pretty effective — though I suppose you can always make the argument that things would eventually have turned out the same regardless of whether or not Lincoln had served out his second term. But that’s cheating: if you take that view of history, then assassins are ineffective by definition and the game is over before it begins.
For one thing, I think you need to take the Confederates’ goals here a little more seriously. It’s true that the Jim Crow system that replaced slavery was grossly inadequate from the standpoint of social justice, but it really was a step up from chattel slavery. If the rebels had wanted white supremacy without slavery, they could have gotten that without firing a shot. Indeed, if they’d been willing to accept so much as a prohibition on the further expansion of slavery, they could have gotten that without firing a shot. Confederates wanted the Confederacy, and Booth didn’t achieve it.
What’s more, though, it’s not only “in the long run” that the assassination didn’t make a difference, it didn’t make much of a difference in the short-run either. Lincoln’s death brought Andrew Johnson to power, and he was committed to white supremacy, but by 1869 Ulysses Grant and other Republicans committed to reconstruction were back in office. “Redemption” didn’t happen until the 1870s and 1880s and the main Jim Crow laws were put in place in the 1890s. The Supreme Court overturned civil rights legislation in 1883 and Plessy v. Ferguson happened in 1896. The key political battles, in other words, happened after Lincoln would have been out of power anywhere.
That said, Henry Farrell has recently pointed to two papers on the assassination question that I ought to look at. First, Benjamin Jones and Benjamin Olken (2007), “Hit or Miss? The Effect of Assassinations on Institutions and War”:
Assassinations are a persistent feature of the political landscape. Using a new data set of assassination attempts on all world leaders from 1875 to 2004, we exploit inherent randomness in the success or failure of assassination attempts to identify assassination’s effects. We find that, on average, successful assassinations of autocrats produce sustained moves toward democracy. We also find that assassinations affect the intensity of small-scale conflicts. The results document a contemporary source of institutional change, inform theories of conflict, and show that small sources of randomness can have a pronounced effect on history.
Next, Zaryab Iqbal and Christopher Zorn (forthcoming), “The Political Consequences of Assassination”:
The assassination of a political leader is among the highest-profile acts of political violence, and conventional wisdom holds that such events often have substantial political, social, and economic effects on states. We investigate the extent to which the assassination of a head of state affects political stability, through an analysis of all assassinations of heads of state between 1952 and 1997. We examine the political consequences of assassination by assessing the levels of political unrest, instability, and civil war in states that experience the assassination of their head of state. Our findings support the existence of an interactive relationship among assassination, leadership succession, and political turmoil: in particular, we find that assassinations’ effects on political instability are greatest in systems in which the process of leadership succession is informal and unregulated.
So with that, happy Veterans Day: heck of a job Princip.
|
<urn:uuid:82b8cae7-851e-4289-b87a-5e13e03696c4>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2007/11/11/181621/assassinations/?mobile=nc
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.960047
| 764
| 2.84375
| 3
|
Why were the statues on
Easter Island built?
No one is sure.
What is sure is that over 800 large stone statues exist there.
The Easter Island statues, stand, on the average, over
twice as tall as a person and have over 200 times as much mass.
Few specifics are known about the history or meaning of the
but many believe that they were created about
500 years ago in the
of local leaders of a lost civilization.
Pictured above, some of the
giants were illuminated in 2009
under the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy.
|
<urn:uuid:83bbce6c-33fc-432a-a701-a874d0900952>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.astrobio.net/index.php?option=com_galleryimg&task=imageofday&imageId=1162&pageNo=23
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.980817
| 123
| 3.171875
| 3
|
The Death Penalty
Introduction to the Death Penalty.
A brief History of the Death Penalty.
The Court Systems in Washington State.
Facts on how the Courts are structured, the Death Penalty Process in Washington State, and the appeals process.
Why the Death Penalty doesn't Work.
Simply some quick reasons it just doesn't work.
What would make the Death Penalty more effective.
My own theory on what would improve it.
In order to analyze the Death Penalty and decide what would make it more effective, its history is imperative to know. The first instituted Death Penalty laws date back into the 18th century B.C.E. known as the Code of Hammerabi. In this code there are twenty-five crimes where one could receive death as a punishment (WSU). Of noteworthy importance in the code was its concern for the rights of victims. In reality, this code may have been the first "victims' rights statute" in history. Unfortunately,
society began to neglect victims in its rush to punish the offender, with the result victims' right would not resurface until the 20th century.
Throughout history the death penalty, in some degree, has always been instituted for the crimes of Treason and Murder. The Death Penalty is simply the legal infliction of death for a most serious criminal act. This is what we refer to as Capital Punishment. The first recorded execution in the New World was in the territory of Virginia in 1608 C.E.. The convicted, Captain George Kendall, was charged and convicted of being a spy for the Kingdom of Spain (espionage) and hence, executed (DPIC). Since then, the Death Penalty has remained in our criminal law statutes.
The court system in the United States is based on the principle of federalism.
Death Penalty essays:
... book of Babylonian law, from 1700BC. (http://www.schoolsucks) The Bible mentions that execution should be used for many crimes. (Bedau1) One example of the death penalty in the bible ...
... my next point... What happens if we do get rid of the death penalty? We would have hundreds of murderers sitting in jails and mixing with many other people ... terminate that mans life for his crimes to others? The death penalty is just that; a penalty. Its intention is not to present an ...
... in jail because of the good facilities they have, which is absolutely absurd. Behavior displayed by murders should not be tolerated by any state. If people see that all states legalize the death penalty , it could potentially reduce the crime rate ...
Injustices of the Justice System. Why do wrongful convictions of the death penalty occur? This research paper describes many reasons for why wrongful convictions occur.
... use the death penalty in cases that do not mainly rely on eyewitness testimony or circumstantial evidence. In conclusion there are many ways that an innocent person can be shown the injustices that the United States' courts ...
... in the request of the death penalty. Characterizing these laws as "arbitrary and capricious," the majority ruled that they constituted cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the due process guarantees ...
... a history as vicious as ours, is racial equality in the sentencing of the death penalty an impending reality, or a continuation of the blight that blinds the eyes of American ...
... In the United States the existence of the death penalty is a matter of state law. Although it was never used as much as England in the 18th century, between ...
... defeats the purpose of their other argument against the killing of and innocent person. Those in favor of the death penalty see mandatory appeals as a way of expediting the execution process, which ...
|
<urn:uuid:737aeeca-0e8f-4346-88c4-e3ce7f75dfd2>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.writework.com/essay/death-penalty-38
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.958219
| 771
| 3.21875
| 3
|
Most had assumed that it would be a few hundred people, but this figure would be about five percent of Apple's non-retail workforce.
According to Seeking Alpha's deepthroats, Apple started designing its own chips because Intel and AMD were still stuck in the PC era. Jobs needed chips that are powerful enough, but also very low on battery life.
Apple's A5 processor, which is under the bonnet of the iPad 2 and iPhone 4S is twice as fast as the A4 in the current iPhone 4, but it slightly improves the battery life with eight hours of talk time. By dumping the harddrive and pushing for smaller, thinner, low powered chips, Apple is able to stick a computer into anything.
So far though it is all rumour. If Apple has chucked itself into the deep end of chip development it would appear to be missing the biggest trend in chip manufacturing, which is the shoving of a GPU and a CPU together.
If the old Stalinist era AMD and Intel carry on with their current policies trend, then their chips will sport graphics which are far superior to Apple and will be much lower power.
Apple, with its concentration on a single chip, might have been more locked into the PC era than it thought.
|
<urn:uuid:3d014ef5-1d74-4b14-bba3-4084377376a5>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://news.techeye.net/hardware/apple-spends-more-on-chip-design
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.981179
| 258
| 2.703125
| 3
|
FINDING THE SKULLS OF A WOLF AND DEER HUNG TOGETHER
By S. C. Turnbo
Among stories of peculiar finds in the wild woods we submit the following which was told me by Mr. Rila Mullen in this way.
In Howell County, Mo., are spots of land known as Wet Prairie. In the early settlement of that country there wet lands were usually surrounded by a growth of scrub blackjack timber. The ground where these wet places exist is soft slushy with tall wild grass growing on it. One day my father told me that during the early days of southern Missouri while he and Wesly Hatfield were hunting together on one of these spots of wet land which was some 8 or 9 miles southwest of West Plains they came to an open place where the grass had been wallowed down and in the center of this was found the skeleton of a wolf and deer. It appeared that the wolf had either chased the deer and caught it here or had sprang on it while lying in wait in the tall grass and after a hard struggle both animals had died here. The finding of the skeleton would not have been so strange if it had not been for the peculiar condition of the two heads which were found to be fastened together in the following way. The skull bones of the animals were connected together by one tusk of the wolf which had penetrated the skull bone of the deer between the eye and ear and become so tight that the wolf was unable to extricate it and they had hung together until they died. My father said that they picked up the skulls and pulled them apart. The evidence indicated that the wolf in its efforts to kill the struggling deer had bit the deer on the head and the tooth had penetrated the skull bone and probably the deer had died soon afterward and the wolf had lingered for days before it finally died from exhaustion and starvation. I suppose Mr. Wolf thought it a very serious matter to have to die so near a feast of venison without being able to reach and devour the least bit of it.
Next Story | Table of Contents
|
<urn:uuid:d86c0a38-b94e-457b-9fe9-d0c99fcaf138>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://thelibrary.org/lochist/turnbo/V16/ST466.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.991677
| 427
| 2.765625
| 3
|
King Osorkon I
Third Intermediate Period metalworkers often used gold inlays to embellish their sculptures. They first carved a channel that they filled with gold thread. Then they hammered the rounded edge of the gold until it was flush with the bronze. On this statuette, the names of Osorkon I, the images of the gods Re-Horakhty and Thoth, the belt, and the striations of the shendyt-kilt were all produced with gold inlay.
- Medium: Bronze, gold
- Place Found: Shibin el Qanatir, Egypt
- Dates: ca. 924-889 B.C.E.
- Dynasty: XXII Dynasty
- Period: Third Intermediate Period
- Dimensions: 5 9/16 x 1 1/2 x 2 in. (14.1 x 3.8 x 5.1 cm) (show scale)
- Collections:Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art
- Museum Location: This item is on view in Egypt Reborn: Art for Eternity, 19th Dynasty to Roman Period, Martha A. and Robert S. Rubin Gallery, 3rd Floor
- Accession Number: 57.92
- Credit Line: Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund
- Rights Statement: Creative Commons-BY
- Caption: King Osorkon I, ca. 924-889 B.C.E. Bronze, gold, 5 9/16 x 1 1/2 x 2 in. (14.1 x 3.8 x 5.1 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 57.92. Creative Commons-BY
- Record Completeness: Best (88%)
|
<urn:uuid:bec583c3-5d89-44f9-a10a-07690ce816f1>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/objects/3635/community/posse/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.824296
| 349
| 3.125
| 3
|
Nautilus Sails Under the Pole and 1,830 Miles of Arctic Icecap in Pacific-to-Atlantic
New Route to Europe Pioneered--Skipper and Crew Cited
By FELIX BELAIR, JR.
Special to THE NEW YORK TIMES
Nautilus' Skipper Helps to Mitigate a Snub to Rickover
Polar Trip Opens Defense Frontier:
U.S. Strategic Advantage Is Seen as Temporary -- Soviet Effort Expected
Chief of U.N. Gives a Plan for Mideast:
Assembly Meets: Hears Call for Step-Up of Its Economic and Political Efforts
House Votes Bill to Aid Education in Science Field:
Student Loans Raised in Place of Scholarships by 900 Million Measure
Veto Threatened on Pensions Bill:
Social Security Rate Rise Backed by White House but State Plan Is Fought
U.S. Leaders Split on Mideast Aims:
Eisenhower Action May Be Needed to Fix Policy for Assembly Debate
U.S. May Reduce Force in Lebanon:
Token Removal of Marine Battalion Planned
Peronists Win Rule of Argentine Labor
Glennan, Ohio Educator, Named to Direct New U.S. Space Unit
Hogan Is Expected to Enter the Race for Senate Monday
Rackets Unit Asks Prosecution for 13
479 Get Jaywalking Summonses but Public Is Hailed on Response
Washington, Aug. 8 -- History's first undersea voyage across the top of the world, a
distance of 1,830 miles under the polar icecap, was disclosed at the White House today.
The trip was made in four days by the Nautilus, the world's first atomic submarine. The
voyage pioneered a new and shorter route from Pacific to the Atlantic and Europe -- a
route that might be used by cargo submarines. It also added to man's knowledge of the
subsurface of the Arctic basin.
The voyage took the Nautilus under the North Pole. The overall trip began at Pearl
Harbor July 23 and ended at Iceland Aug. 7.
Dives at Point Barrow
The Nautilus went under the icecap at Point Barrow, Alaska, and surfaced four days later
at a point in the Atlantic between Spitzbergen and Greenland. She is now on her way to
The feat of the Nautilus, with 116 crewmen and scientific observers aboard, was revealed
as President Eisenhower decorated the submarine's skipper, Comdr. W. R. Anderson,
with the Legion of Merit. A Presidential Unit Citation- the first ever conferred in
peacetime- went to the submarine, with a ribbon and special clasp in the form of a golden
"N" to all who participated in the cruise.
The Presidential citation to Commander Anderson said that the Nautilus under his
leadership had pioneered a submerged sea lane between the Eastern and Western
Hemispheres. It added:
"This points the way for further exploration and possible use of this route by nuclear
powered cargo submarines as a new commercial seaway between the major oceans of the
Skipper Tells Story
A few minutes after the award, Commander Anderson, admittedly "a little dazed" by the
speed of events that brought him here overnight by helicopter and jet plane from Arctic
waters, was telling his story of "Operation Northwest Passage."
News of the voyage reached the Capitol with electrifying effect. William F. Knowland of
California, the Senate Republican leader, read a brief dispatch to the Senate and
"This should give us courage and remind us to have faith. It shows that this is no
time to sell America short."
Senator Mike Mansfield of Montana, the Democratic acting leader, congratulated
Commander Anderson and his crew.
President Eisenhower had already extended the Nautilus skipper his own "very, very best
congratulations" after pinning the decoration on the commander's tunic. He also asked
for him in conveying his personal "well done" to the submarine's officers and crew.
With an occasional glance at his wife who was flown here by Navy plane earlier today
from New London, Conn., without being told why, the 37-year-old Navy Officer sat for
about half an hour under floodlights telling reporters of the voyage. Newsreel and
television cameras recorded the ceremony as did tape recorders for radio broadcasting.
A circular flat map- based on a polar stereographic projection- of the Pacific and Arctic
areas from Pearl Harbor to Greenland was in place in a conference room near the
President's office when James C. Hagerty, White House press secretary, broke the secrecy
surrounding the "very good story" he told reporters would be coming at 1:30 P. M.
The press secretary pointed out that the distance from London to Tokyo at the present
time was about 11,200 nautical miles- by the Panama Canal. By traversing the Arctic
under the icecap the distance was only 6,300 miles- a saving of 4,900 miles, he said.
Mr. Hagerty told how the nautical mileage from Honolulu to London would be cut from
the conventional surface route of 9,500 miles to 6,700 miles by the polar route.
After the citations had been read by the President's naval aide, Capt. E. P. Aurand, and
the President had talked, Thomas S. Gates Jr., Secretary of the Navy, remarked in an
aside to Commander Anderson that "this is the first time a Presidential Citation has been
given in peacetime."
On hearing the observation, the President remarked: "I couldn't think of a better time to
Beaming in the background as the President presented the decoration were Vice Admiral
James A. Russell, acting Chief of Naval Operations; Admiral Frederick B. Warder,
Commander of the Atlantic Fleet Submarine Force; Admiral Jerauld Wright, Supreme
Commander Atlantic Forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization; John A. McCone,
chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, and Lewis Strauss, Administrative
Assistant to the President on Peaceful Purposes of Atomic Energy.
Anderson Tells Story
The group having withdrawn, Commander Anderson began the story of Operation
Northwest Passage as it got under way from Pearl Harbor in the predawn hours of July 23
under highest secrecy. He recounted briefly how the Nautilus had cruised submerged on
a northerly course past the Aleutian Islands and through the Bering Strait between Alaska
and Siberia toward the brittle fringe of the ice pack and then beneath it.
From Pearl Harbor to the Bering Strait, some 2,900 miles, the Nautilus maintained an
average speed of "almost 20 knots." Commander Anderson said it was his original plan
to make "a straight shot" for the polar crossing from the Bering Sea. However,
observations showed a stiff northerly wind had pushed the ice pack farther south than
Looking back, Commander Anderson said that the Nautilus probably could have gotten
through on that route, but that he wanted to find the best possible "highway" and the
search for it took him from the vicinity north of the Bering Strait over to the coast of
Northern Alaska and Point Barrow.
At this point Commander Anderson said that he had discovered the "lead" that normally
opens into deep water at this time of year was easily accessible. The Barrow Sea Valley,
a deep canyon in the ocean floor, was located and followed from a point just north of
Point Barrow to its entry into the true Arctic Basin.
Once in the Barrow Sea Valley, the skipper explained, "we were in our true element and
able to cruise fast and deep-- we were on our way."
The Nautilus surfaced only in the Point Barrow area to photograph the area and to track
the ocean floor for the sea valley. It periscoped off the Diomedes Islands between Alaska
and Siberia and for about thirty seconds sent up its radar for checking bearings.
"If the Russians detected us they are awfully good," Commander Anderson said in
answering a question. He explained that the submarine had been in international waters
throughout the trip and well on the American side of Bering Strait while traversing that
Above the Nautilus the covering icecap was plainly visible over the vessel's closed-circuit
television, the sixth months period of Arctic daylight making visibility no problem. Now
and then great holes appeared in the icecap but the Nautilus sped on.
"We were in a hurry," Commander Anderson explained.
"Why were you in a hurry?" he was asked.
"Navigating under these conditions up close to the pole, making the voyage with the
minimum number of turns, speed changes, depth changes, angle changes, facilitates the
accuracy of navigation by a very marked degree," Commander Anderson went on.
"It is possible to get yourself considerably confused by subjecting the ship to a number of
turns, and so on, knowing what we know now, we would make the crossing in a much
more relaxed fashion. We wouldn't hesitate to change course, or probe openings.
However, we were anxious on this trip to show the possibility of utilizing this route some
day as a fast commercial route."
Commander Anderson was casual but careful in describing the performance
characteristics of his submarine. Its cruising depth and average speed were only
generally described because of security reasons.
"I am able to tell you," the skipper said at one point, "that the Nautilus cruises at lower
than 400 feet. I am able to tell you that we made better than 20 knots. The speed is
somewhat faster in cold water."
The Nautilus skipper was interrupted repeatedly with questions. His answers disclosed
among other things that the Arctic Sea at the North Pole was considerably deeper than
had been supposed. Precision measurements placed the true depth at 13,410 or 1,927 feet
greater than earlier estimates.
Commander Anderson indicated a distinct lack of curiosity about the precise make up an
penetration of the icecap below the surface of the sea. It ranged in thickness from ten to
fifteen feet and loses about three feet of its winter depth in summer. But pressures caused
by wind and tide, sent it to a depth of fifty feet in unchartered places and these were well
above the submarine, he explained.
Hitherto unknown underwater mountain ranges were found to crisscross the Barrow Sea
Valley from its beginning near Point Barrow to a point where it enters the Arctic Basin.
These ranges were apart from the previously known Lomonosov Ridge extending from
Canada almost directly across the Pole into the Soviet Union.
It was exactly at 11:!5 P.M. Eastern standard time last Sunday that the atomic-driven
submarine passed directly beneath the North Pole with a larger company than ever had
been on the spot before. It neither paused nor notified Washington until the Nautilus
surfaced some thirty-six hours later in the Greenland Sea.
The entire voyage under the icecap- a distance equivalent to that from Chicago to San
Francisco- was without a close call or mishap of any kind and without casualty or illness.
As he told his story Commander Anderson said that he wanted to "brag a little about our
"I really think that this is the most remarkable job in ship navigation that has ever been
done," he added.
A humorous note crept into the recitation as Commander Anderson gave the first public
definition of what he called "longitudinal roulette," a passtime not to be indulged in while
traversing the arctic sea for the first time in a submarine.
"A trip across the North Pole, where there is no opportunity to observe anything outside
of the ship, no opportunity to observe stars or do any type of electronic navigation,
presents a very formidable problem- or what has been up to now a very formidable
problem," the skipper explained.
"For example, it would be possible for a ship equipped with conventional navigation
equipment to become so confused at the North Pole that they might actually work
themselves around in a slow circle, thinking that they were going in a straight line, and
end up coming into perhaps the ice-locked coast off Greenland, or even more
disappointing, back where they came from."
How did he manage to avoid this confusion?
"By having superb navigation equipment- superb compasses- by having this advanced
inertial type navigation system, and by having such a complex of navigation equipment to
check one thing against the other, and the other thing against something else- repeated
over and over again, that we knew we were in business," Commander Anderson replied.
An inertial guidance system is made up of gyroscopes and other devices that
automatically determine a submarine's position even on along submerged cruises.
The Nautilus skipper said that no contacts of a hostile nature had been made throughout
the nineteen days and 8,146 miles covered from Pearl Harbor. Contacts not of a hostile
nature were made, but Commander Anderson did not explain what these might have
Back to the top of this page.
Back to today's page.
Go to another day.
Front Page Image Provided by UMI
|
<urn:uuid:1dcd0c10-bfe2-4688-8ab3-8724ce3e810d>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/0803.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.95759
| 2,814
| 2.703125
| 3
|
Imagine that you pour two bottles of the same type of cooking oil into a bowl. As soon as the two oils are in the bowl, it’s impossible to distinguish the two.
But now a team of nano researchers from the University of Southern Denmark (SDU) have come up with a method which makes it possible to put a ‘bar code’ on each tiny droplet of oil.
This enables the researchers to identify the droplets and determine exactly how each individual droplet should bind to the other droplets in the bowl.
“We’re using DNA as a kind of bar code that we put on each of the oil droplets. The droplets are too tiny to be detected with the naked eye, but the DNA enables us to control how they assemble when we mix them up,” says Martin Hanczyc, an associate professor at the Institute of Physics, Chemistry and Pharmacy at SDU.
He is one of the scientists behind the new study, which is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
Most people think of DNA as the hereditary material in humans, animals and plants, but among nano scientists, DNA is also known as a useful building material. Just over a week ago, the cover of the popular journal Science was adorned with a picture of tiny nano structures representing objects such as skulls, hearts and spacecraft.
These tiny nano structures were composed entirely of DNA, whereas the researchers in the new Danish study have used DNA as a form of glue between their oil droplets.
According to Hanczyc, the oil droplets in his study can be likened to LEGO bricks, just like those on the cover of Science. The DNA functions as the pins on the LEGO bricks which ensure that the bricks assemble in the right way.
“We can e.g. make a rule stating that the red bricks only connect to the green ones, while the yellow bricks only connect to the blue ones. If we have lots of LEGO bricks in a box, we can close the lid and shake the box. When we then open the lid again, we’ll be saying ‘Wow! The bricks have assembled in the right way – automatically,’” says the researcher.
In this same way, the researchers can make the tiny oil droplets assemble according to certain patterns – patterns which are determined by the code in the tiny bit of DNA that has been assigned to each droplet.
Once the tiny ‘invisible’ droplets are assembled in the laboratory, the composite drops become big enough to be visible to the naked eye.
“The great thing is that this whole aggregation process is reversible. If, for example, we change the temperature, we can make all the droplets divide again and then we can recycle both the DNA and the droplets.”
DNA and oil droplets
The new method enables the researchers to control how tiny oil droplets bind to one another.
DNA is the glue that holds these droplets together.
The tiny bits of DNA contain codes, and it is these codes that determine which droplets bind to one another.
When the researchers mix up the DNA-labelled droplets, the droplets assemble automatically according to the patterns that they have been programmed to follow.
Source: Martin Hanczyc
According to Hanczyc, the new method has a variety of uses for chemists, nanoscientists and medical researchers.
In the future it will for instance be possible to use this method to create intelligent drugs that can recognise the body’s disease cells and target these cells directly, bypassing the healthy cells in the body.
“Much of the medicine we’re using today is not soluble in water, but only in oil. So in a medical context it’s an advantage that we’re now able to control oil,” says Hanczyc.
“One could for example imagine that the method in our study could be used to create a pill with three different compartments. One compartment could contain the drug, while the second one could contain a system that recognises a certain type of disease cells. The third compartment could contain a system which activate the whole thing, so that the drug is released just at the right time.”
|
<urn:uuid:4b15f2fc-8683-439e-b535-e896b27de312>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://sciencenordic.com/dna-glues-oil-droplets-together
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.935803
| 893
| 3.84375
| 4
|
The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment is reporting significant influenza activity in the state, with a total of 244 people from 22 counties hospitalized with the flu. By Dec. 24 last year, the state had reported 32 people hospitalized with the flu.
Dr. Lisa Miller, state epidemiologist, said, "Vaccination is the safest and most effective tool we have to prevent influenza.
Everyone older than 6 months should receive a flu vaccination annually."
In addition to 244 hospitalizations (the state tracks the number of people hospitalized with influenza), two pediatric deaths associated with influenza also have been reported, one in Denver County and the other in Jefferson County. Both children were under age 3, and one had underlying health conditions.
The CDC reports, based on limited testing thus far, the 2012-2013 vaccine is well-matched to influenza strains circulating nationally this season.
Antiviral treatment is recommended as early as possible for any patient with confirmed or suspected influenza who is hospitalized, has severe, complicated or progressive illness, or is at higher risk for influenza complications.
Priority groups recommended for vaccination include the following:
• Children ages 6 months to 4 years
• People with chronic health conditions (asthma, chronic pulmonary diseases, significant heart disease, sickle cell anemia, neurologic conditions that compromise respiratory function and people with a suppressed immune system)
• Women who are pregnant or planning to become pregnant
• American Indians/Alaska Natives
• People who are morbidly obese
• Residents of nursing homes and other chronic care facilities
• Health care professionals
• Household contacts and caregivers of children younger than 5 years or adults 50 years and older
To help protect yourself and others from flu, the CDC recommends the following:
• Cover your nose and mouth with a tissue when you cough or sneeze.
• Wash your hands often with soap and water. If soap and water are not available, use an alcohol-based hand rub.
• Avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth. Germs spread this way.
• Try to avoid close contact with sick people.
• If you are sick with flu-like illness, stay home for at least 24 hours after your fever is gone, except to get medical care or for other necessities. (Your fever should be gone without the use of a fever-reducing medicine.)
• While sick, limit contact with others as much as possible.blog comments powered by Disqus
|
<urn:uuid:e1b8261e-09d0-437a-bc11-cd6572bbf83b>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.deltacountyindependent.com/index.php/delta-area-2/3878-colorado-is-experiencing-significant-flu-activity?reset-settings
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.951662
| 499
| 3.125
| 3
|
Sentencing and appeals
The law presumes an accused person is innocent until proved guilty beyond reasonable doubt by the prosecution. If the defendant pleads guilty, the judge will determine the appropriate sentence.
Every offence has a maximum sentence, which is set by statute (usually by an Act of Parliament or an Order in Council).
The court sentences the offender after considering all the circumstances of the case. This can include pre-sentence reports and other specialist reports as well as a 'mitigating plea' by the defence. A range of sentences is available, and the sentence will depend on the type of court and the seriousness of the offence. Sentences include:
- discharge - which can be 'absolute' and not carry any conditions, or 'conditional' (on not committing another offence)
- monetary - for example, fines, compensation orders and confiscation orders
- custody - a prison sentence
- community sentence – including probation orders, community service orders, supervision orders and attendance centre orders
Public Protection Sentences
Two new prison sentences were introduced to Northern Ireland for offences of a sexual and/or violent nature committed after 15 May 2008. These sentences are only used when a judge decides that there is significant risk of the defendant committing further offences which would cause serious harm to the public.
Serious harm means death or serious personal injury, whether physical or psychological. Assessment of risk is based on reports specifically prepared for that purpose by specialists including probation officers, psychiatrists or psychologists.
If an offender has been assessed as dangerous and has been convicted of a specified or serious sexual or violent offence he receives either a discretionary life sentence, an indeterminate custodial sentence (an ICS), or an extended custodial sentence (an ECS).
Imprisonment (or, for children, detention) is the most severe penalty that is available to the courts - it is generally only available for the more serious offences. Having considered all the circumstances of the case, the court will decide on the appropriate length of the sentence. Any time an offender has spent in custody before sentencing will usually count as time towards their sentence.
Additionally the court may decide to suspend a sentence. This means that the offender usually will not serve the sentence unless they commit further offences.
Indeterminate Custodial Sentence (ICS)
The Indeterminate Custodial Sentence (ICS) can be used for the most serious sexual and violent offences, those which carry a penalty of 10 years or more, and can mean that the prisoner can, potentially, be imprisoned for life.
The defendant would only receive an ICS if the court considers that an Extended Custodial Sentence (ECS) would not be adequate.
Extended Custodial Sentence (ECS)
The Extended Custodial Sentence (ECS) will be used in respect of specified sexual or violent offences for which the maximum penalty is no more than 10 years. The sentence will be a determinate sentence of at least one year and prisoners will become eligible for consideration for release by the Parole Commissioners at the half way point of this custodial term.
In addition to custody, courts will set extended supervision periods of up to 5 years for violent offenders and 8 years for sexual offenders.
The Criminal Justice (Northern Ireland) Order 2008 provided new powers for the increased use of curfews, supported by the use of electronic monitoring. From 1st April 2009, electronic monitoring became available for use as:
- a condition of bail granted by a court
- a condition of a licence on release from prison
- a requirement of a probation or combination order
- a requirement of a Youth Conference Order
- a non-custodial element of a custody probation or juvenile justice order
This system is used to monitor if the person is at their place of curfew during the hours of their curfew. It is not designed to continually monitor the person's whereabouts.
The system is operated by a private supplier, G4S, working to government guidelines.
The person is fitted with a tag attached around the ankle. A monitoring unit is installed at the curfew address and is adjusted to receive a signal from the tag.
Tags are waterproof and shockproof and do not interfere with a person's normal activities - you can go swimming, have a bath and play sport. The tag looks like a sports watch and can be worn underneath socks or trousers. Tags can only be removed if the strap is deliberately broken and the control centre will detect immediately if a strap has been cut or damaged.
Regular checks are carried out at the control centre for a signal from the unit and the tag – if there are no signals and the equipment is working properly, a report is submitted.
If the person on tag goes outside their place of curfew during their curfew period, the unit does not receive a signal from the tag and an alert is sent to the control centre. The control centre telephones the house to check if the person is there. If the person wearing the tag is present and denies the breach, the equipment is checked for faults and repaired if necessary so that monitoring continues. If the person on tag confirms the breach or if they are not present when telephoned, the control centre contacts the appropriate authority.
If the person is on bail, the Police will be informed that a breach of bail has taken place and the Police may then arrest the person and report them to the court.
The Probation Board and Youth Justice Agency will take responsibility for cases under their supervision. What happens next will be decided on a case by case basis - this may be immediate arrest, a summons to court, a warning letter, a meeting with the person on tag or recall to prison depending on the type of curfew, the seriousness of the circumstances and the risk to the public.
Fine default initiatives
The opportunity exists for defendants to give their financial details to a court. This is done using a means enquiry form. This will then help the courts decide the level of fine to impose, and also in determining any application a defendant may make, for extra time to pay, or to pay by instalments, at the point of sentence.
If a defendant does not provide his or her financial details, a court may make whatever decision it thinks fit. It is, therefore, in the defendant’s best interests to complete and return the forms to court.
To encourage more people to provide their details to courts, a copy of the form will now be served on all defendants along with their summons/charge documents.
Anyone requiring help completing the form should contact a solicitor or an advice centre. In this regard Citizen’s Advice contact details are included on the form.
- Means enquiry form (PDF 279 KB)
- Help with PDF files
- Northern Ireland Courts and Tribunals Service (contacts section)
Options to pay fines and further help available
As well as posting payment by cheque or postal order to the Customer Services Centre, fines may be paid using a credit or debit card by telephoning the Customer Services Centre on 028 7126 1329, or by using the NI Courts and Tribunals Service online facility, where fines can be paid 7 days a week between the hours of 6am and midnight.
Details of payment methods are set out on the Fine Notice which is sent to anyone who has been fined in court.
After a fine has been imposed, it may be possible to arrange for more time to pay, or to pay a fine by instalments.
Anyone experiencing difficulties meeting his or her payments should contact the court office at the court where the fine was imposed to discuss these options.
Probation orders require the offender to be under the supervision of a probation officer and may also impose certain other conditions set by the court.
Community service orders require the offender to do a certain amount of unpaid work for the community. If the offender is employed, they are expected to do the work in their own time.
Supervision orders are similar to probation orders, but are only available for children (young people aged between 10 and 18). These orders may impose certain requirements on the offender, as considered necessary by the court.
Attendance Centre Orders are only available for children and require the offender to go to a centre for a certain number of hours. The centres help offenders to explore why they offend and to stop offending. They also offer help to develop skills and confidence, and to encourage assertive, rather than aggressive, behaviour.
Any person convicted by a magistrates' court (or a youth court) can appeal to the county court against their conviction, and/or the sentence imposed, or, on a point of law, to the Court of Appeal.
It is only possible to appeal the decision of the county court on a point of law. These appeals go to the Court of Appeal.
Appeals from the Crown Court are made to the Court of Appeal.
A further appeal can be made to The Supreme Court, if permission is given, but only if the appeal is on a point of law.
The Director of Public Prosecutions can refer cases from the Crown Court to the Court of Appeal for that Court to review the sentence if he or she considers the sentence imposed was unduly lenient.
The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) - which is independent of both government and the courts - reviews alleged miscarriages of justice that have been through the appeal process. It can refer a case back to the Court of Appeal if there is a possibility that either a conviction or a sentence would not be upheld. Referral of a case to the CCRC depends on some new argument or evidence which was not raised at the trial or appeal or some other exceptional circumstances.
|
<urn:uuid:4b974f75-508f-43c5-bc68-03a475083a4e>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.nidirect.gov.uk/sentencing-and-appeals
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.948525
| 1,985
| 2.59375
| 3
|
The Theory Time Placement Tests coordinate with the Workbook Series, and are an effective diagnostic tool to evaluate a new student or a transfer student on their current knowledge of music theory and aural skills. This reproducible packet includes eight levels of Placement Tests, eight levels of Ear Training Tests, a Teacher Evaluation Chart for written and aural tests, and a Teacher Ear Training Guide for each level. Answers are included for written and aural tests. This addition to the Theory Time curriculum will make a big impression on new and prospective students and parents! Imagine presenting a written evaluation of the student at the initial interview Ė impressive!
After grading the tests and calculating the studentís score, you should have a fair evaluation of where the studentís strengths and weaknesses are in written music theory and aural work. A student passing a particular Placement Test with an acceptable score is ready to begin that level of the Theory Time Workbook Series. This packet includes 71 pages. Written by Heather Rathnau, NCTM. ALL SALES FINAL ON REPRODUCIBLE MATERIALS.
SAMPLE PAGES: (click for larger view)
|
<urn:uuid:ec435894-cc3c-4701-828a-23004bd824ad>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.theorytime.com/PLACEMENT-TESTS_p_110.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.911855
| 231
| 2.78125
| 3
|
are gasoline substitutes distilled from carbohydrates which are
extracted from plant matter. The most common bioalcohol in North
America is ethanol, made from corn kernels. Ethanol presents some
distinct advantages over petroleum gasoline for internal combustion
engines — primarily in that tailpipe emissions are “cleaner.” However,
the vast bulk of ethanol currently produced in the United States comes
from a food crop — corn. At least some of the on-going inflation in
worldwide food prices can be attributed to the growing portion of the
global corn crop that is diverted from the human food chain to fuel
production. In keeping with our mission to generate alternative biomass
energy from waste streams, Bronco Biodiesel is pioneering research on
biofuel production derived from algae in wastewater treatment systems.
In addition to ethanol, we are engaged in research to produce
biobutanol from wastewater algae. Biobutanol, in contrast to ethanol,
can be used in our country’s existing fuel transportation
infrastructure (primarily the pipeline system). In addition, biobutanol
packs almost 30% more BTUs per gallon than ethanol. It could therefore
prove critical to consumers' needs for fuel efficiency in an era of
escalating petroleum prices.
Bronco Biodiesel is currently:
- partnering with Muskegon County to harvest algae from wastewater treatment lagoons and extract recoverable energy.
with the National Museum of Natural History and HydroMentia to
incorporate energy recovery from algal biomass in nutrient remediation
using Algal Turf Scrubbers.™ (funded by Smithsonian Institution)
- developing processes for converting algal biomass into liquid transportation biofuels. (Federally funded through P.L. 110-161)
Wastewater algae grows from excess nutrient-loading in surface waters
of the United States. It is a significant water quality problem across
the country and contributes to dead zones of the Great Lakes and
oceanic coastal areas.
But, it's also a
resource for sustainable, renewable biofuel. Wastewater algae is rich
in carbohydrates, but lacks the rigid cellular structure that makes
terrestrial crops challenging for ethanol fermentation. Algae grows
naturally on the order of millions of pounds per person per year in the
U.S., or hundreds of millions of gallons of potential biofuel.
of the current interest in algal biomass for fuel feedstocks has
followed from the now two-decade old Department of Energy Aquatic
Species Program research that showed the impressive promise for
cultivating high-triglceride content algal species. While these species
represent a significant improvement over land-based crops for biodiesel
feedstock, they have proven problematic to cultivate. Thus, more recent
efforts have targeted molecular biological attempts to create new
organisms that lend themselves better to oil production and cultivation.
contrast, in keeping with our mission, we focus on algal biomass
generated by municipal and commercial wastewater cleanup processes. We
have partnered with colleagues who exploit native algae growth as a way
of removing nutrients from water supplies. The algal biomass from these
sources comprises complex communities of organisms that grow naturally
together in a particular climate/season and location. The resulting
biomass is rich in both carbohydrates as well as triglycerides, both of
which can be converted into liquid fuels. Our research addresses the
issue of biomass disposal for water treatment operations and can
potentially subsidize water treatment, leading to greater
sustainability. There are a variety of areas where innovations and
optimizations will be especially important and where we will direct our
Bronco Biodiesel's research objectives include:
harvesting and preprocessing of algal biomass generated by existing
municipal and commercial wastewater remediation installations for
conversion to biofuels.
- Developing capturing processes by harnessing both photosynthetic and non-photosynthetic organisms.
processes for oil extraction from algal biomass and subsequent
conversion of the oil to biodiesel, optimizing for yield, efficiency,
and waste reduction.
- Developing lifecycle analysis for long term cost recovery and energy balance evaluations.
|
<urn:uuid:c77492b1-00b7-438e-98be-b371bcade680>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.wmich.edu/biodiesel/bioalcohols.htm
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.892191
| 877
| 3.21875
| 3
|
NOAA’s Deep Sea Coral Program, under the auspices of the CRCP, is conducting a month-long expedition exploring deep-sea corals off the US West Coast in and around four national marine sanctuaries. The June 9-July 3 mission is the first of three such cruises planned by the Program for 2010.
The cruise is divided into three legs with the first leg taking place within Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary off the coast of Washington through June 16, the second leg in and around Cordell Bank and Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuaries through June 25, and the final leg in Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary through July 3.
NOAA scientists and partners will utilize the 224-foot NOAA Ship McArthur II as a research platform, conducting around-the-clock operations to gain a better understanding of the biology and ecology of deep-sea corals that live in water between 600 and 2,500 feet. They will use an assortment of sophisticated underwater technologies, including remotely operated vehicles and autonomous underwater vehicles to observe, photograph and sample deep-sea corals and associated marine life.
The expedition is part of a coordinated three-year field research effort to begin to better understand the location, distribution, status and health of deep-sea coral and sponge ecosystems in order to inform conservation and management actions and meet the requirements of the Magnuson-Steven Fishery Conservation and Management Reauthorization Act of 2006.
|
<urn:uuid:c07973ae-6081-41a4-a113-5b7ab151f8d7>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://coralreef.noaa.gov/aboutcrcp/news/featuredstories/jun10/wc10_deepcoral/welcome.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.941735
| 293
| 2.546875
| 3
|
Papaya fruit may not be a favourite among all but papaya has many benefits. Columbus had referred to it as the fruit of the angels. This fruit when ripe has a rich orange and sweet flesh inside its skin. It is both nutritious and tasty. Many people resort to nutrition pills to get vitamins and minerals. But it is always better to have fruits and vegetables instead of going for their nutritional supplements. Let us see the numerous health benefits of a papaya.
Heart Diseases- Papaya has numerous benefits as it is a rich source of antioxidants, vitamin A, C and E. This wide range of antioxidants prevents the cholesterol from oxidising. If the cholesterol oxidises then it sticks to the walls of blood vessels. This accumulation increases with time resulting in an increased chance of heart attacks.
Health Benefits Of A Papaya
SHARE THIS STORY
Papaya is healthy also because it is rich in dietary fibres. These dietary fibres also help control the cholesterol levels in the blood.
The folic acid present in a papaya converts a substance called homocysteine into benign amino acids . Homocysteine can damage blood cells if unconverted. And an increased level of it may even lead to heart attacks.
Digestive System- A protein called papain which is a digestive enzyme is to be found in the papayas. That is why papayas are even used in meat preparations to make make meat tender. The enzymes in papaya breaks the complex proteins into simple amino acids thus making it easier for digestion. A papaya is very healthy to consume in case you have constipation. The papaya enzymes and fibres help in proper bowel movement thus aiding in better digestion.
Anti-inflammatory Properties- Papaya has bounty of anti-inflammatory properties. That why it is very good for people with burns or inflammations. This anti-inflammatory property of a papaya makes it an excellent remedy for people with diseases like arthritis or asthma.
Cancer- A papaya has multiple benefits. It is rich in anti-cancerous elements. The fibre in the food binds with the cancer producing toxins in the colon thus preventing the chances of colon cancer to a considerable degree. The folate, vitamin C, beta-carotene, and vitamin E in papaya have also been linked to lower the chances of cancer in human beings. They protect the DNA from the damage caused by free radicals. It is thus very healthy to eat at least a few pieces of papaya everyday to reap its benefits and reduce the chances of cancer.
You may even have this tropical fruit as a part of your diet plan as it is very low in calories too.
BDST: 1316 HRS, AUG 13, 2012
Edited by: Sharmina Islam, Lifestyle Editor
All rights reserved. Sale, redistribution or reproduction of information/photos/illustrations/video/audio contents on this website in any form without prior permission from banglanews24.com are strictly prohibited and liable to legal action.
|
<urn:uuid:5562793a-6c7a-4a59-aad5-1092848b4ae2>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.banglanews24.com/English/detailsnews.php?nssl=49c965eeb9807e1f10e4e809cffee8fb&nttl=2012082050112
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.943519
| 616
| 2.6875
| 3
|
There are two methods of searching the nLab:
The built-in search. This is via the search box at the top of every page. The distinguishing characteristics of this search are:
An external search engine. Most search engines allow you to restrict the search to a single site. The best site to use for the nLab is
http://ncatlab.org/nlab. The distinguishing characteristics of an external search are:
Search the nLab using Google:
Regular expressions are a powerful way of extending search capabilities to take into account that one often wants to search for more than just a set phrase. In a regular expression, certain characters are declared to be “special” and have a particular interpretation (somewhat like TeX with its special catcodes). A special character can always be “escaped” to interpret it as an ordinary character. Thus
. means “match any single character” but
\. means “match a period”.
As Instiki is written in ruby, it uses the ruby version of regular expressions (each language has its own version; the differences are usually minor). The following is based on the list at ruby-doc. It has been condensed slightly to those aspects likely to be of use here:
?. To match one of these characters, precede it with a backslash. All other characters ordinarily just match themselves unless they are made somehow special by one of the special characters.
?are treated as regular characters in such a list. You can specify a range using
a-z. To include a
-it must come at the start of the list. A
^at the start negates the list.
], or a
abb, and so forth. Similarly,
catcatcat, and so forth. This will try to match as much as possible; use
*?to make it match as little as possible.
abb, but not
a. This will try to match as much as possible; use
+?to make it match as little as possible.
}?to make it match as little as possible.
|
<urn:uuid:c117fb93-18b5-41f5-986c-8a8fb5663f13>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.ncatlab.org/nlab/show/Searching+the+nLab
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.907825
| 438
| 3.34375
| 3
|
United States Department of State, U.S. Department of State Country Report on Human Rights Practices 1995 - Niger, 30 January 1996, available at: http://www.refworld.org/docid/3ae6aa3b14.html [accessed 22 May 2013]
This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.
NIGER Niger was a multiparty democracy throughout the year. The elected civilian government was overthrown by a military coup in January 1996. The Constitution under which the Government served throughout the year provides for a strong presidency, an ethnically representative Parliament (the 83-seat unicameral National Assembly), and an independent judiciary. Niger first held multiparty elections in 1993; international observers judged both the presidential and legislative elections free and fair. When Prime Minister Mohamadou Issoufou resigned in late 1994, a parliamentary majority opposed to President Mahamane emerged. The President dissolved the National Assembly and called new elections. The elections, held in January, were also judged free and fair by observers, and gave the opposition a three-seat majority, which increased following several defections late in the year. After failing to secure the Assembly's approval of a Prime Minister of his choice, the President named Hama Amadou, the opposition Movement for a National Development Society Party's secretary-general, to be Prime Minister. The continuing "cohabitation" between a directly elected President and a Prime Minister backed by a parliamentary coalition opposed to the President was difficult and was cited by the military as its major justification for overthrowing the Government. The Supreme Court is independent of the executive. A 3-year Tuareg insurgency in the north subsided with an October 1994 cease-fire. A formal peace accord was signed in April which called for decentralization of administration in northern regions, government support for northern economic development and grouping of rebels into special military units. In June the National Assembly passed a general amnesty releasing all those imprisoned for suspected or proven rebel activities. Security forces consist of the army, the gendarmerie (paramilitary police), the Republican Guard, and the national police. Despite almost two decades of military rule prior to 1991, the armed forces supported the transition to democratic government. Members of the security forces were responsible for some instances of human rights abuses. The economy is based mainly on traditional subsistence farming, herding, small trading, and informal markets. Uranium is the most important export. Persistent drought, low literacy, a declining uranium market and industrial base, and burdensome debt continue to weaken the economy. However, the value of livestock sales, the second most important export, has increased substantially due to the 1994 currency devaluation. During the year Niger met International Monetary Fund/World Bank benchmarks for revenue and spending, and structural adjustment facility support may resume. Reports of government troops committing human rights abuses declined markedly. Clashes between security and Tuareg rebel forces caused several deaths early in the year. An armed group operating along the border with Chad accused government soldiers of killing civilians in retaliation for a raid against a military outpost, a charge the military denies. Prison conditions are poor. The overloaded judicial system and delays in trials resulted in long periods of pretrial confinement. Societal discrimination and domestic violence against women continued to be serious problems; the de facto disenfranchisement of many women limits their right to change their government. Female genital mutilation persists. Labor unions freely bargained for wages and better working conditions.
Respect for Human Rights
Section 1 Respect for the Integrity of the Person, Including Freedom from:
a. Political and Other Extrajudicial Killing
The peace accord signed with rebel Tuareg groups in October 1994 was generally respected, although clashes between security forces and Tuareg rebels caused several deaths early in the year. Arab militia forces reportedly killed a Tuareg rebel leader and 13 of his fighters in July. The Tuareg rebel front is pressing the Government to identify and try the perpetrators. To date, the Government has not fulfilled its commitment in the peace accord to disarm the Arab militias. Also, an armed group operating near the border with Chad has accused government troops of killing civilians in retaliation for a raid against a military outpost. The military denies the charge.
There were no reports of politically motivated disappearances.
c. Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment
The Constitution and Penal Code prohibit torture, and there were no reports that authorities used it. Prison conditions are poor. There were reliable reports that prisons were overcrowded, and prisoners suffered poor nutrition, inadequate medical care, and a lack of facilities. The Niamey prison recently held 883 inmates in quarters built for 350, and authorities housed juvenile offenders with adult prisoners. Prisoners are housed separately by sex. Family visits are allowed, and prisoners can receive supplemental food and other items from their families. Nongovernmental organizations (NGO's) allege that families bribe guards for special treatment or privileges. NGO representatives and diplomatic personnel visited prisons during the year.
d. Arbitrary Arrest, Detention, or Exile
Although the Constitution prohibits arbitrary detention and the law prohibits detention without charge in excess of 48 hours, police violate these provisions in practice. If police fail to gather sufficient evidence within the detention period, the prosecutor gives the case to another officer, and a new 48-hour detention period begins. The seriously overloaded judicial system, in conjunction with the absence of statutory limits on pretrial confinement of indicted persons, results in excessively long detention, frequently months or longer. Pretrial confinement of up to 5 years has been reported. As many as 80 percent of persons in custody in Niamey are awaiting trial. The Government created new regional tribunals to handle civil cases on the local level. The law provides for a right to counsel, although there is only one known private defense attorney outside the capital. A defendant has the right to a lawyer immediately upon detention. The State provides defense attorneys for the indigent. Bail is available to defendants accused of crimes carrying a penalty of less than 10 years' imprisonment. Widespread ignorance of the law and lack of financial means prevent full exercise of these rights by defendants. In 1995 the Government granted amnesty to all Tuareg detainees being held for suspected or confirmed rebel activities. The Constitution prohibits exile, and there were no reports of its use.
e. Denial of Fair Public Trial
The Constitution provides for an independent judiciary, and the Supreme Court has asserted its independence. The Court showed impartiality and sound interpretation of the Constitution when ruling on disputes associated the power-sharing between the President and the Prime Minister. For example, following the January legislative elections, the Supreme Court rejected a petition filed by the President's coalition--which at the time controlled the Government--to overturn the election results, ruling that allegations of massive fraud were not substantiated. The Court also refused to rule on what it considered strictly political issues related to the cohabitation. However, human rights groups argue that family and business ties influence the lower courts and undermine their integrity. Judges sometimes fear reassignment or having their financial benefits reduced if they render a decision unfavorable to the Government, although such practices are reportedly reduced. The legal system is based on French civil law and customary law. Within the formal court system, defendants and prosecutors may appeal a verdict, first to the court of appeals, then to the Supreme Court. The court of appeals reviews questions of fact and law, while the Supreme Court reviews only the application of law and constitutional questions. A traditional chief or a customary court usually tries cases involving divorce or inheritance. Customary courts, located only in large towns and cities, are headed by a legal practitioner with basic legal education who is advised by an assessor knowledgeable in the society's traditions. The judicial actions of chiefs and customary courts are incompletely regulated by code, and defendants may appeal a verdict to the formal court system. Women have inferior legal status to men and do not enjoy the same access to legal redress (see Section 5). Civil and criminal trials are public except for security- related cases. The law allows the Government to constitute a State Security Court to try in secret high crimes against the State, but due process provisions still apply. This, however, has never been used. Defendants have the right to counsel, to be present at trial, to confront witnesses, to examine the evidence against them, and to appeal verdicts. The Constitution affirms the presumption of innocence. The law provides for counsel at public expense for minors and indigent defendants charged with crimes carrying a sentence of 10 years or more. Although lawyers comply with government requests to provide counsel, they are generally not paid by the Government. There are no political prisoners.
f. Arbitrary Interference with Privacy, Family, Home, or Correspondence
The law requires that police have a search warrant, normally issued by a judge, in order to conduct a search. Police may search without warrants when they have strong suspicion that a house shelters criminals or stolen property. However, human rights organizations report that police often conduct routine searches without warrants.
Section 2 Respect for Civil Liberties, Including:
a. Freedom of Speech and Press
The Constitution provides for freedom of speech and press, and establishes the Superior Council of Communication (CSC), which is charged with guaranteeing free and fair access to the media. The finances and existence of small newspapers were, in recent years, occasionally threatened by official government lawsuits charging libel. To date, however, no newspaper has ceased publication, and no new suits were brought this year. CSC members were elected and installed in 1994, but the organization is hobbled by a limited budget and lack of political direction. The CSC did ensure equal access to the state media for all political parties during the January legislative elections. In mid-July the CSC sought to ban the media from reporting communiques from the political parties on the political conflicts associated with the contentious cohabitation of the President and Prime Minister. Protests from media, human rights, and labor groups that the CSC was violating its mandate and imposing censorship soon led the CSC to lift the ban. There are about a dozen private French and Hausa language newspapers and additional political party weeklies or monthlies. Newspapers openly criticized the Government and provided access to publication for Tuareg and labor leaders. The Government publishes the French language daily Le Sahel and its weekend edition. Foreign journals circulate and report freely. The most important public medium is the government-operated multilanguage national radio service, which reported on opposition activities. Three independent radio stations operate in Niamey, and the Government granted a license to one independent television station. It was not yet operational. Academic freedom is respected.
b. Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and Association
The Constitution provides for freedom of assembly and association. Although the Government routinely grants permits for demonstrations, it retains the authority to prohibit gatherings in what it considers a case of tense social conditions or if sufficient advance notice (48 hours) is not provided. Under the Constitution, citizens may form political parties of any kind, except those that are based on ethnicity, religion, or region.
c. Freedom of Religion
The Constitution provides for freedom of religion, and the Government respects this freedom in practice. Most Nigeriens practice Islam. Christians (including Jehovah's Witnesses) and Baha'i practice freely. Foreign missionaries work without interference, but must be members of an internationally recognized organization and registered as a Nigerien association.
d. Freedom of Movement Within the Country, Foreign Travel, Emigration, and Repatriation
The law provides for freedom of movement. Security forces at checkpoints monitor travel of persons and the circulation of goods, particularly near major population centers, and sometimes extort bribes. The continuing fear of rebels or bandits on major routes to the north severely limits movement. Neither emigration nor repatriation are restricted. Approximately 3,600 Chadian refugees have resettled in eastern Niger. In addition, several thousand Tuaregs from Mali reportedly reside in Niger but are not officially registered as refugees. The Government cooperates with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and other humanitarian organizations in assisting refugees. There were no reports of forced repatriation of refugees.
Section 3 Respect for Political Rights: The Right of Citizens to Change Their Government
Until the military coup in January 1996, citizens had this right and exercised it in the legislative elections in 1995. Citizens 18 years and older can vote, and balloting is by secret ballot. The President is directly elected and members of the National Assembly are elected by proportional representation for 5-year terms. The Prime Minister is named by the President and is subject to approval or censure by the National Assembly. Following the collapse of a coalition government in October 1994, legislative elections in January gave majority control of the National Assembly to an opposition coalition headed by Hama Amadou. Amadou was named Prime Minister in February by the President. Women do not traditionally play a role in politics. The societal practice of husbands' voting their wives' proxy ballots effectively disenfranchises many women. This practice was widely used in the presidential and National Assembly elections in 1993, but more stringent requirements reduced the practice in 1995. Only 3 of 83 National Assembly members are women; the Government appointed 2 women to ministerial positions (Education, and Social Development, Population, and Women's Issues). Special electoral districts are designed to ensure that minority ethnic groups (Toubou, Fulani, Tuareg, Kanouri, and Arabs) are represented.
Section 4 Governmental Attitude Regarding International and Nongovernmental Investigation of Alleged Violations of Human Rights
Several independent human rights groups and associations operate freely, predominant among which are the Nigerien Association for the Defense of Human Rights, Democracy, Liberty, and Development; the National League for Defense of Human Rights; Adalci (Hausa for "dignity"); and the Network for the Integration and Diffusion of Rights in the Rural Milieu (known as "Ridd-Fitla"). There are several active women's rights groups which, however, face difficulties (see Section 5). The International Committee of the Red Cross is also active.
Section 5 Discrimination Based on Race, Sex, Religion, Disability, Language, or Social Status
The Constitution prohibits discrimination based on race, sex, religion, social origin, or ethnicity. In practice, however, there is discrimination against women, children, ethnic minorities, and disabled persons, including limited economic and political opportunities.
Domestic violence against women is widespread, although statistics are lacking. Wife beating is reportedly common, even in upper social strata. Families often intervene to prevent the worst abuses, and women may (and do) divorce because of physical mistreatment. While women have the right to seek redress in the customary or modern courts, few do so out of ignorance of the legal system, fear of social stigma, and fear of repudiation. Women's rights organizations report that prostitution is often the only economic alternative for a woman who wants to leave her husband. Despite the Constitution's provisions for women's rights, the deep-seated traditional belief in the submission of women to men results in discrimination in the political process (see Section 3), education, employment, and property rights. Discrimination is worse in rural areas, where women do much of the subsistence farming as well as child rearing and household tasks. Among the Hausa and Fulani peoples in eastern Niger, some women are cloistered, and can leave their homes only if escorted by a male and usually only after dark. Women have made modest inroads in civil service and professional employment but remain severely underrepresented. Males have certain legal rights as heads of household, while the law does not recognize divorced or widowed women, even with children, as heads of their households. The Government considered a draft family code modeled on codes in other African Muslim countries which was intended to eliminate gender bias in inheritance rights, land tenure, and child custody, as well as to end the practice of repudiation, which permits a husband to obtain an immediate divorce with no further responsibility for his wife or children. In June 1994, when Islamic associations condemned it, the Government suspended its discussion of the proposed code. Islamic militants reportedly threatened physical harm to women who supported the code. Many civil rights activists consider Islamic fundamentalism to be the greatest threat to attainment of women's rights. With the withdrawal of the draft family code and increased intimidation, several women's groups lost membership and became increasingly beleaguered. However, the recent United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women and renewed activism by the female ministers in the Government have provided a new impetus to the morale of these groups.
The Constitution provides that the State promote children's welfare. However, financial resources to do so are limited. Only about 25 percent of children of primary school age actually attend school and about 60 percent of those finishing primary school are boys. The majority of young girls are kept at home to work and rarely attend school for more than a few years, resulting in a female literacy rate of 7 percent, versus 18 percent for males. Tradition among some ethnic groups allows young girls from rural families to enter marriage agreements on the basis of which they are sent at the age of 10 or 12 years to join their husband's family under the tutelage of their mothers-in-law. There are credible reports of girls being drawn into prostitution, sometimes with the complicity of the family. Female genital mutilation, which is widely condemned by international health experts as physically and psychologically damaging to health, is practiced by several ethnic groups in the extreme west and far east. While clitoridectomy is sometimes practiced by these two groups, the most extreme form, infibulation, is not practiced.
People with Disabilities
The Constitution mandates that the State provide for people with disabilities. However, the Government has yet to implement regulations which mandate accessibility to facilities and education for those with special needs.
Ethnic minorities--Tuareg, Fulani, Toubou, Kanouri, and Arab--continue to assert that the far more populous Hausa and Djerma ethnic groups discriminate against them. The Hausa and Djerma dominate business and government. The Government has supported greater minority representation in the National Assembly and increased education and health care targeted towards them. However, nomadic peoples, such as many Tuaregs and Fulani, continue to have less access to government services.
Section 6 Worker Rights
a. The Right of Association
The Constitution provides formal recognition of workers' longstanding rights to establish and join trade unions. However, more than 90 percent of the work force is employed in the nonunionized subsistence agricultural, artisanal, and petty trading sectors. The National Union of Nigerien Workers (USTN), a federation made up of 42 unions, represents the majority of salary earners. Most are government employees: civil servants, teachers, and employees in state-owned corporations. The USTN and the affiliated teachers' union, the National Union of Nigerien Teachers (SNEN), profess political autonomy, but like most unions, have informal ties to political parties. The International Labor Organization criticized the law requiring that all union management officials be citizens, asserting that this provision serves to restrict the exercise of the right to elect representatives in full freedom. The Constitution provides for the right to strike, except by security forces and police. In 1994 the National Assembly passed a strike law specifying that labor must give notice and begin negotiations before work is stopped; that public workers must maintain a minimum level of service during a strike; that the Government can requisition workers to guarantee minimum service; and that striking public sector workers will not be paid for the time they are on strike. The latter condition already prevailed in the private sector. Prime Minister Hama Amadou's Government suspended the strike law and compensated public sector workers whose wages were reduced for striking. The USTN continues to demand that the strike law be rewritten. The USTN orchestrated four brief general strikes during the year, as well as two "dead city" days in regional capitals, to buttress salary and working condition demands. SNEN also struck for 2 weeks in September, demanding payment of wages withheld during previous strikes. All these strikes were legal. The USTN is a member of the Organization of African Trade Union Unity and abides by that organization's policy of having no formal affiliations outside the African continent. However, it enjoys assistance from some international unions, and individual unions such as the teachers' union are affiliated with international trade secretariats.
b. The Right to Organize and Bargain Collectively
In addition to the Constitution and the Labor Code, there is a basic framework agreement, negotiated by the USTN's predecessor, employers, and the Government, which defines all classes and categories of work, establishes basic conditions of work, and defines union activities. In private and state-owned enterprises, unions widely use their right to bargain collectively with management, without government interference, for wages over and above the statutory minimum, as well as for more favorable work conditions. Collective bargaining also exists in the public sector.
c. Prohibition of Forced or Compulsory Labor
The Labor Code prohibits forced or compulsory labor, except for legally convicted prisoners. There were no reports of violations.
d. Minimum Age for Employment of Children
Child labor in nonindustrial enterprises is permitted by law under certain conditions. Children under age 14 must obtain special authorization to work, and those aged 14 to 18 years are subject to limitation on hours (a maximum of 4.5 hours per day) and types of employment (no industrial work) so that schooling may continue. Minimum compulsory education is 6 years, but fewer than half of school-age children complete 6 years of education. The law requires employers to ensure minimum sanitary working conditions for children. Law and practice prohibit child labor in industrial work. Ministry of Labor inspectors enforce child labor laws. Child labor is practically nonexistent in the formal (wage) sector, although children work in the unregulated agricultural, commercial, and artisan sectors.
e. Acceptable Conditions of Work
The Labor Code establishes a minimum wage for salaried workers of each class and category within the formal sector. The lowest minimum wage is approximately $38 (cfa 20,500) per month. Additional salary is granted for each family member and for such working conditions as night shifts and required travel. Minimum wages are not sufficient to provide a decent living for workers and their families. Most households have multiple earners (largely informal commerce) and rely on the extended family for support. The legal workweek is 40 hours with a minimum of one 24-hour rest period. However, for certain occupations the Ministry of Labor authorizes longer workweeks--up to 72 hours. There were no reports of violations. The Labor Code also establishes occupational safety and health standards; Ministry of Labor inspectors enforce these standards. Due to staff shortages, however, inspectors focus on safety violations only in the most dangerous industries: mining, building, and manufacturing. Although generally satisfied with the safety equipment provided by employers, citing in particular adequate protection from radiation in the uranium mines, unions say workers should be better informed of the risks posed by their jobs. Workers have the right to remove themselves from hazardous conditions without fear of losing their jobs.
|
<urn:uuid:4d1fc605-18b6-403c-80c2-4a98c051881d>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.refworld.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/rwmain?page=topic&tocid=4565c22535&toid=4565c25f42b&publisher=&type=&coi=NER&docid=3ae6aa3b14&skip=0
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.958919
| 4,746
| 3
| 3
|
Probus (Virtual Catalog of Roman Coins)
An Online Encyclopedia of Roman Emperors
Probus (276-282 A.D.) and Rival Claimants (Proculus, Bonosus, and Saturninus)of the 280s
Robin Mc Mahon
New York University
M. Aurelius Probus was most likely born in Sirmium in 232 A.D. It is difficult to reconstruct Probus' career before he became emperor because of the unreliable nature of the account in the Historia Augusta, but it is certainly possible that he was a tribune under Valerian. Perhaps all that can be said with any reliability is that he served in the military and was on Aurelian's staff during his Eastern campaigns.[] There is a certain amount of confusion in the sources about him because of the fact that he has often been confused with a certain Tenagino Probus, who served as prefect in Egypt under Claudius II Gothicus.[]
Accession to Power
After the murder of Aurelian, the Senate chose as his successor the septuagenarian senator, Tacitus, who took up the burdens of state and headed with the army to the East. The Eruli had overrun Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia and finally Cilicia, where Tacitus, with help from his half-brother Florianus, defeated them.[] Tacitus, however, either died of an illness or was killed by his own troops; he was succeeded by Florianus.[] In the meantime, Probus had been declared Emperor by his own troops in mid-276, and prepared to meet Florianus, who was marching from the Bosporus, having broken off his victorious engagement against the Eruli. Florianus was acknowledged in Rome and was supported by Gaul, Spain, Britain, and Italy; Probus was supported by Syria, Phoenicia, Palestine and Egypt. The two fought a desultory campaign near Tarsus. With a much smaller force, Probus decided his best strategy would be to avoid a pitched battle and let the heat overcome the troops of Florianus. The latter, having reigned barely two months, was murdered by his own troops.[] Probus became sole Emperor, possibly by August 276.[]
Probus in the West: 276-279
His first order of business was to punish the murderers of Aurelian, who may have also had a hand in the murder of Tacitus.[] On the basis of numismatic evidence, Probus appears to have traveled from the east across the Propontis, and then through the provinces of Thrace, Moesia and Pannonia. It is at this time that he must have defeated the Goths because he already had the title Gothicus by 277 A.D. Shortly after he arrived at the Rhine River he made a trip to Rome to have his powers ratified by the Senate.[]
Following the death of Postumus in 258, the situation in Gaul had rapidly deteriorated and numerous bands of invaders had swept across the Rhine. In the south, the Longiones, together with the Alamanni, had advanced through the Neckar valley into Gaul. The Franks had crossed the Rhine further north. In order to meet this simultaneous threat, Probus divided his forces having his generals campaign against the Franks, while he himself fought against the Longiones and Alamanni. Both Probus and his generals were victorious; in fact, Probus even captured Semnon, the leader of the Longiones, with his son. Both groups of invaders agreed to terms and booty and prisoners were returned; in the end, Probus allowed Semnon and his son their freedom.
Probus is next reported to have fought victoriously against the Burgundians and to have secured his victory with some ingenuity. Because his forces were smaller than those of the invaders, he wanted to engage the enemy on terms as favorable as possible; the Romans were on one side of the river and the barbarians were on the other. Probus was able to induce them to cross the river by having his soldiers hurl insults at them, and being enraged, they began crossing the river. Before the barbarians were able to organize themselves, the Roman army soundly routed them. Smarting from their defeat, the enemy did not live up to their end of the treaty, with the result that, in a second battle, they were again worsted by Probus.[] The barbarians who were taken prisoner were enrolled in the Roman Army and sent to Britain.
Not content with merely defeating the barbarians along the Rhine, Probus took important steps to secure the boundary for the future. He planned and constructed a series of forts and depots on the German side of the Rhine at various crossing points, which he garrisoned with troops. Further, Probus apparently took measures to restore economic stability to Gaul by encouraging the planting of vineyards. Probus' titles Gothicus Maximus and Germanicus Maximus suggest claims to the success of his operations in the area.[]
Events in the East 279-280
The sources do not give many details of Probus's activities in Raetia and Illyricum, but Zosimus does say he repulsed an invasion of Vandals from Illyricum in a battle along a river generally identified as the Lech. In 279, theatre of operations was Lycia. Zosimus records the curious story of the adventures and death of a robber chieftain name Lydius who may be the same individual called Palfuerius in the Historia Augusta. In order to prevent further troubles, Probus constructed fortresses, and settled large groups of veterans in this area, giving them land in exchange for the promise that their sons would also serve in the legions when they were old enough.[]
Probus's Military and Economic Activities In Egypt
Meanwhile, Probus had sent his generals to Egypt, where the Blemmyes were stirring up trouble in 280; they had broken through the border, advanced up the Nile, and, in league with the city of Ptolemais, captured the city of Koptus. They were eventually expelled and order was restored by Probus' generals. Once Probus had restored order, he set about the task of a large-scale reconstruction of the dikes, canals, and bridges along the Nile, something which not been done since it had been undertaken by Augustus in the years 27-25 B.C. More specifically, the Vita Probi notes, "On the Nile, moreover, he did so much that his sole efforts added greatly to the tithes of grain. He constructed bridges and temples porticos and basilicas, all by the labour of the soldiers, he opened up many river-mouths, and drained many marshes, and put in their place grain-fields and farms"(9.3-4). The importance of this type of work cannot be underestimated since a large percentage of the food supply for Rome came from Egypt and the African provinces.[]
The Revolts of Proculus, Bonosus, and Saturninus
According to the Historia Augusta, although the Persian King, Vahram II, had made peaceful overtures, Probus had rejected these and was planning to push the war forward when he was faced with a series of revolts both in the West and East. It is difficult to place them in their exact time-frame since the sources do not agree. Nevertheless, the situation was serious enough for Probus to cancel his plans for war with Persia and hurry back to the West. On his return Probus settled large numbers of barbarians in the Empire.[] Perhaps this was done to repopulate areas which had been left abandoned by the effects of invasions and plague. This policy, which Probus did not begin, and which was continued by his successors was, however, destined to bring trouble to Rome in the future.
The writer of the Vita Probi in the Historia Augusta indicates that in 280 A.D. Proculus revolted in the vicinity of the city of Lugdunum, which had been severely dealt with by Aurelian and, for reasons not given, spurred on by this fear, had adopted a hostile attitude towards Probus. Proculus apparently had some connections to the Franks and he had hoped to rally them to his cause. They appear, however, to have handed him over to Probus when he arrived on the scene.[] Probably at the same time, Bonosus revolted. His rebellion seems to have been serious as it appears to have required considerable force to be suppressed. Bonosus, an officer in charge of the Rhine fleet, had somehow let the Germans slip over the border and burn the fleet. Fearful of retribution, he apparently took shelter in proclaiming himself emperor. He was, in spite of his lapse with the fleet, an excellent soldier. The fighting was only stopped when Bonosus, despairing of his position, hanged himself. Probus spared the lives of his sons as well as that of his wife.[]
Julius Saturninus, one of Probus 's commanders in Syria, probably seized power in the year 281. A close friend and associate of Probus, he may have been compelled to adopt the purple by his unruly troops. Although he initially rejected a request of the people of Alexandria to put on the purple, he later changed his mind and proclaimed himself Augustus. In any case, Probus planned to put down the rebellion. However, Saturninus was killed by his own troops before Probus had a chance to act.[]
The sources do not provide much in the way of material to analyze the extent of these revolts and how widespread the feeling was against Probus in the West. There are indications that the revolts were more than local affairs because inscriptions from as far away as Spain have been found where Probus's name has been erased.[]
In 281 Probus was in Rome to celebrate his victories. Although the Historia Augusta goes into great detail to describe the events of Probusís triumph and celebrations of his victories in respect to the number of animals and prisoners involved, there may be some truth to its description because Zosimus states there was a uprising which at this time required a force of soldiers to suppress. On a more substantial note, Probus completed the wall around Rome which had been begun by Aurelian.[]
Probus was too anxious to push ahead with his plans for an invasion of Persia, which had been postponed due to the revolts and unrest in the West, and, to this end, he left Rome in 282 and proceeded first to his native town of Sirmium when news came that M. Aurelius Carus, Perfect of the Guard, had been proclaimed emperor. When troops sent by Probus to quell the rebellion went over to Carus, Probus' remaining troops killed the emperor. His death occurred sometime between September or October 282.[]
Chastagnol, André. Histoire Auguste. (Paris, 1994).
Magie, D., ed. Scriptores Historiae Augustae. (Cambridge, 1982).
Paschoud, F. ed.Histoire Nouvelle [par] Zosime. (Paris, 1971).
Zonaras, Annales (12.27.). ed. M. Pinder (Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae), Bonn 1844.
Cohen, Henry. Description Historique des Monnaies Frappées Sous L'Empire Romain. (Paris & London, 1880-1892).
Grenfell, Bernard and Hunt, Arthur S. Oxyrhynchus Papyri. Vol XII (London 1916) No. 1409.
Barnes, T.D. "Some Persons in the Historia Augusta." Phoenix 26 (1972): 140ff.
R. Hanslik, "Aurelius (28)." Kl. P.. 1: col. 769.
________. "Bonosus (1)." Kl. P. 1: col. 928.
________."Proculus (8a)." RE 23: col. 75-76.
Henze, W. "Aurelius (194)." RE 2.2: col. 2516-2523.
________. "Bonosus (1)." RE 3: col. 713-714.
Jones, A.H.M., J.R. Martindale, and J. Morris. "Probus 3." The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire. (Cambridge, 1971) 1.736.
Kienast, Dietmar. Römische Kaisertabelle: Grundzüge römischen Kaiserchronologie. (Darmstadt, 1990).
Lépaulle, Emile. Étude historique sur M. Aur. Probus d'après la numismatique du Regne de Cet Empereur. (Lyon, 1884).
Lippold, A. "Saturninus (2)." Kl. P. 4: col. 1570.
Peachin, Michael. Roman Imperial Titulature and Chronology A.D. 235-284. (Amsterdam, 1990).
Pomeroy, Sarah B. "The Revolt of Saturninus." Schweizer Münzblätter 19 (May, 1969) 54-56.
Schwartz, Jacques. "L'empereur Probus et l'Egypte." Chronique d'Egypte 45 (1970), 381-386.
Stein, A. "Saturninus (6)." RE 2A: col.213ff.
________."Tenagino Probus." Klio, 29 (1936): 237-242
Syme, Ronald. Emperors' Biography: Studies in the Historia Augusta. (Oxford, 1971).
Vitucci, G. L'imperatore Probo. (Rome, 1952).
Westermann, W.L. "The Papyri and the Chronology of the Reign of the Emperor Probus." Aegyptus 1 (1920): 297-301.
Winkler, G. "Proculus (2)." Kl. P. 4: col. 1150.
[]For Probus' full name and his year of birth, see Dietmar Kienast, Römische Kaisertabelle: Grundzüge römischen Kaiserchronologie, (Darmstadt, 1990), 250; Probus' place of birth and lineage: it is unclear whether his father was a certain Maximus who rose through the ranks to become a tribune (SHA, Vita Probus, 3.1-2) or a certain Dalmatius who was a gardener (Aur. Vict., Epit., 37.1); W. Henze, RE 2.2, s.v. "Aurelius (194)," col.2517ff; Probus' early career under Valerian and subsequent emperors through Aurelian: SHA, Vita Probus, 5.6-7, 6.1ff; Kienast sifts through the farrago of data in the SHA for the reader and points out what material is worth believing (Römische Kaisertabelle, 250).
For the most recent full treatment of Probus' reign, see G. Vitucci, L'imperatore Probo. Rome, 1952; for a more concise and recent treatment, see R. Hanslik, Kl. P. 1, s.v. "Aurelius (28)," col. 769.
[]The confusion in the Historia Augusta may be intentional since Probus is the hero and his biographer certainly wanted to attribute as many valiant deeds to him as he could. The problem is carefully gone over by A. Stein ("Tenagino Probus," Klio, 29 , 237-242). Stein gives documentary evidence for the career of T. Probus as well as the name Tenagino (which he says is Etruscan in origin). The confusion is also noted in, among other sources, A.H.M Jones (The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, s.v. "Probus (3)," 1.736), T. Barnes, ("Some persons in the Historia Augusta," Phoenix, 26,156), and Kienast (Römische Kaisertabelle, 250).
[]Zosimus, 1.63.1-64.3; SHA, Vita Taciti, 13.1ff; Zonar., 12.28 ([Bonn ed.], 2.608.5ff); for an introduction to the events surrounding Tacitus' campaign in the east and its sources, see F. Paschoud, Zosime, Histoire Nouvelle, (Paris, 1971), 55, 172, n. 92 , and David Magie, Scriptores Historiae Augustae, (Cambridge, 1982), 3.318, n.3. The exact family relationship between Tacitus and Florian is unclear.
[]Zosimus, 1.63.1-2; Zonar., 12..28 (2.608.13-22); SHA, Vita Tacitus, 13.5.
[]Zonar., 12 29(2.608. 23-609.6); SHA, Vita Taciti, 13.6-14.2, Vita Probi, 14.1-2; Zosimus, 1.63-64; Henze, RE 2.2, col. 2519; David Magie, Scriptores Historiae Augustae, 3. 320 n. 4, 3.321, n.5 ; for a discussion of the chronology of these events, see F. Paschoud, Zosime , 1.172-3, nn. 92-93.
[]Kienast, Römische Kaisertabelle , 250; Peachin, 46-117; David Magie, Scriptores Historiae Augustae, 3.354-355, n.2; ; Henze, RE 2.2, col. 2519; Vitucci, Probo, 24ff; Paschoud provides a general survey of the scholarship on the dating of Probus' sole emperorship (Zosime, 1.172ff, n. 93).
[]Zosimus indicates that Probus invited them to a banquet and, while observing the proceedings from above, then gave a signal for the soldiers to attack them.(1.65.1-2) It seems, however, somewhat implausible that they could be so gullible. In Zonaras, Probus rebukes them in person and later put them to death.(12.29[2.609.1ff]). The author of the Vita Probi (13.2-3) in the Historia Augusta indicates some retribution was taken upon the murderers. Probus did not, however, take any action against the followers of Florianus (ibid., 13.3 ); F. Paschoud, Zosime , 1.57, n.94; Henze, RE 2.2, col. 2519.
[]E. Lépaulle, Étude historique sur M. Aur. Probus d'après la numismatique du Regne de Cet Empereur, (Lyon, 1884), 52-53; Henze, RE, 2.2, col. 2520; Henry Cohen, Description Historique des Monnaies Frappées Sous L'Empire Romain, (Paris and London, 1880), Adventus series for Probus, 29-73. Probus' title Gothicus: CIL, 11.1178b; SHA, Vita Probi, 13.5; David Magie, Scriptores Historiae Augustae, 3.363, n.5
Probus' trip to Rome is discussed by Henze (RE, 2.2, col. 2520) and Lépaulle (54).
[]The fullest treatment of Probus' wars with the Germans remains that of Zosimus (1.67-68); the account of these events in the SHA (Vita Probi, 13.5-14.7) is not as detailed as that in Zosimus. Zonaras' narrative (12.29 [2.609.20ff]) is cursory at best; Henze, RE, 2.2, col. 2520-2521; the sources and the secondary literature are treated in depth by Paschoud (Zosime,. 1.58, 173, n. 96, 1.59, 175, n. 97); the chronology of these operations is discussed by Vitucci (Probo, 48ff).
[]Probus' use of prisoners of war as troops: Zosimus, 1.68.3; Henze, RE, 2.2, col. 2521; Probus' fortifications along the Rhine: SHA, Vita Probi,14.1-7; Henze, RE, 2.2, col. 2520ff; vineyards in Gaul: SHA, Vita Probi,18.8; Henze, RE, 2.2, col. 2521.
Probus" victory titles: Gothicus Maximus, infra, n. 8;.Germanicus Maximus, C.I.L., 8.11931; his victories are reflected in his coinage by such legends as Temporum Felicitas (Cohen 728-731), Securitas Perpetua (ibid, 625-627), and Victoria Germanica (ibid.,754-777); Henze, RE, 2.2, col. 2521.
[]Kienast dates events in Asia Minor, Egypt, and Illyricum to 279-280 A.D. (Römische Kaisertabelle, 250); Zosimus, 1.69.1ff; SHA, Vita Probi, 16.1ff; the story of Lydius/ Palfuerius, Zosimus, 1.69.1-70, SHA, Vita Probi, 16.4-7; Henze, RE, 2.2, col.2521; Paschoud, Zosime,. 1.60, 175ff, n. 98; settlement of veterans: SHA, Vita Probi, 16.6; Henze, RE, 2.2, col.2521.
[]Revolts in Egypt: Zosimus, 1.71.1; SHA, Vita Probi, 17.2, 6; Henze, RE, 2.2, 2522; reconstruction of dikes, canals, and bridges along the Nile: SHA, Vita Probi, 9.2; David Magie, Scriptores Historiae Augustae, 3.351-352, n.3 ; the reconstruction of the dikes can by dated from P. Oxy. 12.409; for a full discussion of the papyrus and its dating, see W.L.Westermann, "The Papyri and the Chronology of the Reign of the Emperor Probus", Aegyptus, 1 (1920), 297-301. On Probus in Egypt, see J. Schwartz, "L'empereur Probus et l'Egypte" in Chronique d'Egypte 45 (1970), 381-386.
[]Probus' peace with the Persians (SHA, Vita Probi, 18.1) may have been a stop-gap action since he eventually planned to go to war with them (ibid., 20.1); he may have made peace in order to deal with the usurpers in the west (ibid., 18.4; Probus and his dealings with the Persians: Henze, RE, 2.2, col.2522ff; David Magie, Scriptores Historiae Augustae, 3.371, n. 5); Probus' settlement of barbarians within the boundaries of the empire: SHA, Vita Probi, 18.2, Zosimus, 1.17.1.
[]Chronology of Proculus' revolt: Kienast, Römische Kaisertabelle 252; sources that deal with his revolt: SHA, Vita Probi, 18.5, Vita Firmi, 12.1, 13.1, 4; G. Winkler, Kl. P. 4, s.v. "Proculus (2)," 1150; R. Hanslik, RE 23, s.v. "Proculus (8a)," col. 75-76; Henze, RE, 2.2, col.2522; although Kienast accepts the outline of events spelled out in the SHA, he rightly believes that many of the details included about Proculus' life should be considered dubious (Römische Kaisertabelle , 252-253); Barnes rejects all the details of Proculus' career contained in the SHA (Phoenix, 26 , 168).
[]Chronology of Bonosus' revolt: Kienast, Römische Kaisertabelle , 251-252; sources that deal with his revolt: SHA, Vita Probi, 18.5, Vita Firmi, 14-15; W. Henze, R.E. 3, s.v. "Bonosus (1)," col. 713-714; ibid., RE, 2.2, col.2522; R. Hanslik, Kl. P. 1, s.v. "Bonosus (1)," col. 928; other sources mention Bonosus' revolt in passing: Aur. Vict., Caes. 37.3, Epit., 37.2; Eutrop., 9.17.1; although Kienast accepts the outline of events spelled out in the SHA and apparently the details about his command on the Rhine and his suicide (15.1-3), he rejects the details contained in 14.1-5 of the Vita Firmi (Römische Kaisertabelle, 251-252); Barnes rejects all the details of Bonosus' career contained in the SHA (Phoenix, 26 , 150ff).
[]Chronology of Saturninus' reign: Kienast, Römische Kaisertabelle , 253; sources that treat Saturninus' reign: Zosimus, 1.66.1 (where Saturninus is described as a Mauretanian); Zonar., 12.29 (2.609.10ff); SHA, Vita Probi, 18.4, Vita Firmi, 7-9; Although Kienast rejects Saturninus' career which is spelled out in the Vita Firmi at 9.5, he appears to accept the fact that he was dux limitis Orientalis under Aurelian and governor of Syria under Probus (Römische Kaisertabelle , 253), aspects of his career not accepted by Barnes (Phoenix, 26 , 171ff); Saturninus' reign is discussed by Vitucci (Probo, 58ff), Lippold (Kl. P. 4, s.v. "Saturninus (2)," col. 1570), Stein (R.E. 2A, s.v. "Saturninus (6)," col.213ff), Henze (RE 2.2, col. 2522), and Pomeroy (Sarah B. Pomeroy, "The Revolt of Saturninus", Schweizer Münzblätter, 19 (1969), 54-56); a good survey of the literature and discussion of the chronology of the revolt is provided by Paschoud (Zosime, 1.57, 173, n. 95). See also A. Chastagnol, "Sur la chronologie des années 275-285" in Festschrift Jean Lafaurie (Paris, 1980), 75-82.
[]There are several inscriptions where Probus' name was later erased; see C.I.L., 2.3738, 8.100, 1353, 10.3728; Henze, RE 2.2, col. 2522-2523.
[]Dating of Probus' triumph: Henze, RE 2.2, col. 2523; description of triumph: SHA, Vita Probi, 19.1-8; uprising at Rome: Zosimus, 1.73.1; the wall of Aurelian: Ibid., 1.49.2; Henze, RE 2.2, col. 2523; F. Paschoud, Zosime , 1.43,163-164, n.77.
[]Zosimus, 1.71.4-5; Zonar.,12.29 (2.609.10ff); Magie, Scriptores Historiae Augustae, 3.378-9, n. 1; according to the SHA (Vita Probi, 21.1-4), a tumult occurred and the exasperated soldiers pursued Probus to an "ironclad" lookout tower and he was killed there. Magie notes, " The same account of his death is given in Aur[elius] Victor, Caes. 37,4 and Eutropius, ix, 17, 2; on the other hand, this version [preserved in Zosimus and Zonaras}...seems more credible....Probus' death took place after 29 Aug., 282 since there are Alexandrian coins of his eighth year, which began on that day...."(Scriptores Historiae Augustae, 3.378-9, n. 1); Paschoud discusses the chronological problems in the sources surrounding the dating of Probus' death (Zosime, 1.62, 177-178, n.101).
Copyright (C) 1999, Robin Mc Mahon. This file may be copied on the condition that the entire contents, including the header and this copyright notice, remain intact.
Comments to: Robin Mc Mahon.
Updated:8 July 1999
For more detailed geographical information, please use the DIR/ORBAntique and Medieval Atlas below. Click on the appropriate part of the map below to access large area maps.
Return to the Imperial Index
|
<urn:uuid:51876aee-19d6-48c4-9b82-2fe16b1f497f>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.roman-emperors.org/probus.htm
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.926742
| 6,389
| 3.03125
| 3
|
Andy WarholArtist / Filmmaker
Born: 6 August 1928
Died: 22 February 1987 (complications from gallbladder surgery)
Birthplace: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Best known as: The pop artist who painted a Campbell's Soup can
Name at birth: Andrew Warhola
Andy Warhol began as a commercial illustrator in New York, doing artwork for ads and magazines in the 1940s and 1950s. Eventually he crossed from commercial work to fine art, blurring the line between the two along the way. In the early 1960s his huge and colorful silk-screen renderings of banal objects like Coke bottles and a Campbell's Soup can were hugely popular and established him as the leader of the so-called Pop Art movement. (His multi-color, multi-image portrait of Marilyn Monroe is another famous image from this era.) By the mid-1960s Warhol had become an icon of the psychedelic generation; he made strange and lengthy experimental movies, held famous gatherings in "The Factory," his Manhattan studio, and surrounded himself with a court of fellow artists and adoring fans. He also worked closely with the experimental rock group The Velvet Underground and (in 1969) founded the influential celebrity magazine Interview. Warhol's attitude was summed up in part in his statement, "In the future everyone will be world-famous for fifteen minutes."
Extra credit: Warhol was shot and critically wounded by an acquaintance, Valerie Solanas, in June of 1968. The incident was the basis of the 1996 film I Shot Andy Warhol and Lou Reed's 1990 song "I Believe"... In May of 2007 Warhol's Green Car Crash (Green Burning Car I) was sold at auction for $71.7 million, the most ever paid for one of his paintings; six months earlier a Warhol record was set with the sale of Mao for $17.4 million.
Copyright © 1998-2013 by Who2?, LLC. All rights reserved.
More on Andy Warhol from Fact Monster:
Information Please® Database, © 2007 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
|
<urn:uuid:bbdf3701-98a9-45d0-a064-bf50fc2687b7>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.factmonster.com/biography/var/andywarhol.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.970468
| 427
| 2.5625
| 3
|
ACCOUNTANCY, ECONOMICS, BUSINESS
These are the three subjects which make up the business studies section of the Leaving Certificate Syllabus.
Higher and Ordinary Level
Production and consumption, economic systems and economic thought, demand and supply, price and output, factor incomes, notional income, money and banking, government’s economic role, inflation, international trade and exchange rates, and economic growth and development.
Economics is the more analytical of the three business subjects. The course is designed to deal with the basic concepts and principles of Economics on a national and international basis. Although a more abstract subject than the other two, Economics has great practical application in that it helps students to understand the working of the economy around them. The theory on the course is closely related to current topical issues such as inflation, balance of payments problems and national wage negotiations. In nearly every newspaper one picks up today there are extensive articles on some aspect of the economy. Current political issues today largely the economic issues of today. A study of economics is probably a study of one of the most topical subjects on the course. If you are interested in current affairs and politics, economics is a good subject to study, it is also a useful base for most administrative, clerical and management jobs. It is useful for Social Science courses and careers, for Business Studies; Commerce or Economic courses for Management Marketing and Advertising; for Civil Service and Local Government jobs. Many professional bodies - e.g. Accountants, Banking, Insurance have Economics as a subject in their examinations and it is useful to have studied it in school.
Is a more specialised subject and is difficult to take up in FifthYear without having done Business Studies in Second and Third Year, but nevertheless, some students have taken it up in Fifth Year and have done well.
The aim of the course is to develop a general understanding of accounts and finance. For example it deals with the Accounts of Clubs and voluntary bodies as well as Sole Traders and Limited Companies. If you want to follow a course in Commerce or Business Studies in a Third Level College, it is not strictly necessary to have done accountancy in school, however please pay attention to the “note” below. The Honours course covers most of the Accounting course for the first exam of the Professional Accountancy bodies.
Note: It is important that students are aware that Accountancy is an important module of any business course, at Third Level, and that students can find that it is extremely difficult for them and that they are at a huge disadvantage when doing a Business Course, if they have not done at least Ordinary Level Accounting in the Leaving Certificate. I would recommend that students who have any queries on this matter should speak to Mr. Lawlor who has direct experience of lecturing in Business at Third Level.
Business gives and excellent general knowledge of the whole business, commercial area. No matter what area you choose to work in after school, the knowledge that Business Organisation gives you can only be of help. Accountancy and Economics are specialised areas within the commercial area, and some topics may overlap with topics in Business which gives insight into the commercial world and shows the relationship between various aspects of business:
Section A: People in Business
Introduction to people in business; people and their relationships in business; conflicting interests and how they are resolved.
Section B: Enterprise
(Unit 2) Enterprise
Introduction and definition of enterprise, entrepreneurs and enterprise skill.
(Unit 3) Managing 1
Introduction and definition of management, managers and management skills and management activities.
(Unit 4) Managing 2
Household and business manager, human resource management, changing role of management, and monitoring the business.
(Unit 5) Business in Action
Identifying opportunities, marketing, getting started and expansion.
SECTION C: ENVIRONMENT
(Unit 6) Domestic environment, categories of industry, types of business organisation, community development, business and responsibilities of business.
(Unit 7) International environment, introduction to the international trading environment, European Union, and international business.
|
<urn:uuid:314fc569-6179-49d2-9994-500992bf22f9>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.mariancollege.ie/index.php/academics1/irish-3
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.948048
| 834
| 2.875
| 3
|
Cabinet Coolers are used predominantly to cool small enclosed areas. This can be in a number of industrial areas including:
A carbon-processing factory has an electrical control cabinet which is sited in a problem area. The issues included the machine continually tripping out due to overheating which led to costly downtime and Carbon ingression from the ambient air being drawn in by the fans which caused the electrical circuitry to short out. Conventional electric cabinet cooling fans couldn’t be used due to the high ambient factory temperature. They also breached the integrity of EMC shielding. A Cabinet Cooler system allowed a supply of clean dry compressed air to cool the unit safely. It also maintained the integrity of EMC shielding. The sealed air of this Cabinet Cooler also removed the risk of contaminants, entering the cabinet. This prevented further electrical short outs, keeping the internal circuitry of the cabinet clean and reducing the level of maintenance.
|
<urn:uuid:871aa628-62cc-4d55-9c16-15e7a0bf4866>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.meech.com/en/applications/air-technology-8/cabinet-coolers/cabinet-&-panel-cooling
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.94003
| 186
| 2.53125
| 3
|
The Man in the Iron Mask
The Man in the Iron Mask is a name given to a prisoner arrested as Eustache Dauger in 1669. He was held in the custody of the same jailer for 34 years. His identity has been thoroughly discussed because no one ever saw his face, which was hidden by a mask of either black velvet cloth or iron. What facts are known about this prisoner are based mainly on correspondence between his jailer and his superiors in Paris.
The first surviving records of the masked prisoner are from July 1669, when Louis XIV’s minister sent a letter to the governor of the prison of Pignerol informing him that a prisoner named Eustache Dauger was due to arrive in the next month or so. Historians have noted that the name Eustache Dauger was written in a different handwriting than the rest of the text, suggesting that while a clerk wrote the letter under dictation, a third party, very likely the minister himself, added the name afterwards.
The governor was instructed to prepare a cell with multiple doors, one closing upon the other, to prevent anyone from the outside listening in. The governor himself was to see Dauger only once a day in order to provide food and whatever else he needed. Dauger was also to be told that if he spoke of anything other than his immediate needs he would be killed. According to many versions of this legend, the prisoner wore the mask at all times.
The prison at Pignerol was used for men who were considered an embarrassment to the state and usually held only a handful of prisoners at a time, some of which were important and wealthy and granted servants. One prisoner, Nicolas Fouquet’s valet was often ill and so permission was given for Dauger to serve Fouquet on the condition that he never met with anyone else. The fact that Dauger served as a valet is an important one for whilst Fouquet was never expected to be released, other prisoners were, and might have spread word of Dauger’s existence.
In time the governor was offered positions at other prisons and each time he moved Dauger went with him until he died in 1703 and was buried under the name of Marchioly. Though she may merely have been repeating rumours In 1711, King Louis’s sister-in-law stated in a letter that the prisoner had “two musketeers at his side to kill him if he removed his mask”.
In 1771, Voltaire claimed that the prisoner was the older, illegitimate brother of Louis XIV but other theories include that he was a Marshal of France; Richard Cromwell; or François, Duke of Beaufort; an illegitimate son of Charles II, amongst others.
|
<urn:uuid:5af191fa-96d2-46fe-b0e2-49e3518fca91>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://theoddmentemporium.tumblr.com/tagged/French
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.988229
| 570
| 3.296875
| 3
|
One of the more interesting things about programming for the "real world" is that you get to see a lot of practical applications for the math you learned (or didn’t) in school. Every few years I find I have to refresh my memory on certain things and, at least so far, it usually comes back pretty quickly.
- Evaluating the Performance of Shared WAN Links for Data Center Backup and Disaster Recovery
- Demystifying Unified Communications
- Real Time Analytics: A Case Study Webinar
- Banking on Results: Turn an Avalanche of Data into Actionable Insight
It isn't surprising to forget how to do a double integral or a non-homogeneous differential equation. But even something as seemingly innocuous as an average can turn out to be more complicated than you think. Quick. What's the average of 60 and 30?
I'm going to guess you said 45. But a better answer might be to ask what 60 and 30 represent. If they are successive measurements from an A/D converter measuring battery voltage, for example, then 45 is the right answer. That's the arithmetic mean:
What if I turned it into a word problem: When I go to the beach (it is that time of year) I like to get there in a hurry. So I drive 60 miles per hour. When I go home, I'm tired and I don't want to go home so I drive back at 30 miles per hour. What’s my average speed? Raise your hand if you think the answer is 45.
Given that I can't see if you raised your hand, I'm going to pretend that you did. The average of two speeds is not a straight average. The simple reason is that even though the distance is the same, I will spend twice as much time going home as I did driving to the beach.
The formula is simple but it is easier to think about it intuitively. What I really want is miles per hour. So the real question is how many miles did I go in how many hours. Assume that driving to the beach takes me
T hours. Since I go home at half the speed, I will spend
2*T hours going home. The distance, call it
D, is the same in both directions. So:
float D=T*60; // it also equals 2*T*30; float speed=2*D/(3*T); // distance coming and going, and the total time travelled
Of course, that's specific to our example. The general form is to take the regular average of the reciprocal of the numbers, multiply it by the reciprocal of the count, and then take the reciprocal of the result. With a little algebra you wind up with:
unsigned count; // set externally double data; // set externally unsigned i; double avg=0.0; for (i=0;i<count;i++) avg+=1.0/data[i]; avg=count/avg;
If you don't feel like compiling that, the answer is 40 miles per hour. That makes sense. I live about 30 minutes away from the Galveston beach, at 60 miles an hour. So that's 30 miles. It takes me a half hour to get there and an hour to get back (at 30 MPH). Therefore, I went 60 miles in an hour and a half. That's 40 MPH average.
By the way, in person last week I told someone this was the geometric mean, but that just shows that I am getting forgetful. It is actually the harmonic mean. The geometric mean is a different formula.
In some cases, it is easier to not even do that much math. For example, if you are picking up three redundant sensors, sometimes it is easier to just sort the numbers and pick the one in the middle. That's called the median. Suppose two sensors agree that you have 100 counts, but the other one shorted to ground and is reading 0. Picking the middle value will give you one of the good values. If the two good ones don't agree, you'll still get one of the values.
If you have a lot of values, you probably would sort (although you can also figure out a way to stop sorting once you find the middle if you have a very large data set). If you have just a few values, some nested
if statements will do the trick.
You might think that exhausts the whole topic of averages, but it really doesn't even scratch the surface! Don't believe me? Have a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average#Types and don’t ask me what you do with a winsorized mean — I have no idea.
For completeness, here's a general form for the "regular" average:
double avg=0.0; unsigned count,i; // count set externally double data; // array of count items for (i=0;i<count;i++) avg+=data[i]; avg/=count;
I'm guessing you haven't forgotten that. Or at least I haven't. Not yet, anyway.
|
<urn:uuid:be5c9864-c012-474c-85da-b537a9871d6f>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.drdobbs.com/embedded-systems/mean-spirited/232901125
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.952228
| 1,062
| 2.734375
| 3
|
Sleep not resting on eight-hour pattern
'The body seems to have a way of adjusting to the amount of sleep we require.' Photo: Jessica Hromas
SLAVISH adherents to the eight-hours-a-night sleep rule can relax; new research suggests we all have our own sleep patterns that change according to how much shut-eye we get.
For the first time, a team from the University of Sydney has been able to track people's nightly sleep patterns, finding sleep naturally increases and decreases throughout the week.
''The body seems to have a way of adjusting the amount of sleep we require,'' study leader Chin Moi Chow said. ''If you incur a sleep debt, your body will signal a need to catch up on extra sleep.''
Her study found each person had a different sleep cycle, with some taking only a couple of days to catch up, and some taking up to 18 days. Unlike some previous research, Dr Chow did not find the participants made up for lost sleep at the weekend. Rather, her study's 13 young men, who had their sleep measured over two weeks using a measurement device worn on their arms, made up the sleep at different times, getting up to two hours more sleep on some nights than others.
This suggested the timing of individual cycles was intrinsic rather than something each person chose, she wrote in the journal Nature and Science of Sleep.
The president of the Australasian Sleep Association, Shantha Rajaratnam, said the study suggested the body has an ongoing mechanism for dealing with the amount of sleep we get.
''Over time, it is like you are withdrawing money from the bank, you build up a debt, but eventually, you have to pay back that debt, and after that you can start withdrawing again,'' he said. But he warned it would be dangerous for people to assume they no longer needed eight hours each night.
|
<urn:uuid:02b3e71f-6f08-4945-b25c-ac6fbdd2d9df>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.smh.com.au/national/sleep-not-resting-on-eighthour-pattern-20130129-2dizr.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.968262
| 385
| 2.859375
| 3
|
When the constitutional convention question is put on the ballot in 2017 as required by Article XIX, Section two of the New York State Constitution, the voters of New York will again choose whether to have a convention to revise or replace their Constitution. There are many issues related to the Forest Preserves of New York State that may lead delegates to consider whether Article XIV, Section one’s “forever wild” provision should be amended or eliminated. With the increasing popularity of the local farming movement in and around the Adirondack and Catskill Parks, delegates could consider amendments that clarify the responsibilities that Article XIV currently demands of state and local agencies on protection of the Forest Preserves. The importance of the health of the Forest Preserve for drinking water quality and quantity is clearly articulated in Article XIV and its legislative history, and agricultural practices can have a major impact on water resources. However, if the goal is to ensure the wild nature of the Forest Preserve, legislative measures may be the best avenue. Such legislation should require that agencies adopt measures and policies that mandate and encourage farming practices in and around the blue lines to assure the future integrity of the Forest Preserve and the future viability of agriculture in the Adirondacks and Catskills.
Atkin, Hilary, "Article XIV, Agriculture, and Keeping New York’s Wilderness Wild" (2010). Pace Law School Student Publications. Paper 14.
|
<urn:uuid:961ad6c7-1cae-4a0d-994a-184f68dc2b07>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://digitalcommons.pace.edu/lawstudents/14/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.90636
| 287
| 2.75
| 3
|
Commemorated on November 13th
St John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople
St John (407 AD), who since the sixth century has been called Chrysostom or golden mouthed, was born in Antioch of a noble Christian family between 344 and 354 AD. He was brought up by his widowed mother and received the best education which Antioch could offer. He studied philosophy under Andragathius, rhetoric under the celebrated Libanius, and theology under Diodore of Tarsus. He became a monk by 375 and lived in a mountain community not far from Antioch. He nearly ruined his health through austerities and the damp conditions of his cave hermitage. He returned to Antioch in 381, was ordained deacon by Bishop Meletius, and served the local church until his ordination as priest in 386 by Bishop Flavian, the successor of Meletius. He then became the bishop's special assistant, particularly for the temporal care and spiritual instruction of the numerous Christian poor of the city.
St John soon distinguished himself a preacher and commentator on the Epistles of St Paul and the Gospels of Matthew and John (386-397). He insisted in the Antiochene tradition on the literal meaning of Holy Scripture and its practical application to the problems of the time. Hence much of his work has relevance today also.
In 397 AD, after the death of Archbishop Nectarius of Constantinople, Emperor Arcadius wished St John to be chosen in his place. An envoy was sent to secretly detach John from Antioch, for fear of popular opposition. Theophilus, Archbishop of Alexandria consecrated him on February 398. John was the somewhat unwilling recipient of episcopal consecration at the hands of the at least equally unwilling Theophilus.
As Metropolitan of Constantinople, John immediately set about a much needed reform of the court, clergy and laity. He reduced the customary spending of his own household in favour of the poor and hospitals. He enacted severe discipline for the clergy and attacked the behaviour, the clothes, and the make-up of the women at court. He also criticised those Christians who had been to the races on Good Friday and to the games in the stadium on Holy Saturday.
In 401 AD, at a synod in Ephesius, he deposed six bishops, with the result that all forces opposed to him, at home and abroad, consolidated in a united effort to destroy him. The Empress Eudoxia regarded his drive for moral reform as a personal attack on herself. Meanwhile Theophilus made common cause with the empress and organised a cabal of 36 bishops, which assembled at Chalcedon in 403, as the Synod of the Oak.
The synod condemned St John unheard. He was charged on a series of more or less false charges, was also accused of treason for calling Eudoxia 'Jezebel', was dropped from his see, and asked for his banishment. Arcadius exiled John to Bithynia, but an earthquake in Constantinople terrified him and he recalled John the next day. John resumed his plain speaking, which again enraged Eudoxia; Theophilus intrigued against him with appeals to an Arian council of Antioch, and John was again banished, this time for resuming the duties of a see from which he had been 'lawfully deposed'. This took place on June 9, 404 AD; although his own people and many bishops supported him, he was exiled, first to Curusus in Armenia, where he remained three years, and then to Pontus, where he was killed by enforced travel in bad weather, on foot and in spite of repeated pleas of exhaustion. He died on September 14, 407 AD. Thirty-one years later his body was taken back to Constantinople and reburied in the church of the Apostles.
|
<urn:uuid:76deef40-0de8-4b07-9972-f2b291c54630>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.greekorthodox.org.au/general/orthodoxchristianity/saints.php?saint_id=814
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.98795
| 786
| 3.15625
| 3
|
Brachydactyly (BD) refers to shortening of the fingers or toes due to underdevelopment of the bones in the hands or feet.
The word brachydactyly comes from the Greek terms brachy, meaning "short," and daktylos, meaning "digit." This term is used to describe the hands and feet of people who have shortened digits (fingers or toes). The digits themselves may be shorter than normal, or they may appear small because of shortening of the other bones in the hands or feet. This shortening occurs when one or more of the hand or foot bones fail to develop or grow normally.
BD is usually isolated, meaning that it is not associated with any other medical problems. BD may occur along with other physical differences or health problems, often as part of a "syndrome."
BD occurs in a variety of patterns, depending upon which hand or foot bones are affected and how severely they are shortened. It is important to know some basic information about the bone structure of the hands and feet in order to understand the various patterns of BD. Beyond the wrist and ankle, each hand and foot contains 19 tube-shaped (tubular) bones in a specific arrangement. For purposes of orientation, the fingers and toes are numbered from one (thumb or great toe) to five (little finger or little toe). When a fist is made, the bones in the hand that extend from the wrist to the knuckles are called metacarpals. There are five metacarpals, one for the thumb (first metacarpal) and each finger. Each thumb and finger contains several bones called phalanges. A single one of these bones is called a phalanx. The phalanges are arranged end to end and are separated by joints. The thumb has two phalanges and each finger has three phalanges. The phalanges within a particular finger are named according to their location. The phalanges closest to the metacarpals are called the "proximal" phalanges, those in the middle of the fingers are called the "middle" phalanges, and those at the ends of the fingers are called the "distal" or "terminal" phalanges. The thumbs have only proximal and distal phalanges.
The foot bones are very similar to the hand bones. Like the metacarpals, there are five metatarsal bones that extend from the ankle to each of the toes. The bones in the toes are also called phalanges. There are two phalanges in the great toe and three phalanges in each of the other toes.
BD can involve any of the phalanges, metacarpals, and metatarsals in many different combinations. The shortening of these bones may range from mild to severe. Sometimes certain bones are completely absent. Shortening of the bones may occur in one, several, or all of the digits. For a particular finger or toe, the entire digit may be short or only a particular phalanx may be underdeveloped. When BD involves the distal phalanges, the fingernails or toenails may be small or absent. A digit may also be of normal length but appear short due to shortening of its corresponding metacarpal or metatarsal bone. Reduced length of a metacarpal bone is often easiest to appreciate when the hand is held in a fist.
BD can also occur with other abnormalities of the hands and feet. When a phalanx is abnormally shaped, the finger or toe may be bent to one side (clinodactyly). Sometimes the digits have webbing between them (syndactyly). The phalanges may also be fused together at their ends (symphalangism). This makes it difficult to bend a digit at the joint where the phalanges are fused.
BD frequently occurs in characteristic patterns that can be inherited through families. These patterns are classified as particular types of BD, depending upon which bones and which digits of the hands and/or feet are shortened. There are several classification systems used to describe these different types of BD. The system that is used most frequently was developed by Dr. Julia Bell in 1951 and is called the "Bell Classification."
There are five main types of BD in the Bell Classification, which are designated types A through E. Their major features are as follows:
- In type A, the middle phalanges of one, several, or all of the fingers and/or toes are shortened. This form of BD is further divided into types A1, A2, and A3. In type A1, the middle phalanges of all digits and the proximal phalanges of the thumbs and great toes are shortened. People with this form of BD generally have hands and feet that appear small with relatively equal shortening of all digits. In type A2, the middle phalanges of the index finger and second toe are shortened and often abnormally shaped. In type A3, the middle phalanx of the fifth finger is shortened and this finger often bends toward the fourth finger. Several other forms of BD type A have also been described.
- In type B, the distal phalanges and nails of the fingers and/or toes are small or absent. The middle phalanges may also be shortened, and the tips of the thumbs and/or great toes may be broad or have a "duplicated" (double) appearance. In this type of BD, the digits typically look as though their tips have been amputated.
- In type C, the middle phalanges of all of the fingers may be shortened, but the fourth finger is least affected and is often the longest finger. The index and middle fingers may be bent toward the fourth finger. The first metacarpal bone can also be short, making the thumb appear small.
- In type D, the distal phalanges of the thumbs and/or great toes are shortened and broad.
- In type E, the metacarpals and/or metatarsals are shortened. The fourth and fifth metacarpals and metatarsals are most commonly shortened, but any of them may be affected.
Many different genetic signals are required for normal formation of the hand and foot bones. BD is usually caused by abnormalities in these genetic blueprints. Sometimes BD can be caused by exposure to drugs or medications taken during pregnancy. Problems with
The types of BD in the Bell Classification are inherited in families from one generation to the next. Their pattern of inheritance is called autosomal dominant. This means that they are caused by abnormalities in only one copy of a gene from a particular gene pair. In fact, one form of BD (type A1) was the first human condition that was recognized to have this type of inheritance pattern. Autosomal dominant forms of BD can be inherited by a child of either sex from a parent of either sex. The gene change causing BD may also occur in a particular person for the very first time within a family. Each child born to a person having autosomal dominant BD has a 50% chance of also having BD. However, the degree of hand or foot abnormalities can be very different between people with the same type of BD, and even among members of the same family.
Until recently, nothing was known about the genes that cause BD. This has changed with the identification of the genes that cause two forms of autosomal dominant BD (types B and C) in the past several years. The gene causing BD type C was the first to be identified in 1997. The name of this gene is the "Cartilage Derived Morphogenetic Protein 1" gene, abbreviated as CDMP1. This gene is located on the long arm of chromosome 20 (at location 20q11.2) and provides an important genetic signal to the developing bones of the limbs. Most people with BD type C have abnormalities in one of their two copies of this gene.
The gene causing BD type B was identified in 2000. This gene is called ROR2 and is located on the long arm of chromosome 9. Like CDMP1, ROR2 also provides an important genetic blueprint for the normal development of bones. BD type B is caused by alterations in one copy of this gene.
One interesting feature of the CDMP1 and ROR2 genes is that they can also cause other medical conditions with bone problems that are much more severe than BD. This happens when both copies of either gene are altered in the same person. The genes for other types of autosomal dominant BD have not yet been discovered.
BD occurs in people of many different racial and ethnic backgrounds. It is difficult to determine the overall frequency of BD in the general population because many people who have BD never seek medical attention for their shortened digits. Types A3 and D are the most common forms of BD, but their frequencies vary widely between groups of people from different backgrounds. For example, type A3 has been found in fewer than 1% of Americans, compared to 21% of Japanese people. Because isolated forms of BD are generally inherited as autosomal dominant traits, they should affect males and females in equal numbers. However, several types of BD may be more common in females.
Signs and symptoms
BD is often evident at birth, but may also develop or become more obvious during childhood. It usually does not cause pain or other physical symptoms. In fact, many people who have BD consider it to be a normal family trait rather than a medical condition. When BD does cause problems, they are usually related to the size, appearance, or function of the hands or feet. The altered appearance of the hands or feet may make persons with BD feel self-conscious. Shortening of the digits may also make it difficult to find comfortable shoes or gloves. In its severe forms, BD may affect a person's ability to grip objects or participate in certain jobs or leisure activities. Hand function may be especially affected when BD is associated with clinodactyly, syndactyly, or symphalangism. When BD is associated with significant deformities of the feet, walking may be difficult or painful.
In some cases, BD occurs in combination with other physical changes or medical problems. For instance, people with autosomal dominant forms of BD are often shorter than expected and may have other alterations of the skeleton besides short digits. Some people with BD type E also have hypertension (high blood pressure). BD may also be present as one finding in a number of different genetic conditions (syndromes).
The diagnosis of BD is made when a person has shortening of the digits due to lack of normal growth and development of one or more bones in the hands or feet. When the bones are significantly shortened, this is easily noticed in the appearance of the hands and feet. When the shortening is mild, it may only be apparent on x rays. Some people may not realize that they have BD until told by a physician who has carefully examined their hands and feet.
X rays of the hands and feet are used to look at the bones in detail. A special analysis of the hand x rays called a "metacarpophalangeal profile" is often performed for people with BD. This involves measuring the length of each hand and finger bone. These measurements are then compared to the normal range of sizes for each bone. The metacarpophalangeal profile is used to identify particular patterns of BD. X rays may also reveal other bone changes that help to pinpoint a specific type of BD or another genetic condition. If a person has short stature or other bone changes, a series of x rays of the entire skeleton (skeletal survey) may be recommended.
Since BD is often inherited, detailed information about a person's relatives can be very important in evaluating someone with BD. A geneticist may wish to examine other family members or obtain x rays of their hands and feet. Because BD can occur in a variety of genetic conditions, a geneticist evaluating someone with BD will usually review his or her medical history and perform a detailed physical examination. The presence of other physical differences or medical problems may indicate that the brachydactyly is part of another condition rather than an isolated finding.
Laboratory tests are usually not helpful in diagnosing BD when it is an isolated finding. Although the genes for BD types B and C are known, testing of these genes is not routinely available or usually necessary. If a person with BD has signs or symptoms of another underlying condition, certain laboratory tests may be recommended. These tests may identify other associated medical problems or help to pinpoint a specific diagnosis.
Treatment and management
Many people who have BD are perfectly healthy and do not require any specific treatment for their hands and feet. When use of the hands is impaired, physical therapy or hand exercises may improve grip strength or flexibility. Evaluation by an orthopedist or physical therapist may also be helpful for people who have trouble walking comfortably due to bone changes in the feet. Surgery can be used to lengthen the hand or foot bones in some severe forms of BD. Surgery may also be helpful for people who have significant clinodactyly, syndactyly, or symphalangism. For most people with BD, however, surgery is not needed. If BD is associated with other medical problems, such as hypertension, specific treatments for these problems may be indicated.
Isolated BD generally has an excellent prognosis. When BD is associated with other health problems or is part of another condition, the overall prognosis depends upon the nature of the associated condition.
Temtamy, Samia A., and Victor A. McKusick. The Genetics of Hand Malformations. New York: Alan R. Liss, 1978.
Winter, Robin M., Richard J. Schroer, and Leslie C. Meyer. "Hands and Feet." In Human Malformations. Vol. 2, edited by Roger E. Stevenson, Judith G. Hall, and Richard M. Goodman. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993, pp. 828–43.
Armour, C. M., D. E. Bulman, and A. G. W. Hunter. "Clinical and Radiological Assessment of a Family with Mild Brachydactyly Type A1: The Usefulness of Metacarpophalangeal Profiles." Journal of Medical Genetics 37 (April 2000): 292–296.
Oldridge, M., et al. "Dominant Mutations in ROR2, Encoding an Orphan Receptor Tyrosine Kinase, Cause Brachydactyly Type B." Nature Genetics 24 (March 2000): 275–78.
Polinkovsky, A., et al. "Mutations in CDMP1 Cause Autosomal Dominant Brachydactyly Type C." Nature Genetics 17 (September 1997): 18–19.
Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man (OMIM). <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Omim/>.
David B. Everman, MD
|
<urn:uuid:cf46ebbf-56cc-45eb-b488-8b30748eb571>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.healthline.com/galecontent/brachydactyly
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.945841
| 3,108
| 3.65625
| 4
|
Of or pertaining to geography. Geographical distribution. See Distribution. Geographic latitude (of a place), the angle included between a line perpendicular or normal to the level surface of water at rest at the place, and the plane of the equator; differing slightly from the geocentric latitude by reason of the difference between the earth's figure and a true sphere. Geographical mile. See Mile. Geographical variation, any variation of a species which is dependent on climate or other geographical conditions.
Origin: L. Geographicus, Gr., cf. F. Geographique.
(01 Mar 1998)
|Bookmark with:||word visualiser||Go and visit our forums|
|
<urn:uuid:f1c303b0-a563-446e-ae33-4f0502422d3a>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.mondofacto.com/facts/dictionary?geographic
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.784796
| 139
| 2.9375
| 3
|
What's new/recent at Mythical Ireland
A guide to the latest additions and updates to the website 2004
Aurora Borealis display: A moderate display of the Northern Lights occured over Ireland on November 9th. Mythical Ireland took the opportunity to get some nice photographs of the phenomenon in a historical setting. Added: November 10th, 2004.
New on-line shop: You can now buy limited edition Mythical Ireland prints, the High Man poster and other gifts at our on-line shop. Added: November 3rd, 2004.
Newgrange video: Exclusive footage from inside Newgrange, showing the long walk up the passage, some of the megalithic art inside and the huge corbelled ceiling. Video is 1.45 megabytes. Added: October 29th, 2004.
The Arctic Fox: The Shackleton of his day, Leopold McClintock (1819-1907) from County Louth was the best-known Arctic explorer of the Victorian era. He undertook four major voyages, epic sledge journeys and was first to bring definite information on the lost Franklin party. Added: October 14th, 2004.
Newgrange solstice draw: Nearly 24,000 people applied to get into Newgrange to see the Winter Solstice phenomenon this year. However, just 50 names were drawn from a hat at the Brú na Bóinne Visitors' Centre. Added: October 4th, 2004.
Carrowmore & UNESCO?: BBC journalist Malcolm Billings, malking a documentary for the BBC World Service, said in Sligo that the megalithic monuments of Knocknarea and Carrowmore should be brought to the attention of UNESCO's World Heritage Committee. Added: September 30th, 2004.
Fourknocks photographs: A new gallery of photograhps from inside the megalithic passage-tomb of Fourknocks has been posted on Mythical Ireland. Fourknocks, although small, is a very significant site which shares a unique Winter Solstice link with Newgrange. Added: September 2004.
Archaeologists concerned: A letter has been issued by leading archaeologists and historians to express their concerns regarding the National Road Authoritys (NRA) plan to construct a section of the M3 toll-motorway through the Tara-Skreen valley. Added: September 29th, 2004.
Loughcrew discoveries: One of Irelands most noted archaeological landscapes has yielded new secrets to an innovative airborne survey. Using aerial lasers and computer imaging, an Anglo-Irish team has found an even richer concentration of sites than previously known. Added: September 29th, 2004.
Charlize and Tara: TheOscar-winning actress Charlize Theron is supporting a campaign against the construction of the M3 motorway, which skirts the Hill of Tara. Theron is to have a specially commissioned portrait of herself auctioned in order to raise funds for the campaign against the Clonee-Kells motorway through the Tara Skryne valley. Added: September 27th, 2004.
Knowth section overhauled: The Knowth section, which provides a comprehensive overview of this 5,300-year-old megalithic passage tomb, has been revamped, with the new navigation system and colour scheme. Also contains a section with photos of most of the megalithic art at Knowth. Changed: September 26th, 2004.
Milky Way and megaliths: A photo of the Milky Way galaxy taken near Newgrange. The Boyne river gets its name from the Milky Way. In old Irish, the Milky Way was "Bealach na Bó Finne", the "Way of the Bright Cow". The word Boyne is from Irish, Bó Finne, the Bright Cow. Added: September 24th, 2004.
Atlantis map in Knowth? A four-feet granite stone basin in the Eastern passage of Knowth may be engraved with a map of the city of Atlantis, as Plato described it. Added: September 24th, 2004.
Jupiter images: My first effort to take images of Jupiter using a new technique which involves putting a web camera into the eyepiece of a telescope! Added: September 16th, 2004.
Heritage controversy: A cross-border heritage group, the Battle for the Boyne, has hit out at what it calls the Irish Government's "hypocrisy" in holding heritage week at a time when, they say, numerous heritage sites are under threat. Added: September 8th, 2004.
Atlantis debate continues: Dr. Ulf Erlingsson, the Swedish academic who claims Ireland is Atlantis, has reacted to skepticism of his theory, saying no criticism has yet been valid. Added: September 8th, 2004.
Atlantis was NOT in the Atlantic Ocean: this dissertation on Atlantis by two authors explains why Atlantis is not in the Atlantic, as popularly believed. (File type: Microsoft Word | HTML- 2,642 words). Added: September 2nd, 2004.
Was Ireland the lost city of Atlantis? The mythical land of Atlantis, thought to have plunged into the sea and given the Atlantic Ocean its name, may actually have been the island of Ireland, with the Hill of Tara as its capital, according to a new book. Added: August 7th, 2004.
Slieve Gullion: This mountain, which is mentioned many times in myth, has two cairns on its summit, either side of the "Lake of Sorrow". A collection of photographs, and some information, about this mythical mountain. Added: August 2004.
Myths and Movies: A new Forum area where visitors can talk about Irish myths and their influence on the movies, especially Lord of the Rings and Star Wars. Added: August 2004.
Tara success: An Evening of Stone at the Hill of Tara to celebrate the Festival of Lughnasa last Friday turned out to be a bigger success than the organisers had anticipated. August 4th, 2004.
Forum updated: Problems caused to the Forum section when Mythical Ireland was hacked in June have been rectified (hopefully!). New posts and members have been added and are now visible on the index page. August 2nd, 2004.
Excavations near Knowth: An enigmatic series of earthworks near the world-famous megalithic site at Knowth may have been the resting place of the ancient Kings of Brega, recent excavations have revealed. Added July 2004.
The High Man lecture: a comprehensive talk explaining some aspects of the fascinating "High Man" theory, which postulates that the ancient people of the Boyne Valley area created a giant warrior figure to mimic the warrior of the sky, Orion. Added July 26th 2004.
Art of Kerem: some beautiful digital fantasy artworks created on a computer by Kerem Gogus, who is inspired by the green fields of Ireland and the heavens, among other things. Added July 2004.
Celtic Astrology: Did the Celts study the influence of the stars and heavenly bodies on their daily lives? We know the ancient people studied the heavens, but was this purely observational astronomy or did it go further. Searles O'Dubhain breaks the ice with this dissertation. Added July 2004.
Skull and Crossbones: This symbol can be found on old gravestones in Ireland. Some are in Tipperary, some in Kildare and also Meath. But what do they mean? And why does the symbol vary so widely from place to place? Added July 2004.
Threat to High Cross: Muiredach's Cross, one of the finest examples of a High Cross in Ireland, dating to the 10th Century, is not adequately protected, according to a local group. Added: May 16th, 2004.
My Gallery: A new collection of images - to be expanded on an ongoing basis - covering every conceivable theme connected with Ireland. Each photograph can be clicked on to bring up an enlargement. Added: April 23rd, 2004.
Alan Shepard: There is a remarkable story behind the up-and-down career of American astronaut Alan Shepard, who died in 1998 and who's autograph I have. He was the first American in space - beaten by Soviet Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin by just 21 days - and was the fifth man to walk on the Moon. He very nearly ended up on the doomed Apollo 13 mission, but was forced off the crew list when he developed a bad ear problem. Added: April 12th, 2004.
BRAND NEW WEBSITE: 101 Facts About Newgrange: a website within a website, making good use of php to deliver dynamic content, but written to minimise download times. This section is a veritable feast of information about Ireland's foremost ancient monument. Sections include mythology of Newgrange, megalithic art, kerbstones, astronomy and Fact 101. Added: Late March 2004.
Stonehenge Wallpapers: Three Stonehenge wallpapers, including one exclusive to Mythical Ireland showing sunrise over the ancient stones, were added to the Ballynahattin page. Added: March 2004.
New Free Wallpapers: Two new wallpapers, featuring the Aurora Borealis over the Boyne Cable Bridge and the Muiredach's Cross at Monasterboice, Co. Louth, were added to the already busy wallpaper backgrounds section. Added: March 2004.
The High Man: A completely new section of Mythical Ireland, the first section of the website created with.php to allow for more dynamic content, was added. This section presents a new theory by Anthony Murphy and Richard Moore that a huge warrior figure in the ancient road system of Louth and Meath may have been an ancient representation of the constellation Orion. Added: February 25th, 2004.
New fonts added: Including Star Wars, Star Trek, Jurassic Park and others. Added: March 2004.
The Mythical Ireland Forum: now visitors to Mythical Ireland can interact with each other and discuss matters of interest and relevance to the website. This completely new section is also done with php. Added: Early Feb, 2004.
Ireland's Stonehenge: A huge Irish monument once dubbed Ireland's "Stonehenge", may at one time have been a "school of astronomy", where ancient skywatchers studied the risings of various heavenly bodies during the year. The ancient ceremonial enclosure, at Ballynahattin just north of Dundalk, Co. Louth, was recorded by Thomas Wright in 1758 in his 'Louthiana', a survey of castles, antiquities and ancient remains of County Louth. Added: 24th January 2004.
|
<urn:uuid:abff1bac-1e4c-4f5c-8dcd-436ff11ee7db>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.mythicalireland.com/whatsnew2004.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.952999
| 2,205
| 2.515625
| 3
|
THE WIZARD OF OZ
"The great Oz has spoken! Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain! I am the great and powerful Wizard of Oz!"
In refreshing contrast to the impenetrable writings of economists, the classic fairytale The Wizard of Oz has delighted young and old for over a century. It was first published by L. Frank Baum as The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in 1900. In 1939, it was made into a hit Hollywood movie starring Judy Garland, and later it was made into the popular stage play The Wiz. Few of the millions who have enjoyed this charming tale have suspected that its imagery was drawn from that most obscure and tedious of subjects, banking and finance. Fewer still have suspected that the real-life folk heroes who inspired its plot may have had the answer to the financial crisis facing the country today!
The economic allusions in Baum's tale were first observed in 1964 by a schoolteacher named Henry Littlefield, who called the story "a parable on Populism," referring to the People's Party movement challenging the banking monopoly in the late nineteenth century.1 Other analysts later picked up the theme. Economist Hugh Rockoff, writing in the Journal of Political Economy in 1990, called the story a "monetary allegory."2 Professor Tim Ziaukas, writing in 1998, stated:
"The Wizard of Oz" . . . was written at a time when American society was consumed by the debate over the "financial question," that is, the creation and circulation of money. . . . The characters of "The Wizard of Oz" represented those deeply involved in the debate: the Scarecrow as the farmers, the Tin Woodman as the industrial workers, the Lion as silver advocate William Jennings Bryan and Dorothy as the archetypal American girl.3
The Germans established the national fairytale tradition with Grimm's Fairy Tales, a collection of popular folklore gathered by the Brothers Grimm specifically to reflect German populist traditions and national values.4 Baum's tale did the same thing for the American populist (or people's) tradition. The Wizard of Oz has been called "the first truly American fairytale."5 It was all about people power, manifesting your dreams, finding what you wanted in your own backyard. According to Littlefield, the march of Dorothy and her friends to the Emerald City to petition the Wizard of Oz for help was patterned after the 1894 march from Ohio to Washington of an "Industrial Army" led by Jacob Coxey, urging Congress to return to the Greenback system initiated by Abraham Lincoln. The march of Coxey's Army on Washington began a long tradition of people taking to the streets in peaceful protest when there seemed no other way to voice their appeals. As Lawrence Goodwin, author of The Populist Moment, described the nineteenth century movement to change the money system:
[T]here was once a time in history when people acted. . . . [F]armers were trapped in debt. They were the most oppressed of Americans, they experimented with cooperative purchasing and marketing, they tried to find their own way out of the strangle hold of debt to merchants, but none of this could work if they couldn't get capital. So they had to turn to politics, and they had to organize themselves into a party. . . . [T]he populists didn't just organize a political party, they made a movement. They had picnics and parties and newsletters and classes and courses, and they taught themselves, and they taught each other, and they became a group of people with a sense of purpose, a group of people with courage, a group of people with dignity.6
Like the Populists, Dorothy and her troop discovered that they had the power to solve their own problems and achieve their own dreams. The Scarecrow in search of a brain, the Tin Man in search of a heart, the Lion in search of courage actually had what they wanted all along. When the Wizard's false magic proved powerless, the Wicked Witch was vanquished by a defenseless young girl and her little dog. When the Wizard disappeared in his hot air balloon, the unlettered Scarecrow took over as leader of Oz.
The Wizard of Oz came to embody the American dream and the American national spirit. In the United States, the land of abundance, all you had to do was to realize your potential and manifest it. That was one of the tale's morals, but it also contained a darker one, a message for which its imagery has become a familiar metaphor: that there are invisible puppeteers pulling the strings of the puppets we see on the stage, in a show that is largely illusion.
Money in the Land of Oz
The 1890s were plagued by an economic depression that was nearly as severe as the Great Depression of the 1930s. The farmers lived like serfs to the bankers, having mortgaged their farms, their equipment, and sometimes even the seeds they needed for planting. They were charged so much by a railroad cartel for shipping their products to market that they could have more costs and debts than profits. The farmers were as ignorant as the Scarecrow of banking policies; while in the cities, unemployed factory workers were as frozen as the Tin Woodman from the lack of a free-flowing supply of money to "oil" the wheels of industry. In the early 1890s, unemployment had reached 20 percent. The crime rate soared, families were torn apart, racial tensions boiled. The nation was in chaos. Radical party politics thrived.
In every presidential election between 1872 and 1896, there was a third national party running on a platform of financial reform. Typically organized under the auspices of labor or farmer organizations, these were parties of the people rather than the banks. They included the Populist Party, the Greenback and Greenback Labor Parties, the Labor Reform Party, the Antimonopolist Party, and the Union Labor Party. They advocated expanding the national currency to meet the needs of trade, reform of the banking system, and democratic control of the financial system.7
Money reform advocates today tend to argue that the solution to the country's financial woes is to return to the "gold standard," which required that paper money be backed by a certain weight of gold bullion. But to the farmers and laborers who were suffering under its yoke in the 1890s, the gold standard was the problem. They had been there and done it and knew it didn't work. William Jennings Bryan called the bankers' private gold-based money a "cross of gold." There was simply not enough gold available to finance the needs of an expanding economy. The bankers made loans in notes backed by gold and required repayment in notes backed by gold; but the bankers controlled the gold, and its price was subject to manipulation by speculators. Gold's price had increased over the course of the century, while the prices laborers got for their wares had dropped. People short of gold had to borrow from the bankers, who periodically contracted the money supply by calling in loans and raising interest rates. The result was "tight" money – insufficient money to go around. Like in a game of musical chairs, the people who came up short wound up losing their homes to the banks.
The solution of Jacob Coxey and his Industrial Army of destitute unemployed men was to augment the money supply with government-issued United States Notes. Popularly called "Greenbacks," these federal dollars were first issued by President Lincoln when he was faced with usurious interest rates in the 1860s. Lincoln had foiled the bankers by funding the government with U.S. Notes that did not accrue interest and did not have to be paid back to the banks. The same sort of debt-free paper money had financed a long period of colonial abundance in the eighteenth century, until King George forbade the colonies from issuing their own currency. The money supply had then shrunk, precipitating a depression that led to the American Revolution.
To remedy the tight-money problem that resulted when the Greenbacks were halted after Lincoln's assassination, Coxey proposed that Congress should increase the money supply with a further $500 million in Greenbacks. This new money would be used to redeem the federal debt and to stimulate the economy by putting the unemployed to work on public projects.8 The bankers countered that allowing the government to issue money would be dangerously inflationary. What they failed to reveal was that their own paper banknotes were themselves highly inflationary, since the same gold was "lent" many times over, effectively counterfeiting it; and when the bankers lent their paper money to the government, the government wound up heavily in debt for something it could have created itself. But those facts were buried in confusing rhetoric, and the bankers' "gold standard" won the day.
The Silver Slippers: The Populist Solution
to the Money Question
The Greenback Party was later absorbed into the Populist Party, which took up the cause against tight money in the 1890s. Like the Greenbackers, the Populists argued that money should be issued by the government rather than by private banks. William Jennings Bryan, the Populists' loquacious leader, gave such a stirring speech at the Democratic convention that he won the Democratic nomination for President in 1896. Outgoing President Grover Cleveland was also a Democrat, but he was an agent of J. P. Morgan and the Wall Street banking interests. Cleveland favored money that was issued by the banks, and he backed the bankers' gold standard. Bryan was opposed to both. He argued in his winning nomination speech:
We say in our platform that we believe that the right to coin money and issue money is a function of government. . . . Those who are opposed to this proposition tell us that the issue of paper money is a function of the bank and that the government ought to go out of the banking business. I stand with Jefferson . . . and tell them, as he did, that the issue of money is a function of the government and that the banks should go out of the governing business. . . . [W]hen we have restored the money of the Constitution, all other necessary reforms will be possible, and . . . until that is done there is no reform that can be accomplished.
He concluded with these famous lines:
You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.9
Since the Greenbackers' push for government-issued paper money had failed, Bryan and the "Silverites" proposed solving the liquidity problem in another way. The money supply could be supplemented with coins made of silver, a precious metal that was cheaper and more readily available than gold. Silver was considered to be "the money of the Constitution" although the Constitution only referred to the "dollar," because the dollar was understood to be a reference to the Spanish milled silver dollar coin then in common use. The slogan of the Silverites was "16 to 1": 16 ounces of silver would be the monetary equivalent of 1 ounce of gold. Ounces is abbreviated oz, hence "Oz." The Wizard of the Gold Ounce (Oz) in Washington was identified by later commentators as Marcus Hanna, the power behind the Republican Party, who controlled the mechanisms of finance in the administration of President William McKinley.10 (Hanna was reportedly admired by Karl Rove, who followed the model as political adviser to President George Bush Jr.11)
Frank Baum, the journalist who turned the politics of his day into The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, marched with the Populist Party in support of Bryan in 1896. He is said to have had a deep distrust of big-city financiers. But when his dry goods business failed, he bought a Republican newspaper, which had to have a Republican message to retain its readership.12 That may have been why the Populist message was so deeply buried in symbolism in his famous fairytale. Like Lewis Carroll, who began his career writing uninspiring tracts about mathematics and politics and wound up satirizing Victorian society in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Baum was able to suggest in a children's story what he could not say in his editorials. His book contained many subtle allusions to the political and financial issues of the day. The story's inspirational message was evidently a product of the times as well. Commentators trace it to the theosophical movement, of which Baum was an active member.13 Newly-imported from India, it held that reality is a construct of the mind. What you want is already yours; you need only to believe it, to "realize" it or "make it real."
Looking at the plot of this familiar fairytale, then, through the lens of the contemporary movements that inspired it . . . .
An Allegory of Money, Politics
and Believing in Yourself
The story began on a barren Kansas farm, where Dorothy lived with a very sober aunt and uncle who "never laughed" (the 1890s depression that hit the farmers particularly hard). A cyclone came up, carrying Dorothy and the house into the magical world of Oz (the American dream that might have been). The house landed on the Wicked Witch of the East (the Wall Street bankers and their man Grover Cleveland), who had kept the Munchkins (the farmers and factory workers) in bondage for many years.
For killing the Wicked Witch, Dorothy was awarded magic silver slippers (the Populist silver solution to the money crisis) by the Good Witch of the North (the North was then a Populist stronghold). In the 1939 film, the silver slippers would be transformed into ruby slippers to show off the cinema's new technicolor abilities; but the monetary imagery Baum suggested was lost. The silver shoes had the magic power to solve Dorothy's dilemma, just as the Silverites thought that expanding the money supply with silver coins would solve the problems facing the farmers.
Dorothy wanted to get back to Kansas but was unaware of the power of the slippers on her feet, so she set out to the Emerald City to seek help from the Wizard of Oz (the apparently all-powerful President, whose strings were actually pulled by financiers concealed behind a curtain).
"The road to the City of Emeralds is paved with yellow brick," she was told, "so you cannot miss it." Baum's contemporary audience, wrote Professor Ziaukas, could not miss it either, as an allusion to the gold standard that was then a hot topic of debate.14 Like the Emerald City and the Great and Powerful Oz himself, the yellow brick road would turn out to be an illusion. In the end, what would carry Dorothy home were silver slippers.
On her journey down the yellow brick road, Dorothy was first joined by the Scarecrow in search of a brain (the naive but intelligent farmer kept in the dark about the government's financial policies), then by the Tin Woodman in search of a heart (the factory worker frozen by unemployment and dehumanized by mechanization). Littlefield commented:
The Tin Woodman . . . had been put under a spell by the Witch of the East. Once an independent and hard working human being, the Woodman found that each time he swung his axe it chopped off a different part of his body. Knowing no other trade he "worked harder than ever," for luckily in Oz tinsmiths can repair such things. Soon the Woodman was all tin. In this way Eastern witchcraft dehumanized a simple laborer so that the faster and better he worked the more quickly he became a kind of machine. Here is a Populist view of evil Eastern influences on honest labor which could hardly be more pointed.
The Eastern witchcraft that had caused the Woodman to chop off parts of his own body reflected the dark magic of the Wall Street bankers, whose "gold standard" allowed less money into the system than was collectively owed to the banks, causing the assets of the laboring classes to be systematically devoured by debt.
The fourth petitioner to join the march on Oz was the Lion in search of courage. According to Littlefield, he represented the orator Bryan himself, whose roar was mighty like the king of the forest but who lacked political power. Bryan was branded a coward by his opponents because he was a pacifist and anti-imperialist at a time of American expansion in Asia. The Lion became entranced and fell asleep in the Witch's poppy field, suggesting Bryan's tendency to get side-tracked with issues of American imperialism stemming from the Opium Wars. Since Bryan led the "Populist" or "People's" Party, the Lion also represented the people, collectively powerful but entranced and unaware of their strength.
In the Emerald City, the people were required to wear green-colored glasses attached by a gold buckle, suggesting green paper money shackled to the gold standard. To get to her room in the Emerald Palace, Dorothy had to go through 7 passages and up 3 flights of stairs, an allusion to the "Crime of '73," the congressional Act that changed the money system from bimetallism (paper notes backed by both gold and silver) to an exclusive gold standard. The Crime of '73 proved to all Populists that Congress and the bankers were in collusion.15
Dorothy and her troop presented their requests to the Wizard, who demanded that they first vanquish the Wicked Witch of the West, representing the McKinley/Rockefeller faction in Ohio (then considered a Western state). The financial powers of the day were the Morgan/Wall Street/Cleveland faction in the East (the Wicked Witch of the East) and this Rockefeller-backed contingent from Ohio, the state of McKinley, Hanna, and Rockefeller's Standard Oil cartel. Hanna was an industrialist who was a high school friend of John D. Rockefeller and had the financial backing of the oil giant.16
Dorothy and her friends learned that the Witch of the West had enslaved the Yellow Winkies and the Winged Monkeys (an allusion to the Chinese immigrants working on the Union-Pacific railroad, the native Americans banished from the northern woods, and the Filipinos denied independence by McKinley). Dorothy destroyed the Witch by melting her with a bucket of water, suggesting the rain that would reverse the drought, and the financial liquidity that the Populist solution would bring to the land. As one nineteenth century commentator put it, "Money and debt are as opposite in nature as fire and water; money extinguishes debt as water extinguishes fire."17
When Dorothy and her troop got lost in the forest, she was told to call the Winged Monkeys by using a Golden Cap she had found in the Witch's cupboard. When the Winged Monkeys came, their leader explained that they were once a free and happy people; but they were now "three times the slaves of the owner of the Golden Cap, whosoever he may be" (the bankers and their gold standard). When the Golden Cap fell into the hands of the Wicked Witch of the West, the Witch had made them enslave the Winkies and drive Oz himself from the Land of the West.
Dorothy used the power of the Cap to have her band of pilgrims flown to the Emerald City, where they discovered that the "Wizard" was only a smoke and mirrors illusion operated by a little man behind a curtain. A dispossessed Nebraska man himself, he admitted to being a "humbug" without real power. "One of my greatest fears was the Witches," he said, "for while I had no magical powers at all I soon found out that the Witches were really able to do wonderful things."
If the Wizard and his puppet were Marcus Hanna and William McKinley, who were the Witches they feared? Behind the Wall Street bankers were powerful British financiers, who funded the Confederates in the Civil War and had been trying to divide and conquer America economically for over a century. Patriotic Americans had regarded the British as the enemy ever since the American Revolution. McKinley was a protectionist who favored high tariffs to keep these marauding British free-traders out. When he was assassinated in 1901, no conspiracy was proved; but some suspicious commentators saw the invisible hand of British high finance at work.18
The Wizard lacked magical powers but was a very good psychologist, who showed the petitioners that they had the power to solve their own problems and manifest their own dreams. The Scarecrow just needed a paper diploma to realize he had a brain. For the Tin Woodman, it was a silk heart; for the Lion, an elixir for courage. The Wizard offered to take Dorothy back to Kansas in his hot air balloon, but the balloon took off before she could get on board. Dorothy and her friends then set out to find Glinda the Good Witch of the South, who they were told could help Dorothy find her way home.
On the way they faced various challenges, including a great spider that ate everything in its path and kept everyone unsafe as long as it was alive. The Lion (the Populist leader Bryan) welcomed this chance to test his new-found courage and prove he was indeed the King of Beasts. He decapitated the mighty spider with his paw, just as Bryan would have toppled the banking cartel if he had won the Presidency.
The group finally reached Glinda, who revealed that Dorothy too had the magic tokens she needed all along: the Silver Shoes on her feet would take her home. But first, said Glinda, Dorothy must give up the Golden Cap (the bankers' restrictive gold standard that had enslaved the people).
The moral also worked for the nation itself. The economy was deep in depression, but the country's farmlands were still fertile and its factories were ready to roll. Its entranced people merely lacked the paper tokens called "money" that would facilitate production and trade. The people had been deluded into a belief in scarcity by defining their wealth in terms of a scarce commodity, gold. The country's true wealth consisted of its goods and services, its resources and the creativity of its people. Like the Tin Woodman in need of oil, all it needed was a monetary medium that would allow this wealth to flow freely, circulating from the government to the people and back again, without being perpetually drained into the private coffers of the bankers.
Sequel to Oz
The Populists did not achieve their goals, but they did prove that a third party could influence national politics and generate legislation. Although Bryan the Lion failed to stop the bankers, Dorothy's prototype Jacob Coxey was still on the march. In a plot twist that would be considered contrived if it were fiction, he reappeared on the scene in the 1930s to run against Franklin D. Roosevelt for President, at a time when the "money question" had again become a burning issue. In one five-year period, over 2,000 schemes for monetary reform were advanced. Needless to say, Coxey lost the election; but he claimed that his Greenback proposal was the model for the "New Deal," Roosevelt's plan for putting the unemployed to work on government projects to pull the country out of the Depression. The difference was that Coxey's plan would have been funded with debt-free currency issued by the government, on Lincoln's Greenback model. Roosevelt funded the New Deal with borrowed money, indebting the country to a banking cartel that was surreptitiously creating the money out of thin air, just as the government itself would have been doing under Coxey's plan without accruing a crippling debt to the banks.
After World War II, the money question faded into obscurity. Today, writes British economist Michael Rowbotham, "The surest way to ruin a promising career in economics, whether professional or academic, is to venture into the 'cranks and crackpots' world of suggestions for reform of the financial system."19 Yet the claims of these cranks and crackpots have consistently proven to be correct. The U.S. debt burden has mushroomed out of control, until just the interest on the federal debt now threatens to be a greater tax burden than the taxpayers can afford. The gold standard precipitated the problem, but unbuckling the dollar from gold did not solve it. Rather, it caused worse financial ills. Expanding the money supply with increasing amounts of "easy" bank credit just put increasing amounts of money in the bankers' pockets, while consumers sank further into debt. The problem proved to be something more fundamental: it was in who extended the nation's credit. As long as the money supply was created as a debt owed back to private banks with interest, the nation's wealth would continue to be drained off into private vaults, leaving scarcity in its wake.
Today's monetary allegory goes something like this: the dollar is a national resource that belongs to the people. It was an original invention of the early American colonists, a new form of paper currency backed by the "full faith and credit" of the people. But a private banking cartel has taken over its issuance, turning debt into money and demanding that it be paid back with interest. Taxes and a crushing federal debt have been imposed by a financial ruling class that keeps the people entranced and enslaved. In the happy storybook ending to the tale, the power to create money is returned to the people, and abundance returns to the land. But before we get there, the Yellow Brick Road takes us through the twists and turns of history and the writings and insights of a wealth of key players. We're off to see the Wizard . . . .
|
<urn:uuid:9da1df8c-cdba-4862-a697-aa42df287dbe>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.webofdebt.com/excerpts/chapter-1.php
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.98148
| 5,272
| 3.390625
| 3
|
Apache processes requests in phases (e.g. read the request, parse headers, check access, etc.). These phases can be implemented by functions called handlers. Traditionally, handlers are written in C and compiled into Apache modules. Mod_python provides a way to extend Apache functionality by writing Apache handlers in Python. For a detailed description of the Apache request processing process, see the Apache API Notes, as well as the Mod_python - Integrating Python with Apache paper.
To ease migration from CGI, a standard mod_python handler is provided that simulates the CGI environment allowing a user to run legacy scripts under mod_python with no changes to the code (in most cases).
|
<urn:uuid:533acd75-df30-45b8-8410-551b15df28da>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://modpython.org/live/current/doc-html/intr-flexibility.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.852075
| 139
| 2.546875
| 3
|
Downloads for Solar Electricity
Our sun provides us with an abundance of clean and renewable solar energy. Solar energy can be converted into electricity by utilizing proven and robust technologies. With increased awareness of the environmental, health, and security impacts related to the burning of fossil fuels, it's clear that generating more of our electricity from solar energy is becoming a wiser choice every day.
Recently Added Downloads
San Francisco is habitat for 800,000 people – meeting needs for space to work, play, and learn; for food, water, and air; for community with local flora and fauna. SF Environment provides support for urban agriculture and forestry and green buildings, helping residents and businesses harness environmental opportunities.
|
<urn:uuid:190d88d2-a979-4f0a-a1eb-eeb69ec9e90e>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.sfenvironment.org/energy/renewable-energy/solar/solar-electricity/downloads
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.92878
| 139
| 2.515625
| 3
|
Dutch respondents claim to spend slightly more time than the average European respondent on gathering political information via television, radio or newspapers. Nevertheless, the broader public does not seem to be well-informed on a broad range of government policies. This is due not to a lack of information, as there are abundant information sources, and thresholds to accessing information are low. As many people find political information emanating from The Hague complicated and/or uninteresting, they often fail to pay attention to it. A recent study elaborates on this issue. Four types of citizens are distinguished regarding their degree of political involvement: “wait-and-see” citizens (25%), impartial citizens (17%), dependent citizens (23%) and active citizens (35%). Active citizens show the highest motivation to become actively involved in public debate and – if possible – decision-making.
Although variation is found across citizen-types concerning political involvement, it is also necessary to reflect on trends concerning the entirety of Dutch citizens. In 2010, the Council of Public Administration pointed to an unacceptably deep “cleavage” between politics and society. This is due, however, not only to inaction among citizens. The Netherlands’ vertically organized political institutions do not create the conditions needed to establish new connections with citizens, who operate horizontally. This also applies to the media, which plays a key role in improving how citizens frame their opinions.
At the same time, Dutch society is generally characterized as featuring robust civic activity due to the presence of several active political groups. Members of these groups are usually very well-informed, although their knowledge is often focused on specific areas of government policy. Nonetheless, relatively few Dutch citizens participate actively in political parties, excepting religious parties. Membership in political parties is decreasing and comprises only 2.5% to 3% of the electorate.
SGI national report the Netherlands 2009.
Rob-RFv, Vertrouwen op democratie, Den Haag, 2010.
I. Verhoeven, Burgers tegen beleid: een analyse van dynamiek in politieke betrokkenheid, dissertatie, UvA, 2009.
|
<urn:uuid:93451bef-cdc6-4abb-a3c0-dd80cd3a9ed7>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.sgi-network.org/index.php?page=indicator_quali&indicator=M9_1&pointer=ISL
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.928061
| 439
| 2.6875
| 3
|
Linda L. Ammons,
excerpted From: Babies, Bath Water, Racial Imagery And Stereotypes: The African
-American Woman And The Battered Woman Syndrome , 1995 Wisconsin Law
Review 1003-1080, 1017-1030 (1995) (275 Footnotes omitted)
"She is a Negro; look at her skin; if she is not a Negro, I
don't want you to convict her."
Women in America are violated by their current or former partners at
such an alarming rate that domestic violence is considered epidemic.
Annually, women, as compared to men, experience over ten times as many
incidents of violence by an intimate. According to the National
Institute of Health, in the mid-1980s homicide was the leading cause of
death among African-Americans. Some studies indicate that black women
rank second in the frequency of arrests for murder. The typical victim
of a black female who kills is a black male with whom she had a
Until recently, the public, criminal justice agencies, and the courts
have ignored the plight of the battered woman. Battered women are not
believed either because society has historically been in denial about
the terrorism that occurs in the home, or because abused women who do
not leave their partners are thought to be lying about the seriousness
of the abuse they suffered. Black women face similar hurdles, but
additionally they must overcome the presumption that their race
predisposes them to engage in and enjoy violence. "(P)olice
trainees are frequently told that physical violence is an acceptable
part of life among .ghetto residents."' In other words, blacks are
"normal primitives," or violence-prone. African-American women
who are battered face unique challenges in getting relief and support.
For example, when black women are treated for domestic violence related
injuries in inner-city hospitals, protocols for wife beating are
"rarely introduced or followed." Trusting health-care
providers with their stories of abuse is difficult because black women
have often felt that systems do not have their best interests at heart.
However, when the provider is sensitive to their needs they will reveal
their stories of abuse. Julie Blackman, a psychologist, illustrated how
the mental health system deals with black and white women in abusive
relationships by contrasting the Hedda Nussbaum-Joel Steinberg case with
that of Frances and Herman McMillian. Nussbaum was the battered lover of
Steinberg. Lisa, Steinberg's daughter, was also abused. When Lisa was
killed in a battering episode, Nussbaum turned state's evidence against
her lover. Steinberg was convicted of manslaughter in the first degree,
and sentenced to a maximum term of eight and one-third to twenty-five
years. Nussbaum was never charged and was given the psychiatric and
social services support she needed.
On the other hand, Frances McMillian, a poor black woman who was
arrested for endangering the welfare of her children, was denied
treatment by the same facilities. McMillian and her nine children lived
in a two-room apartment in the Bronx with an abusive husband and father,
Herman McMillian. The family was discovered because of a fire. When
Blackman attempted to get Mrs. McMillian admitted to the treatment
facilities that had treated Nussbaum, they would not accept her.
I tried repeatedly to reach the psychiatrist who had been most
directly involved in Hedda's treatment. Hedda's lawyer encouraged him
to take Frances and reminded him that he ought not exclude Frances
just because she was Black. I never did speak to Hedda's psychiatrist
about Frances, but his treatment facility decided to reject her
The district attorney took nine misdemeanor counts to a grand jury
even though he was "sympathetic to her condition." McMillian
Battered African-American women are also particularly vulnerable
because of the lack or the underutilization of resources. For example,
African-American women hesitate to seek help from shelters because they
believe that shelters are for white women. Because the shelters are
associated with the women's movement, and many black women are estranged
from women's politics, they may feel that only white women's interests
are served in the shelters. African-American women are not totally
mistaken in this assumption. A study of the shelter movement in America
led a researcher to conclude that black women are ignored in the
policymaking, planning and implementation of shelter services. The lack
of community outreach in black neighborhoods by the shelters also
contributes to the perception that the safe havens are not for women of
color. Finally, black women have found the shelter environment
inhospitable to their cultural differences.
When leaving shelters, black women are more likely to need health
care, material goods and help with their children. A National Institute
of Health funded study of sixty battered African-American women over an
eight month period found that black women remained in shelters for a
significantly longer time than their white counterparts before they
could get the necessary resources to start over. Racism also affected
the ability of some black women to leave. For example, African-American
women would be quoted an apartment rental price over the phone, only to
have that price raised when the landlord met the women. White social
service personnel would sometimes patronize, ignore or exhibit hostility
toward black women.
African-American women depend on informal networks and seek support
through prayer, personal spirituality, and the clergy. The
African-American church is a traditional source of strength. Pastors
(typically male), are a central authority figure in many black
communities. However, misinformed ministers may overemphasize the value
placed on suffering as a test from God. Further, some clergy have
misconstrued biblical principles of love, forgiveness and submission to
reinforce sexism and subordination which can be used to justify abuse.
Black female parishioners are often told from the pulpit to protect the
black male because he is an endangered species.
The inconsistency of police intervention and the lack of other
community resources, including hospitals, contribute to the acuteness of
violence in African-American neighborhoods. Black women may have to
resort to more extreme violence to resolve a battering situation because
the police are not interested. African-American women have no historical
basis for believing that the world is just and fair and therefore
traditional institutions are viewed with great skepticism. Professionals
who work with black, battered women provide a unique perspective on how
race affects the issue. Kenyari Bellfield, a shelter worker, describes
the predicament of battered African-American women:
(A)long with the actual experience of psychological and physical
abuse, women of color suffer from the complex phenomenon of racism. The
translation of racial oppression to women of color who are battered
stems from the basic assumption that people of color are inherently more
violent. For a woman of color who is battered, an overwhelming sense of
hopelessness and low self- esteem are the result. The effects of racism
and sexism seem too great to tackle in the face of having been
victimized by a loved one. The very system which has historically served
to subjugate and oppress her is the only system which can save her from
the immediate abusive situation.
Cooperating with authorities in prosecuting her abuser could result
in community abandonment or scorn because of the perception that black
men are selectively penalized. Further, black battered women may connect
the physical abuse with racism. Some feel that they become the object of
their partner's rage triggered by the persistent maltreatment of black
males by the greater society, and therefore the abuser is less culpable.
Novelist Alice Walker describes the motivation and rationalization of an
abusive male character in her work, The Third Life of Grange Copeland:
His crushed pride, his battered ego, made him drive Mem away from
school teaching . . . .It was his rage at himself, and his life and his
world that made him beat her for an imaginary attraction she aroused in
other men, crackers, although she was not a party to any of it. His rage
and his anger and his frustration ruled. His rage could and did blame
everything, everything on her.
The loyalty trap affects the ability of black women to seek
protection and effective counseling. For example, African-American women
do not feel comfortable discussing their problems in integrated
settings. The fear is that disclosure in some way may hurt the
community. Therefore the prohibition against airing dirty laundry
becomes more important than healing. Emma Jordan Coleman describes the
dilemma abused black women face as a "Hobbesian choice between
claiming individual protection as a member of her gender and race or
contributing to the collective stigma upon her race if she decides to
report the . . . misdeeds of a black man to white authority
The justice system has not rushed to protect black women who have
been beaten. Analogies to rape and other gender discriminatory practices
illustrate how black female victimization has been and remains
unimportant. White men have had carte blanche access to all women.
Heinous crimes have been committed in the name of protecting white
womanhood. Interracial sexual or physical assault (e.g., minority
male/white female) still produces outrage that is not comparable to any
other kind of inter- or intra racial adult abuse. For example, the same
week that the highly-publicized rape of the affluent, white Central Park
jogger by several Hispanic and black males took place, twenty-eight
other first-degree rapes or attempted rapes took place in New York City.
Donald Trump purchased full-page ads in the New York Times, The Daily
News, The New York Post, and New York Newsday to denounce the men who
had committed the violent acts. Trump spent $85,000 for the
advertisements. In response to Trump, black clergy published their own
ad, stating that Trump was trying to divide the city into two camps with
a thinly veiled polemic. Another article reported that two weeks after
the Central Park incident, a thirty- eight year old black woman was
forced off a Brooklyn street at knife- point by two men, taken to a
rooftop, raped, beaten, and thrown fifty feet to the ground. The woman
sustained abdominal injuries, two broken ankles, and a fractured right
leg. This attack did not receive the national notice of the Central Park
jogger case and there was no ad from Donald Trump. Three men went to
prison for the crime.
Assumptions about sexual stratification explain why reactions to
sexual assault differ. Criminologist Anthony Walsh provides the
1. Women are viewed as the valued and scarce property of the men of
their own race.
2. White women, by virtue of membership in the dominant race, are
more valuable than black women.
3. The sexual assault of a white by a black threatens both the white
man's "property rights" and his dominant social position. This
dual threat accounts for the strength of the taboo attached to
inter-racial sexual assault.
4. A sexual assault by a male of any race upon members of the less
valued black race is perceived as nonthreatening to the status quo, and
therefore less serious.
5. White men predominate as agents of social control. Therefore they
have the power to sanction differently according to the perceived threat
to their favored social position.
In other words, black women's bodies are not as valuable as their
white female counterparts. . . .
|
<urn:uuid:f6985a13-327d-4f7e-a41d-3bf776c16064>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://academic.udayton.edu/health/01status/violence04.htm
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.957193
| 2,473
| 2.609375
| 3
|
A normal probability curve shows the theoretical shape of a normally distributed histogram. The shape of the normal probability curve is based on two parameters: mean (average) and standard deviation (sigma). The equation behind the normal probability curve itself is fairly complex, but defect-rate predictions for Six Sigma projects are made easily by using normal probability tables (commonly known as z-tables – see the PPM calculator and z-table Excel files on our excel templates page). The example below shows a a normal probability curve, fit to a histogram using statistical software.
In the DMAIC world, normal distributions are used for making predictions and conducting certain hypothesis tests. The 3.4 DPM rate associated with Six Sigma processes is based on the normal distribution curve.
|
<urn:uuid:3becd075-eb8a-4ebf-862f-40545e6a626a>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.dmaictools.com/dmaic-measure/normal-probability-curve
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.908049
| 155
| 3.46875
| 3
|
President Barack Obama seems poised to make early childhood education a top priority in his second term.
According to the White House website, Obama wants to "reform K-12 education funding by encouraging states to adopt higher standards, and improving teaching and learning assessments." It adds, "President Obama's comprehensive agenda invests in and strengthens early childhood education for our nation's youngest children. It helps to prevent achievement gaps before they start, and invests from an early age in children as our most critical national resource."
Governors and state leaders—Republicans and Democrats—across the country aren't waiting for Obama. As legislatures gear up, pre-K education is at the top of many states' agendas.
On January 30, Mississippi's Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves and House Speaker Philip Gunn, both Republicans, announced a bill that would provide matching funds to local early childhood education programs through various avenues, including public school districts, private and parochial schools, private childcare centers, and Head Start. In Mississippi, a state that is trying to revamp its education system and improve test scores, 85 percent of four-year-old children participate in an early childhood education program.
Republican Missouri Governor Jay Nixon visited a preschool this week in order to tout the importance of early education.
"Early childhood education is a smart investment with a very big return. Study after study confirms what parents and educators see each day firsthand: the first five years of a child's development have an impact that last a lifetime," Nixon said.
Nixon's 2014 budget, which he announced in early January, includes a $17 million increase in early childhood funding.
One of the most comprehensive plans comes from Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, a Democrat. He would like to eliminate preschool waiting lists by 2017 and plans to invest nearly $57 million in order to do so. He also wants to spend another $60.5 million to "enhance the quality of early education programs and the effectiveness of the early educator workforce."
A national report by America’s Edge noted on January 29 that an early childhood education investment has short-term economic advantages for those who are employed and long-term advantages for the children who partake.
On the organization's s website, its national director, Susan L. Gates, writes, "Research demonstrates that the foundation for the skills businesses need their future employees to have is developed during a child’s earliest years—from birth through age five."
Innovative programs appease some critics who cringe at the thought of providing more funding to programs they don't believe work. This includes the Head Start program.
Larry Sand, a former teacher and now president of the California Teachers Empowerment Network, told TakePart, "The short answer on 'early childhood education' is it depends. Head Start has been a $180 billion—and counting—waste of money. Before another penny is spent, we need to ensure that it is going to be spent in a way that will actually do some good."
Sand recently wrote a column in which he called Head Start, which was created by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965, as an "expensive and wasteful federal babysitting program."
He says the United States would fare well to look at early education programs in other countries, such as France.
Still, education advocates want to be sure Obama addresses early education in his State of the Union on Feb. 12, and they are lobbying for him to do so.
Elaine Weiss, the national coordinator for the Broader Bolder Approach to Education, and Cassie Schwerner, senior vice president of programs at the Schott Foundation for Public Education, recently wrote an open letter to Obama in The Washington Post calling for him to make early childhood education a top priority.
If Obama took bold steps in early education, they said that it would make him "a uniquely effective 'education president' and leave a lasting positive legacy."
|
<urn:uuid:1c7831a8-84ca-47d8-aab4-2d2064324ebf>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.takepart.com/article/2013/01/30/earlier-we-start-educating-kids-better
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.971673
| 797
| 2.5625
| 3
|
This web site is an outgrowth of an agreement between the USGS and the New England Aquarium, designed to summarize and make available results of scientific research. It will also present educational material of interest to wide audiences.
Combining genetic data with current and predicted climate scenarios, we are modeling the predicted future distributions of wildlife populations in the Arctic and identifying key environmental variables that determine important animal habitat.
Three themes of ongoing research: forecasting polar bear and walrus population response to changing marine ecosystems; measuring wildlife population changes in the Arctic coastal plain, and wildlife communities in the boreal-Arctic transition zone.
Overview of interdisciplinary research studies in Glacier National Park to understand how this mountain wilderness responds to present climatic variability and other external stressors, such as air pollution, and links to detailed reports.
Changes in both the ocean and coastal ecosystems may have negative effects on sea otter populations in the coastal Northwest and Alaska. A study underway will examine these factors and the overall health of sea otter populations.
Describes research to assess the effectiveness of the current system and distribution of marine reserves and protected areas in the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico for conserving reef ecosystems and resources.
|
<urn:uuid:73040f5a-5d7c-4724-92b7-d87a3150f573>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.usgs.gov/science/science.php?term=319&b=20&n=10
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.896554
| 240
| 3.09375
| 3
|
Have you ever looked at the man-made materials
around you and wondered how they came to be? One of Chemistry's most exciting
attributes is its ability to affect how individual substances bond and interact
to create new materials. Chemistry contains the inventors or inventions that have
contributed to the understanding, use and science of chemical substances and their
transformation including their composition, structure and properties.
|
<urn:uuid:1834fa62-a0b5-489b-bce2-47c5cea7b977>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://invent.org/hall_of_fame/1_4_5_2_chem.asp?vDesc='Cortisone'
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.923311
| 82
| 2.78125
| 3
|
Monday, March 19, 2012
Six Clean Energy Sources Need More Power - Mad Like Tesla Book Review
2012 is the International Year of Sustainable Energy for All. Mad Like Tesla, by Tyler Hamilton, salutes people dedicated to finding cleaner alternative energy sources.
Nikola Tesla was an extremely quirky inventor full of mad ideas about the world - many of which eventually proved to work. Tesla didn't stop what he was doing if others ridiculed him. He invented the AC induction motor, radio, remote-control (teleautomation) and more. In 1931, at age 75, he published a design for a geothermal power plant and a way to generate power from the ocean's temperature differential.
These new energy source developers follow in Tesla's footsteps. Most of them have left successful mainstream positions to pursue clean energy using ideas generally considered impractical in our time.
You don't have to be a geek to enjoy this book, but it helps. The language is accessible, but even technology-lite can get a bit heavy. But I felt genuinely educated by the end of it.
Mad Like Tesla presents mini-documentaries on real projects in:
The dream big brother to dirty and dangerous nuclear fission power - the sun does it, so why can't we? Fusion has a bad reputation from past false hopes - including the truly ideal cold fusion concept.
There are two main approaches to fusion, magnetic fusion and inertial fusion, and the US government oversees projects using each kind. But Dr Michel Laberge believes his smaller and much nimbler General Fusion has a real chance (well, 50% and rising). General Fusion has mixed the best of both worlds into magnetized target fusion - which notably removes the most expensive parts from the design.
Solar power from space
Asimov wrote about it in 1941 - huge amounts of solar energy could be generated in orbit and beamed down to us. Technology (and demand) may again have caught up with Asimov's imagination.
Gary Spirnak and his company (Solaren) have made a previous NASA design feasible by losing the heavy copper wires and planning for remote installation instead of launching astronauts. Generated power would be beamed to receivers on earth via microwave.
Tesla was also a big fan of air as a conductive medium for power - he was talking about wireless transmission before anybody reading this was born. And technically speaking, power can be transmitted from one place on earth to another.
On the one hand, this is a complicated way of collecting solar energy that falls for free every day, and traditional solar power is advancing rapidly. On the other, the energy would still be available at night and on cloudy or just plain polluted days.
(I'm visiting Solaren's hometown soon and I have requested a tour. Wish me luck!)
We know tornadoes have enormous destructive power. Now imagine controlling and using that power. Tesla was convinced we can break up tornadoes. Louis Michaud wants to recover the costly waste heat from thermal power plants and use it to create controlled tornadoes, or vortex engines.
Solar chimneys were a predecessor to the idea of using the temperature differential to create air movement and therefore power. But the towers need to be really really tall. The manmade tornadoes use the same mechanism but require no material construction.
In future, these vortex engines could be built near tropical or equatorial warm waters (natural vortex generators in themselves).
Biomimicry (bionics meets sustainability)
Aussie nature guy Jay Harman believes that natural designs beat human inventions - and he has good reason. Based on his lifelong observations of nature (and water swirling down a bathtub drain), he's invented a spiral fan (Lily Impeller) which is both measurably more efficient and much quieter than traditional designs.
Not very exciting? Fans and propellors are part of every computer, every air conditioning system, every pump system... Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute estimates it "could save over a tenth of the world's energy."
Bionics, or copying nature to improve technology) has a respectable history. Da Vinci was one of its greatest practitioners, and Velcro was a bionic invention (ever gotten a burr stuck to your clothes?). Most of us think we know bionics from the very limited application described in The Six Million Dollar Man, but bionics has far greater application than replacing biological body parts. And biomimicry adds sustainability as a key goal in bionic inventions.
In hives, although drones have very small brains, they constantly send each other data and modify their behaviour for the success of the hive. This swarm logic has been successfully applied by REGEN Energy to control energy use in a large building - distributed decision-making succeeding where top-down control fails.
Cleaner biofuels are controversial because they're usually made from corn (that could feed someone directly) and have a poor energy return.
Other plant sources must be specially processed to create biofuel. But cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae, can create some ethanol metabolically when under stress. Paul Woods is sure he can genetically modify these cyanobacteria to produce lots of ethanol under normal conditions. Promisingly, this Algenol has potential for both car and jet fuels.
A casual comparison to milking cows was obviously meant to normalise this process for the General Public. As I've failed to renew my GP membership, it just pinged my V-dar. There are enough complex moral and practical issues around genetically altering and permanently harnessing live organisms for our own purposes to keep me arguing with myself for hours in the dead of night. This isn't just using using yeast to make bread.
The chapter reassures us that sufficient genetic manipulation will prevent ecological problems a la failed biological pest control (cane toad, anyone?), but this failes to soothe all my ruffles.
Super Power Storage
Every day we become more dependent on battery power for the latest inventions. The intriguing Richard Weir and his company EEstor have been promising a "ceramic battery" - a hybrid between an standard battery and an ultracapacitor. The ceramic battery would be safer, have a higher capacity, and have a much longer lifetime than today's batteries.
This is a game changer from handheld devices all the way to electric cars, for which power storage is a major barrier.
EEStor's ceramic battery development history has been slow and full of hype leading only to delays and disappointments, and other competitors have joined the race to get a ceramic battery into a real device into the market.
And over the edge
I thought this book had already shown me the bleeding edge of energy research... Have we discovered everything there is to know about the universe? Not likely. Some researchers promote ideas that contradict accepted physical laws, and if they're convincing and diligent enough, they can pull a bit of funding too, in the hope of supporting a genuine world-changing breakthough.
I highlighted my concerns about the cyanobacteria biofuel project. Naturally, the side effects of the other cleaner energy projects might be just as worrying if I knew more about them.
An even more worrying common theme to all the stories: stronger than any possible technological barrier is the financial barrier, and the true source of the financial barrier is the monopolistic entropy of society's status quo. Or BAU, business as usual. Innovators want to get large energy companies on board to support them, yet large energy companies want to be on board only so far as they can prevent threats to their business.
Major governments invest heavily, with our money, into dying and dangerous power sources - subsidising and encouraging deep sea oil drilling and funding commercially unpopular nuclear fission power plants.
Hamilton uses the "half-full, half-empty glass" cliche to signal optimism in the final section of the book. My conclusion from this book is that we have exactly no idea whether any of these fascinating brainchildren will overcome its technological barriers and then the monopoly market barriers...in time to make a difference.
Luckily, I can see a Plan B.
Plan B - No impact energy source
Much of our world's energy is squandered on the production and distribution of:
1) food animals
2) consumer leisure goods
3) wars of economic imperialism (ironically, the US military is the USA's highest energy user, while recently deployed to kill to protect our energy interests)
All these make our lives and the planet poorer. The award-winning documentary The Economics of Happiness, which I'll be reviewing later, blows away any lingering fragments of the myth that our technologically complex society makes us fulfilled and happy.
A society like ours, dependent for success on unconscious consumption, will drain any energy source. I watch with interest the pursuit of cleaner power. But none of these sources is free, none risk-free...and none is even ready now, when we desperately need it.
The only free energy? Reducing consumption. That's my little drone message to you, my fellow drones in this hive called Earth. In that, you already have the real power.
|
<urn:uuid:9663ea7c-6f59-420c-ab21-8e812143bade>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://minimalistmum.blogspot.co.nz/2012/03/six-clean-energy-sources-need-more.html
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.942564
| 1,871
| 2.703125
| 3
|
What are the definitions of diversity and inclusion?
What is diversity?
The University of Arizona, like most institutions of higher education today, has a broad definition of diversity including, but not limited to, race, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, gender expression, disability, nationality, language, religion, and socio-economic background (AAC&U, 2009).
What is inclusion?
Inclusion is defined as, “The active, intentional, and ongoing engagement with diversity—in people, in the curriculum, in the co-curriculum, and in communities (intellectual, social, cultural, geographical) with which individuals might connect—in ways that increase one’s awareness, content knowledge, cognitive sophistication, and empathic understanding of the complex ways individuals interact within systems and institutions” (AAC&U, 2009, ¶ 3).
How are diversity and inclusion different?
While a diverse student population is necessary for student development, the benefits of diversity are not automatic and do not simply occur from a diverse campus. Researchers stress that institutions must become inclusive places by working in intentional ways to increase educational benefits for students and for the institution (Milem, Chang, & Antonio, 2005).
|
<urn:uuid:e0c64ddd-145a-4513-8684-91fa932fb918>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.arizona.edu/diversity/what-are-definitions-diversity-and-inclusion
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.893549
| 251
| 3.578125
| 4
|
VOSSNACK, EMIL (Emile), engineer, teacher, and artist; b. 11 Aug. 1839 at Remscheid (Federal Republic of Germany); m. c. 1865 in New York City, Ida Cassoni, and they had four children; d. 6 Sept. 1885 at Halifax, N.S.
Emil Vossnack received professional education at the Trade School and the Polytechnic School in Karlsruhe (Federal Republic of Germany). He practised as an engineer and taught mechanical engineering for a short time in Germany before emigrating to the United States. By 1860 Vossnack was living in Chicago where he was employed at the Illinois Central Railroad shops. During his two and a half years in Chicago he closely studied the first grain elevators being built in that city and assisted in designing one of them. Vossnack also lived in Paterson, N.J., and New York City. In the latter he instructed classes in mechanical engineering at the Cooper Union and the mechanics’ institute, and was associated with Danforth and Cook’s Locomotive Shop.
In 1870 Vossnack moved to Halifax. He was employed at the Nova Scotia Iron Works where he built the first locomotives manufactured in the province. Three of these were completed in 1872, and two more in 1873, but in that same year the company went into liquidation and his contract was terminated. Subsequently Vossnack was engaged at the Starr Manufacturing Works in Dartmouth. He built both iron pipe and small rope transmissions for this company and for the mills of the Summerside and Hebb companies in Bridgewater, while at the same time superintending a large machine shop in Halifax.
In June 1876 William and Alexander Moir consulted Vossnack regarding plans to build a waterpower works, flour-mill, box mill, and grain elevator on the Nine Mile River at Bedford. They engaged him to prepare plans for the buildings, to design the machinery, and to superintend the whole works after completion. Vossnack finished this extensive enterprise entirely to their satisfaction, and was thus responsible for building the first grain elevator in the Maritime provinces.
In the 1870s there was much concern regarding the need for technical education to train men for the various industries necessary to exploit the vast natural resources of Nova Scotia. When the Technological Institute of Halifax was established for this purpose late in 1877, Vossnack was appointed lecturer in mechanical engineering, naval architecture, and instrumental drawing. Despite the lack of apparatus for effective instruction, his efforts were so successful that his students presented him with a purse and an address in token of their appreciation. In October 1878 he visited several technological schools in the United States where he collected a series of models, apparatus, and designs for use in teaching. At the request of his students Vossnack wrote a letter to the Nova Scotia Council of Public Instruction and to the Halifax school commissioners recommending the introduction of instrumental and free-hand drawing into the Nova Scotia school course as preparation for technical education. However, the Technological Institute of Halifax lasted only two years, and in March 1879 Vossnack was advertising for a position as a consulting engineer.
During the 1880s he became interested in the sulphite process of making wood-pulp for paper. In March 1883 he visited England and the Continent to study the method’s advantages. The next spring he printed a pamphlet, About sulphite wood fibre: a new substitute for rags in paper making, equal in strength, if not superior to rag pulp. In 1884 he succeeded in starting a wood-pulp company at Granville Ferry, a pioneering enterprise in the use of the sulphite process in Nova Scotia. He then became involved in promoting wood-pulp mills at Ellerhouse, in Hants County, and at Milton, in Queens County.
Vossnack had become a naturalized Canadian in January 1878. As well as being a skilled and enterprising engineer and a devoted teacher, he was a talented amateur artist. His water-colour, “Regatta, 1879,” was exhibited in 1949 at the “200 Years of Art in Halifax” exhibition. After a short but severe illness involving congestion of the brain, he died in 1885, at age 46.
Emil Vossnack was the author of About sulphite wood fibre: a new substitute for rags in paper making, equal in strength, if not superior to rag pulp (Halifax, 1884) and Drawing in public, high & normal schools: a letter . . . to the Council of Public Instruction for the province of Nova Scotia, and the school commissioners of the city of Halifax (Halifax, 1879).
PANS, MS file, Emile Vossnack, Biog.; RG 18, A, 1 (Emil Vossnack, 28 Jan. 1878). N.S., Provincial Museum and Science Library, Report (Halifax), 1931–32. Acadian Recorder, 6 June 1878, 27 March 1879, 5 March 1883, 7 Sept. 1885. Morning Chronicle (Halifax) 21, 31 Dec. 1877; 16 Oct. 1878; 7 Sept. 1885; 31 Dec. 1887.
|
<urn:uuid:7d366d9f-6602-410f-88e5-8a01293e7984>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?id_nbr=5884
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.969521
| 1,094
| 2.546875
| 3
|