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Scientists know that Greenland is melting as the earth warms. Studies show that the island has been shedding ice at an incredible pace of 142 billion tons per year—five times faster than the rate as recently as the 1990s. But big numbers in scientific studies about far-off lands don't always resonate in the public mind, and somehow a substantial portion of the U.S. population still doesn't believe that the earth is getting hotter.
Over the years, the award-winning nature photographer James Balog grew so frustrated by that disconnect that he decided to dedicate his life to visually documenting the impact of climate change on the world's glaciers. The documentary Chasing Ice, released in the United States last month, follows his relentless and at-times harrowing quest, which began in 2007 and continues today. The results are breathtaking. Perhaps the film's greatest achievement is an enormous record of time-lapse images from multiple continents, which allow you to witness glaciers that are hundreds of thousands of years old disappearing from the earth before your eyes.
But this is the money shot, courtesy of The
The excerpt above shows the largest glacier-calving ever caught on film. Two young members of Balog's team camped out for weeks in hopes of catching sight of exactly this. To climate scientists, the colossal event shown above is less persuasive evidence of global warming than the ever-mounting reams of data from ice cores, satellite altimetry, and so forth. After all, icebergs calving from glaciers is a natural process that would happen even if the earth's temperature were holding steady.
But Balog recognizes that, for most people, believing requires seeing. And here his team succeeded in capturing the awesome effects of climate change in a way that papers published in Science just can't. The ice that you see cleaving from Greenland is the same ice that is making sea levels rise around the world. As Greenland shrinks, storms like Sandy, Katrina, and Bopha pose ever-greater danger to the 40 percent of the world's people who live near a coast. If a shot like the one above can change the minds of people like this, Balog's excruciating efforts will be vindicated.
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THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release September 15, 2009
NATIONAL HISPANIC HERITAGE MONTH, 2009
- - - - - - -
BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
The story of Hispanics in America is the story of America itself. The Hispanic community's values -- love of family, a deep and abiding faith, and a strong work ethic -- are America's values. Hispanics bring together the rich traditions of communities with centuries-old roots in America and the energy and drive of recent immigrants. Many have taken great risks to begin a new life in the hopes of achieving a better future for themselves and their families.
Hispanics have played a vital role in the moments and movements that have shaped our country. They have enriched our culture and brought creativity and innovation to everything from sports to the sciences and from the arts to our economy.
Hispanics have served with honor and distinction in every conflict since the Revolutionary War, and they have made invaluable contributions through their service to our country. They lead corporations and not-for-profits, and social movements and places of learning. They serve in government at every level from school boards to statehouses, and from city councils to Congress. And for the first time in our Nation's history, a Latina is seated among the nine Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States.
As Hispanics continue to enrich our Nation's character and shape our common future, they strengthen America's promise and affirm the narrative of American unity and progress.
To honor the achievements of Hispanics in America, the Congress, by Public Law 100-402, as amended, has authorized and requested the President to issue annually a proclamation designating September 15 through October 15 as "National Hispanic Heritage Month."
NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim September 15 through October 15, 2009, as National Hispanic Heritage Month. I call upon public officials, educators, librarians, and all the people of the United States to observe this month with appropriate ceremonies, activities, and programs.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this fifteenth day of September, in the year of our Lord two thousand nine, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-fourth.
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Since leaves require light to perform photosynthesis, the colour of a leaf kept in the dark changes from a darker to a lighter shade of green. Sometimes, it also turns yellow. The production of the chlorophyll pigment essential for photosynthesis is directly proportional to the amount of light available. In the absence of light, the production of chlorophyll-a molecules stops and they get broken slowly. This changes the colour of the leaf gradually to light green. During this process, the xanthophyll and carotenoid pigments become predominant, causing the leaf to become yellow. These pigments are more stable as light is not essential for their production. They are always present in plants.
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How to Turn Project-Learning Setbacks to Your Advantage
Teachers and trainers divulge their secrets for a successful project: Plan ahead, know your subject matter, and be flexible.
Sara, Arialle, and Mandy collect data to determine the amount of phosphates, nitrates, and dissolved oxygen in Nevada's Lake Mead. Angelo will share the results with students in Virginia via live video feed.
Credit: Courtesy of Don Curry
Don Curry is a firm believer in project learning, even when unexpected circumstances cause his plans to go awry. For nearly 15 years, the veteran science teacher has had students examine real-world problems as part of the environmental-studies curriculum at Silverado High School, in Las Vegas. Sometimes his classes learn as much from what goes wrong as from what goes right.
Last year, his students in grades 9-11 decided to research the desert city's water supply. The class divided itself into groups to study everything from the source of municipal tap water to the role that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency plays in determining water-quality standards. To support the latter group, Curry arranged an after-school meeting between its four students and a water-district biologist at nearby Lake Mead National Recreation Area.
The entire class hoped the biologist would answer several questions they'd prepared about the prevention of threats such as giardia and about a U.S. Geological Survey report citing numerous chemicals in Lake Mead. But when Curry and his group arrived for their scheduled appointment, they learned that the biologist had been called away on an emergency and wouldn't be back before their project deadline.
Up until that point, Curry's whole project-learning lesson had gone according to plan. He might have panicked over the no-show, but after years of teaching through hands-on activities, he says, he's learned to embrace the unexpected. He got everyone back into the van and began thinking about a plan B.
As he drove, Curry noticed a National Park Service truck parked by side of the road, and he seized the opportunity. "I stopped and told the kids, 'These people are responsible for the park itself. Let's see what they're doing and if they want to talk to us,'" Curry recalls.
National Park Service rangers show Las Vegas students how off-road vehicles destroyed nearby desert habitat and explain what needs to be done to restore the land.
Credit: Courtesy of Don Curry
The three park rangers were more than happy to speak with Curry's students. They explained that some visitors had recently driven off-road vehicles into the park without permission, which tore up some natural terrain.
Their job was to figure out how to restore the native plants and the desert crust, the top layer of hardened sand that protects the area's ecosystem. With a view of Lake Mead in the distance, the rangers explained that the health of the desert affects the lake's water quality because a healthy desert crust prevents sandstorms, which blow sand and debris into the water.
The students became so interested in desert crust, Curry says, that they started a separate project in which they volunteered their time to help restore it. "The hour-plus that we spent with the rangers was an education for me as well as for my students," Curry says, adding that the biologist later spoke to the class. "You really just stumble into these teachable moments. You can't plan for them."
Of course, the unpredictability of such open-ended learning often presents a huge challenge to teachers. Loosely defined projects can go in directions that teachers aren't prepared to handle, and even the best-planned activities can hit snags. So, how do educators turn potential disasters into enriching experiences for everyone? Edutopia spoke with teachers and trainers for some more advice:
Teacher trainers suggest cultivating an open mind and embracing the organized chaos that comes with project learning. "You have to be flexible while the project is happening," says Tristan de Frondeville, a consultant in San Anselmo, California, who helps teachers add projects to their lesson plans. According to de Frondeville, educators should strive to balance both student engagement with academic standards and the amount of control and open-endedness in managing their classrooms.
"There may be times when you might not hit the ball out of the park with your students, so you stick with the deadline and ask students during a debriefing period afterward how you could have done the project better," de Frondeville says. "You never want to give up on a project, because students will then think that if they push back enough, you'll just give up."
To prepare for curriculum detours, de Frondeville recommends imagining the foreseeable directions a project might take prior to starting it. Content mastery is crucial. "It's easier to be flexible if you know the content well," he explains. "If students go off in a certain direction, you can bring them back and still hold them accountable to the standards."
Relinquishing control gradually can help teachers and students get used to more flexible lessons, says Carol Roth, who teaches earth sciences at Central York High School, in York, Pennsylvania. "Project learning was an adjustment for me because I'm a really structured person," Roth notes.
"For this, you need to think outside the box," she adds, "which is why I use scaffolding: At the beginning of the semester, I give my students more structure and rubrics, and I talk them through the project. As the semester goes along, I take some of that away and give more of the responsibility to them so they are doing more for themselves."
De Frondeville adds that as teachers become more experienced with project learning, they're more readily able to play projects by ear within certain parameters, which ultimately enhances the lesson. "You're trying to light a fire of engagement in your students, and if your students are going in a direction that looks promising, then you need to have the extra 'logs' of standards and resources so that you can feed that fire."
In other words, turning an unexpected incident into an educational triumph isn't a matter of luck. Teachers should anticipate inevitable twists in project-learning lesson plans. De Frondeville suggests that educators completely new to project learning try doing exercises from books, such as Inspiring Active Learning, by Merrill Harmin. This title offers simple ten-minute classroom exercises that help teachers make the transition to a more open-ended teaching style.
Regardless of a teacher's experience, anyone tackling a project for the first time should be willing to learn alongside the students. "Whenever you do a new project, it's always trial and error," says Rebecca Pollack, a humanities teacher at New Technology High School, in Napa, California, who has also trained teachers on project learning for the New Technology Foundation.
"You never know what your students might struggle with or whether it will make sense to them<" she adds. "You might realize that there's a piece missing to it, or you might assume that students know how to do something they don't. The first time, it's never perfect."
Pollack acknowledges that, for some teachers, accepting this imperfection is easier said than done. "It can be hard," she notes. "It's a very different mind-set. You're not always the driving the direction of the class, you have to admit you don't know some things, and you have to admit that you could have done some things better."
Teachers shouldn't worry too much about making mistakes, because miscalculations sometimes lead to "a-ha!" moments for students, says Pamela Shoemaker, a technology-integration coordinator for the Walled Lake Consolidated Schools, in Walled Lake, Michigan.
When Shoemaker was teaching middle school science and social studies classes, her students wanted to know why gadgets use different kinds of batteries, so she created what she thought would be a quick-and-easy project: She put together an Excel spreadsheet of battery data and asked students to create a graphic that visually represented the information.
"I thought it would take them a half hour and it would be no big deal," Shoemaker recalls. Instead, her students struggled to represent the data clearly. "At first I thought, 'Uh-oh. This was a bad idea. It's a total flop.' I had to work through being uncomfortable and let it go."
Shoemaker knew she could turn the situation around. She created a document with each student's work in it, and the next day, she asked them to decide which graphs were the best, and why. In the process, Shoemaker says, students came to understand the basic concepts of graphing data that she'd assumed they already knew.
"It was one of those unexpected teaching moments." she says. "And having them figure out things on their own was more valuable than if I had just given up and shown them how to do it."
What's more, bumps in the road usually lead to a better, smoother ride in the future. "A project really isn't going to be good until the third time you do it," says Rebecca Pollack. "Maybe the project is a little confusing the first time around, or it doesn't fit together as well as it could.
But the students are still getting something out of it," she adds. "They're still communicating, collaborating, managing their time, and using critical-thinking skills. Even if you're still improving on that project, the students are going to learn and get the content."
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The file_exists() function returns TRUE if the file or directory specified by filename exists; FALSE otherwise.
Syntax of file_exists() Function PHP
bool file_exists (file_name )
It test the existence of the file or the directory given as argument name
It return true if the file or the directory given is existing
If Not existing then it returns FALSE
Code for file_exists() Function PHP
echo "file is existing ".file_exists("c:/rose1/ram.txt");
echo "<br>file is existing ".file_exists("c:/rose1/ram1.txt");
If you are facing any programming issue, such as compilation errors or not able to find the code you are looking for.
Ask your questions, our development team will try to give answers to your questions.
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TEXAS RANGERS. In 1823, only two years after Anglo-American colonization formally began in Texas, empresario Stephen F. Austin hired ten experienced frontiersmen as "rangers" for a punitive expedition against a band of Indians. But not until November 24, 1835, did Texas lawmakers institute a specific force known as the Texas Rangers. The organization had a complement of fifty-six men in three companies, each officered by a captain and two lieutenants, whose immediate superior and leader had the rank of major and was subject to the commander-in-chief of the regular army. The major was responsible for enlisting recruits, enforcing rules, and applying discipline. Officers received the same pay as United States dragoons and privates-$1.25 a day; however, they supplied their own mounts, equipment, arms, and rations. At all times they had to be ready to ride, equipped "with a good and sufficient horse...[and] with one hundred rounds of powder and ball."
Even with such official sanctions, the rangers did not fare especially well at first. During the Texas Revolution they served sparingly as scouts and couriers, then carried out a number of menial tasks. As settlers fled east to escape advancing Mexican armies after the fall of the Alamo on March 6, 1836, the rangers retrieved cattle, convoyed refugees across muddy trails and swollen streams, and destroyed produce or equipment left behind. In fact, during the battle of San Jacinto on April 21, they were on "escort" duty, much to their chagrin. Nor did their situation improve appreciably over the next two years because President Sam Houston favored government economy as well as friendship with the Indians. In December 1838, however, Mirabeau B. Lamar succeeded to the presidency and immediately changed the frontier policies of the republic as well as the role of the rangers. At his behest, Congress allowed him to recruit eight companies of mounted volunteers and maintain a company of fifty-six rangers, then a month later to provide for five similar companies in Central and South Texas. Over the next three years the rangers waged all-out war against the Indians, successfully participating in numerous pitched battles. The most notable were the Cherokee War in East Texas in July 1839, the Council House Fight at San Antonio against the Comanches in March 1840, and the battle of Plum Creek (near the site of present-day Lockhart) against 1,000 Comanche warriors in August 1840. By the end of the Lamar administration, Texans had undermined, if not broken, the strength of the most powerful tribes. Sam Houston, upon being reelected to the presidency in December 1841, realized that ranger companies were the least expensive and the most efficient way to protect the frontier. As a result, 150 rangers under Capt. John Coffee "Jack" Hays figured prominently in helping repel the Mexican invasions of 1842 and in successfully protecting Texans against Indian attacks over the next three years. Hays initiated ranger traditions and esprit de corps by recruiting and training a tough contingent of men skilled in frontier warfare. Out of his command arose such famous ranger captains as Ben and Henry McCulloch, Samuel H. Walker, W. A. A. "Big Foot" Wallace, and Robert Addison "Ad" Gillespieqv.
With annexation and the Mexican War in 1846, the rangers achieved worldwide fame as a fighting force. After acquitting themselves admirably during the battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palmaqv on May 8–9, 1846, they became Gen. Zachary Taylor's "eyes and ears." Superbly mounted, "armed to the teeth" with a large assortment of weapons, and obviously at home in the desert wastes of northeastern Mexico, they found the "most practical route" for the American army to Monterrey. Late in September the rangers rashly set the tempo and style for Taylor's successful storming of the city. Although furloughed in October after a brief armistice, they returned early in 1847 in time to provide the general enough military information to help win the battle of Buena Vista in February. In March 1847, the theater of war shifted. An American army under Gen. Winfield Scott landed at Veracruz and quickly muscled its way into the Valley of Mexico. For the next five months the rangers under Jack Hays and Samuel Walker figured prominently in American victories. In fact, so ruthless and lethal were they against Mexican guerrillas that a hostile but fearful populace called them "los diablos Tejanos."
After the Mexican War ended on February 2, 1848, the rangers became for the next decade, as historian Walter Prescott Webb asserted, "little more than an historical expression." Since the United States had rightly assumed responsibility for protecting the Texas frontier, the rangers had no official function. Nor did the state try to enlist their services. The organization thus lost its famous captains as well as the nucleus of its frontier defenders. But after the appointment of John S. "Rip" Fordqv as senior captain in January 1858 the rangers briefly upheld their fighting traditions. Late in the spring they moved north of the Red River to "chastise" a large band of "hostiles," in the process killing the noted Comanche chief, Iron Jacket. Then in March 1859 Ford and his men were assigned to the Brownsville area, where, together with the United States Army, they gained only limited success against the "Red Robber of the Rio Grande," Juan N. Cortina. For fourteen years after this campaign, however, the rangers ceased to be either significant or effective. With the coming of the Civil War in 1861, they rushed individually to the Confederate colors. Although the Eighth Texas Cavalry was known as Terry's Texas Rangers, its founder, Benjamin F. Terry, was never a member of the state organization, nor did he necessarily recruit experienced fighters. To protect its frontiers the state had to rely on young boys, old men, or rejects from Confederate conscription. Subsequently, during Reconstruction (1865–74), either the United States army or the State Police were responsible for carrying out such duties, though they had little success.
But in 1874 the state Democrats returned to power, and so did the rangers. Texas was "overrun with bad men," with Indians ravaging the western frontier, with Mexican bandits pillaging and murdering along the Rio Grande. The legislature authorized two unique military groups to meet this emergency. The first was the Special Force of Rangers under Capt. Leander H. McNelly. In 1874 he and his men helped curb lawlessness engendered by the deadly Sutton-Taylor Feud in Dewitt County. In the spring of 1875 they moved into the Nueces Strip (between Corpus Christi and the Rio Grande) to combat Cortina's "favorite bravos." After eight months of fighting, the rangers had largely restored order, if not peace, in the area. In 1875 the Special Force enhanced its fearful reputation by stacking twelve dead rustlers "like cordwood" in the Brownsville square as a lethal response to the death of one ranger; McNelly also precipitated the "Las Cuevas War," wherein he violated international law by crossing the Rio Grande, attacking Mexican nationals, and retrieving stolen American cattle. The second military unit, designated the Frontier Battalion, was equally effective. Composed of six companies (with seventy-five rangers in each) under Maj. John B. Jones, the battalion participated in fifteen Indian battles in 1874 and, together with the United States Cavalry, destroyed the power of the fierce Comanches and Kiowas by the end of 1875. The battalion also "thinned out" more than 3,000 Texas desperados such as bank robber Sam Bass and notorious gunfighter John Wesley Hardin; therefore, because of its very efficiency, the Frontier Battalion was no longer necessary after 1882.
For the next three decades the rangers retreated before the onslaught of civilization, their prominence and prestige waning as the need for frontier law enforcement lessened. They occasionally intercepted Mexican and Indian marauders along the Rio Grande, contended with cattle thieves, especially in the Big Bend country and the Panhandle, and at times protected blacks from white lynch mobs (see LYNCHING). By 1900 such relative inactivity persuaded critics to urge the curtailment, if not complete abandonment, of the rangers. As a result, in 1901, the legislature cut the force to four companies, each headed by a captain who could recruit no more than twenty men. Only because of the leadership and valor of such captains as J. A. Brooks, William Jesse McDonald, John H. Rogers, and John R. Hughes were the rangers able to maintain their existence-and traditions-during the lean years of the 1890s and early 1900s.
Violence and brutality soon increased along the Rio Grande, however, where the rangers continued to participate in numerous bloody brush fights with Mexican nationals. In 1910 a revolution against President Porfirio Díaz unsettled the populace on both sides of the border. In 1914, early in World War I, problems in the border country focused on Mexican nationalism, German intrigue and sabotage, and American draft dodgers. Then in 1916 Pancho (Francisco) Villa's raid on Columbus, New Mexico, intensified already harsh feelings between the two countries. The regular rangers, along with hundreds of special rangers appointed by Texas governors, killed approximately 5,000 Hispanics between 1914 and 1919, a source of scandal and embarrassment. In January 1919, at the insistence of Representative José T. Canales of Brownsville, the legislature overhauled the force in order to restore public confidence. During the next two months sordid stories of ranger brutality and debauchery and injustice emerged. As a result, Texas lawmakers decided to maintain the four companies but reduce the number of recruits from twenty to fifteen per unit. To attract "men of high moral character" they instituted more competitive salaries, but with minimal expense accounts. They also established specific procedures for citizen complaints against any ranger wrongdoing. After these reforms the force performed well during the 1920s, especially under the leadership of captains William L. Wright, Thomas R. Hickman, and Frank (Francis A.) Hamerqv. After the enactment of Prohibition the rangers constantly patrolled the Rio Grande against tequila smugglers and cattle rustlers. They protected federal inspectors from bodily harm in the so-called "tick war" in East Texas, prevented both individual injury and property damage in labor flare-ups or Ku Klux Klan demonstrations, and tamed the lawless oil boomtowns of Miranda City, Desdemona, Mexia, Wink, and Borger.
With the Great Depression (1929-), ranger fortunes began to ebb. The legislature had to slash the budget, so that during the depression the force complement never exceeded forty-five. As for transportation, the rangers depended on free railroad passes or their own horses along the border. In the fall of 1932 they made a grave error in judgment: they openly supported Governor Ross Sterling against Miriam A. "Ma" Ferguson in the Democratic primary. In January 1933, upon taking office, Ma fired every ranger for his partisanship-forty-four in all. The legislature then slashed salaries and budgets and further reduced the force to thirty-two men. Texas consequently became a haven for the lawless-the likes of Raymond Hamilton, George "Machine Gun" Kelly, and Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker.
In 1935, however, James Allred became governor on a platform of better law enforcement. The legislature therefore established the Texas Department of Public Safety. A three-person Public Safety Commission was responsible for selecting a director and an assistant director, who, in turn, oversaw three basic units: the Texas Rangers, the Highway Patrol, and a scientific crime laboratory and detection center known as the Headquarters Division. The rangers therefore became an important part of a much larger law-enforcement team. Their basic five-company structure remained intact, but changes occurred in hiring and promotion procedures. All appointments were now through examinations and recommendations (not by political patronage); each applicant must be between thirty and forty-five, stand at least 5'8", and be "perfectly sound" in mind and body. Upon acceptance, each received instructions in the latest techniques of fingerprinting, communications, ballistics, and records. Each had to be a "crack shot." Although the commission established no educational provisions, each ranger had to take a written examination and submit an "intelligent" weekly report of his activities. As for promotion, seniority and performance were the all-determining factors.
For several years the rangers were apprehensive about their future because of leadership changes in the DPS. But late in September 1938, with the appointment of Colonel Homer Garrison, Jr., as the new director, the rangers regained their high status. Over the next thirty years-the Garrison era-the rangers became the plainclothesmen of the DPS: they were the detectives, and the Highway Patrol officers were the uniformed state police. The rangers also expanded to six companies (each with a captain and a sergeant), with an overall complement of forty-five men in 1941, fifty-one in 1947, and sixty-two in 1961. They were actually a rural constabulary, with most of the officers stationed individually in small Texas towns. The governor, however, could assign them to a case anywhere in the state. The rangers were skilled in using the modern scientific laboratory of the Headquarters Division. During the Garrison era the rangers operated at peak performance, thereby enhancing their prestige. In World War II, they rounded up enemy aliens and instructed civilians and local police in the latest defense techniques to protect generating plants, dams, factories, and industries from sabotage, while carrying out their regular duties. In the 1950s they investigated more than 8,000 cases annually. And in the 1960s their caseload increased because of the civil-rights movement and the emergence of a more populous, urban state (see URBANIZATION).
When Garrison died in 1968, the DPS commissioners again reorganized and redefined ranger guidelines. Under Garrison's successor, Col. Wilson E. Speir, the force expanded to seventy-three men in 1969, eighty-two in 1971, eighty-eight in 1974, and ninety-four a year later. The rangers also were highly trained and better equipped. Recruits had to be between the ages of thirty and fifty, have at least eight years of on-the-job police experience, and have an intermediate certificate signifying 400 to 600 hours of classroom instruction. The DPS provided the rangers with high-powered cars equipped with the latest radio equipment as well as with a large array of sophisticated weapons and defensive armor. The state also began paying better salaries, together with such benefits as longevity pay, hospitalization insurance, and a paid life-insurance policy. As a result, the rangers evolved into the elite of Texas law enforcement. During the Garrison era such captains as Manuel T. "Lone Wolf" Gonzaullas, Alfred Y. Allee, Bob Crowder, Johnny Klevenhagen, Eddie Oliver, and Clint Peoples were instrumental in maintaining ranger tradition and performance. Subsequently, captains Bill Wilson, J. L. "Skippy" Rundell, H. R. "Lefty" Block, and Maurice Cook continued to improve the force. The training was intensified, the weaponry and crime-detection equipment became even more sophisticated, and, despite increasing case loads, the applicant list for ranger service grew. In recognition of the rangers' toughness against the criminal element and their dedication to state law enforcement, the legislature enlarged the overall complement to ninety-nine officers (including two women) in September 1993 and again increased salaries and fringe benefits. By September 1996 the force had expanded to 105.
Ben H. Procter, Just One Riot: Episodes of Texas Rangers in the 20th Century (Austin: Eakin Press, 1991). Walter Prescott Webb, The Texas Rangers (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1935; rpt., Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982).
The following, adapted from the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, is the preferred citation for this article.Ben H. Procter, "TEXAS RANGERS," Handbook of Texas Online (http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/met04), accessed May 25, 2013. Published by the Texas State Historical Association.
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|Infrastructure projects are hugely important to ensure that the population are efficiently commuting and travelling on a day to day basis. |
With motorways and roads constantly in use transport hubs that were traditionally designed to be totally functional are now being developed to become important areas for travellers to utilise before, during and after their selected journey.
Train, underground and bus stations are all part of large networks that are constantly in use and are in the process of development and change. The rise in the use of public transportation has meant that these types of buildings have become more important, representing some of the most creative and contemporary architecture in the world.
Often incorporating retail units and public areas the building interior reflects external architectural designs with quality designed specifications creating an inviting attractive environment.
Security and service integration are important specification criteria and the use of metal ceilings means that designs can be flexible but also totally useable on a day to day basis. Being one of the most durable construction materials metal cannot be easily damaged, even if a metal ceiling is utilised for regular access to the building services.
Integration of important lighting, public address, communication and fire prevention products can be carried out in a controlled factory environment meaning they are delivered to site ready for installation, saving time and money. Many ceilings for the transportation sector tend to be vaulted or tubular to allow for areas to feel spacious while ensuring smoke extraction can take place.
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|How to submit educational material to Enchanted Learning|
|Our subscribers' grade-level estimate for this page: 3rd - 4th|
Nebraska Map Quiz/Printout
Nebraska Outline Map Printout
Nebraska Label Me! Printout
Facts, Map and State Symbols
Nebraska Flag Printout/Quiz
Large Flag Printable
State Abbreviation - NE
State Capital - Lincoln
Largest City - Omaha
Area - 77,358 square miles [Nebraska is the 16th biggest state in the USA]
Population - 1,711,263 (as of 2000) [Nebraska is the 38th most populous state in the USA]
Name for Residents - Nebraskans
Major Industries - farming (corn, soybeans, wheat, sorghum), grain processing, meat-packing the Air Force Strategic Air Command,
Presidential Birthplace - Gerald Rudolph Ford was born in Omaha on July 14, 1913 (Ford was the 38th US President, serving from 1974 to 1977).
Nebraska's official flag was adopted in 1925. The flag has a deep blue field with the state seal in the center, pictured in gold (yellow) and silver. The state seal, designed in 1867 by Isaac Wiles (a member of the House of Representatives), pictures a blacksmith hammering on an anvil, a settler's cabin, sheaths of wheat, a steamboat on a river, and the transcontinental railroad, with mountains in the background. The state motto, "Equality Before the Law," is on a banner above the landscape. The date of Nebraska's admission to the union, March 1, 1867, is listed below the seal.
|State Mammal||State Fish
|State Fossil||State Insect
||State Soft Drink
Developed in Hastings, Nebraska, by Edward E. Perkins in 1927
|State American Folk Dance
Nebraska: Map/Quiz Printout
Answer geography questions about Nebraska using the map on this quiz.
Nebraska: Outline Map Printout
An outline map of Nebraska to print.
Nebraska: US State Dot to Dot Mystery Map
Connect the dots to draw the borders of a mystery state of the USA. Then use a globe or atlas to figure out which state you have drawn. You might want to give students clues, such as that it is in the midwestern USA, that its capital is Lincoln, or that its name starts with "N." Answer: Nebraska.
Nebraska: Label Me! Printout
Label the major features of Nebraska.
Large Coloring Printable
A large black-and-white printable of the flag of Nebraska.
Nebraska's Flag Printout/Quiz
Read about and answer questions on the flag of Nebraska.
Read about Tornado Alley, an area in Mid-USA that is prone to dangerous tornadoes.
Tornado Quiz + Label Tornado Alley Printout
Answer five questions about tornadoes and label the states in the heart of Tornado Alley. Or go to the answers.
Lewis and Clark: Follow the Instructions
Color the trail that Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery followed in their exploration of the Louisiana Purchase according to simple directions, such as, "They sailed up the Missouri River, passing through what is now Nebraska and South Dakota. Color Nebrask gdark green. Color South Dakota gray." For beginning readers. Or go to the answers.
Lewis and Clark: Follow the Instructions #2
Color the trail that Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery followed in their exploration of the Louisiana Purchase according to simple directions, such as, "The Corps of Discovery traveled up the Missouri River. In August, in what is now Nebraska, they met with the Oto and Missouri Indians. Color Nebraska dark green." For fluent readers. Or go to the answers.
Draw and Write
Draw a map of the state that you live in (in the USA) and write about it.
US State - Find Related Words
For a US state, write eight words related to the state, then use each word in a sentence.
US State Graphic Organizer
For one US state, write the name of the state, draw a map of the state, then write the state capital, postal abbreviation, date of statehood, state bird (draw and write), state flower (draw and write), a major body of water in the state, two bordering states, and state nickname.
US State Report Graphic Organizer Printout #1
This printout helps the student do a short report on a US state, prompting the student to draw a map of the state, locate it on a US map, draw the state's flag, and write its capital city, state nickname, area, population, date of statehood, and state bird.
US State Report Graphic Organizer Printout #2
This printout helps the student do a short report on a US state, prompting the student to draw a map of the state, locate it on a US map, draw the state's flag, and write its capital city, state nickname, area, population, date of statehood, state bird, state flower, climate, and major industries.
A short, printable book on a US state. To complete the book, the student must research a US state, draw its map, draw its flag, and answer simple questions about the state.
USA Map: Find Your State
Find and label your state in the USA, and label other important geography.
USA Map: Where I Live
Write your country, state, and city, and then find and label your state (and a few other geographical features).
Write Ten Things About Your State
A one-page printable worksheet. Write ten things about your state (plus one thing you would like to change).
US State Wheel
This 2-page print-out makes a wheel about a single US state; the student fills out the information on the wheel. It consists of a base page together with a rear wheel that spins around. After putting the wheel together, the student follows the instructions on the front wheel (coloring in the state on a US map and drawing a small map of the state) and fills out the 12 sections of the wheel with information about one state. When you spin the wheel, facts about the US State appear, including: Biggest Cities, Capital, Flag, Bodies of Water, Postal Abbreviation, State Bird, Population (rank), Area (rank), Residents Called, Bordered by, Major Industries, and Entered Union (order).
US State - Find a Related Word for Each Letter
For a US state, see if you can think of and write down a word or phrase that is related to that state for each letter of the alphabet. Think of cities, famous people from the state, bodies of water, mountains, landmarks, and other features. Find words for as many letters as you can.
A census is an official count of the number of people in a region. The survey is done by a government, usually periodically. This page explains how and why censuses are taken.
Printable Read-and-Answer Worksheet
A printable worksheet on the census, with a short text to read, a map to color, and questions to answer. Or go to the answers. Or go to a pdf file with the worksheet and the answers.
|US State Facts, Map and State Symbols|
|Order and Dates of Statehood||State Population Figures||State Area Figures||State Extremes and Records|
|US Postal Codes||US Postal Codes Matching||Guidelines for Writing a Report on a State||US Geography|
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Copyright ©2001-2010 EnchantedLearning.com ------ How to cite a web page
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Explanation: What created the strange spiral structure on the left? No one is sure, although it is likely related to a star in a binary star system entering the planetary nebula phase, when its outer atmosphere is ejected. The huge spiral spans about a third of a light year across and, winding four or five complete turns, has a regularity that is without precedent. Given the expansion rate of the spiral gas, a new layer must appear about every 800 years, a close match to the time it takes for the two stars to orbit each other. The star system that created it is most commonly known as LL Pegasi, but also AFGL 3068. The unusual structure itself has been cataloged as IRAS 23166+1655. The above image was taken in near- infrared light by the Hubble Space Telescope. Why the spiral glows is itself a mystery, with a leading hypothesis being illumination by light reflected from nearby stars.
|<< Previous APOD||Discuss Any APOD||Next APOD >>|
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"The Milmore Memorial," also known as "The Angel of Death and the Sculptor," was a commission from the family of the Boston sculptor Martin Milmore (1844–1883) to honor his memory and that of his brother Joseph (1841–1886). The original bronze statue, cast in Paris in 1892, was erected the following year in Forest Hills Cemetery, in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. When the plaster model was shown at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, it received acclaim that assured French's status at the forefront of his profession. In 1917, the president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Robert W. de Forest, asked French, who was also a Museum trustee, about acquiring a replica of the bronze. French contracted the Piccirilli Brothers, New York's leading firm of marble carvers, to carve the statue in marble. Completed in 1926, this marble version required certain changes to accommodate the structural needs of the medium.
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The Challenge of Wealth
By Dr. Meir Tamari
In our parshah, Pharaoh levies taxes on the Israelites, both in money and labor. Since, throughout history the Jews have been subject to taxation, both by Jewish authorities and by non-Jewish ones, so the actions of Pharaoh are only one incident in a long experience, even if it was the first. There exists, therefore, an extensive literature in this area reflecting halakhic decisions and communal enactments by the autonomous Jewish communities that existed for almost 2000 years. Although there is really little din Torah for taxation, nevertheless, this literature and the communal practices clearly manifest the following Jewish pattern of taxation.
By and large, it is recognized that since the authorities, both Jewish and non-Jewish, have social obligations and are required to provide infrastructure, defense and other services decided upon by the authorities, they also have the right to tax the citizens in order to fund these obligations. The moral basis for this right to tax, flows from two sources:
Din HaMelekh- The Law of the king. Halakhically it was decided that everything that Samuel told the people when they asked for a king, the king has the right to do. There (1 Samuel, chapter 8:11-17) the text concerns itself primarily with taxation, either of goods, land and money, or of labor. Harav A.Y. Kook (Mishpat Cohen, section148 ) and Harav Ovadiah Yosef (Yachve Daat, part 5, section 63 ) have ruled that the parliamentary bodies in Israel inherit this right of the king. By virtue of the ruling of Shmuel (Sanhedrin 20a ), this was paralleled by the concept of dina demalkhuta dina so that non-Jewish kings had a similar right.
Hilkhot Shecheinim- The Law of Neighbours. The citizens of a town are considered to have the same rights as the common rights of neighbors. Thereby, they may force each other to pay for the public costs. (Baba Bathrah, chapter1, mishnah 5; Rama , Choshen Mishpat, section176, subsection 25). hulkhan Arukh,; see also
Such taxes require the consent of the taxpayers, either through a consensus or a majority vote of the taxpayers or their representatives. The taxes could not be confiscatory, so that only wealth that yielded income could be taxed and the risk to the entrepreneurs involved was also a consideration of tax rates. For example, in Geonic times [circa 900 C.E.]Talmudic days gold and silver were exempt from taxation, because they were used primarily for decoration and jewelry. However, by the end of the Middle Ages they had partially become common commodities, and they were taxed partially, since they still retained a jewelry factor. When holding precious metals became an important method of tax evasion, they were considered just as an ordinary part of the taxpayer's wealth (Trumat Hadeshen, section 342; also Rama Choshen Mishpat, section 163, subsection 3). Taxes were levied according to the area the income was earned and not according to domicile ( Teshuvot Harashba, part 5,section 178. The Rashba is a major source on the Jewish Fiscal system. ) Practiced today, this would prevent the decay of the city centers, where the wealthier live in suburbia and so do not fund the needs of the cities they earn their incomes in. There does not seem to be any place, halkhically, for double taxation, for example when two authorities wish to tax the same income. This would question the double taxation practiced in most countries today, whereby a corporation is taxed on its income before distribution and the recipient of the dividends is taxed as well. It should be noted that such double taxation is a major cause of tax evasion through profits distributed as expenses, salaries or personal perks.
Take tax evasion is considered a crime either against other taxpayers or against the recipients of the public funds who suffered a loss of services or benefits. However, the moral affect on the tax evader must not be lost sight of and needs consistent and constant consideration. In order to evade taxes a person or corporation is required to file false financial reports involving all concerned in lies and falsehoods. Furthermore, the illegal gains require forms of consumption that need to be hidden from the authorities involving further lying as well as illegal capital transfers; as often as not such income is spent wastefully thereby raising further moral issues. .
The major issue raised by the taxes of the Pharaoh in Egypt is the legitimacy of those taxes imposed by non-Jewish authorities. Shall we insist that the same moral yardstick apply, as to those levied by Jewish authorities? Unfortunately throughout Jewish history such taxation was discriminatory and punitive, so naturally this question has acquired much prominence and heavily influenced people's behavior.
The treatment of this issue may be divided into two primary halakhic attitude's.
Both Maimonides and Yosef Karo have ruled that a non-Jewish authority, a king or a state, have the right to levy taxes and the Jewish citizens have an obligation to pay them. ( Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot G'zeilah,chapter 5, halakhot11-12; Tur Shulchan Arukh, Choshen Mishpat, section 369.) This is not only an application of the halakhic concept that the rule of the state is the rule, dina de malkuta dina, but also an acceptance that the budget operates for the welfare of the citizens. However, this is requires legitimate rulers that exclude a usurper or one who rules against the will of his people. Taxes may not be discriminatory or imposed capriciously, and it must be clear that there is no evidence of robbery in the way the taxes are imposed or collected. Where these conditions are not met, there is no obligation to pay taxes, which are considered then as a form of robbery.
The collective taxes so often placed on Jewish communities in Europe during past centuries represent a special type of taxes. In addition to the general problem of discriminatory taxation they introduced a threat of physical danger through expulsion, pogrom and even death, when the communal tax quota was unfilled. In this, the tax evader was actually a threat to the community and therefore could not avail himself of the ruling by Maimonides. It is interesting to point out that because of this we even have a ruling that a tax levied on the Jews in order to construct a church, had to be paid by each member, according to the allocation made by the community.
Rabbi Moses Feinstein ruled recently that one is obligated to pay one's taxes in United States, that one is not allowed to file false information in order to obtain public funds for Torah education and that it is permissible for one to work for the I.R.S., even though this may mean transferring information about other Jews. The main thrust of the ruling is that United States of America is a benevolent country in which the Jews are free to practice their religion and does not persecute or discriminate against them. Obviously this stands in contrast to the behavior of governments in Europe over many hundreds of years.
In our day where there are no discriminatory taxes in the Western democracies, the question of the desecration of G-d's name through tax evasion by Jews, must of necessity rule out such behavior. After all, the obligation to sanctify His Name and to refrain from Hillul Hashem, desecrating that Name are mitzvot obligatory on all, men and women alike. All too often, the community is negatively affected by the behavior of highly visible members of the community with regard to tax evasion or what is often a form thereof money laundering. So the name of the Jews, of Israel and of G-d is desecrated.
Copyright © 2002 by Rabbi Meir Tamari and Project Genesis, Inc.
Dr. Tamari is a renowned economist, Jewish scholar, and founder of the Center For Business Ethics (www.besr.org) in Jerusalem.
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Preparing Your Child for Sleep-Away Camp
When summer rolls around, many parents prepare to send their children to sleep-away camp. Before making a decision on a camp, though, you should consider what kind of camping experience will benefit both your child and family.
Ask plenty of questions: How does my child feel about going away? Has he or she handled previous sleep-away experiences well? What do other people who know my child outside the home—teachers, mentors, or coaches—think about the idea? Understand that a child's age is less important than his or her emotional and temperamental makeup (although most camps have a minimum age of 10).
Make sure your child will enjoy the camp's activities. Camp activities vary greatly, and often focus on particular areas, such as competitive sports, nature studies, or the arts.
Gather as much information as possible. For example, review camp videotapes, meet with camp directors and counselors, ask friends and neighbors how their children enjoyed camps you are considering, and, if possible, visit the campsite itself. Once you've chosen a camp, write letters to the counselors describing your child's temperament and the activities he or she likes.
Monitor your own separation-anxiety level. Try not to make your anxiety too evident, because children tend to feed off their parents' fears. You can take some comfort in that you have fully researched and chosen what you consider to be the best camp. Once your child is away, talk to the camp director or a counselor to see how your child is faring.
Many camps offer special services to children with just about any type of physical, medical, emotional, or psychological disability or need. One question to ask is whether a camp that exclusively provides special services to children with special needs is preferable to a camp that has a more inclusive, mainstream setting.
The American Academy of Pediatrics stresses that camps should match the interests and the emotional and developmental levels of the child. With good background research, you will be able to make a successful camp selection for your child.
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WASHINGTON – The middle class is receiving less of America’s total income, declining to its smallest share in decades.
A study released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center highlights diminished hopes, too, for the roughly 50 percent of adults defined as middle class, with household incomes ranging from $39,000 to $118,000. The report describes this mid-tier group as suffering its “worst decade in modern history,” having fallen backward in income for the first time since the end of World War II.
Three years after the recession technically ended, fewer middle class Americans believe that hard work will allow them to get ahead in life. Families are now more likely to say their children’s economic future will be the same or worse than their own.
The Pew study is just the latest indicator of a long-term trend of widening U.S. income inequality. The Census Bureau reported last year that income fell for the wealthiest – down 1.2 percent to $180,810 for the top 5 percent of households. But the bottom fifth of households – those making $20,000 or less – saw incomes decline 4 percent.
The new study reviewed 2010 data from the Census Bureau and Federal Reserve, defining “middle class” as the tier of adults whose household income falls between two-thirds and double the national median income, or $39,418 to $118,255 in 2010 for a family of three. By this definition, “middle class” makes up about 51 percent of U.S. adults, down from 61 percent in 1971.
In 1970, the share of U.S. income that went to the middle class was 62 percent, while wealthier Americans received 29 percent. By 2010, the middle class had 45 percent of the nation’s income, tying a low first reached in 2006, compared to 46 percent for upper-income Americans.
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School Counseling | In Print
For School Counselors, Technology Enhances the Human Touch
Soft skill tests, college planners, and neuropsych evaluations are some of the traditional tools of the school counseling trade. Because school counselors have multiple goals--supporting and fostering positive personal, social, academic, and career development in students--they need a variety of resources at their disposal.
So you'd think counselors would embrace technological innovation that supports their students' development. But most seem to pass on opportunities to save time and money and to find new ways to reach out to children, parents, and educators by leveraging technology.
According to one academic expert in the counseling field, few K-12 school counselors use technology in their professional lives, despite the numerous digital guidance and counseling resources available. Russell Sabella, a professor of counseling in the graduate program at the College of Education at Florida Gulf Coast University and the academic in question, bases this estimation on years of experience working with school counselors during workshops, as a consultant, and through interaction with users of his resource-rich website SchoolCounselor.com.
Sabella says tech-resistant school counselors in his training classes are often intimidated by technology they do not yet know how to use and worry about losing the human touch that has been the foundation of their work for most of their careers.
"I have encountered that fear that technology is replacing something very precious and valuable, which is personal, human contact," he says.
That is not to say there aren't school counselors who find benefit in using technology in their work. There is evidence that counseling professionals all over the country take advantage of Twitter, Pinterest, blogs, websites, and mobile devices--but perhaps just not enough of them.
"Technology is a good fit for counselors," Sabella says. "Like counselors, who exist to help students meet their potential, technology provides us tools to help people achieve even beyond what it is they would have been able to achieve without technology. Our current generation is the most highly connected generation in the history of recorded time, and oftentimes…our face-to-face time is of a higher quality because of how it is we're able to stay connected when we're not face-to-face."
School counselors who do not get enough support from their administrators to use technological tools may also fall behind. Julia V. Taylor, dean of student services at Wake Young Women's Leadership Academy in Raleigh, NC, believes that leadership in the field of school counseling is sorely lacking, perpetuating misinformation that keeps school counselors from learning how to use technology effectively.
"Unless leaders are providing the professional development for technology and the opportunity to sit down and play with it and tinker with it and find out what goes well in the classroom, it's not going to happen," Taylor says. "Educators, administrators, and particularly ed reformers spend so much time talking about the disadvantages. I wholeheartedly feel that we play in technology, but our students live that world and they don't know any other way."
In fact, Taylor believes it so strongly that she says school counselors who do not take the opportunity to learn the new methods and means of communication--from Twitter and Pinterest to mobile devices like the iPad--are doing a disservice to their students. "You might not need to know how to program or code the HTML of a website," she says, "but you need to know where to point students."
The Social Counselor
Taylor wasn't always as tech-savvy as she is today. She says she learned via trial and error that tools like tablets and the internet can be a boon for counselors, provided the counselors focus on what interests them and at a pace they are comfortable with.
Twitter has a lot to offer even beyond extensive networking and ongoing conversations about counseling. Hashtags--clusters of keywords following a # sign--are used by communities on Twitter to follow and engage in dedicated, specific discussions. School counselors in particular can use the hashtag #scchat to connect with like-minded people around the country and the world on topics of import, sharing, for instance, links to articles in professional periodicals, instructional videos, vetted websites, and how-to tips.
At a school where she once worked as a counselor, Taylor turned to Twitter when her team was charged with the task of transforming an advanced-placement school fair that typically was not well attended. She learned how to create a virtual fair and a blog site that included short video presentations of teachers explaining their courses, the required materials, and how students could contact them directly with questions. The end result was increased participation by students as well as significant cost and time savings.
"Twitter isn't a place I go to say, 'I walked my dog today.' Twitter is the place I go to for professional learning," Taylor says. "I follow educators. I follow administrators and school counselors. We have a chat once a month where we share resources, articles, iPad apps."
Taylor's goal is to share what she has learned and to learn from others. In addition to her own Twitter account, Taylor maintains a website where she shares a recommended reading list and her favorite school counseling resources. She has also recently started using Pinterest, a site she believes has enormous potential for school counselors.
Pinterest serves as a virtual, visual-centric bulletin board where counselors can "pin" information, typically graphics and links, for others to view. The names of Taylor's boards reflect her approach to reaching other counselors: Her "Run the World (Girls)" board explores gender bias, empowering girls to achieve their greatest potential, a healthy body image, and more. "School Counseling" offers links to games, projects, art therapy exercises, group counseling resources, and problem-solving tools. "Infographic Geek" lives up to its name, compiling an array of statistic-heavy, colorful posters addressing everything from education (e.g., the number of US colleges by state or the state of global K-12 spending) to when kids leave school (the role of Generation Y women in the workplace and the effect of education on annual income).
Counselors and other students can browse the boards and even "repin" graphics they want to share with their own communities.
Moving to Mobile
Andrea Burston, a counselor at JY Joyner Magnet Elementary in Raleigh, is also a professional development presenter in Wake County (which encompasses Raleigh), teaching her peers about the benefits of technology and helping them navigate cyberspace, even if that means wading in slowly.
"It's a gradual process," Burston says. "You start out with baby steps. I tell counselors, 'Instead of making a website--that's a lot of work--start out with a blog. Blogs are pretty easy --you write about what you're doing. You can post, you can go back and edit, and then you can build from there."
One of Burston's favorite tools is the iPad. She and an intern regularly use Google Docs on the tablet to compile data during classroom visits. After meeting individually with each student to do a check-in, Burston makes a survey in a Google Docs spreadsheet with all the questions she still wants to ask. Instead of walking back and forth to the computer in her office, Burston can input answers wherever she goes.
She's such an enthusiast she created her own wiki site of iPad resources and offers a local professional development class called "How to Use an iPad in Your School Counseling Program."
The benefit of portable technology extends to working with students too. School counselors assist students with a number of academic, social, and life goals. And there's more than one app for that.
The app Middle School Confidential 1: Be Confident in Who You Are is laid out like a graphic novel and follows six friends learning what middle school is all about. The app Hannah Rose Knows encourages kids to improve self-expression, self-confidence, and compassion for others. Still another of Burston's favorites helps kids, especially younger ones, express themselves.
"We have a student who has a sister who's sick with leukemia," Burston says. "She would get on the iPad and use an app called Puppet Pals, where you can write a story, make characters, and move them around. She made a story about her sister. It was very therapeutic for her to tell this story through this app."
In addition to providing a comprehensive list of apps on her wiki site, she collaborates with other school counselors to leverage technology. Later this year she'll participate with Sabella and others in a presentation at the annual American School Counselor Association (ASCA) conference called "School Counseling Web 2.0 and Technology Smackdown."
To those who can't attend the physical event, Burston recommends an online forum from the association called ASCA Scene. More than 19,000 counseling professionals post and respond to questions daily. Queries about technology are a regular occurrence, and there are a number of downloadable files offered by forum participants.
As a former ASCA president, Sabella has direct experience with how the forum helps school counselors access best practices.
"School counselors are having daily discussions and sharing resources without the barriers of space, pace, or time," he says. "School counselors help develop comprehensive school counseling programs designed to help students achieve academically, socially, and in their careers. I see technology as a way for us to achieve and accomplish and succeed."
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Electric cars are being hailed as the future. No, it’s not 1901, but 2011. Over a century ago, gas-powered cars fought for early adopters of horseless carriage technology against electric-powered cars. Yes, what’s old is new again. Except gas won last time. Now, it’s all a bit murky.
Half-upstart/half-vapourware shillers like Tesla and Fisker, as well as old guards like Morgan, are tripping over themselves to electrify your driveway. Despite compromises such as limited range, heavy batteries, and tortuous charge times, car makers (with a little nudge from government regulators) aspire to wean us off petroleum and reduce the carbon emissions from our tailpipes.
And it’s easy to see why. It’s where the money is. Governments are investing in the crucial infrastructure needed to charge the hobbled beasts by installing electric charging points and giving out massive loans to companies who promise to build electric cars in their country. The government has picked a side, which means that you will too.
But there are alternatives, and not just corn-based ethanol – that grotesque shell game that subsidizes American farmers so that they can grow fuel that would otherwise make perfectly good food – but Hydrogen. Yes, it’s a bit combustible (see Hindenburg) and it requires extremely high pressures to be kept stable, but it also allows for refuelling in 5 minutes, a lot less than the 5 hours an electric car currently needs. If Hydrogen received the same kind of government support, it could prove to be a more viable alternative to plug-in electric power. The only way to find out is to invest. Just like these companies are…+Continue Reading
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There were 98,817 operating public elementary/secondary schools in the 2010–11 school year (table 1). In this school year, 1,929 schools were closed and 1,665 new schools were opened. Most operating schools were regular schools (88,929) that were responsible for instruction in the standard curriculum as well as other areas. An additional total of 2,206 schools focused primarily on special education services; 1,485 schools were identified as vocational schools; and 6,197 were identified as alternative education schools.
By 2010–2011, charter schools had been established in 40 states and the District of Columbia, and 31 states and the District of Columbia had designated magnet schools (table 2). Charter schools enrolled about 1.8 million students, and magnet schools enrolled about 2.1 million students in 2010–11 (table 3).
Across all regular public schools that had membership, the overall pupil/teacher ratio3 in 2010–11 was 15.7 (table 4), compared to 16.1 in 2009–10 (Chen 2011). In the 2010–11 school year, the ratio ranged from 10.9 in Vermont to 23.8 in Utah. The pupil/teacher ratio differed across school instructional levels: it was 15.6 in primary; 15.4 in middle; and 16.1 in high schools.
School size differed by instructional level in 2010–11. On average, primary schools had 453 students in membership, middle schools had 576 students, and high schools had 847 students (table 5).
More schools (29,202) were in rural locations than in any other locale in 2010–11. An additional 22,492 were in cities; 24,461 schools were in suburban areas; and 11,849 were in towns (table 6). In contrast, the largest percentage of students attended suburban schools (34 percent), followed by schools in cities (29 percent), rural areas (25 percent), and towns (12 percent). These distributions were similar to those in 2009–10 (Chen 2011).
Eligibility for free or reduced-price lunch under the National School Lunch Program is sometimes used as a proxy measure of poverty. Across the reporting states and the District of Columbia, 48 percent of students were eligible for free or reduced-price lunch in 2010–11 (table 7), compared to the 47 percent reported in 2009–10 (Chen 2011). In 2010–11, the percentage of eligibility ranged among states from a low of 25 percent in New Hampshire to a high of 73 percent in the District of Columbia. By locale, 60 percent of students in city schools were eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, compared to 52 percent in towns, 44 percent in rural areas, and 40 percent in suburban areas.
3 Pupil/teacher ratio is the number of students for each full-time equivalent (FTE) teacher. FTE is the amount of time required to perform an assignment stated as a proportion of a full-time position.
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Biomedical engineers at UC Davis have developed a plug-in interface for the microfluidic chips that will form the basis of the next generation of compact medical devices. They hope that the “fit to flow” interface will become as ubiquitous as the USB interface for computer peripherals.
UC Davis filed a provisional patent on the invention Nov. 1. A paper describing the devices was published online Nov. 25 by the journal Lab on a Chip.
“We think there is a huge need for an interface to bridge microfluidics to electronic devices,” said Tingrui Pan, assistant professor of biomedical engineering at UC Davis. Pan and graduate student Arnold Chen – invented the chip and co-authored the paper.
Microfluidic devices use channels as small as a few micrometers across, cut into a plastic membrane, to carry out biological or chemical tests on a miniature scale. They could be used, for example, in compact devices used for medical diagnosis, food safety or environmental monitoring.
Cell phones with increasingly sophisticated cameras could be turned into microscopes that could read such tests in the field.
But it is difficult to connect these chips to electronic devices that can read the results of a test and store, display or transmit it.
Pan thinks that the fit-to-flow connectors can be integrated with a standard peripheral component interconnect (PCI) device commonly used in consumer electronics, while an embedded micropump will provide on-demand, self-propelled microfluidic operations. With this standard connection scheme, chips that carry out different tests could be plugged into the same device — such as a cell phone, PDA or laptop — to read the results.
The work was supported by a National Science Foundation CAREER award to Pan, and a fellowship to Chen from UC Davis.
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Pilots watches are wrist watches that have been developed especially for pilots since the beginning of the 20th century.
Cartier developed the very first designated pilots watch fort the Brazilian air pioneer Alberto Santos-Dumont in 1906, which was carried on the wrist. The Idea was quickly taken over by other manufacturers for those magnificent men in their flying machines…
Pilots watches have always been built with special care taken on the precision of the time piece, since originally lives actually depended on them. They are also tools of pilots, so they are commonly built like tools: sturdy, robust and very shock resistant. These aviator’s watches usually are made with contrasting face and dials (often white before a black background) and always display minutes and seconds exactly. You will be able to spot a pilots watch at the first glance because of the triangle most aviator’s watches have above or instead of the number twelve. Numbers, the triangle and the dials are traditionally coated with a luminescent paint to allow the pilot to read the watch at night without having to put a light on and ruin his night-vision. Most pilots’ watches still have a big winding crown. This comes from the days where the watches still had to be wound up by hand regularly, and the crowns we’re made extra big so that a pilot could operate them with their flying gloves on.
Later on some aviators’ watches were fitted with a gyrating face, to allow astronomical navigation. As it often happens, military requirements pushed the development further. Anti magnetic pilots’ watches we’re developed, as well as watches resistant to extreme climatic and kinetic influences. These watches we’re so well made, that they stayed superior to modern quartz watches for a very long time.
You will find a wide variety of impressive pilots’ watches on Atomic-Clock.org.uk
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We are now within reach of being able to map all the genes on the human chromosomes, some hundred thousand of them maybe, and to decipher all the genetic information that defines a human being. This will include its sex, the chemistry of its body and its predisposition to a variety of diseases, but not, at least not yet, its personality. All this information is laid down in the human germ cells. Each of them contains 46 chromosomes, worm-like objects only just visible under a good light microscope. Each chromosome is made up of two chains of deoxyribonucleic acid, DNA for short, combined with protein. Along these chains, the genes are spread out in a linear order. A complete genetic map might tell us, for example, that the gene for little Johnny's brown eyes is number 1349 on chromosome 23, but it would not explain why Johnny tells so many lies. So what use would that map be to you and me? Not much, as long as we keep in good health, but many serious scientists believe that such a map would be of signal benefit to medicine. On the other hand, it would also face us with formidable new moral, social, financial and legal problems. This book recounts some of the scientific adventures that brought the Genome Project into being and presents the cases for and against it, but without attempting any judgment about their relative merits.
LRB 26 September 1991 | PDF Download
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A Fluent Reader is one who reads and understands what he or she is reading quickly and effortlessly.
When reading is fluent (automatic), decoding requires less attention. This frees up the reader to concentrate on comprehension and making sense of the text. A Fluent Reader will read more because reading becomes more enjoyable. As more material is read, decoding skills, fluency, vocabulary, background knowledge, and comprehension skills increase.
Non-fluent readers are more likely to:
- Read slowly and laboriously.
- See, read and process only one word at a time.
- Eyes fixate (stop) on every word read.
- Be interrupted whenever they make a miscue.
- Reread to regain comprehension. This is called regression.
- Stop often to sound out words letter by letter (decode).
- Use phonics exclusively as their cueing reading strategy.
- Read on whether it makes sense or not.
- Vocalize the words as they are read, either subliminally or by lip vocalization (Vocalization drastically limits the rate at which one reads to the rate at which one speaks. The average adult speaks between 160 to 220 WPM.)
- Have reduced or minimal comprehension due to slow reading rate. (When not engaged in fluent reading, one's mind tends to wander because the mind can think faster than the rate at which the person is reading.)
Fluent Readers are more likely to:
- Have automatic decoding skills. (Words are decoded by patterns and chunks.)
- Not have a need to reread.
- Not vocalize words (lip or subliminally) as they are read. (The brain can process words at thousands of words per minute (WPM). Eliminating vocalization frees the brain from being slowed down to the speaking rate. The average speaking rate for a child is 125 to 190 WPM. An adult averages between 160 to 220 WPM.)
- See, process, and read two, three, four and more words with each eye fixation.
- Have a very large vocabulary of sight words.
- Focus on and monitor their own comprehension. (This occurs due to the fact that the reader is able to free their cognitive resources so that the meaning and message of the text can be the focus of attention rather than the mechanics of reading.)
- Are more easily able to obtain meaning of unfamiliar words from the context, thus enhancing their comprehension
- Have good "word attack" skills.
- Read accurately and effortlessly and with proper expression.
- Self-corrects. (Immediately recognizes when something doesn't sound right.)
- Use a variety of reading strategies.
- Find reading more pleasurable and tend to read a lot more!
For much of the 20th century, fluency was defined as the ability to read a text quickly and accurately, and with proper expression. Today we know that this definition only describes fluency as it pertains to oral reading. The changing concept of fluency has brought us past the definition of "freedom from word calling" to the more complex explanation that recognizes that fluency requires high-speed word recognition so that it frees a reader's cognitive resources so that the meaning and message of the text can be the focus of attention. In short, reading fluency today can be defined as the ability to read text accurately and automatically, and with sufficient ease allowing the reader to focus their attention on the meaning and message of the text.
Fluent oral readers smoothly read one word at a time, out loud and with ease. Comprehension and recall are not necessarily equated with oral reading since the focus of oral reading is on accuracy, pronunciation, and prosody (expression). Oral reading fluency has very little to do with silent reading fluency. Oral reading is hardly a skill that most of us will use extensively in our adult lives unless we are a radio or TV news announcer.
Fluent silent readers smoothly read "more" than one word at a time without vocalizing (lip or subliminally). They read with ease, speed, and have greater comprehension and recall. The core of silent fluent reading is to be able to extract the meaning and message of the text read without thought to the mechanics of reading. Without fluency, comprehension is often impeded.
Dysfluency occurs when the reader's complete attention, effort, and energy, is focused on word recognition (decoding) that it drains all their cognitive resources, and thereby leaves very little room to devote to comprehension and interpretation of print. The good news about dysfluency is that it is not a permanent affliction.
Prime Words are commonly known as "high frequency words" - words that are found in print based on their frequency. The first 2,000 Prime Words found in print today make up approximately 75% of all the words we see and read in books, newspapers, and journals. Because these words hold thoughts together, Prime Words should be automatically recognized and processed without having to stop and figure them out before one can become a Fluent Reader and read with confidence.
Sight words are a subset of high frequency Prime Words that are learned by sight (memory) since they do not follow typical phonetic rules and letter-sound partnerships. Sight words, also known as "exception words" or "irregualr words", are memorized as a whole words without learning to decode them. Examples of common sight words include: was, the, one, of, shoe, said. Once a word is read without hesitation or conscious thought, it can also be referred to as a "sight" word. Fluent Readers are able to see, read and process the top 2,000 Prime Words as "sight" words.
E.W. Dolch surveyed many children's books in the 1940s. From his survey, he came up with a hand tallied list of "service words" which included a total of 220 pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, verbs and 95 nouns that repeatedly where found in children's books of that time period. These 315 words became known as the Dolch Word List and are still in use today. Dolch words are not listed by word difficulty, but rather frequency with which these words are found in print. Children learning to read typically possess these words in their speaking and listening vocabularies. Dolch words have also been referred to as "sight" words because these words need to be recognized "on sight". Although the Dolch List has held up over time, learning the Dolch words in isolation does not make one a fluent reader but rather a "word caller". The Dolch List also falls short in only listing words that need to be read automatically up to and including the 3rd grade level. Fluent readers today need to have an automatic word bank of at least 2,000 Prime Words.
Subvocalization is the tendency to pronounce words to yourself as you read. The process of subvocalization (lip or subliminally) immediately activates the part of the brain that is related to the function of pronunciation. This activation imposes a reading speed limit of 160 - 220 words per minute (WPM), the rate at which the average adult speaks. Subvocalization is one of the common causes that contributes to a "limited" speed reading rate. The best way to prevent this is to develop a wider eye span. Not faced with this sound barrier and without special training deaf people often read above 1000 WPM.
1. Immediately recognizing letters and frequent clusters of letters.
2. Learning high frequency words by sight.
Examples: and, the, at, in, etc.
3. Seeing phrases as whole word groups.
Example: over the rainbow, black and white, or peanut butter and jelly
4. Using prediction skills within the phrase or clause.
Example: "under the b... ", "the book that I r... ", or "eating a ham s..."
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“Chrrrrp, chrrrp”: Our headphones echo with the tinny peeps of a radio-tagged pallid sturgeon (Scaphyrincus albus). Dave Fuller, a Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks fisheries technician, maneuvers the jet boat up and down the Missouri River on a beautiful October day. The sapphire sky has yet to succumb to winter’s haze, and the cottonwoods and willows that line the bank are dressed in fall's finery, their branches sleeved in green and gold.
Soon we zero in: “CHRRRP.” “It’s a female,” says Pat Braaten, a U.S. Geological Survey research fish biologist, checking the transmitter. “Code 117.” He throws a buoyed net into the water, and we drift downstream until the buoys start dancing: We’ve got her.
“You can look into (a pallid’s) eyes and back into the future—or something,” Fuller says as the two men haul in one of North America’s largest and most endangered fish. Braaten smirks at this facetious attempt at eloquence, but Fuller’s sentiment is one often evoked by pallid researchers. Aaron Delonay, a USGS ecologist who works with the fish, calls them an “irreplaceable treasure from a time older than the Missouri River itself.”
Today’s Missouri River pallids are descended from fish that lived alongside dinosaurs more than 70 million years ago. They’ve weathered ice ages, volcanic explosions and a mass extinction event. Through it all, the fossil record indicates that, in form and function, they’ve hardly changed.
Lately, though, their remarkable evolutionary tenacity has been tested. Since dam-building and channelization began on the Missouri in the early 1900s, roughly 80 percent of the fish’s habitat has been modified or destroyed. Scientists estimate that if they stopped stocking the river with hatchery fish tomorrow, the species could vanish from the Upper Missouri—the dam-locked stretches of river in Montana and the Dakotas—by the century’s end.
After freeing Code 117—a four-foot-long behemoth—from a dripping tangle of net, Braaten and Fuller slip her into a tank. With the caution of a beast accustomed to life in the murky dimness, she lifts her spade-shaped snout from the water. She has the sickly hue of a corpse but her tiny eyes are the color of warm honey. Her under-slung mouth is fringed with fleshy whiskers, and bony scutes armor her from tip to tail. She is weird and wonderful, beautiful and bizarre.
Fuller pulls on rubber gloves and assembles his tools: scalpel, forceps, suturing thread. He makes a one-inch incision in 117’s lower abdomen and peeks inside, looking for signs of recent reproductive activity. If 117 hadn’t spawned, her ovaries would be filled with large, gray-black eggs, which she would eventually re-absorb. But her eggs are tiny and white: She’s spawned. He stitches her up; then, as if handling a priceless antique, he and Braaten lower 117 back into the river.
In recent years, Fuller and Braaten have biopsied a handful of wild pallids that, like 117, appear to be spawning successfully. What’s troubling is what they haven’t found: wild offspring, in either the Upper Missouri or the lower reaches of a major tributary, the Yellowstone River. A hatchery and propagation program has bought the species time. But the ultimate goal—a population that can sustain itself in the wild—remains elusive.
“We are always hopeful,” says Braaten. “But I’ve been working on this stuff for 10, 11 years, and little sturgeon are just not found. Something is happening between reproduction and the rest of their lifespan.”
Figuring out what that something is would help answer a more fundamental question for this and many western rivers: Can struggling fish be rescued without tearing down dams?
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Welcome to the Dead Sea Scrolls LibGuide @SBTS. I hope you will find this site to be a helpful introduction to the study of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
This site is organized by tabs.
The tabs are categorized according to certain types of resources:
Texts: Under this tab you will find primary sources, in the original languages and in translation, for accesseing the scrolls.
Reference Tools: Here you will find lexicons, concordances, encyclopedias/dictionaries, and a couple seminal monographs devoted to the Dead Sea Scrolls. Weston Fields' Full History is a 'must-read' for those who want to understand the controversial history of the discovery and publication of the scrolls.
Journals and Bibliographies: The journals and bibliographies listed here are dedicated to Dead Sea Scrolls scholarship. You will need to search the standard biblical studies journals (e.g., JBL), but be
sure to look through the table of contents in the featured journals.
New to Dead Sea Scrolls studies?
Navigating the resources:
Be sure to check out Joseph Fitzmyer's Guide to the Dead Sea Scrolls and Related Literature, which is featured in the bibliographies section of this site. This resource will help you navigate the major publications. You might also find Emanuel Tov's Revised List, featured on the Reference Tools page, helpful as well.
Understanding the issues:
Timothy Lim's Dead Sea Scrolls: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2005), featured on the Reference Tools page, provides a balanced, concise introduction to Scrolls studies.
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A cable car taking skiers to a glacier in Austria catches fire on this day in 2000 as it passes through a mountain tunnel; 156 people die. Only 11 people managed to survive the fire, which was caused by an illegal space heater.
Kitzsteinhorn Mountain in the Austrian Alps is a popular skiing and snowboarding destination located just south of Salzburg. In order to reach the mountain's prime skiing locations, it is necessary to take a cable car from the town of Kaprun into the mountains and through a 2.5-mile tunnel. The 90-foot-long car is pulled by a cable along train-like tracks.
On the morning of November 11, the car left at 9 a.m. for its journey up the mountain; within two minutes, flames were spotted shooting from the car. The cable car had just entered the concrete shaft tunnel when a disruption indicator, part of the car's safety system, automatically stopped it. Quickly, the tunnel filled with toxic smoke, but the doors wouldn't open. In the back of the car, a man smashed the rear window Plexiglas and 11 people were able to crawl out the back to a stairway that led several hundred yards down to the entrance.
The other passengers were not so fortunate. Although some passengers were able to make it out of the front of the car and attempted to climb to the top of the tunnel, the tunnel acted as a chimney sending flames and smoke straight up. In fact, the driver of the corresponding car coming down the tunnel was burned near the exit at the top. Three other people who were near the top of the tunnel also burned to death.
The fire burned all day, as it was not until that evening that workers could get to the train. Once there, they encountered bodies that were burned and charred beyond recognition. One worker later said "I don't want to describe it for the sake of the families." An inquiry into the fire's cause revealed that a space heater in the driver's cabin had caused the hydraulic oil in a pipe to overheat and leak on to a plastic seat, where it ignited.
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Page 3 of 4
Functional control structures
The most immediate question that any procedural programmer will want to ask is how to implement all of the standard control structures – the if statement and iteration in all its forms.
The if statement is relatively easy as all you need to do is consider the usual if..then..else type construct as a function that returns either the “then” function or the “else” function – this is good functional programming.
Notice that writing functions one after another implies the default order of execution so we haven’t completely avoided the procedural.
The enumeration loop is more problematic because most loops involve the idea of changing the value of something within the loop and this isn’t allowed if what is in the loop is immutable.
There are various ways that a functional language can avoid iteration. For example, to display the first ten integers you can use:
printfn "%A" nums
The [1..10] is just a specification for a list in F# and you can avoid many explicit iterations by simply converting them into a list and a list operation. This is often called a "List comprehension" and you can find similar constructs in languages such as Python and Ruby that are not generally regarded as functional languages.
For example, suppose you want to print the squares of the first ten integers you can use:
let sqr x = x*x
let ans=List.map sqr nums
printfn "%A" ans
First we create a list of the first ten integers, then define a function to perform the square operation and finally apply the sqr function to each of the values in the list. The List.map function takes any function and applies it to each member of the list and returns a new list of results.
If you want to use a variable iteration range you can, as in:
as long as n has a value when this is evaluated then it all works.
Notice that the map function takes a function as one of its parameters.
In functional programming functions can be used in the same way you use any other data type. When used in this way they are called “first class” functions.
There are lots of list processing functions and mastering these is a large part of mastering functional programming in F#.
This is a good place to introduce the notion of an anonymous function. Often functions are just used once and there is no need to give them a name – you just want to use them.
F# supports anonymous functions, often called lambda expressions, that look just like C# lambda expressions. For example the calculation of the squares could have been written:
let ans=List.map (fun x -> x*x) nums
The fun keyword declares a function and the “arrow” can be thought of as showing how the parameters are transformed into the result.
You can take this “anonymous” approach to functions and nest function calls to reduce the entire generation and printing of the squares to a single statement:
printfn "%A" (List.map
(fun x -> x*x) [1..10])
It is possible to take this approach so far that it becomes very difficult to follow what an F# program is doing – so beware.
What about finding the sum of all of the values in a list? The simple answer is that there is the sum function which returns the sum of a list. For example:
printfn "%A" (List.sum nums)
However this is a bit of a cheat as it doesn’t really give you any idea of how to convert an iteration with a “running computation” of a more general kind into functional form.
You could say it hasn’t illustrated how mutable becomes immutable.
One solution to this more general problem is the use of a “fold” function. The best way to explain folding is via an example.
The List.fold_left function accepts a function, an initialiser and a list as its parameters. The function plays the role of an “accumulator” in the sense that it collects up the results of the function applied to each element of the list. To sum a list for example you might use something like:
fun a x-> a + x) 0 [1..10])
The accumulator function in this case is:
fun a x-> a + x
the x parameter is set to each value of the list in turn and the a parameter is the result of the function applied to the previous list element. The 0 is the initialiser and sets the a parameter to zero in the function’s first call.
If you are following this explanation and are a long-time procedural programmer then you should be spluttering – but this is a loop in disguise!
Well yes, but… think of it this way instead.
The function is applied to the first element of the list x0:
where the value of a is provided by the intialiser. Next it is applied to the second element in the list x1 but this time a is set to the result of the function applied to the first element, that is:
The third evaluation is similar:
and so on. Now you can see that what you have here is a nested function evaluation:
Hence folding is building nested function evaluations without having to write it all out manually.
Now is folding a loop in disguise or something different?
For the record the fold_left function nests taking the list elements left to right and fold_right takes them in the reverse order.
You should also appreciate that folding is a very general and powerful technique that really does allow you to do more or less anything you could do by iteration.
For example, you could use the Cons function, which is implemented as an operator :: (double colon) to build up a new list.
That is, 1::[2;3;4] adds the number one to the start of the list to produce [1; 2; 3; 4]. To make use of this in a fold to reverse the order of the values you could use something like:
In this case the “accumulator” function:
(fun a x-> x :: a) [1..n])
fun a x-> x :: a
takes each element of the list and adds it to the accumulator list being built up in a. A moment’s thought should convince you that this results in the list being reversed. Notice the use of the null list [ ] to initialise the fold.
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Haryana has a proud history, dating back to the Vedic age. It was home to the legendary Bharata dynasty, which gave the name Bharat to India. Haryana is bounded by
in the east, Punjab
in the west,
in the north and
in the south. The union territory of Delhi
is landlocked on 3 sides by Haryana. The only river flowing through Haryana is the Ghaggar
, which runs along the northern fringes. The climate is of a pronounced character - very hot in summer and markedly cold in winter.
Chandigarh is the shared capital of the states of Haryana and Punjab. The total area is 44,212 sq km. Hindus constitute about 90 percent of the population. Jats (a peasant caste) form the backbone of the agricultural economy.
Haryana has a very fertile land. Most of the land is suitable for agriculture and 60 percent is irrigated. The important crops are wheat, rice, sugarcane, potatoes, barley, millet and maize. The state is well known for handloom products. The industries include cotton and woolen textiles, scientific instruments, glass, cement, paper and sugar milling, automobiles, tyres, bicycles, and electronic equipments.
Haryana has a network of 44 tourist complexes and it attracts around 7 million tourists every year.
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Both Bowden and Port Morant were busy harbours during the heyday of sugar and bananas. Most of St. Thomas’ large coconut plantations and sugar estates are no longer in operation, however, the sole surviving sugar factory in the parish is the Duckenfield Sugar Factory.
The United Fruit Company once had many flourishing banana plantations in the parish, but was forced to close due to the damaging effects of the Panama Disease. The Company pulled out, and the banana stations closed. Coconut and banana trees in St. Thomas were virtually wiped out by the hurricane of 1944 and many of those left standing were finally blown down in 1951 by Hurricane Charlie.
St. Thomas remains an important agricultural parish. The Plantain Garden and Morant River valleys remain the domain of large estates where sugar and bananas are grown for export. Cocoa is a popular small farmer crop and there has been a revival of coffee production in the more elevated areas of the Blue Mountains.
Coconuts used to be grown for copra that was made into coconut oil and animal feed. Now a small but thriving industry has emerged for the bottling of coconut water for the domestic beverage market. The harvesting of the “green” coconuts for the bottling industry has come at the expense of the older copra industry.
Small-scale near-shore fishing activities continue around the coasts of the parish. The oyster project at Bowden has collapsed but the growing of artemia at the Yallahs ponds is thriving.
Today, a few large areas are used for the cultivation of coconuts, sugarcane and bananas, but small farming is now the main agricultural practice in the parish. Despite changing weather patterns and occasional periods of drought, most crops do very well.
St. Thomas has been the incubator of some interesting agricultural developments. One such is the production of oysters at Bowden. These oysters are shipped to markets in Kingston and the North Coast tourism market. Another development is the production of artemia based at Yallahs Pond. The artemia are used as fish food, saving the country valuable foreign exchange.
Yallahs River 36.9 km (22.9 miles)
Plantain Garden River 34.9 km (21.7 miles)
Morant River 25.9 km (16.1 miles)
Blue Mountain 2256 m
Yallahs Hill 730 m (2,394 feet)
A small amount of marble is currently being mined from quarries in the Bath area of St. Thomas. Jamaica marbles come in various colours – pinkish-grey, grey-green and maroon. Some 100 tons are produced here annually primarily for use in the tile industry. In terms of capacity for polish, colour patterns and richness of colour, Jamaican marble compares favourably with those on the international market.
Talc and asbestos occur in the Hornblende schists of the area surrounding Bath.
Government Forest Reserves 13,158 hectares (32, 514 acres)
Private Woodland 74,138.4 hectares (183,200 acres)
*Cow Bay Swamp
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Atlas of Epidemic Britain: A Twentieth Century Picture
- Smallman-Raynor, Matthew Cliff, Andrew D.
- Oxford University Press
Over a hundred years have passed since Charles Creighton's A History of Epidemics in Britain was published. Then, epidemics of infectious diseases accounted for a third of all deaths in the British Isles, caused principally by familiar infections like measles, whooping cough, scarlet fever, and smallpox, as well as by a host of now unfamiliar conditions in Britain like plague, cholera and typhus. By the beginning of the twenty-first century, mortality from infectious diseases had dropped to less than one in ten thousand of all deaths. But an invidious change had been taking place. Many of the old infectious diseases had been pushed into retreat by improvements in health care, delivered for three generations by a National Health Service, socio-economic progress, and medical advances - particularly mass vaccination which caused morbidity and mortality from a series of vaccine-preventable infections to implode. The vacuum generated was filled not just by cancers and cardio-vascular conditions. To add to the mix, infectious disease morbidity and mortality began to increase again, caused by a complex mixture of apparently new pathogens like bird flu, swine flu, variant Creutzfeld-Jacob disease (vCJD), Escherichia coli O157:H7, HIV, and hospital-based infections. Using over 300 new maps, charts, photographs and associated text, this full-colour Atlas views a century of change - the ebb and flow of infection - in Britain's epidemic landscape. It maps and interprets the complex time-space tapestry woven in twentieth century Britain by the uneven retreat of some infectious diseases, the emergence of new infections and the re-emergence of certain historical plagues. In each chapter, representative maps are accompanied by micrographs of the biological agents of the diseases mapped, illustrations of the environments in which they occur, the impacts they have had, and the pioneers who unravelled their complex life and death cycles. The accompanying text summarizes the epidemics each pathogen has caused in the British Isles, its current status, and the probability of future control.
|Extent||224 pages, 373 halftones||ISBN||9780199572922|
|Format||N/A||Published||10 May 2012|
|Availability||Usually dispatched within 1 - 4 weeks||Delivery||Delivery options and charges|
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"Fiiire, fiiire" voice the men of the communities calling each other to take up machetes, shovels and pails; the hill is on fire.
An epidemic of fires, beyond all precedent, is sweeping away the forests as well as the vegetable plots, the coffee plantations, the milpas and animals of the communities. Mostly they seem provoked. They start at places where no one burns for agriculture. They destroys forests that no one dared cut down, that were part of the communities' patromony. They do not respect ditches nor protections, because the hands that fire them do not rest, they are ubiquitous, invisible, unpunished, they have bared the surface. To see each other's faces; so that no one can hide.
Never before a layer of smoke had covered such a large extension of the Chiapas territory.
The peasants are astounded, indignant, sad and worried. Although government officials are trying all kinds of somersaults to blame the peasants (see the case of the coffee plantations set on fire in Taniperlas), they are accusations no one believes.
In the Altamirano canada there are places where, at noon, one cannot distinguish another person two meters away, as it happens in the communities 10 de Abril and San Miguel Chiptic. But there is worse: the Sierra of Corralon is ablaze, from Morelia to La Garrucha at the canada of Patihuitz. Smoke shoots up from everywhere.
Officially, up to now there are 46 thousand hectares burnt down in Chiapas. Also officially, at this moment 35 fires are being fought against. The largest at the selva and frontier regions. In the area of the Montebello lakes, between La Trinitaria and La Independencia, three thousand hectares are burning, and one thgousand two hundred at the Taniperla ejido. Between Pueblo Nuevo and Sitala, at Tila, in the northern region, the Capalna hill is ablaze. The fires have affected the Palenque National Park and large forested areas at Las Margaritas, Chanal and Comitan. At the El Bosque and Bochil, between Los Altos and the North, fires spring up when it is less expected. And in Chenalho.
These are not the traditional burnings of the agricultural cycle, it is not that the peasants have become more careless nor that they harbor evil intentions.
For the communities, the fires are an omen of hunger. Putting aside the great fires of Copainala and Cintalapa, and the fires that can be associated with urban speculation, as in Ocozocuautla, the largest concentration of fires coincides with the "conflict zone", that is, where the indigenous population lives, where there exist autonomous municipalities, where the EZLN and their suupporting bases move; hundreds of resisting communities.
Although there are no existing proofs (which is typical) the incendiary proliferation in zones of conflict is "normal" during contra-insurgency campaigns. It has been seen in Central America, in Vietnam and in Cambodia; it can be seen in Colombia and Indonesia. Why should it not be seen in Chiapas, if the mannuals are the same? And besides, there are so many fires in the Republic, there's no reason why a few more should be noticed.
The roads that lead to Morelia, to Belisario Dominguez, to the mountains, show their desolation. The inhabitants of Morelia speak with sadness of the scenery lost. Coughing, injected conjunctivitis, children's runny noses, lung pains, spitting, hurting noses. The permanent smell of bonfire on the clothes.
"The blaze appears as distributed" says a peasant. "below the trees and in bonfires near the coffee plantations. Everything is dry and as soon as the wind blows it sets all evenly afire".
"People from here it is not"', he says,"how can it be. But who does it, we don't know.".
At the environs of La Laguna, near Altamirano, there are almost no forests. At La Laguna a new air strip of the armed forces is being set up, that the peasants fear can be turned into an air base.
At the autonomous municipality 17 de Noviembre, many recently founded towns ("New Population Centers") are being affected by the absurd burnings. When the smoke disperses, the moors [smog or soot?] will remain. And if the rains, as it is feared, are delayed, the moors will last.
Translated from Spanish by Maria Elena Hope ___________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________ NUEVO AMANECER PRESS- N.A.P. _________________________________ Registered as a Non Profit Corporation in USA,N.A.P. translates and distributes information in support of human rights in Mexico. Advisory team: Mexico. General Director:Roger Maldonado-Mexico Darrin Wood: Director NAP-Spain office. Susana Saravia: Coordinator NAP: Mexico/USA/Spain Our web page in spanish:http://www.nap.cuhm.mx/nap0.htm
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In the case of the drapery study above, drawn in graphite while I was in art school, the key light strikes the form from the left. You can tell it’s a hard source because of the sharp diagonal cast shadow line. Overhead fluorescents, only slightly less bright, illuminate the shadow side.
The drapery study has the look of an academic exercise partly because it is "overmodeled" which means the tendency to put the full range of modeling factors within each passage.
Outdoors, the blue light from the sky usually modifies the shadow planes, depending on how much they face upward. Reflected light often raises the tone of the shadow. It comes from light bouncing up off the ground surface or from other surfaces. The darkest parts of the shadow are usually at points of contact, called occlusion shadows, where secondary sources can't reach.
Another dark part of the shadow is the area just beyond the terminator. This area is called the core or the hump of the shadow. The core of the shadow only forms if the secondary source of light (edge light, reflected light, or fill light) doesn’t overlap too much with the main light.
In “Daniel in the Lion’s Den,” by Rubens, a strong orange-colored reflected light fills the shadow side of Daniel’s form, all the way from his cheek and neck, down his arm and his leg. Keeping the core intact—or painting it in even if it’s not really there—can give the form more impact, but if it’s overdone it can look unnatural.
If you’re setting up a model or maquette, you can place the primary and secondary lights just far enough apart so that you can see the core beginning to form.
Light and Form, Part 1
Light and Form, Part 2
Light and Form, Part 3
You also might be interested in these posts:
More about all this in my book: Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter
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Rights are a formal codification of human freedom.
Rights state explicitly the fact that no other person or institution has rightful jurisdiction over the person or property of another.
Justice — also known as equity — is nothing more or less than the legal recognition of each and every individual’s right to her own life and her own property.
The Oxford Dictionary defines the term rights as, in part, “A justifiable claim, on legal or moral grounds, to have or obtain something, or to act in a certain way.”
Freedom is the absence of compulsion.
The primary thing that distinguishes the free person from the unfree person is voluntary action versus action that is compelled.
Compulsory taxation, for instance, means that you are not free to do whatever you wish with your own money, because the government may at any time legally compel you to give to government any amount it specifies.
Voluntary action hinges upon the principle of individual rights:
Are we each free to live as we choose, provided we do not infringe upon the equal rights of others? Or not?
The most fundamental political question is this: Do we rightfully own ourselves, or do others rightfully have jurisdiction over us?
To ask that question is to answer it.
America is the only country in the history of the world founded explicitly and principally upon the concept of individual rights.
At root, there’s really only one way to infringe upon another’s rights, and that is through the instigation of force. Quoting the 19th century political thinker Auberon Herbert:
Nobody has the moral right to seek his own advantage by force. That is the one unalterable, inviolable condition of a true society. Whether we are many, or whether we are few, we must learn only to use the weapons of reason, discussion, and persuasion…. As long as men are willing to make use of force for their own ends, or to make use of fraud, which is only force in disguise, wearing a mask, and evading our consent, just as force with violence openly disregards it – so long we must use force to restrain force. That is the one and only one right employment of force … force in the defense of the plain simple rights of property, public or private, in a world, of all the rights of self-ownership – force used defensively against force used aggressively (Auberon Herbert, The Principles of Voluntaryism, 1897).
As Auberon Herbert notes, force can be direct, as in assault and rape, or indirect, as in fraud or extortion. There’s no other way to breach rights than through the (direct or indirect) instigation of force.
Laws that restrict freedom of production and trade (such as cap-and-trade laws) are an indirect use of force.
Trade tariffs are an indirect use of force.
Military conscription is a direct use of force.
Rights, I repeat, are a formal codification of human freedom.
This includes the freedom to trade.
Rights are ethical principles, and they are political principles. As such, rights delimit human freedom in large groups.
This latter thing is emphasized because rights would not need to be discovered if you lived alone, or even if you lived in a small and insular society.
Rights derive from three things: human individuation, human society, and the power of choice which gives rise to moral agency.
Rights are discoveries, not inventions.
One proof of this is found in the fact that the only alternative to acting by right is acting by permission. Whose permission?
Answering that question is where you’ll begin to glimpse the true nature of rights; for if humans only act by permission, who gives permission to those whose permission the rest of us are acting under? And who gives permission to those above, and so on?
Answer: no one — because rights are inalienable in the literal sense: they are not granted, and they cannot be revoked or transferred.
In the final analysis, there’s only the right to your own life: all others – from liberty, to property, to the pursuit of happiness – are an extension of that one.
Those who hold that life is valuable, hold, by implication, that men ought not to be prevented from carrying on life-sustaining activities. In other words, if it is said to be ‘right’ that they should carry them on, then, by permutation, we get the assertion that they ‘have a right’ to carry them on. Clearly the conception of ‘natural rights’ originates in recognition of the truth that if life is justifiable, there must be a justification for the performance of acts essential to its preservation; and, therefore, a justification for those liberties and claims which make such acts possible (Herbert Spencer, The Man Versus the State, 1884).
The crux of freedom is rights.
The crux of rights is human individuation and moral agency.
A deep connection exists between the right to life and the right to property. The importance of this connection cannot be overstated, yet it is precisely this connection that the leftwing and rightwing are both equally ignorant of.
Quoting Claude Frédéric Bastiat:
Each of us has a natural right to defend his person, his liberty, and his property. These are the three basic requirements of life, and the preservation of any one of them is completely dependent upon the preservation of the other two. For what are our faculties but the extension of our individuality? And what is property but an extension of our faculties? … Man can live and satisfy his wants only by ceaseless labor, and by the ceaseless application of his faculties to natural resources. This process is property (Claude Frédéric Bastiat, The Law, 1848).
Property is “not only money and other tangible things of value, but also includes any intangible right considered as a source or element of income or wealth. The right and interest which a man has in lands and chattels to the exclusion of others. It is the right to enjoy and to dispose of certain things in the most absolute manner as he pleases” (Lectric Law Library).
That is precisely why the crux of freedom and free markets is private property.
It is also why environmentalism, as all other forms of socialism, is inherently anti-freedom.
The reason that laissez faire is the proper social system is not because it “works best,” as many nominal defenders of free markets never tire of telling us. Laissez faire is proper, rather, because it is just. Laissez-faire capitalism is the only economic system that respects and protects the inalienable right to life, liberty, property, and free exchange.
One must never forget: money is property. Money is the symbol of your labor.
The root of real wealth is production.
Compulsory (as opposed to voluntary) taxation is a breach of property rights. It is also, again in the words of Bastiat, “legalized plunder.”
Individual rights have been under siege since the moment they were first brought into the light. And yet they’ve remained remarkably resilient. The reason they’ve remained resilient is that they are in a certain sense self-evident: we each, as John Locke said, “have a property in our own person.”
That is the fundamental principle behind rights, and property is an extension of person, nothing more and nothing less.
If you believe in human freedom, you perforce believe in the freedom to trade – fully. For if humans are not allowed to trade freely, humans are not truly free.
No freedom or justice can exist if rights, including property rights, do not exist.
Indeed, the very word rights has its origins in ancient Roman law and is related to the Roman word jus, as in justice. According to historian J. Stuart Jackson, jus “is wider than that of positive law laid down by authority, and denotes an order morally binding on the members of the community.” In the Roman sense of the word, “right” meant “what is just.”
Rights entitle holders to certain freedoms – specifically, the freedom to act in a certain way. Notice the phrase “freedom to act”; it is a crucial distinction because rights do not assure you of anything except the freedom to try.
What, though, fundamentally, is the stuff of rights? Of what are they made of?
To begin with, rights are not primaries: they are second-order principles that derive from something deeper. And that something is a thing which is very specific within the human condition. It is the faculty of choice.
If human behavior were automatic, as it is with animals, there would be no question of rights because any action we undertook would not be chosen. Human action would be neither moral nor immoral but amoral, and rights would therefore not exist.
The grizzly bear who mauls the innocent child is not evil. The man who mauls the innocent child is.
Thus rights are the link between ethics and politics.
Which is why Herbert Spencer and other freethinkers regarded rights as “ethical-political precepts.”
Quoting Samuel Adams:
Among the natural rights are these: First a right to life, secondly to liberty, thirdly to property; together with the right to defend them in the best manner they can…. Rights are evident branches of, rather than deductions from, the duty of self-preservation, commonly called the first law of nature.
Rights are another of these things that everyone thinks he understands, but which in fact almost nobody does.
To get some idea of how poorly understood the nature of rights is, one need only look at the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and observe the sheer number of times one would have to breach the rights (usually in the form of property expropriation – i.e.: “Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay”) of some individual somewhere to achieve even a fraction of that Declaration’s stated goals. The UN’s Declaration of Human Rights is a tour-de-force of postmodern, multicultural, neo-Marxist non-thought.
Leftwingers tell us we have the right to healthcare, the right to a job, the right to a smoke-free work environment, and so on.
Rightwingers, on the other hand, say we do not have the right to open our liquor stores on Sunday, we do not have the right to consensual sex with prostitutes, we do not have the right to gamble, et cetera.
Despite what you’ve been told, these views are not opposites; they are a variation on an identical theme, and their common denominator is this: Humans do not possess the inalienable right to life and property, and government bureaucrats are better suited than we ourselves to tell us how we must live. Yet the fact is, there is nothing in nature, neither human nature nor nature apart from humans, that gives government bureaucrats legitimate authority over the person or property of any other human being.
To say that we have the “right to healthcare,” or the “right to a job,” or the “right to a smoke-free work environment” is the same as saying we have the right to the life, labor, and property of another, which we do not and cannot – by virtue of what rights are.
Rights by definition preclude any claim to the person and property of another, even if that person is a doctor.
To say that humans do not have the right to open their liquor stores on Sunday if they choose, or to say that humans do not have the right to have consensual sex with prostitutes if they choose, or to say that humans do not have the right to gamble and use drugs if they choose, is the same as saying your life is not yours by right but belongs in some measure to bureaucrats, and that humans to that extent exist only by those bureaucrats’ permission — this in spite of the fact that no government and no governmental bureaucracy in the history of the world has ever proved itself more capable of running the individual’s life better than the individual herself.
Government compulsion, rightwing or left, is the antithesis of individual rights.
There is no such thing as a “collective right,” not in any variation.
Rights, by definition, can only belong to the individuals who make up any “collective.”
That is why the very term individual rights is pleonastic in the ultimate purport, albeit necessarily so: the very definition of the word presupposes individual, since it is only individuals who can properly possess rights.
Quoting George Reisman, who is echoing his friend and mentor Ludwig von Mises:
Only individuals exist; collectives consist of nothing but individuals. Only the individual thinks; only the individual acts; only the life of the individual has value and is important. All rights are rights of individuals.
As it happens, there’s an absolutely foolproof method that exists for determining if something is a right or not:
Your rights, my rights, everyone’s rights stop where another’s begin.
If you follow that simple principle, and if you remember that property is nothing more than an extension of person, and that money is also property, you’ll never confuse the issue of rights.
[This article appeared, in a slightly altered form, in Chapter 30 of my book].
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The Qur’an’s sixth sura, “Cattle,” dates from Muhammad’s last year in Mecca, before the Hijra, or Flight, to Medina during the twelfth year of his prophetic career. In Medina he became for the first time a political and military leader as well as a religious one; at Mecca, he had been solely a preacher of his new and uncompromising monotheism, in an atmosphere of increasing antagonism with his own tribe, the Quraysh, who were pagans and polytheists. Sura 6 is preoccupied with that antagonism, and features, among imprecations against the unbelievers, Allah speaking to Muhammad to console him for the Quraysh’s rejection of his message.
Verses 1-12 reaffirm that the unbelievers have rejected the truth of their Creator. Allah warns: “See they not how many of those before them We did destroy?” (v. 6). Allah mocks their unbelief, saying that if he had sent Muhammad a “a written message on parchment,” the unbelievers would have dismissed it as “obvious magic” (v. 7), and if he had sent an angel in the form of a man, they would have just been confused (v. 9). Nothing will satisfy them: they are inherently perverse.
Then verses 13-32 emphasize the oneness of Allah, and claim that “those to whom We have given the Book” – that is, the Jews and Christians – “know this” – that is, the truth of Muhammad’s message – “as they know their own sons” (v. 20). This is because, says Ibn Kathir, “they received good news from the previous Messengers and Prophets about the coming of Muhammad, his attributes, homeland, his migration, and the description of his Ummah.” That is, their unbelief in Islam is not a sincere rejection based on honest conviction, but sheer perversity: they “lie against their own souls” (v. 24).
And there is nothing worse than this. Nothing. Allah asks, “Who doth more wrong than he who inventeth a lie against Allah or rejecteth His signs?” (v. 21). “Signs,” once again, is ayat, the name used for the verses of the Qur’an. This verse emphasize that there can be no greater sin than shirk, the association of partners with Allah. The Tafsir al-Jalalayn asks, “And who, that is, none, does greater evil than he who invents a lie against God, by ascribing to Him an associate, or denies His signs?”
There is no greater evil. In 1997 the “Invitation to Islam” newsletter asserted:
Murder, rape, child molesting and genocide. These are all some of the appalling crimes which occur in our world today. Many would think that these are the worst possible offences which could be committed. But there is something which outweighs all of these crimes put together: It is the crime of shirk.
Some people may question this notion. But when viewed in a proper context, the fact that there is no crime worse then shirk, will become evident to every sincere person.
There is no doubt that the above crimes are indeed terrible, but their comparison with shirk shows that they do not hold much significance in relation to this travesty. When a man murders, rapes or steals, the injustice which is done is directed primarily at other humans. But when a man commits shirk, the injustice is directed towards the Creator of the heavens and the earth; Allah. When a person is murdered, all sorts of reasons and explanations are given. But one thing that the murderer cannot claim, is that the murdered was someone who provided him with food, shelter, clothing and all the other things which keep humans aloft in this life.
Yet those who commit this worst of all sins are still doing so because Allah has “thrown veils on their hearts,” so that they do not understand Muhammad’s message (v. 25). Hellfire awaits them (vv. 26, 30).
Muslims should be careful not to value the things of this world, for “What is the life of this world but play and amusement?” (v. 32). Says the Tanwîr al-Miqbâs min Tafsîr Ibn ‘Abbâs, “Do you not comprehend that this world is evanescent and that the Hereafter is everlasting?”
Many do not. In verses 33-73 Allah consoles Muhammad for the unbelievers’ rejection of his message: “We know indeed the grief which their words do cause thee” (v. 33), but they are “deaf and dumb” (v. 39), and wouldn’t believe even if they witnessed great miracles (vv. 35, 37). The fact that Allah, in a perfect book that has existed from all eternity, is so solicitous of his prophet and concerned about his grief at being rejected, is for pious Muslims only further confirmation of Muhammad’s importance and exalted status. Allah’s solicitude for Muhammad became the springboard for an exaltation of Muhammad in the Islamic mystical tradition. The Persian Sufi mystic Mansur Al-Hallaj (858-922) said that Allah “has not created anything that is dearer to him than Muhammad and his family.” The Persian poet Rumi (Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi, 1207-1273) said that the scent of roses was that of the sweat of the Prophet of Islam:
Root and branch of the roses is the lovely sweat of Mustafa [that is, Muhammad], And by his power the rose’s crescent grows now into a full moon.
Likewise a modern Arab writer opined that Allah “created Muhammad’s body in such unsurpassable beauty as had neither before him nor after him been seen in a human being. If the whole beauty of the Prophet were unveiled before our eyes, they could not bear its splendor.”
In verses 40-49 Allah discusses how he has sent messengers all over the world, warning of punishment to those who disbelieve. Verses 50-58 instruct Muhammad to issue various warnings to the unbelievers. Verses 59-69 emphasizes Allah’s absolute sovereignty, with v. 59 making a succinct statement of his omniscience: “And with Him are the keys of the Invisible. None but He knoweth them. And He knoweth what is in the land and the sea. Not a leaf falleth but He knoweth it, not a grain amid the darkness of the earth, naught of wet or dry but (it is noted) in a clear record.” (Similarly, “We have neglected nothing in the Book,” v. 38, is believed by some Islamic interpreters to refer to the Lawhul Mahfuz, the Protected Tablet, on which Allah has written everything that occurs in the universe, even the minutest actions of animals and birds.) Allah tells Muhammad to “leave alone those who take their religion to be mere play and amusement, and are deceived by the life of this world” (v. 70).
Then verses 74-83 depict Abraham rejecting polytheism by noting the deficiencies of various pagan objects of worship: the stars, the moon, the sun. Those who glibly associate Allah with the moon-god – a pre-Islamic Arabian god of war – should note v. 77: “When he saw the moon rising in splendour, he said: ‘This is my Lord.’ But when the moon set, he said: ‘unless my Lord guide me, I shall surely be among those who go astray.’”
Next week: How can Allah have a son if he has no wife?
(Here you can find links to all the earlier "Blogging the Qur'an" segments. Here is a good Arabic Qur’an, with English translations available; here are two popular Muslim translations, those of Abdullah Yusuf Ali and Mohammed Marmaduke Pickthall, along with a third by M. H. Shakir. Here is another popular translation, that of Muhammad Asad. And here is an omnibus of ten Qur’an translations.)
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Fundamental Rights of India
Fundamental Rights are those rights and freedoms of the people of India, which enjoy constitutional recognition and guarantee. The Supreme Court of India and State High Courts have the power to enforce Fundamental Rights. Supreme court is the guardian protector of fundamental rights.
- A very detailed Bill of Rights It is a very detailed and comprehensive Bill of Rights. It contains 24 Articles from 12 to 35. These describe in detail the fundamental rights of the people of India.
- People enjoy only the rights given in the Constitution. The Constitution of India does not give any recognition to natural or un-granted rights People of India enjoy only those fundamental rights.
- Special Rights for the Minorities. The India bill of Rights guarantees some special rights to the minorities. Cultural and educational rights have been granted to them. It abolishes untouched and makes it’s a crime. It has also granted special protections to women, children and the weaker sections of society.
- Lack of Social and Economic Rights: It grants only civil rights and freedoms. Rights like Right to Work, Right to Leisure, and Right to Social Security have not been included in the India Bill of Rights.
- Rights are Not Absolute: The fundamental rights of the people are not absolute. Some limitations have been placed on them. While describing the scope of each right, the Constitution also describes its limitations. These have been laid down for protecting public health, public order, morality and security of India.
- Rights are equally binding upon all: The Constitution makes the rights binding upon all authorities0 the Union, the States, the Parliament, and all other State authorities.
- Enforcement of Rights. The Constitution not only grants but also guarantees rights. It provides legal and constructional protection t the fundamental rights. The citizens have been given the right to seek the protection of the Supreme Court and other courts for getting their rights enforced.
- Parliament has the power to amend Fundamental Rights: The fundamental rights contained in the constitution can be amended by the Parliament. The Parliament has, in practice, exercised this power on several occasions.
- Provision for the Suspension of Rights: The constitution provides for a suspension of fundamental rights during an emergency. However, such a suspension automatically ends when the emergency ceases or when the President withdraws it.
- Rights to Property are not a Fundamental Right. Initially, the Constitution granted to the citizens the fundamental right to property. However, because of the hindrances posed by this right in the way of implementation of some socio-economic reforms, right to property was deleted from the list of Fundamental Rights. It was made a legal right under Article 300A. This was done by the 44th Amendment of The Constitution. Now right to property is a legal right and not a fundamental right of the people.
- Right of Education. By 86th Amendment Act, Article 21A has been in the Bill of Rights. It gives to the children between the agesof 6 to 14 years, the Rights of Education.
- Constitutional Superiority of Fundamental Rights. The fundamental rights of the citizens are superior to ordinary laws and the Directive Principals of State Policy. No law can violate Fundamental Rights.
- Institution of National Human Rights Commission (NHRC). With a view to check possible violations of National Human Rights Commission has been working in India since 1993. It is five-member commission.
- Conclusion: These features clearly bring out the nature of Indian Bill of Rights. It is indeed a very detailed an essential part of the Constitution of India. It grants and guarantees equal fundamental rights and freedoms to all people of India. It constitutes a very strong pillar of India Democracy.
Rights to Equality
- Equality Before Law (Art. 14). All citizens enjoy equality before law. All enjoy equal protection of law. Equality before law, however, does not mean absolute equality or equality is among the unequal. It means equality or equality among the unequal. It means equality among the similarly placed people. It does not prohibit the classification of persons into different groups.
- Prohibition of discrimination (Art. 15) It prohibits discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth. No person can, on any of any of these grounds, be denied access to shops, hotels, public restaurants and places of public entertainment or the use of wells, tanks, bathing Ghats, and places of public resort.
- Equality of Opportunity (Art. 16.) this right provides equality of opportunity for all citizens in mattes relating to employment or appointment to any office the state. However, qualifications can be fixed for various jobs.
- Abolition of Untouchables (Art. 17). For eradicating the evil practice of untouchables in India, the Constitution has abolished untouchable. Practice of untouchable in any form is an offence publishable by law. All citizens of India now enjoy equal status.
- Abolition of Titles (Art. 18). The Constitution prohibits the state from conferring any title on citizens. However honors for military or academic distinctions can be given. This right does not prevent the grant of military decorations such as Parma Vir Chakra, Mahavir Chakra. Vir Chakra and Ashok Chakra.
Right to Freedom
- Under a set of four Articles (19- 22), the constitution grants the Right to Freedom to the entire citizen. These articles together constitute the charter of freedoms of the people.
- Fundamental Freedoms of Citizens (Art. 19) All citizens have the right to: (i) Freedom of speech and expression. (ii) Freedom of assembly (iii) Freedom to form associations. (iv) Freedom of movement (v) Freedom to reside and settle (VI) Freedom of profession, occupation, trade or business.
- The Right to Freedom, like the right to equality is also not absolute. It is also subject to reasonable limitations. These freedoms have to be used without any violation of public order, public health, morality and security of state. Further, in respect of freedom of profession, trade, and business, the state can prescribe professional or technical qualifications. The State can also nationalize any industry or business.
- Protection against Arbitrary conviction (Art. 20). The constitution provides protection against arbitrary conviction in cases of offences committed by a person. It lays down that: No person canbe punished except for a violation of law. No person can be subjected to a punishment greater than the one prescribed by law. For one crime one punishment can be given. No person accused of any offence can be forced to give evidence against him.
- Protection of Life and Liberty (Art. 21). It grants protection to the lifeand liberty of citizens as well as non-citizens. It says, “No person can be deprive of his life and liberty except according to the procedure established by law.”
- Protection against Arrest and Detention (Art. 22). The Constitution also provides protection against arbitrary arrest and detention. Any person arrested by the police enjoys certain protections. He has a right to be informed about the grounds of his arrest. He has the right to consult his lawyer. He is to be produced before the nearest magistrate within a period of 24 hours of his arrest.
Right Against Exploitation (Arts. 23-24)
- Prohibition of Traffic in human beings and forced Labour (Arts 23). This right prohibits sale and purchase of human beings It also prohibits beggar or forced labour.
- Prohibition of Employment of Children. No child below the age of fourteen years can be employed to work in any factory or mine or any other hard harmful job.
Right to Freedom of Religion (Ars. 25- 28)
- Freedom of Profession and Propagation of Religion (Art 25). All persons enjoy the freedom of conscience. They have the right to profess, practice and propagate any religion. Forcible conversions stand prohibited. No one can be forced to adopt or leave a particular religion.
- Freedom to Manage Religions Affairs (Art. 26). Every religion has the right to establish and maintain religions institutions. Manage its own affairs; Own and acquire movable and immovable property; and administer its property in accordance with law.
- Freedom from paying taxes for the promotion of any Religion (Art. 27). No person can be compelled to pay any tax for the promotion or maintenance of any particular religion.
- Freedom to attend or abstain from religious functions (Arts. 28). The Constitution prohibit is the imparting of religious instructions in any educational institution. No student can be forced to participate in a religious worship that may be conducted in his institution. The right to religious freedom, like other fundamental rights, has certain limitations. This right can be exercised subject to public order, morality and public health. It does not prohibit the introduction of social reforms.
Cultural and Educational Rights (Arts. 29 and 30)
- Right to maintain Language, Script and Culture (Art. 29). Any section of the citizens having a distinct language, script or culture of its own has the right to maintain the same.
- Right to establish and administer educational institutions (Arts. 30). All minorities, whether based on religion or language, have the right to establish and administer their own educational institutions.
Right to Property
Right to Property is now a legal right. (Art 300A) It enjoys protection. Originally it was a fundamental right under article 31 of Constitution.
Right to Constitutional Remedies
The right to move to the courts for securing the fundamental rights is a very valuable right of the people. Citizens can go to the Supreme Court or the high Courts for getting their fundamental rights enforced. It empowers the Courts to issue directions or orders or writs for this purpose. The Habeaus Corpus, It provides a remedy against wrongful detention of a person. By it the court directs the detaining authority to produce the detained person in the court and to explain the cause of his detention. The Mandamus, by it the court can order an inferior authority to d an act, which falls within its jurisdiction. The Prohibition, The court can prohibit an inferior authority from doing an act, which does not falls in its jurisdiction. The Quo Warranto, the court can restrain a person from acting in a public office to which he is not entitled. The Certiorari, by it, the court can order an inferior authority to transfer the matter to it or to some other authority for its proper consideration. It provides legal protection to Fundamental Rights. Right to Constitutional remedies is the very soul of Indian Bill of Rights.
Use of Fundamental Rights
Fundamental Rights are very important for the people. These have to be, however, used in the interest of the unity and security of the state as well as without in any way against public order, public health and morality. The existence of conflicts over caste, the presence of anti-national and anti-social elements, the activities of the terrorists, and the continued need for safeguarding the security, unity and integrity of the nation, all justify the existence of some limitations on fundamental rights.
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Types of Valve Disease
Heart valves can have one of two malfunctions:
Regurgitation (or leakage of the valve)
The valve(s) does not close completely, causing the blood to flow backward through the valve. This results in leakage of the blood back into the atria from the ventricles (in the case of the mitral and tricuspid valves) or leakage of blood back into the ventricles (in the case of the aortic and pulmonary valves).
Stenosis (or narrowing of the valve)
The valve(s) opening becomes narrowed or valves become damaged or scarred (stiff), inhibiting the flow of blood out of the ventricles or atria. The heart is forced to pump blood with increased force in order to move blood through the narrowed or stiff (stenotic) valve(s).
Heart valves can have both malfunctions at the same time (regurgitation and stenosis). Also, more than one heart valve can be affected at the same time. When heart valves fail to open and close properly, the implications for the heart can be serious, possibly hampering the heart's ability to pump blood adequately through the body. Heart valve problems are one cause of heart failure.
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Liman is a Russian adaptation of the Medieval Greek λιμένας meaning bay or port. The term is usually used for estuaries of Black Sea and Sea of Azov. There is another synonymous term guba which is used for estuaries of the Russian shores in the north. As an estuary, liman is formed at the mouth of a river where flow is blocked by a bar of sediments. Liman can be maritime (the bar being created by the current of a sea) or fluvial (the bar being created by the flow of a bigger river at the confluence).
Such features are found along the western and northern coast of the Black Sea, as well as along the lowest part of the Danube. Examples of limans include Lake Varna in Bulgaria, Lake Razelm in Romania, the Dniester Liman in the Ukraine, the Anadyrskiy Liman in Siberia and Amur Liman.
The word was borrowed in English from Russian лима́н (Russian pronunciation: [lʲɪˈman]). However, the word came from the Medieval Greek λιμένας meaning bay or port. The word was spread by Turks when they occupied the western and northern shore of the Black Sea, with the meaning of harbour and port. In Bulgarian, Romanian, Ukrainian and Russian the word defined the particular estuary, Dniester Liman.
See also
|Look up liman in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.|
- "лимáн" Vasmer's Etymological Dictionary in Russian
|This hydrography-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.|
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Welcome to the University of Oregon's Green Chemistry website. In the links that follow there is information about our green chemistry curriculum, research programs, database of educational materials, workshop on incorporating green chemistry into the undergraduate curriculum and our textbook on Greener Organic Chemistry.
Curricular Innovations in Green Chemistry Organic and Beyond (March 2006)
Going Green Lecture Assignments and Lab Experiences for the College Curriculum, Presentations from the National ACS Meeting (March 2005)
Greener Education Materials (GEMs) for Chemists An interactive database of education materials focused on green chemistry. Available in June 2005, a comprehensive resource of education materials including laboratory exercises, lecture materials, course syllabi and multimedia content that illustrate chemical concepts important for green chemistry. Each entry includes a description of the item and is searchable by a variety of parameters, including chemistry concepts, laboratory techniques, green chemistry principles, and target audience. Database entries incorporate both published and unpublished materials.
Green Organic Chemistry: Curriculum Development and Dissemination provides a brief description of our work in this area and the history of the program.
Green Chemistry Education Network (GCEdNet) serves as a catalyst for integrating green chemistry in chemical education at all levels. As a network of educators we support opportunities to research, develop, implement and disseminate green educational materials. The GCEdNet reaches out to all chemistry educators through collaboration and mentoring, facilitating professional growth, and fostering the synergistic integration of green chemistry in education.
Map of the Green Chemistry Community Looking for a green chemistry contact in your area? Consult the recently updated Green Chemistry Google map, listing over 500 individuals and organizations worldwide. The map project was initiated at the University of Oregon and its growth and success is the result of an amazing three-year partnership with the green chemistry community. We invite you to add yourself to the map.
Green Organic Chemistry: Tools, Strategies and Laboratory Experiments A textbook/laboratory manual for undergraduate organic chemistry laboratory. Includes ten comprehensive introductory chapters describing the strategies and tools used in practicing greener chemistry and nineteen extensively student-tested laboratory experiments that teach fundamental organic chemistry concepts and lab skills in a more environmentally-friendly (greener) fashion.
Green Chemistry in Education Workshop A week-long, hands-on workshop for university educators that wish to adopt a greener organic laboratory curriculum. Please visit the Center for Workshops in the Chemical Sciences (CWCS) for application information.
Green Product Design Network this virtual center brings together talent from around the UO and the world to catalyze implementation of greener products by addressing each stage of innovation – from chemical content to product design to supply chains to consumer awareness.
Greener Nanomaterials and Nanomanufacturing The goals of the Safer Nanomaterials and Nanomanufacturing Initiative [SNNI] are to develop new nanomaterials and nanomanufacturing approaches that offer a high level of performance, yet pose minimal harm to human health or the environment. Research under the Initiative will merge the principles of green chemistry and nanoscience to produce safer nanomaterials and more efficient nanomanufacturing processes in the context of producing nanoparticles and nanostructured materials for applications in fields such as in photovoltaics, nanoelectronics and sensing.
Center for Sustainable Materials Chemistry (CSMC) The vision for this National Science Foundation funded Center is to conduct curiosity-driven and use-inspired research to enhance the sustainable chemistry toolbox with new methods and new techniques that will advance the scientific enterprise and transform the next generation of products, while preparing students to become the next generation of green chemists. CSMC leads the study and design of environmentally benign chemistry platforms for the fabrication of high-performance inorganic electronic devices. The Center seeks to revolutionize device fabrication for applications spanning the space from large-area displays and electronics to nanoscale integrated circuits.
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See also the
Browse High School Equations, Graphs, Translations
Stars indicate particularly interesting answers or
good places to begin browsing.
Selected answers to common questions:
Direct and indirect variation.
Slope, slope-intercept, standard form.
- Evaluating Composite Functions [1/31/1996]
If f(x) = 3, and g(x) = x^2 + 1 divided by the square root of (x^2 -1),
how do you evaluate the composite function of f composed with g (f circle
- Finding a Point Equidistant From Two Other Points [8/18/1996]
Point A is (-5,-3), and point B is (-1,-5); to be equidistant from A and
B, what should the value of k be for the point (3,k)?
- Finding a Point on a Circle [5/28/1996]
How do I find the y1 value?
- Finding Asymptotes [07/06/1998]
In the equation y = (m/x) + c, how do the values of m and c affect the
graph? How do you find the asymptotes?
- Finding Equations of Parabolas [12/12/1996]
Determine the equation of the parabola whose vertex is at (1,3) and whose
directrix is y=x.
- Finding Focus and Directrix [04/12/2001]
How can you find the focus and directrix when given a formula for a
- Finding Intervals in Trig Graphs [10/25/1998]
Can you help me with graphing sine and cosine functions? How do you mark
off the intervals?
- Finding Point of Intersection [05/08/2001]
Is there a formula to tell if two lines, given by point coordinates,
cross and at what coordinates they cross?
- Finding the Center of a Circle [06/06/1999]
How can I find the center and radius of a circle that is in the form:
Ax^2 + Cy^2 + Dx + Ey + F = 0?
- Finding the Equation of a Curve [10/02/2000]
I'm looking for an equation for a curve that describes the way people
store information about pending events over time. I would also like to
know how to find the equation of any curve.
- Finding the Equation of a Line [01/08/1997]
Given either a point and a slope or two points, how do you find the
equation of a line in both point-slope and standard form?
- Finding the Equation of a Parabola [04/28/2001]
How can I find the equation of a parabola whose zeros are at 0 and 6, and
whose minimum value is -9?
- Finding the Equations of Two Circles [9/30/1995]
Find the equation of the circles with the center at (4,-7) and touching
(externally and internally) the circle with the equation: (X^2)+(Y^2)+4X-
- Finding the Table's Diameter [05/05/2001]
A circular table is pushed into the corner of a room so that it touches
both walls. On the edge of the table is a scratch 8" from one wall and 9"
from the other wall. What is the diameter of the table?
- Finding the Zeros of a Function [05/12/1999]
How would I find the zeros of P(x) = (x^2-3)(2x-7)^2(x-1)^3, and what is
meant by "state the multiplicity of each"?
- Finding Three Lines that Form a Triangle [08/30/2001]
Find an equation for each of the lines that goes through the point (3,2)
forming a triangle of area 12 with the coordinate axes.
- First Principle Hyperbolas [01/05/1999]
How do you solve for the standard equation of a hyperbola given its
- Folium of Descartes and Parametric Equations [11/23/1998]
How do you plot an implicit function, such as the folium of Descartes,
with the equation y^3 + x^3 = 3xy?
- Formula for a Helix [07/08/1997]
What is the formula that gives the height above the ground of a point on
- The General Polynomial Function [09/17/1998]
How do you relate a polynomial like y=6x-2 to the general polynomial
function? How do I graph and find the inverse of y=sqrt(2)?
- Generating Fractal Equations [7/1/1996]
Is there any way to generate a fractal equation from a set of numbers?
- Given n Points, find a Polynomial Function... [6/27/1996]
Find a polynomial F(x) of degree less than n so that the graph of F
passes through all of the points.
- Graphing Absolute Values [07/03/2002]
I have a function, f(x), that I can graph, but I don't understand how
to graph |f(x)|.
- Graphing a Circle [04/14/1998]
I would like to know how to graph the equation of a circle.
- Graphing a Function with Asymptotes [07/05/1998]
How do you find the asymptotes of f(x) = (2x + 1)/(x - 3)? How do you use
the asymptotes to graph the function?
- Graphing a Line Given a Point on It and Its Slope [03/07/2004]
I am completely confused about how to graph lines. The question is
asking me to graph the line that goes through the point (0,2) with a
slope m = 1/4. I am not sure what slope m = 1/4 means.
- Graphing and Understanding Conic Equations [12/11/1995]
How can I sketch and find the vertices of this conic equation?
- Graphing an Ellipse [11/20/1998]
How do you graph an ellipse? What is the equation?
- Graphing an Equation [11/08/1997]
Please explain how to graph this equation: y = a + b(x) + c(x^2) + ...
- Graphing a Parabola [4/3/1995]
How do you graph the quadratic equation, y=3(x+1)^2 -20?
- Graphing Complex and Real Numbers [02/26/2003]
Since on the Cartesian plane we can only graph real zeros and real
solutions, are we truly graphing the function when we omit the complex
and imaginary zeros and solutions?
- Graphing Direct Variation [02/27/2003]
How do you graph direct variation? I thought you had to have two
coordinates to graph a line.
- Graphing Equations [08/15/1997]
I know the coordinates of these equations, but what are the names and how
do I graph them?
- Graphing f(2x) and f(|x|) [09/03/2003]
Given f(x), how do you graph f(2x) and f(|x|)?
- Graphing Inequalities [06/05/2003]
How do you graph y + 4x is less than 20 ?
- Graphing Intercepts [11/06/1997]
How would I find the intercept for a problem such as 3x-2y = 12?
- Graphing Linear Equations [07/14/1998]
Can you give me a step by step guide to graphing linear equations?
- Graphing Linear Equations [12/26/2001]
Give the intercepts of 7x - 2y = 2.
- Graphing Multivariable Polynomials [02/20/2005]
I have a few questions about multivariable polynomials. Say we have
the polynomial x + y + z, can this be graphed? I also really don't
know anything about the z axis or how to graph on it.
- Graphing Parabolas [01/16/1997]
How do you know how to graph a parabola from looking at its equation?
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National Weather Service
This hailstone was declared the largest on record to hit Hawaii.
At 4.25 inches long, 2.25 inches tall and 2 inches wide, a hailstone that fell on the windward side of Oahu this month has been declared the largest on record to hit Hawaii, the National Weather Service announced.
Records for Hawaii go back to 1950 and the previous record was a relatively puny 1 inch in diameter.
"The record-setting hailstone was dropped by a supercell thunderstorm on the windward side of Oahu and produced large hail in Kaneohe and Kailua," the service said in a statement. "Numerous reports of hail with diameters of 2 to 3 inches and greater were reported."
"Hail to the size of golf balls and baseballs can only form within intense, thunderstorms called 'supercells'," the service added. "These supercells need warm, moist air to rise into progressively colder, drier air; as well as winds changing direction and increasing speed with increasing height off the ground. For both sets of conditions to exist at the same time in Hawaii is extremely rare, but did occur on March 9. Conditions were ideal for a supercell to form, which on National Weather Service radar imagery looked exactly like such storms in the central portions of the contiguous United States where severe hail larger than an inch in diameter is most common."
The March 9 supercell also spawned a tornado with winds of 60-70 mph in Lanikai and Enchanted Lakes on Oahu.
A hailstone that hit Vivian, S.D., on July 23, 2010, holds the U.S record for largest diameter (8 inches) and for weight (1.938 pounds). A hailstone in Aurora, Neb., on June 22, 2003, has the largest circumference (18.75 inches).
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Chelsea Brunner, a junior geology major from Louisville, will present her research on the Allende meteorite at the 71st Annual Meeting of the Meteoritical Society in Matsue, Japan, on Friday (Aug. 1).
Brunner’s research is an extension of work that she started in the summer of 2007, collaborating with Dr. Denton Ebel at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Her talk is titled: “Abundances and Sizes of Clast Types in the Allende CV3 Meteorite: New Results from Mapping Analysis.”
Her research involves the examination of calcium-rich and aluminum-rich inclusions (CAIs) in the Allende meteorite, which is classified as a carbonaceous chondrite meteorite. Samples of the meteorite were recovered from a strewn field in the Chihuahua State in Mexico in 1969. The inclusions in the meteorite originally formed as free-floating aggregates of mineral dust, some of which were partially or fully melted to form droplets in the solar nebula. Surfaces of the meteorite were mapped using an electron microprobe, and relative surface area and size distributions of different types of inclusions, matrix, and chondrules were computed. The abundances and the distribution of these different inclusions pertain to theories of their origin and planet formation.
Brunner also received a grant from the Geological Society of America to continue work on the project after the summer REU was completed. “Chelsea’s research and participation in this international conference is another great example of student engagement beyond the classroom,” said Dr. David Keeling, head of the Department of Geography and Geology. “Her work at the AMNH in New York as part of a summer Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) fellowship has enriched her training in the geological sciences and provided additional academic and cultural experiences in communities other than her own.”
For information, contact Andrew Wulff at (270) 745-5976.
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Japan's nuclear watchdog has raised the severity level of the crisis at its stricken nuclear power plant to 7 - the highest level and equal to the disaster at Chernobyl in the former Soviet Union.
The incident at the Fukushima Daiichi plant had previously been rated a 5 on an international scale used to gauge the severity of incidents at nuclear facilities.
But Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said the amount of discharged radioactive materials is approximately 10 per cent of the amount released when a nuclear reactor exploded at the Chernobyl plant in 1986.
The statement was released as a strong earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.3 jolted the Tokyo area and its surrounding areas. Japan's Meteorological Agency said the quake struck at 8:08am local time [23:08 GMT] the same day.
A powerful aftershock recorded on Monday evening in the Fukushima prefecture killed three people, emergency workers said.
No casualties were reported in Tuesday's quake, and there were no reports of damage in the Tokyo prefecture, nor any tsunami warning issued.
But the Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO), which operates the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex, said a fire had briefly broken out at the Number 4 reactor.
TEPCO said the fire at a box that contained batteries in a building near the reactor was discovered at about 6:38am and put out seven minutes later. It was not clear whether the fire was related to Tuesday morning's earthquake. The cause was being investigated.
Earlier, the government expanded an evacuation zone around the Fukushima plant because of the high levels of accumulated radiation since a tsunami hit the complex a month ago, causing massive damage to its reactors.
Two additional quakes early afternoon on Tuesday prompted TEPCO to once again order workers to evacuate the nuclear plant, bringing the total number of earthquakes above magnitude 6 in the region to four in roughly 24 hours.
A company spokesman told Reuters news agency that the status of the damaged plant is being inspected, but did not provide additional details.
Al Jazeera's Harry Fawcett, reporting from Mizusawa on Tuesday, said there is a lot of concern among Japanese people about the long-term impact of the radiation in the areas surrounding the site.
"Certainly the refugees, or the people who've been evacuated ... they've often being saying to us they're not sure they're being told the full story," he said. "The impact is certainly spreading."
Local news agency Kyodo said the government's Nuclear Safety Commission had estimated that at one stage the amount of radioactive material released from the reactors in northern Japan had reached 10,000 terabequerels per hour for several hours, which would classify the incident as a major accident according to the INES scale.
The International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES), published by the International Atomic Energy Agency, ranks nuclear incidents by severity from 1 to a maximum of 7.
Kyodo did not say when the big increase in radiation had happened but quoted the commission as saying the release had since fallen to under one terabecquerel per hour.
The commission also released a preliminary calculation for the cumulative amount of external exposure to radiation, saying it exceeded the yearly limit of one millisieverts in areas extending more than 60km to the northwest of the plant and about 40km to the south-southwest.
Jasmina Vujic, professor of nuclear engineering at University of California, Berkeley, said that there were major differences between the Chernobyl and Fukoshima disasters.
Chernobyl was situated in an area with a high population density in the centre of Europe, she said, while the Japanese plant is in a lightly populated, coastal region.
"From that point of view, the impact on environment and population, would be much smaller than Chernobyl," Vujic told Al Jazeera.
Japan had previously assessed the accident at reactors operated by TEPCO at level 5, the same level as the Three Mile Island accident in the US in 1979.
The tsunami was triggered by a 9.0 magnitude earthquake on March 11, the largest recorded in quake-prone Japan, crippling the reactors' cooling systems.
TEPCO said on Monday it had stopped the discharges of low-level radioactive water into the sea that have drawn complaints from neighbouring China and South Korea.
It has already pumped 10,400 tonnes of low-level radioactive water into the ocean to free up storage capacity for highly contaminated water from the reactors.
On Monday, shortly after Japan marked one month since the quake, a huge aftershock shook a wide swathe of eastern Japan, killing two people, and knocking out power to 220,000 homes.
It was one of more than 400 aftershocks above a 5 magnitude to have hit the area since March 11.
Because of accumulated radiation contamination, the government is encouraging people to leave certain areas beyond its 20km exclusion zone around the plant. Thousands of people could be affected by the move.
Masataka Shimizu, TEPCO's president, visited the area on Monday for the first time since the disaster. He had all but vanished from public view apart from a brief apology shortly after the crisis began and has spent some of the time since in hospital.
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This sparkly turkey is a bright and fun project for the 2nd grade class. It’s a good opportunity for them to practice cutting—we stress that they cut directly on the outside of the black lines. And of course using white glue and glitter is also fun. Different color combinations of paper and glitter make these an interesting display in the classroom or hall.
- Tan, red, orange and yellow construction paper
- Turkey body (Pattern)
- Turkey feathers (Pattern)
- Turkey legs and beak (Pattern)
- Turkey wings and wattle (Pattern)
- Google eyes
- Glue stick and white glue
- Red or gold glitter
- Choose a background color paper for your project.
- Cut out all the turkey pieces. Glue the legs to the back of the body.
- Glue the beak to the wattle, and then the wattle to the head.
- Glue on the google eyes and the wings.
- Glue the middle feather to the top center of the background paper.
- Glue two feathers on each side of the middle feather.
- Glue the turkey body over the feathers, making sure the feet are still on the background paper.
- Outline the feathers, body, wings, etc. with white glue. Sprinkle on red or gold glitter.
Other colors of glitter can be used—-
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Getting into the School Routine after Summer Break
Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.
—William Butler Yeats, poet
Whenever your kids have a summer break from school, it may seem like an uphill battle to get them back into the school routine. Their sleep schedule may be off. Their enthusiasm may be low (or non-existent). And they may balk at going back to school. Whether your child goes to a year-round school or one that has a three-month summer break, consider these ideas to get kids back into the school routine.
Tips for . . .
- all parents
- Be compassionate. Summer breaks are like vacations. Think about what it’s like for you to make the transition back from a great vacation (yes, it’s not fair that kids get so many more breaks than you do, but try to focus on that tough transition).
- Talk about the value of education. Even if school isn’t always easy, that doesn’t mean that it’s not important. Emphasize how working hard at school helps kids to succeed. Consider using some of the ideas on emphasizing the value of school from What Kids Need to Succeed.
- Even though summer break is over, continue to have fun with your kids. Set aside some time each week to spend having fun together as a family.
- parents with children ages birth to 5
- Keep young children on the same daily routine (if possible) whether they’re going to preschool or not. This helps to keep their energy and moods at an even keel.
- Teach your kids the differences between days. Many get confused as to why they go to child care five days a week and then stay home for two. Take a calendar and have them mark off the days. Consider color-coding the days so that “yellow” days mean preschool or child care and “orange” days mean home days.
- Talk about the importance of “home time” and “school time” so that kids see the value in both (or talk about the importance of “play time” and “work time”).
- parents with children ages 6 to 9
- Help your child look forward to school. Purchase a “lucky pencil” or “lucky folder” for her to keep track of homework. Be enthusiastic about school. Your excitement will often rub off on her.
- Be honest about the fatigue that can happen during the first week back to school after a long break. Encourage your child to take a short nap after school, if needed.
- Talk about the benefits of summer breaks and the benefits of going to school. For example, it’s fun to choose what you want to do during breaks. It’s also exciting to learn new things and meet new kids at school.
- parents with children ages 10 to 15
- Don’t be surprised if you find that your child strongly resists going back to school. That’s normal. Many kids at this age love spending time with friends and would prefer to hang out with them outside of school. At the same time, other kids really look forward to going back to school.
- Help your child name what he likes best about school. Even if it starts out only with lunch and recess, go with that. As the school year progresses, see which subjects begin to interest him.
- Admit that some parts of school are hard. If you didn’t enjoy the junior high or middle school years, say so. But then talk about how much better high school is. That often helps kids to stick with the hard stuff.
- parents with children ages 16 to 18
- As older teens become more independent, they may become more resistant to school. Continue to emphasize how important a high school education is—and why. Show teens that the more education they acquire, the more money they make. See the chart on page 2 of the U.S. Census Bureau report “The Big Payoff.”
- Focus on the parts of school your teen enjoys. Remind her of the soccer team, the newspaper staff, the choir, or another activity that she gets excited about.
- Help your older teenager apply for a part-time job, apply to a college, or prepare for college-required tests (such as the ACT, or SAT). Older teenagers can get overwhelmed or paralyzed in doing some of these new, important tasks. Your guidance can be a big help.
- Encourage your teen to connect with teachers that he likes. Having a good rapport with a teacher not only makes high school more interesting, but these teachers can also be helpful in writing job, college, and scholarship recommendations.
More Back to School Tips
We’ve compiled some simple, everyday, back to school tips—for all ages and stages—to help make the transition as stress-free as possible.
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Arrange eight identical coins into the shape of a cup shown in the
illustration. The object is to move only two of them in a new position to
get the cup standing upside-down. You're allowed to move the coins as you
wish but at the end the cup has to have exactly the same shape only
rotated at 180 degrees from its initial position.
Arrange 8 matchsticks to form the fish swimming left as shown in the
illustration. The object of the puzzle is to move 3 matchsticks to make
the fish swimming in the opposite direction, i.e. to the right.
Six pennies are placed on the table to form a triangle as shown in the
uppermost illustration. By sliding one penny at a time, reverse the
triangle so that it points in the opposite direction. How many pennies do
you have to move? Now put ten pennies on the table to form a bigger
triangle as shown in the lower illustration. Reverse the triangle by
sliding one penny at a time. How many pennies do you have to move?
The object of this puzzle is to visit all the 20 green points on the
graph. You can start at any point but you may visit each point only once.
Moving from point to point you have to travel along the white lines
(alleys) only. You have to finish at the point where you've started your
Without doubt the Tangram is the most popular put-together puzzle, and one
of the most well known puzzles ever. The origins of the Tangram are
unknown, but the earliest references date back to the beginning of the
19th century, China. That's why the puzzle is also known as the Chinese
puzzle. The puzzle consists of seven pieces - tans - obtained by dividing
a square as shown in the illustration. To play with the Tangram simply
print all the seven pieces and then cut them out. Now you're able to
arrange them in many different ways making an infinite number of nice,
fun, and sometimes very puzzling figures. For every figure you have to use
all the seven tans. You're allowed to rotate the pieces as you wish, and
even flip them over. But you can't overlap the pieces. We've chosen just a
few most popular figures that you may assemble using all the seven tans.
They will give you a good taste of the puzzle.
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Oct. 24, 2008 Many animals live longer when raised on low calorie diets. But now researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have shown that they can extend the life spans of roundworms even when the worms are well fed — it just takes a chemical that blocks their sense of smell.
Three years ago, the researchers, led by Kerry Kornfeld, M.D., Ph.D., reported they found that a class of anticonvulsant medications made the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans live longer. But until now, they didn't quite know what the drugs did to give the worms their longevity. They report their latest findings in the Oct. 24 issue of the Public Library of Science Genetics.
"We've learned that the drugs inhibit neurons in the worm's head that sense chemicals in their surroundings — the neurons are like the worm's nose," says Kornfeld, professor of developmental biology. "Like roundworms that are grown in a food-scarce environment, the worms exposed to the anticonvulsant ethosuximide lived longer. But these worms ate plenty of food. That suggests that the worms' sensation of food is critical to controlling their metabolism and life span."
If roundworms sense that food is abundant, their metabolism adjusts accordingly. Their bodies respond to promote rapid ingestion, rapid growth and rapid aging, Kornfeld explains. In contrast, when the worms sense a shortage of food, they make "metabolic decisions" to delay growth, delay energy use and extend lifespan.
In the long term, Kornfeld's goal is to identify compounds that could potentially delay human aging. The research group for this project also included James Collins, Ph.D., Kim Evason, M.D., Ph.D., Chris Pickett, Ph.D., and Daniel Schneider.
Kornfeld's lab studies C. elegans because they live only about two to three weeks, so experimental results can be obtained quickly. In addition, the worms' genome has been sequenced and extensively studied.
The scientists' strategy has been to expose the roundworms to libraries of chemicals to identify compounds that delay aging and extend their lives. That approach led to the unexpected result that some human anticonvulsants slow aging in C. elegans.
Now, further investigating the effect of one of those compounds, ethosuximide, the researchers found that it had the same life-extending effect as some well-studied genetic mutations in C. elegans. These mutations inhibit the activity of some sensory neurons in the worm, and that helped the researchers conclude that ethosuximide also directly affected these neurons. Roundworms treated with ethosuximide lived up to 29 percent longer than normal.
"Now we know what cells ethosuximide targets in C. elegans," Kornfeld says. "It's likely that the drug prevents the nerve cells from being electrically active, but precisely how it does that is something we need to study further. We also want to find out how the effect on the neurons is translated into an effect on the worms' bodies to delay aging."
Ethosuximide is used to treat seizure disorders in people. Interestingly, a common side effect of the drug is the loss of the sense of taste. Does that mean the ability to taste or smell food affects aging in people? It's probably not that simple, but it does hint at some sort of connection, Kornfeld says. He says it's possible that sensory perception cues have important metabolic consequences independent of what we actually eat.
"Emerging evidence suggests that core metabolic pathways that modulate lifespan in worms also modulate lifespan in vertebrates such as mice and perhaps humans," Kornfeld says. "Sensory pathways might also be fairly universal. In an ancient common ancestor, these pathways might have caused metabolic adjustments that affect lifespan. That could be reflected in our own biology."
Funding from the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Longer Life Foundation and the Ellison Medical Foundation supported this research.
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Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
- Collins JJ, Evason K, Pickett CL, Schneider DL, Kornfeld K. The anticonvulsant ethosuximide disrupts sensory function to extend C. elegans lifespan. PLoS Genetics, Oct. 24, 2008
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
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| 0.947904
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| 3.640625
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|
Department of German and Russian
'As We Live, So We Learn'
The proof, for one renowned proverb scholar, is in…
- By Lee Ann Cox
The temptation towards wordplay is fierce when writing about Wolfgang Mieder, professor of German and folklore and renowned expert on proverbs -- any subject, any language, any angle, any place in history, from the ancients’ wisdom to snowboarders’ slang. With a wealth of sayings on hard work and social justice alone, deeply held values of Mieder, one might construct an entire narrative out of proverbs. “But!” he would likely warn in professorial cadence, “Moderation in all things!”
For himself Mieder merely chuckles at such advice as he dives into a discussion of his latest work, “Making a Way Out of No Way”: Martin Luther King’s Sermonic Proverbial Rhetoric, the 200th book he’s written or edited. Mieder read some 6,000 pages of King’s published texts, collecting, cataloguing and analyzing, in the process, he says, telling the story of King’s life, a biography in proverbs. His comprehensive index -- more entertaining than the term implies -- is longer than the book’s 16 chapters, containing 1092 proverbs and proverbial phrases, each shown in every context that King used them, sourced and dated.
Here Mieder makes clear that King’s oratory gifts owe much to literature, the Bible and the rhetoric of great human rights leaders who came before him -- Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Parker. With King’s vast intellectual repertoire, coupled with the traditional anaphora or repetition of an African American preacher, “it was almost as if he were bombarding you,” says Mieder, using, he’s calculated, an average of one “wisdom expression” for every 5.5 pages of text.
Among King’s favorite phrases were Carlyle’s “no lie can live forever,” Donne’s “no man is an island entire of itself,” Jefferson’s “all men are created equal,” a quotation that takes on proverbial status through repetition, all employed, as Mieder writes, “as linguistic signs in the service of desegregation, civil rights, and freedom.” From King’s biblical stock, “love your enemies,” and “he who lives by the sword shall perish by it,” in essence define his nonviolent creed, Mieder says.
How to rock the pews
King of course used original language -- Mieder is convinced that King coined “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” -- and yet he relied heavily on what Mieder calls “set pieces,” proverb-rich speech that could be easily summoned and powerfully received. If King ever edged toward cliché, overusing expressions at times, Mieder reminds that while he may have noticed, having obsessively combed the entirety of his work at once, King often gave two speeches a day, certainly 300 a year, many of which were spontaneous and generally to a different audience.
In contrast, Barack Obama, whose proverbial rhetoric Mieder wrote about in his 2009 book, Yes We Can, has no such luxury with an ever-present media. Obama, for the most part, makes careful, studied use of proverbs, using three or four in a speech, according to Mieder. His basic intuition aligns with King’s.
“Using a proverbial or metaphorically proverbial element from time to time gives a speech a certain amount of emotion, warmth -- and also lets the audience identify with what you’re saying,” Mieder explains.
Obama freely acknowledges his debt as an orator to Douglass, Lincoln and especially King. Standing on the shoulders of giants, a favorite proverbial metaphor of Mieder’s, whether talking about rhetoricians or his own scholarly heroes.
Having previously written about the use of proverbs in the speeches not just of Obama but also of those giants Douglass and Lincoln, Making a Way Out of No Way fills in a great 20th century gap. That title, an African American proverb of unknown origin, characterizes for Mieder all that King stood for in his struggle for universal human rights, despite the ubiquity of “I have a dream.”
“You see, ‘I have a dream’ is different,” Mieder says. “’I have a dream’ is just ‘I have an idea, I have a wish.’ ‘Making a way out of no way’ expresses what he did with word and deed.”
Mieder has a soft spot for King, having arrived in America from Germany in 1960 at the age of 16. From his vantage as a teenager in Detroit, living with an ideologically progressive family, the cause of civil rights made its mark.
Talking to Mieder and reading his often moving analysis of King’s use of language it becomes clear that anyone tempted to trivialize proverb study should rethink. While proverbs run the gamut from silly to slurs, they communicate human experience, representing an idea, says Mieder, often as naturally as normal words.
“It behooves us to pay attention to (proverbs) because they are powerful,” Mieder says. “They are not sacrosanct, they are not simplistic. In fact they can be terribly dangerous…sometimes language is tricky. We don’t think enough about language.”
Mieder undoubtedly does think enough about language. With his comprehensive knowledge of proverbs it’s clear that he is linguist, historian, philosopher with a reach into countless other fields of study. He admits he can sit at his desk happily for 15 hours at a stretch.
“Maybe the word 'workaholic' isn’t only negative,” Mieder posits. “I would at least add the adjective a damn happy workaholic.” Almost a proverb, if it could only catch on.
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http://www.uvm.edu/~grdept/?Page=news&storyID=11515&category=germruss
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Conditions of Use
Living in Space
Living in space can be very different from living down here on earth. Especially when you’re on NASA`s space shuttle, the Discovery. For one thing, your weightless in space! You get to float around doing flips and having fun right? In the space shuttle, sometimes yes, but there’s much more to being aboard the Discovery. You were sent up there for a reason, you’re on a mission to do specific things and work for NASA. With doing all this work and how different it is up in space, how is living up there? How do astronauts do the things we do down here on earth, in zero gravity? This is how.
While the astronauts are in space they have their living quarters. This includes their living room, workout room, and living space all in one. On the space station there are two crew cabins, each big enough for 1 person. The third person on the space station can sleep anywhere, as long as they are strapped down. In space the amount of room you have is limited. Because the shuttle is not the biggest thing in the world, or space, the chambers are small and spaces can be tight
Although there is zero gravity in space, the astronauts in the space station or shuttle eat the same things we do, well… almost. Some things like salt and pepper are liquidized in order to keep it from floating around the cabin, getting stuck in filters and other harmful places. The space food used to be things squeezed out of toothpaste tubes, but now there are many different choices of what the astronauts can eat like fruits, nuts, peanut butter, chicken, beef, seafood, candy, and brownies. Drinks consist of coffee, tea, orange juice, fruit punch, and lemonade. Now that the people that are in space can eat more similar things to people on earth, the astronauts are very happy.
Like I said before, when you`re sent into space on the shuttle you were sent up for a reason. You were sent to complete a mission and do other work to help benefit our knowledge and NASA`s research. One thing astronauts do when they are in space is capturing/releasing satellites. They do this with a mechanical arm and the satellites also do scientific research while orbiting the earth. Aboard the shuttle the astronauts are constantly working to change filters, updating computer equipment, and doing medical experiments to determine how well their bodies are doing with the zero gravity environment. Being on the shuttle or on the space station means constant working so being an astronaut is not all fun and play
Although there are some similarities, being in space is a lot different than being down here on earth. Being an astronaut requires tons of training and knowledge, not to mention once you`re in space the amount of work is very great. Over all, the men and women aboard the Discovery and Space Station are benefiting our country in a huge way 24/7.
Article posted November 7, 2010 at 04:35 PM •
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How to Manage Pests
UC Pest Management Guidelines
Impatiens Necrotic Spot
Pathogens: Impatiens necrotic spot virus (INSV) in the tospovirus group
(Reviewed 12/09, updated 12/09)
In this Guideline:
SYMPTOMS AND SIGNS
Symptoms on plants infected with Impatiens necrotic spot virus include overall yellowing (chlorosis), dead (necrotic) spots on leaves or terminal shoots, and general stunting. Fruits show chlorotic spots, red or green areas surrounded by yellow halos, and concentric rings that may become necrotic. Symptoms are similar to those caused by another tospovirus, Tomato spotted wilt virus (TSWV) (for more information on this virus, see TOMATO SPOTTED WILT).
COMMENTS ON THE DISEASE
In California, INSV is vectored primarily by western flower thrips. When nymphs acquire tospoviruses by feeding on infected plants, they will retain the ability to transmit the virus for the remainder of their lives. INSV has a host range that consists mostly of ornamentals and is not as broad as that of TSWV.
While spraying for the thrips vector will not prevent these virus diseases from occurring, growers should still attempt to manage thrips populations when possible.
UC IPM Pest Management Guidelines:
S. T. Koike, UC Cooperative Extension, Monterey County
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Japan Eyes New Space Mission to Sample an Asteroid
Space engineers in Japan are scoping out an ambitious follow-up to the country's Hayabusa mission, which snagged samples from the asteroid Itokawa and returned them to Earth in 2010.
The successor spacecraft, known as Hayabusa 2, would carry out an aggressive study of another asteroid. The probe would drop off two landers, blast the asteroid with an impactor and send more samples back to Earth for close-up inspection.
Earlier this year, Tokyo-based NEC Corporation announced it had started designing the new asteroid explorer for the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).
The plan now calls for the Hayabusa 2 spacecraft to be launched in late 2014. The object targeted is 1999 JU3, a carbonaceous or C-type asteroid. [Photos: Asteroids in Deep Space]
The probe’s key mission is to collect and return samples from that rocky world, to help scientists better understand the origin and evolution of the solar system.
Hayabusa 2, propelled by an ion engine, would arrive at the asteroid in mid-2018, conduct a series of observations and operations and then return to Earth by the end of 2020.
The total cost of the mission is pegged at about $400 million — $150 million more than the original Hayabusa.
The budget boost is not surprising since Hayabusa 2 is going to be launched on Japan’s H2A rocket, which is larger than the M-V rocket used for Hayabusa. The new probe would also have a bigger payload and a longer operational stint, spending roughly one year at 1999 JU3 compared to Hayabusa’s three months of inspecting Itokawa.
The first Hayabusa
"It’s a much more scientifically aggressive mission than the first Hayabusa. They are applying all the lessons learned from that mission to Hayabusa 2," said Paul Abell, lead scientist for planetary small bodies in the Astromaterials Research & Exploration Science Directorate at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. He was a joint science team member on the Hayabusa mission.
The original Hayabusa was launched in May 2003 and reached Itokawa in mid-September 2005. Despite a sampling glitch, the craft managed to return to Earth a precious cargo of ultra-tiny grains of asteroid material. [Photos from the Hayabusa Mission]
Those prized extraterrestrial specimens were parachuted into the Australian outback in June 2010. Some of the bits and pieces are being distributed to researchers around the world.
Hayabusa overcame a series of glitches to make a victorious back-and-forth sojourn, and it has thus been heralded as a robotic version of NASA's famous Apollo 13 mission. But in this case, it was more appropriate to say, "Sagamihara, we’ve got a problem."
Abell told SPACE.com that Hayabusa 2 is basically a copycat version of its older sister ship, but with greater capabilities. There’s more redundancy, for one, as well as improved software for autonomous navigation, guidance and control.
Hayabusa 2 will involve international collaborations with Germany, the United States, Australia, and other countries.
One new technical feature is that Hayabusa 2 will tote two landers to the asteroid instead of one. One will be a version of the detachable MIcro/Nano Experimental Robot Vehicle for Asteroid (MINERVA). This tiny lander was on the first Hayabusa as well, but it missed its mark, drifting off into space after being deployed too high above Itokawa.
This time, joining the MINERVA-like lander is MASCOT (Mobile Asteroid Surface Scout), a small separate landing package developed by the German Aerospace Center.
"MASCOT will take some measurements, then move to a different location and take more readings," Abell said.
Unique to Hayabusa 2 is its impactor system. Deployed from the mothership, the impactor will slam into the asteroid and blast out a crater. A deployed standalone camera package will watch the high-speed crash.
While all of this is under way, Hayabusa 2 will slip behind the limb of the asteroid.
"They don’t want to be anywhere near the event with respect to the mothership," Abell said. "The ejecta from the impact might interfere with spacecraft systems."
Once Hayabusa 2 is back around the asteroid, it will relay to Earth detailed imagery of the crater.
"So they’d have a really good idea of the actual impact event itself, the crater formation and the ejecta pattern from that hypervelocity impact," Abell told SPACE.com.
Also on the agenda for Hayabusa 2 is to attempt a pinpoint landing at the newly created crater and sample that site, again sifting up material for transport back to Earth.
Hayabusa 2’s ability to suck up specimens is greater than what the first Hayabusa was capable of — and that gear failed to operate properly. Hayabusa 2 is designed to come back home to planet Earth with three different samples: two prior to the impact event and one post-impact.
"They are very optimistic that they will be able to return much more sample than they have in the original Hayabusa mission. It should be very interesting to see what they bring back," Abell said. "No matter where we go…we’re surprised at what we find."
Abell said scientists and laypeople in Japan and around the world were enthralled with the first Hayabusa mission. It was relatively inexpensive and had a high scientific payoff. Hayabusa 2 is being designed in the same vein.
"What you are starting to see is recognition that missions to near-Earth objects are very attractive," Abell added. Asteroids are interesting for many reasons, cutting across both science and space exploration. Some scientists and entrepreneurs advocate mining asteroids someday, since they harbor vast stores of potentially valuable resources, including water, iron and platinum.
And many researchers stress that we need to learn more about space rocks, since a big one is bound to strike Earth again sometime in the future.
The payoff from this type of asteroid research is valuable "in terms of how to deal with something that may have our name on it in the future," Abell said.
Leonard David has been reporting on the space industry for more than five decades. He is a winner of last year's National Space Club Press Award and a past editor-in-chief of the National Space Society's Ad Astra and Space World magazines. He has written for SPACE.com since 1999.
MORE FROM SPACE.com
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Nothing better shows corporate control over the government than Washington’s basic response to the current economic crisis. First we had “the rescue” and then “the recovery.” Trillions in public money flowed to the biggest US banks, insurance companies, etc. That “bailed” them out (suggestion of criminality?) while we waited for benefits to “trickle down” to the rest of us. As usual, the “trickle down” part has not happened. Large corporations and their investors kept the government’s money for themselves; their profits and stock market “recovered” nicely. We get unemployment, home-foreclosures, job benefit cuts and growing job insecurity. As the crisis hits states and cities, politicians avoid raising corporate taxes in favor of cutting government services and jobs.
Might government bias favoring corporations be deserved, a reward for taxes they pay? No: corporations – especially the larger ones – have avoided taxes as effectively as they have controlled government expenditures to benefit them.
Compare income taxes received by the federal government from individuals and from corporations (their profits are treated as their income). The table below (in millions of dollars) is based on statistics from the Office of Management and the Budget in the White House:
The overall picture is unmistakable. The trend is clear. During the Great Depression federal income tax receipts from individuals and corporations were roughly equal. During World War Two, income tax receipts from corporations were 50 % greater than from individuals. The national crises of depression and war produced successful popular demands for corporations to contribute significant portions of federal tax revenues.
US corporations resented that arrangement, and after the war, they changed it. Corporate profits financed politicians’ campaigns and lobbies to make sure that income tax receipts from individuals rose faster than those from corporations and that tax cuts were larger for corporations than for individuals. By the 1980s, individual income taxes regularly yielded four times more than taxes on corporations’ profits.
Since World War 2, corporations shifted much of the federal tax burden from themselves to the public and especially onto the middle income members of the public.ii No wonder a tax “revolt” developed, yet it did not push to stop or reverse that shift. Corporations had focused public anger elsewhere, against government expenditures as “wasteful” and against public employees as inefficient. Organizations such as Chambers of Commerce and corporations’ academic and political “allies” together shaped the public debate. They did not want it to be about who does and does not pay the taxes. Instead, they steered the “tax revolt” against taxes in general (on businesses and all individuals alike). The corporations’ efforts saved them far more in reduced taxes than the costs of their political contributions, lobbyists, and public relations campaigns.
At the same time, corporations also lobbied successfully for many loopholes in the tax laws. The official federal tax rate on profits is now around 35 % for large corporations who theoretically have to pay additional state taxes on their profits and local taxes on their property (land, buildings, business inventories, etc.). Those official and theoretical tax obligations have been used to support conservatives’ claims that corporations pay half or more of their profits to federal, state, and local levels of government combined. However, because of loopholes, the truth is very different. Corporations’ – and especially large corporations’ – actual tax payments are far lower than their official, theoretical obligations
The most comprehensive recent study of what larger corporations actually pay by three academic accountants – professors at Duke, MIT and the University of North Carolina – gets at that truth. It examined a large sample of corporations. Their average turned out to be a rate of total taxation (federal, state and local combined) below 30 %.iii The study concluded: “We find a significant fraction of firms that appear to be able to successfully avoid large portions of the corporate income tax over sustained periods of time. Using a ten-year measure of tax avoidance, 546 firms, comprising 26.3 percent of our sample, are able to maintain a cash effective tax rate of 20 percent or less. The mean firm has a ten-year cash effective tax rate of approximately 29.6 percent.”
General Electric (GE) deserves special mention. The New York Times reported that its total tax payment amounted to 14.3 % over the last five years.iv Citizens for Tax Justice corrected that down to 3.4 % as the profits tax it paid in the US.v Thus, GE paid a far lower tax rate on its income than most Americans paid on theirs. In 2009, GE received a huge $140 billion bailout guarantee of its debt from Washington.vi By choosing GE’s chief executive, Jeffrey R. Immelt, to head his Economic Advisory Panel, President Obama effectively rewarded the corporate program: give us more and tax us less.
The Brookings Institute pie chart below summarizes the dramatic success achieved by corporations’ tax avoidance strategies.vii
Corporations repeated at the state and local levels what they accomplished federally. According to the US Census Bureau, corporations paid taxes on their profits to states and localities totaling $ 24.7 billion in 1988 while individuals then paid income taxes of $ 90.0 billion.viii However, by 2009, while corporate tax payments had roughly doubled (to $ 49.1 billion), individual income taxes had more than tripled (to $290.0 billion).
If corporations paid taxes proportionate to the benefits they get from government and/or to what individuals pay, most US citizens would finally get the tax relief they so desperately seek.
All republished content that appears on Truthout has been obtained by permission or license.
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R is a statistical computing environment that is fully-compliant with state-of-the-art buzzwords: free, open-source, cross-platform, interactive, graphics, objects, closures, higher-order functions, and more. It is supported by an impressive collection of user-supplied modules through CRAN, the “Comprehensive R Archive Network”. (Sound familiar?)
And now it has its own O’Reilly Nutshell book, R in a Nutshell, written by Joseph Adler. I am pleased to report that Adler has risen to the challenge of the highly-regarded “Nutshell” franchise. As is traditional for the series, this title mixes introduction, tutorial, and reference material in a style that is well suited to a reader who already has a background in programming, but is a new or occasional user of R.
The book’s flow was very effective for addressing the different points of view from which I approached it.
As a curious newcomer to R who wanted to get going quickly, I was well-served by Part 1, which provided an R kickstart. Chapter 1 covers the process of getting and installing R. It is short, to the point, and just works, addressing Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux/Unix with equal attention. Chapter 2, on the R user interface, introduces the range of options for interacting with R: the GUI (both the standard version and some enhanced alternatives), the interactive console, batch mode, and the RExcel package (which supports R inside a certain well-known spreadsheet). Chapter 3 uses a set of interactive examples to provide a quick tour of the R language and environment, establishing a task-oriented theme that carries through the rest of the book. The last chapter of part 1 covers R packages. It summarizes the standard pre-loaded packages, introduces the tools to explore repositories and install additional package, and concludes by explaining how to create new packages.
As a polyglot programmer who is always interested in seeing how a new language approaches programs and their construction, I enjoyed Part 2, which described the R language. This section begins with an overview in chapter 5, and then devotes a chapter each to R syntax, R objects, symbols and environments (central to understanding the dynamic nature of R), functions (including higher-order functions), and R’s own approach to object-oriented programming. This section closes in chapter 11, with a discussion of techniques and tips for improving performance.
As a busy professional with data sitting on my hard drive that I’d like to understand better, I appreciated Part 3, with its practical emphasis on using R to load, transform, and visualize data. Chapter 12 presented alternatives for loading, editing, and saving data, from the built-in data editor, through file I/O in a variety of formats, to a mature set of database access options. Chapter 13 illustrated a range of techniques for manipulating, organizing, cleaning, and sorting data, in preparation for presentation or more detailed analysis. Chapter 14 introduces the reader to the wealth of graphical presentation options built into the R environment. There are so many charting types and details that this chapter could have been overwhelming, but Adler keeps the interest high and the mood light by drawing on an engaging variety of data: toxic chemical levels, baseball statistics, the topography of Yosemite Valley, demographic data, and even turkey prices. Chapter 15 is devoted to lattice graphics, the R implementation of the “trellis graphics” technique for data visualization developed at Bell Labs. This chapter illustrates the power of lattice graphics by exploring the question of why more babies are born on weekdays than weekends.
As a non-statistician who still occasionally needs to do some number-crunching, I’m sure I’ll be returning to Part 4, with its detailed explanations and illustrations of analysis tools and techniques–almost two-hundred pages worth. In chapters 16 through 20, Adler surveys topics in data analysis, probability, statistics, power tests, and regression modeling. As someone who has been offered too many medications and lost fortunes, I found much to enjoy in chapter 21, which used a variety of spam-detection techniques to illustrate the concepts of classification. Chapter 22, on machine learning, discusses several of the data mining techniques that R supports. Chapter 23 covers time series analysis, which may be used to identify trends or periodic patterns in data. Finally, chapter 24 offers an overview of Bioconductor, an open-source project focused on genomic data.
The book closes with a detailed reference to the standard R packages.
This is an impressive piece of work. In a volume of this size (about 650 pages), navigation is crucial, and I found both the organization of the chapters and index up to the task. I was able to follow the instructions and examples through the first several chapters of the book essentially without a hitch, and in the latter chapters the variety of illustrations and data sources added interest to what could have been very dull going.
I won’t claim perfection for this book. There were a couple of explanations that could have been clearer, and one or two odd turns of phrase or rough edits. Out of all the code examples that I tried, I found exactly one that didn’t seem to work without a minor correction. For a work of this size, that’s actually pretty amazing!
As a long-time O’Reilly reader, I see Joseph Adler’s R in a Nutshell as a welcome addition to the menagerie.
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(February 9, 2012)
GreenHouse builds compost tumblers
SHREVEPORT, LA — GreenHouse students met in the community garden behind Centenary Square Sunday, February 5, to build new compost tumblers for the campus.
"This is a way of life for me," said Bonnie Bernard, sophomore/junior biology and chemistry major. "We make something positive and productive out of what people have just thrown away. The bins and wooden stands were scrap that we collected, and the community garden is standing on land that no one thought was useful."
Due to the GreenHouse students' efforts, Centenary now has two compost tumblers and a traditional compost three-bin system to collect waste. The tumblers and bin break down green material such as vegetable waste and brown material like paper and leaves to create compost, which will be used to fertilize the community garden.
"This project takes care of a sustainability issue that is local and close-to-home," said junior and GreenHouse resident Krista McKinney. "Every day we are throwing away a ton of food. Now, we can collect some of the waste, compost it, and fertilize our garden."
GreenHouse participants can earn academic credit by participating in the "Sustainability Projects Lab," designing and implementing a sustainability project on campus. Bernard along with McKinney is leading the project to create more composters and to collect materials for composting from the dining hall in Bynum Commons. They have created weekly rotating teams to collect the waste and load the composters.
Centenary's GreenHouse living learning community is open to students who are interested in environmental issues and sustainability. GreenHouse students live and study together through team-taught learning labs, service learning and internship opportunities, and special events.
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Species Status and Fact Sheet
DESCRIPTION: The whooping crane is the tallest North American bird. Males, which may approach 1.5 meters in height, are larger than females. Adults are snowy white except for black primary feathers on the wings and a bare red face and crown. The bill is a dark olive-gray, which becomes lighter during the breeding season. The eyes are yellow and the legs and feet are gray-black. Immature cranes are a reddish cinnamon color that results in a mottled appearance as the white feather bases extend. The juvenile plumage is gradually replaced through the winter months and becomes predominantly white by the following spring as the dark red crown and face appear. Yearlings achieve the typical adult appearance by late in their second summer or fall. The life span is estimated to be 22 to 24 years in the wild. Whooping cranes are omnivorous feeders. They feed on insects, frogs, rodents, small birds, minnows, and berries in the summer. In the winter, they focus on predominantly animal foods, especially blue crabs and clams. They also, forage for acorns, snails, crayfish and insects in upland areas.
REPRODUCTION AND DEVELOPMENT: Whooping cranes are monogamous and form life-long pair bonds but will remate following the death of a mate. Whooping cranes return to the same breeding territory in Wood Buffalo National Park, Canada, in April and nest in the same general area each year. They construct nests of bulrush and lay one to three eggs, (usually two) in late April and early May. The incubation period is about 29 to 31 days. Whooping cranes will renest if the first clutch is lost or destroyed before mid-incubation. Both sexes share incubation and brood-rearing duties. Despite the fact that most pairs lay two eggs, seldom does more than one chick reach fledging. Autumn migration begins in mid-September, and most birds arrive on the wintering grounds of Aransas National Wildlife Refuge on the Texas Gulf Coast by late-October to mid-November. Whooping cranes migrate singly, in pairs, in family groups or in small flocks, and are sometimes accompanied by sandhill cranes. They are diurnal migrants, stopping regularly to rest and feed, and use traditional migration staging areas. On the wintering grounds, pairs and family groups occupy and defend territories. Subadults and unpaired adult whooping cranes form separate flocks that use the same habitat but remain outside occupied territories. Subadults tend to winter in the area where they were raised their first year, and paired cranes often locate their first winter territories near their parents' winter territory. Spring migration is preceded by dancing, unison calling, and frequent flying. Family groups and pairs are the first to leave the refuge in late-March to mid-April.
Juveniles and subadults return to summer in the vicinity of their natal area, but are chased away by the adults during migration or shortly after arrival on the breeding grounds. Only one out of four hatched chicks survive to reach the wintering grounds. Whooping cranes generally do not produce fertile eggs until age 4.
RANGE AND POPULATION LEVEL:
Historic: The historic range of the whooping crane once extended from the Arctic coast south to central Mexico, and from Utah east to New Jersey, into South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. The historic breeding range once extended across the north-central United States and in the Canadian provinces, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. A separate non-migratory breeding population occurred in southwestern Louisiana.
Aransas/Wood Buffalo Population: The current nesting range of the self-sustaining natural wild population is restricted to Wood Buffalo National Park in Saskatchewan, Canada and the current wintering grounds of this population are restricted to the Texas Gulf Coast at Aransas National Wildlife Refuge and vicinity. is experiencing a gradual positive population trend overall, although some years exhibit stationary or negative results. In January, 2000, there were 187 individuals in the flock, including 51 nesting pairs.
Rocky Mountain Experiment: In 1975, an effort to establish a second, self-sustaining migratory flock was initiated by transferring wild whooping crane eggs from Wood Buffalo National Park to the nests of greater sandhill cranes at Grays Lake National Wildlife Refuge in Idaho. This Rocky Mountain population peaked at only 33 birds in 1985. The experiment terminated in 1989 because the birds were not pairing and the mortality rate was too high to establish a self-sustaining population. In 1997, the remaining birds in the population were designated as experimental, non-essential to allow for greater management flexibility and to begin pilot studies on developing future reintroduction methods. In 2001, there were only two remaining whooping cranes in this population.
Captive Populations: As of March, 2001, there were 120 captive whooping cranes held at six facilities. Four facilities: Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, International Crane Foundation, Calgary Zoo, and San Antonio Zoo have successful breeding programs. Currently, the remaining facilities, Lowry Park Zoo and Audubon Institute house cranes for rehabilitative and educational purposes. Chicks produced at the captive facility either remain in captivity to maintain the health and genetic diversity of the captive flock, or are reared for release to the wild in the experimental reintroduction programs.
Florida Experimental Nonessential Population: An experimental reintroduction of whooping cranes in Florida was initiated in 1993 to establish a non-migratory population at Kissimmee Prairie. A nonmigratory population avoids the hazards of migration, and by inhabiting a more geographically limited area than migratory cranes, individuals can more easily find compatible mates. Since 1993, 233 isolation-reared whooping cranes have been released in the area. In Spring 2000, there were 65 individuals in the project area with 10 pairs defending territories and evidence of the first successful hatching of chicks. Annual releases of chicks are expected to continue to augment this new experimental population.
Eastern Migratory Population: A second experimental non-essential population is currently being reintroduced to eastern North America. The intent is to establish a migratory flock which would summer and breed in central Wisconsin, migrate across the seven states and winter in west-central Florida. The birds are taught the migration route after being conditioned to follow costumed pilots in ultralight aircraft. Initial experiments using sandhill cranes, completed in the Fall of 2000, successfully led 11 cranes 1,250 miles from Necedah National Wildlife Refuge in Wisconsin to Chassahowitzka National Wildlife Refuge in Florida. The birds winter in Florida and then migrate back to Wisconsin on their own in the Spring.
Following this success, the first attempt to lead whooping cranes was made in 2001. Seven birds made it to Florida and the five that survived the winter returned to central Wisconsin the following spring. An additional 16 birds were successfully reintroduced to the flyway in 2002. To date, 20 of the original 24 whooping cranes reintroduced have survived and adapted to the wild. Updated information on this project is available online at http://www.bringbackthecranes.org
HABITAT: The nesting area in Wood Buffalo National Park is a poorly drained region interspersed with numerous potholes. Bulrush is the dominant emergent in the potholes used for nesting. On the wintering grounds at Aransas National Wildlife Refuge in Texas, whooping cranes use the salt marshes that are dominated by salt grass, saltwort, smooth cordgrass, glasswort, and sea ox-eye. They also forage in the interior portions of the refuge, which are gently rolling, sandy, and are characterized by oak brush, grassland, swales, and ponds. Typical plants include live oak, redbay, Bermuda grass, and bluestem. The non-migratory, Florida release site at Kissimmee Prairie includes flat, open palmetto prairie interspersed with shallow wetlands and lakes. The primary release site has shallow wetlands characterized by pickerel weed, nupher, and maiden cane. Other habitats include dry prairie and flatwoods with saw palmetto, various grasses, scattered slash pine, and scattered strands of cypress. Areas selected for the proposed eastern migratory experimental population closely mimic habitat of the naturally occurring wild population in Canada and Texas.
REASONS FOR CURRENT STATUS: The whooping crane population, estimated at 500 to 700 individuals in 1870 declined to only 16 individuals in the migratory population by 1941 as a consequence of hunting and specimen collection, human disturbance, and conversion of the primary nesting habitat to hay, pastureland, and grain production. The main threat to whooping cranes in the wild is the potential of a hurricane or contaminant spill destroying their wintering habitat on the Texas coast. Collisions with power lines and fences are known hazards to wild whooping cranes. The primary threats to captive birds are disease and parasites. Bobcat predation has been the main cause of mortality in the Florida experimental population.
MANAGEMENT AND PROTECTION: The self-sustaining wild population is protected on public lands in the nesting area at Wood Buffalo National Park in Canada and on the principal wintering area at Aransas National Wildlife Refuge in Texas. A major traditional migratory stopover is at Salt Plains National Wildlife Refuge in Oklahoma. This population is closely monitored throughout the nesting season, on the wintering grounds, and during migration. The Canadian Wildlife Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are involved in recovery efforts under a 1990 Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), "Conservation of the Whooping Crane Related to Coordinated Management Activities." All cranes within the Rocky Mountain, Florida non-migratory and proposed eastern migratory non-essential, experimental population areas are fully protected as a threatened species (instead of endangered), but other provisions of the Endangered Species Act are relaxed to allow for greater management flexibility as well as positive public support
For more information please contact:Mr. Tom Stehn Whooping Crane Coordinator Aransas National Wildlife Refuge P.O. Box 100 Austwell, TX 77950 (361) 286-3559 Email: firstname.lastname@example.org
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Plant scientists find mechanism that gives plants ‘balance’
MSU plant biologist Sheng Yang He studied rice plants for a research project designed to ultimately improve a plant's ability to grow while at the same time defend itself against pests and other stresses. The project was detailed in a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Apr. 23, 2012
EAST LANSING, Mich. — Plant scientists find mechanism that gives plants ‘balance’
When a plant goes into defense mode in order to protect itself against harsh weather or disease, that’s good for the plant, but bad for the farmer growing the plant. Bad because when a plant acts to defend itself, it turns off its growth mechanism.
But now researchers at Michigan State University, as part of an international collaboration, have figured out how plants can make the “decision” between growth and defense, a finding that could help them strike a balance – keep safe from harm while continuing to grow.
Writing in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Sheng Yang He, an MSU professor of plant biology, and his team found that the two hormones that control growth (called gibberellins) and defense (known as jasmonates) literally come together in a crisis and figure out what to do.
“What we’ve discovered is that some key components of growth and defense programs physically interact with each other,” he said. “Communication between the two is how plants coordinate the two different situations.
We now know where one of the elusive molecular links is between growth and defense.”
This is important because now that scientists know that this happens, they can work to figure out how to “uncouple” the two, He added.
“Perhaps at some point we can genetically or chemically engineer the plants so they don’t talk to each other that much,” He said. “This way we may be able to increase yield and defense at the same time.”
In this way, He said plants are a lot like humans. We only have a certain amount of energy to use, and we have to make wise choices on how to use it.
“Plants, like people, have to learn to prioritize,” he said. “You can use your energy for growth, or use it for defense, but you can’t do them both at maximum level at the same time.”
The work was done on two different plants: rice, a narrow-leafed plant, and Arabidopsis, which has a broader leaf. This was significant because it demonstrated that this phenomenon occurs in a variety of plants.
He was one of the lead investigators on an international team of scientists that studied the issue. Other participating institutions included the Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Hunan Agricultural University, the University of Arkansas, Duke University, Yale University and Penn State University.
Funding was provided by the National Institutes of Health; the Chemical Sciences, Geosciences Division, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Office of Science, Department of Energy; the Howard Hughes Medical Institute; and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.
He is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute/Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation Investigator. Earning the prestige honor last year, He is one of only 15 in the country.
Michigan State University has been working to advance the common good in uncommon ways for more than 150 years. One of the top research universities in the world, MSU focuses its vast resources on creating solutions to some of the world’s most pressing challenges, while providing life-changing opportunities to a diverse and inclusive academic community through more than 200 programs of study in 17 degree-granting colleges.
Tom Oswald, Media Communications, Office: (517) 432-0920, Cell: (517) 281-7129, Tom.Oswald@ur.msu.edu ###
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The Trickle Up Solution
Blog & Media
Investing in Women
More Than Just a Place to Save
Meet Ramata Ouédraogo
Helping Women in Africa Put Food on the Table
How Do Savings Groups Work?
Trickle Up India: Meet Sanaka Sardar
Anna's Mali Video Journal
“As more cash and assets get into the hands of women, more of these earnings get into the mouths, medicine, and schoolbooks of their children, while at the same time increasing women’s bargaining position and power in the family and community; and their ability to act against violence in the home and in the world. There is no development strategy more beneficial to society as a whole - women and men alike - than the one which involves women as central players.”
- Kofi Annan, Former Secretary -General of the United Nations
The key to economic development lies in unleashing women’s potential and investing in women’s capabilities. Women bear a disproportionate weight of the world's poverty, representing 70% of the world's poor. At the same time, it has been widely recognized that women have the potential to be the engine of economic and development progress. Addressing gender inequalities are crucial factors in enabling women to transform their lives and the lives of their families and communities.
Women’s roles as the primary caretakers of children, providers of household fuel and water, and in many areas of the world, producers of food, can only begin to illustrate their importance in the economies and societies of developing countries. However, it is a stunning fact that while women perform 66% of the world’s work and produce 50% of the food, they only earn 10% of the income and own 1% of the land.
Trickle Up is committed to serving women, who comprise 98% of Trickle Up's participants, and the Trickle Up program is particularly designed for, and ideally suited to women. As a result of the following program components, women are able to start or expand a microenterprise, many for the first time:
Weaving, haircutting, tailoring, raising pigs, chickens, and goats, selling tortillas, hair clips, eggs, empanadas, rice pancakes, couscous, and ice cream are just a few of the many activities women chose that allow them to not only earn more money, but take the first step in transforming their lives. The Trickle Up program is an empowering process that is not limited to increased income, but also leads to increases in self-esteem, decision-making ability, and control over their economic resources in terms of the central issues of buying and selling land, family planning, sending daughters to school, and deciding when children will marry.
Trickle Up is committed to being a catalyst for change in the lives of women who have traditionally had limited financial independence and low social standing. They are lifting themselves from poverty and becoming role models for other women and girls in their families and communities. It is then that they become active members of their communities and the architects of their own future.
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Costumes have been chosen. Routes have been planned. Now all that's left to do is collect - and eat - tasty Halloween confections.
Trick-or-treaters will be on a mission to cram as much sugary, cavity-causing candy as possible into their Jack-o'-lanterns come Oct. 31. The adults in their lives, on the other hand, will spend part of their evening wondering just exactly how much dental damage Halloween candy does cause. Should we keep children from eating all of those tasty treasures they collect?
"Let them eat all they want," says John Ruby, D.M.D., pediatric dentist and associate professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Dentistry. "Eating candy and sweets is more of a problem when you do it every day of the year.
"Indulging on special occasions - Halloween, Easter, Christmas and birthdays - is not going to ruin your teeth. Have fun and eat what you like."
Dental decay is a chronic disease, Ruby explains. It happens over a long period of time and is the result of constant exposure to sugary treats. Candies cause cavities or tooth decay if they're consumed frequently every day.
And, some are worse than others.
"Sour candies are a double hit," Ruby says. "Not only do you get tooth decay with the sugar but the acid is in high concentrations to make it sour; because of that your teeth also can erode due to the acid."
For optimal dental and overall health, Ruby recommends healthy snacks - such as celery and peanut butter, or cheese and crackers - on regular days. Most fruits, vegetables and dairy products do not cause cavities, and they also have other nutritional benefits. The dentist also says to avoid snacks sweetened with fructose, as it can cause tooth decay and other health problems.
"When consumed in great quantities, fructose can cause teeth to decay and also cause some metabolic problems leading to diabetes and obesity," Ruby explains.
Ruby says candy in moderation is not a bad thing. "If everyone just ate candy three or four days each year on special occasions, we wouldn't have a problem with cavities," he says.
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- Pregnancy & Childbirth
- Attachment Parenting
- Family Nutrition
- Family Wellness
This was a topic of debate many years ago. It used to be felt that breastfeeding while pregnant can steal important nutrients from the fetus and can increase the risk of miscarriage. Now we know that this is not true. Many research studies have demonstrated no nutritional risk to the fetus, and no increased risk of miscarriage. I encourage pregnant moms to continue to breastfeed as long as they want to.
There is, however, one situation where breastfeeding during pregnancy is NOT considered safe. For moms who have a history of miscarriages or preterm labor (labor beginning before 37 weeks gestation) with previous pregnancies, breastfeeding may increase the risk of these events occurring again. Why? Because breastfeeding releases a hormone into mom's bloodstream that can cause the uterus to contract. If a mom's uterus is especially sensitive to this hormone (i.e., if a mom has had preterm labor or miscarriages before) then breastfeeding MAY trigger the uterus to contract.
However, most women's uteruses are NOT sensitive to this breastfeeding hormone. It is therefore safe to breastfeed during pregnancy.
You should discuss this issue with your own midwife or obstetrician.
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A concept to turn the Eiffel Tower into a giant green wall has been proposed as a symbolic statement of "the reconciliation of nature and mankind."The plan calls for 600,000 plants to be attached to the structure using hemp sacks filled with soil as the growth media. An irrigation system comprising 12 tons of tubing would be used to provide water for the plants.
The installation would not be permanent, and would be removed after a few years. But, once in place, the installation would help remove an estimated 87.8 tons of CO2 from the atmosphere.
"Should it not be the duty of engineers to imagine a new future where nature is brought back into the heart of the city," said a statement from Ginger, the company behind the proposal. With an estimated cost of nearly 100 million dollars for the project, that's more than a million dollars per ton of CO2. Hardly the most cost effective carbon sequestration, but certainly a visible one.
written by Ronald Brak, December 30, 2011
written by Youtube Downloader, January 04, 2012
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The bull elephant seal Gustavo here is carrying a transmitter. This seal and others like him are now helping scientists gather research where people cannot go the icy ocean around the South Pole.
During the Antarctic winter, the Southern Ocean is covered with ice, and research vessels cannot sail continuously through it to capture data. These seals are therefore serving as genuine scientific pioneers.
On land, elephant seals may seem sedate, but get them in the water and you will see just how capable they really are. During the annual migrations to their oceanic feeding grounds, elephant seals cover thousands of miles, diving down to depths of more than 6,560 feet (2,000 meters) and remaining underwater for spans of more than an hour.
Every year at this time, the males of the only reproduction colony of the southern elephant seal in the Antarctic come to molt their fur at the South Shetland Islands, a group that also includes King George Island. The scientists from the Alfred Wegener Institute took advantage of this narrow time window to tag some of the animals with satellite transmitters.
Gustavo is an imposing bull elephant seal that weighs 3 tons and measures 13 feet (4 meters) in length. He belongs to a group of 14 animals serving as scientific assistants for researchers at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven, Germany.
A state-of-the-art satellite transmitter is fixed with a special adhesive on the short hairs near this elephant seal's head. When a seal with a transmitter dives, it collects data, even under the ice, and when it reappears on the surface again to breathe, the recorded package is sent to a satellite that passes on the information.
Once molting is over after three weeks, the bulls return to their migratory life and do not return to land until six months later, when they mate with the females in the Antarctic spring. With the next molting, the transmitter will fall off with good luck, the transmitter will continuously transfer data until then for a year.
At the beginning of the Antarctic winter, from March to April, weather on King George Island, where the seals are tagged, can be rather uncomfortable. Still, researchers brave the harsh conditions to tag elephant seals.
"We have just returned from the Antarctic Peninsula and still have fresh impressions of the incredible experience when you have numerous elephant seal bulls with their loud deep roar in front of you," said researcher Joachim Plötz. "Imagine attaching a satellite transmitter the size of your palm to some of these huge creatures."
The call of an elephant seal here sounds like a loud deep roar. In the ocean, the satellite tags scientists are affixing on them will call out for them during a tagged seal's voyages across the Southern Ocean, its transmitter will send not only its geographic position and diving depth, but also data on water temperature and salt concentration. This will help scientists draw conclusions regarding the creatures living in such waters.
"Elephant seals mainly feed on fish and squid," researcher Horst Bornemann explained. "They lead a nomadic life in the ice desert of the Antarctic Ocean and are always looking for regions with ample prey."
In the coming months, marine biologists Joachim Plötz (right) and Horst Bornemann (left) can now follow Gustavo and other elephant seals from their desks in Germany. By following seal migrations via satellite, the scientists can figure out how productive zones with exceptionally high numbers of fish and squid occurring in the Southern Ocean are distributed in space and change over time, as well as what depths and ocean conditions are linked with good supplies of food.
When the next molting takes place, the microelectronics, developed by the Scottish Sea Mammal Research Unit, will then fall off. Even though the transmitters only hold out for a year, the data will be highly sought after in the following months. Information from this German-Argentinean-South African joint project will be made available for scientific ventures around the world.
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Apr 3, 2011
An abandoned salt mine in Germany, which has become a nuclear waste storage site named "Asse II". Since the 1970s, barrels of nuclear waste have been piled mussily in it. This nuclear-waste storage site is located in central Germany countryside as deep as 2,460 feet (750 meters) underground.
This picture was taken in 1970s.
Between 1967 and 1978, there’re 126,000 barrels of radioactive waste stored in the mine, of which 90% were from nuclear power plants. Now mine is unstable and has the risk of flooding, which prompts to find another safe storage site for these dangerous wastes before Asse II collapses.
Employee was giving a test for traces of radioactive contamination
Employee was checking the fissures caused by rock movements.
Above the site of the Asse II nuclear-waste dump
September 2009, anti-nuclear protesters gathered in front of Berlin’s Brandenburg held a demonstration.
A government worker was checking for radiation near the sealed entrance to nuclear-waste storage chambers.
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Books by Category:
Jeffrey Strausser and José Paniza - All books by this author
Painless Junior Series - All books in this series
Here’s a very approachable textbook for both children and adults who speak English as their second language. It acquaints students with correct English sentence construction, parts of speech, capitalization, punctuation, and spelling, and offers extra tips on how to expand one’s English language vocabulary. After laying out these fundamentals, the authors proceed with solid instruction on writing a paragraph in English, and then with instructions on writing a multi-paragraph story. Advice includes choosing a topic to write about, sketching out a rough draft, and finally revising and editing the finished piece. Students once daunted by what they perceived as the intricacies of English will be attracted by the authors’ student-friendly approach to proficiency.
Paperback / 240 Pages / 7 13/16 x 10 / 2008
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Follow the steps below to complete this assignment:
Choose a current and controversial issue. For example, the same-sex marriage debate in Canada.
Read a newspaper article or watch television news coverage to gather facts and opinions about this issue. Record examples of bias.
Write a news report of the issue from two different perspectives, using the facts you have gathered. For example, one report would include facts about a war from a pro-war perspective. The other report would use the same facts from an anti-war perspective. Write the reports in a persuasive manner. That is—be biased! Each report should be a maximum of 150 words.
In your opinion, which report is more convincing? Why?
This assignment is the second piece of work for the cumulative section assignment.
The reports will be marked according to guidelines:
Elements of bias are clear: 6 marks Use of facts (3 per report): 6 marks Use of opinions (3 per report): 6 marks Clear, concise writing style: 2 marks
Any person can refuse a doctor’s aid, knowing that they’re going to die in pain. Why can’t a person that knows that they’re going to die request a doctor’s hand in making the journey comfortable and painless?
When a terminal patient knows that they are going to die and has accepted this fact, they may wish to die on their own terms. In these cases, by the end of their lives, these individuals are often in great pain and cannot even take care of themselves. Their dignity is taken away from them as they’re forced to survive even as they ask to die. The most common ‘cure’ for the severe pain of one’s body slowly dying piece by piece is to use medication to ease the discomfort. This can put a financial strain on them, and their family. If they know they’re close to dying and actively request to end their life, why should they be forced to bleed money just to stay comfortable as they naturally move towards the inevitable?
Either assisted suicide, euthanasia, or both, is already legal in five places in the world: The Nethelands, Belgium, Switzerland, Luxenbourg, and the State of Oregon. In these places, patients confirmed to be terminal by a doctor or physician, and are deemed sane and understanding of that they’re requesting, have strict routes that they can follow to end their lives in a humane way, with a chance to say goodbye to those they love. Assisted suicide and euthanasia allows the death of the patient quickly and painlessly under supervision, while alternate forms of suicide offer no such guarantees.
This shouldn’t even be an issue for the dying. Who does your life belong to, if not you?
In the times that a terminally ill patient need their families the most, they are often also in need of drugs just to function without extreme pain. These expensive drugs can be used as a tool against the person, convincing them that they’re a burden and are simply dragging on the inevitable, increasing the medical debt that will be left when they’re gone.
What if the cure to their disease were to be discovered only a month after they end their life, in the time that they otherwise would have still been alive? These people choosing to remove the burden of their lives from the shoulders of their loved ones could also remove the pressure of finding those cures from the shoulders of those that seek them. This could elongate the time it takes to find cures and therapies, which would allow times for more people to suffer from the same illnesses.
Of course, for many religious people, there’s another, very obvious point: only God should choose when each life ends. Many medical professionals believe that no doctor should ever knowingly kill their patient. And who would believe that? Who would want to have a doctor that they knew had willingly and knowingly killed their patient?
Legalizing assisted suicide is legalizing the murder of weak, vulnerable people, and offers an opening for this to turn into a steep, slippery path: perfectly healthy people choosing to commit suicide and being aided by doctors. For example, in 2008, a healthy woman in Germany committed suicide with the direction of a doctor. She did this because she didn’t want to move into a care home. Has the world become so dark that this can happen without repercussion?
It will never be permissible for one human to end another’s life. Any other situation where the scenario is offered, it’s obvious what it is: murder. Why is it that this “assisted suicide” should be any different?
It’s been somewhat difficult for me to find logical arguments against assisted suicide in the news, and I understand why. This is a no-brainer. This is, after all, a different shade entirely from suicide via depression or spontaneity. People who know that their death is staring them in the face have a right to either spit in its face or accept it with open arms. Nobody has the right to stop them, and it’s only humane to help them if they know what they’re asking for.
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|<< Proverbs 16 >>|
New International Version
1To humans belong the plans of the heart,
but from the Lord comes the proper answer of the tongue.
2All a person’s ways seem pure to them,
but motives are weighed by the Lord.
3Commit to the Lord whatever you do,
and he will establish your plans.
4The Lord works out everything to its proper end—
even the wicked for a day of disaster.
5The Lord detests all the proud of heart.
Be sure of this: They will not go unpunished.
6Through love and faithfulness sin is atoned for;
through the fear of the Lord evil is avoided.
7When the Lord takes pleasure in anyone’s way,
he causes their enemies to make peace with them.
8Better a little with righteousness
than much gain with injustice.
9In their hearts humans plan their course,
but the Lord establishes their steps.
10The lips of a king speak as an oracle,
and his mouth does not betray justice.
11Honest scales and balances belong to the Lord;
all the weights in the bag are of his making.
12Kings detest wrongdoing,
for a throne is established through righteousness.
13Kings take pleasure in honest lips;
they value the one who speaks what is right.
14A king’s wrath is a messenger of death,
but the wise will appease it.
15When a king’s face brightens, it means life;
his favor is like a rain cloud in spring.
16How much better to get wisdom than gold,
to get insight rather than silver!
17The highway of the upright avoids evil;
those who guard their ways preserve their lives.
18Pride goes before destruction,
a haughty spirit before a fall.
19Better to be lowly in spirit along with the oppressed
than to share plunder with the proud.
20Whoever gives heed to instruction prospers,
and blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord.
21The wise in heart are called discerning,
and gracious words promote instruction.
22Prudence is a fountain of life to the prudent,
but folly brings punishment to fools.
23The hearts of the wise make their mouths prudent,
and their lips promote instruction.
24Gracious words are a honeycomb,
sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.
25There is a way that appears to be right,
but in the end it leads to death.
26The appetite of laborers works for them;
their hunger drives them on.
27A scoundrel plots evil,
and on their lips it is like a scorching fire.
28A perverse person stirs up conflict,
and a gossip separates close friends.
29A violent person entices their neighbor
and leads them down a path that is not good.
30Whoever winks with their eye is plotting perversity;
whoever purses their lips is bent on evil.
31Gray hair is a crown of splendor;
it is attained in the way of righteousness.
32Better a patient person than a warrior,
one with self-control than one who takes a city.
33The lot is cast into the lap,
but its every decision is from the Lord.
New International Version (NIV)
Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Proverbs 16 Online Parallel Bible
Proverbs 16 Bible Apps
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lizabeth Barrett Moulton-Barrett was born March 6, 1806 in Durham, England. Her father, Edward Moulton-Barrett, made most of his considerable fortune from Jamaican sugar plantations, and in 1809 he bought Hope End, a 500-acre estate near the Malvern Hills. Elizabeth lived a privileged childhood, riding her pony around the grounds, visiting other families in the neighborhood, and arranging family theatrical productions with her eleven brothers and sisters. Although frail, she apparently had no health problems until 1821, when Dr. Coker prescribed opium for a nervous disorder. Her mother died when she was 22, and critics mark signs of this loss in Aurora Leigh.
Elizabeth, an accomplished child, had read a number of Shakespearian plays, parts of Pope's Homeric translations, passages from Paradise Lost, and the histories of England, Greece, and Rome before the age of ten. She was self-taught in almost every respect. During her teen years she read the principal Greek and Latin authors and Dante's Inferno — all texts in the original languages. Her voracious appetite for knowledge compelled her to learn enough Hebrew to read the Old Testament from beginning to end. Her enjoyment of the works and subject matter of Paine, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Wollstonecraft was later expressed by her concern for human rights in her own letters and poems. By the age of twelve she had written an "epic" poem consisting of four books of rhyming couplets. Barrett later referred to her first literary attempt as, "Pope's Homer done over again, or rather undone."
In her early twenties Barrett befriended Hugh Stuart Boyd, a blind, middle-aged scholar, who rekindled Barrett's interest in Greek studies. During their friendship Barrett absorbed an astonishing amount of Greek literature — Homer, Pindar, Aristophanes, etc. — but after a few years Barrett's fondness for Boyd diminished.
Her intellectual fascination with the classics and metaphysics was balanced by a religious obsession which she later described as "not the deep persuasion of the mild Christian but the wild visions of an enthusiast." (See Methodism for the connotations of "enthusiasm.") Her family attended services at the nearest Dissenting chapel, and Mr. Barrett was active in Bible and Missionary societies.
From 1822 on, Elizabeth Barrett's interests tended more and more to the scholarly and literary. Mr. Barrett's financial losses in the early 30s forced him to sell Hope End, and although never poor, the family moved three times between 1832 and 1837, settling at 50 Wimpole Street in London. In 1838, The Seraphim and Other Poems appeared, the first volume of Elizabeth's mature poetry to appear under her own name. That same year her health forced her to move to Torquay, on the Devonshire coast. Her favorite brother Edward went along with her; his death by drowning later that year was a blow which prostrated her for months and from which she never fully recovered. When she returned to Wimpole Street, she became an invalid and a recluse, spending most of the next five years in her bedroom, seeing only one or two people other than her immediate family.
One of those people was John Kenyon, a wealthy and convivial friend of the arts. Her 1844 Poems made her one of the most popular writers in the land, and inspired Robert Browning to write her, telling her how much he loved her poems. Kenyon arranged for Browning to come see her in May 1845, and so began one of the most famous courtships in literature. Six years his elder and an invalid, she could not believe that the vigorous and worldly Browning really loved her as much as he professed to, and her doubts are expressed in the Sonnets from the Portuguese which she wrote over the next two years. Love conquered all, however, and Browning imitated his hero Shelley by spiriting his beloved off to Italy in August 1846. Since they were proper Victorians, however, they got married a week beforehand.
Mr. Barrett disinherited her (as he did each one of his children who got married without his permission, and he never gave his permission). Unlike her brothers and sisters, Elizabeth had inherited some money of her own, so the Brownings were reasonably comfortable in Italy. In 1849, they had a son, Robert Wiedeman Barrett Browning.
At her husband's insistence, the second edition of her Poems included her love sonnets. They helped increase her popularity and the high critical regard in which the Victorians held their favorite poetess. (On Wordsworth's death in 1850, she was seriously considered for the Laureateship, which went to Tennyson.) Her growing interest in the Italian struggle for independence is evident in Casa Guidi Windows (1851) and Poems before Congress (1860). 1857 saw the publication of the verse-novel Aurora Leigh,
It is still unclear what sort of affliction Elizabeth Barrett Browning had, although medical and literary scholars have enjoyed speculating. Whatever it was, the opium which was repeatedly prescribed probably made it worse; and Browning almost certainly lengthened her life by taking her south and by his solicitous attention. She died in his arms on June 29, 1861.
No female poet was held in higher esteem among cultured readers in both the United States and England than Elizabeth Barrett Browning during the nineteenth century. Barrett's poetry had an immense impact on the works of Emily Dickinson who admired her as woman of achievement.
Barrett's treatment of social injustice (the slave trade in America, the oppression of the Italians by the Austrians, the labor of children in the mines and the mills of England, and the restrictions placed upon women) is manifested in many of her poems. Two of her poems, Casa Guidi Windows and Poems Before Congress, dealt directly with the Italian fight for independence. The first half of Casa Guidi Windows (1851) was filled with hope that the newly awakened liberal movements were moving toward unification and freedom in the Italian states. The second half of the poem, written after the movement of liberalism had been crushed in Italy, is dominated by her disillusionment. After a decade of truce, Italians once again began to struggle for their freedom, but were forced to agree to an armistice that would leave Venice under Austrian control. Barrett Browning's Poems Before Congress (1860) responded to these events by criticizing the English government for not providing aid. One of the poems in this collection, "A Curse For a Nation," which attacked slavery, had been previously published in an abolitionist journal in Boston.
Aurora Leigh also dealt with social injustice, but its subject was the subjugation of women to the dominating male. It also commented on the role of a woman as a woman and poet. Barrett's popularity waned after her death, and late-Victorian critics argued that although much of her writing would be forgotten, she would be remembered for "The Cry of the Children", "Isobel's Child", "Bertha in the Lane", and most of all the Sonnets from the Portuguese. Virginia Woolf argued that Aurora Leigh's heroine, "with her passionate interest in the social questions, her conflict as artist and woman, her longing for knowledge and freedom, is the true daughter of her age." Woolf's praise of that work predated the modern critical reevaluation of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and today it attracts more attention than the rest of her poetry.
Created 1987; last modified 6 April 2002
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Follow the sun: optimal orientation for solar energy systems
A QUT PhD student is installing a dynamic "sunflower" solar system on a roof at QUT's city campus in a bid to optimise the performance of solar energy systems and save householders and businesses money on high-cost, peak-demand energy bills.
Stephen Kel, from Queensland University of Technology's (QUT) School of Engineering Systems, has designed the purpose-built dynamic solar infrastructure to act like a sunflower and move to follow the sun.
The six-panel device will be installed on the roof of QUT's S Block on Gardens Point Campus with the aim of finding the optimal orientation and elevation for solar devices.
"The system we are installing on S Block uses six commercially available panels across different solar technologies to capture the maximum intensity of sunlight at varying points of orientation and elevation," Mr Kel said.
"The primary aim is to find the best point so that utility providers can install their solar systems at exactly the right orientation and elevation to help reduce demand spikes during peak periods of the day.
"The secondary aim is to find the best solar technology that gathers the maximum energy for householders and businesses to help reduce their demand during peak usage times."
Mr Kel is focussing on different versions of three types of solar technologies: silicon, thin film, and organic solar technology.
"Silicon solar technology is the most common form. It is the most mature technology so most households with solar systems would have it, but it is also the most expensive," Mr Kel said.
"Thin film technology is made by depositing one or more thin layers of sunlight absorbing materials such as cadmium, amorphous, or silicon. It is not widely used for household systems yet because it is not yet as efficient as silicon. It needs a bigger area than silicon technology but it could work out to be the cheapest option.
"We are particularly interested in thin film technology because most thin film devices are less susceptible to temperature changes and actually perform better at higher temperatures while also performing well in low light."
Mr Kel said organic solar was an emerging technology because of cost and sustainability and could be the cheapest form.
"It mimics photosynthesis and is made from organic molecules or materials. However, so far its efficiency is low; it's unstable and has a short lifespan of about two years," he said.
Mr Kel said the results of the study would be known around September.
"We should be able to recommend how to have solar panels installed to produce the most amount of power and to reduce demand spikes. This will help shield householders and business owners from further energy price rises," he said.
"We will also target electricity retailers who face huge demand from users during peak hours. The industry is looking to solar power to reduce demand in these peaks instead of building more fossil-fuelled power stations.
"This information could be helpful to existing solar energy system owners if their systems are on mounting brackets."
Media contact: Niki Widdowson, QUT media officer, 07 3138 1841 or email@example.com
In This Section
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- Adelaide organisations sought for input into workplace studyMon 13 May 2013
- 2013 Sydney Architecture Festival: 1-10 NovemberThu 2 May 2013
- Tenix awarded Australia’s first Infrastructure Sustainability (IS) ratingMon 22 Apr 2013
- Plundering...for the environment’s sakeThu 18 Apr 2013
- Pixel on the marketThu 2 May 2013
- Stockland research confirms Green Star liveability visionWed 17 Apr 2013
- Illawarra students retrofitting for the future at the Solar Decathlon China 2013Tue 16 Apr 2013
- United Nations Association of Australia (VIC) Corporate Water Valuation Sustainability Leadership SeminarTue 16 Apr 2013
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Security company Multicom of Stockholm, Sweden, has found a way to use cellphones to help track valuable goods.
Guards who accompany valuable cargo will carry a phone with a built-in GPS chip. The phone automatically makes a call to a control centre every 60 seconds giving the time and its current position (WO 2004/28184).
This information is stored, and should the cellphone fail to make two or more calls, or if its signal is jammed, the centre can help police by producing a trail showing the cargo's recent movements. The trail should help police narrow their search.
To continue reading this article, subscribe to receive access to all of newscientist.com, including 20 years of archive content.
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In this section we have included museums and education centers in Florida as well as Holocaust museums elsewhere that maintain useful Web sites.
Museums and Holocaust Education Centers in Florida
Florida Holocaust Museum
(Formerly The Tampa Bay Holocaust Memorial Museum and Educational Center)
55 Fifth Street South
St. Petersburg, FL 33701
Phone: (727) 820-0100
Fax: (727) 821-8435
Contact: Stephen Goldman, Director
The Florida Holocaust Museum hosts both in-house and traveling exhibits. Recent exhibits have included Anne Frank in the World, A Day in the Warsaw Ghetto, and Denmark's Response to the Holocaust. The Museum produces study guides and offers teacher-training programs. Holocaust survivors are available to speak in classrooms and use of the on-site research facilities is encouraged. The Museum also hosts programs featuring outstanding authors and scholars of the Holocaust. Another on-going project is the video interviewing of Holocaust survivors, liberators, and rescuers. These tapes are archived at the Museum and at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. A museum book store is also on site.
The Holocaust Documentation and Education Center, Inc.
Florida International University
North Miami Campus
3000 N.E. 145 Street
North Miami, FL 33181
Phone: (305) 919-5690
Fax: (305) 919-5691
Contact person: Rositta Kenigsberg, Director
The Holocaust Documentation and Education Center opened in 1979 with the primary purpose of interviewing Holocaust survivors, liberators, and rescuers. Over the years, the Center's objectives and programs have greatly expanded and diversified. At present, the Center's Archives holds over 1200 videotapes in addition to audiotapes. Publications include high school level curriculum on Holocaust studies, a newsletter, and a 28-minute video entitled In Their Own Words. One-day Teachers' Seminars and week-long Teachers' Institutes are sponsored to provide an in-depth historical overview of the Holocaust, as well as opportunities to speak with survivors. Other services include an active speakers' bureau, commemorations, and a writing and visual arts contest. A reference library and memorabilia display are also available at the Center.
The Holocaust Memorial Resource and Education Center of Central Florida, Inc.
851 North Maitland Avenue
Maitland, FL 32751
Phone: (407) 628-0555
Fax: (407) 628-1079
Contact Person: Tess Wise, Executive Director
The Holocaust Memorial Resource and Education Center of Central Florida was founded in 1980. The Museum exhibit chronicles the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe--their cultural, religious, and economic development, as well as their tribulations. Visitors are able to see how thousands of communities were destroyed in less than a decade. Guided tours are available. A Memorial Wall, built from Jerusalem stone, surrounds six memorial lights, representing the six million Jews who died at the hands of the Nazis. Center publications include a newsletter, bibliographies, and curriculum guides. The Library contains 4000 volumes, 12 periodicals, and 600 videotapes. A lecture and film series is also offered. Other services include teacher training, educational consultation, an annual art and writing contest, and teaching "trunks" available to schools.
Holocaust Outreach Center
Florida Atlantic University
College of Education
777 Glades Road
P.O. Box 3091
Boca Raton, FL 33431
Phone: (561) 297-2929
Fax: (561) 297-3613
Contact: Dr. Ellen Heckler, Coordinator of Holocaust Education Project
The Holocaust Outreach Center is a joint effort of the College of Education and the Raddock Eminent Scholar Chair of Holocaust Studies. The purpose is to provide training, resources, and support for teachers, media specialists, and school administrators in FAU's service area of Broward, Palm Beach, Martin, St. Lucie, Indian River, and Okeechobee Counties. The H.O.C. trains educators to use appropriate curricula and lesson plans and introduces available resources, such as literature, videos, publications, posters, and the testimony of those who personally experienced and witnessed the Holocaust. These materials are available through the Holocaust Outreach Center's lending library located at the FAU College of Education on the Boca Raton campus.
Mania Nudel Holocaust Learning Center
Jewish Community Center
5850 Pine Island Road
Davie, FL 33328
(954) 434-0499 ext. 314
Contact person: Annette Labovitz, Director
The Holocaust Learning Center is dedicated to promoting remembrance and understanding of the Holocaust. It offers the community an extensive Holocaust library that includes current Young Adult fiction and non-fiction and multimedia materials that can be incorporated into classroom instruction. The Center also hosts a lecture and film series and presents continuous exhibitions of Holocaust artifacts and photographs.
The Sanford L. Ziff Jewish Museum of Florida
301 Washington Avenue
South Miami Beach, FL 33139
Phone: (305) 672-5044
Contact person: Laura Hockman
Though not a Holocaust memorial museum, the Sanford J. Ziff Jewish Museum of Florida is a valuable resource for the study of Jewish identity and culture. The focus of the collection is Jewish Life in Florida since 1763. Of special interest are materials related to the episode of the S.S. St. Louis. This ship, full of Jewish refugees from Germany, set out for Cuba, but was turned away and remained off the coast of Florida until returning to Europe. Another exhibit planned for February 3-May 31,1998, called The Florida-Israel Connection (1948-1998), will include materials related to the founding of the state of Israel.
Museums Outside of Florida with Useful Web Sites
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
100 Raoul Wallenberg Pl., SW (15th St. & Independence Ave.)
Washington, DC 20054-2150
Phone: (202) 488-0400
Fax: (202) 488-2690
E-mail: firstname.lastname@example.org, email@example.com, firstname.lastname@example.org
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Web site contains online versions of several of the Museum's exhibits. Visitors can also search a database of historic photographs and display the results. The Museum's Archives and Library are also searchable, but only titles, not the documents themselves, are displayed. Teachers should review the Museum's "Guidelines for Teaching the Holocaust" page.
Simon Wiesenthal Center
9760 West Pica Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90035
Phone: (310) 553-9036
Fax: (310) 277-5558
The Simon Wiesenthal Center Web site features a collection of over 100 short biographies and photos called "Children of the Holocaust" which would lend itself to many engaging classroom activities. Also of interest to teachers are the 50 topical bibliographies related to the Holocaust, assorted fact sheets, and current news items.
The Topography of Terror Foundation
Stiftung Topographie des Terrors
Budapester Strasse 40
Fax: +49-30-261 30 02
This site links to over 60 Holocaust memorials on German soil. Each memorial museum site is represented by a short history and several photographs. Click on the small photos to see enlargements. Site available in English or German.
The Mechelen Museum of Deportation and the Resistance
2 Rue Joseph Dupont
1000 Brussels, Belgium
This site documents the deportation of Belgium Jews to Auschwitz. Of the 25,257 prisoners deported through Mechelen, only 1,207 survived to see the liberation of the camps.
Yad Vashem, The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority
Jerusalem, Israel 91034
Most of the information at Yad Vashem's Web site is about the museum itself.
| Bibliographies | Documents | Galleries | Glossary | Maps | Movies | Museums | Music |
| Plays | Quizzes | Software | Videography | VR Movies | Web Search Engines | Web Sites |
A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust
Produced by the Florida Center for Instructional Technology,
College of Education, University of South Florida © 2005.
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Most Active Stories
Reflecting On Sept. 11, 2001
Tue September 6, 2011
5 Other Surprise Attacks That Changed History
The headline writers at USA Today put it this way: "9/11 How One Day Changed Our World." National Geographic observed that the attacks of Sept. 11 would "alter the course of history."
But the shocking assaults in 2001 on the World Trade towers, the Pentagon and the planned hit on the Capitol were not the first surprise attacks that changed the way humans do business.
Through the centuries, there have been unexpected strikes on civilian targets that occurred during wars – declared or not – and peacetime attacks that came completely out of the blue. The Sept. 11 attacks fall into the latter category.
Sudden assailings have toppled societies and shaken civilizations. The element of surprise can be a very potent change agent. And, perhaps, the most powerful weapon of all.
One of the earliest accounts of an epic surprise attack comes from Greek mythology: the Trojan Horse. The episode, explains George Dameron, a history professor at Saint Michael's College in Colchester, Vt., is associated with the 10-year war between Greeks and Trojans.
In one version of the tale, the Greeks finagle a way to get a large wooden horse inside the City of Troy. Inside the horse, Greek warriors hide. They emerge and, in a surprise attack, defeat the Trojans.
"The story may be based on an actual war," Dameron explains, "but the account of the war was certainly embellished over the centuries" between the event – fought during the 12th or 13th century BC, the ancients believed — and its recounting in the Odyssey, written by Homer circa 8th century BC.
Virgil's first century AD poem, The Aeneid, tells the story of the Trojan Horse from the point of view of the Trojans, Dameron says, "and not only is it one of the most beautiful poems ever, but it is one of the most moving accounts of the wanton destruction of an entire city from the point of view of the victims. No one today can read the story of Troy's destruction by the 'treacherous' Greeks without being moved."
Virgil's description of Troy's destruction, Dameron says, provides the backstory for events that ultimately lead to the founding of Rome.
And the mythic success of the Trojan Horse victory set a high bar for surprise — and world-changing — attacks that followed through the eons.
We asked Dameron and a handful of other historians from around the country to help us examine other clandestine attacks throughout history. Here are five:
1) The Sack of Rome by the Visigoths, 410 AD. Aided by rebellious slaves, Alaric I and the Visigoths rushed through a city gate unexpectedly. The three-day siege was the first time in centuries that Rome had been sacked and invaded, says Dameron, "and it was a massive political and psychological blow." Non-Christian Romans blamed the sacking on the abandonment of the traditional Roman gods.
The ultimate surprise there, adds Johns Hopkins University military historian Mary Habeck, "was that Rome fell, not that the city was attacked."
2) The Battle of Trenton, 1776. On Christmas night, Gen. George Washington crossed the ice-chilled Delaware River to lead some 2,400 Continental Army troops on an unexpected raid against German Hessian mercenaries garrisoned at Trenton, N.J. The Patriot forces caught the British-sponsored enemy completely off guard, says Brad King, executive director of Battleship Cove naval ship museum in Fall River, Mass. "The lasting effect was that the success raised rebel morale and proved that the most professional army in the West could be beaten."
3) The Battle of France, 1940. Speaking to the Council on Foreign Relations in 2007, Ernest R. May a professor of history at Harvard University and author of Strange Victory: Hitler's Conquest of France, said that the Germans' "successful surprise attack" on France altered the way the world regarded France and the way that France regarded itself.
Before the Nazi campaign, May said, "almost everyone said that France had the strongest army in the world." But after Germany's victory, he continued, "almost everyone thought this had been an illusion. The French military was accused of a Maginot Line mentality, defeatism, cowardice. The Germans were taken to have been overwhelmingly superior militarily and to have had will to win which the French lacked. These became, and to some extent remain, articles of faith in France."
In drawing parallels between the Germans' victory and Sept. 11, May argued that in fact the French were stronger than the Germans and the Germans' victory was a product of "guile and luck." The Sept. 11 plot, he added, "is another, and much more extreme, example of an attack by a weaker party."
The plan for the Sept. 11 attack was, like the German plan, "based on knowledge obtained from open sources, not on secret intelligence," May said. And "the analysis underlying the plan rested largely on suppositions about the enemy's standard operating procedures."
4) The Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor, 1941. The morning assault by the Imperial Japanese Army on the U.S naval base in Hawaii changed the shape of the already-raging World War II "by bringing America in with its freshness and manufacturing capacity," says Brad King of Battleship Cove museum.
The attack also refocused American foreign policy in profound and everlasting ways. Speaking on National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day in 2008, then-Pres. George W. Bush said, "On December 7, 1941, the enemy nearly destroyed our Pacific Fleet, and the United States was forced into a long and terrible war. A generation of Americans stepped forward to fight for our country. Their message to America's enemies was clear: If you attack this country and harm our people, there is no corner of the Earth remote enough to protect you from the reach of our Nation's Armed Forces."
5) The Six Day War, 1967. On the morning of June 5, Israeli planes surprise-attacked the at-rest Egyptian air force destroying hundreds of planes. Similar strikes hobbled Jordan and Syria. On the ground, Israeli troops marched into the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip. They routed Palestinians from the West Bank of the Jordan River, seized the Golan Heights in Syria and continued on to the Suez Canal. The rapid chain of events altered the landscape and the future of the Middle East. And arguably, foreign policy in state departments around the world.
The Art of War
Compiling such a list can be a complex undertaking. "Issues of scale, era, and location complicate the question, as do the criteria for a 'sneak attack' — which is often viewed as a preemptive strike by those who launch it," observes military historian John W. Hall at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. "Rarely are such affairs complete and total surprises. In hindsight, it often emerges that the indicators for an attack were present but overlooked or not placed in the proper context."
Hall suggests that Germany's unexpected – and unsuccessful — surprise invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 be included on the list. "It is quite conceivable," Hall says, "that Hitler could have consolidated his territorial gains to that date had he not committed this most egregious of strategic blunders."
And noticeably absent from the roster are any Asian events.
There is a reason for that, explains historian David A. Graff an associate professor at the Institute of Military History and 20th Century Studies at Kansas State University. "Tricks, traps, ambushes, and other efforts resulting in the surprise of one party by another have been commonplace in Chinese warfare from as far back as we have records," Graff says. "The centrality of deceit in warfare was enunciated by Sun Tzu in the middle of the first millennium BC. Deceit aimed at achieving surprise became so ubiquitous that it was almost like background noise, without the power to shock."
What gives events like Sept. 11 and Pearl Harbor their iconic power in our culture, Graff says, "is the ability of the victims to be shocked, and to perceive the attack as 'dastardly.' The Chinese have generally been more inclined to fault the victim for letting down his guard.
The Chinese language, Graff adds, "has no equivalent to our saying, 'Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice shame on me.' But if it did, it would be something like 'Fool me once, shame on me.' "
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by Shawn R. Conley – student worker in Special Collections
With the election year in full swing and Election Day looming, most of us will be making our way to that legendary voting booth with the fancy curtains to cast our vote and take part in yet another one of our civic duties. Most of all, and assuredly most rewarding, is having the liberty to have taken part in a Presidential election that was established in our country nearly two-and-a-half centuries ago. Delusions of Americana aside, many of us are just glad to get that sought-after “I Voted” sticker one we’ve finished.
As millions of men and women flood the voting booths across the nation, the arduous task remains: how does one count these millions of votes? The task of an accurate and speedy vote count is something our forefathers have been tackling since our country was founded. During the 19th century, a flurry of new ideas and machines arose to combat this problem. One of these companies attempting to deliver “…a fair vote and an honest count” according to their brochure from over a century ago, was the Glenn Voting Machine Company of Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
While sorting and cataloguing my way through a collection of papers and letters from E.J.C. Bealer, a very prominent businessman and stone quarry magnate from Cedar Rapids, I came across a large number of stock certificates from as far back as 1898 from long defunct companies like the Tykoon Mining Company and the American Gold Production Company. Tucked between these certificates was a little blue book with gold letters titled, “The Glenn Voting Machine.” Mr. Bealer had quite an investment in this company through the many stock certificates I found.
“Why use Glenn Voting Machines?” asks the third page of the brochure. During this time in American history, the entire logistical process of voting was changing directions. Through the evidence exhibited by this brochure, one can see how appealing casting a vote by machine would be. All one must do according to page nine is to “place the pointers on the names of the candidates of your choice — walk out.” Not only would the mechanical voting machine make voting much simpler, but it might even make voting fun or appealing which is something political scientists try to figure out to this day.
Taking a look at the illustrations of the machine, one can make out the presidential candidates of the 1904 election: Theodore Roosevelt and Alton B. Parker. The simplicity of the machine is hinted throughout the brochure, ensuring that every gentleman’s vote is precise. Sorry ladies, your time hasn’t arrived just yet…give it a few more years. Towards the end of the brochure are many newspaper articles and clippings, exhibiting how the Glenn Voting Machine promises “Fast Returns!” and “desirability” of a mechanical voting machine as compared to old-fashioned paper ballots.
So when you finally do make your way to the voting booth, pull those fancy curtains shut, and cast your vote for President of the United States, remember that it was through the inventions of companies like the Glenn Voting Machine Company of Cedar Rapids, Iowa that allow us to ever so conveniently cast our votes on LED screens and receive “Fast Returns!”
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For English teachers abroad, the “family tree” lesson plan almost teaches itself. First, you draw a generic tree on the blackboard. Next, there is the question and answer section to define how many family titles a particular person might have in a family tree. And then the grand finale—having the students draw their own family tree. If a teacher does it right, he can stretch the lesson out over two class periods—and spend hardly any time prepping.
I did the family tree lesson last week in my kindergarten class and it was over before it began thanks to China’s one-child policy. Because the policy has been in place since 1978, China is into the second generation of only-children. Turns out that contemporary Chinese family trees look pretty much like a stick with a couple of leaves at the top.
Most of my students have no uncles, aunts or cousins and an average of 7 people in a their three-generation family tree. I did my best to explain what uncles, aunts and cousins are but if you don’t have any, a five year old has a hard time with the concept.
Also due to the one-child policy is a high degree of franticness demonstrated by parents. They are obsessed with doing everything right for their only-children, which means they do everything for them. This anxiety is heightened due to the fact that EVERYONE they talk to about parenting also has just one child and is doing exactly the same thing.
Not only are the parents frantic about raising the one perfect child, the grandparents are also heavily invested in that one grandchild becoming a good student, a good person and good provider. He/she is their meal ticket when they get old, and of course Mom and Dad’s meal ticket as well.
The only non-anxious member of the family unit appears to be the kids themselves. With four grandparents and two parents around to do everything for them, they barely need to lift a finger. Perhaps it is best to keep them in the dark as long as possible before exposing them to the bright harshness of being the single root.
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Cancer is a scary word. Almost everyone knows someone who got very sick or died from cancer. Most of the time, cancer affects older people. Not many kids get cancer, but when they do, very often it can be treated and cured.
What Is Cancer?
Cancer is actually a group of many related diseases that all have to do with cells. Cells are the very small units that make up all living things, including the human body. There are billions of cells in each person's body.
Cancer happens when cells that are not normal grow and spread very fast. Normal body cells grow and divide and know to stop growing. Over time, they also die. Unlike these normal cells, cancer cells just continue to grow and divide out of control and don't die when they're supposed to.
Cancer cells usually group or clump together to form tumors (say: TOO-mers). A growing tumor becomes a lump of cancer cells that can destroy the normal cells around the tumor and damage the body's healthy tissues. This can make someone very sick.
Sometimes cancer cells break away from the original tumor and travel to other areas of the body, where they keep growing and can go on to form new tumors. This is how cancer spreads. The spread of a tumor to a new place in the body is called metastasis (say: meh-TASS-tuh-sis).
You probably know a kid who had chickenpox — maybe even you. But you probably don't know any kids who've had cancer. If you packed a large football stadium with kids, probably only one child in that stadium would have cancer.
Doctors aren't sure why some people get cancer and others don't. They do know that cancer is not contagious. You can't catch it from someone else who has it — cancer isn't caused by germs, like colds or the flu are. So don't be afraid of other kids — or anyone else — with cancer. You can talk to, play with, and hug someone with cancer.
Kids can't get cancer from anything they do either. Some kids think that a bump on the head causes brain cancer or that bad people get cancer. This isn't true! Kids don't do anything wrong to get cancer. But some unhealthy habits, especially cigarette smoking or drinking too much alcohol every day, can make you a lot more likely to get cancer when you become an adult.
Finding Out About Cancer
It can take a while for a doctor to figure out a kid has cancer. That's because the symptoms cancer can cause — weight loss, fevers, swollen glands, or feeling overly tired or sick for a while — usually are not caused by cancer. When a kid has these problems, it's often caused by something less serious, like an infection. With medical testing, the doctor can figure out what's causing the trouble.
If the doctor suspects cancer, he or she can do tests to figure out if that's the problem. A doctor might order X-rays and blood tests and recommend the person go to see an oncologist (say: on-KAH-luh-jist). An oncologist is a doctor who takes care of and treats cancer patients. The oncologist will likely run other tests to find out if someone really has cancer. If so, tests can determine what kind of cancer it is and if it has spread to other parts of the body. Based on the results, the doctor will decide the best way to treat it.
One test that an oncologist (or a surgeon) may perform is a biopsy (say: BY-op-see). During a biopsy, a piece of tissue is removed from a tumor or a place in the body where cancer is suspected, like the bone marrow. Don't worry — someone getting this test will get special medicine to keep him or her comfortable during the biopsy. The sample that's collected will be examined under a microscope for cancer cells.
The sooner cancer is found and treatment begins, the better someone's chances are for a full recovery and cure.
Cancer is treated with surgery, chemotherapy, or radiation — or sometimes a combination of these treatments. The choice of treatment depends on:
the type of cancer someone has (the kind of abnormal cells causing the cancer)
the stage of the tumor (meaning how much the cancer has spread within the body, if at all)
Surgery is the oldest form of treatment for cancer — 3 out of every 5 people with cancer will have an operation to remove it. During surgery, the doctor tries to take out as many cancer cells as possible. Some healthy cells or tissue may also be removed to make sure that all the cancer is gone.
Chemotherapy (say: kee-mo-THER-uh-pee) is the use of anti-cancer medicines (drugs) to treat cancer. These medicines are sometimes taken as a pill, but usually are given through a special intravenous (say: in-truh-VEE-nus) line, also called an IV. An IV is a tiny plastic catheter (straw-like tube) that is put into a vein through someone's skin, usually on the arm. The catheter is attached to a bag that holds the medicine. The medicine flows from the bag into a vein, which puts the medicine into the blood, where it can travel throughout the body and attack cancer cells.
Chemotherapy is usually given over a number of weeks to months. Often, a permanent catheter is placed under the skin into a larger blood vessel of the upper chest. This way, a person can easily get several courses of chemotherapy and other medicines through this catheter without having a new IV needle put in. The catheter remains under the skin until all the cancer treatment is completed.
Radiation (say: ray-dee-AY-shun) therapy uses high-energy waves, such as X-rays (invisible waves that can pass through most parts of the body), to damage and destroy cancer cells. It can cause tumors to shrink and even go away completely. Radiation therapy is one of the most common treatments for cancer. Many people with cancer find it goes away after receiving radiation treatments.
With both chemotherapy and radiation, kids may experience side effects. A side effect is an extra problem that's caused by the treatment. Radiation and anti-cancer drugs are very good at destroying cancer cells but, unfortunately, they also destroy healthy cells. This can cause problems such as loss of appetite, tiredness, vomiting, or hair loss. With radiation, a person might have red or irritated skin in the area that's being treated. But all these problems go away and hair grows back after the treatment is over. During the treatment, certain medicines can help a kid feel better.
While treatment is still going on, a kid might not be able to attend school or be around crowds of people — the kid needs to rest and avoid getting infections, such as the flu, when he or she already isn't feeling well. The body may have more trouble fighting off infections because of the cancer or side effects of the treatment.
Remission (say: ree-MIH-shun) is a great word for anyone who has cancer. It means all signs of cancer are gone from the body. After surgery or treatment with radiation or chemotherapy, a doctor will then do tests to see if the cancer is still there. If there are no signs of cancer, then the kid is in remission.
Remission is the goal when any kid with cancer goes to the hospital for treatment. Sometimes, this means additional chemotherapy or radiation might be needed for a while to keep cancer cells from coming back.
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Source: World Bank
Climate change is affecting cities and their residents, especially the poor, and more severe impacts are expected as climate extremes and variability increase. Cities are often already overwhelmed by the number and complexity of services they need to provide. Adding climate change mitigation and adaptation to the other challenges facing cities is an enormous burden; and at the same time cities must accommodate another three million new residents every week. Cities and Climate Change: An Urgent Agenda discusses the link between climate change and cities, why cities should be concerned about climate change and adopt early preventative policies, and how the World Bank and other organizations can provide further support to cities on climate change issues.
Residents of cities are responsible for as much as 80% of global greenhouse gas emissions while at the same time residents of cities are facing significant impacts from climate change. Up to 80 percent of the expected $80 billion to $100 billion per year in climate change adaptation costs are expected to be borne in urban areas; see the World Bank's Economics of Adaptation to Climate Change study. Nevertheless, climate change offers cities opportunities to alter course, implement smart policies, and develop sustainable communities. Well managed, well designed, dense cities are also the only way to meet GHG emission mitigation targets, while providing an acceptable quality of life for the soon-to-be 6.5 billion urban residents.
Included in this report is a living table of city-level per capita greenhouse gas emissions data which will be regularly updated online as new city data is available.
Click here to read the full report
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Siblings of Autistic Children May Also Have Subtle Traits
TUESDAY Oct. 12, 2010 -- As many as one in five siblings of children with autism may have subtler problems with language and speech, according to new research involving nearly 3,000 children.
What isn't yet clear is if these problems indicate a milder form of an autism spectrum disorder, or exactly what type of intervention, if any, might be needed to help these youngsters.
"Smaller studies have reported that in families with children with autism, many children who don't have an autism diagnosis have had a language delay," said the study's lead author, Dr. John Constantino, professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Mo. "When we looked at this huge sample, we saw the same thing -- about 20 percent of children presumed to be non-autistic had language delays and autistic qualities in their speech. In the general population, the prevalence of these traits is only about 7 percent," he said.
Results of the study were published in the November issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry.
Although many siblings of children with autism are completely unaffected by the disorder, the disorder is far more likely to strike the brother or sister of someone with autism than someone without an affected sibling. In fact, the risk of a sibling of someone with autism having the disorder is 22-fold higher, according to background information in the article.
What the current study sought to further tease out was whether or not certain autistic traits -- conditions that might not trigger a diagnosis of autism, but nonetheless could still cause problems -- might be more prevalent in siblings of children with an autism diagnosis.
The researchers used data from an American, Internet-based family register compiled by the Interactive Autism Network, which includes more than 35,000 participants. In addition to providing information about the children in their families who had been diagnosed with autism, some parents also completed a Social Responsiveness Scale questionnaire on each of the children living in their home between the ages of 4 and 18 years old.
A total of 1,235 families, including almost 3,000 children, provided all of the information necessary for the current study.
The study found that 10.9 percent of families had more than one child with an autism diagnosis, and an additional 20 percent had children who weren't diagnosed with autism, but who had language delays. Half of the group with language delays also had autistic qualities in their speech patterns.
The study also found that girls were more likely to have these subtle traits of potential autism spectrum disorder. They suggest that if these were taken into account, the current notion that there is a wide preponderance of boys versus girls diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder might narrow to as low as three boys for every two girls affected.
This study's findings also provide further evidence that autism spectrum disorders have, at least in part, a genetic basis, according to Constantino.
Scott Hunter, director of pediatric neuropsychology at the University of Chicago Medical Center, agreed that this study adds to the evidence suggesting that genes are one likely cause of autism spectrum disorders.
Because parents completed the questionnaires, this study wasn't able to determine if the siblings were experiencing a mild form of autism, or if these were isolated language delays.
Both experts thought that it would be a good idea for families with one autistic child to have their other children screened, and Hunter said that you should definitely seek a thorough evaluation if you notice any trouble in language acquisition in children who don't have autism.
"If you are a parent of a child with autism, it's probably important to talk to your pediatrician about your other child's development," said Hunter.
"The likelihood of other children in the family potentially being affected by a language or social impairment is relatively high, so keep an appropriate level of vigilance. These less-severe symptoms may nevertheless be substantially impairing in school and friendships," explained Constantino.
Both experts agreed that if intervention is necessary, treatment that's started sooner generally leads to better outcomes. But, noted Hunter, "It's never too late to intervene."
To learn more about autism, visit the U.S. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
Posted: October 2010
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Mitral (MI-tral) valve prolapse (MVP) is a condition in which the heart's mitral valve doesn't work well. The flaps of the valve are "floppy" and don't close tightly. These flaps normally help seal or open the valve.
Much of the time, MVP doesn't cause any problems. Rarely, blood can leak the wrong way through the floppy valve. This can lead to palpitations, shortness of breath, chest pain, and other symptoms. (Palpitations are feelings that your heart is skipping a beat, fluttering, or beating too hard or too fast.)
The mitral valve controls blood flow between the upper and lower chambers of the left side of the heart. The upper chamber is called the left atrium (AY-tree-um). The lower chamber is called the left ventricle (VEN-trih-kul).
The mitral valve allows blood to flow from the left atrium into the left ventricle, but not back the other way. The heart also has a right atrium and ventricle, separated by the tricuspid (tri-CUSS-pid) valve.
With each heartbeat, the atria contract and push blood into the ventricles. The flaps of the mitral and tricuspid valves open to let blood through. Then, the ventricles contract to pump the blood out of the heart.
When the ventricles contract, the flaps of the mitral and tricuspid valves close. They form a tight seal that prevents blood from flowing back into the atria.
For more information, go to the Health Topics How the Heart Works article. This article contains animations that show how your heart pumps blood and how your heart's electrical system works.
In MVP, when the left ventricle contracts, one or both flaps of the mitral valve flop or bulge back (prolapse) into the left atrium. This can prevent the valve from forming a tight seal.
As a result, blood may leak from the ventricle back into the atrium. The backflow of blood is called regurgitation (re-GUR-jih-TA-shun).
MVP doesn't always cause backflow. In fact, most people who have MVP don't have backflow and never have any related symptoms or problems. Their mitral valves still can form a tight seal.
When backflow does occur, it can cause shortness of breath, irregular heartbeats called arrhythmias (ah-RITH-me-ahs), or chest pain.
Backflow can get worse over time. It can change the heart's size and raise pressure in the left atrium and lungs. Backflow also raises the risk of heart valve infections.
Medicines can treat troublesome MVP symptoms and help prevent complications. Some people will need surgery to repair or replace their mitral valves.
MVP once was thought to affect as much as 5 to 15 percent of the population. Researchers now believe that many people who were diagnosed with MVP in the past didn't actually have a faulty mitral valve.
They may have had a slight bulging of the valve flaps due to other conditions, such as dehydration (lack of fluid in the body) or a small heart. However, their valves were normal, and little or no backflow of blood occurred.
Diagnosing MVP is more precise now because of a test called echocardiography (EK-o-kar-de-OG-ra-fee). This test allows doctors to easily see MVP and detect troublesome backflow.
As a result, researchers now think that less than 3 percent of the population actually has MVP. They believe an even smaller percentage has serious complications from the condition.
Most people who have MVP have no symptoms or medical problems and don't need treatment. They're able to lead normal, active lives; they may not even know they have the condition.
A small number of people who have MVP may need medicine to relieve their symptoms. Very few people who have MVP need heart valve surgery to repair their mitral valves.
Rarely, MVP can cause problems such as arrhythmias (irregular heartbeats) or infective endocarditis (EN-do-kar-DI-tis). Endocarditis is an infection of the inner lining of the heart chambers and valves. Bacteria that enter the bloodstream can cause the infection.
The NHLBI updates Health Topics articles on a biennial cycle based on a thorough review of research findings and new literature. The articles also are updated as needed if important new research is published. The date on each Health Topics article reflects when the content was originally posted or last revised.
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24/09: Freedom, the Decalogue, and Christian Ethics
“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery”
Everyone appreciates freedom. In fact, America prides itself on being the home of the free. Throughout the history of our country, American soldiers have fought to secure these freedoms for its citizens. Nowhere is this love of freedom more evident than when the rights of a group or individual are threatened or totally disregarded. We treasure moments in our history when these groups have been granted or have attained, sometimes after difficult struggle, their full rights. For many Americans, these rights are summed up in the words of Thomas Jefferson as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In this Declaration, a young America boldly asserts that these rights stem from our freedom as creations of God and that they, the rights themselves, are self-evident. However, because of the pluralistic, and increasingly secular nature of American society, the connection between our self-evident rights and our being created by an all-wise creator has been blurred or even lost. The problem that this creates is that when we do not acknowledge this Creator-creation relationship, we lose any objective grounds for our freedom that we cherish so dearly. In fact it is difficult to find any other basis for the self-evident nature of these rights. And, as C.S. Lewis writes, “If nothing is self-evident, nothing can be proved.” In addition, it is taken for granted by most that with this great freedom comes much responsibility. We somehow understand that we are truly free only when others respect our personal freedom. In this we see that all freedom must be limited in some way. In other words, we are not free to do whatever it is that we want to do. This leads to two important questions: What are the limits to our freedom and who is entitled to set them? These questions can only be answered properly in the context of an objective standard, a standard held forward in the law of the Creator God.
It is an obvious fact of history that, where freedom has existed, people have tried to use it for their own selfish ends. Governments have been created, in many cases, solely to protect the rights of all and placing limits on those rights. The encyclopedia Ethics notes that, “The moral task of government, then, is too ensure that individuals are at liberty to use their property as they see fit to sustain and enhance their lives.” It goes on to say that, “government thus is given the power to use coercion defensively, in protecting individual rights.” Two things are implied from these statements. First, freedom, as was mentioned earlier, is seen as a value of primary importance to all. Secondly, governments, in order to protect this freedom, must use laws to protect individual rights. The relationship between law and freedom is an interesting and important one. In fact, as John Rushdoony writes, “Because law governs men and society, because it establishes and declares the meaning of justice and righteousness, law is inescapably religious.” To say that law is religious is to say that it governs that which is most important for human existence and that its precepts are taken for granted or, to use previous terminology, self-evident. Rushdoony goes on to assert that, “the source of law is the god of that society.” At this point we are faced with a choice: either we submit to the god of human opinion in order to determine our liberty or we submit to the Creator God who governs His creation. If we declare the former to be our god, we are doomed to ride the waves of popular opinion and the basis of our freedom becomes completely subjective. On the other hand, if we submit to the law of the Creator God, who from this point on I will refer to the God of the Bible (both Old and New Testaments), we will live in a freedom that is unchanging and, in fact, eternal.
For many, it is difficult to accept the Bible as God’s word to human beings. It is not my purpose here to elaborate on or prove the reliability of the Old and New Testament Scriptures. However, it is my intention to show how these writings, specifically those dealing with law, have been laid out for the use of the people of God. I agree with Wright when he argues that though many cannot accept revelation as a basis for ethics this was definitely the case for ancient Israel and for millions of Christians as well. From the traditional Protestant perspective, Scripture has been given by God through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. The human writers of the Bible, though inspired by God, were not robotic or unnatural in their writing. When interpreting the Bible, we must always consider the historical and culture context in which it was written. This is extremely important for the interpretation of Old Testament law. It is difficult for many to see any trace of human freedom in the books of the Hebrew Scriptures. It is even harder for many to see the relationship between the apparently harsh Law of Moses and Jesus’ law of love in the New Testament. However, when the contexts of these two systems are evaluated, we must conclude that not only did the Law of Moses grant freedom to its adherents, but that the law of Christ and that of Moses are intimately related to each other.
In general the Old Testament law, or Law of Moses, can be divided into three categories: civil for governing the nation, ceremonial for worship, and moral for ethics. In each of these areas the men and women of Israel were bound to obey God’s law. The New Dictionary of Christian Ethics notes that, “by obeying the law…they continued to experience His blessing and protection, and became living witnesses to the goodness of God among the nations.” Does this mean that God’s relationship with Israel was strictly legal? If that were true, wouldn’t that be in direct contradiction to Jesus and the writers of the New Testament? It is here that we must understand the Law didn’t just appear to Israel out of nowhere. In other words, “the law is given within the context of a story.”
The story begins with Genesis 1:1, where we learn that God is the Creator of all things and is therefore Lord of all things. Later, we see that God created man in His image, noting a special relationship and/or purpose for human beings. In the third chapter, we see that man falls from his original state in turning away from his loving creator in disobedience. Mankind, represented in Adam and Eve, was expelled from paradise and received the sentence of inevitable death. This death was represented by the expulsion from the garden of Eden, the place of God’s presence, and the end of the special relationship between God and man. Christians have referred to this event as the fall, or spiritual death, of mankind. If just a cursory reading was given to these passages, one would think that there was little hope for mankind and that God had abandoned mankind and the earth. However, when we read from God’s curse pronounced on the serpent we see that God had future plans for His people: “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” While Jewish and Christian commentators differ on who this offspring is, it is clear that God is planning to use the line of Adam and Eve to defeat the line of the serpent, or Satan and evil. Later in the book of Genesis, we meet Abraham with whom God makes a covenant and promises that his descendants will be as many as the stars in the sky. At this point we see God bringing together a people for Himself. Eventually, these descendants of Abraham find themselves in Egypt under the bondage of slavery. Moses, who had been miraculously saved at birth, returns to Egypt after encountering God in the desert. He, with the help of God, demands Pharaoh to let God’s people go so that they can worship. The story of God’s rescue of His chosen people found in the book of Exodus, begins with the plagues of Egypt and ends with the crossing of the Red Sea and the meeting with God, Himself, at Mt. Sinai. It was at Mt. Sinai that God reaffirmed His covenant with the descendants of Abraham and gave them His law.
A number of things should be clear at this point. First, the story of Israel centers not around law, but on redemption. Second, before the law was given, God had acted in such a way as to create a relationship between Himself and His people. The redemption that was foreshadowed at the expulsion from the garden had been fulfilled, at least partially, in the redemption of Israel from slavery and the defeat of the Egyptian army at the Red Sea. It is important to note that God had acted on His own accord to save Israel. His actions were of a completely gracious manner. Elsewhere in the Old Testament, Moses explains God’s reasons for saving the people of Israel:
“The LORD did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. But it was because the LORD loved you and kept the oath he swore to your forefathers that he brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the land of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt. Know therefore that the LORD your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commands.” (Deuteronomy 7:7-9)The Israelites had been redeemed by a loving, covenant keeping God. This was the understanding of the men and women of Israel as they awaited the word of the LORD at Mt. Sinai.
When Israel received God’s law from Moses, one thing was very clear. It was in the context of this covenant of love that the law was given to the people. Christopher Wright notes that for the Israelite, obeying the law became “a matter of response and gratitude within a personal relationship, not of blind obedience to rules or adherence to timeless principles.” The Israelites were to live in such a way as to honor God’s loving actions on their behalf, thereby honoring the covenant made between He and them. It was not the case, then, that they needed to keep the law in order that God would save them, for they had already been saved. Before Moses read the laws of God to the people, they were already God’s people. He had delivered them and they were now, in light of God’s grace, called to keep His laws. Although the Israelites were called to keep the law (the core of which are the Ten Commandments) of God out of gratitude, keeping the law meant much more than this. In fact, there is a direct relationship between the redemption from Egypt and a new, liberated, way of life. The Decalogue was given because of God’s redemption and for the sake of Israel’s freedom.
For the sake of time I will not deal with each of the Ten Commandments in this current work. I will deal predominantly with the prologue to the Decalogue. We first encounter the Ten Commandments in chapter twenty of the book of Exodus. Our passage reads: “And God spoke all these words: ‘I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.’” There is much to be said regarding this particular passage and we can be most efficient if we divide it into three parts: 1. the LORD your God, 2. who brought you out of Egypt, 3. out of slavery. First, as was previously mentioned, God’s law was given in the context of relationship. Here God uses his special covenant name Yahweh and thereby illustrates His intimate relationship with His people Israel. He was not only a god, or even the God, but he was their God. Again, this shows that the law was not given to create a special relationship, but that, at the giving of the Ten Commandments, a special relationship already existed. Secondly, we are reminded that the law centers on redemption. God had acted in order to redeem them out of Egypt. The God of the Universe had heard and remembered his promises and graciously acted on behalf of his people. Here God shows His love and compassion for His people, in that He condescended to act on their behalf. Finally, God had brought them out of slavery and bondage. In fact, when God had earlier revealed Himself as Yahweh, the covenant God, He is identifying himself as the liberating God who fulfills His promises. The implications of this are two sided. On the on hand, God makes Himself known as the liberating one by graciously redeeming His people from the bondage of slavery. On the other hand, we cannot under-emphasize the fact that Israel had been in bondage. This bondage was a reality on many levels. They had been deprived of their rights and forced into labor against their will. Additionally, many had turned from God and had actually been influenced by the idolatry of Egypt, thereby placing themselves in spiritual bondage. When we consider this aspect of bondage along with the concurrent history of the nation of Israel, we realize that God had liberated Israel in spite of their conduct. Fortunately, God’s liberation was not just a physical one, but a spiritual and ethical liberation as well. The law was intended to teach the holiness of Yahweh, or to show Israel the difference between the way God does things and the way other nations do things. Later, in the Old Testament writings, God warns that continued submission to their love of foreign gods and to immoral practices would not only grieve the heart of God, but would lead them back into bondage. The Decalogue was given to safeguard the people of God from bondage; bondage to sin and its destructive power. Douma summarizes this idea very well: “The prologue prevents us from turning the Decalogue into a set of prescription used to order slaves around. They are instead rules of life for liberated people, people who must not be foolish enough to fall back into slavery.” The liberties purchased for Israel by God in the Exodus “were not to be squandered, but to be protected by social responsibility based on exclusive loyalty to Yahweh.”
So far, we have seen that the law of God, specifically the Ten Commandments, was given to the people of Israel as a means to live a liberated life and to show gratitude to Yahweh. The implications for the nation would have been immense. The law was indispensable as a guide for Israel’s ethics. As the people of God they were to reflect God’s glory to the nations and to establish the rule of God on earth. Peter Enns, in his commentary on Exodus, notes that the Decalogue “integrates cosmic order and social order.” In other words, God’s will in heaven would be done on earth through faithful obedience to the law. It is interesting to compare this with the commission given to man in Genesis who, as the image bearer of God, was to have dominion over the earth. In a very real way, then the law of God is an image of God, or, in other words, the law reflects the character of God. Philip Ryken rightly notes, “The law always reveals the character of the lawgiver. This was especially true at Mount Sinai, where every one of the Ten Commandments was stamped with the being and attributes of Almighty God.” The people of Israel, through the law, were called to be “a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation.” In other words, by obeying the law they would reflect the ethical character of God.
Jesus, a loyal Jew, understood this role very well. When we read the gospels, it is obvious that Jesus saw himself as God’s representative on earth. There is also evidence that he understood himself as the image bearer of God. It is clear that the other writers of the New Testament saw Jesus as the image of the living God. Paul, in his second letter to the Corinthians, notes that Christ “is the image of God.” Later, the writer of Hebrews writes, “He (Christ) is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of His nature, and He upholds the universe by the word of His power.” Because of Jesus’ special position, He had the right to interpret and proclaim the will of God for His people. This is true of God’s law as well. Ryken writes, “If we want to understand the Ten Commandments properly, therefore, we need to know how Jesus interpreted them.” In order for Christians to understand how the law relates to ethical behavior, they must first look to Jesus.
Jesus, many Christians would argue, was the true Israel, in that he perfectly obeyed the commands of God. He is the one chosen to show the world the character of God. In His obedience, Jesus sets an example for those who would follow Him in the ages to come. In fact, He urges His followers that unless their righteousness, or conformity to the law and character of God, surpasses that of the Pharisees they shall have no part in the Kingdom. Is Jesus simply putting forth more rules for the people of God to follow? At this point, we must remember that the “perfection” that God requires is one of perfect devotion, not sinlessness. Jesus summed the law up in two commandments. "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love, of God and of man, sums up the whole of the law. Jesus is not presenting original material here. He is calling the people of Israel, God’s chosen people, to live up to the calling which they have received: reflecting the character of Yahweh. It is clear that Christ had a high view of the law. He himself kept the law and He encouraged others to do the same. In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus sets forward a thorough exposition of the law. His statement in Matthew 5 provides the backdrop for all that follows: "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” When Jesus refers here to the “Law or the Prophets” He is referring to the whole of Old Testament revelation. In other words, He did not come to destroy the Old Testament scriptures or to do away with its laws. He had not come to destroy, but to fulfill. John Murray wrote that Jesus, “came to realize the full measure of the intent and purpose of the law and the prophets” or to bring them to full fruition. Jesus, as representative Israel, had perfectly obeyed the law and had brought to realization the many Messianic prophecies. What then were the implications for Jesus’ followers? The following verses provide us with the answer:
“For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." (Matthew 5:18-20)To summarize the previous statement, Jesus places a strong emphasis on the importance of the law and all of its detail (iota and dot). He reveals an intimate relationship between membership in the kingdom and obedience to the law. To illustrate this, He contrasts the righteousness of the Pharisees with the righteousness of those who will enter the kingdom. The hypocrisy of Israel’s religious leaders was a constant topic of Jesus’ teaching. The righteousness of the Pharisees, therefore, lacked sincerity and true obedience. Murray writes, “The righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees is therefore that of character and behavior, the righteousness of doing and teaching the commandments of God.” The law expresses God’s righteous will for His people and Jesus commands them to keep up, not as a way to get right with God, but as a way of pleasing the God who had redeemed them.
Jesus had not come to contradict that which God had revealed to Israel at Mount Sinai. This becomes more obvious when we learn that Jesus, like a second Moses, came to save His people from their sins. Jesus upheld the validity of law as the revealed will of God. However, this did not mean that the law was an end in and of itself. Nor did this mean that God’s people needed to obey the law in order to partake in the blessings purchased by Jesus’ sacrifice. Like Moses, Jesus set forward the law as the ethical standard of living, based on God’s character, in order that His people might live a life of love and gratitude to the God who had redeemed them. Christ saved His people from the slavery of sin, just as Moses had freed Israel from slavery in Egypt. Christians must live out this freedom, not by using it as a license to do as they wish, but in order to exercise a righteousness that is pleasing to God. John writes in his gospel that, “if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” Free to please God, free to gratefully obey his law.
1. Human freedom is a complicated issue and will not be dealt with extensively here. For further treatment see Ethics, John Roth ed. and The New Dictionary of Christian Ethics & Pastoral Theology. David J. Atkins ed.
2. Lewis, C.S. The Abolition of Man, p. 40, parenthesis mine.
3. Roth, John, ed. Ethics: Revised Edition, v.1, p. 540
4. Rushdoony, Rousas John. The Institutes of Biblical Law, p. 4
5. ibid., p. 4
6. For a strong philosophical defense of the Christian God see the classical works of Cornelius Van Til and Francis A. Schaeffer. For a more recent defense, note the works of John Frame and K. Scott Oliphint (specifically, his Reasons for Faith).
7. Wright, Cristopher J.H. Old Testament Ethics and the People of God, p. 32
8. Atkinson, David J. ed. New Dictionary of Christian Ethics & Pastoral Theology, p. 539
9. Wright, p. 26
10. The writer of Genesis, who the present author believes to be Moses, notes in Genesis chapter 3 that the man and his wife “heard the sound of the LORD God moving about in the garden at the breezy time of day.” (Jewish Publication Society) This and other language cause many commentators to see the garden of Eden as a archetype of the Temple in Jerusalem, the special place where God’s presence dwelled among his people. For further development of the garden-temple motif see Gordon Wenham’s Commentary on Genesis (Word Biblical Commentary).
11. Genesis 3:15 (New International Version)
12. NIV, emphasis mine.
13. Wright, p. 25
14. ibid., p. 28
15. For a detailed exposition of the Ten Commandments see Thomas Watson’s The Ten Commandments (Banner of Truth) and J. Douma’s The Ten Commandment(Nelson).
16. Exodus 20:1-2 (NIV)
17. This aspect of the Israelites character is illustrated in the recorded history of the nation and its continual rebellion against God.
18. Douma, J. The Ten Commandments, p. 3
19. ibid, p. 7, emphasis mine.
20. Wright, p. 54
21. Enns, Peter. Exodus: NIV Application Commentary, p. 411
22. Ryken, Philip G. Written in Stone: The Ten Commandments and Today’s Moral Crisis, p. 14
23. See Mark 9:37; Luke 10:16; John 7:16 and others.
24. See John 14:6-9
25. 1 Corinthians 4:4
26. Hebrews 1:3, English Standard Version, emphasis mine.
27. Ryken, p. 44
28. Matthew 22:37-39, ESV
29. See Deuteronomy 6:5, 11:13, 13:3
30. Matthew 5:17, ESV
31. Murray, John. Principles of Conduct, p. 150
32. ibid., p. 156
33. Ryken, p. 25
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Meanders are semicircular bends in stream channels. The meander in this picture is in a creek near my house.
The most famous meandering river in history was the Meander River in western Turkey, now known by its Turkish name as the Büyük Menderes (Big Meander). The word meander derives via Greek from the name of this river in the antiquity, Maiandros. Maiandros is neither Turkish nor Greek; it appears to be a very old Anatolian word with an obscure meaning.
To the north of the Büyük Menderes is the Küçük Menderes (Little Meander), the ancient Cayster (Caystros).
The next posts in this series will be about the colorful (mostly, turbid brown, actually) histories of the Meander and the Cayster rivers.
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(CNN) -- The use of hydraulic fracturing to open underground natural gas formations has a low risk of triggering earthquakes, experts reported Friday, but some scientists say the debate is far from over.
"Fracking," as the process is commonly known, involves injecting a mixture of water and chemicals deep into the Earth. The pressure causes shale rock formations to fracture, and natural gas is released. The fluid is extracted, and the natural gas is mined through the well.
There's a higher risk of man-made seismic events when wastewater from the fracking process is injected back into the ground, according to a report by the National Research Council, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences. But out of about 30,000 disposal wells nationwide, only a handful of noticeable tremors have been reported, with the strongest equivalent to a magnitude-4.8 earthquake, the panel of engineers and scientists concluded. Read the report (PDF)
Congress requested the study in 2010, as hydraulic fracturing triggered a natural gas production boom that has driven down the price of the fuel by 45% in the past year. Although the boom has fattened landowners' wallets, it has been accompanied by concerns that the practice can harm the environment by contaminating groundwater -- and by triggering quakes.
In the region surrounding Youngstown in northeastern Ohio, where the boom is in full swing, seismic instruments recorded nearly a dozen small quakes in 2011, with a magnitude-4.0 tremor reported December 31.
John Armbruster of Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University, who's been studying seismic events and fracking in the Youngstown area for months, said Friday that it's "virtually certain" that an injection of fracking wastewater caused the New Year's Eve tremor.
Depending on its location, "any disposal well that's been pumping stuff into the ground for months can cause earthquakes," said Armbruster, who's studied earthquakes and drilling for 40 years.
The quakes prompted state officials in January to order four fluid injection wells in the eastern part of the state to be "indefinitely" prohibited from opening.
Small quakes also have been reported in Oklahoma, Colorado and Arkansas, and "these events are being examined for potential links to injection," Friday's report states.
"Hydraulic fracturing in a well for shale gas development, which involves injection of fluids to fracture the shale and release the gas up the well, has been confirmed as the cause for small felt seismic events at one location in the world," the report states. It found small seismic events involving "a very limited number" of injection wells, but the long-term effects of the growing number of wells wasn't known.
In general, shifting the balance of fluids underground -- whether taking more out of the ground than is put back in or vice versa -- is likely to trigger seismic activity, the report concludes.
"While the general mechanisms that create induced seismic events are well understood, we are currently unable to accurately predict the magnitude or occurrence of such events due to the lack of comprehensive data on complex natural rock systems and the lack of validated predictive models," it states.
Unpredictable as earthquakes are, the likelihood of seismic events increases as operations increase, said Murray Hitzman, who chairs the committee that authored the report. "If we have more wells, we have more chance of events. And if we have more events, there's more probability of higher-magnitude events."
There are no specific regulations regarding how authorities should respond when fracking wastewater is injected over a seismic fault, Hitzman said. Stopping injection has "been done primarily in an ad-hoc manner by various federal, state and local agencies and institutions." The report suggests protocols for how authorities should to address the issue.
"I don't think it's realistic that this treasure will be sitting underneath us and we won't use it," Armbruster said. "It needs to be heavily regulated." Compared with fracking's money-making potential, he says, "monitoring these wells doesn't cost a lot of money."
The highest potential for man-made quakes may come from the development of carbon-capture technology, an effort to recover the carbon dioxide released by fossil fuels and blamed for an increase in global temperatures. But the report says more study is needed, since no since no large-scale carbon-capture projects are running at this point.
The U.S. Geological Survey, the federal outfit that studies earthquakes, acknowledges that increased seismic activity coincides with wastewater injection. But it does not say there's proof of a direct connection.
"While it appears likely that the observed seismicity rate changes in the middle part of the United States in recent years are manmade, it remains to be determined if they are related to either changes in production methodologies or to the rate of oil and gas production," wrote David J. Hayes, deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior, which oversees the USGS.
"That's too weak," Armbruster said. "In the case of Youngstown, the chance that this is just a random coincidence is like winning the lottery. It's a million to one that it's just a random coincidence."
Analysts say fracking has great potential as a "geopolitical game-changer." They say a domestic gas windfall could cut U.S. reliance on imports from energy-rich "rogue" nations.
Health and safety questions surrounding hydraulic fracturing have spurred battles in several states between neighbors and between farmers and environmentalists. In New York, the governor appointed a panel to investigate allegations that fracking may contaminate underground drinking water. The Research Council study was not tasked with assessing water quality surrounding hydraulic fracturing.
New York City gets roughly half its water from the Delaware River Basin, a key area for hydraulic fracturing.
Both the Upper Delaware and Monongahela rivers sit on an area called the Marcellus Shale, which lies beneath large parts of Pennsylvania, New York and West Virginia at a depth of 5,000 to 8,000 feet, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.
The shale is believed to hold trillions of cubic feet of natural gas. Before technological advances in hydraulic fracturing, the natural gas in the region had been considered too expensive for access.
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Diseases and Conditions Encyclopedia
Tap into this interactive encyclopedia for instant access to information on more than 835 diseases and conditions.
The latest studies conclude that a successful weight-loss plan is a mind/body undertaking that not only involves monitoring calorie intake and expenditure, but dealing with the psychological side of weight loss and habit change.
What's the difference between a bad case of the blues and the painful mental disorder known as depression? According to the experts, impaired functioning is usually a clear-cut indication of clinical depression.
Parents and pediatricians should know how to detect hearing problems at various stages during a child's first three years of life.
Your child should see a dentist six months after eruption of the first tooth, experts say. The dentist can provide or recommend preventative information regarding baby bottle tooth decay, infant feeding practices, mouth cleaning, teething, pacifier habits and finger-sucking habits.
With childhood obesity on the rise, should parents worry about the weight of their babies?
Bruises are a part of life. By the time you notice a bruise, though, it's already started to heal.
Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is not a disease; it is a disorder that interferes with the normal function of the large intestine (colon) and is characterized by cramping, abdominal pain, bloating, constipation and diarrhea.
Polycarbonate plastic is durable, impact-resistant, and clear. It is widely used in food and beverage containers, but research has raised concerns over its health effects.
In a root canal, the soft tissue inside the tooth's canal is removed and the space is filled with a material that's compatible with the body's own tissues.
It's important to encourage good eating habits, while allowing kids to enjoy the fun of the holiday.
Here's your guide to the best foods to nourish you, as well as those foods best left for that occasional need to indulge in guilty pleasures.
In your grocer's case, you'll find whole turkeys and parts — fresh, frozen, and smoked. You'll also see ground turkey, turkey cutlets, turkey hot dogs, turkey sausage, and turkey burgers.
Skin problems such as pimples, blackheads, rashes, and oily skin are common in both teens and adults. But you don't necessarily need a dermatologist to treat them.
Walking is one of the best and easiest exercises someone can do.
Whether they are coming for an afternoon or a week, taking some steps before your grandchildren arrive can help keep them safe during their visit. Consider these guidelines.
Here's a look at some of the more common medicinal herbs. Most herbs have not been thoroughly tested for effectiveness or interactions with other herbs, supplements, drugs or foods.
If you're just getting started with herbs, go at it gradually. Experiment with one or two herbs at a time. For freshness, purchase herbs that have been newly dried, and buy in small amounts.
Eyeglasses can be prescribed for a range of vision problems, from nearsightedness to farsightedness to the diminished vision of advancing age.
You should cut back on foods that have only limited nutritional value, that are overprocessed or that contain too much fat, salt, sugar and refined white flour.
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Coaches should tell players not to tackle or block with their heads or run head-down with the ball.
Whether they're called subs, hoagies, heroes or grinders, long sandwiches stuffed with a variety of ingredients are a favorite lunch choice.
From the food you stock in the freezer to the silverware you put on the table, your kitchen is your partner in health. When you fill your kitchen with the right tools and foods, you reap the benefits.
The “secret” to maintaining a healthy weight is not found in any magic diet or weight loss system. In fact, it’s no secret to it at all. You just need to take in about the same amount of calories that your body uses up.
No one is fond of change, and big changes during the holidays can be particularly difficult to cope with for everyone involved.
Your gut is home to trillions of microorganisms. Although few cause illnesses, probiotics may keep the harmful bacteria in check so that you avoid or shorten a bout of stomach upset.
Although older adults still need plenty of fruits and vegetables, whole grains and fiber, they need to add or subtract a few things from the diet they followed earlier in life.
Drug-drug interactions occur when one drug interacts or interferes with another drug. Such interactions are dangerous because they can alter the way one or both of the drugs act in the body. They can also cause unexpected side effects. The following information can help you avoid drug-drug interactions.
As a parent of a young child, one of the most important decisions you will make is choosing who will care for your child while you’re at work.
The way you think about exercise can be the crucial factor in sticking with your fitness program.
For long-lasting health and well being, stay physically active, challenge your mind and stay involved with others.
Your little ones can learn a lot about safety if you take some time to teach them. Here's an ABC that you and your children can recite together.
Our taste buds are important, but smell seems to play a bigger role. Most people who complain of loss of the sense of taste are surprised to learn they are actually having problems with their sense of smell.
What happens when your health care provider taps on your knee with a rubber mallet? Your leg kicks forward, seemingly on its own. And in a sense, your leg has a mind of its own -- in your spine.
Many of today's generation of musclemen are told by nutritionists and bodybuilding experts that well-balanced meals will offer enough protein for all but the most intense exercisers.
Eight minutes in the morning -- that's all it takes to help launch you toward a fitter, trimmer lifestyle.
Although most foodborne illness stems from raw animal foods -- such as eggs, meats and dairy products -- fruits and vegetables may carry germs, too.
Although the cause of rosacea is unknown, people with fair skin who blush easily may be at the greatest risk for it.
This back exercise improves strength and flexibility of your spine. Start by sitting in a sturdy chair, with your feet flat on the floor.
Something as simple as getting out of bed properly can help to ease strain on your back and prevent injury.
You can help keep your children safe by following these precautions.
Fainting is a loss of consciousness, falling down or needing to lie down, followed by spontaneous recovery. Fainting by itself is not a problem, but it could be a sign of a serious health condition.
You can avoid the flu this season by taking one simple step: Get a flu vaccination.
To reduce scarring, keep the skin area out of the sun. Ultraviolet rays can darken your scar, making it more noticeable.
Today’s goal is not to re-create a Norman Rockwell painting, but to produce a festive meal you will be happy to serve on Thanksgiving Day. The biggest change: If you don’t need to present the whole turkey for carving at the table, cook a turkey breast instead.
Childhood obesity is more prevalent in the Northeast, followed by the Midwest, South and West. It is also more prevalent in cities than in rural areas.
Although colds cannot be prevented -- or cured -- you can take precautions to reduce the chance of infection.
Surveys show fewer than one in 10 women perceive heart disease as their greatest health threat. But it's the nation's number one killer, and women are its prime target.
You run two miles every other day and lift weights twice a week. You've been trying to eat more fruits and vegetables and less meat. You don't smoke. When it comes to your health, you figure you've got everything covered. But when was the last time you saw your doctor for a health screening?
With today's world filled with flashing images of MTV, quick news reports, and fast-food restaurants on every corner, are we capable of concentrating as well as we used to?
A balance disorder is a disturbance of the inner ear that can make you feel unsteady or like you’re moving or spinning.
High blood pressure is a sneaky ailment. The condition has no symptoms that you can see or feel. Having your blood pressure checked is the only way to know if it is high.
Your neck is a complicated piece of human anatomy. Here's a closer look at this area of the body.
It's important to reduce your medical expenses. Even if you have health insurance, you pay a percentage of every health care bill you incur.
Taking arthritis medication is important, but what you do for yourself, including exercising, doing relaxation exercises and managing your emotions and attitudes, is just as crucial to your ability to lead an active, productive life.
Being active is a great way to help control diabetes. Exercise helps lower your blood sugar.
Parents of kids with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) face a tough choice: whether to medicate their children or not.
If you've been thinking about adding a cuddly new cat or dog to your household, take some time to think about what type of pet will best suit you, your family and your lifestyle.
Immunizations aren't just for children. Adults need immunizations, too. Ask your doctor which of the following shots you may need.
Technology has given us the automated external defibrillator (AED), which is turning up far from hospitals. Some schools and public buildings already have AEDs.
Having a baby is a life-changing experience, and there's no way to know just how exhilarating and challenging the first few months can be.
Recovering people can use the tools they learn in rehab to begin the intense challenge of avoiding relapse.
Many people think of asthma as a childhood disease, but it often occurs as a new condition in older adults.
More than ever before, Americans older than 65 are turning to yoga for exercise. What is yoga, and why is it so popular? Yoga is a series of stretches and poses done with breathing techniques. It offers the powerful benefits of exercise. And since yoga is gentle, almost anyone can do it, regardless of age or fitness level.
As your eyes age, their lenses become less flexible, and they slowly lose their ability to focus. It's an ongoing, lifelong process called presbyopia, which you begin to notice between ages 40 and 45.
A car with an air bag is considered safer than a car without one. But for children under 12 years old, air bags can be dangerous.
Here are some helpful tips for understanding the air in your house and the air-quality appliances that can alter it.
Most people know air pollution can hurt your lungs and make it tough to breathe. But a growing body of research shows air pollution can be as bad or worse for your heart.
Many older adults enjoy a glass of wine with dinner or a beer while watching the game on TV. In fact, half of Americans ages 65 and older drink alcohol. Having a drink now and then is fine—as long as you don’t overdo it.
Alcohol may have some health benefits, including lowering the risk for heart disease, but it may also lead to abusive drinking and other diseases.
Genetics can play a part in whether you have problems with alcohol. But many other factors also have an influence.
Age-related macular degeneration is the leading cause of irreversible vision loss in people older than 60.
Do you know the difference between normal changes in vision that occur with age and abnormal changes caused by age-related eye disease? Here are some answers.
Several kinds of medicine are commonly prescribed for high blood pressure. Here are some of the main types.
Installing your child's car seat properly and using it every time your son or daughter rides in the car is one of the best ways to help keep him or her safe in case of an accident.
According to the American Heart Association, there are five main types of cholesterol-lowering medications.
Most people with color blindness -- also called color vision deficiency -- can see certain colors. Usually, the difficulty involves distinguishing between shades of red and green.
Hormones, which are chemical signals, affect growth, metabolism, blood pressure and even behavior.
Every year, more than 400 million prescriptions are filled with generic medications in the United States.
The first genetically modified food product for human consumption was a tomato, which went on the market in 1994.
Are you going bald? Which conditioner should you use? Here are the answers to these and other questions about your head of hair.
A kidney stone is a solid piece of material that forms in the kidney out of substances normally dissolved in the urine.
LSD, also called acid, is one of the most commonly used hallucinogens or psychedelic drugs.
Melatonin is a hormone that regulates your circadian rhythm, or the 24-hour cycle of biological processes called your "internal body clock."
Muscle cramps -- involuntary muscle contractions -- are common. But even though they can be quite painful, they don't cause damage.
If you're confused by the numbers and types of sunscreen, welcome to the club. Many Americans, it seems, are so confused by sunscreens that they don't even use them. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that only about 30 percent of adults regularly use sunscreen.
Your stomach's starring role is as an organ essential for digestion. The stomach breaks down all the food you eat.
Viruses are familiar from the common diseases they cause: colds and flu, for instance. But what are they, and how do they cause sickness?
Occupational asthma is a lung disease in which the airways overreact to dust, vapors, gases, smoke or fumes that exist in the workplace.
Quality time should be woven into our lives. As our children get older and slip away, we need to stop worrying about the extraordinary and think more about the ordinary."
You need to consume some fat to maintain good nutrition, but many Americans eat more fat than they need.
About half of people with nail problems have fungal infections. For some of these people, antifungal medications may help.
If you’re heading out of town, and you or your child has allergies or asthma, proper planning can help you keep sneezes, sniffles, wheezing and attacks under control.
Roughly one person in four has some kind of allergy. The most common is "allergic rhinitis," which includes seasonal hay fever and year-round allergies to dust, animal dander, mold and some foods.
As you age, you should check with your health care provider about any allergy medications you take and make sure you are up to date on your shots.
Some treatment programs teach problem drinkers to reduce their drinking, an approach that appeals to people who otherwise might not seek treatment.
Just when you thought you had your summertime outdoors routine down -- plenty of sunscreen, a large hat, limited exposure between 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. -- comes the news that Americans aren't getting enough of the "sunshine vitamin" -- vitamin D.
More than half of Americans have used an alternative therapy instead of -- or in addition to -- Western medical treatment for their conditions. Among these therapies are acupuncture and other Chinese-medicine practices that have been used for more than 3,000 years.
The four most common heat-related emergencies are cramps, fainting, exhaustion, and heat strokes. These illnesses occur when the body can no longer cool itself properly.
More than a million people have pulled up roots and hit the road full time in recreational vehicles (RVs). If you're thinking of joining them, be sure to consider your health.
Vesalius revolutionized the science of anatomy by basing his findings on direct observation of the body itself, rather than on centuries-old received wisdom.
There's evidence that people who respond rigidly to anger-provoking events are likely to wind up with significantly elevated levels of heart-damaging cholesterol.
Although some behavior problems can be attributed to normal child development, some require professional help.
What causes diabetes? Scientists aren't sure, but heredity, obesity, lack of exercise and other factors play a part.
Codependency is an emotional and behavioral condition. It affects a person’s ability to have healthy, mutually satisfying relationships.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if you could look and feel years younger just by taking a supplement? The makers of "anti-aging" hormone supplements would like you to believe that this is possible. But before you accept their claims and open your wallet, see what medical researchers say.
Most of the time, however, a cold passes in a week, with or without the use of antibiotics. Taking these drugs does not help you get better faster. In fact, it can create problems.
People with generalized anxiety disorder worry about their finances, their health, their jobs, world events, and the future. Their worry is often out of proportion to reality.
Appendicitis, an infection of the appendix, is the most common reason for a child to need emergency abdominal surgery.
If you are having problems with back pain, shin splints, knees or hips, look to your feet. Although these ailments might seem totally unrelated to one another, they can sometimes be linked to problems that start with your feet and how they're built, foot experts say.
Compulsive shoppers generally are people prone toward low self-esteem, anxiety and depression, as well as fantasizing, perfectionism and lack of sufficient social contacts, one expert says.
Thrill rides at amusement parks and traveling shows are higher, faster and wilder than ever. But are they dangerous?
Experts say you should pay close attention to what is, by far, the most useful genetic knowledge—your family medical history.
What if you could do one simple thing to significantly improve your health? Eating at least five servings a day of fruits and vegetables can do just that by reducing your risk for cancer, heart disease and stroke.
Doctors and physical therapists say people with arthritis can improve their health and fitness through exercise without damaging their joints.
You’ve probably seen the ads for toning shoes and Shake Weights. Do these gadgets deliver the workouts they promise?
Youths of all ages from 2 through the teen years snack more often. With 13 to 14 percent of children and adolescents overweight, we can blame eating between meals for part of the trend.
Getting too little vitamin B12 may leave you feeling fuzzy in your thinking and lead to numbness or tingling in your hands and feet.
Although aspirin is a common over-the-counter medication, it’s not appropriate for everyone.
If you set professional goals for yourself at the beginning of the year, don't forget to take a look at what you have and haven't accomplished as the year progresses.
If you have asthma, a healthy lunch can help your lungs work better.
Simply lacing your shoes or sneakers properly, along with choosing a shoe that fits your foot correctly, can add comfort to your stride and prevent foot injuries.
ADD can have a significant social impact on a person's life, affecting relationships in the family and on the job.
Men who think they're too "macho" to seek medical help could end up making more trips to the doctor's office in the long run.
Walking aids can help you stay mobile—but only when they’re used safely.
Because barbecue grills are operated in a casual, relaxed atmosphere, they tend to be taken for granted. And that can lead to serious injury.
Staying active—getting regular exercise—is one of the best ways to minimize the effects of aging. Exercise helps prevent chronic illness and loss of function in older adults.
Not progressing wisely—exercising too much, too hard, or too often instead of gradually working out longer and harder—is a common mistake made by many fitness enthusiasts. But it’s not the only one.
If allergies bother you in the fall, you’re most likely sensitive to one or more molds, weeds, trees or grasses.
Common injuries include a twisted ankle, sprained wrist, overextended elbow and damaged knee ligaments. Fortunately, you can take steps to help prevent joint damage.
You may think wearing goggles is enough to protect your eyes, but many injuries can happen to your eyes that goggles won't prevent.
Salmonella causes diarrhea and gastroenteritis, and, rarely, typhoid fever. It is often spread through contaminated food or water.
Like cancer or heart disease, alcoholism is a primary chronic disease with its own symptoms and causes. The disease is progressive and often fatal if not treated.
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Back to school for many school kids means new clothes, new supplies, and new backpacks. It can also mean new back ACHES.
Children who frequently and repetitively use poorly fitted or loaded backpacks are subject to neck pain, back pain, headaches, and other problems associated with poor posture. Research shows more than 7000 emergency room visits result from injuries associated with backpacks and these injuries have increased 330% since 1996.
Wellness doctor and chiropractor, Dr. Ryan Coogan, has addressed some of the key issues surrounding children’s health and safety with their backpacks below. He is a member of Backpack Safety America and a certified fellow in Clinical Biomechanics of Posture.
Here are some quick, easy, and helpful tips to prevent injury and pain in children:
CHOOSE RIGHT — Choosing the correct sized backpack is an important first step to safe backpack use. The backpack should not be larger than three quarters of the length of a child’s back. The shoulder straps should be padded and a waist strap is ideal.
PACK RIGHT — The maximum weight of the loaded backpack should not exceed 15% of your child’s body weight, so only pack what is needed. Heavier books should be closer to the child. Regardless of the weight, if the backpack forces the wearer to bend forward to carry, it is overloaded.
LIFT RIGHT — Even adults can hurt themselves if they lift 20 pounds improperly. Imagine what a child could do to a growing spine lifting 20 pounds improperly. Here are the guidelines for lifting a backpack:
a) Face the pack
b) Bend at the knees
c) Use both hands and check the weight of the pack
d) Lift with the legs
e) Apply one shoulder strap, then the other
4. WEAR RIGHT — Use both shoulder straps snug but not too tight (the pack should not hang down past the waist). When the backpack has a waist strap, it should be used.
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Open Source and Open Access Resources for Quantum Physics Education Documents
Wolfgang Christian, and
Quantum mechanics is both a topic of great importance to modern science, engineering, and technology, and a topic with many inherent barriers to learning and understanding. Computational resources are vital tools for developing deep conceptual understanding of quantum systems for students new to the subject. This article outlines two projects that are taking an open source/open access approach to create and share teaching and learning resources for quantum physics. The Open Source Physics project provides program libraries, programming tools, example simulations, and pedagogical resources for instructors wishing to give a rich experience to their students. These simulations and student activities are, in turn, being integrated into a world?wide collection of teaching and learning resources available through the Quantum Exchange, a part of the ComPADRE Portal to the National Science Digital Library. Both of these projects use technologies that encourage community development and collaboration. Using these tools, faculty can create learning experiences, share and discuss their content with others, and combine resources in new ways. Examples of the available content and tools are given, along with an introduction to accessing and using these resources.
Published April 2, 2008
This file has previous versions.
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SHNEOR ZALMAN BEN BARUCH (known also as Zalman Ladier):
Leader of the rational Ḥasidim called "ḤaBaD" (acrostic formed from "Ḥokmah," "Binah," "De'ah" = "Wisdom," "Understanding," "Knowledge"); born at Liozna, government of Moghilef, in 1747; died at Pyen, near Kursk, and interred at Gadiyoch, government of Poltava, Dec. 28, 1812. Little is known of that part of Shneor Zalman's life which preceded his conversion to Ḥasidism. Distinguishing himself as a Talmudist while still a youth, he, although his parents were very poor, wedded the daughter of a wealthy resident of Vitebsk, the marriage enabling him to devote himself entirely to study. Besides Talmudic and rabbinical lore, he acquired a fair knowledge of mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, and Cabala. Being of a dreamy and speculative nature, he became an adept in Luria's system of Cabala, and as such conceived a fervent admiration for Baer of Meseritz, at that time the representative of the system. For twelve years he lived in Baer's house, and took an active part in the propagation of Ḥasidism.
In 1772 the struggle between rabbinical Orthodoxy and the adherents of the new sect began, in which conflict Shneor Zalman became prominent. Together with Mendel of Vitebsk he was sent by Baer to Wilna to allay the anger of Elijah Gaon, who had launched a ban against the Ḥasidim. Unfortunately Shneor Zalman and his colleague failed to obtain a hearing from the gaon; and the struggle between the contending parties, from which the future leader of the "ḤaBaD" was to suffer so cruelly, became more bitter. On the death of Baer the Ḥasidim of White Russia and Lithuania looked upon Shneor Zalman as their leader; but from motives of modesty he kept in the background until the departure of Mendel of Vitebsk to Jerusalem. He then returned to his native place, Liozna, and assumed the leadership. More learned than Baer, he endeavored to place Ḥasidism on a scientific basis, and advocated both in his works and in his sermons an intelligent and not a blind faith, requiring from his followers a certain mental preparation. In his system the "ẓaddiḳ" appeared as a mere teacher and not as a miracle-worker. Being himself an eminent Talmudist, Shneor Zalman did not deprecate the study of the Talmud as was then the tendency of the leaders of Ḥasidism in the south, and his followers, who assumed the name "ḤaBaD," always stood on ahigher plane of intellectual development than did the followers of the latter. However, fearing lest in the course of time his followers might assimilate with the rabbinical Orthodox, he devised new means of withdrawing them from the authority of the rabbis. For example, he composed a new Shulḥan 'Aruk, introduced a new ritual, recommended special prayer-houses, and made other innovations. This exasperated the Orthodox, and Shneor Zalman was included among the twenty-two representatives of Ḥasidism who were denounced to the government as being dangerous agitators and teachers of heresy. In consequence of this denunciation Shneor Zalman was arrested at Liozna about the end of 1797 and conveyed in chains to St. Petersburg. For three months he remained imprisoned in a fortress and was then subjected to an examination by a secret commission. Ultimately he was released by order of Paul I.
As was to have been expected, his imprisonment won for him the halo of a martyr; and on his release his position was considerably strengthened. Two years later he was again transported to St. Petersburg, upon the further denunciation of his antagonists, particularly of Abigdor, formerly rabbi of Pinsk. Immediately after the accession to the throne of Alexander I., however, Shneor Zalman was released, and was given full liberty to proclaim his religious teachings, which the government considered to be utterly harmless. In 1812, in consequence of the French invasion, he fled from the government of Moghilef, intending to go to that of Poltava, but died on the way in a small village near Kursk. His descendants, who assumed the family name of Shneorssohn, are still the spiritual leaders of the Ḥasidim of White Russia known as those of Lyubavich.His Works.
Shneor Zalman was a prolific writer; but only a few of his works have been published. These are: "Tanya," or "Liḳḳuṭe Amarim," in two parts, the first containing a scientific exposition of Ḥasidism, the second, also entitled "Sha'ar ha-Yiḥud weha-Emunah," giving a mystical explanation of the "Shema'" (Slavuta, 1796; Zolkiev, 1799; with a pastoral letter entitled "Iggeret ha-Ḳodesh," Zolkiev, 1805); "Shulḥan 'Aruk" (5 vols., Shklov), a religious code based on the "Ṭurim" and other posḳim; "Seder Tefillot" (2 vols., Kopust, 1816; Shklov, n.d.), a prayer-book with a cabalistic commentary; "Torah Or" (Kopust, 1837), homilies on Genesis and Exodus; "Liḳḳuṭe Torah" (Jitomir, 1848), homilies on the three other books of the Pentateuch and on Lamentations, Esther, and Canticles, with sermons for New-Year, the Day of Atonement, and the eighth day of the Feast of Tabernacles; "Hilkot Talmud Torah" (Lemberg, n.d.), on the study of the Law.
- Jellinek, Ḳonṭres ha-Rambam, p. 37;
- Grätz, Gesch. xi. 114;
- Ha-Shaḥar, vi. 97 et seq.;
- Dubnow, in Voskhod, 1888, No. 3, pp. 37 et seq.;
- Ḥayyim Meïr, Bet Rabbi, Berdychev, 1903;
- Rodkinsohn, Toledot 'Ammude ḤaBaD, 1876;
- Fuenn, Keneset Yisrael, p. 331.
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Of all the renewable energy technologies, wave power is the furthest back on the evolution chart. As it turns out, harnessing energy from ocean waves isn't easy. But the technology is improving, and extracting energy from ocean motion could eventually follow the same growth curves we have seen for wind and solar.
The U.S. wave power movement got a big boost last week when it was announced that the Feds have granted New Jersey-based Ocean Power Technologies (OPT) permission to build the first commercial wave power plant in the country.
The 35-year license allows the company to proceed with plans for a 1.5-megawatt power project about 2.5 miles off the coast of Reedsport, Oregon. The wave power plant will make use of OPT’s PowerBuoy system, which in has already been successfully deployed in the waters off of Scotland, Hawaii and New Jersey.
"The issuance of this license by FERC is an important milestone for the U.S. wave energy industry as well as for OPT," stated the company’s CEO, Charles F. Dunleavy. ”The 35-year term of the license demonstrates the commercial potential of wave power, and this will support initiatives to secure financing for the project."
The project will eventually feature 10 wave power buoys that will generate enough power for about 1,000 homes. Construction of the initial PowerBuoy is nearing completion and it is expected to be ready for deployment later this year.
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Noctilucent Clouds are usually spotted in areas closer to the poles, but recently they have become more common in areas further away. Many believe this to be caused from the continual day to day atmospheric spraying that occurs daily, reacting with HAARP's continual radiation of the earth's upper ionosphere. you can clearly see the frequency waves present in this example.
Noctlucent Clounds Over Wester Washingto
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Administration of the Tests
SLRC is responsible for administering TWU's Science Placement Tests to students who have not yet taken their introductory biology, chemistry, physics, and zoology courses. Learn more about placement testing by visiting Academic Advising.
TWU administers two placement tests in science: the Basic Science Placement Test and the Chemistry Placement Test. These half-hour tests consist of multiple choice questions on material presented in most Texas junior and/or senior high schools.
- All testing materials are provided at the test site.
- You may not use reference materials or calculators while taking these tests.
- There is no fee for taking the tests.
- After taking these tests, your test(s) will be graded and the results sent to the the Academic Advising office. A copy is also retained in the Chemistry and Physics Department.
Which Placement Tests Should You Take?
All new students are required to take the science placement tests. If you are required by your degree plan to enroll (or if you elect to enroll) in the following courses, you must pass TWU's basic science placement test:
- BIOL 1113 - 1111
- CHEM 1013 - 1011
- PHYS 1133 - 1131
- PHYS 2153 - 2151
If you are required by your degree plan to enroll (or if you elect to enroll) in the following courses, you must pass TWU's chemistry placement test:
- CHEM 1023 - 1021
- CHEM 1113 - 1111
How to Prepare for Science Placement Tests
Junior high and high school science textbooks are excellent resources for preparing for science placement tests. You can also find science textbooks in most public libraries.
Basic Science Placement Test
The Basic Science Placement Test contains questions about general physical science concepts including the structure of the atom. It also contains questions to test the math skills you will use in introductory college level science courses (e.g., unit conversions, mathematical manipulation of exponential numbers, etc). You are exempt from this test if you have college credit (C or better) in physics or chemistry.
Chemistry Placement Test
The Chemistry Placement Test contains material covered in the first year of high school chemistry. You are exempt from this test if you did not take chemistry in high school. If you did take chemistry in junior high or high school, you will take this test, and you will enroll in either CHEM 1013, CHEM 1023, or CHEM 1113 as determined by your score on this test (provided you pass the Basic Science Test.) You are exempt from this test if you have college credit (C or better) in physics or chemistry, and may enroll in the next science course listed in your degree plan.
page last updated 1/2/2013 11:07 AM
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Today is the Feast Day of St. Irenaeus of Lyons, an early church father and apologist whose writings have been very influential in in the life of the Church and the discipline of theology. Father Barron speaks about this great Saint here.
Last year, I participated in the annual meeting of the Academy of Catholic Theology, a group of about fifty theologians dedicated to thinking according to the mind of the church. Our general topic was the Trinity, and I had been invited to give one of the papers. I chose to focus on the work of St. Irenaeus, one of the earliest and most important of the fathers of the church. Irenaeus was born around 125 in the town of Smyrna in Asia Minor. As a young man, he became a disciple of Polycarp who, in turn, had been a student of John the Evangelist. Later in life, Irenaeus journeyed to Rome and eventually to Lyons where he became bishop after the martyrdom of the previous leader. Irenaeus died around the year 200, most likely as a martyr, though the exact details of his death are lost to history.
His theological masterpiece is called Adversus Haereses
(Against the Heresies), but it is much more than a refutation of the major objections to Christian faith in his time. It is one of the most impressive expressions of Christian doctrine in the history of the church, easily ranking with the De trinitate of St. Augustine and the Summa theologiae of St. Thomas Aquinas. In my Washington paper, I argued that the master idea in Irenaeus’s theology is that God has no need of anything outside of himself. I realize that this seems, at first blush, rather discouraging, but if we follow Irenaeus’s lead, we see how, spiritually speaking, it opens up a whole new world. Irenaeus knew all about the pagan gods and goddesses who stood in desperate need of human praise and sacrifice, and he saw that a chief consequence of this theology is that people lived in fear. Since the gods needed us, they were wont to manipulate us to satisfy their desires, and if they were not sufficiently honored, they could (and would) lash out. But the God of the Bible, who is utterly perfect in himself, has no need of anything at all. Even in his great act of making the universe, he doesn’t require any pre-existing material with which to work; rather (and Irenaeus was the first major Christian theologian to see this), he creates the universe ex nihilo (from nothing). And precisely because he doesn’t need the world, he makes the world in a sheerly generous act of love. Love, as I never tire of repeating, is not primarily a feeling or a sentiment, but instead an act of the will. It is to will the good of the other as other. Well, the God who has no self-interest at all, can only love.
From this intuition, the whole theology of Irenaeus flows. God creates the cosmos in an explosion of generosity, giving rise to myriad plants, animals, planets, stars, angels, and human beings, all designed to reflect some aspect of his own splendor. Irenaeus loves to ring the changes on the metaphor of God as artist. Each element of creation is like a color applied to the canvas or a stone in the mosaic, or a note in an overarching harmony. If we can’t appreciate the consonance of the many features of God’s universe, it is only because our minds are too small to take in the Master’s design. And his entire purpose in creating this symphonic order is to allow other realities to participate in his perfection. At the summit of God’s physical creation stands the human being, loved into existence as all things are, but invited to participate even more fully in God’s perfection by loving his Creator in return. The most oft-cited quote from Irenaeus is from the fourth book of the Adversus Haereses and it runs as follows: “the glory of God is a human being fully alive.” Do you see how this is precisely correlative to the assertion that God needs nothing? The glory of the pagan gods and goddesses was not a human being fully alive, but rather a human being in submission, a human being doing what he’s been commanded to do. But the true God doesn’t play such manipulative games. He finds his joy in willing, in the fullest measure, our good.
One of the most beautiful and intriguing of Irenaeus’s ideas is that God functions as a sort of benevolent teacher, gradually educating the human race in the ways of love. He imagined Adam and Eve, not so much as adults endowed with every spiritual and intellectual perfection, but more as children or teenagers, inevitably awkward in their expression of freedom. The long history of salvation is, therefore, God’s patient attempt to train his human creatures to be his friends. All of the covenants, laws, commandments, and rituals of both ancient Israel and the church should be seen in this light: not arbitrary impositions, but the structure that the Father God gives to order his children toward full flourishing.
There is much that we can learn from this ancient master of the Christian faith, especially concerning the good news of the God who doesn’t need us!
In addition, here is the YouTube video of Father Barron's commentary on St. Irenaeus:
St. Irenaeus, pray for us!
Father Barron is the Director of Word on Fire Catholic Ministries.
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Did you know that macular degeneration affects one in three people over the age of 75? Keep your eyesight healthy by loading up on foods that are rich in beta carotene, a carotenoid that is found in orange and dark green vegetables. Eat foods like carrots, spinach, collard greens, and winter squash. Lutein and Zeaxanthin are also important to include in your diet as they protect vision cells from oxidative damage. You can find these two compounds in peppers, sweet potatoes, parsley, and snow peas. Studies have suggested that eating foods rich in selenium, such as barley and Brazil nuts, can help prevent macular degeneration as well. Also be sure you are eating plenty of food with vitamin C, such as berries, oranges, lemons, and broccoli.
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CitiSense is a portable, box-like sensor that can be deployed to provide local air quality information to everyone within range of the sensor, not just those carrying it. The device provides feedback on things like ozone, nitrogen dioxide, and carbon monoxide levels – the most common pollutants present in vehicle exhaust.
The sensor can relay information to your phone using the EPA’s air quality ratings, from green (good) to purple (unsafe), allowing people to gauge conditions for their daily activities. This information could be especially helpful for people suffering chronic conditions like asthma, or where air conditions have an increased affect on physical exertion such as for runners and those exercising.
Researchers at UC San Diego believe this system could be implemented to provide a much more thorough data collection system on urban air pollution than the EPA currently provides. The sensors currently cost around $1,000 per unit to make, but much of the technology and computer software is already developed leading to reduced costs down the line.
Additionally, the data collected can be relayed to home computers and others, allowing for a better understanding of urban pollution patterns, which tend to concentrate along major transportation routes rather than evenly dissipate. The project aims to make the ‘invisible visible,’ and hopefully everyone a little safer from pollution.
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Aug. 22, 2012 A compound found in green tea could be a weapon in treatments for tackling cancer, according to newly published research at the University of Strathclyde.
The extract, known as epigallocatechin gallate, has been known to have preventative anti-cancer properties but fails to reach tumours when delivered by conventional intravenous administration.
However, in initial laboratory tests at the Universities of Strathclyde and Glasgow, researchers used an approach which allowed the treatment to be delivered specifically to the tumours after intravenous administration. Nearly two-thirds of the tumours it was delivered to either shrank or disappeared within one month and the treatment displayed no side effects to normal tissues.
The tests are thought to be the first time that this type of treatment has made cancerous tumours shrink or vanish.
In the tests, on two different types of skin cancer, 40% of both types of tumour vanished, while 30% of one and 20% of another shrank. A further 10% of one of the types were stabilised.
The researchers encapsulated the green tea extract in vesicles that also carried transferrin, a plasma protein which transports iron through the blood. Receptors for transferrin are found in large amounts in many cancers.
Dr Christine Dufès, a senior lecturer at the Strathclyde Institute of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences, led the research. She said: "These are very encouraging results which we hope could pave the way for new and effective cancer treatments.
"When we used our method, the green tea extract reduced the size of many of the tumours every day, in some cases removing them altogether. By contrast, the extract had no effect at all when it was delivered by other means, as every one of these tumours continued to grow.
"This research could open doors to new treatments for what is still one of the biggest killer diseases in many countries."
The research paper has been published in the journal Nanomedicine. Imaging equipment used in the research was funded by a grant from the Wellcome Trust.
The research links to Advanced Science and Technology, one of the research themes at Strathclyde's Technology and Innovation Centre, a world-class facility uniting academic and industrial partners in seeking innovative research solutions, job creation and business development.
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Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
- Fanny Lemarié, Chun Wai Chang, David R Blatchford, Rumelo Amor, Greg Norris, Laurence Tetley, Gail McConnell, Christine Dufès. Antitumor activity of the tea polyphenol epigallocatechin-3-gallate encapsulated in targeted vesicles after intravenous administration. Nanomedicine, 2012; DOI: 10.2217/nnm.12.83
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
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Common RedpollCarduelis flammea (Linnaeus)
Status Irregularly common in winter. Abundant some years, occasionally rare to absent other years. Whether this irregularity is the result of availability of food, prevailing winds at times of migration or to other less obvious factors is not known. Fall birds generally first appear in October or November (average 30 October, earliest 4 October); an exceptionally early bird was seen at Cape Sable on 8 September 1965 (B.J. and S. Smith). Numbers build by late December, when estimates of 100-1000 or more Common Redpolls have been made on Christmas Bird Counts around the province.
The latest reports are generally in April (average 11 April, latest 4 May). Two later spring birds at St. Esprit, Richmond County, on 10 June 1982 (R. and M. Meyerowitz) were unusual but reports from Sable Island in 1968 were quite startling: following a sighting of three birds between 8 and 10 June, three of these little northerners were seen on 6 July, one on 12 July, one on 26 July, and one on 2 August (C. and N. Bell, I.A. McLaren). Winter 1935-36 was a "redpoll winter." They were common from December to April and for the two weeks of mid-April the local winter population, augmented by northbound transients, swarmed over parts of the Annapolis Valley. On 18 April, C.A. Borden had "millions of small birds" come out of the sky and settle all about him while he was pruning the trees in his apple orchard at Sheffield Mills, Kings County. The birds were seemingly unconscious of his presence, alighting close by and chattering excitedly. In all his years of orcharding he had never seen anything like it. They stayed a few minutes and then suddenly the entire flock rose into the air as one bird and whirled away in a cloud. Nothing so dramatic has been reported in recent years but redpolls were very common in the winters of 1959-60, 1968-69 and 1981-82.
Description Length: 13-14 cm. All plumages: Bill short and sharply pointed. Adult male: Crown bright satiny red; rump and breast delicately suffused with pink; back streaked brown and gray; wings and tail dark brown, the wings with two light gray bars, and the tail well notched; belly white; flanks and rump streaked with brown. Adult female: Similar but without pink on rump or breast; underparts and rump more heavily streaked with brown.
Range Breeds in the northern parts of the Northern Hemisphere. In North America, breeds south to Newfoundland, central Quebec, northern Manitoba and northern British Columbia, and winters south to the central United States.
Remarks Redpolls are closely related to Pine Siskins and American Goldfinches, both of which they resemble in size, manner of flight and feeding habits. In winter these three species commonly fly together in mixed flocks, but as the time in spring for northward migration approaches, great numbers of redpolls often congregate and travel by themselves. On 17 April 1942 I saw one of these great mass migrations in progress near Wilmot, Annapolis County. The branches of a small roadside apple orchard were so thickly covered with redpolls that the trees presented a leaden-gray appearance. The ground below was so thickly covered that it looked like a gray carpet in motion, as thousands of individuals hopped about. The centre of this great flock was not more than 30 m away, and the din of birds' combined twitterings was impressive, as though each one in its excitement was trying to out-twitter the others. When flushed by a blast from my car's horn, the roar of their wings was like a sudden gale of wind. As they wheeled into the sky in dense formation, twisting and turning as though uncertain of the proper course to follow, they looked like an immense swarm of giant bees. Never before or since have I seen so many redpolls at one time.
Questions? Comments? E-mail us at: Museumemail@example.com
Credits and copyright information. Last updated February 20, 1998
Best viewed with Netscape 3.0 or Internet Explorer 3.0 or later.
For further information contact Webmaster, Nova Scotia Museum.
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Setting the gold standard in sports power measurement
SRM - Schoberer Rad Messtechnik - was founded by engineer Ulrich Schoberer in 1986. Prior to this the qualified medical
engineer had spent many years thinking up and experimenting with ways to measure an athlete's power output on the pedals under real conditions during an actual ride.
Up until the eighties, no adequate method had been found to measure performance on a bike in training or racing, you still had to rely on lab testing instead. This meant that athletes were forced to go back and forth between their real performance - cycling on the road or cross country - and the ergometer in the lab. With lab testing, they still couldn’t tell how their performance had changed over a period of a few hours, either in a race or in training. Lab testing was an intermittent check-up, at best, but couldn’t tell athletes anything about how they were performing day-to-day. And the most important performance – during competition – couldn’t be tested.
It wasn‘t until Ulrich Schoberer developed and patented the SRM Training System that it at last became possible to measure power in watts while cycling. SRMs measure the only aspect of training that is absolute, POWER, which isn’t affected by the kinds of influences, like weather conditions (temperature, wind) you see when you measure physiological variables such as heart rate or speed. Even better,
pedalling power is measured at the point where output really occurs, on the special crank, the SRM Powermeter.
Today the SRM Training System has become standard equipment for the world's leading professionals in cycling and triathlon such as Lance Armstrong, Greg Lemond, Mario Cippolini, Paolo Bettini, Erik Zabel, Nicole Cooke, Kristin Armstrong, Amber Neben, Sabine Spitz, Mark Cavendish, Bert Grabsch, Normann Stadler and many others, for national teams, sport universities, coaches and all recreational athletes who take training seriously. For years now they have being using the SRM Training System as a reliable and indispensable training instrument in cycling, and now professional athletes from other sports, such as NHL hockey players, cross-country skiers and Formula One drivers have started using them as well.
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The Power of New School Food Guidelines for ChildrenPosted September 6th, 2012 by Katy Farber
Today one of my students came back from lunch and said, “They are doing Michelle Obama’s thing!”
I said, what do you mean?
“They are giving seconds only on vegetables and fruit, but not on the pizza!” she said, smiling. She did not seem fazed by this in the slightest bit, but I wondered if some of my students were.
Hmmm, I thought, an 11 year old’s perspective on Michelle Obama and the USDA’s new school nutrition guidelines. A word on the street, of sorts.
The Healthy, Hunger Free Kids Act, championed by first lady Michelle Obama, made major improvements in school nutrition. The new school meals have more whole grains, fruits, and vegetables; low-fat milk; and less salty and fatty foods. This is a major effort to combat obesity, which over the last four decades, rates have more than quadrupled in children and more than tripled in adolescents.
The USDA website is loaded with resources about these improvements. They have a page for teachers, parents, students, food service employees and community members. Here are the main goals of the new school lunch improvements:
• Ensure students are offered both fruits and vegetables every day of the week;
• Increase offerings of whole grain-rich foods;
• Offer only fat-free or low-fat milk;
• Limit calories based on the age of children being served to ensure proper portion size;
• Increase the focus on reducing the amounts of saturated fat, trans fats, added sugars, and sodium.
Our school didn’t have much work to do to meet these new standards. Luckily, our chefs have been using whole wheat flour, limiting sweets, eliminating chocolate milk, and providing plenty of fruits and vegetables at every meal.
But other schools? Like the inner city Chicago school chronicled in the book Fed Up with Lunch? Loads of work to do– just one look at the pictures from that book and you will see what I mean. Dough wrapped hot dogs, mystery meat, all foods packaged in plastic and loaded with sodium and artificial ingredients. Lots to improve and great progress to be made.
These kinds of improvements have the potential to close some of the poverty gap in education– to improve the health and learning of our nation’s neediest children. Our schools were doing such a disservice, especially to kids whose family’s rely solely on school food for their nutrition. Many of these students are more likely to have learning and behavioral issues, from a lack of access to quality resources, including healthy food.
Every improvement in school food nutrition has the power to improve the lives of thousands of children nationwide.
While I am excited that my own students will have access to better nutrition to help their growing brains and bodies, and this will improve many school food programs by leaps and bounds, I have other concerns, too, such as the BPA and pesticide load of many conventional and canned fruits and vegetables used so frequently in schools because they are “free” from the government.
While the new standards are great progress for our nation’s kids, we still have lots of work to do. The impact of improving school nutrition couldn’t be greater. Children will learn more, be absent less, growth healthier and stronger the more nutritious we can make the food in our nation’s schools.
I’ll keep my ears open for more 11 year old insights into this important issue! They, after all, are the ones who will be running this place soon.
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Syrian Woodpecker (Dendrocopos syriacus) - Wiki
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
[Photo] Syrian Woodpecker (Dendrocopos syriacus). Picture taken by Ofer Faigon, 18-December-2005, French Hill, Jerusalem, Israel.
The Syrian Woodpecker (Dendrocopos syriacus) is a member of the woodpecker family, the Picidae.
The Syrian Woodpecker is a resident breeding bird from southeastern Europe east to Iran. Its range has expanded further northwest into Europe in recent years.
It is an inhabitant of open woodlands, cultivation with trees and scrubs, and parks, depending for food and nesting sites upon old trees. It is often an inconspicuous bird, in spite of the plumage. The large white shoulder patch is a feature that catches the eye.
Syrian Woodpecker is 23-25 cm long, and is very similar to the Great Spotted Woodpecker, Dendrocopos major. The upper parts of the male are glossy black, with a crimson spot on the nape and white on the sides of the face and neck. On the shoulder is a large white patch and the flight feathers are barred with black and white. The three outer tail feathers show only a few white spots; these show when the short stiff tail is outspread, acting as a support in climbing. The under parts are buffish white, the abdomen and under tail coverts reddish. The long bill is slate black and the legs greenish grey,
The female has no crimson on the nape, and in the young this nape spot is absent, but the crown is crimson.it differs from the smaller Lesser Spotted Woodpecker by the crimson on the abdomen.
It is much harder to distinguish Syrian Woodpecker from Great Spotted Woodpecker. Syrian has a longer bill, and lacks the white tail barring of Great Spotted. Another important distinction is that Syrian does not have the black line connecting the moustachial stripe to the nape shown by the more widespread species.
When hidden by the foliage, the Syrian Woodpecker’s presence is often advertised by the mechanical drumming, a vibrating rattle, produced by the rapidly repeated blows of its strong bill upon a trunk or branch. This is not merely a mating call or challenge, but a signal of either sex. It is audible from a great distance, depending on the wind and the condition of the wood, and a hollow bough naturally produces a louder note than living wood. The drumming is longer than Great Spotted Woodpecker’s, and decreases in volume. It is faster tand shorter than the drumming of White-backed Woodpecker.
The call is a sharp quit, quit, softer than Great Spotted Woodpecker, and something like Redshank.
The Syrian Woodpecker’s food mainly consists of those insects which bore into the timber of forest trees, such as the larvae of wood boring moths and beetles.
The woodpecker usually alights on the trunk, working upwards. During the ascent it taps the bark, breaking off fragments, but often extracts its prey from crevices with the tip of its sticky tongue. Seeds, nuts and berries are eaten when insect food is scarce.
Its actions are jerky, and it hops rather than climbs, leaping forward with one foot just in advance of the other. When a space is crossed the flight is easy and undulating.
The neat, round 5cm diameter nesting hole, is bored in soft or decaying wood horizontally for a few inches, then perpendicularly down. At the bottom of the shaft, a small chamber is excavated, where up to 11 creamy white eggs are laid on wood chips.
The hole is rarely used again, but not infrequently other holes are bored in the same tree. Almost any tree sufficiently rotten is used. The young, when the parents are feeding them, cluster at the mouth of the hole and keep a continuous chatter, but when alarmed slip back into the hole.
|The text in this page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article shown in above URL. It is used under the GNU Free Documentation License. You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the GFDL.|
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: Nocturnal World :
(AKA Night Hike) Students will explore Glen Helen at night and learn about the special adaptations of nocturnal animals. Sensory awareness activities during the hike will teach students how to use their senses to navigate in the dark. On clear nights, students will stargaze and learn constellations.
Objectives for the Nocturnal World Lesson
- Become aware, comfortable, and respectful of the nocturnal world and the creatures that are active within.
- Can describe adaptations of various nocturnal animals.
- Describe Earth’s rotation and moon phases.
- Observe at least two circumpolar constellations.
Science Standards Covered by the Nocturnal World Lesson
Earth and Space Sciences
A.1 Describe how night and day are caused by Earth’s rotation.
A.2 Explain that Earth is one of several planets to orbit the sun, and that the moon orbits the Earth.
A.4 Explain that stars are like the sun, some being smaller and some larger, but so far away that they look like points of light.
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How to Pass Your Emissions Test
Sinclair Community College professor James Halderman offers Environment News readers the following tips for passing a vehicle emissions test.
1. Test your vehicle on a nice day only--avoid very cold or windy days. Cold weather requires that the engine be run longer for the coolant, oil, and catalytic converter to reach and maintain optimum operating temperature.
2. Make sure your battery is in good condition. A weak or low-voltage battery causes many fuel-injected engines to run rich (use too much fuel).
3. Change engine oil before having the vehicle tested. Dirty or contaminated oil increases exhaust emissions.
4. Use premium gasoline to help reduce nitrogen oxide (Nox) emissions.
5. Do not overfill the gas tank. After the nozzle clicks off, add no more than a dime’s worth of fuel. If the tank is overfilled, liquid gasoline can be drawn into the engine through the canister purge system.
6. Drive at least 20 miles before having the vehicle tested.
7. Arrive at the test center with only a quarter- to a half-tank of gasoline.
8. While waiting for the inspection, place the gear selector in “park” or “neutral,” and keep the engine running at fast idle (about 2500 rpm).
9. Before testing begins, turn the air conditioning/heating or defroster to the off position.
Other Tips from the Experts
1. Be sure your tires are in good condition and inflated to the maximum pressure stated on the side of the tires.
2. Know whether your car is front- or rear-wheel drive, and watch to see that the test workers put the driving wheels on the rollers.
3. Ask to see that the dynamometer settings are correct for your make, model, and year of vehicle.
4. Watch to see that the parking brake is not engaged.
5. Watch to see that the vehicle operator does not use rapid acceleration or braking.
Remember: It is your car, and you are entitled to this information and to observe the test process from a designated safe location. If you suspect your car may have sustained damage, file a complaint and drive to your preferred auto repair facility for an inspection.
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Announced September 23, 1970 and withdrawn November 10, 1971.
The following is the text of an IBM Data Processing Division press release distributed on September 23, 1970.
In a major departure from conventional computer technology, International Business Machines Corporation today introduced its first computer using a main memory made entirely of monolithic circuits.
To store its data and instructions, the new IBM System/370 Model 145 uses silicon memory chips, rather than the magnetic core technology that has been the mainstay of computer memories for the past 15 years. More than 1,400 microscopic circuit elements are etched onto each one-eighth-inch-square chip.
Monolithic circuitry also is used throughout the Model 145's central processor to perform all of the system's arithmetic and logic functions.
"When we introduced System/370 three months ago," said Thomas J. Watson, Jr., chairman of the board of IBM, "we thought it would do very well, but it has done even better than we expected. We believe that Model 145, with its significant advance in technology, the monolithic main memory, will make the capabilities of System/370 available to an even wider range of users."
With the Model 145, many more business and scientific users can obtain the increased performance-per-dollar advantages of System/ 370. They will not have to reprogram their existing applications written for System/360 and earlier IBM computers. The first models of System/370, the 155 and 165, were introduced in June for users of larger systems.
"In the Seventies, up-to-the-minute information from a computer data base is as vital to the people who run medium-sized organizations as it is to those who run large ones, "said F. G. Rodgers, president of IBM's Data Processing Division. "The Model 145 has all the characteristics needed to make advanced data base applications practical and profitable for intermediate system users."
"The innovative technologies in Model 145 represent significant engineering achievements," Mr. Rodgers said, "but even more important is how they add up to better performance, efficiency and economy for the user."
One of the key advantages of the Model 145 for multiprogramming and data base applications is its ability to use IBM's newest and fastest disk storage devices. They include the IBM 3330, announced in June, and a new disk storage facility, the IBM 2319, announced today. The 2319, available only with the Model 145, has a capacity of 87-million characters of information, expandable to 233-million. It attaches to the central processor, thereby eliminating the cost of a separate disk control unit.
Equally important are new program products announced today for handling data base applications using remote terminals. IBM's Customer Information Control System (CICS), previously available only for large systems, will be available in two Disk Operating System versions. They are designed to assist users in speeding such information as customer account records, inventory status, production and engineering data and student records to where it is needed, while allowing the files to be updated directly from the computer terminal.
In conventional memories, data is stored in magnetically charged cores strung on wires. The use of monolithic memory technology, with its very high circuit density, allows IBM to offer Model 145 users more than a half-million characters of high-speed storage in about half the space that would be required by core planes for an equivalent amount of memory. The more than 1,400 circuit elements on each monolithic chip are interconnected to make up 174 complete memory circuits.
IBM has pioneered the use of monolithic memory technology in its highest performance computers, which include System/370 Models 155 and 165 and System/360 Models 85 and 195. In those systems, monolithic memory technology is used in high-speed buffers that match the speed of very large main core memories to that of the central processors.
The Model 145's internal operating speed is up to five times faster than that of the widely used System/360 Model 40, and up to 11 times faster than the Model 30's. Users have a choice of six main storage capacities, from 112,000 to 512,000 characters -- twice the maximum available with System/360 Model 40.
The ability to run programs written for earlier IBM computers, including the 1400 Series and 7010, is provided with the Model 145 at no additional charge. Users can also run Disk Operating System programs under control of the more powerful Operating System without reprogramming.
Another innovation that enhances the Model 145's efficiency is a reloadable section of monolithic memory that augments the main memory. It is called Reloadable Control Storage (RCS).
The code for the basic System/370 instruction set, including all system control functions, is stored in the RCS. Users will be supplied with a prewritten disk cartridge containing all needed instructions, as well as those for selected optional functions. Options might include the instructions that enable the Model 145 to emulate earlier IBM machines or perform arithmetic with extended precision to 34 decimal digits.
The console operator can load instructions from the disk cartridge into RCS in about 45 seconds. The standard 32,000 characters of control storage provided with each Model 145 can be expanded to 64,000 by using a portion of main memory, if needed, to accommodate optionally available functions.
Monthly rental for typical configurations of IBM System/370 Model 145 will range from about $14,950 (with 112,000 characters of main memory) to $37,330 (512,000 characters), with purchase prices ranging from about $705,775 to $1,783,000. Initial customer shipments will be scheduled for late next summer.
The Model 145 is in production at IBM's Endicott, N.Y., facilities, where it was developed. It also will be manufactured at the IBM World Trade Corporation plant in Mainz, Germany.
The monolithic memory technology was developed by the IBM Components Division. The memory circuits are in production at the division's Burlington, Vt., plant. Complete monolithic memories are being assembled by IBM's Systems Manufacturing Division.
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As part of a pending civil lawsuit, a Pittsburgh senior federal judge determined that Svonavec Inc. did not establish that it possessed any right to mine the coal under the Flight 93 National Memorial at the time the United States acquired the company's land by eminent domain, other than eight acres not in dispute.
On Sept. 2, 2009, the federal government acquired Svonavec Inc.'s 275.81 acres in Stonycreek Township by eminent domain for use as the Flight 93 National Memorial. The acquisition was subject to existing easements and certain rights of third parties that included coal mining rights.
Immediately after the Sept. 11, 2001, crash of Flight 93, on which crew and passengers gave up their lives to fight a terrorist takeover of the aircraft, Svonavec Inc. set up a temporary memorial on its property at the crash site. Within weeks the public was using the temporary memorial to honor the heroes of Flight 93. The coal company did not use its land for any other purpose from that date until the United States took ownership of the property on Sept. 2, 2009.
The federal government has the authority to take private property for public use as long as it satisfies its constitutional obligation to provide "just compensation." In general just compensation means the fair market value of the property on the date it is taken, according to federal case law.
By law, the government must explore all aspects of the value of a property it takes ownership of through eminent domain to determine the amount it needs to pay for the property. Mineral rights are one aspect.
"This is a very complex case. The case is still active. The judge's decision (on the coal mining rights) is just one small issue that is involved in the case," said Somerset attorney Patrick Svonavec, who represents Svonavec Inc. of Somerset.
The federal government did not dispute that Svonavec Inc. owned the 275.81 acres of surface land on Sept. 11, 2001, but it argued that the company did not own the coal underneath. If the court had determined that Svonavec Inc. owned the right to mine coal, the property more than likely would have a higher value.
Senior U.S. District Judge Donetta Ambrose agreed with the federal government's argument.
In the civil action, Svonavec, the defendant, was required to present documentation on the chain of possession of mining rights under the tract.
"Defendant relies primarily on missing, unrecorded and incomplete documents to support its chain of title for the alleged coal leases," Ambrose wrote. "The existence, terms and/or validity of these documents are unknown and unknowable to the court."
The government believes $611,000 is just compensation for the property. A company official has said he believes that amount is too low.
"I anticipate the court will tell us soon a timeline, and hopefully we get it to trial and get a resolution," Svonavec said.
U.S. Attorney Albert Schollaert, who is listed as the attorney on behalf of the federal government, did not respond to a telephone request for comment.
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Following King's theoretical work, a series of measurements has been carried out with bronze spheres varying in diameter from ¼ to 1½ inches. In plane stationary waves in water at frequencies between 100 and 200 kc. King′s predicted dependence of radiation pressure on the location of the spheres relative to the position of nodes and loops is verified. Neglecting the viscosity of the medium and the compressibility of the spheres, it was found that the radiation pressure approximates inverse variation with the radius a of the sphere when the latter′s size is such as to make 2πa/λ greater than unity and less than four.
Considering the spherical torsion balance a likely laboratory acoustic standard in liquids, it is possible to calibrate as secondary standards any pressure microphone for subaqueous use in the supersonic range. Such calibration was effected upon tourmaline crystal microphones by the usual resonance tube method. The piston source was telescopically fitted into the end of a horizontal rigid cylinder about 6 in. in diameter and 15 in. long. The other end was machined and covered either by a blank quarter wave plate which acted as a perfect reflector or a quarter wave plate in the reflecting face of which the tourmaline crystal was inserted. The spherical torsion balance was suspended over the center of the cylinder so as always to maintain the sphere on the axis of the cylinder. The whole suspended system was provided with horizontal motion by means of a micrometer screw of 4 in. travel.
The results obtained by this calibration compare favorably with other methods and check roughly with the pressures calculated from the static piezoelectric constant of the tourmaline crystals.
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For 100 years, scientists have monitored volcanoes in the United States. It's important work because an active volcano can erupt at any time, quickly wiping out entire communities.
CBN News traveled to the Pacific Northwest to learn how today's advanced technology helps keep people safe.
The Cascade mountain range lines the upper half of the U.S. West Coast. The massive peaks, like Mount Rainier in Washington and Oregon's Mount Hood, represent some of America's greatest beauty... on the surface, that is.
Underneath the rocky terrain lies destructive, hot magma because the Cascades are also active volcanoes.
"They've erupted before, and they will erupt again, and when they erupt, they will present a very real hazard to the people who live nearby," Andy Lockhart, a geophysicist with the United States Geological Survey, told CBN News.
The Cascades are home to Mount St. Helens, the volcano that exploded violently in 1980. In minutes, the infamous eruption took the lives of 57 people, caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage, and destroyed every living thing within 230 square miles.
Still a danger today, Mount St. Helens is considered the most active volcano in the Cascades. Its eruption was a pivotal point in the science of volcanology. The massive explosion put volcano monitoring on the fast track.
For example, at the time, there was only one volcano observatory in the entire United States. Today the USGS has five: the Alaska Volcano Observatory, the California Volcano Observatory, the Cascades Volcano Observatory, the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, and the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory.
"Because St. Helens continued to erupt on and off until 1986 it became a laboratory for scientists and engineers to develop new instrumentation, to develop the computer software, the algorithms that could be used to automatically process the increasingly large amounts of data we were able to bring off the volcanoes," John Ewert, the scientist-in-charge at the Cascades Volcano Observatory, told CBN News.
Inside the Technology
Ewert and his team gave CBN News an up-close look at the technology monitoring Mount St. Helens and the other 168 active U.S. volcanoes, of which more than half could be potentially explosive.
"What these instruments allow us to do is to look at data in real time and get the data to our colleagues so we can build a more comprehensive view of what a volcano is doing during unrest," USGS geochemist Peter Kelly explained to CBN News.
Scientists examine three primary signs when forecasting eruptions:
- How much a volcano is shaking because of earthquakes or vibrations due to fluid
- If it's swelling or changing shape because of magma pushing on its sides
- The amount and types of volcanic gases it's sending out
"It's important because ultimately volcanic gases drive volcanic eruptions, and so understanding volcanic gases is fundamental to understanding volcanic activity," Kelly said.
Today's equipment is much more sensitive to that activity and portable, allowing it to go where people cannot. Take for instance the "spider."
"It's really nice because we set it down with a helicopter so we can really get it close to a volcano where we have a really high signal without all the noise from towns and such," Chris Lockett, a USGS computer scientist, told CBN News.
In Harm's Way
That noise gets closer, however, as the deceptively picturesque scenery lures new residents, leading to the growth of area towns and population centers.
"In the Cascades as a whole, the one that we worry about the most is Mount Rainier because of the number of people living in the valleys on the west side," Lockhart said.
Lockhart explained an eruption can send deadly mudflows or "lahars" filled with rock, sand, and water at high speeds down the mountain across a great distance, destroying everything in their paths.
"I didn't see the eruption of St. Helens in 1980, but I was at the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991, and it's just like having a hole blown in your world," he said. "It was just so much bigger and faster than anything I'd ever seen."
When scientists determine the risk of a particular area, they most definitely consider developments built close to volcanoes.
"[The Cascades are] some of the highest threat volcanoes we have in the United States -- actually the majority of the highest threat volcanoes -- and that's because we have so many people and infrastructure nearby," Ewert said.
That, according to Ewert, puts the pressure on for greater accuracy in predictions and improved monitoring technology.
Scientists also urge residents to consider potential hazards, even hidden ones, before choosing where they live.
*Original broadcast November 8, 2012.
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February 28, 2007
GCRIO Program Overview
Our extensive collection of documents.
Archives of the
Global Climate Change Digest
A Guide to Information on Greenhouse Gases and Ozone Depletion
Published July 1988 through June 1999
The Global Climate Change Digest is an interdisciplinary guide to general and technical information related to climate change resulting from human
activities, particularly global warming by greenhouse gases and stratospheric ozone
depletion. It was published
monthly from July 1988 through June 1999 by the Center for
Environmental Information, Inc (CEI, in Rochester, NY) a private, nonprofit
organization providing information through its publications, educational programs,
conferences and library.
The archives include all Digest
editions. Access to the Archives is free, thanks to financial support from the US Global Change Research Information Office (see press release).
consists mostly of literature citations accompanied by brief abstracts. The citations are
broadly organized according to type of publication ("Professional Publications,"
"Reports," etc). Within those categories are subcategories based on content
("Climate Change Science," "Mitigation," etc). Each edition of the Digest
also includes "News" and "Calendar" sections.
The Digest is written for a diverse audience: policy makers, researchers,
executives and administrators, librarians, students of various levels, and interested
citizens. Entries of general appeal are designated, and the rest are grouped under
specific topics so readers can quickly find the most interesting topics. The summary for
each entry gives the reader enough information to decide whether to obtain the original.
Each summary is generally much shorter and more readily scanned than the abstract or
summary given in the original document (which is usually reproduced in full in
conventional literature databases). Each entry gives complete information for obtaining
the item listed.
The format of the Digest evolved over the years. With the later issues,
sections "Professional Publications," "News," and (normally)
"Reports," appeared in every issue. The "Books and Proceedings" and
"Periodicals" sections appeared several times a year. The Digest's sections
are described below:
- Professional Publications: This is the largest section of the Digest
because virtually all the citations have undergone peer review prior to publication. It
contains primarily referenced articles from professional journals, aimed at other
professionals. The section emphasizes items of general or interdisciplinary interest and
those relevant to policy development, but also contains more specific technical material
than is found in the other sections.
- Reports: Includes reports issued by national and state/provincial level
governments, international and national working groups, research institutes, universities,
and various interest groups. While multi- authored reports of wide interest are
emphasized, also included are examples of the 'gray literature' papers circulated
informally which occasionally command considerable attention.
- Books and Proceedings: Includes books aimed at general as well as professional
readers. Most are available from commercial publishers; some are published directly by
institutes, academic units, professional societies etc. For conference proceedings, the
section emphasizes those containing substantial (often edited and reviewed) papers. The
section lists major book reviews.
- Periodicals: Includes magazine articles aimed at general readers as well as
(generally unreferenced) survey articles for both general and professional readers.
- News: Unlike newsletters, the Digest gives only highlights of major news,
together with sources of more detailed information for those who need it. International
developments are emphasized, as are national developments of international interest or
significance, and in some cases state/provincial developments of wider interest. Entries
may describe recent trends (such as attempts to include environmental costs in utility
planning), as well as specific events (such as modifications to the Montreal Protocol for
Protection of the Ozone Layer). Emerging controversies are delineated, but no judgments
are made. Research developments with potential implications for policy or with substantial
impact for their immediate field are noted, usually in connection with a paper or report
listed in another section.
Users can approach the Digest in two general ways. A user may employ our search
software to search the site. Alternatively, users may look
through the categories listed in each issue's table of contents. We list the tables of
contents in two forms:
- All issues listed chronologically in a single large file
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Copy policy. The Center for Environmental Information allows limited copying of
portions of the text for purposes consistent with its aims of furthering communication,
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individual, non-commercial use) under conditions specified by the fair use doctrine of US
copyright law. Permission does not extend to other kinds of copying such as routine
copying of entire issues, copying for resale, or creating new collective works.
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The middle-aged are fittest
Middle-aged people are fitter and exercise more than younger people.
Researchers found that the increases in sports participation were not equal across all groups. People in good health and with good incomes, with cars and in higher social classes tended to exercise more. This was particularly evident in white men.
The lead researcher, Dr Emmanual Stamatakis, of University College London, suggested that older people might have been influenced by the exercise boom in the 1990s and kept it up since. He felt it was hard to explain “why younger people are falling back to doing less sport” and why it was more pronounced the younger the person was.
Dr Stamatakis suggested that the London Olympics in 2012 was a great opportunity to encourage participation in sport across a wide range of social groups. But he felt there had to be a “co-ordinated strategy to target those groups most in need” if the results were going to be long-lasting.
Stamatakis E, Chaudhury M. (In Press 2008) Temporal trends in adults’ sports participation patterns in England between 1997 and 2006: The Health Survey for England. British Journal of Sports Medicine.
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Robert Jadin's "Venomous Snakes" slithers into CU's Museum of Natural History
Slither up to Boulder tonight to hear herpetologist Robert Jadin lecture on "Venomous Snakes," including a new breed of pit-viper snakes belonging to the genus crotalus. "Many different biodiversities exist and have yet to be discovered," he says. Earth has just as much to be discovered on the surface as in the ocean."
Jadin has always been interested in snakes, and says he has no fear of them. But he confesses to being afraid of large felines and mammals, having encountered a growling jaguar during his studies in Peru.
Jadin started to study snakes officially back in 2003. "I look forward to finding out more about these fascinating animals," he says. "My plans after graduating with a Ph.D. are to work as a university professor where I can continue teaching about amphibian and reptile biodiversity, evolution and conservation."
He will be discussing his latest findings, a new genus of pit-vipers, along with four more species during "Venomous Snakes," his lecture that starts at 7 p.m. tonight at the University of Colorado's Museum of Natural History in Boulder. For more information, visit cumuseum.colorado.edu
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The Ministry of Education and Training asked high schools to carry out career guidance curriculum since 2006, emphasizing the importance of career education.
Career guidance gives more information to parents and students about career opportunities, thus helping them choose the careers suitable to their ability, health and hobbies. Students can draw up long term plan to follow to obtain their goals. If they exactly know what study majors they would follow, they would be able to prepare themselves soon to get adapted to the new circumstances.
However, though recognizing the importance of career education, no school has paid appropriate attention to the work. In general, the career guidance hours are assigned to head teachers, or the teachers, who have few teaching hours. Therefore, no one spends time on preparing lesson plans for career guidance hours, once they have to spend too much time on other compulsory works.
A survey by the Vietnam Education Science Institute has found out that 70 percent of high school students do not receive career education.
Most students kept quiet when they were asked about the career education curriculum for 10th graders. No 11th grader could answer the question, saying that they would only decide what they would become when they finish the 12th grade.
A student surprised his teacher when asking what subjects he needs to learn more intensively to attend the university entrance exams, if he wants to become an officer in the banking and finance sector.
“What subjects are you keen on?” – the teacher asked the question. “I still don’t know,” the student replied.
The problem of many high school students now is that they do not know what they would study and what jobs they would take. A lot of students said the same thing that they would ask others or their parents to decide what to do next after finishing high school.
It’s quite a popular thing at high schools that students do not have adequate information about career opportunities. Meanwhile, the career guidance book compiled by the Ministry of Education and Training only provides basic information and mentions the most popular career in the society.
As a result, a lot of students register to attend A-group exams (mathematics, physics and chemistry), simply because this is the most popular exam group. Meanwhile, they do not know what they need, and do not care about if they have capability to take the jobs.
Especially, students and parents nowadays do not have information about their job opportunities, because they cannot find the information about the training structure and the manpower demand.
Educators, after being criticized for the problem, have been trying to bridge employers and students by organizing the meetings, where employers can show their demand and students can raise questions to know what they want to know.
In general, high schools invite the representatives of universities and junior colleges to the schools to give advices directly to students. However, the meetings are not enough for universities to provide useful information about their training majors.
It happens that after the meetings, school yards become the “rubbish dumps” with a lot of leaflets and ad papers delivered by universities and enterprises. Meanwhile, students leave the meetings with no useful information obtained. Thu Uyen
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