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As the lame-duck Congress wraps up business, a serious debate is unfolding over the future of the US nuclear weapons complex. For the first time since the end of World War II, the long-held policy that places control of the design and production of nuclear weapons in civilian hands may be up for grabs. At issue: What is to be done with the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), now located inside the US Department of Energy?
Created by Congress in 1999, the NNSA was granted semi-autonomous status within the Energy Department, with its own separate bureaucracy, in the hope that this structure would provide the agency the freedom to fix lapses in security at the national weapons labs. The agency is responsible for the maintenance and modernization of the US nuclear warhead stockpile, the operation of research laboratories and nuclear and non-nuclear weapons production sites, and the management of nuclear non-proliferation activities and naval reactors.
Management of the labs had come into question after members of Congress concluded -- wrongly, as it turned out -- that secrets on the US hydrogen bomb program had been passed on to China by a Los Alamos employee. But there were a host of other security, safety, and financial problems at the labs, and the agency's chief sponsor, then-US Senator Pete Domenici, reasoned that "this new agency provided an opportunity to significantly improve the management of security, as well as all other areas, in the [Energy] Department."
After that, however, the safety and security situation in the nation's nuclear weapons complex grew worse, not better.
At the end of 2011, the Energy Department's inspector general found that NNSA management was fundamentally broken, consisting of "a costly set of distinctly separate … operations that often duplicate existing [Energy Department] functions." The inspector general urged the government to establish a process to close and consolidate Energy Department labs, similar to the method by which the Defense Base Realignment and Closure Commission has decommissioned hundreds of military bases since the late 1980s.
But directors of the weapons labs -- and, until his retirement in 2008, Domenici himself -- argued that outside meddling was the main problem, and the Energy Department should have less responsibility for overseeing the safety, security, and financial matters of the NNSA. And, in the summer of 2012, the House Armed Services Committee adopted this same view, passing legislation that would eliminate DOE oversight and enforcement of safety, security and financial requirements, grant unprecedented governmental oversight of budgets and nuclear arms policies to the contractors that run the Los Alamos, Sandia, and Lawrence Livermore national laboratories, diminish decades-old standards for nuclear safety; and weaken the Defense Nuclear Facility Safety Board, established by Congress in 1988 as an independent overseer of nuclear safety.
The modern-day security equation. Part of the fiscal 2013 defense authorization bill, the House legislation would restore the Cold War management system known as "least interference," which largely shifts the burden of safety, security, and financial compliance from the Energy Department to the contractors that perform most of the department's work. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) describes least interference as "an undocumented policy of blind faith in [government] contractors' performance." It's not without good reason that the NNSA remains prominent on GAO's list of "high risk" federal programs that are vulnerable to waste, fraud, and abuse.
The attempt to move the National Nuclear Security Administration out of the Energy Department and insulate the national labs from outside oversight was stalled in an unusual way this summer: Peace activists, including an 82-year-old nun, penetrated the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, which stores hundreds of tons of highly enriched uranium. Since then, the Senate has rejected the House's language on oversight of the weapons complex and has agreed to a provision that would create a commission to study how and where the complex should be managed.
One of the options on the table appears to be a transfer of the NNSA to the Defense Department, a shift that the Obama administration entertained in the past. For the first time since 1946, this possibility reopens a debate about whether the nation's nuclear weapons production and maintenance complex should be under civilian or military control. It's anything but a trivial debate. Many of the scientists who founded the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists argued ardently for civilian control in the wake of Hiroshima and Nagasaki -- and they won. The scientists contended that atomic energy was too destructive and important to leave in the hands of the military. The secrecy inherent to the military, the scientists felt, would thwart scientific discovery and prove to be a major obstacle to international control and cooperation.
The question to be decided now is whether, some 65 years and a long Cold War later, the security equation has changed in a way that requires a new arrangement for overseeing the complex that stores and maintains the United States' nuclear weapons.
The struggle for control of the weapons complex. For 50 years, the national laboratories and other facilities that design and maintain the US nuclear weapons stockpile enjoyed an elite national security status. But with the end of the Cold War, the design and the production of new nuclear weapons stopped, and dysfunction in the complex has increased as the NNSA struggled to keep the country's largest and most hazardous government-owned enterprise operating efficiently and securely.
Even after closing many major nuclear material production sites, the NNSA continues to preside over an antiquated infrastructure of weapons labs and other nuclear facilities that cost more than $500 million per year to maintain and repair. The Y-12 complex, for example, stopped production of nuclear weapons decades ago. Yet its annual budgets have more than doubled in order to maintain antiquated, oversized facilities that now handle a small number of weapons parts, store growing amounts highly enriched uranium from dismantled weapons, and process a large backlog of unstable HEU compounds. (Y-12's most notable recent achievement was to put an end to storing hundreds of tons of highly enriched uranium in a 66-year-old wooden building, 14 years after the Energy Department acknowledged its vulnerability to a major fire.)
For nearly 25 years, the government has tried to shrink the NNSA's footprint even as the agency was trying to build replacement facilities to fabricate nuclear weapons components and process excess plutonium for power reactors. These one-of-a-kind, high-hazard facilities have been plagued by delay and skyrocketing costs. A skilled workforce retiring in droves has not helped the downsizing and modernization effort.
Over the decades, the national laboratories – semi-autonomous, contractor-run components of the nuclear complex -- have not been shy about attempting to remain free of outside control. Lobbying by the nuclear weapons labs has gone largely unchecked; a White House official recently described the labs to me as being among "the biggest rogue elements in the US government." In 2009, for example, directors of the three labs overseen by the NNSA -- Sandia, Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore -- personally lobbied the White House to push for higher funding levels.
The administration subsequently announced plans to increase Energy Department nuclear weapons spending to nearly 70 percent above Cold War levels. Over the next 20 years, the NNSA informed Congress in 2011, the agency plans to spend more than $250 billion to maintain the US nuclear weapons stockpile and refurbish the weapons research and production complex. As the "fiscal cliff" looms, however, the Obama administration is trying to put on the financial brakes, threatening a veto that would block funding for a new plutonium-component manufacturing facility at Los Alamos. However, the House and Senate conferees have defied the president and authorized $3.7 billion for this facility. They also gave the weapons labs carte blanche to bypass the Energy Secretary in formulating the Nuclear Posture Review for the Obama administration – the nation's policy guidance for nuclear weapons.
It is not just the lab directors who have worked to loosen oversight of the NNSA and the labs.
In November 2009, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, a former national laboratory director, opposed a Defense Nuclear Facility Safety Board recommendation requiring contractors to comply with Energy Department safety requirements. This was the first time the department had spurned a safety recommendation in the 20-year history of the nuclear facility safety board. It also marked an extremely unusual position for Chu to take: In effect, the head of the Energy Department was arguing against his department's safety requirements at the national laboratories, which are run by outside contractors. Chu balked at the safety board recommendation because an Energy Department safety assessment for earthquake risks at a decades-old plutonium facility at Los Alamos indicated that it needed expensive upgrading due to its potentially extreme radiological hazards -- even as the Energy Department was trying to build its replacement, now estimated to cost almost $6 billion.
Following Chu's lead, Deputy Energy Secretary Daniel B. Poneman issued a directive in March 2010, allowing weapons contractors the flexibility to tailor their own safety and security programs. Shortly thereafter, safety board vice chairman John E. Mansfield wrote to Poneman, declaring that the directive "undermines the principles of providing adequate protection of the public, workers, and the environment from DOE's defense nuclear facility operations."
Although Poneman subsequently backed away from his directive, Chu refused to budge in his opposition to the board's recommendation. By law, the dispute had to be sent to congressional Armed Services Committees, where the complex safety and engineering judgments involved were refereed in a highly politicized environment. In effect, Chu gave Ohio Representative Mike Turner, chairman of the House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee, a platform to end Energy Department oversight of the nation's nuclear weapons facilities.
Days after the House committee voted to support these drastic changes, the White House, alerted by unions representing Energy Department workers, opposed the provisions, saying they "severely hamper external, independent oversight … require a weaker standard of contractor governance, management, and oversight, and eliminate DOE's flexibility to determine the appropriate means of assessing the unique risks that it confronts in its facilities."
Despite White House opposition, Turner prevailed, and the Republican leadership rammed the bill through the House in May, blocking all relevant amendments and floor debate.
Who should oversee the weapons complex? The effort to move the NNSA out of the Energy Department and greatly diminish outside oversight of national labs and other parts of the weapons development complex came off the tracks late in July, when three peace activists, including an 82-year-old nun, got past multiple barriers and trained snipers guarding a facility that stores hundreds of tons of highly enriched uranium at the Y-12 National Security Complex. The Energy Department and the National Nuclear Security Administration had been made aware of contractor security deficiencies at Y-12 two years earlier, but did not fix them.
At a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing in September, Texas Representative Joe Barton asked the nun, Megan Rice, who was seated in the audience, to stand. "That young lady there brought a holy Bible (to the plant)," Barton said. "If she had been a terrorist, the lord only knows what could have happened."
With the myth of contractor competence punctured, the Senate passed a resolution rejecting the House provisions to end Energy's oversight and also has agreed to an amendment, sponsored by senators Jon Kyl and Tom Udall, that would create a panel to make recommendations on how the weapons complex should be managed, and by what agency. Congress is expected to take action on the defense authorization bill before it adjourns on December 24; the final version of the bill includes this advisory panel, which is to make an interim report in six months and a final report by February 2014.
Among the many possibilities to be considered on this panel is the transfer of the NNSA to the Defense Department. Shortly after President Obama took office, the White House initiated a process to consider such a shift. The New York Times editorialized in favor of the move, but stiff public opposition from the nuclear weapons labs and congressional supporters led the White House to shelve the effort. But now it's likely being dusted off.
In 1946, scientists -- including many who founded the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists -- banded together in a major political effort to prevent the military from maintaining its control over atomic energy. Before the atomic bombs were dropped on Japan, prominent scientists sought to warn President Truman of the consequences of nuclear weapons use, including a nuclear arms race that threatened humanity. They carried their concerns into the congressional debate over the post-war development and control over atomic energy, helping to convince Congress to pass the 1946 Atomic Energy Act that created the civilian Atomic Energy Commission.
But decades have passed since the end of the Cold War, and nuclear weapons no longer hold the high status they once did, particularly in a US military establishment facing an era of budget austerity. The continuing battle over management of the nation's aging and bloated nuclear weapons complex raises a series of serious questions: Will putting the National Nuclear Security Administration in the Defense Department have a streamlining effect, forcing the nuclear weapons program to compete with higher priorities, such as readiness and personnel? Or will putting the weapons research, production, and maintenance complex under Pentagon control open the way to ever-higher spending on the weapons complex, and even less oversight of its safety and security? Would the weapons complex facilities now owned by the Energy Department actually be transferred to Pentagon control? Would the Defense Department even want the facilities, many of which include large amounts of nuclear waste and radioactively contaminated property in need of extraordinarily expensive remediation?
How this will play out is not clear. But prospects have improved for creation of a congressional commission that would make recommendations on the National Nuclear Security Administration's future, and the door appears to be opening, for the first time in more than two generations, for a public debate about the institutional fate of nuclear weapons in the United States. It's a debate worth having. The disposition of the NNSA is more than a bureaucratic turf battle; it could well determine the future size and scope of the US nuclear arsenal. Given that military nuclear spending now dominates the Energy Department budget, a shift in management of the weapons complex may also allow that department the first real opportunity, since it was created in 1977, to focus on its original mission: The ushering in of a new energy future for the United States. | <urn:uuid:d61ddefd-40c0-422c-b006-310f4bc7175d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/features/who-should-manage-the-nuclear-weapons-complex | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95571 | 2,901 | 2.28125 | 2 |
CLEARWATER — Brock Mealer is a 26-year-old Ohio man who walks with the help of two canes despite being paralyzed three years ago in a horrific Christmas Eve traffic crash.
He was given a 1 percent chance of ever walking again.
On Wednesday, he met someone else who has overcome big odds to survive and thrive: Winter the dolphin, who lost her tail in a crab trap but now swims with a prosthetic tail.
Mealer, of Wauseon, Ohio, was a guest Wednesday at the Clearwater Marine Aquarium, where he got up close and personal with the dolphin that has been an inspiration to children and adults with medical conditions or handicaps.
Mealer slipped into a wet suit and with a little help, sat on a platform inside the tank to see, touch, feed and have a bit of fun with Winter.
"I know dolphins are such smart animals," Mealer said. "I thought at some time Winter must have wondered if she'd make it or if she was going to die."
Mealer admits he knows the feeling.
He felt a connection the moment he watched video of Winter, who lost her mother and her tail after being caught in a crab trap line on Florida's east coast in 2005. She was brought to the Clearwater Marine Aquarium for rehabilitation and ultimately to be fitted with the prosthetic tail.
Mealer lost his father, David, and the ability to walk when a 90-year-old driver ran a stop sign and crashed into his family's SUV. Mealer was left paralyzed from the waist down.
"The doctor operated on me for 8 1/2 hours," Mealer said. "I have a titanium plate in my wrist, titanium and 17 screws in my back. Faith in God and constant support from my family and friends got me through. I believed I could walk again knowing they'd always believed I could."
Both the man and the dolphin have endured countless hours of physical therapy and rehabilitation. Each also has become an inspiration.
Winter, with her prosthetic tail, is the star of Dolphin Tale, a major motion picture including big name stars Morgan Freeman and Ashley Judd that tells her story of survival.
Mealer has begun to walk and make news of his own.
Because his brother, Elliott, plays football at the University of Michigan, the Wolverines' strength and conditioning coaches have worked relentlessly with Mealer to enable him to beat the overwhelming odds and walk again.
He did so in a big way Sept. 4 when, with the assistance of his two canes, he led the Wolverines onto the field during the team's home opener as cheers rose from the crowd of more than 113,000.
"To know so many people supported me felt incredible," Mealer said. "When Coach (Rich) Rodriguez gave me the goal (last spring) of leading the team onto the field, I wasn't sure I could make it. Walking onto that field was a great moment. A celebrated victory for my family."
Mealer's mother, Shelly, and Elliott, an offensive lineman, walked beside him. Elliott not only lost his father in the accident, but his girlfriend, Hollis Richer, 17.
Mealer's story came to the attention of Tom Orr, past board chairman of the aquarium who also happens to be a Michigan fan. He made contact with Mealer through Facebook and later met him when Michigan hosted Iowa earlier this year.
He told Mealer about Winter and invited him to see the dolphin if he got to Florida.
Bingo. It just so happened that he was coming to Jacksonville to see his brother play in the Gator Bowl in Jacksonville on Friday. So he decided to make a side trip to Clearwater. "It worked out that I could see Winter," he said.
Winter strutted her stuff for him too, waving at him and splashing him and the trainers.
The 80,000-gallon, 9-foot deep tank, in which 5-year-old Winter and her 35-year-old adopted dolphin mother Panama swim, was originally created as part of the Dolphin Tale movie set.
"Normally the production crew would create a temporary set, then tear it down and leave town, but Alcon Entertainment and Warner Brothers allowed us to keep the tank," said David Yates, the aquarium's CEO. "They paid two-thirds of the $400,000 cost. We paid the rest. Now we have a permanent structure to use for perpetuity."
The aquarium was closed to the public for two months for filming of the 3D movie. It reopened Dec. 15.
"The major underwater scenes in the movie were shot in this tank," Yates said. "When we filmed out here, we filmed through the windows, actually in the water with 3D cameras and above the water."
When Mealer left Winter's tank, he wore a big grin.
"There was something about looking into her eyes," he said. "That was awesome." | <urn:uuid:98c45849-0493-422d-a248-09919ba2be33> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tampabay.com/news/humaninterest/once-paralyzed-ohio-man-meets-clearwaters-winter-the-dolphin/1142467 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982843 | 1,037 | 1.632813 | 2 |
Composer George Frederick Root wrote many popular Civil War songs, including The Vacant Chair and Just Before the Battle, Mother. Both of those are sentimental pieces, but Root’s most famous contribution to Civil War music is a more rousing tune, The Battle Cry of Freedom. Root wrote The Battle Cry of Freedom in July of [...]
Probably the most famous poem about Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson is “Stonewall Jackson’s Way,” a poem that was set to music. The authorship of the poem is generally attributed to John Williamson Palmer, a doctor and writer who lived from 1825 until 1906. | <urn:uuid:ff8d31f8-51f4-4881-9196-31f68f8a8501> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ironbrigader.com/category/the-arts/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00071-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969399 | 135 | 3.34375 | 3 |
To obtain print-quality JPEGs, contact the Office of Public Affairs at (815) 753-1681 or e-mail firstname.lastname@example.org.
Contact: Tom Parisi, Office of Public Affairs
December 20, 2005
DeKalb, Ill. — Gerald Blazey, a distinguished research professor in the Department of Physics at Northern Illinois University, has been named a fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) in recognition for his leadership role in groundbreaking research at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia.
The distinction is awarded each year to no more than one-half of 1 percent of APS members.
Blazey is a resident of Kaneville. Since 2002, he has served as co-spokesperson of Fermilab’s DZero project, which brings together the expertise of more than 675 researchers from nearly 40 U.S. universities and 40 foreign institutions.
DZero is one of two proton/antiproton particle collider experiments at Fermilab, where scientists are exploring the subatomic universe using the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, known as the Tevatron. The Tevatron effectively uses electric power with almost 1 trillion volts to hurl protons and antiprotons toward each other at nearly the speed of light in a four-mile underground ring. Scientists study the particle collisions for traces of matter that have never before been documented.
The APS cited Blazey "for leadership of the DZero experiment and the study of jet production at the Tevatron." Particle collisions produce jets—the manifestations of fundamental quarks, antiquarks and gluons (the particles that make up protons, antiprotons and neutrons).
"The systematic and complete study of jets at DZero was only possible because a great number of people worked together for many years," Blazey said. "I would like to thank all of my collaborators at DZero and Fermilab for the opportunities to participate in the studies and the entire Tevatron program."
In addition to his work at Fermilab, Blazey serves as co-director of the Northern Illinois Center for Accelerator and Detector Development (NICADD). The NIU center is dedicated to the development of a new generation of particle accelerators and detectors. | <urn:uuid:a53c2ed5-abd5-42d4-a4f8-c39af7188dae> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.niu.edu/PubAffairs/RELEASES/2005/dec/blazey.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00070-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.917776 | 481 | 2.25 | 2 |
48°34' / 21°16'
Translation of the
Sena chapter from
Pinkas Hakehillot Slovakia
Translation of the
Edited by Yehoshua Robert Buchler and Ruth Shashak
Published by Yad Vashem
Published in Jerusalem, 2003
Published by Yad Vashem
Published in Jerusalem, 2003
Project Coordinator and Translator
Our sincere appreciation to Yad Vashem
This is a translation from: Pinkas Hakehillot Slovakia: Encyclopedia of Jewish Communities, Slovakia,
Edited by Yehoshua Robert Buchler and Ruth Shashak, published by Yad Vashem, Jerusalem.
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(Hungarian: Szina) A village in the district of Kosice, in the of Abov Region, in eastern Slovakia
A settlement on the border of Hungary, first mentioned in 1249, as the property of noblemen. In the 14th century Sena was permitted to hold market and fair days and in the 16th century received rights of a city and district assemblies were held there. In the 17th century Turks invaded there, plundering them many times, and burned many homes. Most of the Sena inhabitants were Hungarian, and Slovaks were in the minority, most of them Catholics like the rest. They made their living by agriculture and working on estates. In the 19th century, several factories were established for the production of agricultural products, however, its agricultural character was unchanged. Even in the period of the Czechoslovak Republic there were no significant changes. In November 1938, Sena was annexed to Hungary. In January 1945, at the time of its liberation, much destruction had taken place.
History of the Community
It seems that the first Jews to settle in Sena arrived about the middle of the 18th century, from observation of the tombstones that were erected dating from the years 1749-1764, in the local cemetery that appears to have served all Jews of the district. In the 1768 list of taxpayers, three heads of households are noted as Jews, who lived in the homes of the noblemen and paid them 9 Florins tax. The Sena Jews made their living from peddling and visited the town markets in the Abauj region. The number of Jews in the town grew gradually, and according to local tradition, in the second half of the 18th century, a Jewish community (kehila) was established to which Jews in neighboring villages also joined. In the 1880s in Sena, a synagogue was established with a section for women, and at its entrance a study hall (bet-midrash). Even before that, in the middle of the 18th century, Sena had a ritual bath (mikvah) and a burial society (chevra kadisha). The kehila employed a ritual slaughterer (shochet), who also served as a teacher and the leader of prayer services.
Throughout the 19th century, the Sena kehila grew and in the middle of the century, a rabbi led it, who also served Jews in 13 neighboring settlements. The kehila maintained a Talmud Torah and elementary school in which dozens of children from the whole area learned. With the split of the Hungarian communities, the Sena kehila joined with the orthodox communities. During the years 1885-1894, the head of the rabbinate was Rabbi Shimon EHRENFELD, grandson of the Chasam Sofer, a superb orator, who afterward moved to the rabbinate in Michalovce (q.v.) and was considered one of the important rabbis of the country. During his leadership, Sena reached the pinnacle of its growth, to almost 300 people. At the beginning of the 20th century, there was an increasing trend among the young people in particular, to move to the larger cities, and the kehila began to diminish in size.
After World War I, the Sena kehila still counted 230 members, including the neighboring settlements. David RONAI was its leader, and in the 1920s, Rabbi Tuvia Yisrael SCHWEIGER was the head of the rabbinate. In 1922, the kehila's budget was 6,000 Kronen, with 50 heads of households paying the community taxes and employing three workers. The kehila engaged in social welfare as well as the chevra kadisha and charitable organizations. In 1923, the kehila's rules were renewed and approved. The kehila had a synagogue, cemetery, ritual bath with an apartment for the shochet, and a classroom that served for religious instruction. In 1929, the old synagogue was refurbished and enlarged and next to it were a community center and an apartment for the rabbi. In the 1920s, a branch of the National Jewish Party was established. In the elections of 1928, the party received 40 votes for the local council.
Jews of Sena made a living from trade and agriculture. They owned four grocery shops, a tavern, a butcher shop, warehouse for wood and building materials, a leather shop, an alcohol production plant and a flour mill. Among the Jews were three owners of large agricultural farms, and farmers who farmed smaller fields, two merchants who sold agricultural products, two shoemakers and a doctor the regional doctor, Sr. Samuel JONAP.
Leopold RÉTHY, born in Sena in 1852, was a world-renowned ear-nose-and-throat doctor, who was also a professor in the University of Vienna.
The Holocaust Period
After Sena's annexation to Hungary, the authorities pursued the Jews. Gradually their work permits were taken away from them and they had to rely on assistance from the social welfare institutions in Kosice (q.v.). In 1941 many men were drafted for the work force and sent to forced labor. After the Germans conquered Hungary on 19 March 1944, only 80 Jews remained in the town. On April 18 1944, the Hungarian gendarmerie rounded up the Jews next to the synagogue. From there, they were taken to the the Kosice ghetto and joined the transport that left on 16 May 1944 for Auschwitz. Among the deportees was Rabbi Tuvia Yisrael SCHWEIGER and his family.
After the war, just a few survivors of the camps returned to Sena, but shortly after they all moved to Kosice. The synagogue was destroyed during the war. The cemetery was neglected and some of the tombstones were destroyed.
Barca is a village near Sena. At the end of the 18th century, a Jewish community was established there that was associated with the rabbinate of Sena. After World War I, 120 Jews lived there. The community had a synagogue, cemetery, and ritual bath, and employed a shochet, who also served as a teacher of religion and leader of prayers. The Jews of Barca were deported the second half of the month of May 1944 via Kosice to Auschwitz.
Moreshet Archive Givat Chaviva, A/1024.
Cohen, Yeshivot Hungaria (Hungarian Yeshivas), Vol. 2, p.39.
Bárkány-Dojč, pp. 397-400
MHJ, vols. VII, XVI
Schweitzer, p. 47
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(1) Photoheterotrophs` (or `photoorganotrophs`) are heterotrophic organisms which use light for energy, but cannot use carbon dioxide as their sole carbon source. Consequently, they use organic compounds from the environment to satisfy their carbon requirements. Examples are purple non-sulfur bacteria, green non-sulfur bacteria and heliobacteria.
(2) An organism that depends on light for most of its energy and principally on organic compounds for its carbon. … Compare: photoautotroph, photolithotroph, phototroph. | <urn:uuid:e1110bb1-3f27-4793-901a-67ea4c7a7570> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.lymphedemapeople.com/wiki/doku.php?id=glossary:photoheterotrophs | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00045-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.909431 | 120 | 2.890625 | 3 |
CHAPTER IX. SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE AMONG THE ROMANS.
But the Greeks, after all, were the only people of antiquity who elevated astronomy to the dignity of a science. They however confessed that they derived their earliest knowledge from the Babylonian and Egyptian priests, while the priests of Thebes asserted that they were the originators of exact astronomical observations. [Footnote: Diod., i. 50.] Diodorus asserts that the Chaldeans used the Temple of Belus, in the centre of Babylon, for their survey of the heavens. [Footnote: Diod., ii. 9.] But whether the Babylonians or the Egyptians were the earliest astronomers, it is of little consequence, although the pedants make it a grave matter of investigation. All we know is, that astronomy was cultivated by both Babylonians and Egyptians, and that they made but very limited attainments. The early Greek philosophers, who visited Egypt and the East in search of knowledge, found very little to reward their curiosity or industry; not much beyond preposterous claims to a high antiquity, and an esoteric wisdom which has not yet been revealed. They approximated to the truth in reference to the solar year, by observing the equinoxes and solstices, and the heliacal rising of particular stars. Plato and Eudoxus spent thirteen years in Heliopolis for the purpose of extracting the scientific knowledge of the priests, but they learned but little beyond the fact that the solar year was a trifle beyond three hundred and sixty-five days. No great names have come down to us from the priests of Babylon or Egypt. No one gained an individual reputation. The Chaldean and Egyptian priests may have furnished the raw material of observation to the Greeks, but the latter alone possessed the scientific genius by which indigested facts were converted into a symmetrical system. The East never gave valuable knowledge to the West. It gave only superstition. Instead of astronomy, it gave astrology; instead of science, it gave magic and incantations and dreams - poison which perverted the intellect. [Footnote: Sir G. G. Lewis, Hist. of Anc. Astron., p. 293.] They connected their astronomy with divination from the stars, and made their antiquity reach back to two hundred and seventy thousand years. There were soothsayers in the time of Daniel, and magicians, exorcists, and interpreters of signs. [Footnote: Dan. i. 4, 17, 20.] They were not men of scientific research, seeking truth. It was power they sought, by perverting the intellect of the people. The astrology of the East was founded on the principle that a star or constellation presided over the birth of an individual, and either portended his fate, or shed a good or bad influence upon his future life. The star which looked upon a child at the hour of his birth, was called the horoscopus, and the peculiar influence of each planet was determined by professors of the genethliac art. The superstitions of Egypt and Chaldea unfortunately spread both among the Greeks and Romans, and these were about all that the western nations learned from the boastful priests of occult science. Whatever was known of real value among the ancients, is due to the earnest inquiries of the Greeks.
[Researches of the Greeks.] | <urn:uuid:11095b76-1507-4c28-9106-84b2bbf0b29a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://historion.net/old-roman-world/chapter-ix-scientific-knowledge-among-romans?page=4 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966518 | 684 | 3.265625 | 3 |
Canada is expected Tuesday morning to introduce legislation relating to a government report that highlighted shortfalls in freight railroad service.
It’s not clear what the amendment to the Canada’s Transportation Act entails. The Freight Rail Service Review, released in 2011, found two-thirds of surveyed shippers lost money because of poor service. Canadian Pacific and Canadian National railways have since made improvements, but some shippers argue the changes haven't gone far enough.
The Coalition of Rail Shippers, a coalition of 17 shippers associations, wants the government to set a minimum level stand of services and to provide arbitration when mediations between carriers and shippers fail. The rail industry contends such a measure could push them into unfair contracts that would disrupt their networks, resulting in poorer overall service. The legislation likely would affect bulk shippers, not intermodal customers. | <urn:uuid:88612da1-473b-415d-8162-d1c4883929e2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.joc.com/rail-intermodal/international-rail/canada-expected-introduce-rail-legislation-tuesday_20121210.html?qt-webcasts_podcasts_whitepapers=0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960563 | 173 | 1.945313 | 2 |
Prescribed burns planned for Pisgah
Published: Wednesday, February 6, 2013 at 1:30 p.m.
Last Modified: Tuesday, February 5, 2013 at 9:30 p.m.
The Forest Service plans to restore between 8,000 and 10,000 acres of the Nantahala and Pisgah national forests in 2013 using prescribed burning, said Forest Supervisor Kristin Bail with the National Forests in North Carolina.
"Fire has been part of Southern Appalachian forests for thousands of years, and we've learned that putting out every fire creates a buildup of forest debris, putting communities at risk and threatening forest health," said Bail. "Using prescribed burns, we can mimic what would occur naturally and restore native trees and plants like table mountain pine and mountain golden heather, which are fire-tolerant."
By using low- to medium-intensity prescribed burns, Forest Service employees plan to reduce overgrown vegetation and woody debris that could cause high-intensity wildfires that threaten lives, homes and public infrastructure. Catastrophic wildfires degrade forest health by scorching soils and killing many mature trees and other desirable plant species. Prescribed burning will result in healthier forests that are less congested, more biologically diverse and more resilient to threats from invasive plants and pests, such as southern pine beetle.
"Prescribed burning is essential for restoring our forests that are adapted to fire," said Gordon Warburton, mountain ecoregion supervisor for the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission. "Fire creates habitats that provide sprouts and berries, which are important food sources for wildlife. We must also remember that fire is critical for maintaining many oak species that produce acorns for wildlife."
All prescribed burns are completed by trained wildand fire professionals in accordance with detailed plans, which include desired weather conditions and other strict safety parameters, as well as modeling to reduce the effects of smoke.
"Safety is the top priority of our prescribed burning program," said Bail. "We take the safety of neighbors and the health of our forests very seriously."
For more information on prescribed burning in the Nantahala and Pisgah national forests, visit www.fs.usda.gov/nfsnc and click on "Restoring Fire to the Mountains."
Reader comments posted to this article may be published in our print edition. All rights reserved. This copyrighted material may not be re-published without permission. Links are encouraged. | <urn:uuid:9d2d9dbf-21dd-49f4-97df-44937dfdb726> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.blueridgenow.com/article/20130206/ARTICLES/130209912/1022/placead | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947903 | 498 | 3.109375 | 3 |
Taken from Socialist Voice, June 2012 by NC, who is responding to criticism of a review of Andrew Kliman’s book The Failure of Capitalist Production written in the January edition of SV. Thanks to Eugene and NC for allowing us to publish it here.
In the the April and May issues of Socialist Voice an opinion article raised a number of questions about an article on economics in the January issue. It proposed that the review of Andrew Kliman’s book The Failure of Capitalist Production counterposed the “declining rate of profit” thesis with the Monthly Review thesis of “financialisation.” It proposed in turn that distinctions between the competing explanations are exaggerated and are reconcilable. Yet this misses important points of demarcation. Furthermore, the subsequent counter-explanation advanced has a number of shortcomings for understanding crisis in capitalism.
Too much or too little surplus value?
The first matter is whether there is indeed a significant difference between the Monthly Review approach and those scholars who emphasise profit cycles. Fundamentally, the Monthly Review thesis represents a theory of “under-consumption.” As a consequence, this thesis views the cause of economic crisis in capitalism as emanating from the excessive exploitation of workers: that is, crisis and stagnation are a result of the rate of surplus value being too high. According to the “under-consumptionist” thesis, capital has appropriated lots of surplus value but it cannot ultimately find enough buyers for the vast quantity of commodities it is able to produce; the spread between surplus and variable capital is highly skewed towards the former.
So it is a problem of investment realisation. The result is either acute economic crisis at periodic intervals or long-term economic stagnation, with many workers and machines lying idle. This is pretty close to the Monthly Review thesis, although it should be noted that in their explanatory framework they do not use core Marxist economic categories such as surplus value or indeed the labour theory of value. In contrast, other radical economists, from Henryk Grossman to Andrew Kliman and Alan Freeman, have tended to emphasise a different set of variables in explaining capitalist crisis.
Crucially, this school sees the cause of crises as being the exact opposite of what the Monthly Review school and other under-consumptionists claim it is. The “falling rate of profit” school holds that it is an insufficient rate of surplus value that leads to acute capitalist economic crises. Too little, as opposed to too much, surplus value is being produced for the needs of the capitalist system. The problem is not that there is too much surplus value, with few profitable investment outlets, but the realisation of surplus value itself.
Conceptual demarcations matter
Conceptually, these two theses of crisis theory are completely opposed to one another. Furthermore, the two theses might lead to quite different political conclusions.
The “under-consumption” thesis implies that if a more equal distribution of the national income can be achieved under capitalism- a lower rate of surplus value – the problem of crises and mass unemployment can be overcome within the capitalist system.
This indeed was the position of Paul Sweezy, the intellectual founder of the Monthly Review school. Writing in 1995, he argued:
If my analysis of the performance of the U.S. economy during the last sixty years is accepted, to what policy conclusions does it point? . . . Public ownership of the means of production and planning to meet the needs of all the people [won't be] a serious option . . . any time soon. The question should therefore be reformulated: what could be done within the framework of the private-enterprise system to make it work better?
The second indispensable change needed to make the private-enterprise economy work better is a redistribution of wealth and income towards greater equality. We live in a period in which an unprecedented and growing share of society’s income accrues to corporations and wealthy rentiers, while the share of the underlying population stagnates or declines.
This implies a permanent imbalance between society’s potential for adding to its stock of capital and its flagging consumer power . . . Would the capitalist class as a whole, in extremis, be willing to give up half of what it has to save the other half? I have a feeling that the fate of the private-enterprise system may depend on the answer to this question. ["Reminiscences," Monthly Review, May 1995.]
There is indeed continuity with this political stance in the current efforts of Monthly Review to project a “21st-century socialism” that, unpacked, is more radical social democracy rather than Marxian socialism. The “falling rate of profit” thesis, in contrast, implies that the only way out of a capitalist crisis is through an increase in the rate of exploitation of workers.
Here too the crisis problem might in theory be overcome within the framework of capitalism, but only by greatly increasing the rate of surplus value. This, however, implies an explosive intensification of the class struggle (which is precisely what we are seeing now in Ireland and beyond).
Aside from this, other issues are evident in the opinion article that are worth revisiting. One is the argument advanced about the notion of falling consumption capacity on the part of the working class, which in time¡ªadmittedly in confluence with other variables¡ªleads to a generalised crisis of capitalism. Intuitively, there is some logic to this argument: if workers’ pay or share of income (or both) are falling, personal consumption demand will tend to fall (unless it is offset by something else, such as credit).
This reduces profits, and sets the stage for an economic crisis or recession. However, this thesis is problematic when we consider that a decline in personal consumption demand can be offset by a rise in another component of demand, for example investment demand. Investment demand consists of spending by businesses to build such things as factories, machinery, and so on.
So if investment demand rises, and the increase is large enough to offset the fall in personal consumption demand, a decline in wages, or workers’ share of income, does not lead to a decline in total demand and therefore does not lead to an economic crisis.
Of course “under-consumptionists” would counter that investment demand cannot grow faster than personal consumption demand in the long run: ultimately, consumers have to buy the stuff. This, however, ignores the fact that a significant section of demand within capitalism is internal to capital, i.e. capitalists selling to each other within “closed circuits.” Mining companies, for example, sell iron to companies that use the iron to make steel; steel companies sell the steel to companies that use it to build mining equipment; companies that build mining equipment sell to the mining companies.
The production of consumer goods and the demand for them typically rises less rapidly than the production of and demand for investment goods. Indeed, if we take the empirical evidence from the world’s largest capitalist economy – the United States – this is what has happened. Since the 1980s (and up to 2009) real investment demand or productive demand grew 73-fold; personal consumption only 15-fold (Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis, www.bea.gov). So investment demand grew five times as rapidly as consumption demand. Thus consumption demand is not wholly pivotal to the workings of capitalist crisis.
Furthermore, productive investment has not stagnated irreversibly since the late 1960s but has fluctuated in line with wider profit cycles.
Financialisation, fictitious value, and the dangers of one case
Questions might be raised about the idea that capitalism has reached a new stage, defined not by commodity production but by money simply creating more money (M-M?). If this is so, then we are no longer living in a capitalist mode of production.
Capitalism is commodity production (which is why the first chapter of volume 1 of Capital begins with commodities). If capitalism is not predominantly characterised by M-C-M? exchange, then it ceases to exist as we know it. If we live in an economy predominated by M-M? then we live in a fairyland of fictitious value, where everything is ethereal and no value is created.
Of course the only reason M-M? can exist is if it is grounded on M-C-M? . No economy can exist on M + M? alone: fictitious value at some point must have recourse to real value in the economy, real value being based on commodity production. In any case, much of the financialisation activity over the last twenty years or so has been rooted in actual productive investment, in utilities such as telecoms, for example, which belies the notion that financialisation must exclusively be indicative of some profit strategy at odds with real production.
Ultimately, financialisation and financial crisis have always accompanied capitalism (tulip mania in 1637, for example). Financialisation at some level indeed is necessary for lubricating the system of productive capitalism. To claim that it represents a new stage is to simply conflate what has been a process of intensification brought about not by stagnant productive investment (which is subject to cyclical waves) but by the deregulation of capital flows in the search for greater profitability.
Of course it is well known that financialisation profits have risen sharply compared with non-financials in the United States; but there has been an even more significant increase in profits from overseas production. Profits from productive sectors overseas have quadrupled since the 1950s, while financial profits have only doubled. (Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis, www.bea.gov).
In any case, we should be cautious about extrapolating evidence from the single case of the United States to make wider generalisations about the trajectory of international capitalism. Capitalism at the global level operates unevenly; and while American capitalism might be faced with a secular decline in profitability, this is hardly true of some of the other large economies in the world: India, Brazil, Russia, or China.
The thesis advanced in the opinion article, while containing much validity, is not without problems. Firstly, the conceptual demarcations between the Monthly Review school and the “falling rate of profit” thesis are not as superficial as implied. This is true at both the conceptual and the political level.
Secondly, the wider argument about the trajectory of contemporary capitalism and the genesis of the present crisis is based on three problematic features. The first is arguably based on a misspecification of effective demand by inflating the importance of personal consumption to capitalist growth.
The second problem is arguably based on misconceptualising fictitious value within capitalism; the third is based on an exaggeration of the significance of financialisation as a new stage within the development of capitalism.
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- - August 23, 2012 | <urn:uuid:ee55af4f-6cd0-43b0-bade-607f10e84fa2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.irishleftreview.org/2012/06/07/explaining-crisis-response/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00052-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943083 | 2,336 | 1.570313 | 2 |
John P. Cunha, DO, is a U.S. board-certified Emergency Medicine Physician. Dr. Cunha's educational background includes a BS in Biology from Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, and a DO from the Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences in Kansas City, MO. He completed residency training in Emergency Medicine at Newark Beth Israel Medical Center in Newark, New Jersey.
Mild headache symptoms are unlikely to need immediate medical attention. These symptoms include mild head pain that is aching, squeezing, or bandlike, on both sides of the head, generally above the level of the eyebrows.
These headaches can occur often and may appear at predictable times. People who have these types of mild headache often know the triggers and symptoms of their headaches because the pattern repeats itself for each episode.
Common headache types include the following:
Tension-type headache is thought to be the most common headache type. It occurs more often in women than in men. Attacks can be occasional or more frequent. Symptoms include tight, or pressing, mild-to-moderate head pain, which may be on both sides. Pain usually radiates from the neck and the back of the head around the sides.
Migraine is the second most common headache type. These are classified according to whether or not they include an aura (a visual disturbance, weakness, or numbness that occurs 1 to 2 hours before the onset of the headache). Migraines with this aura are called classic, while those without are called common. Migraine is more common in women than men. It is often one-sided, throbbing, of moderate-to-severe intensity. The headache may be accompanied by nausea, vomiting, and sensitivity to light.
Cluster headache is a less common headache that occurs in men more often than women. With a cluster headache, there is intense pain that is generally on one side and located around the eye or temple. A bloodshot eye, tearing, runny nose, and eyelid drooping or swelling on the same side of the face may also occur. The headaches tend to occur in "clusters," sometimes daily or every few days over a period of weeks to months. After such a "cluster" of headaches, there may be symptom-free periods of years before another cluster of headaches occurs. | <urn:uuid:40e3d9cf-6d5f-4a4c-8273-34acc91a87a5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.emedicinehealth.com/mild_headache/page3_em.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00056-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94795 | 479 | 2.875 | 3 |
Safeguarding inheritance and enhancing the resilience of orphaned young people living in child- and youth-headed households in Tanzania and Uganda
Evans, R. (2012) Safeguarding inheritance and enhancing the resilience of orphaned young people living in child- and youth-headed households in Tanzania and Uganda. African Journal of AIDS Research, 11 (3). pp. 177-189. ISSN 1608-5906
Official URL: http://www.ajol.info/index.php/ajar/article/view/8...
This paper explores the resilience of orphaned young people in safeguarding the physical assets (land and property) that they inherited from their parents and in sustaining their households without a co-resident adult relative. Drawing on the concept of resilience and the sustainable livelihoods framework, this paper analyses the findings of an exploratory study conducted with 15 orphaned young people heading households,18 of their siblings and 39 NGO workers and community members in Tanzania and Uganda. The research suggests that inherited land and property represent key determining factors in the formation and viability of child- and youth-headed households in both rural and urban areas. Despite experiences of stigma and marginalisation in the community, social networks were crucial in enabling young people to protect themselves and their property, in providing access to material and emotional resources and in enhancing their skills and capabilities to develop sustainable livelihoods. Support for child- and youth-headed households needs to recognise young people's agency and adopt a holistic approach to their lives that analyses the physical assets, material resources, human and social capital available to the household, as well as individual young people's wellbeing, outlook and aspirations. Alongside cash transfers and material support, youth-led collective mobilisation that is sustained over time may also help to build resilience and foster more supportive social environments that challenge property grabbing and the stigmatisation of child- and youth-headed households.
Repository Staff Only: item control page | <urn:uuid:c38d4f3b-5063-4fbc-b829-2260f65b1194> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://centaur.reading.ac.uk/29328/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937592 | 393 | 2.53125 | 3 |
Ever since the first days of elementary school and the promise of summer vacation, many of us have looked to the summer months with great anticipation. When we were younger, it was a time for seemingly endless play. Trips to the pool or lake. Playing outside with friends. Now that we’re older, many of us still look forward to summer as a time for vacations and activity. It’s a time to breathe freer. Rest. Relax. Pray. Slow down. Talk to God a little more.
Today, June 21, is the first official day of summer. As most of us know, summer goes fast. Faster still as we get older. In light of this, summertime becomes even more important as a time to replenish and to rest.
During his vacation at Castel Gandalfo in Italy in 2005, Pope Benedict XVI even mentioned this need for rest. “In the world in which we live, the need to be physically and mentally replenished has become as it were essential, especially to those who dwell in cities where the often frenzied pace of life leaves little room for silence, reflection and relaxing contact with nature. Moreover, holidays are days on which we can give even more time to prayer, reading and meditation on the profound meaning of life in the peaceful context of our own family and loved ones,” the busy pontiff said in an Angelus address.
It is easy to get caught up on the busyness of life and forget to rest. It is also easy to buy in to the belief that resting means you are somehow lazy or slacking off. Even on vacation we can get caught up in doing.
This summer, try and remember to rest for a moment or a day. When you are resting, take the time to talk to God or just to sit and listen for him. We need rest and we need him. In Matthew’s Gospel Jesus reminds us to rest in him. “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest” (Mt 11:28).
Last June, when preparing for his summer vacation, Pope Benedict spoke during a weekly general audience of this need to include God in our summer vacation time. “While at work, with its frenetic rhythms, and during vacation, we have to reserve moments for God. [We have to] open our lives up to him, directing a thought to him, a reflection, a brief prayer,”
Obviously we can’t spend our whole summer resting. That’s not practical. So take the family to a parish festival or across town to a unique shrine. You can find a listing of local events in our Around the Archdiocese section of the Catholic New World. There is lots of fun to be had in the archdiocese. Take yourself to the lake or to a spiritual talk. Wherever you go this summer or whatever you do, don’t forget to take God with you. | <urn:uuid:44262059-4565-491b-940f-c99b6ce55cbe> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.archchicago.org/Blog/print.aspx?postID=66 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978142 | 617 | 1.976563 | 2 |
There is much more to the ideas of Greek mathematician and philosopher Pythagoras than the famous theorem that bears his name. His belief that “all is number” asserts that there is a numerical explanation for everything we see as well as everything we cannot see. This belief, and the science that has been built upon Pythagoras’ work, has directed much of the study of the mathematics in our world for nearly two millennia.
Perhaps the best illustration of this principle that anything can be quantified, or expressed as numeric values, is found not in our world, but in the virtual world of computers. Even with Pythagoras’ intellect and insight, he would be impressed at the speed with which today’s computer programs crunch numbers to process data.
One of the most obvious examples within that world is in the area of computer graphics. Computer graphics is the term used to describe two-dimensional or three-dimensional objects and images that are produced with computer software using numerical data and complicated mathematical information.
A computer animator starts with little more than an idea. Everything after that—the objects, the way they move, their color, the scene behind them, and the lighting and shadows—has to be created from the nothingness of virtual space using the only language computers understand, numbers.
Your favorite video game, the movie effects you saw last week with friends, even the software applications on your home computer, all use numbers to create the images you see and to manipulate them based on your interactions.
Even though computers speak the “language of numbers,” their vocabulary is limited; they can’t count past one. Using a basic number base, known as binary, computer hardware sees the numerical value of a charged circuit as “1.” A circuit with no charge has a value of “0.” Billions of these circuits are structured in a certain way in the computer’s memory. This enables the computer to access incredibly large sets of numbers and perform intricate calculations.
The results are complex computer graphics based upon a basic binary system. Though the numbers being crunched in the computer’s memory can be extremely complex, the language used to create them is extremely basic. That elaborate 3-D animation that seems so real on the screen simply comes from a series of 0s and 1s.
To learn more about how technology affects us daily, check out The Impact of Technology: Society. | <urn:uuid:f8a5005f-ab58-4054-9d1f-1e057031df23> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.teachersdomain.org/resource/viewtext_printer_friendly/resource/9566 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00070-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956776 | 501 | 3.71875 | 4 |
Actress and author Sonia Manzano is perhaps best known for her ongoing role as Maria on Sesame Street; she joined the cast in the early 1970s. But she has also won 15 Emmy Awards as part of the show’s writing staff, and in 2004 she published her first children’s book, No Dogs Allowed!, illustrated by Jon J Muth (Atheneum). Another picture book, A Box Full of Kittens, illustrated by Matt Phelan, followed for Atheneum in 2007. Her new title, The Revolution of Evelyn Serrano (Scholastic), is something of a departure: a YA novel about a Puerto Rican girl awakened to political activism and to her cultural heritage while living in Spanish Harlem (El Barrio) in 1969.
Why did you want to write about the Young Lords, a short-lived Puerto Rican activist group in 1960s-70s New York City?
I thought it important to write about the power of youth. I remember seeing footage of Juan González [one of the group’s leaders], who is now at the [New York] Daily News. The group would shout things like ‘We think Puerto Rico should be independent –and kids should eat oatmeal!’ There was a sense of ‘We can do all this stuff!’ I’d forgotten about that. Kids do have a lot of the answers but they can’t always move things forward. There was so much youthful indignation: ‘What?! People are being unfair?!’ What they were doing seems so revolutionary. And they looked like Castro. I think people were afraid of them because of the way they looked.
How does the group fit into your latest book?
I have always been fascinated by things that were happening in 1969. Coincidentally, Sesame Street first aired in 1969 and one of the main curriculum goals of the show was that American children should know that Latins lived in America, and the Latin child should know that he is important in the world. Latins were totally invisible at the time. 1969 was the very beginning of Hispanics being public. It started with the Young Lords [they set garbage on fire to draw attention to a lack of sanitation services and occupied a church from which to offer the community help]. Everyone had a platform then; it was a time of idealism and change, and the status quo was being challenged. That small event had great impact. It feels like a perfect time to bring attention to it.
There seems to be a renewed spirit of activism in our country, reflected in the various Occupy movements over the past year or so. Do you have a philosophy about activism that you hope to convey to your readers?
Well, the Occupy movements seem to be about general discontent and not very specific. But there is a harshness in society nowadays. People are uncaring of other people; there is an incivility. It’s not the kind of society we would like to think of ourselves as being. If it [the book] makes kids look out for the other guy, that would be a good thing. There is also a great lack of critical thinking these days. People can’t see the gray in things; everything is black or white. [In the book,] at first Evelyn is thinking “either my mother is right or my grandmother is right.” But in the end, she says she hopes they are both right. Each has something she can take.
Your descriptions of El Barrio are particularly evocative. What is your personal experience with the neighborhood?
My grandmother lived on East 111th Street, right across from the church [First Spanish Methodist Church] seized by the Young Lords. I was raised in the Bronx, but we visited her often. When we would come across the Willis Avenue Bridge it was like Puerto Rico Central. I remember the food sold in the street; it was so exotic seeing all those fried foods. And I remember the congestion of people at the time, and the sadness of people gazing out the window. My grandmother’s maiden name was Serrano and she lived with my cousin Evelyn. Using their combined names in the book is another personal connection for me.
In addition to Evelyn’s political awakening, your book explores Evelyn’s connection to her heritage and cultural identity. Does this reflect your own experience?
I remember becoming politically aware and seeing myself in the big world, separate from my parents. I was 21. Evelyn is much younger, 14. The way she begins to see her family is because of her issue about being Latin. It reminds me of that movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding, when the main character recalls that she was the only kid in school with sideburns because she was Greek. It’s a universal problem that people from many cultures can relate to. [But] when you know your past, you can have a stronger future. You can at least understand your parents and grandparents better. My parents would always paint our kitchen turquoise and I wanted everything to be beige. When I went to Puerto Rico and saw all the bright colors, it hit me that my family was from the tropics. I realized how hard it must be for them to be indoors all the time in New York. We have so many old family photos taken up on the roof – it was just like West Side Story. It was my family’s way of being outside as much as possible.
Before becoming an author, your first professional success was as an actress on Sesame Street. How do the two art forms – acting and writing – compare for you?
When one acts there is a feeling of recklessness. “Know your lines and be ready to go” is something I learned from a Muppet person. I had always wanted to practice everything over and over. But this person said, “Let’s just go and not practice.” You can know the lines but still have room to just go with it and improvise some things. It worked really well on camera.
With writing it’s just the opposite. You ponder the word, look at the sentence, leave it alone for a while, then come back to it. It’s very particular – do I use an exclamation point or not?
You first entered the children’s book world as a picture book author. How was it to shift gears and write for an older audience?
I don’t have to spell everything out for older readers. They can infer and guess and put their own lives into it. I’m still learning the genre, but I’m happy to have such a wonderful editor in Andrea Pinkney.
What’s up next for you? Any new book projects you can talk about?
I love to write and I have been working on a memoir for a while. I’ve also been working on another memoir with a family member.
And I just did my first event for the new book, at La Casa Azul Bookstore on 103rd Street – a few blocks from where the Young Lords were demonstrating.
So it sounds like we’ll be learning more about Sonia Manzano. Is there any of you in Evelyn Serrano?
Yes. There is a lot of me in all the characters I write. There’s even some of me in Big Bird and Ernie and Bert when I write for them!
The Revolution of Evelyn Serranoby Sonia Manzano. Scholastic Press, $17.99 Sept. ISBN 978-0-545-32505-9 | <urn:uuid:44d08211-d2e8-42f5-bc2e-35670eae6125> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/authors/interviews/article/53924-q-a-with-sonia-manzano.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978341 | 1,576 | 2.453125 | 2 |
A BSW degree is different from other degrees such as psychology or sociology. It is a degree that trains you for a profession.
Only the BSW degree gives the graduate eligibility to apply for licensing as a social worker in the state of Minnesota. Anyone practicing social work in settings other than state, county, or local government must be licensed. Thus, a psychology or sociology degree is not sufficient for a career as a practitioner in social work. While there is overlap between the focus of psychology on the “person” and the sociology on the “environment of human society,” only social work programs offer extensive supervised internships in social service agencies. Thus, only the BSW program prepares students to practice.
A BSW degree is different from a two-year human services degree.
The BSW degree is a licensed degree recognized by the State of Minnesota for social work. Only graduates of an accredited social work program can practice social work.
The Augsburg BSW degree is a four-year degree (128 semester hours). The degree has been accredited since 1980 and prepares students for social work licensure. The G.P.A. minimum for applying is 2.2 on a 4-point scale. | <urn:uuid:13fd90f2-768f-41df-97b3-87711e0ba7d1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.augsburg.edu/socialwork/academic-overview/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954877 | 248 | 2.234375 | 2 |
David Segal is at it again. In his latest piece for The New York Times, he shifts the focus to the ABA and its detrimental impact on legal education. Segal notes that in order for a law school to even obtain provisional accreditation, it must meet a large number of standards, which inevitably raises tuition. Most states require a degree from an ABA-approved school in order to practice law, which leaves prospective lawyers with little choice when accruing debt in order to eventually find a job. And then to pay off those debts, they must earn an adequate salary, charging more than many in need of legal aid can afford. Segal points out the paradox: “The United States churns out roughly 45,000 lawyers a year, but survey after survey finds enormous unmet need for legal services, particularly in low- and middle-income communities.”
As opposed to other countries, in the U.S. there is generally only one option for legal services—hiring a lawyer trained by an ABA-approved law school. And many believe that ABA’s standards are “one-size-fits-all and overly rigid, which drives up the cost of both a diploma and of legal services.” For a school to be considered for provisional accreditation, it must be in operation for at least a year, which makes this whole process not only “expensive,” but “risky,” as well.
Segal brings up the case of Duncan School of Law, part of Lincoln Memorial University in Tennessee, which had been awaiting provisional accreditation. The school finds fault with the ABA’s methods, charging them for their raised expenses and tuition. However, as Above the Law points out, about half of Duncan’s budget goes to paying its faculty, which cannot be overlooked: “Segal does a lot to try to indirectly blame the high cost of professorial salaries on various rules, written and unwritten, about attaining ABA accreditation, but there’s no way to completely gloss over faculty greed and deans (who are themselves part of legal academia) being all too happy to keep paying into the system that keeps salaries high for all.” We cannot keep pointing fingers at different culprits in the case of exorbitant legal education, until faculty salaries are taken into account as well.
But, with all this blame directed at the ABA, it has “noted that it would be an antitrust violation to cap or limit the number of law schools.” So, one would expect the thumbs-up for Duncan. However, two days after the NYT article, the school was informed that the ABA had denied them provisional accreditation. Reasons for this move were not disclosed, but The National Law Journal reports that “the council had identified problems with the academic credentials of the school’s incoming students and the school’s ability to provide academic support to those students.” That’s not how Above the Law sees it: “The timing of this, three days after the New York Times published its article, creates the unmistakable impression that the ABA denied accreditation in retaliation for the school bitching to the Times.” Yet, apparently the ABA made their decision weeks before Duncan was notified.
Regardless of what transpired with Duncan, the NYT still brings up an important issue, one which is addressed by USC Law professor Gillian Hadfield. Instead of one avenue for training lawyers, Hadfield envisions “a range of options that would entail an array of educational degrees and a broad spectrum of prices and formats for legal services.” This way, those who want to work in the legal field but avoid hefty tuitions can do so, and everyone would be able to afford legal services at some level. Yet, Above the Law notes that this solution would “require a nationwide reinterpretation of legal services.” Plus, schools like Duncan Law would still want to train “full-service, do-it-all lawyers,” which is “very lucrative.” As it sums up, “the ABA doesn’t force prices to be high, so much as it refuses to require costs be controlled.” | <urn:uuid:dd868ec8-2f9d-4c98-b879-0501b4575cdf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.accepted.com/2012/01/25/is-the-aba-to-blame-for-the-high-cost-of-legal-education/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97569 | 880 | 1.734375 | 2 |
I work in a planning department at an English university so I'm duty bound to blog today on the new National Planning Policy Framework for England. It might sound a bit boring but it's likely to have significant implications for the built environment for years to come and it represents the biggest change to the planning system in England in a generation (or more).
What are the main changes? Well, much has been made of the reduction of planning policy guidance from more than 1,000 pages to around 50. That's one of the most obvious changes and there is certainly a good deal of simplification associated with the NPPF. It has 13 main sections (image below), from 'Building a strong, competitive economy' to 'Facilitating the sustainable use of minerals'. It also covers 'Protecting Green Belt land', which is something I've written about recently on this blog in relation to data.
I was interested to see that the Glossary (excellent as it is in many ways) does not include a definition of 'sustainable development' (the NPPF's key guiding principle). Instead, it says on p. 2 that:
"The purpose of the planning system is to contribute to the achievement of sustainable development. The policies in paragraphs 18 to 219, taken as a whole, constitute the Government's view of what sustainable development in England means in practice for the planning system."
Paragraphs 18 to 219. That's quite a lot, but I didn't really expect it to be defined, given the inherent difficulties associated with defining it. To be fair, the Government could not really be expected to define this but it does seem strange that their view of the core principle of the NPPF cannot be articulated in fewer than 200 paragraphs.
Other interesting snippets I noticed so far...
- Section 3 on 'Supporting a prosperous rural economy' is only 157 words long (much shorter than, for example, Section 7 on 'Requiring good design' - which gets 840 words)
- The word 'regeneration' appears 3 times in the NPPF
- Among the documents the NPPF replaces is the 1990 PPG on 'Development on Unstable Land' - the NPPF mentions the word 'unstable' once
- The 'Plan-making' section from p. 37 says that 'Local plans are key to delivering sustainable development'
- Local planning authorities have to prepare a Strategic Housing Market Assessment and Strategic Housing Land Availability Assessment
- Parishes and 'neighbourhood forums' can use neighbourhood planning to 'grant planning permission' through Neighbourhood Development Orders (p. 44)
- Related to the point above, the NPPF states that 'Where a Neighbourhood Development Order has been made, a planning application is not required for development that is within the terms of the order' (p. 46)
- But, NDOs and Community Right to Build Orders 'require the support of the local community through a referendum' (p. 47).
- Annex 2 (p. 50 to 57) is the Glossary and v. useful
- Annex 3 (p. 58 to 59) details the documents replaced by this new NPPF
The ministerial statement on the NPPF from Greg Clark is on his website and all other NPPF materials can be found on the CLG website. The NPPF pdf doesn't take long to read! It will be 'interesting' to see how all this plays out in practice over the next few years. Perhaps it will not be as good or as bad as people think...
A final point of reminder here - the NPPF applies to England and not the whole of the UK. | <urn:uuid:5babbddd-bf87-4ced-b492-24c70ccb95af> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://undertheraedar.blogspot.com/2012_03_01_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954605 | 754 | 2.1875 | 2 |
Anderson city attorney Frankie McClain announced Monday that the city would open the grievance hearing of Martin Brown, the city’s former police chief, to the public.
Although McClain insists that it is the city’s opinion that the state Freedom of Information Act does not require that the hearing be open to the public, FOIA is clear. A grievance hearing must be made public if the employee demands that the proceedings be open. Rather, McClain said, the city will open the meeting “because Mr. Brown has requested it.”
If you’re wondering why it took city leaders some time to come to that conclusion (considering the wording of the state law, ably clarified by Columbia attorney and USC law professor Jay Bender, who specializes in such law), we’ll admit confusion.
Yet we’re pleased the city changed it position and the public should be as well.
Now we can all hear both sides of the issue that will come before the city’s grievance committee.
The outcome of the hearing was never our focus and still isn’t.
Adherence to state law, particularly when it applies to public bodies doing the public’s business, was and is — and always will be — our only goal. | <urn:uuid:e84e9333-5f53-4c83-86b8-896ece825e1a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.independentmail.com/news/2012/sep/18/city-makes-right-call/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959679 | 261 | 1.546875 | 2 |
How can a bit of dirt or dust effect the sound vibrations?
Everything in the universe is in a state of vibration. Sound is the vibrations we can actually hear (between 20Hz – 20 000Hz). Everything we can’t hear ( a stone, a flower or a speck of dust) is still vibrating but out of our hearing range. Think about when you walk into an old, desserted house full of spider webs and dust…imagine the vibrations coming out of there…”bad vibes”…then compare this to a house full of things that a person cares for, has personally chosen with love, appreciates and is clean and light! ”Good vibes”. You can’t hear the difference yet you can definately percieve it with your whole being. This isn’t rocket science, it’s about being human. Everyone can tell the difference between good and bad vibes!
Back to the dirty crystal bowl. So, do you want “dust vibes” emanating from your bowl to your body, your house, your family? Remember that when you play the bowl you amplify those vibrations creating more “dusty vibes”. NO THANKS! When you receive your bowl it would have been handled by people (more vibrations) and packaging material, so it is a good idea to give it a good clean, cleanse and charge before using it for healing, manifesting and labouring!
Pour distilled water (or filtered) in a bowl with some biodegradable, mild dish washing liquid. Use a soft toothbrush or soft brush and scrub the granular surface on the outside. A soft cloth is fine for the smooth surface on the inside.
Rinse the bowl thoroughly and carefully with the water.
Dry with a hair dryer or gently place outside in the sun to dry.
Any crystalline structures (including our bodies) can absorb and release energy. It is important therefore to cleanse the bowl of any negative energy it may have absorbed along the way so that you don’t absorb it when it is played. Ted Andrews writes about this in “Crystal Balls, Crystal Bowls”.
You can do this by placing it in a bath full of sea-salt which draws out any negative energy. You could go in the bath with it if there is enough room!
Frankincense insense vibrates at a high frequency (remember…EVERYTHING VIBRATES – this is NOT a hippy thing…it is science!) so will clear any lower frequencies that are lurking! Just burn it around the bowl for a while.
Place the bowl outside under a full moon – beautifull! Or place it in the sun for a few days. This will re-energise your bowl which in turn re-energises you when played!
I would recommend doing the cleaning, cleansing and charging when you first receive the bowl. This will also help you to feel a connection with it. Then do this again before the birth. After this once every few months would be sufficient! | <urn:uuid:fcf2ccbf-2a6c-4765-a338-4d21c2d64c73> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://soundbirth.com.au/clean-cleanse-and-charge/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9355 | 645 | 1.820313 | 2 |
Targeted Drug Helps Leukemia Patients Who Do Not Benefit From Initial Therapy
A new study has found that patients with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) who have not responded to interferon treatments experience long-term benefits when they switch to the targeted drug imatinib. Published early online in Cancer, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, the study indicates that imatinib is the treatment of choice for these patients.
Imatinib, a drug that blocks the protein made by a particular cancer-causing gene, has revolutionized the treatment and prognosis of patients with CML. Now up to 93 percent of patients who take the drug as initial therapy for CML survive at least eight years, whereas prior to imatinib, patients survived an average of only three to six years.
While imatinib is now the standard drug given after a diagnosis of CML, approximately 15,000 to 20,000 patients in the United States may have started taking imatinib after failing to respond to the previous standard drug for CML, interferon. Like patients who now take imatinib as initial therapy for their cancer, these patients seem to respond well to imatinib, at least in the short term; however, little is known about their long-term prognosis.
To investigate, Hagop Kantarjian, MD, of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, and his colleagues analyzed 368 CML patients from their institution who started taking imatinib after failing to respond to interferon. The team estimated that 68 percent of patients survived for at least 10 years. Previous research indicates that only 20 to 30 percent of patients who do not respond to interferon therapy and have no access to imatinib survive this long.
According to the authors, these findings suggest that most patients can benefit from imatinib after unsuccessful interferon treatments, and they do not have to consider other therapeutic options.
On the Net: | <urn:uuid:a3f11944-4525-42ba-b0b4-b2cac86f16ae> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.redorbit.com/news/health/1112482023/targeted-drug-helps-leukemia-patients-who-do-not-benefit-from-initial-therapy/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00068-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94641 | 407 | 2.484375 | 2 |
|Shhh...it's a secret...|
Ever had a really, really big secret? Peter Parker did, and it all started with a teeny, weeny spider bite. As Christians, is it OK to have secrets? What does God say about secrets?
On November 9th, The Amazing Spiderman comes out on DVD, and, as promised, this is your ScreenSmart preview and review...
Before we move on to the topic of secrets, here is a quick overview:
1. It's only been 10 years since the last Spiderman movie...but as far as technology and storyline go, the new movie is an improved version. Having said that...
2. This movie contains the same issues with violence, language, possibly scary images (think creepy huge lizard), and kissy-faced activities. No surprise there, right? When compared with the "old" version, the negative elements are similar.
3. This movie contains some of the same positive elements, as well. The transformation of Peter Parker into selfless superhero, the fight against evil in all forms, the importance of family (unfortunately, that realization sometimes takes place when it's too late), etc.
Thus, I'd like to focus on one specific aspect of the movie: secrets.
When Peter realizes he is now endowed (via spider bite) some strange senses and abilities, he also realizes that to be the hero he needs to be, his "condition" has to be kept secret. Complicating things, however, Peter Parker's Aunt May says something to him that provides the viewers with a foreshadowing of coming events: "Secrets have a cost," she says, "They're not free. Not now, not ever."
Are secrets OK? If so, what defines an "OK" secret? The Bible talks about some interesting situations that involve secrets:
Remember Queen Esther's secret? She was married to King Xerxes, who had no idea that she was actually a Jew... when she finally did reveal her secret at the pivotal moment, she saved the Jewish people from total annihilation. (You can read the story in the book of Esther in the Bible.)
Remember when Jesus healed the leper, and He told him to keep it a secret? The leper didn't keep the secret, however, and news spread so fast that Jesus could no longer go out in public, and His ministry was stunted. (You can read the story in Mark 1:4--45.)
Those are biblical examples of secrets that were supposed to be kept. Kind of like Peter Parker's secret, the mission depended on people keep their traps sealed! However, the Bible also says in Romans 2:16 that God will judge our secrets (and of course, we can't hide anything from God).
So here's my question for you:
What qualifies as a secret that should be kept? What qualifies as a secret that should NOT be kept? Was Aunt May (in the movie) correct in saying that secrets have a cost? | <urn:uuid:7bfc9c80-294e-4860-9f35-71801c0a6e40> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://guidemagazine.org/screen-smart/4116-shhhits-a-secret- | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00049-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973755 | 619 | 1.664063 | 2 |
Electronic Arts Incorporates Social Action Into New SimCity Game
By John Gaudiosi
One of the themes at this year’s Game Developers Conference was games for change. Electronic Arts took this concept to heart with the development of SimCity, a new PC-exclusive, 3D reboot of the franchise from Maxis that’s scheduled to ship in 2013.
The Game Changers event -- presented by EA at the W Hotel -- was hosted by Lucy Bradshaw, senior vice president of Maxis, and featured Davis Guggenheim, the Oscar-winning director of the documentary An Inconvenient Truth. While Guggenheim wasn’t involved in the development of the game, he did lend his environmental star power to GDC 2012 to help showcase the social consciousness behind the new SimCity.
“Video games like SimCity allow gamers, including my own kids, to see the consequences of their actions,” says Guggenheim. “Games can educate people, without making them feel like they’re taking their medicine. SimCity gets under your skin and sticks with you.”
“If we’re going to solve global warming, we need to find a way to create cheap alternatives to coal,” he adds. “There are scientific channels and political channels to navigate, but just as important is the psychological channel to connect with people.”
It’s that connection that may represent the greatest difference between this version of SimCity and the four versions that have preceded it. According to EA, the decisions that players make during this game will have far-reaching impacts beyond the limits of the cities they create. Everything from the depletion of natural resources to the rate of global climate change can be affected.
Maxis’s Bradshaw has watched the world change dramatically since she first worked on SimCity 2000 with original SimCity designer, Will Wright. Today, people walk around with smartphones that have the computer capacity of high-end machines from back then. She has also seen her own teenage daughters adopt technology to not only stay connected, but also actively shape and engage in the world. That concept was woven into the new SimCity.
“Your decisions go beyond the boundaries of a single city in this game,” says Bradshaw. “They impact the cities of your friends and of the online community. Pollution affects everyone in the game, just as it does in the real world. Resources are finite and players must make hard decisions, like going for the cheaper coal factory or investing more time and money into solar power and keeping a greener environment.”
Maxis is also trying to reach the growing audience of casual gamers that have come into the game industry through social and free-to-play games. Gameplay has been designed to allow people to jump in and play and have fun. The sandbox offers depth for those who want to invest more time, but the world is open to the very audience Guggenheim was targeting with his documentary.
SimCity borrows important life lessons from two great teachers in Guggenheim’s own life. The first is his late father, Charles Guggenheim, also an Oscar-winning documentarian who told his son to always let the audience do half of the work. In gaming, of course, the audience does the majority of the work. The second is David Milch -- the creator of “NYPD Blue” and “Deadwood” -- whom Guggenheim worked with on the “Deadwood” series and always admired for his writing and storytelling.
“Time is the hidden and unspoken player in every story,” says Guggenheim. “SimCity allows players to experience the result of time. If a player opts for the quick solution of coal for powering their city, over time the city will be plagued with smog and dirty water, as well as angry citizens. It’s brilliant that this game can bring this to life, without preaching to the audience.”
The developer is using a brand-new game engine to enable more elaborate cities to be built than ever before in the franchise. But as games have progressed since the original launched in 1989, the new SimCity has been designed for social action. In developing this latest version, Maxis worked with Games for Change, the group founded in 2004 to help develop games with humanitarian and consciousness-raising themes.
“We wanted to collaborate with Games for Change because we think of play as something transformational,” says Bradshaw. “Games allow players to have hands-on experiences that show how the world works. We talk about how games can inspire players, and we hope that SimCity can play a role in the world today.”
Guggenheim says that the issue of global warming is much worse today than when he filmed An Inconvenient Truth five years ago. More than 35 billion tons of carbon are released into the air every year. And nine of the 10 warmest years on record have been in the 21st century. Guggenheim took time out of his Hollywood schedule to talk about SimCity because he and his son love to play the games. And he believes the new game could have a profound effect on important societal changes moving forward.
John Gaudiosi has been covering video games for the past 17 years for media outlets such as The Washington Post, CNET, Wired magazine and CBS.com. He is editor in chief of GamerLive.tv and a game columnist for Reuters and RhMinions.com. He is a frequent contributor to Digital Innovation Gazette. | <urn:uuid:1da11185-9a18-42c8-a8fd-4d4d1fbb8c3b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.awn.com/blogs/im-game/electronic-arts-incorporates-social-action-new-simcity-game | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00049-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96634 | 1,167 | 1.742188 | 2 |
State salaries for judges fell 1.7% to €27.8m in 2011
LEGAL BILL:THE PAY bill for the State’s 153 judges stood at €27.8 million last year, a fall of 1.7 per cent on 2010 but an increase of 16 per cent on 2008, the year in which the crisis in the public finances began.
Late last year, voters supported a referendum to change the Constitution so that judicial pay could be cut. Judges had refused to accept reductions in pay along with other public sector employees by invoking a clause in the Constitution designed to protect the independence of the judiciary.
The Chief Justice, currently Ms Justice Susan Denham, who took over in mid-2011, was paid €304,974. This was unchanged on 2010, but was €30,000 higher than in 2008, when the economy went into recession.
The seven members of the Supreme Court shared €1.9 million last year, giving an average salary of almost €270,000 – a 2.7 per cent increase on 2010 and €27,000 more than in 2008.
The pay bill for 39 High Court judges, including the president of that court, came to €9.1 million last year, a fall of 1.3 per cent on 2010. Compared to 2008, however, the High Court judges’ pay bill is up by 13 per cent.
The average pay for a High Court judge last year was just under €234,000, an increase of €18,000 on 2008.
There were 39 sitting Circuit Court judges last year, including the president of that court. They were paid collectively €6.8 million. That was 3 per cent down on 2010, but 15 per cent up on 2008.
The average pay of Circuit Court judges last year was just under €175,000, an increase of more than €18,000 on 2008.
The 77 District Court judges, including that court’s president, shared €9.2 million last year. That represented a decline of 2 per cent on 2010, but an increase of more than 16 per cent on 2008.
Pensions and retirement lump sums to former judges amounted to almost €8.5 million last year. | <urn:uuid:3ee28899-757c-48e0-8082-5690dc95a83f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/public-finances/state-salaries-for-judges-fell-1-7-to-27-8m-in-2011-1.540573 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00045-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9757 | 458 | 1.65625 | 2 |
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court, asks for the National Park Service and Forest Service to be barred from participating in the slaughter program, write Matthew Brown of the Associated Press, here.
In an effort to prevent a disease carried by bison from spreading to cattle, more than 3,300 bison have been slaughtered in the last decade, by federal agencies working with the state of Montana.
The groups filing the suit say the threat of the disease – brucellosis – has been overstated and that the Park Service and Forest Service are ignoring their responsibility to preserve the bison.
Yellowstone’s 3,000 bison comprise one of the largest concentrations of the animals in the world, Brown writes. Bison once roamed North America by the millions, sustaining many Native American tribes, before being nearly wiped out after the arrival of white people to the region.
During winters, bison range beyond Yellowstone’s borders in search of food. A 2000 agreement between Montana and the federal government allows those animals to be killed to prevent any contact with cattle. | <urn:uuid:84afbfa4-c7ff-4cfb-a4ba-bac25575847b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.buffalopost.net/?tag=brucellosis | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00066-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939863 | 221 | 3.25 | 3 |
Helping Children After the Tsunami
I'm Gwen Outen with the VOA Special English DEVELOPMENT REPORT.
Aid officials are working to help the youngest victims of the December twenty-sixth earthquake and tsunami waves in the Indian Ocean.
The United Nations Children's Fund estimates that one and one-half million children were affected in South Asia. UNICEF says many have lost their parents or been separated from their families. The agency has estimated that more than one-third of the dead were children.
Last week UNICEF appealed for more than one hundred forty million dollars to assist what it calls the "tsunami generation." The request was part of a larger United Nations appeal made Thursday in Jakarta.
UNICEF says money is needed for immunization campaigns to prevent disease. Clean drinking water and special feedings for children and pregnant women are also needed. Another aim is to repair schools, so children can return to classes as soon as possible.
The head of UNICEF says children must also be protected from criminal groups. Carol Bellamy warned that children are at risk of being kidnapped for slavery in the sex trade or forced labor. She praised actions taken by the government of Indonesia in heavily damaged Aceh.
Adoptions of children are now banned in that province. The government also has barred children under the age of sixteen from leaving Aceh except with their parents.
UNICEF is setting up camps in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and the other countries affected by the tsunami. Workers will try to reunite children with their parents, extended families and communities. The first step is to identify children who are alone.
Some Western families have offered to adopt children whose parents died in the tsunami. But policies in the affected countries, as well as their own nations, may prevent that at least for now.
The American State Department says any adoptions are probably many months away. It says adoption professionals believe children in a crisis should be kept as close to their family members and community as possible.
The State Department deplored reports of sex crimes, kidnapping and trafficking in persons in the affected countries. A spokesman said there have been enough reports to see a real danger and the need for quick action. He said officials were "horrified that thousands of children orphaned by this disaster" are at risk from criminals "who seek to profit from their misery."
This VOA Special English DEVELOPMENT REPORT was written by Jill Moss. I'm Gwen Outen. | <urn:uuid:9d73fe89-87ed-4e57-b812-847f3a299caf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.manythings.org/voa/0/11487.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00057-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979044 | 506 | 2.609375 | 3 |
The Three Dark Kings (Die Drei Dunklen Könige) by Wolfgang Borchert Translated from the German into English by Michael Heule Project of the GER 403 History of German Literature class Ball State University - Spring Semester 2003
He groped through the dark suburb. The houses stood broken off gainst the sky. The moon was missing, and the pavement was shocked by the late steps. Then he found an old plank. He pushed his foot against it until a brittle piece sighed and broke loose. The wood smelled moldy and sweet. Through the dark suburb he groped back. There were no stars to be seen. When the door opened (it cried in doing so, the door), the pale-blue eyes of his wife looked toward him. They came from a tired face. Her breath hung white in the room; it was so cold. He bent his bony knee and broke the wood. The wood sighed. Then it smelled moldy and sweet all around. He held a piece of the wood under his nose. Smells almost like cake, he laughed quietly. Don't, said his wife's eyes, don't laugh. He's sleeping. The man placed the sweet, moldy wood into the small tin stove. It flared up and threw a handful of warm light throughout the room. It fell brightly on a tiny round face and remained for an instant. The face was just one hour old, but it already had everything that belonged to it: Ears, nose, mouth and eyes. The eyes had to be large, you could tell that, even though they were closed. But the mouth was open, and a soft puffing came from it. Nose and ears were red. He's alive, thought the mother. And the small face slept. There are still some oat flakes left, said the man. Yes, answered his wife that is good. It is cold. The man took another piece of the sweet soft wood. Now she has had her baby and has to be cold, he thought. But he didn't have anyone, whom he could strike in the face with his fists for it. As he opened the stove door, again a handful of light fell over the sleeping face. The woman said quietly: Look, like a halo, do you see it? Halo! he thought, and he didn't not have anyone whom he could strike in the face with his fists. Then there were people at the door. We saw the light, they said, from the window. We want to sit down for ten minutes. But we have a child, said the man to them. They said nothing more, but nevertheless came into the room, blew steam from their noses and raised their feet high. Then the light fell on them. There were three of them. In three old uniforms. One had a cardboard box, one a bag. And the third didn't have any hands. Frozen, he said, and held the stumps high. Then he turned his coat pocket toward the man. Tobacco was in it and thin paper. They rolled cigarettes. But the woman said: Don't smoke, the child. Then the four went to the door and their cigarettes were four points in the night. One had thick wrapped feet. He took a piece wood from a bag. A donkey, he said, I carved on it for seven months. For the child. He said that and gave it to the man. What's wrong with your feet? the man asked. Water, said the donkey carver, from hunger. And the other one, the third one? the man asked as felt the donkey in the dark. The third one was trembling in his uniform: Oh, nothing, he whispered, it's only nerves. We've just exper- ienced too much fear. Then they stamped step out their cigarettes and went in again. They raised their feet high and looked at the small sleeping face. The one who was trembling took two yellow bonbons from his cardboard box and said: They are for the woman. The woman opened her pale blue eyes widely, when she saw the three-dark ones bent over the child. She was afraid. But then the child pushed his legs against her chest and screamed so powerfully that the three-dark ones lifted their feet and shuffled to the door. Here they nodded again, and then they climbed into the night. The man followed them with his eyes. Strange saints, he said to his wife. Then he closed the door. They are beautiful saints; he mumbled tended to the oat flakes. But he had no face for his fists. But the child screamed, whispered the woman, he screamed uite loudly. Then they left. Look, how lively he is, she said proudly. The face opened its mouth and screamed. Is he crying? the man asked. No, I think, he's laughing, the woman answered. Almost like cake, the man said as he smelled the wood, like cake. Quite sweet. It's also Christmas today, said the woman. Yes, Christmas, he mumbled, and from the stove a handful of light fell brightly onto the small sleeping face. | <urn:uuid:775828fe-3c8c-40c7-8ff0-060fe3250093> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bsu.edu/classes/warner/resource/k%C3%B6nige.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00074-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.992259 | 1,048 | 2.328125 | 2 |
We have some comments to make on the meta-analysis by Juan Casas and colleagues.1
Large randomised trials are regarded as the gold standard in assessing the efficacy of clinical interventions.2
2001 saw the publication of three such trials that dealt with prevention and treatment of diabetic nephropathy by blocking the renin-angiotensin system in patients with type 2 diabetes.3—5
All three showed renoprotective effects above and beyond the beneficial effect of lowering systemic blood pressure. Standard statistical methods were applied to adjust for the small recorded differences in blood pressure. On the basis of these findings, the US Food and Drug Administration and the European Agency for the Evaluation of Medicinal Products approved losartan and irbesartan for renoprotection in patients with type 2 diabetes. Guidelines in Europe and the USA were developed recommending angiotensin-receptor blockers as first-line treatment for the prevention of diabetic nephropathy and end-stage renal disease. In their meta-analysis, Casas and colleagues conclude: “The benefits of ACE inhibitors or ARBs on renal outcomes in placebo-controlled trials probably result from a blood-pressure-lowering effect. In patients with diabetes, additional renoprotective action of these substances beyond lowering blood pressure remains unproven”.
Most studies included in the meta-analysis were published before 2002, with one exception: the ALLHAT study. Since ALLHAT had a dominating effect on the meta-analysis, it should be assessed carefully and critically. The study dealt with high-risk hypertensive patients including 12 063 with type 2 diabetes. Urinary excretion of protein or albumin was not measured, precluding correct classification of renal disease. The renal outcomes were based on a post-hoc analysis. The cause of end-stage renal disease and any precipitating clinical circumstances, such as acute renal failure, were not assessed. In other words, numerous renal and non-renal disorders including drug-related nephrotoxicity could have resulted in end-stage renal disease, by contrast with RENAAL3
Furthermore, the starting treatment in ALLHAT was 10 mg of lisinopril daily, which is not regarded as optimum for renoprotection; how many patients remained on that dose is not stated. We have shown that ultrahigh dosing of irbesartan (900 mg once daily) offers additional renoprotection independent of changes in 24-h systemic blood pressure.5
We have several other concerns about the meta-analysis: first, the definition of end-stage renal disease does not include peritoneal dialysis; second, the relative risks in figure 2 differ from a rough and ready calculation based on the numbers shown; and third, at least three Scandinavian diabetic nephropathy studies are not included in figure 2 A despite data on end-stage renal disease being presented therein.
We suggest that the conclusion of Casas and colleagues' meta-analysis should be interpreted with caution due to the heterogeneous patient groups, inconsistencies in reporting valid trial results, potentially suboptimal doses of ACE inhibitors and ARBs, and use of an endpoint that might have been improperly assessed.
H-HP has equity in Novo Nordisk and Merck, and has received consulting and lecture fees from Merck, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Pfizer, and Sanofi, and grants from Merck and Bristol-Myers Squibb. | <urn:uuid:bad943b7-3738-4f2f-98dd-1224c0b1f27d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(06)68373-6/fulltext | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946114 | 706 | 2.171875 | 2 |
Money-market funds (MMFs) may have fought off tighter rules for now, but regulators have a variety of options if they opt to continue the fight. Regardless of regulatory efforts, the age of money funds as havens for corporate cash may have passed.
Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Mary Schapiro called off the commission’s vote on money fund reforms when it became clear there weren’t enough votes to pass it. The proposal aimed to stymie runs on money funds by requiring them to establish capital buffers and let their share prices float instead of being fixed at $1 per share.
Even if the SEC had voted in favor of the proposal, companies’ use of money funds appears to be waning. Ben Campbell, president and CEO of Capital Advisors Group, notes that the SEC’s Rule 2a-7 effectively reduces the weighted average maturity of money fund investments to 60 days, and in practice funds’ maturities are now under 50. That’s down from an average of 90 days prior to the financial crisis and 120 days before 1991, according to Campbell.
That puts money fund yields at the short end of the Treasury curve, at around just 0.1%.
“Our conclusion is that [treasury executives] are going to consider a wide variety of investment channels outside of traditional MMFs,” Campbell says.
He notes that a Capital Advisors survey in June shows treasurers anticipate shifting short-term investments, especially to government securities and also commercial paper and separate accounts. A third expect to decrease their use of demand deposit accounts, a move likely prompted by the expiration of the FDIC’s unlimited deposit insurance at the end of the year.
Even with the change in deposit insurance, however, banks’ demand deposit accounts (DDA) may prove attractive. David Neshat, treasurer at Cambridge, Mass.-based Akamai Technologies, a cloud platform provider with $1.2 billion in 2011 revenue, says his company keeps sufficient cash in a DDA at its cash management bank to satisfy its daily liquidity needs. The earnings credit rate (ECR) it receives to offset bank service charges “is today on a net basis higher than the return on any MMF out there,” Neshat says.
Akamai’s need for short-term liquidity closely matches the amount it must deposit to receive enough ECR to offset all of its banking fees; investment managers place its remaining cash in longer-term investments. If a company’s short-term liquidity needs exceed that “sweet spot,” money funds are the remaining option for investing cash that needs to be quickly available.
Had the SEC’s proposal been approved, that money-fund option likely would have become much less viable for treasurers, since a floating-rate net asset value introduces the risk of capital losses if the fund changes value. “After all, we are managing shareholders’ cash, and our first objective is to preserve principal,” Neshat says.
The pendulum may swing in money funds’ favor when the unlimited FDIC insurance expires, but given DDA advantages, the pendulum may not swing that far. Neshat says companies are comfortable using DDAs, but as with money funds, will have to “look under the hood” of their cash management banks to verify their credit strength.
Aron Chazen, co-founder of Treasury Curve, which offers a web-based platform accessing information and trading from multiple asset managers, notes that investing in a money fund requires only a single wire to execute the trade and one journal entry.
“What often gets lost is the fact that money funds are easy to invest in operationally, accounting-wise and from a tax perspective,” Chazen says, adding that “more than anything,” he’s heard companies talk about shifting money to bank time deposits, while those with the resources are evaluating commercial paper.
Of course, the Federal Reserve and the Treasury supported tighter rules for money funds, and they may pursue other avenues to rein in the $2.6 trillion MMF industry.
Heath Tarbert, a partner at the law firm of Weil Gotshal & Manges, pictured at left, says the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) established by Dodd-Frank could require the SEC to try again to impose rules. The FSOC could designate major money fund providers or the entire money fund industry as systemically important financial institutions, making them subject to additional rules and oversight.
The Fed could also limit banks’ ability to borrow from MMFs, reducing those risky holdings, and the Fed could require banks that run MMFs to hold more capital against them.
Tarbert says Title 8 of Dodd-Frank, which deals with clearing, settlement and processing, provides interesting alternative approaches. For example, the FSOC could designate activities that are critical to money funds’ operations as systemically important. “It's conceivable FSOC could say there will be no payment clearing or settlement activity for any MMFs that do not have a floating NAV or a buffer in place,” he says.
Another section of Dodd-Frank potentially could be used to exempt money fund companies from being designated as systemically important if they adopt certain reforms, Tarbert adds. “You could use a carrot instead of a stick, saying, ‘We think stable value funds present systemic risk, but if you change to a floating NAV we won’t designate you as systemically important.’”
For coverage of the SEC’s decision, see SEC Money-Fund Vote Cancelled and Former SEC Chair Criticizes Agency’s Money-Fund Punt. For more on the aftermath of that decision, see Money Funds to Test Geithner, Bernanke. | <urn:uuid:ee814822-c777-4224-b4a8-a15d4bce2fe9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.treasuryandrisk.com/2012/08/28/despite-reprieve-money-funds-under-pressure?page=2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00066-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951798 | 1,207 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Recycle your plastic bottles into a broom
Here's how to turn a discarded bottle into a broom in 11 easy steps & learn more about a Brazilian social enterprise who used this simple idea to seed a whole social welfare programme for urban children.
Through training workshops, A Rocha Brazil is mobilizing communities and churches to respond to the environmental challenges in their neighbourhoods. Here's the story of how one innovative little church is turning an environmental problem into a solution - discarded plastic bottles into brooms!
What you need:
20 plastic soft drink bottles 2 liter PET
1. Remove the label on the bottle
2. Remove the bottom of the bottle, with the cutting stylus. The bottle will keep strips approximately 0.5 cm
3. Make cuts in the bottle up to the more rounded
4. Remove the neck with scissors
5. Make 18 pieces without neck and leave with a bottleneck
6. Fitting parts with no neck, one by one over the part with neck. Are you ready base of the broom
7. Cut the top of another bottle and fit over the base of the broom you just prepared
8. Drill two holes and insert the wire through all layers of bottles
9. Pull the wire to the other side and twist the ends to fasten
10. Secure parts with the aid of two nails
11. Your broom is ready!
For more information about A Rocha Brazil and how they created a social enterprise from this project see:
It is a good method of recycling plastic bottles. These are also used in a lot of other different applications. Nothing is wasted in the world. Everything can be used to make other things. Custom Essays
Valuable blog which is providing a lot of information about the recycling our plastic bottles into a broom. Hey man you have posted there an important issue what inspires us more. Thanks and keep it up...
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Wow this is awesome recycle project! We all know that we are facing a great dilemma on environmental protection. We have to be aware plastic and especially polystyrene recycling methods to lessen the cause of damage in nature. Actually, Michael Bloomberg, mayor of New York City, wants to basically ban every little thing anybody loves though one ban he has in mind has a respectable enough rationale. Bloomberg is touting a Styrofoam ban, as the stuff is very challenging to do away with due to high costs of collection and recycling. You may need a lots of cash to pay for things if a more expensive material is used instead of Styrofoam. | <urn:uuid:203732cb-ee41-4cb6-93ca-34db48758b8c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.permaculture.co.uk/readers-solutions/recycle-your-plastic-bottles-broom-0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.926397 | 760 | 2.140625 | 2 |
Buying life experiences to impress others removes happiness boost
Spending money on activities and events, such as concert tickets or exotic vacations, won’t make you happier if you’re doing it to impress others, according to findings published in the Journal of Happiness Studies.
Research has shown that consumers gain greater happiness from buying life experiences rather than material possessions, but only if they choose experiences for the right reasons says the new study.
“Why you buy is just as important as what you buy,” said Ryan Howell, assistant professor of psychology at San Francisco State University. “When people buy life experiences to impress others, it wipes out the well-being they receive from the purchase. That extrinsic motivation appears to undermine how the experiential purchase meets their key psychological needs.”
The study builds on Howell’s previous findings, which suggest that people who buy life experiences are happier because experiential purchasing helps fulfill psychological needs that are vital for human growth and well-being. These include the need to feel competent, autonomous — or self-directed — and connected to others.
For the present study, Howell and colleagues surveyed 241 participants and found that a person’s motivation for making a purchase predicts whether these needs will be met. Howell conducted the research with Jia Wei Zhang, a student in his lab, and University of Rochester researcher Peter Caprariello.
They found that people who choose to buy life experiences because it is in line with their desires, interests and values reported a greater sense of fulfillment and well-being. They felt more autonomous, competent and connected to others, less loneliness and a greater sense of vitality.
Individuals who choose life experiences to gain recognition from others reported feeling less autonomous, competent and connected to others.
“The biggest question you have to ask yourself is why you are buying something,” Howell said. “Motivation appears to amplify or eliminate the happiness effect of a purchase.”
As part of the study, the researchers developed and validated a new survey to measure individuals’ motivations for experiential buying. Members of the public can take the survey by visiting the “Beyond the Purchase” website. Howell and colleagues launched the website to collect data for academic studies and allow members of the public to take free psychology quizzes to find out what kind of shopper they are and how their spending choices affect them. Visit the Beyond the Purchase website at http://www.beyondthepurchase.org
“Buying Life Experiences for the “Right” Reasons: a Validation of the Motivations for Experiential Buying Scale” was published online on June 13, 2012 in the Journal of Happiness Studies. Co-author Jia Wei Zhang is a former SF State undergraduate who graduated in 2011. | <urn:uuid:5d720017-a961-459b-b3f4-7b826d179277> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.psypost.org/2012/06/buying-life-experiences-to-impress-others-removes-happiness-boost-12325 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95315 | 580 | 2.21875 | 2 |
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India produces about 400,000 tonnes of electronic waste each year, growing exponentially. Handling this is a great challenge. What adds to it is the fact that the country is one of the lead importers of all kinds of waste—hazardous included. Almost all of this is recycled or scrapped by the unorganized sector using the most rudimentary methods that pollute. Our reporters found a thriving ‘illegal’ trade and dangerous working conditions. The environment ministry’s answer has been to grant its first and only licence to import e-waste to a company called Attero Recycling—to encourage its Roorkee plant, which it calls a model. Our reporters found Attero reselling e-waste instead of recycling it. The ministry’s regulatory attempts do not recognize the small players who actually recycle e-waste, found out Ruhi Kandhari, Jyotika Sood and photographer Sayantan Bera
Arnab Pratim Dutta visited Attero’s recycling unit in Roorkee, posing as a scrap dealer from Moradabad
Attero, India’s recognized recycling facility for e-waste, is about 20 minutes from Roorkee. Its walls and gates are about eight feet high. A signboard warns of CCTV. The security guards have orders to prevent outsiders from carrying inside mobile phones, pen drives or cameras.
I was there on May 3, 2010, with a scrap dealer from Moradabad in Uttar Pradesh. We were to meet D B Chhetri, head of administration and security of the plant, a retired lieutenant colonel. Security checks and a short walk later, we entered the office around 3 pm. Our meeting started 15 minutes later.
We said we wanted motherboards. Chhetri said he needed motherboards because “they are precious”. He offered to sell full computers and peripherals. Our conversation was interrupted by a man who walked in; he wanted to buy a Xerox machine. The deal got sealed quickly for Rs 4,000.
Chhetri then called an assistant to show us around. We were taken to a hall in which new computers were stacked. We wanted black computers; about 50 such were in the adjacent building. We decided we wanted 100.
Back at Chhetri’s office, we bargained—unsuccessfully. The standard rate for Pentium III machines was Rs 3,000; P IV machines cost Rs 4,000; and black computers commanded an additional Rs 500. We would be back in a few days. Chhetri asked us to bring motherboard samples for him.
Kareem, a scrap dealer from Seelampur, joined us on our second visit four days later. Chhetri told us that as per the environment ministry’s new rules on e-waste, Attero could not sell its wares officially to vendors from Moradabad and Seelampur—a fake receipt should do, he said. We would try out a sample first before placing the final order.
As we got talking, Kareem promised Chhetri he would buy truckloads of waste from Attero. Soon after, Chhetri took us to the godown. It was nothing short of a supermarket. Printers, printer cartridges, computer cabinets, hard disks, floppy drives, fax machines, Xerox machines—they were all there, neatly stacked in columns with their names labelled on signboards. Kareem checked the cost of each product. Keyboards cost Rs 20, SMPS (switched mode power supply, which transmits power from a source to the load, such as a computer) for Rs 55.
I chose a Dell Pentium IV with a 17-inch monitor, which had the serial number 3KKK81S. The Windows XP operating system was functional, I checked.
Chhetri signed the bill, in the name of my scrap dealer friend from Moradabad, on plain paper. As I left the premises, the security guard kept the bill and gave me a photocopy.
I had just bought a computer for Rs 4,500 from a registered recycler that boasts of being India’s only end-to-end recycling facility.
Ruhi Kandhari visited Attero to get their side of the story
After Arnab gave me a heads-up, I was prepared for the security checks. Four officials of Attero—CEO Nitin Gupta, Research and Development Director Praveen Bhargava, Administration and Security Head D B Chhetri and Plant Head Param Prakash—greeted my colleague Sayantan Bera at the building’s reception.
Chhetri explained why security was crucial for the Rs 35-crore plant—they had developed the recycling technology in their laboratories and did not want it leaked. Gupta walked us around the plant’s four units—shredder and separator, smelter, electro refinery, and research and development facility. It can process 36,000 tonnes of waste in a year, though it gets only 600 tonnes at present. Hence it imports e-waste from developed countries. Gupta said formal recyclers like them found the going difficult given the competition from the unorganized sector.
After we got possession of the computer Arnab had bought, I sent Gupta an e-mail. He replied: “As a company policy we do not sell an e-waste to the unorganized sector. We have a very transparent and open culture at Attero, as you might have witnessed during your plant visit.” Attero sold refurbished computers only if companies allowed it to refurbish and sell them, and they make their takeback policy clear when they sell it.
Arnab, though, did not get any such directives from Attero.
Sources in the Central Pollution Control Board said e-waste recycling units are not allowed to sell e-waste. They could sell refurbished computers if they have the board’s permission for it. Besides, Attero’s licence expired in December last year and that makes it illegal to buy, sell or recycle e-waste, the official said. | <urn:uuid:16a34efe-bd25-4395-bc9f-56edb2c70221> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.downtoearth.org.in/content/it-s-underbelly | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962903 | 1,372 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Posted by: Rob Hof on March 15, 2005
For years, Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos has attended O’Reilly & Associates’ Emerging Technology conference for fun, but today he played demo god for the overflow audience in San Diego. …
After first accidentally restarting his personal computer while onstage, eliciting groans from the audience of tech wizards, he introduced an intriguing new feature on Amazon's search site A9.com. Basically, through a new A9 feature called OpenSearch, he's eliciting the denizens of the Web to contribute their own sources of specialized information that searchers can subscribe to much like they can subscribe to blogs.
Unlike the ultra-simple Google search site, A9 offers the ability to set up columns of specialized databases to search, such as its own Internet Movie Database, IMDB.com. By opening up A9's site to anyone who wants to create similar columns of specialized info, he hopes to allow people to create literally thousands of columns from which searchers can choose. "We want OpenSearch to do for search what RSS has done for content," he says. So instead of searching in Vioxx and seeing page after page of lawyers to sue on your behalf, you could search the PubMed medical literature and find info on Vioxx itself.
Like A9, it's clearly more complicated to use than Google, at least for now. There's a more detailed explanation here. But it looks like an interesting step toward making search much more useful and much more personal. | <urn:uuid:c6dbfdb9-d8bc-4297-9f32-6f3ff4729256> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/archives/2005/03/searching_for_jeff_bezos.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949388 | 311 | 1.5 | 2 |
December 2, 2011
Agol, an enlightened scientist, transmits the vibration of approach of a celestial object and the various observations and important data it means for our evolution at the beginning of this new cycle, and invites us to manage this data in our circles (*). ..
- Link to listen: http://soundcloud.com/voixdelumiere/agol-uranus-021211-file-download
Welcome, dear brothers and sisters of Earth. I am Agol Anna Hus O'Kel from Uranus II, you already know me, and I say welcome, this is our way of hospitality, even knowing that I am received ... It is I who invite you, however.
So I chose to come back to talk via this channel, and through my position as a scientist (say enlightened) and Emir of the Brotherhood of Intergalactic Higher Consciousness. A few months ago, I told you my dear ones that we observe closely the phase of our common sun -which we call Shella, us on Uranus- and I invite you to support our shared star in, say its wanderings, and its path in a cycle change (I specify that this is not precisely the change in cycles which your planet Earth has just begun, this is a parenthesis).
So here today I rather just tell you two or three important things which affect our solar system - whose we share the life, movement, ascension, complex orbits, and crossing cycles, that affect either the entire solar system, or some planets like yours for example, or ours.
So there is, dear ones, one first thing I would like you to know, because it is important that we share in conscience and in our hearts : the movement of the tides on our planets - because we ourselves have also a tidal movement, even if we have no sea like the ones on Earth -so this movement is now regular, cyclical, sometimes subject to some fluctuations, and it is rigged, both for us and for you – by the frequency that comes from the sun, and for you from your moon also, I believe, and for us too.
But it will be added very soon, among the stars who will influence the movement of tides, a new element. This object is not actually a planet and not exactly what you call a comet. This is an important celestial object that will make its appearance in the magnetic fields and say cosmo-telluric fields (I use that word, by default because there is no other to be used) from your planet - I do not speak of our-, and whose influence will be felt, in some subtle way, although I have no privileged vantage point on your Earth about it, but very certainly will affect the movement of the tides.
Here is a first data - I'll pass them, I might add, in the form of vibrations and sounds, not figured, because their nature and complexity are not part of a posssible figured transmission. Here is now the first frequency data, there are five total.
.... Progress of each of five successive data frequency transmission, vibrations in silence and sounds ....
... As you may have observed: data 4 and 5 are wave systems quite simple and repetitive, while the first 3 are much more complex ... Tell me how you will use this data? Well, with your participation in scientific circles (*) you can certainly share them and I hope you will analyze and process them ... Know that there is a fairly obvious combination of wave systems on the five data , that establishes say the curve and cyclical variations and temporal influence of this cosmic or celestial object which I've not named, but which I specifically have said the next occurrence in your terrestrial field and your tides.
I invite you, dear ones, considering these data and their use: to practice a lot more joy than anxiety, and to use this information in the sense of unfolding your collective intelligence and resources, which are numerous and of high quality.
This being processed, I will now tell you about a second subject. We have noticed, we of Uranus, that there are a variety of small puddles or stains that appear sporadically, and blinking for almost say, on the edge of the external vibratory field of your planet, and this for us means a significant change in our observations because it did not happen before. We have the ability to identify these phenomena as certainly vibratory ones, but that are directly related to the vibration of your consciousness and to the changes in forms of interacting lights emanating from your planet, and therefore from your humanity.
This is currently still quite chaotic and we hope to see it maybe regularized, stabilized, harmonized, and perhaps see these apparitions (because you may use that word) a little less fleeting or random. I want to reassure you by saying they are still very evident and clear, and unambiguous when they appear, and that our analysis is quite positive – let’s say optimistic because I know you like that sort of word ...
We are also informed about the offers of collaboration that have been implemented by our solar brothers from Mars to you, and should therefore be directed perhaps into something that will also help stabilize the events which I have just given to you the conditions and form of observations ... Beyond the purely factual issue of giving you this information, it seems interesting that this information enables you to try to manage something. I have no particular precise methodology, from my place, to give you in this matter. But I am convinced -and this for specific reasons- you have the ability, once you will consult each other in this regard (*), to establish a form of actions or thoughts or vibration, which can then act on these events or say on the cause. Because we observe rather an effect, you're more able to manage what you call the cause - which for us is simply the polarity of this effect we observe.
I invite you therefore to address this observation, and to that end I will also issue you some data from our observations, but remastered, so you can hopefully make use of it properly. This data will be issued in the form of a sequence resembling a sequence of words. Do not see any special significance, it is simply a way to format data packets and transmit them audibly to you.
Here is the first one ... sequence of words / groups of sounds ...
With these three sequences of words - I call this words, it may surprise you, but a word is a data packet isn’t it, so you will have all available data, we hope, as we have processed and sorted them, which can help you manage (we hope you’ll do), and we certainly know that some teams are able to handle this and do what you choose to make your point, and maybe add your own comments to what I sent you.
It is therefore clear, and I apologize, that this transmission is made for very specialized circles (*). But if I pass it on this way through this channel, it is also because the data packets, and these preceding frequency sequences, have an incentive to move vibrationally on a relatively large audience because they inform you and by bio-resonance therefore transmit to all of your humanity, which has the effect of also acting in a purely biological phenomena to which I referred in speaking to you.
Before completing this procedure, there is a third thing I want to talk about. This is almost a form of warning, not in the dramatic sense of the term, of course (this is not my style), but you are, let me tell you my dear brothers and sisters of Earth, as we now observe, in a very interesting phase of the movement of your planet and of the evolutionary movement of your humanity on this planet ... For there is complete restart of a variety of systems, which have recently reached the tipping point of cycles change you just went through, that is the final phase of their previous cycle, and therefore can now restart or stay in line waiting - waiting for the right time to restart ... Allowing you, my dear ones, both collectively and individually, to reset everything, on a large scale, a large overhaul, and I use expressions that are familiar to you and this is deliberate: I want to speak in a way that is not abstract for you.
So you are absolutely privileged in this period, in terms of our observations and certainly in terms of your lifes and your evolution, to practice all these updates, these upgrades. It's time to get rid of all that is used, all that is out of date, of all that is to recycle (as you know there is recycling). And there will soon be available, and it will come to you in a systemic way: all the new data, new settings, and certainly the new paradigms that will be your new database for the new cycle - which is in full start-up, at point zero in some way, with a great evolution curve that is presented to proceed through.
So I wanted to tell you this, from our point of view and my view as Emir of Intergalactic Higher Consciousness. I know that some of you have the ability to clearly observe it, but they are few, and this is the assertion of an external observation.
Thank you for your attention and I wish you, once again, welcome, my dears, with all my love and consideration. I now withdraw. I am Agol, from Uranus, your brother. Alleluia.
(*) Circles : Agol refers to the practice accessible to all of us, circles of telepathic collective intelligence - some examples of that form of meetings are the "Pleiadians and Galactic circles" you can find on this blog, channeled for your information.
via Christine Anne K. 02/12/2011
These messages are meant to be shared, however, and we thank you for that, we appreciate that the content and form are fully maintained and that their source will be properly specified : http://voixdelumiere.canalblog.com | <urn:uuid:51a27d60-e1d3-45fa-ade1-aeac8db9b313> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://lightworkers.org/channeling/148172/agol-anna-hus-okel-uranus-ii-no-2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960549 | 2,047 | 1.609375 | 2 |
BIRTH RATE DECREASES, CHILD DEATH INCREASES IN ARMENIA
- Year by year the birth rate decreases in Armenia and the numbers of child deaths increases, the statistics of the National Statistics Service shows.
In 2010, 44,825 babies were born in Armenia. In 2011, 43,447 babies were born. In 2010, 27,921 people died in Armenia, in 2011 that number reached to 28,030.
In 2010, 804 stillbirth cases have been registered in Armenia. In 2010, there were 344 death cases of new born (0-27 days old).
Statistics show, that Armenia's Kotayk region has the highest number of stillbirth while Shirak region is number one in regard of new born deaths.
- 1724 The Armenians and Azeri Turks of Gandzak sign an agreement to stand up to the Ottoman Turks.
- 1873 Birth of Nikolay Aghbalyan (educator). He died in 1947.
- 1894 The Hntshak Party figure Jeerayr was hung in Yozghat.
- 1903 Birth of philosopher and art historian, Hrant Apresian.
- 1922 Opening of the State Bank of the Armenian SSR.
- 1932 Birth of Vladimir Yengibarian, world famous boxer, European, World, and Olympic Games' champion, international referee.
- 1934 Birth of American Orientalist Robert Thomson. He was awarded a PhD from Cambridge University for Assyrian and Armenian translations. He translated the "Armenian History" by Agathangelos.
- 1988 The Presidency of the Supreme Soviet of Armenia decided to stop the "Gharabagh" Committee by considering its activity illegal and anti-constitutional.
- 1988 The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union appoints Arkadi Volski as its authorized representative in the territory of Artsakh.
- 1992 The Helsinki Additional Meeting of the CSCE (now Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe OSCE) Council decides to have a Chairman-in-Office visit the region to contribute to the establishment and the maintenance of a cease-fire in Transcaucasia. | <urn:uuid:a10c4696-6b4e-4c45-bf42-16b5e09921ac> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.armtown.com/news/en/nws/20120324/98409/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.923167 | 448 | 2.3125 | 2 |
Woods Hole-New Bedford Service Resumes
New England Fast Ferry service linking New Bedford and Woods Hole resumed yesterday after being interrupted for about one week due to a mechanical error with one of the ferries.
The New Bedford to Woods Hole ferry service is a pilot program running through Nov. 10 that will test the market for commuters and tourists.
New England Fast Ferry also operates year-round service between the Vineyard and New Bedford under license from the Steamship Authority.
“During the first two weeks of operation, 2,000 riders took the ferry trip, demonstrating a real interest in this transportation service,” said Kristen Decas, director of the New Bedford Harbor Development Commission.
“We encourage more people from both communities to try this excursion and supply their feedback through the onboard survey,” Ms. Decas said. “Through ridership and community input we can determine whether a permanent water link between New Bedford and Woods Hole makes sense for the future.”
More information about the service is available by calling 508- 979-1414 or by visiting nbwhferry.com.
Scientist Will Discuss Flounder Program
Dr. Elizabeth A. Fairchild, stock enhancement project director at the University of New Hampshire’s Atlantic Marine Aquaculture Center, will discuss the potential for a winter flounder stock enhancement program in Vineyard waters at the Chilmark Public Library on Tuesday, Sept. 25 at 5 p.m.
New England winter flounder population has declined 91 percent in the past 17 years, according to the university’s Coastal Marine Laboratory.
Ms. Fairchild has been studying winter flounder for more than a decade, looking at reasons for the decline and possible programs for restoration.
Her recent research has considered methods for enhancing wild winter flounder stock with hatchery-raised juvenile fish. Ms. Fairchild’s experiments have been aimed at determining the ideal size for releasing juveniles into the wild, when and where the releases should occur, and how to condition the hatchery-raised juveniles to avoid predators and forage for food after release into the wild.
Ms. Fairchild’s research has been funded by the Science Consortium for Ocean Replenishment, a consortium of university fisheries research departments that is sponsored by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Marine Fisheries Service.
The free lecture is sponsored by the Menemsha Fisheries Development Fund and the Friends of the Chilmark Public Library. Admission is free. More information is available by calling 508-645-3360.
Class Scheduled on Landscaping Accounting
Do you have trouble collecting from your landscaping clients? Pete Costas from Vineyard Gardens is offering a class at the Polly Hill Arboretum titled, Landscaper Accounting: Collecting for 2007.
In this class/forum he will present a couple of collection strategies of his own, and brainstorm with the class on better ways to bill clients, or even get pre-paid in 2008.
The class will be held on Tuesday, Sept. 25 from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. at the Far Barn at the arboretum. The cost of the class is $10 with all proceeds to benefit the arboretum. More information and registration is available by calling Karin Stanley at Polly Hill at 508-693-9426. | <urn:uuid:5b7ba9d3-9cf5-42f9-98f9-f14369255312> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mailto:classifieds@mvgazette.com/news/2007/09/18/business-briefs | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00070-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.916311 | 701 | 1.679688 | 2 |
Literacy milestones 5-6
Starting school is wonderfully exciting and a major part of this excitement can come from children learning to read. As adults we can take the complexity of learning to read for granted. Learning to read is hard work for young children but thankfully there are many ways at home you can support your child’s emerging literacy skills, helping them reach their milestones. Children will all develop in their own time within the context of opportunity, practice and previous experience. Children who come from literate homes where literacy skills are valued are at an advantage. This age is a period of huge development which may occur in leaps or bounds or steady consistent progress – all of which is usual.
How five to six year olds learn
5-6 year olds learn name recognition
Many class teachers will begin with a child’s name as a reading point as many children already know their name and can identify the letters in their name. This helps them feel confident about beginning the ‘learn to read process’. Provide your child with models of their own name at home which they can copy from.
5-6 year olds learn letters and sounds
Pre-schoolers often know their A,B,Cs however the first year of school is about learning the sounds which correspond with each letter. There are many phonics programs used nationally. Most programs begin by teaching children the letters in the sequence of a,m,s,t,I,f,d. This is due to each letter looking, sounding and being articulated (formed with the tongue and lips) differently which minimises confusion. Help your child by saying and singing silly tongue twisters. This will help your child become sensitive to the sounds in words.
5-6 year olds are learning the concepts of print
As pre-schoolers children are encouraged to become confident handling books. This is continued further by children this age as they learn ‘concepts of print’. Concepts of print is referring to holding the book correctly, identifying the title of a text, understanding that the front cover or title page often tells us what the story will be about, identifying the illustrator, directionality reading left from right and the return sweep (returning from the right hand side of the page to begin reading the next line on the left hand side).
5-6 year olds are learning letters vs words vs sentences
Children will learn that letters form words, which are then strung together in order to form sentences. States differ on the way of teaching this. When the teacher starts with sentences it is called a Top Down approach and when they begin with building words from letters it is a Bottoms Up approach.
5-6 year olds will learn to sound out
Teachers may describe the first words your child learns to read as CVC (consonant, vowel, consonant) words such as dad, mum and cat. Your child will learn to hear and identify each single sound and then pull the sounds apart and then slide them back together again. This skill helps with learning to write and spell words. Your child is not yet able to tell you how many syllables a word has but they can clap the number of sounds they hear in a word. Clapping games at home help them practice these skills.
5-6 year olds are also developing their comprehension skills at this time. There are six main comprehension strategies which can begin to be taught from this early age.
These strategies are:
- Making connections – linking what they read (or have read to them) to what they already know about the topic.
- Predicting – using the information in the text to guess what will happen next
- Visualising – being able to make a picture in their mind of what is happening in the story
- Monitoring – knowing when a word sounds wrong or when a story doesn’t make sense
- Summarising – children can explain what they have read or heard in 1 or 2 sentences.
“Children are made readers on the laps of their parents” Emilie Buchwald.
5-6 year olds learn High Frequency Words. High Frequency words are a small number of words (children learn approximately 200) that make up a large percentage of written print. Children begin to learn these basic words such as the, and, they, said to help kids with reading more fluently and because reading can be very laborious for young children when they have to sound out each word. High Frequency words may be known to parents as sight words
- 5-6 year olds may have Home Reading. While each school will arrange nightly reading under a different system, nationally the importance of nightly reading for children has been recognised. It is important not just to read to your child but to interact with them about the text. Your child may bring a book home from school but also allow children to choose their own book at home. Easy books allow children to build their confidence. More difficult books which you may have to share the reading of allow them to follow their own interests. Create a special place for home reading and focus on your child. This models to them that they are important and that you value learning to read.
Find more about kids reading:
- Reading milestones for pre-kinder children
- Reading milestones for 5-6 year olds
- Reading milestones for 7-8 year olds
- Reading milestones for 9-10 year olds
- Reading milestones for 11-12 year olds
- Reading games for kids
- Resistant readers aged 6-9
- Helping your child learn to read | <urn:uuid:693f5421-6db4-44b8-bf4a-02f032ebe635> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kidspot.co.nz/schoolzone/article+4168+281+Literacy-milestones-5-6.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962572 | 1,134 | 3.890625 | 4 |
ISLAMABAD: Planning Commission declaring Thar Coal project of nuclear scientist and Chairman of the Governing Board of Thar Coal Project Dr Mubarik Samarkand as ‘unfeasible’ has stopped its funding.
“The commission has concluded audit of the project and stopped release of funds for it on the grounds that we think it unfeasible. It’s not possible to produce 10 megawatt electricity from the Thar Coal,” Shahid Sattar, Member Planning Commission (PC) said while addressing The International Energy Summit here on Saturday.
He said the release of more funds of the pilot project would be ‘risky’.
He said nuclear scientist Dr. Samar Mubarakmand has failed in producing gas through Thar Coal field. “The gas flamed only for four hours and then dropped off,” Shahid Sattar said.
On other hand, nuclear scientists has contradicted the statement of Shahid Sattar saying that it seems Mr Sattar has never gone to Thar. “Coal Gas remained flaming for almost four months and if still someone couldn’t see it then its his fault,” he said.
Earlier, Dr. Samar said that through underground gasification technology, electricity can be generated at Rs3 to 4 per unit while diesel can be produced at $40 per barrel.
Dr. Samar Mubarakmand is a nuclear scientist and a Member of Science and Technology, Planning Commission.
For last many years he with a team of dedicated scientists is trying to use coal reservoirs at Thar, Sindh, considered to one of the largest reservoirs in the world. | <urn:uuid:863929e3-099f-4212-aaee-8ae961b21f67> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.onlinenews.com.pk/details.php?newsid=192798 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95287 | 344 | 1.867188 | 2 |
Paperback books make less of an impact on the foot of the unwary reader who drops them on to his unprotected toes, but the fourth edition of Ian Lloyd's excellent Information Technology Law (published by Oxford University Press) is quite heavy enough to make itself felt. Weighing in at 735 pages, the new edition (at a very reasonable £29.99) has done more than almost any other book to give the impression that IT law -- a ragbag of discrete legal topics as diverse as surveillance, defamation, copyright and e-commerce -- possesses an overriding cohesive unity. The exclusion of the regulation of the telecommunications and broadcasting sectors has made this job easier but, let's face it, this is a student text and anyone who has ever taught Information Technology Law at university level will know that it is easier to persuade children to eat spinach than to persuade students to immerse themselves in the vast, expanding constellation of rules that govern the telecoms and broadcasting sectors.
is what the third edition looked like when Butterworths still published it
Since the book is more closely themed around the control of information than aimed at the control of the infrastructure within which it may be conveyed, its content addresses correspondingly more of the interesting and controversial political pressure points in IT law (the individual versus the state, the right to know versus the right to suppress) rather than the law's merely regulatory aspects (however commercially important they may be to clients who are governed by them). Its author presents his analysis in a reasoned and open-handed manner and does not tell readers what to think. All in all, a good buy, particularly if -- as the IPKat suspects will be the case -- we have seen the end of a particularly tumultuous decade of legislative upheaval and can now focus on relatively minor fine-tuning of this fascinating area of law. | <urn:uuid:f969206f-64c1-4557-af0c-7fe7d7b51254> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ipkitten.blogspot.com/2005/02/its-that-man-lloyd-again.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957223 | 370 | 1.578125 | 2 |
CREDITS: 1.00 LUCourse Description
The course examines two interior design projects: the Banq Restaurant in Boston and Georgia Tech’s Hinman Research Building. Both are located within existing structures and have been designed to have a high visual impact. The text explains the background to the design decisions and the motivations that underpin its concept. The text is accompanied by images, technical drawings and construction details showing the materials and technologies used.
Learning Objectives – after reading the article and studying the drawings, you will be able to:
- Examine the cultural premises and causes that have contributed to architectural theory taking its present form.
- Discuss how two apparently very different projects were the work of the same designer.
- Analyze the creative process and implementation strategies.
- Describe the reuse of existing structures and spaces to accommodate new functions. | <urn:uuid:8dcd6df6-6ece-4390-a3ff-12fa5651cfaf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theplan.it/J/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1789%3Abanq-restaurant-hinman-research-building&lang=en | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931162 | 174 | 3.1875 | 3 |
On a computer, the startup screen on Windows (where it says Windows 9x on the cloudy background) the bottom of the screen is moving. It is a small line and it is a gradient skyblue to white which is moving to show that it is loading. This image is a bmp even though it has an extension of .sys
The file is Logo.sys in case you don't know.
I was just wondering how bitmaps can be animated?
Last edited by Zach Elfers; 01-31-2003 at 01:29 PM.
Yes the logo.sys is a bmp. but it is not animated. that portion is done separate from the bmp. (mand who knows it might really be a DIB with a sys name).
There is such a file called DIB. (Device independant Bitmap)
I used to play around with it to make an animation. How I think it worked, (forgot):
You put several bmp files together something like this:
tt.bmp+aa.bmp+zz.bmp You highlight the three files and save them as a dib file. And it animated like a gif.
I will check back in my files to see if I can find it.
[Quote]I was just wondering how bitmaps can be animated?[/Quote}
Creating Movies which are in 3D. As the name (Lathe)implies all objects are rounded. They turn tumble, get larger and smaller.
The easiest way to create a movie is to let a program generate it for you. The ÁLathe application generates movies (called sequences) that are compatible with MiniMovie.
Another way to create a movie is to manually combine multiple BMP format bitmaps into a single DIB file. Use a program which supports the BMP file type (Paintbrush, for example) to create several bitmaps, one for each frame of your movie. Then, use the COPY command to concatenate the BMP files into a DIB.
The following statement combines every BMP file in the current directory, in the directory order, into a single DIB file called ANIMATE.DIB:
COPY /B *.BMP ANIMATE.DIB
The next few statements copy four bitmaps, BITMAP1.BMP, BITMAP2.BMP, BITMAP3.BMP, and BITMAP4.BMP, in that order, to a DIB file called MOVIE.DIB: | <urn:uuid:d0c542a9-fd86-4e5d-b9ce-67ad10117d91> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.webdeveloper.com/forum/showthread.php?3329.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939788 | 526 | 2.6875 | 3 |
On May 9, 2012, President Barack Obama became the first sitting U.S. President to affirm his belief that same-sex couples should be able to get married. Weeks later, the First Circuit Court of Appeals declared a portion of the Defense of Marriage Act (“DOMA”) unconstitutional.1 These announcements are just two of many events that have shaped the current landscape in this country with respect to the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (“LGBT”) Americans.
As LGBT issues are being placed at the forefront of American politics, employers would do well to pay attention, as these changes may necessitate changing employment policies, educating staff, and potentially defending against employment lawsuits for previously unchartered claims, including discrimination based upon sexual orientation and gender identity or expression.
On June 12, the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee (“HELP Committee”) is set to consider the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (“ENDA”). ENDA seeks to expand the protections of Title VII to cover sexual orientation and gender identity and will prohibit discrimination in hiring and employment by nonreligious employers with at least 15 employees.
ENDA will be a federal mandate proscribing any discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity by both public and private employers—thereby bringing employees living in states without such protections like Ohio,2 Kentucky,3 Pennsylvania,4 and West Virginia,5 under the umbrella of federal protection.
The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has found that Title VII protects transgender employees—holding that discriminating against employees who do not identify with their gender, act like members in their gender, or conform with sexual stereotypes is a form of sex discrimination violates Title VII. Barnes v. City of Cincinnati, 401 F.3d 729 (6th Cir. 2005); Smith v. City of Salem, 378 F.3d 566 (6th Cir. 2004).
Further underscoring the shifting landscape of LGBT rights was the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s (“EEOC”) recent ruling in Macy v. Holder, expanding the prohibition against sex discrimination of Title VII to cover transgender workers.
In Macy v. Holder, the EEOC held that Mia Macy’s complaint of discrimination based on gender identity, change of sex, and/or transgender status can be brought under Title VII. Macy, a former police detective in Phoenix, Arizona, relocated to San Francisco and applied for an open position at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (“Agency”) for which she was qualified. Macy originally applied for the position as a man and interviewed with the Director as a man. Macy asserted that the Director told her on two separate occasions that she would have the position pending completion of a background check. A few months after her original application, Macy informed the Agency that she was beginning the process of transitioning from male to female. After the Agency received notice of Macy’s change of name and gender, the agency contacted Macy and told her the position was no longer available due to lack of funding. Macy later discovered that the Agency filled this position with another person.
The EEOC found that charges of discrimination based on transgender status or gender identity are cognizable under Title VII’s sex discrimination prohibition and any such claims must be processed by the EEOC.
That Title VII’s prohibition on sex discrimination proscribes gender discrimination, and not just discrimination based on biological sex, is important. If Title VII proscribed only discrimination on the basis of biological sex, the only prohibited gender-based disparate treatment would be when an employer prefers a man over a woman, or vice versa. But the statute’s protections sweep far broader than that, in part because “gender” encompasses not only a person’s biological sex but also the cultural and social aspects associated with masculinity and femininity.
* * *
[G]ender discrimination occurs any time an employer treats an employee differently for failing to conform to any gender-based expectations or norms.
The growing trend in the United States reveals that employment law is changing and adapting to provide a more inclusive environment for LGBT employees. Even though your state or federal circuit court may not recognize certain protections for LGBT individuals, many cities and counties around the country do have such protections in their local ordinances. As employers are navigating these issues in hiring, promoting, and firing, they should be cognizant of the local, state, and federal laws that may be at play. Employers must take the time to recognize and understand these changes, and consider revising their employee manuals and employment policies to comply with these changes.
(1) Massachusetts v. U.S. Dep’t of HHS, et al., Case Nos. 10-2204, 10-2207, & 10-2214, 2012 U.S. App. LEXIS 10950, (1st Cir. May 31, 2012) (affirming the lower court’s holding finding Section 3 of DOMA which defines marriage for federal purposes as a union between a man and a women, to be an unconstitutional encroachment on the power to define marriage granted to the states by the Tenth Amendment).
(2) Ohio prohibits discrimination by public employers based on sexual orientation.
(3) Kentucky prohibits discrimination by public employers based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
(4) Pennsylvania prohibits discrimination by public employers based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
(5) West Virginia provides no protections for LGBT employees. | <urn:uuid:d243d36f-4863-42e7-ad96-7c3d348ed736> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.jdsupra.com/post/documentViewer.aspx?fid=cc39f268-b873-43ff-8539-8d942a2677f6 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00054-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939333 | 1,137 | 2.3125 | 2 |
Black smoke seen at Vatican as first vote fails to elect new Pope
- From: News Limited Network
- March 13, 2013
BLACK smoke billowed out of the Vatican chimney today signifying the first ballot to elect a pope to lead the world's 1.2 billion Catholics had failed to find a single leading candidate.
Thousands braved teeming rain and at times hail to cower under umbrellas in St Peter’s Square to look to the heavens and watch the small chimney high above the Sistine Chapel for a sign of election progress.
White smoke, signifying a pope has been chosen, was never likely in this first ballot but the conclave has attracted huge global attention since Pope Benedict, 85, made history last month by becoming the first pope in 600 years to step down.
The black smoke, created from the burning of the ballots in a stove in the chapel and aided by some added chemicals including potassium and sulphur, billowed above the Vatican terracotta roof tops shortly after 7.50pm local time. Many in the St Peter's Square on what was a unseasonally cold evening, carried flags of their papal hopes including banners from Spain, Philippines, Brazil and Mexico as well of course from Italy.
There was great anticipation despite the expectation there would not be a result but consensus was being part in a moment in history.
Four ballots will now be held every day until consensus is built upon and a candidate attracts a two thirds majority or at least 77 votes to be elected pope; no clear favourite has been identified although cardinal Angelo Scola and Brazil's Odilo Scherer are seen as frontrunners.
The papal tailor Gammarelli delivered the clothes on Monday to ensure that the newly elected pope could change immediately into papal white as soon as he accepts the election. With the words "Habemus Papam'' - or "We have a pope'' - the pontiff then appears on the balcony of St. Peter's Basilica to greet the crowd for the first time.
A group of women who say they are priests launched pink smoke from a balcony overlooking the square during the Mass to demand female ordination - a play on the famous smoke signals that will tell the world whether a pope has been elected.
And in a bizarre twist, basketball star Dennis Rodman is expected to arrive in St. Peter's Square tomorrow in a makeshift popemobile as he campaigns for Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana to become the church's first black pope.
Earlier in the afternoon, the 115 cardinals from around the world eligible to vote attended a moving Gregorian-chanting mass to pray the Holy Spirit guided them in their important election of a new pope to lead the church which has been bogged in corruption, controversy, politics and scandal in recent times. They were joined by thousands of devout pilgrims and clergy from a myriad of religious orders all wearing their traditional robes.
During the mass homily, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, dean of the college of cardinals, alluded to the disunity within the fractured church, appealing to fellow electors to put differences aside for the good of the church.
"My brothers let us pray that the Lord will grant us a pontiff who will embrace this noble mission with a generous heart," he told the congregation as many cardinals looked skyward as outside thunder and lightning and intermittent hail storms appeared to give gravitas to his words.
He added: "Each of us is therefore called to cooperate with the Successor of Peter, the visible foundation of such an ecclesial unity."
US Cardinal Timothy Dolan perhaps saw it differently saying a calm had washed over him as if "this gentle rain is a sign of the grace of the Holy Spirit coming upon us."
Later in the afternoon, the 115 red-capped cardinals walked in procession two-by-two along the frescoed walls of the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace to be sequestered into the Sistine Chapel for the vote. As they entered the chapel they chanted what is called the “litany of the saints”, asking the more than 150 saints by name to help them in their choice of pope.
Once inside they bowed before the frescoe of Michelangelo’s Last Judgement then took their place to each swear on a book of gospels an oath of secrecy for the duration of the conclave, under threat of excommunication if they reveal elements of deliberations in selecting a new leader.
The whole chapel scene, before the cameras were ordered out and the doors locked with only voting cardinals within, was broadcast live on big screens about St Peter’s Square.
Prior to the lockdown, some cardinals took to the Internet and Twitter to say their goodbyes to followers for the next few days.
“Last Tweet before conclave: May Our Father hear and answer with love and mercy all prayers and sacrifices offered for fruitful outcome. God Bless,” tweeted South African cardinal Wilfrid Napier.
It was a day steeped in history, holy ritual and tradition despite the unorthodox resignation that brought the world to this moment. And despite the rain that poured, at times torrid, throughout the day, thousands of pilgrims and tourists including from Australia have been enjoying what everyone appreciates is a very special week ahead for the Roman capital and Catholics in general. | <urn:uuid:20d88e5e-cbe2-4c27-b6d1-974449a9f80c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.news.com.au/world-news/black-smoke-seen-at-vatican-as-first-vote-fails-to-elect-new-pope/story-fndir2ev-1226595974211?from=public_rss | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00073-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96894 | 1,094 | 2.21875 | 2 |
We suspect little has changed since the original construction of this 1960s John Boys-designed midcentury Mornish house in Strathblane, Glasgow.
You just need to look at the fixtures and fittings to see what we mean – check out one of the images below to see a marvellous space age dining suit at the back of the kitchen for example. It’s not alone in its originality.
The house itself, in a ‘secluded location’ and on the ‘highly sought after’ road, was designed by architect John Boys of Lothian Barclay Jarvis, a successful Glasgow practice that later became Lothian Barclay Jarvis and Boys. He apparently spent time on a study tour in Scandinavia in his formative years, with the evidence of that also present here.
The agent describes it as a ‘ranch style bungalow’, complete with a ‘Butterfly’ roof, with the accommodation offering four bedrooms, two public rooms and a kitchen arranged around a central open space. There’s also a double garage with its own driveway outside, plus space to extend, should you get the planning permission.
You’ll also notice some lovely features within, including an open plan sitting/dining room with floor to ceiling windows, along with exposed wooden beams, feature stone walls plus Caithness stone and wood floors throughout.
As for that location, it sits among larch and pine trees, with a stream running through the garden and land attaching to Drumbrock Moor, where you’ll spot pheasants and deer.
A great time capsule, as well as an interesting and practical place to live. Offers over £455,000, should you be interested.
Find out more at the Rettie estate agents website | <urn:uuid:375e4864-ecfe-406f-8b67-f892f27d1cab> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wowhaus.co.uk/2012/05/08/on-the-market-1960s-john-boys-designed-midcentury-mornish-house-in-strathblane-glasgow/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00070-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959757 | 375 | 1.71875 | 2 |
About this artist
Source: Oxford University Press
English sculptor, installation artist, painter and printmaker. He was a leading figure in the group of ‘Young British Artists’ who emerged, predominantly in London, in the 1990s. He studied at Goldsmiths’ College, London (1986–9), and in 1988 curated the exhibition Freeze, which provided a new platform to show his own work and that of many of his Goldsmiths’ contemporaries, some of whom have since become internationally renowned. His works are explicitly concerned with the fundamental dilemmas of human existence; his constant themes have included the fragility of life, society’s reluctance to confront death, and the nature of love and desire, often clothed in titles which exist somewhere between the naive and the disingenuous. The works typically make use of media that challenge conventional notions of high art and aesthetic value and subject-matter that critiques the values of late 20th-century culture.
Dead animals are frequently used in Hirst’s installations, forcing viewers to consider their own and society’s attitudes to death. Containers such as aquariums and vitrines are also hallmarks of his work; reflecting the formal influence of Minimalism and certain sculptures by Jeff Koons, they are used as devices to impose control on the fragile subject-matter contained within them and as barriers between the viewer and the viewed. A Thousand Years (1989; London, Saatchi Gal.), a bisected glass vitrine containing a flayed cow’s head, maggots, flies and an Insectocutor, references the tradition of vanitas painting in Western art; acting as a metaphor for the tenuousness of existence and for the drive to pleasure and desire in face of the inevitability of death, it also plays out a cycle of actual birth, death and decay, with the attendant responses of fascination and repulsion, within the gallery space. In and Out of Love (1991; see 1991–2 exh. cat.) was installed on two floors of a vacant shop in Woodstock Street, in central London. The upstairs room contained flowers, bowls of sugar water and white canvases with pupae attached from which exotic butterflies hatched, mated, laid eggs and died (some were crushed underfoot by gallery visitors) in a cyclical rehearsal of biological function. Downstairs the canvases held dead butterflies embedded into monochromatic fields of viscous household gloss paint, fulfilling a static aesthetic role. The exhibition stood as a challenge to the art connoisseur who sees art history as a series of collectable masterpieces, proposing instead that works of art are occasional manifestations of a continuous culture. The paintings were later sold individually to collectors. In Mother and Child Divided (1993; Oslo, Astrup Fearnley Mus. Mod. Kst), the four sections of a bisected cow and calf are displayed in tanks of formaldehyde between which the viewer can pass. The animals are preserved as in life, but at the same time are emphatically dead, with their entrails and flesh exposed. The immediate impact and shocking power of the work, clinically devoid of sentiment and yet referencing the most elemental of human emotions, that of the bond between a mother and child, are characteristic of Hirst’s sculptures.
Hirst’s paintings can be seen as a foil to his sculptural work, though they are similarly inconclusive, exposing contradictions without resolution as a condition of human existence. The ‘spot’ paintings, such as Arachidic Acid (1994; London, White Cube Gal., see 1997 publication, p. 236), make reference to Gerhard Richter’s colour-chart paintings, turning the grid-like structures into rows of coloured circles. They are named after pharmaceutical stimulants and narcotics, the chemical enhancers of human emotion, and yet take the form of mechanical and unemotional Minimalist paintings. Their detachment is further emphasized by the exploitation of procedures that can be simply carried out by assistants under his instruction. The ‘spin’ paintings, created by pouring household gloss paint onto spinning circular canvases, rework Abstract Expressionist gestural painting in a mechanized pastiche borrowed from a fun-fair entertainment. Yet their expressive titles, such as Beautiful, Shattering, Slashing, Violent, Pinky, Hacking, Sphincter Painting (1995; see 1996 exh. cat., p. 101), contradict the apparent irony of their creation. Hirst’s interest in contemporary society is further reflected in collaborative pop music projects and in his designs for the Pharmacy and Quo Vadis restaurants, London. He was awarded the Turner Prize in 1995.
From Grove Art Online | <urn:uuid:551c4cd8-6e0b-44ce-84a0-c0c2a1a10bd1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.moma.org/m/explore/collection/art_terms/6905/0/0.iphone_ajax?klass=artist | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955562 | 964 | 2 | 2 |
A brief history of laughing gas May 3, 2010Posted by Colleen in Biology, Chemistry, Health, History of Science, Medicine.
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As a science major, signing lab safety forms is just a normal part of the beginning of every semester for me. We always cover the proper protocol for experiments we’ll be conducting in the lab and the things we probably shouldn’t do in order to remain alive. We take all of this for granted, but hundreds of years ago, the methods for scientific experiment were far different.
The story “The Not-So-Funny Tale Of Laughing Gas” on NPR’s Morning Edition talks about this. In 1799, a young scientists, about 21 years old, named Humphry Davy was doing testing on different gases as potential cures for Tuberculosis, a major problem of the time. To test these different gases (carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, etc.), he inhaled the gases himself and wrote about his reactions to them. Let’s just say, it wasn’t always a pleasant experience. While none of these gases could actually be used to cure tuberculosis, he did notice one of these gases had a particular effect on him. While testing the gas nitrous oxide, also known as laughing gas, Davy noticed that the toothache that he had been experiencing was gone after the nitrous oxide was inhaled and then later came back. He proposed that this gas could potentially be used in surgery to keep the patients from feeling the pain. Unfortunately, there was no knowledge of any kind of anesthesia at the time and the idea of a pain-free surgery was such a novel idea. Pain was thought to be a sign of a healthy body that would heal quite well, so people shied away from the idea. It would take about 40 years before people would begin to consider Davy’s discovery.
Sleep and stress May 3, 2010Posted by Colleen in Health, Neuroscience.
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Finals week has arrived which includes late nights in the library, lots of caffeine and not enough sleep. We all know it’s bad for us, yet we continue to deprive ourselves of sleep just to get that extra hour of work in. We feel so stressed out that we think depriving ourselves of this vital function will help in some way, shape or form.
Science Daily posted an article about stress and its connection to sleep. Studies have shown that “people with chronic stress report shorter sleep duration, worse sleep quality, and more daytime functioning impairments.” The problem is that lack of sleep can also cause more stress upon the person which could lead to an unfortunate and potentially never-ending cycle. How should someone with this problem begin to address it? Make some lifestyle changes: don’t drink too much caffeine, don’t try to stay up all night studying for a final (I should take my own advice!), make sure you have a wind-down period before bed, etc. This way sleep deprivation won’t be the cause of the stress in your life!
Most of us have heard about the massive oil spill that occurred on April 20th in the Gulf of Mexico when an oil rig exploded, killing 11 workers. It is estimated that at least 1.6 million gallons have leaked into the waters of the gulf. The oil has now officially claimed its first victim, according to an LA News Monitor online story, a Northern Gannet seabird. This death means that the oil has officially started to impact the surrounding environment.
Unfortunately, down the road this could mean bad things for the organisms of the Gulf of Mexico. According to a Science Daily article, the oil from the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill is still affecting the wildlife of Alaska even after over 20 years has passed. This disaster spilled 10.8 million gallons of crude oil over 1300 square miles. After all of this time some of the organisms, especially the near-shore ones, continue to ingest the residual oil. A group of scientists testing the continued impact of the oil looked at the harlequin duck as an example of a near-shore species. They used biomarker CYP1A, which is induced upon exposure to crude oil, to measure the continued impact. This biomarker was in higher abundance in the harlequin ducks, strongly suggesting that the oil continues to have an effect on the area where the disaster happened over 20 years ago.
This could mean that many years down the road, the Gulf of Mexico could still be seeing the effects of this oil disaster. The hope for me, I suppose, is that technology has improved enough over the past 20 years to have clean-up equipment that works more efficiently and effectively than it has in the past.
Click on first search result here for pdf of the Harlequin duck CYP1A paper.
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This semester, I have been part of a business creation and development class at Marian University called the A-Team. The A-Team is a student consulting group made up of students that come from a number of different backgrounds and disciplines but come together to work on a specific engagement. The team acts as a consulting group for a business or organization that comes forward with a specific problem or question that they would like us to answer. This semester our team chose to work with the Town of Speedway. Speedway has been having a problem over the past 20 years with their population declining causing an increase in housing stock and a decline in the overall upkeep of some of the houses. They came to us to try to figure out how to get young professionals to move to their town as well as how to deal with the blight that has been beginning in their neighborhoods.
You may be wondering now what exactly that has to do with a science blog. Well, I’ll tell you. We came to the conclusion that
Speedway should work on becoming a green community. There is nowhere else in the Indianapolis area that can make the claim that they are a green community. We all agreed that if Speedway were green we’d move there in a heart-beat. I personally think that the concept of living in a green town would be really cool! What we did as consultants was work on finding some suggestions for things that they could do. Some of the team members found lots of green grants and tax credits that the citizens could potentially use. There are things as extreme as installing solar panels or wind turbines. This would significantly decrease energy costs for the home. Also, there are other, smaller-scale things we suggested they look into.
By upgrading appliances to more energy efficient models, the homeowner saves a lot of money over time as well as doing something good for the environment. Houses can be made more green and energy efficient by installing energy-saving windows and insulation, and most simply by putting in compact fluorescent light bulbs.
We hope that Speedway listened to what we had to say (we gave them our presentation yesterday evening) and will work on going green!
Pollution is Good? April 28, 2010Posted by Colleen in Climate Change, Environment/Conservation, Health, Policy.
Marian University celebrated Earth Week last week (April 19th-22nd). We even hosted an outdoor movie and taught everyone the importance of recycling! That same week the EPA put out a report saying that air pollution has dramatically reduced over the past twenty years. To me, that seems like a really good thing, but according to a recent NPR story, clean air could actually be intensifying global warming.
Shocked? Me too.
But, according to science writer Eli Kintisch, this could be the case.
Why is this so?
Well, there are two kinds of air pollutants: aerosols and greenhouse gases. Greenhouse gases warm the planet, which we are well aware of, but recently scientists have discovered that aerosols actually have a temperature maintaining effect for the earth. Apparently if all man-made air pollution was stopped, global warming could be sped up by as much as a degree Fahrenheit. While greenhouse gases absorb heat, adding to global warming, aerosols actually reflect sunlight away from the earth causing the earth to cool down rather than heat up. By cleaning the air, we’re taking away this stuff away, perhaps adding to the increase in the global temperature. These pollutants still cause health problems, like asthma and respiratory disease, so letting them stay in the atmosphere isn’t necessarily the answer. The scary thing is that we don’t know how much these cooling effects have slowed down global warming. If it’s a lot, then taking the aerosols away could cause a huge problem. This would mean that we’ve been causing a larger warming effect than we originally thought. If not, then it may not be as much of a concern.
One idea that has come about from this knowledge is to use geothermal engineering to fix the problem caused by removing these cooling pollutants. What we would do is inject new pollutants into the clouds, allowing for the cooling to occur. Theses sulfur aerosols are distributed naturally during volcanic eruptions, such as the one we’ve been seeing in Iceland. Volcanoes, when they erupt, put out a lot of sulfur aerosols into the stratosphere and can cause cooling to happen. The idea is that if there is a natural emergency in the future caused by the warming, it might be possible to slow or stop the warming by mimicking the volcanoes and injecting these aerosols into the stratosphere.
To hear the whole story, click here.
Deep Dark Sea Monsters April 26, 2010Posted by Colleen in Behavior, Biology, Ecology, Physiology.
It seems like the things that fascinate us the most are the things we don’t know much about. This is certainly true for the depths of the ocean. One of the most famous organisms that can be found in the Mesopelagic to Bathypelagic zones of the ocean is the Deep Sea Anglerfish. The species I will be referring to is commonly called the humpback angler or the black devilfish (Melanocetus johnsonii).
Yikes! Does it bite?
This fish looks ferocious with its huge mouth and fang-like teeth, tiny eyes and round body. You might think that this fish is huge and could bite your arm off. You’d be wrong. This little cutie actually maxes out around 7 inches (and that’s pretty big). It has a round body with soft muscles and weak bones to deal with the high pressures found at these depths. She doesn’t need to be very muscular because she is actually rather sedentary. She sits and waits for her food to come to her, using her bioluminescent lure to attract prey. The lure is filled with symbiotic bacteria that fluoresce in a fashion similar to the fireflies here on land. She wiggles it back and forth, encouraging her food to get close enough that all she has to do is open her mouth and gobble up the unsuspecting fish. The stomach is extremely expandable, making it possible for the anglerfish to eat things that are up to two times as large as she is! Pretty extreme, but food is hard to come by so beggars can’t be choosers.
You may have noticed that I kept referring to the angler as a she. This is no accident. The humpback anglers we are most familiar with are actually all females. Their male counterparts are much smaller than the females, being only about an inch long. They look like little jelly beans with fins! Unlike the female anglers, the males are actually very muscular, perfect for active swimming. They need to be good swimmers so that they can find the females. The male anglerfish really only has one goal in life: to find a female angler. This is because the Deep Sea Anglerfish have evolved to have a very bizarre reproductive cycle. Since it is harder to find a mate than to find food for these little fishies, they can’t reproduce like most other fish. The males have special organs by their eyes that allow them to sense the chemicals that are emitted from the female fish. When a male finds a female, he uses hooks in his mouth to attach to the female. Over time, the male becomes part of the female, a parasite of sorts, sharing her blood supply and getting all of his nutrients from her. The only thing that the male fish continues to do on his own is breathe. This way whenever the female is ready to lay her eggs, she has the male there to fertilize them.
Marian Travels to Pensacola April 5, 2010Posted by Colleen in Biology, Ecology, Environment/Conservation, Marian University curriculum, Science Education.
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Spring Break….and SCIENCE!
Over Marian University’s spring break, the MU Marine Biology class that I am enrolled in took a field trip to Pensacola, Florida. It’s been kind of difficult learning about marine topics while in a classroom in the middle of Indiana…the nearest ocean is hours away. Because of this, I found our Pensacola trip to be vital to my understanding of the topics we’ve covered so far this semester.
Our group began our caravan to Florida at 5 AM the Saturday of spring break and arrived to our rented beach house in Pensacola about 12 and a half hours later. As soon as we got there, the whole class ran to the beach across the street, and our learning began!
The following day, we went to Big Lagoon State Park. One of the first things we did in every new place we went to was to check water temperature and salinity. Here, the water was an icy 15 degrees C and had a salinity of 17 ppt. The water here was somewhat less salty because we were looking at an area that acted as a nursery ground to many young marine organisms. To look at these organisms, some of us took a seining net and walked through the water. Some of the organisms we found included snapping shrimp, jellyfish (one was a moon jelly), juvenile sea trout, croaker and mullet, pipefish (related to seahorses), as well as other juvenile organisms.We also looked at the primary producers in this area. Sea grass and eel grass were the plants we saw in the water and Juncus was a terrestrial plant we saw all over.
The following day, we took a day trip to Mobile, Alabama to look at the mud flats there. Unfortunately, the Gulf coast only experiences one tide circuit per day (compared to 2 on other oceans). Low tide had occurred at 5:30 in the morning, but we got there around 11 AM. We did what we could as far as looking at soil samples, but information was difficult to gather here. The temperature of the water was half a degree cooler (14.5 degrees) in Mobile Bay and salinity was 10 ppt. The salinity here was so much lower because of the fresh-water river that flowed into the area.
In Pensacola Bay, right behind the house where we stayed, we looked at fouling communities, which are the communities of barnacles, and oysters that attach to buoys, boats, pilings of piers, and any other surface that they can find to claim as home. The zonation depends on how much time the object spends in or out of the water. Oysters tend to live on things that spend all or most of their time submerged. Barnacles can be higher up and can survive for periods of time out of the water.
One of the final marine aspects our class explored was to look at the water and beach of the Gulf of Mexico right outside of the house we stayed in. We took measurements of the length of the beach (from waterline to area where plant growth began) so that future classes could come down and compare our data with theirs. The water here had a much higher salinity than anywhere else we had tested at 37 ppt. The temperature was the same as most other places we tested (15 degrees). There were some interesting organisms that we came across here as well. One was the ghost crab. If you see the holes that are along the beach, that is most likely the home of one of these creatures. They range in size from very small to about the size of a fist (if you include its legs). We found a large female crab and brought her in to study, but she must have been old because she died the next day. We also tried bringing in a smaller one we found later on in the week, but there was an accident and the little guy got crushed. A third and fourth were brought back to our house and placed in a tank. On was large and the other was small. Unfortunately for the smaller crab, the big guy got hungry. Before we came home again, we let go our lone surviving crab. I’m sure she was glad to be free again.
Willpower and the Brain February 12, 2010Posted by Colleen in Behavior, Biology, Evolution, Neuroscience.
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It feels like we’re rapidly passing through February, which means March, as well as my spring break Marine Biology trip to Pensacola is quickly approaching. I’m hoping that the weather will be warm because I’d really like to spend some time relaxing on the beach. Naturally, that means breaking out the swimsuits and trying to watch what I eat to be in top shape. Many of my friends are in the same situation and are on diets in order to lose that pesky 5 pounds. We all seem to struggle with making good choices though (why, oh why, can’t I say no to chocolate?). It all leaves me wondering where my willpower went.
The science of will power
The other day while doing some other homework, I came across a radio story on NPR called “Willpower and the ‘Slacker’ Brain”. I had learned in psychology that the brain can memorize about 7 numbers at a time, which is why we’re generally pretty good at remembering people’s phone numbers (most of the time). In this particular study, they had people memorize numbers; some had to memorize a small series of numbers, like two, and others had to memorize a larger series of numbers, like 7. They were then sent to another room to recite their numbers, but along the way were interrupted and offered a snack: either chocolate cake or fruit salad. Most people who memorized a large number would take the cake and those with a small number would take the fruit. Apparently, the more you have on your mind, the more likely you are to choose something that you want emotionally rather than what makes logical sense. (Listen to the story to hear the whole study.)
So maybe that’s why I don’t always make the best food choices… I’ve got too much on my mind to think logically. | <urn:uuid:4c487225-2e98-4feb-b3ac-f96a49be7359> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://marianuniversityscienceblog.wordpress.com/author/mcolleenoconnor/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975282 | 3,927 | 2.78125 | 3 |
CTEH® has comprehensive knowledge of the environmental and human health issues facing rail companies and we bring our collective experience and multidisciplinary approach to every project. We provide a wide range of scientific consulting services to rail industry, including:
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Every major railroad operates track and facilities in industrial areas, bordering properties with serious environmental issues. In a large number of cases these properties have environmental impacts which have spread to railroad property. The Right of Entry Management Program was designed to reduce property owner exposure to potential contamination liability related to adjacent sites.
CTEH® initiated this program to provide fast, cost effective and cooperative assessment and cleanup at incidents with soil and surface water issues. The major goal of this program is to reduce long-term remediation by addressing the major issues early on in a project. CTEH® accomplishes this goal several ways. We coordinate with regulators, both on-site and off-site, to ensure that we are meeting their expectations as well as keeping our client’s interests in mind.
Additionally, CTEH® can provide assistance with segregation of wastes and identify economical disposal options. We will prepare technical closure reports and ensure a smooth transition to the railroad’s long term environmental consultant if further action is needed. | <urn:uuid:2d3461e8-52d4-4fe7-a63d-d76bea4f82fd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cteh.com/transportation/rail | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940637 | 557 | 2.125 | 2 |
Born: c. 1860
Birthplace: Hano, First Mesa, Ariz.
Nampeyo was known internationally as a premier potter. She based her work on techniques used by Hopi and Tewa artisans. She learned pottery from her father's mother, a Hopi, who specialized in “crackle ware,” smooth-finished pottery that was intricately painted.
Nampeyo integrated prehistoric Sikyatki designs into her work. She and her second husband, Lesso, copied motifs from pots excavated from an ancient ruin in 1895, and Nampeyo reproduced them on her own vessels. She eventually mastered the Sikyatki style, which is characterized by geometric figures and pictures of animals and faces. She used a yellowish clay to produce the low wide-shouldered pots
She taught other First Mesa women her technique, thus creating a renaissance in Hopi pottery. Nampeyo's eyesight began to fail in the mid-1920s, and Lesso painted the vessels she had shaped. Her daughters and granddaughters also became skilled potters and carried on the tradition she had revived.Died: 7/20/1942
Fact Monster/Information Please® Database, © 2007 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. | <urn:uuid:43293495-a026-4aa8-8048-c65546bd267b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0900064.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976694 | 268 | 3.03125 | 3 |
Who doesn't love Chicken Salad and Egg Salad!!! There are foods that I have craved after giving up gluten and chicken salad was one of those! Although, this version is served in eggs, it was a great lunch and the our kids loved to snack on them through the week. Chicken salad is a great source of protein, and full of omega 3's and 6's, which are essential fatty acids building blocks that the body needs. This recipe is great for lunch dinner, or a snack! Just make sure to double up this recipe, it is sure to disappear fast!
- Fill a sauce pan with water and add 7 eggs. Boil eggs for 10 minutes to 15 minutes. Let cool for 5 minutes. Run under cool water and peel shells, and slice length wise. In a small bowl spoon egg yolks, 1 tablespoon of mayonnaise, paprika and 1 tablespoon of Dijon mustard. Mix thoroughly, as you would deviled eggs.
- Dice chicken, celery, green onions and dill. Toss in a medium sized bowl, and add Mayonnaise, Dijon, lemon, salt and pepper. Stir in egg mixture, and spoon into the hard boiled eggs.
Serve and enjoy! | <urn:uuid:91e83bcc-3922-4238-ba6d-4965dbf4ac7c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://theprimitivefoodie.blogspot.com/2012/05/chicken-deviled-egg-salad.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955576 | 253 | 1.507813 | 2 |
He is Not Here, He is Risen
Many Christians seem content to leave Jesus on the cross, while the resurrection often suffers from neglect. That the cross receives so much attention, however, is not without warrant. After all, the event was the “one act of righteousness” that led “to justification and life for all men” (Rom. 5:18). That is to say, the one Man’s act of righteousness is the climactic act of Jesus’ life-long fidelity to His Father’s will and purpose, when He offered up His life for His people. Taking it one-step further, many of us are inclined to say that we will live under the public disgrace and outrage of the cross until Christ’s return, that it defines the age in which we now live. Since we live in a suffering world, as the thinking goes, the crucifixion provides the perfect revelation of God’s empathy with His creation. Yet the whole reason that the one act remains pivotal is precisely because Scripture deems it the decisive victory by the One who hung dead upon it. But what kind of victory would have Christ hanging upon it still? Wherein lies the triumph in the story of a disillusioned Galilean who could not get God to establish His kingdom on earth? There is none. Without the resurrection, the cross is foolish indeed.
All of this to say that the cross itself is entirely inseparable from God’s other redemptive acts through Jesus in history — His life, death, resurrection, ascension, and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost — all of these form a unified front upon which the age of sin and death met its match. And never was the defeat of those two horrors more boldly proclaimed than on Easter morning. The resurrection stands as the single, most powerful declaration by God that this truly human Jesus “delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God,” was also “the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness” (Acts 2:23; Rom. 1:4). Jesus and His mighty works were vindicated when God raised Him from the dead, exalting Him as “both Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:36), no longer lowly and limited, now Messiah of His people and Ruler of the entire world.
If the resurrection did not happen, then we followers of Jesus, along with Saint Paul, “are of all people most to be pitied” (1 Cor. 15:19). In other words, if Christ has not been raised we are the most wretched, unhappy, sorry lot the world has ever seen, because we have believed the cruelest deceit — the hope of a glorious salvation when all we are truly left with is sin, weeds, and death. But happen it did, and it is believed, for Jesus Himself said, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:29). This was, of course, the very reason the apostle John wrote the gospel: “These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (v. 31). The resurrection is part and parcel of that Gospel message of life in Jesus’ name. It is non-negotiable. One cannot consider himself or herself in line with “apostolic Christianity” without affirming the bodily resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. This is the clear testimony of the New Testament writings, captured most succinctly in Romans 10:9: “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Those who would deny it, while being treated with “gentleness and respect” (1 Peter 3:16), must not be countenanced at the table of fellowship; their professed “Christianity” should not be acknowledged.
The question that faces us, however, is not about its evidence; rather, it is about its meaning. What significance does the resurrection of Jesus have in God’s redemptive plan?
In simplest terms, the resurrection overturned the curses of the Fall (sin, weeds, and death). Not just the resurrection itself, however, for included in that event is that which led up to it: both the obedience of Jesus to His Father’s will (sometimes called “active” obedience) and His obedience unto death (“passive” obedience). In the former, Jesus’ role as the second Adam is clearly displayed. This Messiah sent from God defeated the sin of Adam’s disobedience with His own perfect obedience to what Israel had collectively failed to do, namely, keep the covenant.
When Adam disobeyed the divine command, God sent Abraham and the nation of Israel after him to usher in the light of the Gospel of God’s salvation (see Isa. 41:8–9; 49:3–6). Failing this, Jesus came as Israel’s representative; He could do this because He was sent as the Christ (“anointed one”). In Israel, the anointed one, or king, was both the representative of the nation to God, as well as God’s chosen representative to the nation (for example, 2 Sam. 19:43; 20:1). As such, like Israel (see Isa. 63:16), the king was God’s son: “I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son” (2 Sam. 7:14; also Ps. 2:6–7). The king of Israel, of course, was not deified like the Pharaohs of Egypt (unlike Jesus, who is the God-man). Thus for Jesus, being the Christ meant that He so closely identified with His people that whatever can be said of Him can, at least in principle, be said of them.
For Christians (both Jews and Gentiles, see Rom. 9:4–8), then, this means that they participate in God’s covenant, becoming by faith heirs of His promises, faithful to His will and purpose, precisely because Jesus already was. The apostle Paul meant nothing less when he wrote that we have been “baptized into Christ Jesus” (see Rom. 6:1–14). Finally, the gift that flows from this perfect fidelity on Jesus’ part is the gift of life itself (“the last Adam became a life-giving spirit,” 1 Cor. 15:45), and brings us back to what Saint Paul described as the “righteousness [that] leads to justification and life” (Rom. 5:18).
It is in Jesus’ obedience unto death that the contrast between the first and second Adam amplifies. “The free gift is not like the trespass” (Rom. 5:15). Indeed, it is far greater; the abundant grace of God completely overshadows the trespass of Adam. But how would that grace come? The charge from God to Israel, as stated above, was to live in covenant with Him as a means for them to defy the curse and destruction of Adam’s fall. But in this matter the apostle said, “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing” (Rom. 7:19). That is, “the good” keeping of the Law always gave way to “the evil” breaking of the Law as long as Adam remained Israel’s representative. And so they failed. Still, the necessity of the Servant’s work remained if sin was to be conquered and the old Adamic man redeemed (see Isa. 53:11). Who has delivered us from this body of death? The answer? “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Rom. 7:25). Jesus came and perfectly fulfilled the will of God, even unto death. In so doing, He reversed the faithlessness of Adam, starting in His resurrected life a new family of God that would bear His characteristics instead, and turned a fallen, corruptible world on its path toward renewal (see Rom. 8:21–22).
So, one major point of all this today is that, being baptized into Christ Jesus, we too share in His victory and exaltation (Rom. 6:1ff.). Not only was sin defeated by the perfect obedience (right through to the resurrection) of Jesus, death was destroyed as well. For death received its sting from sin. It is as if death had the rug pulled right out from under its feet, subsequently powerless to keep Him in the grave. Along with this came the guarantee that those who die once, if they are in union with Christ, will never die again. The pre-eminent resurrection, in other words, was the “first fruits” of the great resurrection to come (see 1 Cor. 15:12–33; 51–57). In this way, the ransomed Christian partakes of Christ’s exaltation, being put right with God and His law, reckoned righteous before the holy Judge.
Thus the third day, Easter morning, witnessed the dawn of a new day. Yet it was not just a new day unlike any other preceding it; rather, it was a day that carried within it the very future to which it pointed. The old war-analogy comes to mind: victory has been proclaimed, the war is nearing its end, though sin and death have yet to hear the news, and we battle them still. But they are not to be feared; we are their slaves no longer. The victor, Jesus, has destroyed the yoke of sin and death, having had that burden laid upon Him. The story of Jesus’ literally empty grave not only confirms the hope to which we cling, it simultaneously offers even now the future resurrection life to each person found in Christ. The uncertainties and chaos of this world, while at times oppressive, must not give us constant despair. There is no room for that in the life of the one who believes in God’s victory through the exalted Christ Jesus. As hard as it is, amid the mourning and empathy of tragedy, we are to thank God in light of the promise: the new creation, heaven on earth. Thus we routinely proclaim the faith each Lord’s Day: “Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ will come again.” There will come a day when the weeds will be choked-out by the sweet grape vine, true justice will reign, and once-wretched sinners will do naught but live resurrected, perfectly and humbly in the presence of the Almighty. | <urn:uuid:ff840ff4-af08-47ba-8a28-70a9d339e7ff> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ligonier.org/blog/he-not-here-he-risen/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00062-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962989 | 2,263 | 2.03125 | 2 |
I have heard to help lose weight one should do a colon cleanse to get rid of toxins. I just want to know what I can do with out spending lots of money.
I love questions like this. There are hundreds of books out there that say something like “death begins in the colon” and “cleanse the toxins” and other rubbish.
While there is truth to poor diets causing ill health (Americans eat a lot of fat and have a very high incidence of colon cancer), there’s a lot of myths too.
Fiber is the key. Instead of looking for miracle cures, adapt a healthy lifestyle. Eat whole-fiber, low fat foods and read labels. (While you’re at it, cut down on the salt too). Just reaching the FDA’s recommended allowance of fiber daily can be a challenge. (No more fast food!) Also, drink plenty of water. You can’t flush out the bad if it’s stuck like a rock inside of you. (Constipation hurts). Finally, exercise. Along with all the other health benefits (and burning calories, duh) regular exercise will promote peristalsis (the regular movement of stuff through your insides).
Seriously though, it takes some work to keep yourself healthy. Keep at it. And please stay away from people who are going to shove stuff where it doesn’t belong and “flush you out”. That’s really not good for you. Also, stay away from laxatives unless your doctor suggests it. They can have very bad side effects.
Just eat right and exercise.
Footnote: Enemas and Go-Lytly are not good! You can severely imbalance your sodium and postassium levels! (read: heart failure) Don’t stick things up there unless a doctor (a real doctor) tells you to! | <urn:uuid:c564ccb9-1a8d-49b7-86f7-287ec65bcb41> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.newcolonsweep.com/blog/tag/sodium/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936156 | 393 | 1.75 | 2 |
The precise specificity of the approximately 3,000 known restriction enzymes for their >200 different target sequences could be considered their most interesting characteristic. Although all restriction enzymes bind DNA nonspecifically, under optimal conditions the difference in cleavage rates at the cognate site and the next best site (single-base substitution) is very high. For example, the rate difference for EcoRI at its cognate site (5´-GAATTC-3´) and next best site (5´-TAATTC-3´) is of the order of 105 (1)
. Similarly, for EcoRV, cleavage at its cognate site (5´-GATATC-3´) is 106 times faster than at the next best site (5´-GTTATC-3´) (2)
However, under nonoptimal conditions, the differences in cleavage rates between cognate and next-best sites change dramatically for many enzymes. This loss of fidelity or increase in cleavage at sites similar to the cognate site is commonly referred to as star activity. A number of reaction parameters can increase the rate of cleavage at star sites relative to cognate sites. These include pH, type of ions present, ionic strength, metal cofactors other than Mg2+, high enzyme:DNA ratios and the presence of volume excluders (glycerol, ethylene glycol, etc.). In conjunction with this increase in star activity, cleavage rates at the cognate site generally decrease. For example, for EcoRI, the rate difference between cognate and star sites approaches zero as ethylene glycol concentration increases up to 4M (3)
, and for EcoRV, the rate difference drops to only sixfold when Mn2+ is substituted for Mg2+ (2)
For more information on the proposed mechanisms for star activity and a list of enzymes that exhibit star activity, see the Restriction Enzymes Resource. | <urn:uuid:3d3be1e0-cd99-4976-b77d-d0fd7259b408> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://au.promega.com/resources/articles/pubhub/enotes/what-is-restriction-enzyme-star-activity/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.924002 | 404 | 2.4375 | 2 |
CHIS Data Quality & the Survey Environment
CHIS provides high quality data that accurately represent the California household population. Since CHIS 2001, the survey has been guided by the data quality objectives of the Total Survey Error perspective (Groves et al., Survey Methodology), an approach that collectively addresses multiple threats to survey quality. Read more about the multiple threats to survey statistics.
Like all surveys, CHIS is challenged by a rapidly changing survey environment in which people are harder to reach and can be selective of about how and when they are reached. Response rates in nearly all population-based surveys have declined over the past few decades, and the recent growth of cellular telephones introduces potential coverage problems for traditional random digit dial (RDD) sampling methods. Declining response rates may increase the potential for nonresponse bias in CHIS estimates, and the growth of cellular telephones may increase the potential for noncoverage bias in CHIS estimates. View our short bibliography of research on these data quality issues.
CHIS is at the forefront of efforts to scientifically understand and address potential nonresponse and noncoverage bias. Below are studies we have done to assess methodological issues and guide our future efforts to maintain the highest standards for data quality. While no single study can definitively demonstrate data quality, the multiple studies taken as a whole consistently point in the same direction: CHIS data are high quality and accurately represent California's household population. | <urn:uuid:8fc90dfc-0f65-4040-ad9a-a82b9efc9ef9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://healthpolicy.ucla.edu/chis/design/Pages/data-quality.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936451 | 287 | 1.96875 | 2 |
Everyone loves to be fit and healthy to be able to do the issues that they need to do. It is extremely important to have a healthy body for you to accomplish the duties that you could accomplish. There are loads of ways offered to information you to become as healthy as possible. You simply need to observe them religiously.
DRINK LOTS OF WATER
Water is an important aspect for the body. This is the principle component of your whole body and it’s worthwhile to replenish regularly. All the time try to drink as much water as you may so that you can have a wholesome body. Water helps in making your metabolism up. This aids in the proper muscle contraction. You need to keep in mind that it additionally helps in eradicating undesirable waste products in your body. Read the rest of this entry | <urn:uuid:4b110f0f-3031-4e29-a74b-f07b564a8553> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://dailyfitnessblog.info/tag/healthy-body/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981191 | 166 | 2.25 | 2 |
Look what happened when we recruited a creative mom
to make over a room for the third-graders at this
When Children's Ministry Magazine asked Kami Gilmour, a
mom with a flair for decorating, to make over a Sunday school
classroom, we specifically chose a third-grade room. Why? Because
we've found in almost every church we've seen over the years that
it's easier to design a room to be child-friendly for kids 5 and
under. The real challenge comes with designing rooms that are
age-appropriate, gender-neutral, colorful, and current for older
kids. We're convinced that Kami achieved all this with our makeover
room. Read on to learn how you can apply the same principles in
your classroom makeovers.
Wall to Wall
The room is in a basement and was recently painted white. With a
western exposure window, there was lots of glare. The room had a
bulletin board, a wall cabinet, a white board, and posters tacked
on the walls. The lighting was fluorescent and seemed harsh with
the white walls and bright window.
In choosing a design and color palette, Kami kept in mind the use
of the room. The teacher was very visual and the room was small, so
the design needed to support his teaching setup, rather than be
"I chose bright colors that were gender-neutral," Kami says, "and
a crisp, geometrically inspired design with white lines and squares
that was 'hip' and age-appropriate."
To make the white lines, Kami used 1.5-inch blue painter's tape,
measured straight lines with a chalk line, and painted two coats of
white primer along the tape edges to seal them and ensure crisp
lines. For rooms with highly textured walls, use painter's caulk
along the edges to make sure colored paint doesn't seep under the
tape. Kami let the white primer on the tape dry (about one hour)
and painted the walls in each area with colored primer that matched
the final topcoat color. She gave the bottom areas extra coats of
primer, since this area is highly prone to scrapes and dings. Total
In evaluating the wall hangings, Kami says, "The bulletin board
seemed 'old school' and a hassle for the teacher to design over and
over. So we opted for the sleek, functional magnetic board
Kami had a metal shop cut 26 millimeter galvanized steel to the
desired size. She then glued it to plywood with PL400 (strong
caulk/adhesive). A carpenter built a frame with recycled 2¥4s and
screwed the new board into the wall studs over the bulletin board.
The added benefit is that the new board is removable (but heavy) if
the teacher really wants the bulletin board back. Total cost:
For design with teacher-friendly function, Kami designed a
magnetic strip of 6-inch metal squares around the room so the
teacher can hang displays at the children's eye level. "It also
highlights the cool geometric design," Kami says. "The squares were
cut from scrap metal by our new friends at the sheet metal shop!"
Total cost: $10
To diffuse the light, Kami simply hung a sheer white curtain on a
tension rod. She also created a metal valance to tie the window in
to the rest of the room design. Total cost: $10
Kami took down the awkward cabinet in the corner and removed the
two small bookcases that were crowded and overflowing. A carpenter
built a 7¥3-foot bookcase out of scrap shelving wood. The top is
deeper to provide a countertop-style area for the teacher. After
priming and painting it, the bookcase was bolted to the wall for
stability and safety. To hide the clutter, Kami installed a closet
shelving rod and added a festive fabric curtain. Total cost:
To add a little whimsy and personal touch, Kami made face magnets
from 35millimeter clear glass gems (from Wal-Mart's floral
"We took pictures of the kids," Kami explains, "cut them out,
and with clear glue put the faces on the back side of the gem (face
showing forward) and hot-glued a strong magnet to the back once the
face glue was dry. We also used multicolored pompoms and hot glued
strong, round magnets to them for use around the magnetic strip and
board. With the remaining pompoms, we covered the plain, ugly clock
in colorful furry fun!" Total cost: About $25
Room Decorating Phases
Because we understand that not everyone has the time, energy, or
financial resources to make over every square inch of a room, we
decorated the room in three phases.
• Phase 1: Little Money or Time-If you do nothing else to a room,
paint it a bright, child-friendly color and add a nice curtain. We
also added the magnet board in this phase. Total cost: $165
• Phase 2: Getting Into It-Add special touches that kids will
love. We added the magnet square strip, the bookcase, and magnets.
Total cost: $70
• Phase 3: Why Stop Now?-If we were to do more to this room,
here's what Kami suggests. Cut a 3-foot opening in the drywall next
to the class door and add a minidoor so kids have their own
entrance into the class. Also, take out the fluorescent lights-buy
the fun, flexible steel wire spotlights and arrange them in
patterns on the ceiling.
Decorating on a Budget
Decorating on a budget requires as much creativity as the design.
Here are a few things we learned along the way.
• Use Recycled Materials. Ask store owners if they have a scrap
area or discounted resources for church use. Browse your local home
store for supplies, then look in your yellow pages for suppliers of
materials you want. We found galvanized metal at The Home Depot,
but then we called a sheet metal fabricator and found them to be 50
percent less expensive.
• Save Money on Paint. Visit a landfill recycling center. Most
cities have a household hazardous waste drop-off site for paint,
stain, and primer. At our center, everything was free! We got two
gallons of paint and a quart of primer.
Keep in mind, though, that many of these products have been stored
in people's garages or at the site's warehouse in uninsulated areas
and have been frozen many times over. So before you fill up your
car with free stuff, check the date on the mix label, and open the
can to look for bubbles or clumps. Bad paint isn't worth it even if
it's free, because it won't stay on the wall well. Also, in many
areas churches are considered businesses and can't return any paint
to the recycling center without a drop-off charge.
Check out the "oops" rack at your local home store. Look for
colors close to what you're interested in using, and the paint
staff will doctor the color with more pigment. We even had The Home
Depot add more pigment to our recycled paint from the landfill. Be
creative, and don't be afraid to ask the paint area staff for help
or suggestions on color mixing and matching.
Ask your church members if they have paint or primer to donate.
Specify semi-gloss, and give samples of the color you're looking
for. If the paint is close to what you want, you may be able to
tint it to your desired color. | <urn:uuid:399fb598-95f1-4d65-bc94-e98677c4dd4b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://childrensministry.com/articles/while-kids-were-out | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00066-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941889 | 1,670 | 2.046875 | 2 |
March 2 — Post a photo of one of your female ancestors. Who is in the photo? When was it taken? Why did you select this photo?
|Grandma Brown, August 30, 1912|
I have always liked this photograph taken of 2nd great grandmother Sarah Brown because I can see in her the faces of my grandmother and my mother --- and perhaps a trace of myself. She was born Sarah Almira Duty on January 4, 1834 in Giles County, Tennessee. In 1851, at the age of seventeen, she married Jonathan Perry Brown and three years later, they made the long trek over the Oregon Trail to The Dalles, Oregon.
A sense of familiarity emanates from this picture; the look, the staunchness, the earthiness that has been passed down through the generations. Although her life as a pioneer woman in eastern Oregon has been fairly well documented, I crave to know the child, the young girl and woman. That Sarah Duty has always called to me, but never lets me in. | <urn:uuid:1f63812a-2082-49a2-a49d-8a63b986120a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://rootsnleaves.blogspot.com/2011/03/fearless-femaless-sarah-almira-duty.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982242 | 209 | 2.3125 | 2 |
Bill could change how Supreme Court chooses chief justice
MADISON Wisconsin’s Supreme Court would be given the power to elect its chief justice under a constitutional amendment that could be introduced to the state Legislature as early as next week.
The bill authored by Rep. Tyler August, R-Walworth, would end a longstanding rule that gives the court’s highest seat to the person with the most seniority. Instead, the seven justices would gather to choose their own chief following any Supreme Court election.
That could allow the court to seat a new chief justice every one or two years.
“The justices know better than anyone if the Supreme Court is being run the way it ought to be,” said August, who authored the bill with Sen. Rich Zipperer, R-Brookfield. “If it feels it is or isn’t, they can make the change they feel is necessary.”
August began circulating the bill to legislators Thursday. He hasn’t spoken to any members of the Supreme Court about the proposal, and he didn’t know if they would eventually weigh in with their thoughts.
The Gazette was unable to reach justices for comment.
The National Center for State Courts shows that 22 states use a peer election to choose a chief justice. Eight make the selection based on seniority, according to the center.
Supreme Court Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson, who has been on the court since 1976, has held that position for 16 years.
August believes the high court should select its leader the same way Republicans and Democrats do in the state Legislature.
“I think giving the seven justices the flexibility to determine for themselves who’s going to lead their branch of government would make sense,” he said.
“The leader of Wisconsin’s highest court should not simply be who has been there the longest. The chief justice should be a consensus builder who has the respect of their fellow justices.”
The state Supreme Court has drawn a lot of attention this year.
Justice David Prosser defeated JoAnne Kloppenburg in a closely watched election that ended with a recount. That came before the court reinstated Gov. Scott Walker’s controversial plan to end most collective bargaining rights for thousands of state workers.
The state continues to investigate an alleged physical altercation between Prosser and Justice Ann Walsh Bradley. Bradley claims Prosser put her in a chokehold during an argument in her office. | <urn:uuid:d1adaafe-1125-4116-bccf-c719cac9bc97> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://walworthcountytoday.com/news/2011/jul/09/bill-could-change-how-supreme-court-chooses-chief-/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969961 | 508 | 1.921875 | 2 |
South 2nd East Street in the middle of Green River, Wyo., will lead you to Expedition Island Park. Designated a National Historic Landmark in 1968, this is the site where John Wesley Powell launched his exploration of the Green and Colorado rivers in 1871 and possibly in 1869 as well.
WyoHistory.org welcomes the support of the following sponsors. Contact us at email@example.com for information on levels and types of available sponsorships. For more information about our sponsors and the people behind WyoHistory.org, visit our About Us page: | <urn:uuid:1f4c6dd0-e5bf-42fe-a425-6320064b1c60> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wyohistory.org/field-trips/expedition-island | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.916702 | 119 | 1.625 | 2 |
The following is part 3 of a series of articles reviewing presentations given as part of the program “Your Genes and You: Health, Disease, and Medicine” offered by the University of Cincinnati in 2009. (For more see, Part 1 and Part 2.)
The fifth presentation in the program was entitled “Vaccines and Drugs Versus the Evolving Microbe: It’s Personal and It’s a War.” This presentation focused mainly on natural selection and mutations in bacteria and viruses (collectively called microbes) that can lead to drug-resistant microbes.
The terms evolving and evolution used in the context of this presentation should have been clearly defined as meaning “adaptation” or “limited change in a population over time,” but unfortunately this never happened. Instead the audience is left to believe that this is referring to the commonly accepted definition of evolution as “descent with modification from a common ancestor” (molecules-to-man evolution). This is done to reinforce the concept that Darwin’s evolutionary ideas are necessary for modern medicine.
The presenter talked about the polio vaccine and stated it was successful in preventing polio because the polio virus is not evolving rapidly, and, therefore, “Darwinism is not active.” Again, equating Darwinian evolution (molecules-to-man evolution) with adaptation (limited change within a population) is deceptive. No reason was given as to why the polio virus and other microbes that cause childhood diseases like mumps and measles are slow to change. As a molecular biologist and microbiologist, I am personally intrigued by this but do enjoy the benefits of vaccinations—especially as it concerns my five-year-old daughter!
An interesting fact about polio is that it was not a common disease before the 1900s due to poor sanitation. People were commonly exposed to polio viruses and developed antibodies, which could then be passed to infants through breast milk. Infants would become infected with the poliovirus but would only develop a mild disease because of the protection of the mother’s antibodies. The infants would then develop their own antibodies to the polio virus and never suffer the severe form of the disease.
Better sanitation after the 1900s led to decreased exposure to the virus, meaning no maternal antibodies and exposure to the virus typically occurred later in life. Children were not immune and thus developed a severe form of polio. This equates well to my thinking that it is sometimes good to let your kids eat dirt! Not that you should literally let children eat dirt, but rather the principle that it is a good thing for your children to play outside, be around animals, and get dirty once in a while. This increases their exposure to microbes and helps them build a strong immune system. Multiple studies have shown this to be true.
The presenter stated that other microbes, such as the influenza virus, evolve quickly, and, therefore, “Darwinism is in full force.” This means that mutation and natural selection allow the organism to change and adapt quickly to its environment (again, not molecules-to-man evolution).
The flu shot or vaccination we receive each year is only good for one flu season, since the influenza virus is rapidly changing. The influenza virus can mutate quickly, pick up genes from its hosts, and swap genes with other viruses. Thus, the “dead” influenza virus given to us in a flu shot (which we develop antibodies against) during one flu season may be very different from the influenza virus that will be infecting people the next flu season (which we have no antibodies against). This is true for other microbes such as HIV and Mycobacterium tuberculosis.
At the end of the presentation, a slide entitled “Some take home [sic] lessons” stated, “Darwinian evolution applies to microbes as well as to plants and animals.” But this is not true. Jacques Monod is quoted as saying, “Anything found to be true for E. coli [bacteria] must also be true of elephants.”1 This was in reference to biochemistry that is similar in bacteria (E. coli) and animals (elephants).
However, the effects of mutation and natural selection are very different for microbes and animals, plants, and humans. Population sizes, generation times, genome complexity, and the pressure of the environment are very different for microbes versus most other living organisms. These differences allow bacterial populations to change and survive quickly in adverse environmental conditions, but the same is not true for plants, animals, and humans (for a more in-depth analysis of this issue see A Creationist Perspective of Beneficial Mutations in Bacteria). Regardless, mutations and natural selection lead to a decrease in information for every organism and do not add the genetic information needed for molecules-to-man evolution.
Several of the presentations given in this series made no reference to evolution or only a passing referencing. It was obvious that some presenters were really stretching for connections. For example, in one presentation dealing with a particular disease, the presenter had a slide stating, “Evolutionary conservation of critical cellular pathways and processes enables scientists to use simpler organisms such as fruit flies and worms to decipher human disease.” However, I could approach studying the disease very similarly as a creationist and say, “God’s design conservation of critical cellular pathways . . . .”
Since the study of the disease falls under the category of operational science, how the organisms used in the study came to have similar cellular pathways is irrelevant. Both evolutionists and creationists studying the disease would likely come to the same conclusions.
The bottom line is that molecules-to-man evolution is completely irrelevant to modern medicine.
Overall, the presentations were very informative and worth my time. I gained a greater appreciation for the complexity of the genome, how small differences in DNA can lead to very bad consequences for an individual, and how local scientists and physicians are actively doing research that will lead to better understanding and treatment of human diseases in the future.
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Answers magazine is the Bible-affirming, creation-based magazine from Answers in Genesis. In it you will find fascinating content and stunning photographs that present creation and worldview articles along with relevant cultural topics. Each quarterly issue includes a detachable chart, a pullout children’s magazine, a unique animal highlight, excellent layman and semi-technical articles, plus bonus content. Why wait? Subscribe today and get a FREE DVD download! | <urn:uuid:357f0066-aaa4-4089-9a7a-fd52737e7afe> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2009/11/16/making-evolution-pill-easier-to-swallow-part-3 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00061-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955967 | 1,462 | 3.171875 | 3 |
BEIJING — It was a magical moment, and it’s worth taking a moment to revisit.
China’s “Prince of Gymnastics,” Li Ning, was suspended in mid-air, traveling around National Stadium at the end of Friday’s Opening Ceremony. His act was the final one of a brilliant visual performance and it was capped by the ceremonial lighting of the Olympic flame.
A day later, the Chinese gymnasts carried that amazing image with them as they took to the floor at National Indoor Stadium.
For sure, Li’s six medals (golds in the floor exercise, pommel horse and rings) at the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Games were in the back of their minds, too. Li set the standard of excellence that all Chinese gymnasts will be measured by.
Asked about how the 44-year-old Li’s stunning spectacle inspired them, Chinese gymnast Zou Kai responded by saying, “The feeling it gave us was of an older brother who was lighting the flame. It was very exciting and moreover it was on our home soil.”
Give Li the gymnastic equivalent of an assist — a big one. China led in the men’s team competition with 374.675 points heading into Monday’s eight-team final round.
My viewpoint: Here are my thoughts the day after judoka Ryoko Tani failed to win a third consecutive gold medal in the women’s 48-kg division:
Tani’s longevity as a top-level athlete is remarkable. To compete in five Olympiads is a testament to her discipline, work ethic and unmatched desire to excel at the highest level. To earn two golds, two silvers and a bronze is an even greater achievement.
It’s no surprise that the Japan Olympic Committee wanted Tani to earn a gold on Saturday and hope that her performance could be a catalyst for first-place finishes in other sports as well.
It wouldn’t be appropriate for the JOC to issue statements that express disappointment over Tani’s failure to win a gold.
Instead, the JOC should praise Tani for being Japan’s first medalist of the 2008 Summer Games and for her incredible staying power as an athlete.
Three years after becoming a mother, Tani remains a great role model for Japanese women.
In fact, now would be a great time for Japanese poets to write haiku with this theme in mind: the inspiration Tani brings to Japanese women.
What others are saying: When time permits, between events, news conferences and even the occasion meal, it’s a treat to catch up on what other journalists are writing for their publications.
Here are a few snippets of the latest blog entry by Filip Bondy of the New York Daily News:
“For one day, I feel like a Canadian reporter at the Olympics, chasing around minor sports in search of America’s first medal.
“The Canadians figure they will be lucky to win three golds the whole time here, and those aren’t exactly in the glamour events. There’s Adam van Koeverden, a veritable medals machine in canoeing and kayaking. Then there’s Karen Cockburn, who won a silver in trampoline in Athens.
“As Cam Cole of the Vancouver Sun says, ‘Basically, we’re not good at anything that matters.’ ”
And then these poignant remarks were posted on SI.com:
“I overheard someone saying that Friday night’s Opening Ceremonies cost $350 million. Impossible, I thought — until I watched them unspool, and began gradually to realize how very possible that might be.
“Guess they didn’t need Steven Spielberg. The goose-stepping soldiers and sudden mob barking I could have done without, but otherwise it was a remarkable spectacle. The artwork-in-progress trope worked very well. The little earthquake survivor walking with Yao Ming could win an archery gold for its unerring aim at the heart. And that I spent so much time trying to figure out how they pulled stuff off is testament to how visually engrossing everything was.
“Got a good sense for what stories get play in the state-run Chinese media, too: There were supportive cheers for the Iraqi delegation, and ho-hum silence when Sudan marched in.”
Memorable quotes: “There is a lot of history behind the route. It is real nice to compete on. The scenery was beautiful, especially when you climbed the Great Wall — it was terrific,” Spanish road cyclist Samuel Sanchez said after winning the 248-km race on Saturday.
“You cannot imagine a harder opening game than this, but I like it,” China forward Yi Jialian said, sizing up Sunday night’s first-round men’s basketball game against the United States, a game U.S. President George W. Bush and his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao, were scheduled to attend and more than one billion people were expected to watch the game worldwide.
“Yao has been great for basketball in China. People have seized on that. It continues to globalize the game,” U.S. superstar Kobe Bryant told reporters.
Did you know?: Movie star Jackie Chan’s “Official Album for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games” was released on April 30. He is featured on 10 songs.
Extravagance in Beijing: Scanning the headlines in China Daily, I came across a small item dubbed “The exquisite art of nightlife.” Writer Erik Nilsson profiled ChinaDoll, an upscale nightclub in Beijing’s Chaoyang district.
The VIP room, known as the Ai Wan Room, costs 8,000 yuan ($1,170) to rent for the night, and that’s before food or drinks. | <urn:uuid:a8b95084-2b2e-4a03-8290-895df19d0341> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.japantimes.co.jp/sports/2008/08/11/sports/li-inspired-gymnasts-with-his-high-wire-act/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00048-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960961 | 1,248 | 1.65625 | 2 |
ZAMBIA has identified agriculture to drive the economy forward and this sector will only thrive if the country maintains a good road network and other infrastructure.
Agricultural products, which are mostly grown in the rural areas, require good roads to reach the markets.
The best and biggest markets for agriculture products are urban areas, which are situated several kilometers from the production points.
The provision of a good road infrastructure is also cardinal to the rapid socio-economic development of Zambia like many other countries.
The Government's efforts to improve the road network in Zambia have been unwavering.
On Friday last week, President Rupiah Banda commissioned works for the tarring of the 90-kilometre Isoka-Muyombe Road by the contractor China Jiangxi Corporation at a cost of K213, 808, 420, 485, 60 billion.
Tarring of the road is a reiteration of the importance that the Government attaches to infrastructure development in Zambia.
Recently President Banda commissioned yet another road project which involves the upgrading of over 100 kilometers of the Mumbwa-Landless corner Road.
Other major projects include the completion and commissioning of the Choma-Chitongo the Zimba-Livingstone all in Southern Province, commissioning works of the much talked about Mongu-Kalabo and the successful upgrading of the Mpongwe-Luansobe Road on the Copperbelt.
Like the Mongu-Kalabo Road project, the tarring of the Isoka-Muyombe Road has been on cards for many years and the fact that President Banda has under-taken to have it tarred offers a sigh of relief to the residents of Isoka District and Zambia at large.
The project would be under-taken over a period of two years and President Banda assured that he would soon launch similar road works for the extension of the project to cover the Chama-Lundazi stretch.
Its implementation will be wholly financed by the Zambian Government.
In total, the Isoka-Muyombe-Chama-Lundazi project covers a distance of approximately 393 Kilometers and it involves the up-grading of the existing gravel road to bituminous standard.
The president noted that the commencement of the implementation of the road project was a fulfillment of the Government's programme to construct, maintain, rehabilitate and up-grade roads country wide.
"The upgrading of this road has been out-standing for many years.
"There is nothing better than starting this year by commissioning a major project such as the Isoka-Muyombe-Chama-Lundazi," President Banda said.
In order to expedite work, the Government, through the Road Development Agency (RDA) decided to package the works into four separate contracts with lot one covering the Isoka junction road to Muyombe which has since been launched.
The remaining three lots would cover a distance of 303 kilometers and works would be commissioned in due course.
There is no doubt that benefits from this road project would be immense.
Firstly, the Isoka-Muyombe-Chama-Lundazi Road provides a direct link to Lusaka, Eastern, Western and southern parts of the country.
It provides the much needed link between Eastern, Northern and Copperbelt provinces of Zambia and apart from reducing the costs of travel and transportation, the upgrading of this road would reduce travel time for road users travelling from the north and eastern parts of Zambia to Lusaka and beyond.
"The new road will also reduce vehicles operating costs associated with the poor state of roads.
"The resultant effect of reduced costs of goods and services would automatically lead to improved health and an enhanced general lively-hood of the communities in Isoka," President Banda notes.
Economic sectors such as agriculture, tourism, trade and commerce would be boosted with the up-grading of the road.
To show the seriousness that President Banda attaches to national projects like that of the road infrastructure, he warned that his Government would not tolerate incidences of shoddy works and compromise of standards and specifications.
He would not allow tax payers' money to be misused through shoddy road works.
"The Government is keen to ensure that citizens of Zambia get value for their money and therefore the Road Development Agency (RDA) must ensure close monitoring and supervision of all road works being undertaken in Zambia so that they are implemented diligently," he says.
The road project would also play a cardinal role in the development of the new Mafinga District which the Republican president declared following several calls that he does so from chiefs and Isoka residents.
Isoka East Member of Parliament (MP) Catherine Namugala in whose constituency the road project was launched thanked President Banda for the initiative.
She said declaring Tendere sub-boma in Muyombe into a full district entailed that lives of women that died on their way to the hospital in Isoka would be saved.
"I urge you residents of Isoka, to continue supporting the works of President Banda and thank him forever for what he has done today by commissioning this road project as well as declaring Tendere sub Boma into a full district," Ms Namugala says.
The Isoka-Muyombe Road works have been outstanding for years and Ms Namugala expressed gratitude that finally the multi-billion project has finally taken off.
President Banda returned to Lusaka shortly after commissioning the road works.
"By creating Mafinga district, we know that we shall have a district hospital where the lives of our women that died on their way to Isoka district will now be preserved more so that the road is also being tarred," Ms Namugala said.
Northern Province Minister John Chinyanta had all the kind words for President Banda's Government over the projects.
"The commissioning of the road project has further sent President Banda's opponents millions of kilometres away from State House." Mr Chinyanta said.
He observed that the Government and President Banda's commitment to developmental projects in Zambia is unquestionable while Works and Supply Minister Mike Mulongoti said it was great that works on the road had commenced.
RDA chairperson Luambe Mondoloka assured that the agency had remained steadfast in supervising road projects in Zambia to ensure that such works were implemented to the satisfaction of the people as tax payers.
He said township roads in the district would be worked on by the same contractor engaged to tar the Isoka-Muyombe road.
RDA was also aware of the bad state in which the Serenje-Isoka Road is and to that effect the agency has since engaged contractors to patch bad spots on this Great North Road (GNR) and contractors would soon move on site.
China Jianxie Corporation has assured that his company would be undertaking diligent works on the road to benefit Isoka residents in a life time.
That a good road infrastructure is cardinal to accelerating socioe-conomic development, improving quality of life, creating jobs, bringing in stable income as well as providing access to social services can not be over emphasised. | <urn:uuid:0ac27f20-85e9-4472-bb00-2b4017775587> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://allafrica.com/stories/201102160463.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964322 | 1,497 | 2.125 | 2 |
i would completely agree with Jon.
most robot builders fail on their first project because they make things too complicated too soon.
my first robot was doomed to failure because i made things too complicated.
i decided i wanted the bot to be able to map the room and plot a path so i had loads of sensors and a lot of mathematical routines running on the processor.
the main problem though was i just picked motors that were too big.
the battery life sucked, it went too fast to be controlable and the interference caused by such big motors made my controller behave eratically.
my 2nd robot was far more successful after applying the leasons i learned the first time.
it was driven by 2 smallish servos and had only limited sensors but could still find the beacon on it's battery charger within a few minutes from anywhere in my (small) house.
you'll hear loads of similar stories from amateur robot builders.
start simple, learn and progress.
now with more experience, i'm back trying to make a fast robot that can map the room but i could never have done as well if i had not built more simple bots in the past.
i'm doing much better this time round so don't give up on that underwater bot entirely....
check these for future inspiration:http://web.ticino.com/Submarine/http://web.ticino.com/Submarine/E1_page1.htm | <urn:uuid:7a05f8c7-97af-4d64-90ad-6af389cecf99> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.societyofrobots.com/robotforum/index.php?topic=306.msg1968 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976001 | 297 | 1.84375 | 2 |
The New York Department of Education and the sponsors of the General Educational Development program yesterday took an important step in the effort to raise expectations for all students.
At an alternative education center for youth and adults in Manhattan, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, and Molly Broad, the president of the American Council on Education, which sponsors the GED, announced the start of a pilot program to align expectations for GED program to standards that prepare participants for success in college and careers.
“The GED needs to be more than a substitute for a high school diploma. It needs to be a passport to college and careers,” Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said at the event. “This pilot project will demonstrate ways to ensure that all individuals who pass the GED are prepared to succeed in college and careers.”
The pilot project is building on the state-led effort that has created a common core of standards in math and English. So far, 40 states and the District of Columbia this year have adopted the Common Core standards in math and English.
Now, New York City is leading the way to make these standards a game-changer for adults in the GED program. The 500,000 adult learners who pass the GED exam every year deserve to know whether they truly are ready to succeed in college and careers.
The success of our adult learners is essential for the economic future of our country. President Obama has set a goal that the United States once again be first in the world in college completion by the end of the decade. To reach that goal, we will need to add 8 million new graduates over the next decade. We will succeed only if adult learners enter postsecondary schools at record rates and complete their degrees.
Just as our high schools award diplomas that guarantee students are ready for college and careers, the GED has to raise its standards so that adult learners are prepared for the challenges of postsecondary education and to work in the 21st Century economy. | <urn:uuid:1d0ac3b8-9c65-4c89-a620-13195e0dbaef> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ed.gov/blog/2010/12/aligning-the-ged-to-college-and-career-readiness/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945585 | 407 | 2.46875 | 2 |
The Journal of Social Psychology, 1982
, 117, 135-142. SOME APPARENT ADVANTAGES OF SUBCLINICAL PSYCHOPATHY*
University of New South Wales, Australia
J. J. RAY AND J. A. B. RAY
Classical descriptions of the psychopathic personality include a number of highly desirable characteristics
in addition to the obviously undesirable ones. Following Eysenck, it is hypothesized that this personality type is not a type at all but merely an extreme of normal personality
traits. Subclinical manifestations of psychopathy are therefore studied. The MMPI "PD" scale was administered together with other scales to a random postal sample of the Australian State of New South Wales. The resulting sample of 128 people showed a representative demographic structure. High "PD" scores were found to be associated with honesty (low lie scale scores), permissiveness, good perceived relationships with others, denial of being tough and rejection of punitiveness. They were also correlated with Machiavellianism and lesser education. It was concluded that as long as psychopaths can keep out of trouble, they may have many advantages over others.
"Likeable," "Charming," "Intelligent," "Alert," "Impressive," "Confidence-inspiring," and "A great success with the ladies": These are the sorts of descriptions repeatedly used by Cleckley (2) in his justly famous case-studies of psychopaths. They are also, of course, "irresponsible," "self-destructive," and the like. These descriptions highlight the great frustrations and puzzles that surround the study of psychopathy. Psychopaths seem to have in abundance the very traits most desired by normal persons.
When so many so-called normal individuals attend assertiveness training, the untroubled self-confidence of the psychopath seems almost like an impossible dream. When many young persons are feeling the need for social skills training, the magnetic attraction of the psychopath for members of the opposite sex must seem almost supernatural.
Cleckley's seminal hypothesis concerning the psychopath is that he suffers from a very real mental illness indeed: affective deficit. He feels emotions of only the shallowest kinds. He does bizarre and self-destructive things because consequences that would fill the ordinary man with shame, self-loathing, and embarrassment move the psychopath only to a trivial degree. What to others would be a disaster is to him merely a fleeting inconvenience. Cleckley
also gives grounds for the view that psychopathy is quite common in the community at large. He has collected some cases of psychopaths who generally function normally in the community as businessmen, doctors, and even psychiatrists.
Perhaps the most notable of the theories connecting psychopathy with normal behavior is that of Eysenck (e.g., 3), who regards the primary psychopath as being very largely someone who is a high scorer on his "P" scale, though all psychopaths are also said to be neurotic and extroverted. The main point here, however, regardless of the particular scales, is that Eysenck sees criminal psychopathy as an extreme of a "normal" personality dimension (or dimensions). Widom (9) also characterizes criminal psychopaths as unsuccessful psychopaths. The implication, of course, is that many psychopaths may exist in society who cope better than do those who come to the attention of the judicial and welfare systems. Harrington (6) goes so far as to say that the psychopath is in fact the man of the future. He is the new man being produced by the evolutionary pressures of modern life.
, however, sets out a number of criticisms of this view generally focusing on the real disabilities that the clinical psychopath also suffers.
The study of "ambulatory" psychopaths has, however, hardly begun. Very little is known about subcriminal psychopathy. Eysenck's work appears primarily to be concerned with psychoticism, with psychopathy being included as merely an (arguable) subcategory. Given the lengths to which Cleckley goes in stressing the vast differences between psychotics and psychopaths, Eysenck's approach seems at least unnecessarily confusing. Nonetheless, the concern and the approach in the present study are thoroughly Eysenckian: It is desired to study psychopathy not as an artificial clinical category but as a general personality trait in the community at large. With that approach, the guiding question will be whether subclinical psychopaths might not have the advantages of the institutionalized psychopath without the otherwise-observed very severe disadvantages.
The major barrier to the study of psychopathy as a normal personality trait has been doubt about how it might be measured. The most widely used index of the psychopathic personality is the MMPI "PD" scale. Like all the MMPI scales, however, this scale was created solely by reference to the responses of a clinical group. Its claim therefore is to measure clinical psychopathy. Subclinical psychopathy might be quite different.
In her pioneering study of "normal" psychopaths, however, Widom (9) found the PD scale useful. Some exploration of what it might measure among a general population sample is therefore of some potential interest. It seems logical that if the scale measures psychopathy at all, normal psychopaths should show at least some elevation of scores on it. It is therefore the PD scale which forms the basis of the present work.
The scale was included in a questionnaire together with four exploratory scales, two of which were designed to measure psychopathic self-perceptions (toughness and ability to relate to others) and two to measure psychopathic attitudes (permissiveness towards children and punitiveness towards criminals). Also included because of its apparent conceptual relevance to psychopathy was the Christie and Gels (1) Likert-form "Machiavellianism" scale.
Finally, a short social-desirability scale (4) was added to check on any artifact from this source. Given the almost destructive honesty of the psychopath when he is not explicitly trying to manipulate people, the prospects for a study free of this artifact seemed, however, unusually good.
The attributes chosen for measurement represent only a small selection of those that could have been included. Although any selection is of necessity highly arbitrary, the chosen attributes are thought to be ones that are implied in much discussion of clinical psychopathy. It was desired to see whether the correlates of psychopathy among normals would differ.
A question that might arise concerns the validity of the first four of the six additional scales mentioned above. Why were four exploratory scales used in addition to the two well-established personality scales? The two scales of self-perception were used because it was thought that how things seemed from the person's own point of view was the most relevant area of enquiry. Whether or not one actually relates well to others may be a matter of some dispute and considerable value judgment, but if the person himself is happy with his own relationships, that surely is of itself of some importance. By concentrating on how things seemed from the person's own point of view, then, it was hoped to avoid disputes about what constituted good interpersonal adjustment. From Cleckley's case studies, it would seem that clinical psychopaths do see themselves as getting on well with others and as being tough, with both perceptions having some element of truth.
The PD scale followed by the other scales was put into a single questionnaire and mailed to a sample of Australians chosen at random from the electoral rolls of the State of New South Wales. Because electoral enrolment (voter registration) is compulsory in Australia, the sampling frame was unusually comprehensive. The major omission would be recent immigrants. It should be noted, however, that the Australian franchise is so expansive that even many non-citizens are allowed to vote and appear on the rolls (i.e., if they are citizens of some other British Commonwealth country).
Before inclusion in the questionnaire, all PD items were examined for suitability in a postal administration. Only two out of 50 (dealing with sex practices) had to be revised.
Of the 500 questionnaires despatched, 128 were returned. The distribution of demographic characteristics observed in the resultant sample was indistinguishable from that observed in contemporaneous random doorstep samples carried out in the Sydney (the New South Wales State capital) metropolitan area. Thus although the final sample was certainly not random, it was at least representative in terms of age, occupation, and education.
On the assumption that psychopathy might be sex-related, the questionnaire had been sent to males only. Thirty-five of those returned, however, had been answered by females. Analysis showed, however, that PD score was fortunately not sex-related (r = -.140).
All subsequent analyses are therefore based on the combined group.
Under item-analysis, 18 PD scale items were found not to correlate significantly with the scale total. This left a 32-item scale with a reliability of .85. Because of its clinical origin, the number of PD items that had to be deleted was not unexpected. It might be noted, however, that shortening a scale from 50 to 32 items could seriously alter its validity properties. That this is highly unlikely in the present case can be seen from the correlation between the two forms of the scale. At .937 the correlation is high enough to warrant the claim that whatever the 50-item scale measures, the 32-item scale measures also. Reliabilities for the remaining (much shorter) scales were as follows: Toughness .63, Social Desirability .58, Relationships .'76, Permissiveness .60, Punitiveness .78, and Machiavellianism .70.
Psychopathic tendencies in the normal population then were found to be associated with a perception of one's self as not tough (r = -.20) and as relating well to others (r = .22). Such tendencies were also associated with attitudes of permissiveness towards children (r = -.24) and rejection of punitiveness towards criminals (r = -.22). Psychopathy also was related to Machiavellianism
(r = .48) and poorer education (r = -.21). Best of all, however, psychopaths were exceptionally truthful about themselves. The correlation between PD score and Social Desirability was -.32. All correlations mentioned are significant at the .05 level. The correlations with the 50-item scale closely paralleled those (derived from the 32-item PD scale) given above.
Finally, it seemed appropriate to attempt to give consideration to the view that psychopathy is not a continuous variable but rather an isolated clinical category with no "normal" counterparts. One way of taking at least a preliminary look at this proposition is to test whether or not the observed relationships would survive a division of all PD scores into "highs" versus "lows." Since dividing a continuous variable into two categories normally throws away a great deal of information, the significance of relationships can only survive such a procedure relatively unscathed if most of the discrimination is in any case grouped in a category rather than in a continuous way: e.g., if most of the discrimination derived from the characteristics of a small atypical group of high scorers.
To this end, the top third of the sample in terms of their PD scores has been divided from the bottom two-thirds and compared for differences in their mean scores on other variables. Only the relationships with perceived toughness and Machiavellianism survive, with ts of 2.03 and 4.23. Clearly, much of the discrimination available from continuous scoring of the PD scale is lost. Since, then, the PD scale gives substantial discrimination throughout its range, the view that this scale works only to discriminate very high scorers is counterindicated. Category-type treatment of the data was then inappropriate.
Generally, the correlations reveal the subclinical psychopath as a person rather remarkably like many people's ideal self-conception. Who would not like to be honest, to be happy with one's relationships, to feel sensitive rather than tough, to be permissive and impunitive? Only the correlations with education and Machiavellianism provide a jarring note. Perhaps, however, even the amorality of the Machiavellian fits in rather well with a defensible rejection of absolute moral standards.
Is not in fact the psychopath too good to be true? Could what we are seeing in the above correlations be just another example of psychopathic dissimulation? While this explanation cannot be absolutely ruled out, the evidence of the social-desirability correlation is against it. The questionnaire method in general is rather limited by its reliance on the honesty of the respondent; yet in the case of the psychopath it is precisely this limitation which is largely absent. Exceptional honesty in self-description on the part of the psychopath was both expected on the basis of previous observations and obtained on the present occasion. Perhaps, then, the validity of the Marlowe-Crowne social-desirability items should be questioned in their present application. Could it not be that psychopaths are acquainted with the tricks of the psychologist? Perhaps they can see through lie scales and fake an honest response on them. Again, the evidence is against this explanation. Far from being an exceptionally sophisticated group, psychopaths have been shown to be on the whole a, rather poorly educated group.
Is it, then, the PD scale which is at fault? Does it really measure psychopathy? Since even clinical cases of psychopathy can often not be uncontroversially diagnosed, this is an unanswerable question. Only a much greater level of agreement about what constitutes psychopathy than that which prevails at the moment could enable a definitive answer. Given the in-built criterion-groups validity that arises from the scale's method of construction and the homogeneity of the items observed on the present occasion, we can, however, say that the scale measures something consistently and that what that is must have at least something to do with what is clinically described as psychopathy.
Overall, then, the most parsimonious explanation of the present results may be that we have here again an example of an inverted U function. Both extremely high and extremely low levels of psychopathy may be maladaptive, with intermediate levels being most adaptive. The basis for saying that high levels of psychopathy are maladaptive
is, of course, the trouble into which clinical psychopaths often get themselves. The basis for saying that low levels of psychopathy may also be maladaptive
stems from the common observation of the role of anxiety in psychopathy: Psychopaths do not seem to show any anxiety (5, 6). The debilitating function of high levels of anxiety hardly needs to be stressed. In a normal, non institutionalized population, therefore, their relative immunity from anxiety may give psychopaths an advantage. While anxiety as such was not studied in the present paper, this well-documented relationship between psychopathy and anxiety may at least serve as a hypothesis to explain the relatively favorable picture of the psychopath that emerged from the present study.
1. CHRISTIE, R., & GEIS, F. L. Studies in Machiavellianism. New York: Academic, 1970.
2. CLECKLEY, H. The Mask of Sanity (5th ed.) St. Louis, Mo.: C.V. Mosby, 1976.
3. EYSENCK, H. J., & EYSENCK, S. B. G. Psychopathy, personality and genetics. Chap. 12 in R. D. Hare & D. Schalling (Eds.), Psychopathic Behavior: Approaches to Research. Chichester, England: Wiley, 1978.
4. GREENWALD, H. J., & SATOW, Y. A short social desirability scale. Psychol. Rep., 1970, 27, 131-135.
5. HARE, R. D. Psychopathy: Theory and Research. New York: Wiley, 1970.
6. HARRINGTON, A. Psychopaths. St. Albans, England: Panther Books, 1974.
7. RAY, J.J. (1976) Do authoritarians hold authoritarian attitudes? Human Relations, 29, 307-325.
8. SMITH, R. J. The Psychopath in Society. New York: Academic, 1978.
9. WIDOM, C. S. A methodology for studying non-institutionalized psychopaths. Chap. 5 in R. D. Hare & D. Schalling (Eds.), Psychopathic Behaviour: Approaches to Research. Chichester, England: Wiley, 1978.
School of Sociology, University of New South Wales P.O. Box 1, Kensington, New South Wales, 2033, Australia
* Received in the Editorial Office, Provincetown, Massachusetts, on July 31, 1981. Copyright, 1982, by The Journal Press.
APPENDIX -- STATEMENTS PRESENTED
Scale of perceived toughness
1. I can stand pain more easily than other people generally seem to be able to do.
2. People usually walk all over me. (R)
3. I generally give in rather than fight. (R)
4. I usually get what I want in life.
5. I tend to be a bit of a coward. (R)
6. There are few obstacles I can't get around if I really want something.
7. Even as a child I was a pretty tough customer.
8. I would never be able to withstand torture. (R)
Scale of perceived social ease
1. I don't get on with other people very well.
2. I make friends easily (R)
3. I feel that my relationships with other people are generally rather shallow.
4. I find it hard to get really close to anybody.
5. I generally feel comfortable with other people (R)
6. I like people (R)
7. People are an open book to me. (R)
8. My friendships don't generally last very long.
Scale of attitude to children (Permissiveness versus discipline)
1. Spare the rod and spoil the child.
2. Children should be seen and not heard.
3. Physical punishment of children should be outlawed. (R)
4. Children need plenty of discipline.
5. Children respond well to a firm hand.
6. Children should be left to do pretty much as they please. (R)
7. Sometimes physical punishment is the only thing children seem to understand.
Scale of attitude towards criminals (Punitiveness)
1. Punishment does not deter crime. (R)
2. Prison sentences today are not long enough.
3. The life sentence far serious crime should mean life.
4. More criminals should be made to do hard labour when they are in prisons.
5. Prisons should be more like hospitals or schools than they are today. (R)
6. What criminals need is guidance rather than punishment. (R)
7. Prisons should be more humane than they are today. (R)
8. Flogging should have no place in a modern prison system. (R)
9. Hanging should be brought back as a penalty for serious crime.
10. Violent crime should be harshly punished.
11. All prisons should be pulled down. (R)
12. A lynching party may be the best way to deal with rapists.
Note: Agreement with an item marked "R" is scored the same as disagreement with an item not marked "R". | <urn:uuid:e242d24e-135e-4fd0-9b9e-6c66538866c1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=232982.0;prev_next=next | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00048-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959597 | 4,052 | 2.296875 | 2 |
You might have a social network more sinuous than a spider’s web and an online presence that would impress Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg.
But when it comes to landing a job, the old-fashioned resume still trumps all.
That’s the opinion of three experts in the recruitment and job-seeking field nationwide. “Until we come up with a way where we can send a hologram of a person,” says Amos Tayts, a Toronto-based former recruiter with offices across Canada and the U.S. helping people looking for work, “the resume is the only way that people will know who you are, and what you bring to the table.”
Although there is industry talk of a ’resume 2.0’ comprising video profiles in which candidates speak about their impact on increasing sales at a company or reducing costs, for instance, the familiar resume is still expected by anyone hiring or recruiters.
“It’s the standby — like the old pair of jeans that people are comfortable with,” says Jeff Aplin, who recruits out of Calgary. He says the importance of a resume cannot be overstated. “It means everything to get to the next step, such as the phone or face-to-face interview.”
Vancouver-based executive search consultant Shaun Carpenter brands a resume the “quintessential jumping-off point.” He says there was speculation it might become redundant with the rise of online sites such as LinkedIn, which lists your career and recommendations among numerous features. “But I don’t believe it will,” adds the associate partner at Pinton Forrest & Madden. “There’s a holistic approach to getting a job. In terms of social media and resumes, one goes with another. The network helps to get your resume seen by the right people, but a resume is still the key starting point.”
Carpenter says most employers want to see no more than two pages, and all want to see them tailored to their corporation and culture. He advises thinking in terms of a full day’s worth of research: Look at everything online on the potential employer and download its financial reports and any news stories about the company.
Those hiring want to see that candidates recognize what the organization is currently going through and the significance of its business. “The resume needs to really prove that you understand what you are looking at and be speaking to the cogent points that are identified in an advertisement,” says Carpenter. “Pull out points and address issues. It really has to be customized — use your knowledge, intuition and research ability — and avoid using formulaic vocabulary, such as ‘team player’ or ‘highly motivated.’ These will not cut it.”
When describing the assets you bring to a job, make sure it is backed up by your working life. “You want to highlight different dimensions of your experience to be congruent with that organization and that specific job,” says Aplin, the COO at David Aplin Recruiting. “Ensure there are no empty words.”
A resume can be a way to show your personality, he suggests. Include a few aspects that are unique to you such as a health or community initiative with which you were involved, for example, if appropriate to the job. “If a typical HR person is filtering through a high volume of resumes, you might be able to add colour or zing to your resume to make it more interesting to read,” he says.
In explaining your career, adds Carpenter, never put the onus on the reader to do further research. “I can’t stand when I get a resume and they have the company name but nothing about size, scope, nature of business, reporting structure, revenue,” he says. “You should be able to look at the resume and get all the information you need to make a decision.”
Employers find it hard to resist “compelling” resumes, according to Tayts. “In order to stand out and get to the top 10 per cent of the talent pool, you need to have a resume that is able to articulate value very quickly,” says the founder of ResumeTarget Inc. He estimates it takes around nine seconds for a hiring manager to propel the applicant to the next stage.
Enlisting professional advice in writing your resume is often the best approach, according to Aplin. “It’s a good thing to polish or make the writing more attractive or engaging,” he says. Carpenter, however, stresses the need for resumes to remain personal to the applicant. “I don’t want resumes to look like they have all been written the same way,” he says, adding: “If you believe this is your dream job, you should be putting in a lot of effort.” | <urn:uuid:124578ff-1230-4906-913d-a0e4177645fb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.edmontonjournal.com/Standard+resume+still+hard+beat+landing/3829526/story.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965308 | 1,035 | 1.5 | 2 |
San Diego Gas & Electric is asking state regulators to end a rate cap that covers 90 percent of a typical customer's electricity usage as part of a broader proposal to boost its annual revenue by $190 million.
The utility's plan would add about $5 to a typical customer's bill, bringing it to $76 monthly.
Customers using 50 percent more than average (about 750 kilowatt hours monthly) would see rates rise under the new plan by $10.75, bringing their monthly bills to about $143.
In December, SDG&E projected it could raise its rates by the same amount – $190 million annually – and a typical customer's bill would rise by $1.70 monthly, if the rate cap were maintained.
Consumer groups vow to fight any attempt to lift the rate cap, saying the Legislature intended to keep it in place until 2015. | <urn:uuid:c99b27c1-4fc5-4092-8b26-bcdf5a0b68a8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.utsandiego.com/uniontrib/20070202/news_lz1b2develop.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968176 | 178 | 1.734375 | 2 |
U.S. students missed large numbers of words they were expected to know on a new vocabulary section of a national exam, in the latest evidence of severe shortcomings in the nation's reading education.
Eighth-graders scored an average of 265 out of 500 in vocabulary on the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress, the results of which were made public Thursday. Fourth-graders averaged a score of 218 out of 500.
The results showed that nearly half of eighth-graders didn't know that "permeates" means to "spread all the way through," and about the same proportion of fourth-graders didn't know that "puzzled" means confused—words that educators think students in those grades should recognize.
Most fourth-graders did know the meaning of "created," "spread" and "underestimate." At eighth grade, most students knew "grimace," "icons" and "edible."
Read the Report
'Vocabulary Results from the 2009 and 2011 NAEP Reading Assessments'
The new vocabulary test was embedded in the biennial national reading exam, known as the NAEP. Last year's scores were in line with those posted in 2009, the first time vocabulary scores were broken out, but the latest results are the first to be made public. Experts noted that the results mirror the performance on the national reading test, which has yielded fairly static scores for a decade.
Margaret McKeown, a senior scientist at the Learning Research and Development Center at the University of Pittsburgh, said she wasn't surprised by the results but that they are cause for concern.
"There is very little vocabulary done in any classroom at any age," said Ms. McKeown, whose research focuses on reading and vocabulary. "There is quite a bit of research about vocabulary and the best ways to teach it. Unfortunately we are not seeing that go into the classrooms as much as we would like."
Leslie Russell, a reading specialist at Butts Road Intermediate School in Chesapeake, Va., said the vocabulary scores could be improved if students were more immersed in literacy at school and at home. "We need to make more of an effort to get parents involved in teaching reading and teaching them how to help children make sense of words they do not know," she said.
The U.S. Department of Education administered the 2011 exam to a representative sample of 213,100 fourth-graders in public and private schools in all states. About 168,000 eighth-graders were tested.
The scores reported on the new vocabulary section are weighted averages, and don't correspond to the average share of words known by students. The 2011 results show that, in fourth grade, the average student likely knows 11 of the 40 words he or she is expected to know, while the average eighth-grader likely knows 33 of the 56 items on the exam, according to officials at the Department of Education who administer the test.
In 2009, 12th-graders also took the exam. Their average score was 296 out of 500 on the vocabulary portion. The high school exam is administered every four years.
The department has given the reading exam for decades but decided to add new questions in 2009 to more fully test students' knowledge of grade-level vocabulary. The words were embedded in reading passages and students were asked their definition in a multiple-choice format based on the context of those passages. The selected words are familiar concepts, feelings or actions.
African-American and Latino students posted scores lower than white and Asian students at every grade level. Low-income students scored far below their wealthier counterparts. The gaps between the groups ranged from 28 to 31 points.
Girls scored a few points higher than boys in fourth and eighth grade, but the results of girls and boys were nearly identical in 12th grade.
Data showed scores for the highest-performing students dipped slightly from 2009, while scores for the lowest-scoring students remained unchanged in fourth grade and increased slightly in eighth grade.
"Without a strong vocabulary, any child's ability to read and to learn suffers dramatically," David Driscoll, chairman of the National Assessment Governing Board, which sets policy for NAEP, said in a statement. "Helping students improve their vocabulary and use words in the proper context is essential to improving overall reading ability."
Write to Stephanie Banchero at firstname.lastname@example.org
Corrections & Amplifications
The test results showed that nearly half of eighth-graders didn't know that "permeates" means to "spread all the way through," and about the same proportion of fourth-graders didn't know that "puzzled" means confused. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said that nearly half of eighth-graders didn't know the meaning of "puzzled." Also, the score reported on the new vocabulary section of the National Assessment of Educational Progress exam is a weighted average score on a 500-point scale, based on tests in which different students were asked different questions that may have carried differing point values. The average national score therefore doesn't directly correspond to a percentage of correct responses. For fourth-graders, whose average score was 218, the average student likely knows 11 of the 40 words he or she was expected to know on the 2011 exam, while the average eighth-grader, whose score averaged 265, likely would know 33 of the 56 words on the exam, according to officials at the Department of Education who administer the test. An earlier version of this article summarized the results as indicating that students knew only about half of what they were expected to on the vocabulary section. | <urn:uuid:3ae19e57-7f1b-4a9b-a7e6-3b32556ec51e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323316804578163213067015532.html?mod=WSJ_article_BookshelfHeadlines | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979834 | 1,154 | 3.09375 | 3 |
The American Dental Hygienists' Association Emphasizes Making Time for Good Oral Health This National Dental Hygiene Month
CHICAGO, Sept. 13 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- With the theme "Healthy Habits are Easier than You Think" for its National Dental Hygiene Month (NDHM) celebration this October, the American Dental Hygienists' Association (ADHA), in collaboration with Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company, manufacturer of Orbit® sugarfree gum, promotes the idea that good oral hygiene habits are simple to establish and maintain, even for the person living an active lifestyle.
"It is imperative to our overall health to have a healthy mouth," ADHA President Caryn Solie , RDH, said. "Brushing, flossing, rinsing with an anti-microbial mouth rinse and chewing sugarfree gum are easy ways to help avoid issues that could affect the status of your oral health."
"Brush, Floss, Rinse, Chew" is a reminder that maintaining good oral hygiene habits can have lasting effects. Keeping a healthy mouth can help prevent oral disease.
Brushing your teeth for two minutes at least twice daily can reduce plaque build-up and the risk of diseases like cavities and gingivitis; flossing removes plaque and food particles under the gumline and between your teeth; rinsing your mouth each day with an anti-microbial mouth rinse is another important step in preventing gum disease; and chewing sugar-free gum like Orbit® after eating stimulates saliva production, which helps fight cavities, neutralizes plaque acids, remineralizes enamel to strengthen teeth and washes away food particles.
In tandem with this initiative, the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company Foundation has established a Community Service Grant Award program with the ADHA Institute for Oral Health to fund initiatives providing oral health services and education in all 12 of the ADHA's districts across the country.
"Wrigley is committed to improving the general understanding of the role of sugarfree gum as part of a healthy oral care routine," says Pat Alexander, Sr. Marketing Manager, U.S. Wrigley Oral Healthcare Program. "We are committed to providing services that help improve oral health and lives; this extends to our support of the American Dental Hygienists' Association National Dental Hygiene Month."
For further details about NDHM, go to www.adha.org/ndhm/index.html.
ADHA is the largest national organization representing the professional interests of more than 150,000 dental hygienists across the country. Dental hygienists are preventive oral health professionals, licensed in dental hygiene, who provide educational, clinical and therapeutic services that support total health through the promotion of optimal oral health. For more information about ADHA, dental hygiene or the link between oral health and general health, visit ADHA at www.adha.org.
SOURCE American Dental Hygienists' Association
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Request more information about PR Newswire products and services or call us at (888) 776-0942. | <urn:uuid:908f4c27-bfcb-4176-90e4-6912b1f5138e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/the-american-dental-hygienists-association-emphasizes-making-time-for-good-oral-health-this-national-dental-hygiene-month-102798684.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.910995 | 680 | 2.484375 | 2 |
New Report on Discrimination Against Latina Transgender Women by Law Enforcement
In a new report titled Interactions of Latina Transgender Women with Law Enforcement , researchers explore the extent of discrimination and mistreatment that Latina transgender women living in Los Angeles, California experience from the very people whose job it is to uphold justice. The report was developed by BIENESTAR, a non-profit organization serving the Latino/a LGBT community, in collaboration with the Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science, and was funded by the Williams Institute of UCLA.
Drawing on information provided by over 200 Latina transgender women living in Los Angeles County, findings of the report indicate staggering amounts of harassment, abuse, neglect, and targeted profiling on the part of law enforcement. According to the report, two-thirds of the transgender women surveyed experienced some form of verbal abuse from law enforcement, while 21% experienced physical assault and 24% experienced sexual assault. Of those who attempted to report such misconduct by the police, two-thirds said their report had been handled “poorly” or “very poorly.”
Among Latina transgender women who had been jailed, 30% said they were verbally assaulted by other inmates, 11% said they were physically assaulted, and 10%said they were sexually assaulted. After reporting these incidents of mistreatment by fellow inmates, 70% of transgender women reported that law enforcement either responded negatively or did not respond to the incident at all.
Given the level of discrimination and abuse they suffer, it is unsurprising that even though 55% of Latina transgender women interviewed said they have been victims of a crime by others, only half of them reported those crimes to the police. Of those that did report crimes committed against them to law enforcement, 57% said they were treated poorly or very poorly by the police. The report concludes by articulating the great need for law enforcement trainings on sensitivity towards the transgender community, particularly towards transgender women and transgender people of color. Furthermore, the report suggests, information about legal rights should be shared more broadly among the transgender community, in addition to increased communication between the police and transgender women.
GLAAD thanks BIENESTAR, the Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science, and the Williams Institute for bringing this important information to light, and urges the media to utilize this report when covering transgender issues. | <urn:uuid:ad5b03f5-aa66-4976-a1ab-461dc7c2e630> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.glaad.org/blog/new-report-discrimination-against-latina-transgender-women-law-enforcement | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967032 | 479 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Drawings and impressions from children, grades three through five were assembled to a 4-foot by 8-foot collage of Martin Luther King Jr. by artists, from left, Cameron Malphurs, Kris Letlow and Sean Mulkey. Artist Durrel Smith is not pictured.
ALBANY — A black and white collage of Martin Luther King Jr. was dedicated at the Albany Civil Rights Institute Friday and will become a part of the museum’s permanent collection.
The graphic four foot by eight foot image was produced in January by about 300 area school children, grades three through five, according to Lorraine Alexander, community impact director with United Way of Southwest Georgia, which spearheaded the project.
Alexander said the portrait has been titled “Union,” because of the nature of it’s creation and the coming together of the community it represents.
“The children from The Boys & Girls Clubs of Albany, A School for Children, and the Albany YMCA’s Men of Distinction Program at Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School were given black and white construction paper and drawing tools and instructed to write how they felt about Dr. King and what he did for this country,” Alexander said.
“When they’d finished, four local artists of the D’Town Arts Coalition fashioned the children’s work into the big collage.” Artists who took part in assembling the collage were Cameron Malphurs, Kris Letlow, Sean Mulkey and Durrell Smith.
The collage effort was conceived by four Americorp VISTA members, Erin Hutchins, Ben Swanson, Shanila Williams and Shanina Roberts.
According to Alexander, Americorp VISTA, or Volunteers in Service to American, is the national service program designed specifically to fight poverty in communities across America. The program provides full-time individual assistance to community organizations. Alexander said that VISTA is sometimes referred to as the “national” Peace Corps.
“The VISTA volunteers come from all over,” Alexander said. Three of the four here now came in November. They were asked to generate some kind of service project in the community to honor Dr. King, and this is what was done.”
Erin Hutchins, one of the VISTA volunteers, said that the artists assembled the collage at Brandon’s David’s Heart & Dagger Tattoo Parlour and Fine Arts Gallery, which donated the space to do so.
“We worked from a picture of Dr. King,” Mulkey said, “It was put together on art board with a special spray adhesive. We had to cut the construction paper to make it, but we were very careful to keep the best of what the children had drawn and written. Some of the paper sections included names or wonderful statements like ‘love is blind.’ ”
Sonyanna Green, a second grader at MLK Elementary, won the Coloring Sheet competition of the Union project, while Terrence Jacks, an MLK Elementary fifth grader, was given the award for Best Collage Sheet. The project Essay Contest winners for grades 9 -12 were Martavious Rollins and Kalis Armstrong. Titola Martin and Erykay Taylor were winners in grades 6 - 8. | <urn:uuid:8223c1c8-cb4d-45f8-aed9-dbf854d6b6da> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.albanyherald.com/news/2012/feb/03/kids-make-mlk-collage-civil-rights-museum/?business | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971245 | 684 | 2.03125 | 2 |
Baton Rouge church honored for hurricane relief
Congregation coordinated UU Gulf Coast relief volunteer effort.
Sometimes the right people are in the right place at the right time. Such was the case with the Unitarian Church of Baton Rouge as Hurricane Katrina plowed through New Orleans on Aug. 29, 2005.
As floodwaters rose and thousands of displaced New Orleaneans poured into Baton Rouge, 80 miles away, church members went to work. They took people into their homes, collected and delivered money and supplies to local shelters, served meals at a Red Cross shelter, and provided support and a place to meet for Unitarian Universalist congregations from New Orleans.
For its work in responding to the disaster, the church was honored this year with the Unitarian Universalist Association’s Bennett Award for Congregational Action on Human Justice and Social Action. The annual award goes to congregations that do exemplary work in social justice. It includes a $500 prize.
The Unitarian Church in Baton Rouge turned out to be the only UU church in southern Louisiana not significantly damaged by Katrina and the flooding. The two New Orleans churches, First Unitarian Universalist and Community Church Unitarian Universalist, were both flooded and their members dispersed across several states. The North Shore Unitarian Universalists, a congregation in Lacombe, lost half of its roof.
In the days that followed, UUs all across the country turned to Baton Rouge, some for help, and many more to offer assistance. The Unitarian Church of Baton Rouge became the center of UU relief efforts in Louisiana. “As soon as we got phones and electricity back we knew what we were being called to do,” said Diana Dorroh, UCBR’s volunteer programs director. Church volunteers and staff began responding to what would be hundreds of calls and walk-in visitors in the weeks and months after the disaster. A second hurricane, Rita, hit on September 24, adding to the damage and the need.
UCBR created a hurricane relief center in the church office, staffing it with members and friends. It responded to many UUs who needed shelter, transportation, and connection with their dispersed congregations. It served as a central contact point for the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations as well as churches and UUs around the country who wanted to send relief supplies and money, and to volunteer.
It wasn’t long before church leaders realized they needed help. Volunteers couldn’t keep up with the calls. The UUA’s Southwest District office arranged for the Rev. Marilee Baccich, community minister in Berkeley, Calif., to come to Baton Rouge to coordinate relief efforts. “That’s what saved us,” said Dorroh. “It was getting more and more chaotic handling everything with volunteers. When Marilee came she took over communications and kept things operating efficiently.”
Baccich was ultimately hired as minister to the community. The congregation also hired Cheré Coen to be Coordinator of Volunteers. Funds for these positions came from the UUA-UUSC Gulf Coast Relief Fund, which collected more than $3.5 million.
The statistics tell the story. The church’s Hurricane Relief and Social Justice Project placed about 1,200 volunteers on the Gulf Coast and those volunteers worked more than 31,000 hours. More than 200 congregations sent workers.
UCBR itself formed a group, the Weekend Warriors, shortly after Katrina and for almost two years the group of two dozen people has spent at least one weekend a month doing relief work in New Orleans, including gutting and rebuilding houses and helping people put their lives back together in other ways.
As the second anniversary of Katrina rolls around there are plenty of immediate needs—people still without houses, neighborhoods that need to be reclaimed, but more of the focus of UCBR’s work has shifted to long-term projects. Dorroh is on the city of Baton Rouge’s Long Term Recovery Committee. She worries about what will happen to the hundreds of people who are still stranded in Baton Rouge, who have no homes to go back to in New Orleans, and who don’t have the resources to move out of the inadequate low income housing project they live in.
UCBR has a legacy of community involvement in social justice issues. In the 1950s it was kicked out of its rented quarters because it had an interracial congregation with “radical views.” Members participated in the freedom marches of the ’60s, and have been active around issues of school desegregation, gun control, abortion rights, and environmentalism. Dorroh said the Katrina disaster was a catalyst for further engagement in the world. “Since Katrina our doors have opened wider and we have connections to social service groups, to people struggling in New Orleans, and to a hundred UU congregations that we didn’t have before.”
A moment from the past two years comes back for Dorroh. “I was taking a trip through the devastated area with a group from the Arlington Street Church from Boston,” she said. “We were trying to find Community Church, which had been flooded. We finally found it and the reverent way they interacted with the space, holding hands and praying, will always stay with me.”
She added, “I’m 65. The recovery from Katrina will continue for the rest of my life.”
Penny Ramsdell became president of the congregation in June 2005. When Katrina struck that summer she added another hat, that of steering committee chair for the church’s Hurricane Project. “It’s been a very full couple of years,” she said. “When I look back I have a range of emotions. I’m very proud of our congregation and how it stepped up. And I’m very humbled. No matter how tirelessly we worked we had it so much better than those who lost homes, workplaces, and had to rebuild churches and lives at the same time.”
It helped, she said, that volunteers could see tangible results every day—the shelving and bedding that the church purchased for a new shelter, which was immediately put to use; the space the church provided for a displaced university class; and giving two Jewish congregations a place to hold High Holy Days.
Did the disaster effort change the congregation? “I think more people have become aware of the subtle ways in which vulnerable populations can be disenfranchised,” Ramsdell said. Special moments for her include the demonstration of generosity by the congregation from the very beginning. “When we decided we needed to organize a task force to respond to the disaster we sent the word out and all these people just showed up. Another moment for me was when Rev. Baccich arrived to take over relief operations at the church.” But she said the best moment might have been the meal she helped prepare with church members for 200 Red Cross volunteers. “The meal just overwhelmed the volunteers and it filled us with pride and pleasure and gratitude that we could do this for them.”
She added, “What I want other UUs to know is how much difference it makes to have a strong healthy congregation when you are faced with something like this. I think first of the people—Rev. (Steve) Crump and the rest of our professional staff and our lay leaders and the congregation itself. We all work well together. That enabled us to quickly come together and to work effectively in all that we were called to do in the past two years.”
“Our Small Group Ministry program kept going, too,” she added, “and that was a wonderful way to process all that was happening to us. Rather than people feeling isolated and overwhelmed, they could go to their groups and share their stories and offer emotional support and share information.”
UCBR’s minister, the Rev. Steve Crump, knows his congregation pretty well. January will mark his 25th anniversary there. “There was no question in my mind that we would have responded the way we did,” he said. “From the first day when we opened our doors to a New Orleans UU in a wheelchair, right up to the present time, we responded with all the capacity we had and if we had to we’d do it again.”
Katrina changed the ministry of UCBR, he said. “I think we’ve all been radicalized. We’ve seen all the broken promises, all the people who aren’t getting the help they need. We’re working now for the long term. And we’ve been made aware of our own mortality. This storm could just as easily have made a path for our city. We will never get over this. The best we can do is try to integrate this into our lives.”
See sidebar for links to related resources. | <urn:uuid:20b821be-c545-4306-ad38-f34070d0802e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://uuworld.org/news/articles/44209.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975497 | 1,866 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Security, internet privacy and state intervention are all hot topics at the moment. The current proposals in the UK for GCHQ to be able to monitor web activity and electronic communications in the name of ‘national security’ have been met with fierce opposition from personal freedom and privacy advocates. Yet the man behind the latest US bill, CISPA, thinks that a happy medium is near to being reached.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers is the primary sponsor of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA). He feels that by collaborating with the technology industry, privacy groups and big name companies in the online world, they can together come to an agreement on terms for a bill that protects the privacy interests of the individual, while protecting the security of the US as a whole.
“We’ve got a coalition of companies in the high-tech industry supporting the bill…because we’ve listened to people’s concerns and incorporated them. It’s truly a collaborative effort” he told Mashable.
The aim of CISPA is to encourage cyber threat communication between businesses and government. In the world we live in, attacks no longer have to be physical nor carried out by terrorists to cause widespread damage to a country. State-sponsored attacks that seek to obtain top-secret information from US firms in order to give foreign countries an unfair advantage in the global marketplace are among Rogers’ concerns.
By creating an environment where companies can create a pool of knowledge pertaining to cyber attacks that they have previously fallen victim to, CISPA hopes to provide a means for others to prepare for those sort of eventualities.
Big names such as Facebook and Microsoft have publicly announced their support of CISPA, along with almost 30 other organisations, while Engine Advocacy, an organisation dedicated to bridging the gap between Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C, have withdrawn their opposition to the bill.
However, not everyone is behind this proposed legislation. The Electronic Front Foundation (EFF) and Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) are seeking to inform the public about what they see are the dangers of CISPA, while others believe the vagueness of the bill will allow the government to snoop on internet users’ emails, texts and social media interactions.
It’s a very interesting topic, with strong arguments and heated debate emanating from both sides of the table. What are your views on this? Do you think that in the time of a crisis it is acceptable for the government to pop the hood and see what’s going on, or is it never justifiable for the state to monitor private communications? | <urn:uuid:20132d30-821f-446a-afeb-ced211f705fc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.dadapp.com/tag/sopa/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946846 | 536 | 2.21875 | 2 |
This form is inclusive for humans, but exclusive to programmers. Request for information are getting more complicated, because programmers are writing programs that circumvent security measures.
As of 2004.09.21, the latest trend is to display an image with crazy characters and other object that currently can not be read my a program, and then require the person to type in the characters before they can proceed. Some *beep* mega lo manic, found a way around this by linking the form to high traffic web sites and offered free content to people that would read the images and fill in the numbers so they could more easily collect data again.
Hopefully this idea will prevent any sort of automation, and stop the cycle of implement something good, only to see someone find a way around it.
But who knows.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09/15 ... _jpeg_bug/
It involves a series of step that require the person filling out the form to accomplish before then can contact you. The tasks are simple, and most people can accomplish them (I will ask my mother to confirm this when the code is complete).
1.A check the HTTP REFER to make sure no one has hijacked your form.
2.Person fills out the form, and you require you a valid email address.
3.You email them a chunk of data. Chunks of data could be a MD5 sum of the data collected, a text file with special instruction on how to continue (the text file could be zipped up), or just one of those crazy images.
4.They save the chunk of data to their computer.
5.They return to the completion page where they are required to browse for the chunk of data and submit it back to the server.
6.Once the chunk of data has been uploaded successfully, you can do a diff on two files and delete one or both of them. You can also verify any other information at this point.
Step five is crucial because the FILE element is the one input type, that I am aware of, that can not be automated. The VALUE attribute can not be set for it. The person will always have to browse for the chunk of data on their computer.
High volume websites, people that only want tech savvy people to contact them, or people that want to collect information after they know the person is legitimate are just a few people that will want to use this contact form process.
I am contacting the nms project to help out for the coding.
Some forms information:
This is not an endorsement for Micro$oft, they just happen to have one of the craziest image makers I am aware of. You only get 2MB for a free hot mail account, gut Google's gmail gives you 1GB! That is even crazier than the image at the bottom of this page: | <urn:uuid:105ae211-c29a-40d2-8738-6d745452776e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.creativitypool.com/viewtopic.php?t=1762 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931581 | 590 | 2.03125 | 2 |
I don't think there is any significance in the order. However ... however, if I were to prescribe order to the level of intimacy the forefathers had with their Creator, it would be in the following order (among others).
Solomon was a near good for nothing. Possessing great wisdom and yet the fall of Israel was due to his lack of understanding of the whole framework of Creation, the reason for the existence of Israel. He failed to establish a framework of governmentation that would perpetuate the framework for the endurance of Israel.
Perhaps, Solomon had realised that his existence was in vain, but merely being a place-holder. He had absolute faith in his science and near zero faith in his relationship with the LORD. He prayed the typical prayer of preaching to the choir. I doubt his sincerity in that prayer.
Abraham was a schizophrenic fanatic. His faith was tainted by the idolistic legacy of his dad. The LORD tells him one message and he concocts extra messages out of that message. He was told to bring his son to the sacrifice, not bring his son to be sacrificed. Typical fanatics of "going the extra mile". He was supposed to elevate his son and bind him closer. He did not understand the meaning of Qurvan. The language of the LORD was deliberately ambiguous and it was up to him to interpret and he failed the test. Instead of elevating his son, he depressed Isaac, instead of binding him closer he alienated Isaac from him and the LORD.
However, Abraham exhibited as a natural leader. He devoted himself to total faith in his Creator. He was compassionate but his gung-ho fanaticism irresponsibly destroyed the whole of Isaac's character. Isaac became motivationally and emotionally unstable who did not achieve much or at all in his life time.
David was chosen as the administrator to wind down an unnecessary kingship. A kingship with which both Samuel and the LORD were disappointed. Disappointed that the people had chosen to have a king, an anointed phalic messiah, "just like the other nations". That disappointment is reflected in 1Samuel 8.
He tried somewhat to protect his dynasty but without much motivation. His disillusionment led him into various immoral excursions. His intimacy with the LORD led him to understand the anti-climactic role he needed to play. That Israel was not meant to be a kingdom nor be led by a king or messianic hero.
The model of the Divine and Eternal
kingdom governmentation was demonstrated thro Moses and Israel traveling thro the desert. It was not a perfect implementation of the model. Moses seems like a nationalist and a people's person and like getting his hands wet with the issues of the people. However his lack of intimacy with the LORD was demonstrated that Jethro had to give him a few pointers on how to set up a representative democracy. Moses was the right person at the right place at the right time for the right job of delivering Israel out of Egypt.
Also, Moses refused to see his almighty Creator because he was afraid to die. He preferred to see just a shadow of the Almighty. Due to his lack of faith, he could not enter into the Promised Land. Not to mention striking a rock twice.
I would like to skip Elijah and Samuel and go straight to Jacob.
Jacob longed for intimacy with the LORD, as a deer longs for the streams of water. Imagine being in the shoes of the LORD, and Jacob lies and cheats his brother just to be intimate with the LORD, to claim a birth right he did not legally have. Choosing a birthright that would exile him from his material inheritance. He understood the implications and responsibility of that birthright, which Esav disdained.
Imagine the IRS bringing someone to court for fraud in his tax returns and when asked why he/she presented fraudulent information, it was revealed that the reason was he/she wanted to pay more taxes.
Unlike the cowardly Moses, Jacob demanded to see the LORD. Not only see but even wrestled with the LORD. And negotiated with Him just like Abraham did.
Unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and die, no fruit would result. Jacob understood what Moses did not - see the LORD to die and be born again in a new enlightenment. Some people go for pot or coke but Jacob went for the LORD.
The enlightenment represents the precision of faith - do not walk that extra mile but walk just precisely enough. The way to life is a narrow and winding path but a broadway leads to destruction. In quality engineering, we ensure a nut and its bolt fit just precisely - we cannot make one an extra bit bigger, where the tolerance of the allowance should be as narrow as possible. In the gaussian curve, do not veer to the left nor to the right.
That precision is the model of how modern Israel needs to behave to achieve peace. Not giving in an extra inch to Esav any claim to the birthright, he schemed against his brother in humility. If he had to crawl, or beg Esav or Lavan, he did it to protect his birthright. It was like he had read Sun Tze's Art of War.
And the LORD saw it fit and precise that the nation of Israel should spawn with Jacob. | <urn:uuid:4af87fa7-d4c0-4f8e-9c6c-3266ee1a927b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/questions/2678/why-does-mark-mention-elijah-before-moses | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.986125 | 1,088 | 1.851563 | 2 |
Let’s face it – how to replace a shower window can be very difficult to figure out. Many bathrooms in older homes have wood or metal double hung windows right in the middle of the shower/tub area. While this was not a problem when these homes were built in the 1940’s, 1950’s and 1960’s (when more people took baths vs. showers) they just aren’t practical any more. The water from the shower penetrates the wood or metal frames in a shower and causes the frame to decay or rust. So how do you solve this problem without losing the benefit of natural light, increases safety and air flow and moisture control of having a window? Read below about 3 possible shower window options and their advantages and disadvantages. | <urn:uuid:ceca2c10-c81c-4550-b2f0-93928469fe8e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://newsfromtheblock.com/tag/shower-window/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939738 | 157 | 1.710938 | 2 |
February 17, 2012 > High school volunteers give 'kick-start'
High school volunteers give 'kick-start'
American High varsity soccer team gives back to local elementary school
By Helen Tracey-Noren
Photos By Helen Tracey-Noren
Jerry Losson, coach of the American High School varsity girls soccer team and physical education department chair, sets the bar high for his team. "Kids don't rise to low expectations," Losson said. "If you set the bar high, they will rise to meet it." In addition to maintaining high grades, Losson insists that the ShEagles soccer team be good citizens in order to play for him.
"Over the last couple of years, we try to get the kids to realize that they are part of a community, and that they need to be good citizens," Losson said. "Your career as an athlete only lasts so long. You've got to learn to be a good citizen."
Losson has been coaching the American High School ShEagles for the past eight seasons and each year the team has qualified for the California North Coast Sectional playoffs. They've also received recognition by the California Interscholastic Federation for maintaining a 3.0 grade point average as a team.
Every soccer season, the ShEagles and Losson volunteer to better their community and themselves as citizens. In past years, they have volunteered with the American Cancer Society but this year, the girls decided to give their time to another cause close to their heart.
Kim Johnson, assistant coach to Losson and a teacher at John M. Blacow Elementary School, volunteers her time to help train the ShEagles. After years of coaching with the Ohlone College Renegades, Johnson called Losson - whom she met during college at CSU East Bay - to see if she could assist his coaching efforts. Losson accepted and they have been working together for the past two seasons.
Losson wanted to return the favor. "How can I give back to this woman who has given so much of her time to us as a team?" Losson said. And that's when the ShEagles decided to volunteer their time at Blacow Elementary.
The team split into four groups: help teachers in their classrooms, set up Blacow's new science lab, redecorate the multipurpose room, and teach the kids soccer skills during physical education.
"If you look good, you feel good," said Kala Clark, a senior at American High School and co-captain of the ShEagles this past season. "We're making the school look good, so that [the kids] will feel good. Losson also told us to tell them that school is important and sports are important."
Blacow is one of the last elementary schools to receive a new science laboratory. The ShEagles helped unwrap stools and put together the much needed lab which, according to Blacow Principal Angela Morariu and alum of American High School, will officially open Thursday, February 23.
The elementary school is also one of three immersion schools in the Fremont Unified district, teaching in both Spanish and English. Since eight members of the soccer team speak Spanish fluently, they were able to help in these classrooms.
Not only were the ShEagles glad to be giving back to their community, but Blacow staff was more than happy to welcome the ShEagles to their school. "It's so great to have [the ShEagles] here," Morariu said. "And maybe it will spark their interest to do more community service, or see all these kids and want to become an elementary school teacher."
The ShEagles provided a much needed community service according to P.E. Instructor Justin Charbonneau. "It's great to have the girls here," Charbonneau said. "We don't get too many volunteers. I work four days at another elementary school in the district, and we don't get many volunteers there either." Volunteering not only was a benefit for the elementary school students, but also helped the ShEagles form a stronger bond. "I think that this will bring all the girls together," Clark said. "It will give us something to look back on."
Through playground shouts of calling for the ball and the high school volunteers playing a friendly game of keep-away - which they always seemed to lose - the message of bettering the community was not lost. "Soccer helps develop leadership and confidence in these kids. It helps develop teamwork skills and communication," said Alexandria Johnson, a senior on the ShEagles. "And it keeps you out of trouble, that's for sure," chimed in Melissa Urena, teammate and junior at American High School.
Though the elementary school students may not realize it yet, these volunteers raised the bar for them to become better "big kids." And by raising that bar, the ShEagles challenged themselves to become better citizens too.
If you would like to volunteer at John M. Blacow Elementary School, please call (510) 656-5121 for more information.
Photo Caption: The American High ShEagles | <urn:uuid:313a80dd-4cd1-4a63-b142-855c8c98e18a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://tricityvoice.com/articlefiledisplay.php?issue=2012-02-17&file=story4.txt | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980598 | 1,071 | 1.6875 | 2 |
Hi Guys! sorry I Haven’t been posting anything lately… But Today we are doing the SLLR( Student Led Learning reviews!) We (dad and me) both have some things to share!
I see she is learning how to learn structurally with a good framework around the concept or attitude or skills to acquire. This is good that I am confident that she grasp the complete picture of things she is trying to learn. I think sophia has become very confident in presenting works and I felt she grow up when listening to her presentation. I Loved to see the positive change she demonstrated. And she has good eye contact and loud volume, more engaging than before. no timid, and hesitation. I would like to see more arguing and persuasion skill in her daily life. To be brave to fight with friends while remember to take care of her friend and earn the friendship from friends but not asking for it.
Preparing for the SLLR helped me prepare for what I was going to do and say at the actual presentation and it also helped me get more confident.
I think the most challenging part of preparing the SLLR is when we had to write out he script because you had to really address what you were going to say and at this part if you really changed you agenda it would really affect you! This was also hard because you had to write almost word for word about what you were going to type.
If I could redo the SLLR I would probably create more activities to challenge my parents, and to show them my true understanding about each units.
The best part of the SLLR was to finally let them understand about the inquiry, action and writing cycle and show them about our learning.
Cookie 17 AKA Sophia
“I Don’t Do Fashion, I Am Fashion.” | <urn:uuid:65b36cae-48d8-4572-90be-7f3acfc180b3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://sites.cdnis.edu.hk/students/063699/2012/04/18/sllr/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982808 | 375 | 1.703125 | 2 |
We first started the design process by listing our flaws—both physical and character. We had been doing so many cute designs at the time that we wanted to make uglier characters.
Another challenge was to make characters out of large, iconic shapes. The scientists were based off of pills and capsules shapes.
We also used loose watercolor studies to explore mood and atmosphere. Though these color sketches were done very quickly, most of the core design ideas were kept in tact in the final frames from the film.
Early on, we were interested in the idea of writing the movie with storyboard thumbnails. In fact, there was never a formal screenplay for the film and the dialog was more or less improvised in recording sessions. Keeping a big piece of foam core in our studio, allowed us to change, add, or subtract, but maintain the big picture.
We kept panels loose and sketchy so it was easy to make revisions.
Final characters were constructed from fabric, rope, clay, ping pong balls, erasers and soy milk carton. Then they were photographed and assembled in After Effects.
We tried to challenge the limitation of 2D flat characters by creating many replacement parts.
100 hand positions
These hands were Ru’s hand with a padded glove.
All close up shots were pixilation.
50 mouth shapes made out of rope and erasers.
Max rig in After Effects. * VIDEO DEMO w/ audio
This is a glimpse of our character file and the ideas behind. Warning: This is not a tutorial and all the technical steps are not included in the demo.
Artie rig in After Effects.
Artie rig is set up the same way as Max rig. But what makes this rig unique is the back of Artie mirrors the front. This allowed the character and the reflection in the rear view mirror to be animated together.
*Help from Sean Mcbride.
All props were first constructed with cardboard and then painted with acrylics.
They were photographed from all angles to be reconstructed digitally in 3D space.
More organic shapes were photographed 360 degrees and used as replacement parts.
One of the biggest design challenges was to create a large scale sets in our tiny studio. Part of the process was figuring out how the sets will be deconstructed and stored.
If you look closely, you’ll find our pig friend in the door way. She acts as a stand-in for lighting and shadow.
All the parts were planned as modules so each scene could be easily assembled and stored away. Also by reusing parts & fabric for the landscapes, we saved a lot of materials and space.
Rocks were created with styrofoam, which was also photograph 360 degrees.
This set was used to make the cliff sequence below.
Forensic laboratory was the most detailed set in the movie. (a whole month to create everything)
Even though the scene is about 10 seconds, and the props go by very quickly, if they weren’t there, the scene would have felt off.
Cousin Miho who is a nurse helped us understand human anatomy and internal organs.
—–San Francisco street view—–
A wide shot like the San Francisco street needed more thinking before construction because of limited space. To give the illusion of depth, we used forced perspective. The houses got smaller and smaller as it got further.
This helped with storage because we could stack them like Russian dolls and saved a lot of space.
A great deal of the animation had stop motion elements integrated with digital animation.
Here is an example of how we combined the two.
We really wanted to have fun and experiment with materials.
Jello was used for water scenes.
Although the idea was simple, it took quite some time to get it right.
In the end, we ended up using 15 boxes of jello and filming with an HD video camera.
This aerial view of San Francisco was then composited with the jello.
Clouds were sculpted out of cotton.
This segment of hand puppets made us respect puppeteers a lot more.
To get the 8 seconds of footage, we filmed for 2 days.
The rain on the glass of the car was a video footage of water dripping down on a piece of glass. The glass was held up by Ru’s comic books which got wet.
Then the video footage was later composited to the cardboard car.
This is one of the examples of a typical composite breakdown.
1.We plotted timing in animatic which was drawn in flash, based on the storyboard thumbnails.
We created a background with modular bushes and trees. Max held the light up at 24 different increments to create the sun rising and setting.
Stop motion element of moss gradually growing on rocks.
Ru created 3 stages of body decomposition.
We dissolved between the 3 puppets.
Added shadows, composited all elements together and that is how we create 1 scene!
—– color correction & depth of field —–
After we finalized animation, we rendered out TIFF sequences for multiple layers.
This allowed us to make color changes and to create subtle lighting to the flattened images.
This is the image before color correction.
Using the TIFF sequences, we generated depth mattes for the scenes.
It was very flexible to make depth of field changes as a final touch.
This is how it looks at the end.
Here is the example of layers in After Effects.
It took us 2 years and 4 months to create this movie in between commercial jobs and it was not always fun, but in the end, we cannot be happier with the final piece.
We learned a lot about discipline, commitment, and we fell in love with animation all over again.
We hope you enjoyed the making of “Something Left, Something Taken” .
Feel free to contact us if you want to know more about the production. | <urn:uuid:99e72fd5-7459-40b5-a072-86a34c45a371> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://tinyinventions.com/blog/?p=317 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963198 | 1,231 | 2.015625 | 2 |
Hemingway in Midnight in Paris
Ernest Hemingway: I believe that love that is true and real, creates a respite from death. All cowardice comes from not loving or not loving well, which is the same thing. And then the man who is brave and true looks death squarely in the face, like some rhino-hunters I know or Belmonte, who is truly brave… It is because they make love with sufficient passion, to push death out of their minds… until it returns, as it does, to all men… and then you must make really good love again.
(Here are a few answers for the Anon questions. I posted this on my personal page when I started it a year ago. Here’s a bit of personal insight. I’m not going to go much deeper publicly.)
James Lipton asks these 10 questions to every guest at the end of “Inside the Actor’s Studio”
1. What is your favorite word?
2. What is your least favorite word?
3. What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally?
laughter, intelligence, glasses, rowboats, the mountains, soccer fields, theatres, big dinners with good people, good microbrews
4. What turns you off?
“…because I said so” and cocky ignorance
5. What is your favorite curse word?
F*&^!!! – or, I mean, ‘f……’
6. What sound or noise do you love?
Anyone’s laugh – bells in old cathedrals - the sound of a shutter on a camera
7. What sound or noise do you hate?
Bones breaking - tires screeching
8. What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?
Professional Historian - Park Ranger - Teacher
9. What profession would you not like to do?
an ER doctor or a butcher
10. If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?
The library is to the right.
Clocks slay time… time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life. ~William Faulkner
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (via heartlabyrinths)
Dear World of Readers,
If you have not read The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, please do.
Then you and I can talk about it. Life would be that much richer. | <urn:uuid:0ca48456-fe53-4c49-9e0b-c8b1d142afa7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://knowrq.tumblr.com/tagged/love | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934327 | 532 | 1.632813 | 2 |
FREDERICKTOWN — Tomatoes appropriately occupy a considerable amount of exhibitor space at the Fredericktown Tomato Show this week; and on Thursday, OSU Extension educator Troy Cooper judged all of the produce.
Tomato Show directors Dennis Shinaberry, Bernie Douglas and Mike Gearhart assisted Cooper and helped identify and label winners. Volunteer Tami Hules recorded the winners’ names.
Exhibitors entered a wide variety of tomatoes that included large meaty tomatoes, green tomatoes, pinks, Roma, cherry and variegated, to name a few.
There were also unique tomato categories like the Biggest first place entry belonging to Richard Grimm. There were also the most unusual, open class entries, and the tomatoes transformed into little people by Fredericktown second-grade students.
In the open class, Sue Vaughn won first place for her “Live Like There’s No Tomorrow” display of a tomato trumpeter at a church. There were other unique open class creations as well, including Jerry Bechtel’s second place caterpillar created entirely from a variety of tomatoes.
The criteria Cooper used to evaluate the tomatoes, and much of the other produce, included color, uniformity, size and yield. Yield refers to how much of the tomato was undamaged and edible. He said he considered what made a good market tomato.
Cooper picked up a tomato with cracks extending from the stem and said that the crack did not make the tomatoes “bad.” He said it was merely a result of this summer’s dry season.
Judges do not look at names while making their selection and Cooper was no different. He was surprised to learn that six of the first place tomato entries he awarded were given to Jason Dirst. Dirst was also awarded one second place prize.
The Best of Show was awarded to Macy Earnest. Cooper chose her entry from all of the first place winners.
“When I looked at all of the first place winners,” Cooper said, “these were uniform, the color was good, and there’s not a whole lot of spoilage.”
The big tent hosts more than the produce; the canned goods and baked goods are there, too. Visitors can see the Best Tomato Pie entry by Monica VanAtta for her green tomato pie and the Best of Show in the Baked Goods that went to Dave Bessett for his sourdough bread.
For the rest of the story
The rest of this article is available to Mount Vernon News subscribers. To continue reading, please log in or purchase a subscription. Click here for the September 7, 2012 e-edition. The article will only be available for thirty (30) days.
Contact Rhonda BletnerEmail
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. | <urn:uuid:f0e7855b-0fca-4880-820e-c0b17a49d932> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mountvernonnews.com/local/12/09/07/article.php?id=3 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964221 | 597 | 1.515625 | 2 |
IQ and Voter Preference in 2004 Presidential Election
Netlore Archive: Forwarded email purports to correlate the results of the 2004 U.S. presidential election with the average IQ of voters in each state
Description: Net hoax
Circulating since: Nov. 2004 (this version)
As circulated online, Nov. 2004:
IQ and Voter Preference
Analysis: The data charted above, which began circulating on the Internet shortly after the U.S. presidential election of 2004, would appear to confirm an elitist supposition held by some on the left - namely that Bush supporters are dumber than Kerry supporters.
There's just one problem: the numbers in the "Average IQ" column were fabricated. No such data exists.
As it happens, the same figures were bandied about earlier that year in reference to 2000's Bush/Gore election, and discredited in short order. Then, as now, it was claimed that the numbers purporting to represent average IQ by state came from a book entitled "IQ and the Wealth of Nations." However, one of its authors, Richard Lynn, stated that the book contains no such data.
It also bears pointing out that three states switched their electoral preference from one party to the other between 2000 and 2004, with no corresponding change in the alleged IQ of the populace.
Lastly, the hoax is reminiscent of a widely circulated email dating from 2001 which claimed, on the basis of phony documentation, that G.W. Bush has the lowest IQ of any modern president.
Share This Article
Sources and further reading:
Internet Hoax Tricks Mainstream Major: Not So Smart After All
National Business Review (New Zealand)
Bush Voters Have Lower IQs
Museum of Hoaxes
Vote Summary: Presidential Election of 2004
Last updated: 11/09/05 | <urn:uuid:cb2f25c5-e742-4b8d-9b02-e73e90298ef2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_voter_iq.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944828 | 375 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Key Australian websites have been hit by a ‘peaceful protest' against the application of web filters by the Anonymous group.
Australia's iTnews claimed that ‘Project Freeweb' will see events planned in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Brisbane, Adelaide, Newcastle and Canberra at various times on Saturday 20th February.
More than ten members of the Anonymous group, which took credit for the prolonged denial-of-service (DoS) on Australian Government websites last week and hit the office of the Australian Prime Minister last year, are expected to attend each event. These attacks were labelled ‘Operation Titstorm'.
A Project Freeweb organiser, who goes by the alias 'Infinite', told iTnews: “We wish to oppose this filter because we're not only representing Australia, but the world. If passed, this legislation will set a disturbing precedent at an international level. The public, not the Government, should have the right to decide what is deemed appropriate for you or your family to be exposed to."
Another activist, who went by the name ‘Coldblood', told BBC News that the activists did not support the creation of illegal content, but banning it would not tackle the issue.
He said: “If something is illegal which is done on the internet the government should try and prosecute them. If they ban it [then] it will just appear somewhere again. What they really need to do is go after the people who are making this content.”
A statement by the system administrators guild of Australia (SAGE-AU) posted after the DoS attack, said it condemned the efforts.
It said: “While SAGE-AU believes that imminent internet filtering legislation will fail to work, it has condemned DoS attacks as the wrong way to express disagreement with the proposed law.
“SAGE-AU points out that the impact of DoS attacks is frequently felt less by government agencies than by system administrators, many of them SAGE-AU members, who are responsible for managing websites and servers.
“SAGE-AU believes the funds allocated for internet filtering would be better spent on activities that are proven solutions to the problems identified by the federal government.”
It recommended, rather than blocking, encouragement of ‘family-friendly' ISP services, improved parent education and more rigorous enforcement. | <urn:uuid:fb787d6f-ee2b-49cd-bf25-dfd392f0e101> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.scmagazineuk.com/australia-prepares-for-week-of-protest-against-web-filters-after-the-anonymous-group-hit-key-websites-last-week/article/163785/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00070-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959476 | 481 | 1.554688 | 2 |
There is no medical doctor stationed on Lizard Island but Lizard Island Research Station has highly qualified first aiders with access to medical equipment, supplies and advice for emergencies.
The Station has an extensive medical kit supplied by the Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS) as well as first aid supplies including medical oxygen. All staff are trained in first aid including medical oxygen usage and these qualifications are kept up to date with regular revision courses.
The Lizard Island Resort employs a registered nurse who is available to Research Station users during clinic hours and for emergencies - a fee is charged for the nurse's services.
RFDS doctors are available for phone consultations daily. Emergency medical evacuation from the island is arranged through the RFDS if necessary. The RFDS relies upon donations for its existence. Donations to the RFDS can be made through the Research Station.
Australians are covered by Medicare for medical evacuations. Overseas visitors are advised to carry insurance that covers them for this risk.
The nearest recompression chamber is in Townsville.
Dr Anne Hoggett , Director, Lizard Island Research Station | <urn:uuid:e6d0d451-2b4b-41d2-8a3e-a65202d0a72f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://australianmuseum.net.au/Medical-Assistance | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955778 | 219 | 1.90625 | 2 |
Oct 01, 2007
(Vol. 27, No. 17)
ASmodeler—Gene Modeling of Alternative Splicing Events
Take a genomic eukaryotic sequence, match it with a mature eukaryotic mRNA or a reverse-translated protein sequence, and you’ll discover the location of introns. These, of course, are spliced out during RNA maturation. If you remember anything from the last review, you’ll recognize that splicing is a many splendored thing that can take many paths for a given gene. But, you may interject, how can I predict the multiple alternative splices that might occur if all I have is a sequence? To the rescue comes ASmodeler, an online system for doing this dirty work. Sequence entry is easy. Users can specify genomic sequences by UniGene ID number and then either paste in mRNA, EST, or Protein sequence or, alternatively, upload a file with sequence info. Numerous modeling methods for predicting alternative splice sites are available. Is the system perfect? No, many splices are predicted that are not known to occur biologically, so the program is best used as a theoretician’s tool. Still, ASmodeler is a very useful and powerful program for molecular biologists.
- Strong Points
- Weak Points
- Very Good
*The opinions expressed are solely those of the author(s) and should not be construed as reflecting the viewpoints of the publisher, Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News, Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., the publishing house, or employees and affiliates thereof. | <urn:uuid:709c2e39-c96f-461e-8da2-ead48f98935e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.genengnews.com/best-of-the-web/asmodeler-gene-modeling-of-alternative-splicing-events/2101/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.921502 | 323 | 2.34375 | 2 |
The February 16, 2008 issue of the St. Louis Post Dispatch reported that state Representative Michael McGhee has proposed that Missourians vote on a constitutional amendment in November that reads, “to ensure that schoolchildren have the right to pray and exercise other free religious expression in a nondisruptive manner in their school.“ Representative McGhee states that he has heard stories of students admonished at school for their religious faith and a child was forbidden to bring a Bible on a school bus.
These are not adequate reasons for the state to adopt an additional constitutional amendment. Each one of these alleged incidents could have been corrected on a one-on-one basis. Further, over the past forty-five years, federal courts have clarified students’ rights regarding prayer, reading the Bible while in school, and the study of the Bible by student-led and student organized religious clubs. Thus, the proposed constitutional amendment is unnecessary. We, the citizens of Missouri, and the General Assembly need to better spend our time debating and voting on more substantive issues and problems in the months ahead.
The House Special Committee on General Laws voted “do pass” on this proposed amendment by a vote of 7 to 1. Hopefully, the Missouri General Assembly will not place it on the ballot. If it is, we should vote "No"!
(The opinions expressed are not necessarily those of St. Louis Public Radio.)
Lowe "Sandy" MacLean is vice chancellor emeritus, University of Missouri, St. Louis, and is active in local political and community organizations, including the Grand Order of Pachyderms (GOP), a service organization for the Republican Party. | <urn:uuid:12c55442-aa8a-47b1-a923-44f8cfbb7054> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://kwmu.org/programs/commentaries/commentary.php?cid=930 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962873 | 338 | 1.617188 | 2 |
On a cold Sunday morning in Niagara Falls, I waited in a room nervously with the other contestants. The Toastmasters Table Topics Championships was about to begin.
As I anxiously stared out the window I tried to distract my nerves by admiring the Falls. Staring at the steady flow of water as it hurled itself over the edge, I smiled at the irony of the parallel between the water and the events that had brought me here.
A group of friends and I had launched a non-profit, student-led organization called GROW that runs events in the Jewish community. Since most of us were deathly afraid of public speaking, we started a Toastmasters club. When I volunteered to represent our club at the next competition, little did I know this would be in the dreaded “Table Topics” category.
Table Topics is designed to test impromptu speaking abilities. You are given a topic, typically a single word like success or happiness, and on the spot have to give a one- to two-and-a-half-minute speech that builds upon that theme. You are judged based on content, speech development, and stage presence.
Most people find table topics extremely challenging, as everyone is afraid their mind may go blank and they will have nothing to say.
The Power of Definitions and Clarity
As a Jew, I think we were born to compete in table topics. We have opinions on everything! We also are very curious and like to ask lots of questions. Questions that force us to delve deep into any and every topic we can think of, usually starting with definitions.
In my very first class on Judaism, I was taught the importance of definitions. For example:
Am I a good person? Of course I am! Well, at least I think I am. But how do I know I’m a good person?
The only way to know if you’re a good person is to create a definition. Define the word “good” and then see if you fit that definition. Without the proper definition, it's impossible to answer the question. (See here for the answer.)
Beyond preparing myself for life, I was mastering the art of Table Topics.
The more I learned about Judaism, the more I delved into the proper definitions for Love, Happiness, Success, and many other important life goals. And it turns out that I wasn't just preparing myself for life, I was really mastering the art of Table Topics.
To Learn is to Teach
Beyond this is a concept in Judaism that whenever you learn an important idea, in order to ensure that you remember it, you should teach it to at least five people right away. When you explain the idea to someone else, you are sealing it in your memory. You're also developing the skill of clearly explaining your thoughts in an orderly fashion. And since everyone learns a little differently, you are forced to develop lots of analogies to get your point across.
So while I may have only been a rookie when it came to Toastmasters, my Jewish journey had given me the necessary tools for success.
At Toastmasters, the competition begins at the club level, and then the winner moves up to the area, division, and finally the district championships. At the first three levels of competition, I was given the words "wealth," "recovery" and "integrity." Following my formula of defining the term and then explaining with an analogy of how the world would be a better place if we lived with proper values, to my surprise I kept winning. And with each competition, my confidence grew.
"Max Kalles – you’re next," the sergeant at arms called. Snapping back to reality, it was my turn for the stage.
I slowly walked across the hall and into the packed auditorium.
"Max Kalles," the contest chair announced, "the phrase is: ‘Life is a journey.’" The crowd clapped as I slowly walked up the stage stairs formulating my words while trying my best not to trip. I quickly looked at my wife who had a smile across her face.
I looked out at the crowd, gave a big smile, and began:
Mr. Contest Chair, fellow Toastmasters, and welcomed guests:
Life is a journey.
The problem is that when we first begin that journey, we are too young and inexperienced to make our own decisions. So we look up to people who are wiser than us and ask them what to do. They tell us that life is like a ladder, and the goal, of course, is to get to the top.
So we start at the bottom rung and begin to climb. What should we do? Go to school of course, that's what everyone else does. You need an education to get to the top of the ladder.
You graduate school and ask: What next? Well, everyone needs a higher education. So enroll in university – climb your ladder.
You finish university in a degree that you weren't interested in, but that's not what's important; finishing is all that matters. Climb the ladder.
After graduation you have to get a job. It's not really in the industry you wanted, but you have student debts to pay off – just climb a little higher.
What now? Get married, of course. So you find a spouse to climb the ladder with.
Now that you have a spouse, you need a house, but to pay for the house you need to stay in that job that you didn't really like. Don't worry, just keep climbing the ladder.
You're thinking of making a change, but now's not a good time because your wife is pregnant with your second and you need a bigger house to fill with stuff you don't really need. But that's not important as long as you’re climbing the ladder.
Retirement is near; there's no use quitting now. Besides, you were promoted again and you have to pay for your children's school. Don't worry, just keep climbing the ladder.
Each time you put your head down and continue to climb – inching toward the top – that's when things will be better (you convince yourself).
You finally reach the top of the ladder and pull yourself onto the roof of the building. Reaching the top, you stand up in triumph. You made it! You look out at the amazing sights… but as you turn around, you are shocked to realize that your ladder was leaning on the wrong building!
We can go our whole lives trying to achieve greatness, trying to get to the top. But before we start life's journey, it is worthwhile to look up and make sure that our ladder is leaning on the right wall.
The Judges’ Decision
I sat down and watched the rest of the competitors give their speech on the same topic. They were all very good, and it was difficult to tell who would win. When they announced my name as the winner I was in a state of shock.
Winning a Toastmasters competition is a great feeling. But the best part was taking the ideas I've learned while studying Judaism and sharing them with the world, to help bring meaning and happiness into the lives of others. I’ll drink to that. | <urn:uuid:c9a562c2-e8f0-4713-a25d-a72f0efed699> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.aish.com/jw/s/LChaim_To_the_Toastmasters.html?s=raw | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00060-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979474 | 1,502 | 1.976563 | 2 |
To paraphrase Ronald Reagan paraphrasing Will Rogers, some people around here never met a tax they didn’t dislike. Others have met just one: a carbon tax.The reasons that some economists like a carbon are outlined here.
A number of the nation’s leading conservative economists, who as a rule do not like taxes, are touting some benefits to a federal carbon tax. That group includes Gregory Mankiw, a former Romney adviser and George W. Bush-era chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors; Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Sen. John McCain’s 2008 chief economic adviser; and Art Laffer, progenitor of Reagan’s treasured Laffer Curve.
Such a tax could raise an estimated $1.5 trillion over 10 years and help wean the country from carbon-intensive fuels. And with Congress set for a season of budget fights and a possible effort to overhaul the tax code, the carbon tax is likely to reenter the conversation about getting America’s fiscal house in order.
So, it’s worth understanding why the economics of a carbon tax might make it appealing to some conservative economists, and why many political arguments about taxes don't apply to it.
The basic reasoning is,
A carbon tax is a special kind of tax called a Pigovian tax, named after 20th-century British economist Arthur Pigou.Coase in his famous 1960 article, The Problem of Social Cost, points out some problems with Pigou's approach.
Normally, a competitive market produces just the right amount of a good. If there are not enough people selling glue, its price will rise and people will cash in by selling more glue. If too many people are selling glue, the price will go down, and some people will find it’s not worth their while to sell glue anymore. Either way, the market should settle at the point where the cost of producing more glue is equal to the value people place on that additional glue.
But Pigou realized that if a producer wasn’t paying for the full cost of producing a good, they would produce too much of it anyway and everyone else would foot the bill. Imagine that making glue is expensive because it costs a lot to cart away all the horse carcasses used in its production. There’s not going to be a lot of glue because only people who really like glue will be willing to pay to produce it.
Now imagine that instead of carting away the dead horses, glue factories realize they can dump them in nearby rivers for free. All of a sudden, it becomes a lot cheaper to make glue, so the price goes down. At a price like this, you can’t afford not to buy glue, so people consume more of it, and new glue factories pop up.
It all looks like economic growth, until the dead horses start piling up, and people start getting sick. Then they get a bunch of medical bills and the government has to spend money cleaning up the river. The sticky-fingered glue barons don’t mind much, because they can afford to buy the expensive houses upriver, and when the cost of cleanup gets spread to everyone, the cost to them is a pittance compared to their newfound glue fortunes.
Meanwhile, the tape users are fuming. They’re getting sick from glue they don’t even use, and the horse-dredgings are driving up their tax bill. And because a bunch of the former tape-makers have jumped on the glue bandwagon, there’s now a tape shortage. It’s a mess.
When you account for the costs of sickness and cleanup, each tub of glue costs $20 to produce. But the glue factories don’t pay for this, so they can sell glue at a going rate of $12. Glue that’s only worth $12 is being made at a cost of $20, so $8 is being wasted on each new tub of glue.
In this case, Pigou would prescribe an $8 tax on glue. Now, it costs glue factories $20 to produce glue, and only people willing to pay that much for glue will buy it. Less glue is produced, so fewer dead horses end up in the river, and the revenue raised from the tax can be used deal with the problems caused by the ones that do. | <urn:uuid:a6c7bfd9-16e4-44fc-96a0-a0a5211b6e47> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://antidismal.blogspot.com/2013/01/reasons-for-liking-carbon-tax.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00057-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959695 | 906 | 2.3125 | 2 |
Dorothy Haskell Porcher Legge was a pioneer of historic preservation in Charleston. In this interview, Legge discusses her early efforts to restore homes on the peninsula and describes the restoration of her family’s residence at number 99 – 101 East Bay Street beginning in 1931. Legge worked privately and effectively to inspire the revitalization of this block of deteriorated eighteenth-century mercantile structures on East Bay Street which eventually came to be known as “Rainbow Row.” In the interview Legge also discusses growing up on Mulberry (on the Cooper River) and Bonny Hill (on the Combahee River) rice plantations and family history including the life of her mother’s grandfather, Rev. John Bachman. Audio with transcript and tape log.
Harold Stone Reeves, a native Charlestonian and lifelong performer, discusses the many aspects of his life since his birth in 1892, including his longtime interest in Gullah, attending the University of South Carolina, his commission with the Charleston Light Dragoons during World War I, his involvement with the Society for the Preservation of Spirituals, and his role as the first manager of the of the Charleston Social Security Office. Audio with transcript and tape log. | <urn:uuid:033227b2-95f6-4508-94fd-558d74341064> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://lowcountrydigital.library.cofc.edu/cdm4/results.php?CISOOP1=exact&CISOBOX1=Heyward%2C+Duncan+Clinch%2C+1864-1943&CISOFIELD1=CISOSEARCHALL&CISOOP2=all&CISOBOX2=charleston+(s.c)&CISOFIELD2=subjec&CISOROOT=/SCO&t=s | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00052-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965229 | 249 | 2.484375 | 2 |
Nigeria: Floods to Cut Crude Oil Production in 2013
From All Africa
By Blessing Anaro
The 2013 budget may have failed the first test with the ravaging floods dragging down crude oil production output to between 2.1 and 2.2 million barrels per day (mbpd) from 2.5 mbpd in the first half of this year.
A weekly report by Afrinvest said the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) revealed that the country’s oil production dropped from an average of 2.5 mpbd in the first half of this year to between 2.1 and 2.2 mbpd last week as a result of flood and major outage on a Shell facility.
When the federal government presented the budget 2013 budget to the National Assembly recently, local and international analysts were sceptic about the benchmark for crude oil production, saying it was most unlikely target.
They had based their fears on crisis in the Niger Delta which seem to be smouldering, but has the penchant for erupting every now and then. | <urn:uuid:b123a106-3667-45dd-b875-e3505dd1fd1d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.energytribune.com/64417/nigeria-floods-to-cut-crude-oil-production-in-2013 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962058 | 217 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Create Your Own Safe Zone; Training for Undergrads November 6
UT’s new Safe Zone training for undergraduates is set for Sunday, November 6, at Humes Residence Hall, East Multipurpose Room.
Safe Zone is a voluntary network of faculty, staff, and students who believe that every member of the community should have an equal opportunity to grow and learn in a safe and open environment. Safe Zone training is part of the Chancellor’s initiative on Civility and Community. Safe Zone training explores LGBT issues in an honest and open way and provides an opportunity for participants to become LGBT allies.
UT’s Safe Zone project is administered through the Dean of Students Office. UT’s Employee and Organizational Development provides the training through small group activities, information sharing and large-group discussions that explore commonly held myths and beliefs of the LGBT community.
After completing the course, participants can receive the Safe Zone sticker to post in their room or work area. This training is for undergraduates only, but additional sessions have been scheduled for faculty, staff, and graduate students. The training is free, but registration is required online at http://safezone.utk.edu/training.html
For more information, call 974-6657 or send an e-mail to firstname.lastname@example.org. | <urn:uuid:cb2b25ad-a7ab-411a-8579-6b6d5751e3b9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.utk.edu/tntoday/2011/10/24/safe-zone-training-nov-6/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00052-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951708 | 275 | 1.890625 | 2 |
As students work on the activities in the module, look for the following:
- Have students grasped the concept that the brain is responsible for a wide range of activities?
- Are students beginning to understand the relationship between the senses and the brain?
- Were students able to complete the body outline with the accompanying pictures?
- Were students able to express their feelings and show their “face” accordingly?
- Did students participate in class discussions?
Brain Power Video Modules: Grades K-1
T-shirts, Stickers, and Buttons: Grades K-1
As a result of scientific research, we know that addiction is a disease that affects both brain and behavior. | <urn:uuid:3ebb56c2-d93c-47c3-8778-e32de4b6c061> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/brain-power/grades-k-1/your-amazing-brain-module-3/assessment | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94226 | 144 | 3.953125 | 4 |
NASA's DC-8 airborne science laboratory soars over the Sierra Nevadas and the Owens Valley near Lone Pine, Calif., during a checkout flight in the winter of 1998. The aircraft is validating several specialized instruments for the future Global Precipitation Measurement satellite during the six-week GCPEx airborne campaign over Ontario, Canada from late January through February 2012. (NASA / Jim Ross) › View Larger Image
GCPEx Snowfall Study Resumes Over Ontario, Canada
After a couple of no-fly days due to weather conditions and media outreach, NASA’s DC-8 flying laboratory resumed flying Jan. 26 in NASA's Global Precipitation Measurement Cold-season Precipitation Experiment, or GCPEx, snow study.
The goal of the more than six-hour night flight was to collect precipitation bands over the Environment Centre for Atmospheric Research Experiments, or CARE, located in Egbert, Ontario, Canada. About 35 passes were made over the CARE site in inclement weather, with freezing rain and strong winds forcing the flight crew to change the flight patterns to increase data collection.
The GCPEx field experiment will help scientists match measurements of snow in the air and on the ground with the satellite's measurements.
"We are looking at the precipitation and the physics of precipitation, such as snowflake types, sizes, shapes, numbers and water content," said Walter Petersen, the GPM ground validation scientist at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. "These properties affect both how we interpret and improve our measurements."
The Airborne Precipitation Radar-2 (APR-2) developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Conical Scanning Millimeter-wave Imaging Radiometer (CoSMIR) developed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center were operated during the first science flight Jan. 19. As a small low-pressure system moved across the area, the DC-8 flew an orbiting pattern over the CARE site. A Cessna Citation operated by the University of North Dakota joined the aerial orbit that included repeated spiral descents and climbs. Sites around CARE are heavily instrumented to collect snow and water measurements.
In addition to the CARE ground network of snow gauges and sensors and measurements from aircraft, advanced ground radars will scan the entire air column from the clouds to the Earth's surface.
Among scientists aboard a second science flight Jan. 21 was Gail Skofronick-Jackson, GPM deputy project scientist at NASA Goddard in Greenbelt, Md.
"We took a short flight to measure surface information over our GCPEx field campaign region. It is important to know what our surface 'looks like' with our instruments for clear-air conditions because we can 'subtract' the surface signal when we are observing falling snow," said Skofronick-Jackson.
"It's like trying to weigh your luggage to make sure that it is under 50 pounds so you don't get charged extra at the airport," she added. "First you weigh yourself (like clear-air surfaces), then you weigh yourself holding the luggage (snow falling over the surfaces), finally you subtract the two leaving just the luggage weight (only the falling snow signal)."
During GCPEx the DC-8 is flying above the clouds while the Citation and a Canadian National Research Council Convair 580 fly through the clouds and measure the microphysical properties of the raindrops and snowflakes inside.
If the opportunity exists during the mission, now scheduled to end Feb. 29, the DC-8 also will fly over blizzards along the northeastern United States.
For more information about GCPEx, visit:
NASA Dryden public affairs | <urn:uuid:52748cf6-6133-422f-8784-b70c66e79771> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/status_reports/DC-8_status_01_26_12.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00056-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.919666 | 758 | 3.25 | 3 |
Family Vacations to Stockholm, Sweden
|STOCKHOLM: Sweden's capital city boasts historic architecture, quaint streets, and lively family activities (Digital Vision)|
- See the dazzling crown jewels.
- View a real 17th-century warship.
- Ogle Viking gold at the Museum of National Antiquities.
- Travel back in time to the 18th and 19th century at Skansen, a living history museum.
- Take a boat ride to explore other islands.
Sweden's capital, Stockholm is built on 14 connected islands. Bridges and waterways lace the city, and in summer, with daylight lasting until around 10:00 p.m., the streets remain lively with strolling families, couples, and students.
A good place to start your visit is in Gamla Stan, the Old Town, whose narrow, winding streets date to the 13th century. On a walk, the aroma of grilled waffles pulls you into an eatery for a snack. Along with cafes, boutiques and art galleries line the cobblestone lanes.
An Old Town highlight: Kungliga Slottet, the Royal Palace. The 600-room baroque masterpiece, completed in 1754, has its share of ornate ceilings and elaborate tapestries. Kids, however, are more likely to want to spend the most time in Skattkammaren, the Treasury, which displays crowns encrusted with diamonds, pearls and emeralds. The Livrustkammaren, the Royal Armory, another must-see, features fairytale-like antique carriages and coaches, some adorned with gilt and jewels. For more pomp, attend the changing of the guard, held daily in summer.
The island of Djurgården has several family-friendly attractions. The Vasamuseet contains the Vasa, a commanding warship that sank in 1628 almost as soon as it left the dock because it was too tall and too heavy to sail. The ship's wooden hull was preserved by the Baltic mud and salvaged in 1961. Carefully restored, the massive Vasa once again looks fierce with its ornate gargoyle-like sculptures. The museum, built around the ship, also showcases coins, tools, and other items reclaimed from the sea.
Skansen, an open-air living history museum, features more than 150 buildings from various Swedish periods. Among them are an 18th-century farmhouse and country church, a mid-1850s town with a shoemaker, glassmaker, and potter. Young children familiar with Pippi Longstocking and friends, characters created by Swedish author Astrid Lindgren, may want to ride a train through storybook settings at Junibacken, an indoor amusement that also offers children's plays. This summer the park hosts added exhibits as part of the 2007 centennial anniversary of the beloved author.
On nearby Östermalm, at the Historiska Museet, the Museum of National Antiquities, head straight to the Gold Room on the ground floor for the dazzling collection of Viking gold and silver coins, necklaces, rings, chains, and other treasures. The Viking Gallery features more coins as well as drinking glasses, swords, bracelets, and models of Viking ships, which had narrow hulls and shallow drafts so they could sail Scandinavia's inland waterways.
The Stockholm archipelago consists of more than 24,000 islands, some merely skerriessmall rocky patches of land jutting above the water. Take a wind-in-your-face boat or ferry ride to Vaxholm, about 45 minutes from downtown Stockholm. Enjoy fishing and a tour of the Vaxholms Fästnings (Fortress) Museum, a stone fort begun in the 16th century. About an hour from Stockholm, Grinda, a nature preserve, is a good place for easy hikes.
Tip: Buy the Stockholm Card and receive entry to 75 museums and attractions as well as public transportation
Details mentioned in this article were accurate at the time of publication
Best Hotels in Stockholm | <urn:uuid:13cc72cc-9bfd-49fb-ba00-c205a2626909> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://away.com/sweden/stockholm-family-vacation-sidart_200808_095609.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939126 | 842 | 1.664063 | 2 |
Bindweed (Convolvulus arvensis)
Also called wild morning glory, bindweed grows in open areas. Its 1- to 4-foot-long stems crawl along the ground and twine
over and around other plants.
Pulling usually doesn't eradicate it ― the stems break off, but the weed returns from the roots. To control its spread, you'll have to dig the roots out repeatedly (persistence is required). It's important not to let bindweed set seed, since the hard-coated seeds can sprout after lying dormant for 50 years!
Best control is prevention. Remove flowers before they set seed, and pull or hoe seedlings. Kill established plants by regularly cutting to the ground any stems that have reached six inches tall.
For chemical control, in midsummer, when bindweed is at the height of its growth season but has not yet set seed, spot-treat isolated patches with glyphosate. | <urn:uuid:80f41ffd-1468-432b-989c-5d9a7a4ff7a7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sunset.com/garden/garden-basics/how-to-control-weeds-00400000043681/page2.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00063-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951398 | 194 | 3.015625 | 3 |
By Kerry Miller Share Del.icio.us
It’s been five years since Molokai-born author Lois-Ann Yamanaka has graced book stores with a new title, and eight since being on
MidWeek’s cover in June 1998. Now, in 2006, she has released a new novel, and she’s also looking forward to her “other” life as a teacher.
Yamanaka’s newest historical fiction tale, Behold The Many, is the story of three sisters stricken with tuberculosis who are sent to stay at an orphanage in Kalihi Valley to recover, only to be abandoned, beaten and berated. The two youngest die, leaving the eldest, Anah, all alone.
“She (Anah) lives her life with the regret of not being able to save her sisters,” says the 45-year-old author/mom. “The long and short of it is they were trapped here (Hawaii) by mistake. They don’t understand. They’re waiting to be taken home.”
The inspiration for this new novel comes from Yamanaka’s own life. Since 1992, she’s lived with her husband and autistic son in Kalihi Valley, two blocks from the site of the orphanage depicted in her book.
“Our house got haunted,” she reveals. “They (the ghosts of the children) were looking for their home. That’s how we met.”
It was her son, Yamanaka says, who could feel a presence in their house, which turned out to be the spirits of the children.
“He (son John) kind of has a sixth sense,” she says. “I think he attracted them.”
Having lived through that somewhat surreal experience, the Yamanakas are very happy in their home. Prior to 2001, much of her days were spent on the road promoting her books, so she truly appreciates any time she gets to spend at home these days.
“My books used to come out once a year. I used to never unpack my suitcase,” Yamanaka recalls.
While she leaves her mornings open for writing, the author devotes the latter part of her days to teaching young students at her school, Na’au: A Place of Learning and Healing, located in downtown Honolulu. Oddly enough, Yamanaka says, she complains about teaching at times, saying that it “takes a lot of emotional energy,” but reveals that something keeps tugging at her to stick with it, and she is awfully proud of her students.
“The school is a way of giving back. I’m working with a lot of young people, writers on different kinds of projects. The kids are really doing well ... writing their hearts out,” she says.
As for her writing, well, Yamanaka is enjoying the rest of her tour promoting Behold The Many, which has brought her much joy.
“I feel gratitude and feel fortunate that my publisher still believes in putting me out there,” she tells MidWeek.
For now, Yamanaka is hopeful her fans will embrace Behold The Many, and also hopes to release another novel sometime in the future - but she’s leaving that up to fate.
“I’m not sure as to what project is going to happen next,” she admits with a laugh. “I’m kind of waiting for a sign.”
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Most Recent Comment(s): | <urn:uuid:4442ce1e-a16e-4866-b6e5-225f8d1aeb2f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://archives.midweek.com/content/columns/oldfriends_article/lois_ann_yamanaka/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981409 | 785 | 1.6875 | 2 |
Sixty thousand Japanese citizens marched in central Tokyo today to press their government to ditch nuclear energy in favour of renewables in light of the ongoing Fukushima nuclear disaster: here. And here.
The 60,000-strong rally was the largest since the March 11 earthquake that triggered the Fukushima nuclear plant meltdown: here.
Japan’s citizens are not happy about nuclear power. And they’re taking to the streets to make their voices heard: here.
Fukushima Nuclear Crisis Update for September 20th-22nd, 2011: here.
Nuclear contamination found beyond Japan no-go zone: here.
Third Fukushima nuclear plant worker dies: here.
Fukushima ‘hot spots’ raise radiation fears: here.
Fukushima seawater 58 times pre-disaster radiation levels – The Canadian National: here.
Japanese Government Nixed Idea of Obama Visiting, Apologizing for, Hiroshima: here.
Britain: Coalition ministers were accused of jumping the gun today by pushing through a new generation of nuclear power stations without learning the lessons of the Japanese Fukushima disaste: here.
Angry villagers living near a recently built nuclear power plant in southern India blocked a main road to demand its closure on Thursday, saying they don’t believe the facility is safe: here. See also here. | <urn:uuid:bf82b131-083f-4b82-ab3d-a90a0b66c979> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://dearkitty1.wordpress.com/2011/09/19/japanese-demonstrate-against-nuclear-power/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00052-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.915225 | 271 | 2.125 | 2 |
Do we live in a meritocracy, or is it all luck?
July 16, 2012
What’s the current state of the American dream? So many seem to work hard and do everything right--but just happen to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.
Many metal fabricators may be running to the hilt, but much of the rest of the economy remains in slow acceleration. So many young people are facing meager job opportunities, and that’s left them rethinking the American dream. What is that dream, exactly? National Public Radio’s Ari Shapiro put it this way: “Though the phrase has different meanings to different people, it suggests an underlying belief that hard work pays off, and that the next generation will have a better life than the previous generation.”
He added that the notion is uniquely American. Although we don’t feel people are entitled to success, we feel that hard work and playing by the rules should lead us to something better than our parents had. Success is within our control.
As Michael Dimock of the Pew Research Center explained to NPR, “When Germans or French are asked the same questions about whether it’s within all of our power to get ahead, or whether our success is really determined by forces outside our control, most German and French respondents say, ‘No, success is really beyond our control.’”
After brutal recessions, globalization, and the resulting much smaller manufacturing base—at least when it comes to total employment—Americans are rethinking the notion of the American dream. This includes Adam Davidson of NPR’s “Planet Money” and columnist for The New York Times Magazine. Davidson talks about our “Plan A’s” and “Plan B’s.” Plan A usually included the dream job, what Davidson called a kind of “lottery-based” career path. Sure, an aspiring actor has little chance of making it big, but he or she tries all the same, because the rewards are so huge. The logic: You’ll never hit it big (or win the lottery) if you don’t give it a try (buy a lottery ticket).
Then there are the Plan B careers, the jobs people take when Plan A doesn’t pan out. Plan B jobs may not be flashy, but they really helped build the American dream. If you got a job at the factory and worked hard, you could build seniority, buy a house, live a middle-class lifestyle, and retire on a healthy pension. If your father or mother worked at the local plant, you probably could too. The plant provided the employment anchor for thriving communities.
As we all know, manufacturing has changed. Decades ago, an inexperienced person probably would start at a fab shop sweeping the floors or grinding metal. After so long, he or she would move on to a more technical position, like programming, setting up, and operating a press brake. That person then could make a career at mastering the skilled trade. He’d know that press brake inside and out. For that person, a manufacturing career was Plan A. Many others, though, would make a career in a non- or semiskilled position—the classic Plan B.
These days, as more shops adopt continuous improvement practices, they are cross-training workers. Some of the most valuable (and, ideally, well-paid) employees can do it all, working in a quest to reduce setup time and speed part flow. One multi-talented person (a water spider, in lean parlance) may prestage materials and tools—essential for reducing setup time and providing everything a multitalented (and again, well-paid) operator needs to start a job. Machine operators may work on press brakes one day then punch presses the next, moving wherever needed to open part-flow bottlenecks.
For many these days, manufacturing isn’t Plan B. For the best, it becomes a Plan A. It’s a passion.
But what about Plan B careers in manufacturing? If someone shows up and works hard, he should be paid well enough to support a family comfortably, even if he may not be incredibly engaged or passionate about the job. That’s the middle-class American dream, right?
As evident by recent wage surveys from the Fabricators & Manufacturers Association, many companies in this industry continue to pay their good workers very well—but not all of them do. In fact, thefabricator.com blog has gotten plenty of comments from frustrated readers. One said he knew welding, but he worked at the local Walmart because the starting pay was only a little less.
Unlike a Walmart clerk, of course, a welder has a better chance at climbing the career ladder and making more money. U.S. manufacturing careers can be far more lucrative than those in other sectors. Thing is, it’s not a guarantee, even if that welder works hard and seemingly does everything he or she should do to get ahead. If the economy goes south, a company may need to lay off a talented employee who just was at the wrong place at the wrong time.
Young people have grown up in a tumultuous employment environment, at least one more tumultuous than the job market of the 1950s. In fact, historians may look back at the latter half of the 20th century as an anomaly. The rest of the world was either in development or had its business infrastructure destroyed by war. Of course, the U.S. economy thrived and, with it, the American dream.
Maybe the American dream hasn’t died; maybe it simply has evolved. Today’s young workers may remember their father or mother being laid off from a good job at a large plant. If that happened to my parents, I’d have a difficult time trusting any employer. Still, people living in the right area of the country and who have in-demand technical skills can land a good job. They may not keep it forever, they may work for several companies over a career, but they probably will be successful. Success isn’t guaranteed, but in truth it never really has been for anyone.
Maybe knowledge and an engaged curiosity—eagerly growing, learning, and adapting to the times—provide the foundation of the modern American dream. In a sense, eagerness to learn and question the status quo is at the heart of continuous improvement efforts sprouting up at fabricators large and small. People who dream up better ways to get the job done are in more demand than ever.
A worker may get hired and laid off several times on the roller coaster of the new global economy, but once he or she learns something new and challenges the status quo, that person can change something for the better. No economic downturn can take that knowledge, experience, and curiosity away. | <urn:uuid:4885c42c-e1cf-47e8-b6c8-d5469e09dae4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thefabricator.com/article/forceos/fabricating-the-american-dream | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960205 | 1,431 | 2.234375 | 2 |
A hair drug test can be a messy, inconvenient process that might involve taking samples of blood, saliva or urine. Now, a new, convenient and reliable procedure is available in the form of the hair follicle drug test.
The hair follicle is a repository of substances that have been introduced into the body. Any drugs ingested by way of smoking, snorting, swallowing or injection leave traces of the substance in the hair follicle. When a drug is taken, it is metabolized and enters the blood stream. The blood carries the substance to different parts of the body including the hair follicle. When the hair follicle produces the hair strand the substance ingested is also transferred to the strand. Hair grows at an average of half an inch every 30 days, following a structural time line. The lowest level of the strand above the scalp is the oldest, followed by the next oldest at the next level and so forth.
In a hair follicle drug test, about 90 – 120 hair strands are taken from the hair on the head and subjected to chemical analysis. By analyzing a half inch strand, it is possible to determine whether or not a drug was used in the past 30 days. If a longer, one and a half inch strand is analyzed, drug usage over the past 90 days can be detected
The hair follicle drug test offers distinct advantages over other types of drug testing. The main advantage is the convenience it offers to the person being tested because it is non-intrusive. This also makes it more difficult for the person being tested to evade testing for some reason or another. Still another advantage is the difficulty in trying to tamper with the test, as has often happened in the case of drug tests using samples of saliva, urine or blood. Perhaps, the most important of the hair follicle drug test is its accuracy in determining drug use. Test evaluations have shown that the hair follicle drug test produces results that are more accurate than the more-commonly used urine test.
The hair follicle drug test has the capability of detecting usage of various types of drugs like marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine (such as Ecstasy), morphine, PCP and performance-enhancing drugs. This makes the hair follicle drug test useful not just in law enforcement cases, but also in sports where the use of performance-enhancing drugs has become a widespread issue.
The combination of convenience for the person tested, accuracy of test results and ease of application has made the hair follicle an important item and the hair follicle drug test a valuable tool in the ongoing efforts against drug abuse. | <urn:uuid:15226002-8a7e-4ed1-a986-84f7d2835558> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hairfollicle-drugtest.com/hair-drug-test/the-hair-follicle-drug-test-is-a-convenient-hair-drug-test | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00051-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948291 | 523 | 2.59375 | 3 |
The Ashden Awards are a UK-based charity working to increase the use of local sustainable energy worldwide. They find, reward and publicise the work of leading sustainable energy programmes working across the developing world and in the UK.
The Gaia Association in Ethiopia is transforming the lives of refugees by distributing stoves that use ethanol fuel, a by-product of the sugar industry. The area around the Kebribiyah camp, home to 17,000 Somalian refugees, has suffered severe deforestation and women were always in danger of attack when they went out to collect fuel wood. The Dometic CleanCook stoves are healthier and more efficient – and families can avoid using wood altogether. Now Ethiopian manufacturers are producing the stoves locally.
Sarah Butler-Sloss, founder and chair of the Ashden Awards said: “Our judges were enormously impressed with the enthusiasm for the stoves among refugee women. Not only did the stoves prevent wood-collection, with its associated dangers and environmental impacts, they were also much safer, quicker and more pleasant to use, in particular avoiding the risk of respiratory and eye diseases from smoke inhalation.”
Accepting the Ashden Award on behalf of Gaia Association, Milkyas Debebe said: “The Ethiopian people, especially women and children and our growing refugee population, suffer increasingly from poor energy choices and energy poverty. Gaia is pioneering ethanol stoves and fuel, using Ethiopia’s natural resources. With support from the UNHCR and the Ethiopian government we are helping both Ethiopians and refugees. This Award will help us to reach more people in need.”
For more information: | <urn:uuid:cb464fee-8096-4953-87fb-62935d1f40b8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://dometic.com/enie/International/Site/News/CleanCook-project-wins-international-green-energy-award/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94748 | 331 | 2.359375 | 2 |
Ants’ House by Espegel – Fisac
The Ants’ House is formally conceived considering the surrounding environment and its location on a large plot in the Manzanares Park, immersed in the mountains near Madrid.
The house is meant to dominate the vast natural world which lies beyond its entrance. Its shape is designed by nature. Just like an outstretched hand, the house works its way through the almond trees reaching out from in between the branches, reaching towards different spaces and lights effects.
Its location, on the southern slope of the mountains, gives the house favourable climatic and environmental features. The climate of the mountains of Madrid, with mild Winters and pleasantly warm Summers, combines cold temperatures with plenty of sunshine during the Winter and cool nights in the Summer, making it an ideal location for bioclimatic design.
The location, combines two basic conditions: proximity to an urban centre and ease of access, as well as the pleasure of the mountains and the natural surroundings. Dualism is also present in the house: nature vs man-made.
The house is a two level building with a concrete staircase located in a central position. The ground floor, which adapts to the sloped ground through a wide ramp, is a large open space which has different functions: a reading zone, a fireplace, a socialising area, an outward view towards the patio, a service area which comprises the kitchen, as well as the laundry, storage and facilities. This single space extends as far as the South Terrace, it borders with the swimming pool and a large almond tree, and eventually ends under the span of a concrete slab, in a covered outdoor dining area.
The first floor, built over part of the lower one, hosts a guestroom in the cantilever over the outdoor dining area, a bedroom for the children with a large playroom, and the master bedroom with a mezzanine which creates a canopy over the bed and provides a view over the Northern mountains.
Lastly, the great spanned structure, is closed by a concrete slabs and walls, wrapped in a translucent glass skin protected from the western sun by aluminum slats.
Because of its shape, the house acts as a “solar funnel” with a high degree of passive solar collection, with openings towards the South and West, whereas the more contained size and profile facing North prevents excessive heat loss, typical of this orientation. The southern sun, warm in the Winter and harmless in the Summer, is what the building captures most. The western sun, less intense and milder in the Winter and horizontal but hot in the Summer, is controlled by tiltable external sunshades.
During the Winter the heat intake is achieved by direct solar gain in areas with a southern exposure, and by the indirect contribution of solar collectors on the roof as well as floor heating in the internal zones. During the night maximum insulation is required from the glazing, this is achieved by enclosing its perimeter with velvet curtains. Extra power support is provided by a gas boiler and a fireplace located in the reading area which can benefit from this radiation.
In the Summer, intense southern sun is screened by protecting the façades with the upper floor cantilever, and the Western façade is protected by adjustable horizontal aluminum slats on a swing frame. The inside temperature is lowered by using Gravent type windows, which provide permanent cross ventilation: they are installed in the upper parts of the glass panes in the living room and master bedroom. The system can extract heat and cool off the roof during the Summer months, while the large blade fans, hanging from the concrete slab, work at low speed to unlay the hot air in the Winter and provide cool in the Summer. The insulation of the wide terrace surface is obtained by a permanent vegetative cover, which reduces the heat of the sun by evapotranspiration.
The property has a radiant floor heating system with zonal thermostatic regulation: the main contribution comes from the solar energy captured over a 16 m2 area of vacuum tube collectors. The energy for radiant floor heating is stored in a 750 litre tank with double insulation, with an additional 300 liters for hot water [ACS]. Further heating support consists in a natural gas mixed-use boiler.
In absence of occupants, solar heat is primarily used to temper the space and maintain the fixed temperature setpoint. This heat will circulate through the radiant floor as long as the storage temperature is at 30 °C or until it falls to 25 °C. When the temperature exceeds the interior setpoint, circulation will be deactivated, producing an increase in the accumulation temperature up to 50 °C. Whenever the accumulation temperature exceeds the temperature limit, heat is redirected to the swimming pool which is equipped with a thermal cover to prevent temperature loss. This allows the bathing season to be extended by at least two months before and after the Summer, and also increases the life of the collectors.
The blind façades of the house have been wrapped in an outer layer of stadip 5+5 mm glass with translucent butyral held by a horizontal steel substructure fixed to the reinforced concrete walls or to the light cellular concrete blocks using anchorage elements which create a vertical ventilation air chamber. The insulation used in these walls is an 8 cm rock wool layer plugged to the outside of the 30 cm concrete wall.
All The carpentry and glazing have high insulation and low emissivity properties. The insulated carpentry has been provided with the Climaplus (8/16/5+5) double glazing, which consists of an inner Planitherm layer and an outer Planilux layer and an argon gas filled air chamber. Coloured glass has been used in some cases, as in the entrance hall and the courtyard, to convey a sense of artificiality.
Due to the large glazed areas of the house, a heavy structure of reinforced concrete walls and slabs was chosen to achieve high thermal inertia throughout the building: this, together with the concrete floor, increases the efficiency of floor heating.
No cooling system has been necessary thanks to the correct bioclimatic design.
The architecture of the house spreads over the plot using small, low intensity settlements: lightning sticks provided with photovoltaic cells, large circular flowerbeds, insulated flooring concrete circular slabs resting on natural ground, wood staircases, which give rhythm to the natural surroundings.
Architects: Espegel – Fisac
Location: 28400 Collado Villalba, Spain
Project Year: 2010
Photographs: Joaquín Mosquera
Project Architects: Carmen Espegel Alonso, Concha Fisac de Ron
Project Team: Cristina Hernández Vicario, Laia Lafuente García-Valdecasas, Isabel Camacho Bretones, Lucila Urda Peña | <urn:uuid:8cce0623-526b-4043-aea5-5a11f3463b39> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://karmatrendz.wordpress.com/2012/06/29/ants-house-by-espegel-fisac/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935007 | 1,412 | 1.820313 | 2 |