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SikhiWiki:Weekly featured article/Week 14
Dasvandh or Dasaundh, literally means a "tenth part" and refers to the practice among Sikhs of contributing in the name of the Guru one-tenth of their earnings towards the common resources of the community.
The concept of dasvandh was implicit in Guru Nanak’s own Gurbani in the line: "ਘਾਲਿ ਖਾਇ ਕਿਛੁ ਹਥਹੁ ਦੇਇ ॥ ਨਾਨਕ ਰਾਹੁ ਪਛਾਣਹਿ ਸੇਇ ॥੧॥ One who works for what he eats, and gives some of what he has - O Nanak, he knows the Path (1)" (SGGS p 1245)
In the time of Guru Amar Das, Nanak III, a formal structure for channelizing Sikh religious giving was evolved. The Guru set up 22 manjis or districts in different parts of the country, each placed under the charge of a pious Sikh who, besides preaching Guru Nanak's word, looked after the sangats within his/her jurisdiction and transmitted the disciple’s offerings to the Guru. .....More | <urn:uuid:e625d974-f99c-402e-a92b-08d88f33e5ea> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.sikhiwiki.org/index.php/SikhiWiki:Weekly_featured_article/Week_14 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571190.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810131127-20220810161127-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.896557 | 290 | 2.796875 | 3 |
Remake Broken Crayons Into New Ones
As a kid, one of the most annoying things that can happen when you are coloring is having a crayon snap or break while you are busy making that page come alive! Oh that new box of crayons. How we love them. Perfect with their little bright points sticking up inviting us. As parents, it is so annoying when every color but the white one gets broken. Yes they will still use their broken crayons, not saying parents run out when the crayon breaks, but no matter at some point you end up with a box or drawer full of broken or too-tiny-to-use crayons. What to do? Simple, remake the crayons. This way you can save money by not having to purchase new crayons and its also a fun Do-It-Yourself activity for you and your kids. And likely if the kids are part of the re-making process they will be more excited to try out their new hand made crayons.
The process is prett simple. All you have to do is separate the broken crayons into mini muffin tins, make sure to remove the paper labels and not to mix different colors together. You will be sacrificing a mini-muffin tin as the wax is pretty difficult to clean out, so either use an old one that you dedicate to this re-cycle idea or you could line the tin with the heavy duty foil liners.You can also use silicone molds in different shapes for your recycled crayons. For toddlers, its actually better to leave them shaped as mini muffins so that it won't easily break. Younger kids still don't have agile fingers to properly grip the thin crayon, so a stubby shape will be easier for them to hold.This DIY activity can be a way for you and your kids to share some bonding time. You can play games while doing it as well. For example, trying to guess what color comes out when you mix two different colors together. This is also an opportune moment to teach them the value of frugality and recycling. Telling them that aside from being fun, what you're doing is a way to be thrifty since you won't have to keep buying new crayons. So as you can see, this activity is both fun and valuable. Check the Imgur site below for photos and instructions.
Learn MORE at Imgur
To help with slow website load, we have put all photos for this article here: View photo gallery. | <urn:uuid:a167ab41-1c2b-465d-a587-722f06e5653c> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | http://woodmanshut.wikidee.org/remake-broken-crayons-into-new-ones.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571502.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811194507-20220811224507-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.960025 | 526 | 1.921875 | 2 |
THE SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD
Lord, thank You for once again defending Jerusalem.
Read 2 KINGS 19:20–37
Isaiah Prophesies Sennacherib’s Fall
20 Then Isaiah son of Amoz sent a message to Hezekiah: “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: I have heard your prayer concerning Sennacherib king of Assyria. 21 This is the word that the Lord has spoken against him:
“‘Virgin Daughter Zion
despises you and mocks you.
tosses her head as you flee.
22 Who is it you have ridiculed and blasphemed?
Against whom have you raised your voice
and lifted your eyes in pride?
Against the Holy One of Israel!
23 By your messengers
you have ridiculed the Lord.
And you have said,
“With my many chariots
I have ascended the heights of the mountains,
the utmost heights of Lebanon.
I have cut down its tallest cedars,
the choicest of its junipers.
I have reached its remotest parts,
the finest of its forests.
24 I have dug wells in foreign lands
and drunk the water there.
With the soles of my feet
I have dried up all the streams of Egypt.”
25 “‘Have you not heard?
Long ago I ordained it.
In days of old I planned it;
now I have brought it to pass,
that you have turned fortified cities
into piles of stone.
26 Their people, drained of power,
are dismayed and put to shame.
They are like plants in the field,
like tender green shoots,
like grass sprouting on the roof,
scorched before it grows up.
27 “‘But I know where you are
and when you come and go
and how you rage against me.
28 Because you rage against me
and because your insolence has reached my ears,
I will put my hook in your nose
and my bit in your mouth,
and I will make you return
by the way you came.’
29 “This will be the sign for you, Hezekiah:
“This year you will eat what grows by itself,
and the second year what springs from that.
But in the third year sow and reap,
plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
30 Once more a remnant of the kingdom of Judah
will take root below and bear fruit above.
31 For out of Jerusalem will come a remnant,
and out of Mount Zion a band of survivors.
“The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this.
32 “Therefore this is what the Lord says concerning the king of Assyria:
“‘He will not enter this city
or shoot an arrow here.
He will not come before it with shield
or build a siege ramp against it.
33 By the way that he came he will return;
he will not enter this city,
declares the Lord.
34 I will defend this city and save it,
for my sake and for the sake of David my servant.’”
35 That night the angel of the Lord went out and put to death a hundred and eighty-five thousand in the Assyrian camp. When the people got up the next morning—there were all the dead bodies! 36 So Sennacherib king of Assyria broke camp and withdrew. He returned to Nineveh and stayed there.
37 One day, while he was worshiping in the temple of his god Nisrok, his sons Adrammelek and Sharezer killed him with the sword, and they escaped to the land of Ararat. And Esarhaddon his son succeeded him as king.
New International Version (NIV)
Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
“Now, Lord our God, deliver us from his hand, so that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that You alone, Lord, are God” (2 Kings 19:19).
When we find ourselves in difficulty, questions arise. Is this God’s punishment for some sin in our lives? Are we being tested? Was it random chance? Why did God allow it? Discernment is often difficult. Sometimes there is no clear answer, even in retrospect. However, we can take encouragement from today’s reading, affirming God’s sovereignty.
First, God responds to his people’s prayer, as he did to Hezekiah’s (20). Those who seek him will find him, even when concrete answers elude them. Second, God will vindicate their trust in him. Like Assyria, who habitually defies the true God (22), some may mock Christians for their naïveté in expecting God to act on their behalf, but the Lord always honors our trust in him. Third, God affirms his sovereignty over the past. Assyria could subdue nations only because God has ordained it (25). Given Assyria’s cruelty, this may be troubling, but elsewhere it is explained that Assyria acts on its own initiative and will be held responsible for its cruelty, even though God is using it for his own purposes (Isa. 10:5–7). Finally, God is sovereign over the future too: he tells Hezekiah how events will unfold (32–34) and brings them about (35–37).
Faith is essential because there are alternative interpretations of events, and the resolution is in the future. Only by faith do we know that God is sovereign over Assyria’s impressive string of victories, rather than Assyria being stronger than the gods of the subdued nations. It is also by faith that we are assured of a future in God’s hands. Although Hezekiah is given a sign (29–31), this is not proof in advance but affirmation in retrospect that in the hard times God is ever present and working for the good of his people.
Lord, may we remember daily that our circumstances are not beyond Your control. May we rest in Your sovereignty and love for us.
Lord, as we see Your sovereign hand at work against Assyria, we realize that You are still at work directing the rise and fall of nations as You will. | <urn:uuid:93b78586-ffcf-4e5d-a263-2aab1fb71b22> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://scriptureunion.org/dailyencounter/the-sovereignty-of-god/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573118.26/warc/CC-MAIN-20220817213446-20220818003446-00665.warc.gz | en | 0.950459 | 1,385 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Dog knocked over the Christmas tree in the den around the Christmas time frame. Edison and Baxter. Edison is the dog and Baxter is the cat? But the cat really did it. That’s the story you write. A mom and dad and two children and they are feeling aggrevated. You can hear whimpering because they know they’re in trouble, but no smells. Next, Edison and Baxter go into a time out. Daddy works on reconstructing the tree and mom begins putting the items on the tree. | <urn:uuid:6f7ade62-2d7f-4300-bcec-4d5de00f3d1a> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.timeslips.org/resources/creativity-center/story/christmas-dog-wrong/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570741.21/warc/CC-MAIN-20220808001418-20220808031418-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.951145 | 107 | 2.09375 | 2 |
- Assistant Professor
- University of Notre Dame
This study of Italian news printing from its origins in 1470 to the sack of Rome in 1527 examines a broad array of Renaissance printed news texts in both Italian and Latin, in verse and in prose, which either relay information or comment more obliquely on contemporary events. The study explores the literary strategies Renaissance authors used to interpret the news of their day. It also traces connections among authors, printers, readers, and states seeking to control the flow of information at a time of political, social, and religious flux. Ultimately, the project attempts to redefine our understanding of printed political discourse in early modern Europe by locating its origins earlier and farther south than previously imagined. | <urn:uuid:27a88a14-a27a-4f0f-9333-82ea757015c2> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.acls.org/fellow-grantees/margaret-meserve/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571190.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810131127-20220810161127-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.921356 | 153 | 2.546875 | 3 |
River Birch trees are commonly planted and popular trees for zone 5 landscapes. These trees are usually grown in clumps of three trunks for added interest. This deciduous tree displays bright yellow foliage during the fall. This birch grows well in wet areas. This tree grows fast and can reach a height of 40 feet tall when it is fully mature. This tree requires frequent watering, especially during periods of drought. River Birch is a native tree of North America.
River Birch produces seed pods that are unique to the variety. The seed pods are long and narrow and look like a skinny caterpillar. The pods of the tree are brown. The seeds are stacked on top of one another so when you break them; they fall apart.
The unique beauty of the peeling bark adds character and interest to landscapes. The meat of the bark is tan. When the bark peels, the underside is brown, and the top side turns a dirty white color. There is no maintenance in removing the bark of the tree. Bark naturally sheds as the growth progresses.
Branching of the River Birch tree is moderately weak. You will notice small branches shedding when the tree matures. Storms can also cause the tree to lose limbs. Overall this is a neat tree to use in landscapes.
Flower Color- Yellow
Foliage Color- Green in the summer and yellow in the fall.
Height- 40 feet tall
Spread- 30 feet wide
Light- Full sun
Details- Best know for its peeling bark, this tree makes a great focal point in landscapes. The three trunk formation sets this tree apart from other trees. This birch is commonly planted in landscapes near collections of water. This deer resistant plant provides year round interest.
Other birch tree options.
- Cutleaf European White Birch
- Dura Heat® River Birch
- European White Birch
- Heritage® River Birch
- Purple Rain® European White Birch
- Summer Cascade River Birch
- Whitebarked Himalayan Birch
- Young’s Weeping Birch | <urn:uuid:a326d431-6320-4109-b3e5-359be7f1eb96> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.cleancutproperty.com/trees/river-birch/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571190.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810131127-20220810161127-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.89937 | 437 | 3.4375 | 3 |
Perspectives on the editor's mentoring-for-democracy role in publication.
As context for self-investigation, editorial board representatives of several journals have reflected on the nature of disciplinary work that might otherwise not immediately reveal the nature of their underlying democratic pragmatism. For example, although public educational institutions rely heavily on democratic thought, other institutions whose policies have far-reaching implications for K-12 students (e.g., health, government policy) should be included in the research on democratic citizenship (Mullen, 2011). To garner such breadth and in recognition of multiple genres and the researchers who might report these, here we discuss how those involved in disseminating new research and thought might enhance democratic opportunity through editorial mentoring. We build on what Mullen et al. (2008) shared as the rationale for a 2008 American Educational Research Association (AERA) editors' panel presentation:
In part, editors can ensure a broad dialogue by publicly calling for sharing civic responsibility to clearly explain their publication mission and purposeful advancement of scholars' work.... editors will discuss how the expansion of their mission has now impacted their response to submitted manuscripts and to the framework in which journal editors have traditionally worked, (p. 3)
We also reflect on ideas from this panel for graduate students by re-entering a dialogue specific to the journal Learning For Democracy (LFD) (e.g., the advancement of democratic thought as outcomes for teaching and learning) (Pryor& Brown, 2008). We begin this review essay by discussing the importance of ideas that Popper (1945) expressed that posit linkages between knowledge and a free society. Popper's ideas, foundational to LFD, were explored only initially in a 2010 keynote address to the AERA SIG Democratic Citizenship in Education. Certainly, the calls for social and personal independence-dependence proliferate as ecologies of thought and practice (e.g., the 2010 AERA conference theme) are considered central to any discussion about democratic citizenship. The importance of Popper's philosophical ideas and the relationship of these to a free and democratic society offer us additional insights.
As a second step in framing this discussion, we pursue possibilities for applying democratic thought to a practical venue--editorial scholarly service. Our primary goal is to further opportunities for scholars to engage in discussions central to the publication and dissemination of their research. As a framework for this paper, we address the AERA Democratic Citizenship in Education Special Interest Group's (SIG) mission, which is "to promote democratic citizenship-development research in K-12 classrooms and to foster interdependence among citizenship-democratic researchers" (News release, 2010). Two questions we have asked that shape our dialogue here are as follows: What is the role of a journal editor in a democratic society? Can editors reasonably and effectively serve as editorial-mentors?
We hypothesize that the global nature of scholarly interdependence has shifted expectations about the role of researchers including, for example, the need to address challenges as well as opportunities that occur as people learn in different places, countries, and time zones (Lee & Rochon, 2010). The currency of the role of cultural leadership is therefore being called into account; noticeably, we pose this challenge to editors: In what ways might editorial work remain less a part of a hidden agenda and more forcibly assert transparency inherent in a democratic stance? As an outcome, we hope to provide strategies useful to editors and their executive teams and review boards.
Editorial Responsibilities in an Open Society
The far-reaching potential for enhanced global interaction and the visible challenges to political isolation inherent in non-inclusionary regimes (e.g., interpersonal connections available via Facebook) are apparent in current worldwide expressions of citizen unrest. Communication venues serve to invigorate debates about political constructs, broadening opportunities for things such as freedom of speech or collective expression of group will; therefore, civic democracy thrives in an open communicative society. It is prescient to the topic of communication and social access that this discussion explores the nature of expectations and perspectives held within the United States and academic editors internally. For example, as LFD editors sought in 2006 to move the journal's foundational home in the United Kingdom to the United States, the mission aims and scope, and explicit purpose of the journal, democratic thought and practice remained central. The editorial position shifted to a United States-based researcher who expanded the board to include numerous faculty members from United States institutions. Similarly, other journal boards, even those essentially United States-based, include a wide range of international editors or board members (see the American Educational Research Journal).
We turn to the role of journal editor from national and international perspectives. Building on Mullen's (2011) essay, we analyze the role of the editor relative to its democratic function and to mentoring as an embodiment of that function, and conclude with a compendium of suggested editorial-mentor practices. We also draw attention to some of the benefits and challenges to that role with a quote from Berquist who, in writing for a medical education audience, noted Mainiero's caveat that while mentoring is a time-consuming effort it is also a valuable endeavor:
We don't get paid for mentoring ... or do we? Our reward is the success of the mentee or, in the case of the journal, the satisfaction of a superior product that we all worked together to produce. Mentoring our authors, reviewers, and editors will result in a product that we can pass on to the next group of mentors, (cited in Berquist, 2008, p. 1626)
British researchers Wellington and Nixon (2005) note and many concur (see later section, Democratic Function of Editorship) that editors hold power to define constructs and boundaries of their publications, not dissimilar to the more generalized and passionate calls for liberty-freedom in academic publishing. Wellington and Nixon urge an enhanced vision of this role so that censure is less eminent in framing or expanding boundaries of thought. Editors in the United States appear to agree, as Stanley (2007) noted, who admonishes the profession [in general] for allowing editors to pursue a "gatekeeping" role. Editors perpetuate an often-mainstream master narrative that situates power and authority in the hands of a few and that resurrects communication barriers. Pragmatic issues might complicate the editor's ability to engage fully with an author during the editorial review process and in fact might be limited by the expertise needed to execute it. For example, linguistic barriers might reframe a narrative where such was not the author's intent. Burrough-Boenisch (2006) writes that many European authors employ language professionals to correct their English; thus, the linguistic editing by outside professionals could create an unintended interpretation of a narrative--unknown to both its author and the editor to whom it was submitted.
Moreover, Nickerson (2005) notes that standards among editors vary so greatly, that editors and their review boards differ widely in their use. Nickerson refers to several pragmatic issues such as how, within the same journal, reviews are conducted, standards are applied, type and quality of feedback is provided to authors, and interestingly, reviewers' attitudes are portrayed. Provocative, and yet untouched by much of the research on this topic, Nickerson continues, is the very notion that authors often reap a backlash from reviewers whose personal or research experience differs greatly from that of an author. Vecchio (2006) analyzed more than 800 manuscripts submitted over 4 years, seeking information about bias, agreement, and predictive validity in reviews, only to conclude that monitoring the entire review process is critical to the editorial role.
It is left then to academe to determine what ideological frame might best present the role of the editor, particularly the powerful outreach to global interaction this role holds. To augment such outreach, we provide theoretical ideas based on Austrian-British philosopher Karl Popper's (1902-1994) description of an open society. He suggested that a value of editorial communication and by way of extension the communicative work of editors is to operationalize belief in an open society. It is our hope that this theoretical discussion, along with responses by four editors, might generate strategies useful to a community of editors and the authors with whom they engage and mentor.
Democracy and the Open Society
Popper suggested two foundational ideals supportive of an open society: a government that is responsive and tolerant, and political mechanisms (e.g., practices and policies) that are transparent and flexible (Popper, 1945). Levinson's concept of an open society has been interpreted as
... an association of free individuals respecting each others' rights within the framework of mutual protection supplied by the state [e.g., the controlling authority], and achieving, through the making of responsible, rational decisions, a growing measure of humane and enlightened life, (cited in Magee, 1974, p. 92)
However, an association of free individuals is not always easily realized or even, in some cases, particularly desired. As a barrier to free associations along the lines that Popper (1945) articulated with respect to political processes, Swann (2006) suggests that processes constituting governmental power are not unlike the processes used in editorial power. Swann posits, for example, that what constitutes knowledge in an open society should be--if taken as conjectural--available and open to diverse perspectives and discussion with editors. Further, the processes editors follow should be constituted to foster conjectural protections. Should we then be thinking of the derivations of the editorial role as a political process?
Democratic Function of Journal Editorship
The work of journal editorship, that is the public work of editors--writing, reviewing, responding to author queries--is not typically considered political. These efforts are less thought of as work framed by ideals than that of some transitory and pragmatic work-type responsibility, such as sending out a call to reviewers. Some authors on publishing (Dow, 2000; Hamrick, 2006; Harper, 2006; Lillis, Magyar, & Robinson-Pant, 2010; Lindle, 2004; Mullen, 2011) argue that editorial work indeed is an outcome of the foundational beliefs of who--and perhaps what counts as academic freedom--the freedom to gate keep the publications of academic scholars. Here gate keeping refers to the ability to provide access to authors or to restrict their access. We are drawing on Mullen's (2011) work that is a sharing of an editor-mentor's probing insights into democratic pathways of thinking and practice with respect to expansive mentoring-based editorial possibilities. For example, Mullen suggests that we envision the role of the editor as a mentor to the author-citizen who in many instances has experienced such vagrancies of editorial invective ranging from fairness, even inclusiveness, to mediocre treatment and, not uncommonly, undisputed abandonment.
To describe the democratic function of journal editorship, we refer to Mullen's (2011) notation of outdated and traditional editors as "old school," that is, actors who gate keep as their primary function. This orientation embeds a role not as colleague but as one who must--in order to be viewed as scholarly--provide the necessary regulatory mission that somehow fuses rigor into scholarship. Democracies, Mullen writes, should be particularly concerned with this concentration of power for two reasons, gate keeping (1) promulgates--the who of who gets published, and (2) frames the ensuing public norm of what constitutes the knowledges of importance.
Authors learn from their editors; they quickly read their own reviews and those of colleagues. They learn what to write and how to write it--yet inequities continue. The enculturation of journal work, such as peer review processes that limit communication with authors and that perpetuate particular knowledges (Raelin, 2008) challenge Popper's call to the open society. Mullen's (2011) review essay and her foundational work for this current paper suggest that we evoke the ideals of an open society by urging editors and other leaders associated with publication to critically investigate their practices and discuss them publicly. We suggest that an untying of the regulatory knot of journal editing could promote the vitality inherent in the role, and stimulate challenges to power inequities and other status quo-maintaining practices.
The suggestion for transparency and editorial support is not unprecedented in the United States and worldwide publication genre. Policies that promote both excellence and equity have long appeared in the literature. Pinar's founding of the Journal of Curriculum Theorizing (circa 1970s) is but one example of editors turning their attention to their own policies that affect democratic community development and the inclusion of marginalized populations in critically important roles of leadership and service (Brown, Irby, & Yang, 2008). Visionary direction emanates from editors of many journals as they intentionally address cultural and institutional forces that shape the scholarly processes of their work (e.g., Mullen et al., 2008; Scheurich et al., 2004). Unsurprisingly, access and advantage of unbridling ritual continue to litter the pathway of democratic opportunity. An ideology that better aligns the editorial role with democratic goals such as the protection and perpetuation of ideals and practices supportive of liberty, social justice, and equality offers a new way of thinking that is propelled by open, inclusionary practices. Such a shift can provide editors with a genre that disentangles them from the regulatory function of gatekeeper (Brown et al., 2008), which might legitimize the groundswell of authors who have long been disadvantaged by exclusionary practices inherent in patriarchal processes.
Democratic Editorial Practices
What are some of the practices of a democratic minded editor? In part, these practices could include working closely with editorial teams to include junior faculty members and doctoral students (Mullen et al., 2008, 2011), or constructively critiquing manuscripts that are incomplete in terms of the conceptual framework, data analysis, or some other important dimension (Mullen & Kochan, 2000). Dougherty (2009) suggests that the democratic minded editor is inclusive of global perspectives, seeking dialogue and promoting it. Several of the editors in the vignettes to follow emphasize the importance of contentiousness in their editorial mentoring work. They expressed feeling that they must vigilantly serve as a kind of social justice compensator where authors are concerned, enabling fair treatment of their works, enabling the translation of their intended meanings, and being highly responsive throughout the entire review process. These and other practices are brought to the fore as we offer our perceptions and experiences of the role of the editor-mentor and the democratic juncture they support.
Intentional mentors can promote promising practices of alternative mentoring that serve to both interrogate and change traditional as well as technical approaches to mentoring (Galbraith, 2003; Mullen, 2011). Mullen (2005) writes that alternative or nontraditional practices include cross-cultural mentoring, inquiry, writing, or arts-based approaches, learning communities, mentor-based programs, peer coaching and learning, professional activism, staff development, electronic mentoring. She explains that journal mentors use such conduits to remedy the drawbacks of traditional mentoring relationships, such as the time and funds needed to attend professional conferences and learning from the organizational structures provided. Alternatively, Mullen offers, mentoring could include collaboration, co-mentorship, democratic learning, and shared leadership. Democratic mentoring can be a formal or an informal experience of mentoring wherein the editor or board members help authors satisfy their own desire to publish their work, therefore providing them the berth to act on a vision of personal and professional expression.
Mentoring Function of Journal Editorship
Newer mentoring models can enable journal editors to help address deficits in the academic work environment. For example, tenure-seeking faculty, in general, sometimes falter not because of inadequacies relative to their own motivation or capability but rather from a lack of access to designated mentors and, more importantly, a mentoring support system that is beneficial to their career and psychosocial development. Mentoring entails complexity in the educative process (Johnson, 2006; Mullen, 2005) that extends to the editorialship roles that involves the support and sponsorship of individuals' scholarly, professional, and career development inclusive of people's academic disciplines and professions (Mullen, 2011).
Mentorship can be seen as a framework of cultural negotiation, adaptation, and acceptance in which individuals with experience and expertise invest time in those who are less experienced, enhancing their capacity for growth and success (Johnson, 2006). Peer-based learning communities can develop from such relationships (Galbraith, 2003). As mentors and mentees collaborate, these interactions can generate new knowledges as part of an otherwise staid relationship of inequities within organizations, and professions (Hansman, 2002).
Challenges Confronting Editor-Mentor
The demand on an academic editor invariably compartmentalizes his or her attentions into contradictory roles, such as explorer-gatherer of innovative ideas and trends, and maintainer of traditional normative social and academic practices. To function as an explorer-gather, an editor might give wide berth to the ontological premise of an author's vision of knowledge, especially to those novice researchers who challenge more established convictions (Wellington & Nixon, 2005). Conversely, as editor-maintainer, practices such as deciding the merits of manuscripts submitted for publication could be shrouded in beliefs in the importance of scrutiny and distance, as necessary strongholds of rigorous scholarship (McGinty, 1999). Yet, journal editors act on the authority entrusted to them, knowledgeable and/or understanding of the impacts their actions portend.
Compromises Supporting Editor-Mentor
Journal editors might be more attracted to deliberately blending the construal of their editorial role as institutions increasingly value the importance of mentoring (e.g., Brown et al, 2008). Team-based approaches across organizational and disciplinary boundaries in academe are beginning to permeate editorial policies and guidelines, practices, and activities (Bull et al., 2006; Sa, 2008). Consistent with the belief of journal editor as mentor-leader is how such leadership might recast a journal reviewer's role as critical supporter rather than judge. Taken together, Munro-Turner's (2003) premise of "mentoring on purpose" and lessons learned at AERA during 2008 and 2010 sessions hold great promise.
To learn more about this promise, eight experienced editors we approached responded to our questions about how their mentorship within the context of the editorial process infuses the ideals of democratic thought in the experience of authors. We next posit their responses as four vignettes, which are the outgrowth of synthesized and rewritten statements that aid in their readability. Following these brief portraits, we offer some initial suggestions for the field. By doing so, we endeavor to further editors' beliefs about the possibilities and challenges that bridge imaginative and democratic civic participation, a role we believe editors hold as their responsibility and stewardship.
Academic Editor-Mentor: Vignette #1
Having served as the editor of an international refereed journal for 8 years and having guest edited 14 special issues of journals in addition to numerous other editorial roles, I felt called upon to initiate dialogue about the capacity that editors have to serve in an editorial mentoring role. Several years ago, I organized an invited journal editors' session at AERA from which several themes emerged, including some responses a group of 12 journal editors in education had about challenges they face in editorial mentoring. While I suspected that challenges would indeed be identified, these seemed to overwhelm the potential for advantages. For example, the participating editors emphasized the difficulty of providing the extra time needed to mentor authors in manuscript development and of preparing others, particularly reviewers, on their editorial teams to mentor authors. They noted a learning curve involved in designing review guidelines and rubrics that fit with a mentoring approach to peer review, as well as the awkwardness of mentoring in a peer-review culture that is inundated in high-stakes scholarly rigor and assessment.
In addition to practical concerns, theoretical responses emerged from this panel session. The editors expressed concerns about their own leadership, since some viewed their role as a very public responsibility--a civitas of service. They asked, how might I serve to more democratically engage the scholars who submit manuscripts and what is my responsibility to them? Not surprisingly, the theme of democratic leadership as it might impact editorial role (e.g., a mentoring editor) emerged as the panel turned its attention to expressions of concern from the session audience, many of whom believed they had experienced negative, unfair, or dismissive treatment by editors. We, as editors, found the audience's reactions both compelling and appalling, and we did not believe that we had had a hand in perpetuating the problems under discussion.
As I learned more about these editors' beliefs and the concerns generated by our audience, I wondered if a more current reframing of the role of the editor was needed, and if this reframing should suggest leadership in which democratic thought plays a more central role, particularly in the power-laden environment of a peer-review process. In an article that I then wrote, I read everything I could find written by journal editors about their roles. I examined trends within the journal editorial culture, in addition to areas of deficit and promising practices. I came to understand a bigger picture of journal editorship, that is, as a tripartite vision that has the potential to compel editors to serve as mentors to authors and reviewers. For it, the roles and responsibilities of academic journal editors from mentoring, democratic, and international perspectives is crucial, the point being that one dimension of the work builds on another.
Outcomes of this review essay indicated that editors need to embrace the mentoring, democratic, and international functions important in an open society. I feel passionately that journal editors need to lead the diversification of higher education systems by eliminating constrictive access and advocating for mentoring as an organizational value. The progressive ideologies of mentoring that underscore such activities feature collaboration, co-mentorship, democratic learning, and shared leadership. The function of internationalizing journals is intrinsically linked to the mentoring and democratic aspects of academic editorship. Needed, though, are international perspectives on mentoring and democracy that can serve as frameworks for guiding journal editors. Internalization efforts have thus far been localized within particular journals and with certain publishers, such as Routledge and Peter Lang. As one starting point for addressing these three functions, I tell stories about the importance of journal editors and other publishers constituting and reconstituting their editorial boards and review panels so that they are more highly diverse and interdisciplinary in scope, ethnicity, and nationality.
For years, I have felt inspired by the liberatory, empowering work produced by academics such as Shirley Steinberg, founder and long-standing editor of Taboo: The Journal of Culture and Education. The democratic body of knowledge she produces through her vast networks and sponsorship of under-represented groups, including the reclaiming of indigenous knowledges, has built communal synergy and helped mend racial, gender, and class divides. This intensive level of commitment to an open society reinforces in multiple directions the inclusion practices (e.g., diversification and representation of under-represented groups) of the making of a democracy, while shaping the important work in criticality and critical leadership. I have heard Steinberg call for criticality in scholarly cultural norms by evoking play with the use of "rigor/mortis" (i.e., scientifically based educational research can metaphorically equate with stiffness of death) to force deep reflection on status quo practices that block generativity within a democracy.
Authors share that they want seasoned academics, particularly editors of journals, to perform mentoring roles but that practices of editorship vary greatly. Based on the feedback I have received from authors of the journal I edited and the sessions I have organized and participated in, few academics have confidence in the overarching desire of editors to mentor authors' work. Therefore, those of us who wish to propel the democratic work of journal editors must work even harder to get our message heard, and it is incumbent upon us to share our ideas in writing and certainly in our praxis.
Academic Editor-Mentor: Vignette #2
I believe the principal responsibility of an editor is to fill the journal with material that is interesting, coherent, and pertinent. It is consistent with democratic values and the Popperian idea of an open society that an editor selects articles for publication that provide diverse perspectives. Similarly, when a manuscript that has been reviewed is evaluated by an editor, such established criteria as coherence and pertinence should take precedence over whether a reviewer agrees with an author's argument. A journal should be a forum for debate and, as such, diverse arguments and perspectives will be fostered.
Although I feel it is, generally speaking, good to be helpful, as the editor of LFD I did not consider mentorship to be part of my formal role. But I did take the view that all would-be contributors should be treated with respect. When they had provocative and pertinent ideas that were not being presented to best advantage, it was worth devoting time and effort to edit their submissions to achieve greater coherence. Mentorship, at an informal level, took place because of my editorial activities. Treating authors with respect included giving them a timely decision as to whether their manuscript has been accepted. A speedy decision is much more important than the provision of detailed feedback. Three weeks seems to me to be long enough for an author to await the decision. Any feedback given should be honest and to the point. It is desirable for the feedback to indicate what the author might need to do to make the article publishable in the journal, but it is not always possible to provide such feedback.
As the editor of an international journal, I thought it important to publish material from authors from many countries, including manuscripts whose first language was not English. I encouraged submissions from authors with interesting ideas whose command of English was such that their work required a significant degree of editorial intervention. The work of contributors for whom English was their first language also required heavy editing. For example, a paper submitted with the structure of a master's dissertation required significant revision. In all cases, I was careful to avoid altering meaning, and copy was sent to authors for approval prior to publication.
Most of my editorial time was spent working on accepted typescripts--too much time, in fact. What I did was not sustainable, in the sense that I could not find sufficient time both to edit the journal as I was doing and continue with my own writing. After providing editorial service, in time, I chose the latter.
Academic Editor-Mentor: Vignette #3
In my original work with this LFD editor (vignette #2), as a United States author inquiring and then submitting an article for review and possible publication in this journal, I found her to be a true mentor, although she might have summed up her scholarly service as editorial work-tasks. The first indicator I had that she would provide an "open-opportunity" along the lines of Popper's advocacy for transparency became visible to me by her willingness to respond to my inquiry about my manuscript topic. She provided me thoughtful detail, such that allowed me to revise large sections of text. She also acknowledged that she had read my submitted manuscript and sent me reviewers' comments, again in enough detail to allow me to address needed revisions for a successful final submission. She augmented her comments with summary points--editorial cues. Our email exchanges, while addressing the manuscript details, were also reflective about the journal mission (e.g., what might constitute democratic practices) and this type of interaction was, in my experience, unique. Not surprisingly, I wondered about the hierarchical nature of the editorial role: Should this editor really be telling me all this? After all, she would have to make an editorial decision on the worth of my manuscript as a published piece, which seems inevitably to summon forth barriers between journal editor and author.
Ultimately, the editor decided that belief in an open-society mandates the need to reveal, not suppress information, which might enhance social-industrial opportunities. She published my article; however, the greater impact for me occurred when I realized that an editor-mentor could foil traditional barriers by serving the scholarly community with a broader vision than gate keeping. So I ask, if we as editors and leaders of boards do not share helpful information to those who submit manuscripts to us, are we remiss in our duty? Although some individuals might suggest this mentor approach lacks the integrity needed for scholarly rigor, as a democratically oriented academic, I disagree.
Academic Editor-Mentor: Vignette #4
As a new professor, I had published several articles in the National Council of Professors of Educational Administration's (NCPEA) sponsored journal Educational Leadership Review (ELR) and begun developing a working collaboration with the founder of that journal and then-editor. After having spent time industriously reviewing for this journal, I was invited to serve as a guest editor. This led to an invitation to serve as editor of the ELR. The editor had nurtured me into this role, and this experience greatly influenced how I saw my role as editor.
As ELR editor, it was my responsibility to publish well-written, timely articles consistent with the journal's mission. However, in doing this, I kept in mind this primary question when acting as mentor-editor: What could I do to support this writer as we worked together to strengthen this submission? This same question framed my work with reviewers as together we sought ways to strengthen the manuscript.
Consistent with my orientation as journal editor, I expected feedback from reviewers to be timely, substantive, and respectful. Reviewers were expected to complete their review within eight weeks. If a reviewer could not meet this timeframe, I invited someone else to review. Once a reviewer committed to the manuscript, I provided support by reminding him or her in an electronic mail message a week before the review-completion deadline. The number of reviewers who thanked me for the reminder and then within a day or two would send a completed review often surprised me. This experience taught me that it was not necessary to provide reviewers with turnaround timeframes of more than a few weeks, so I adjusted my expectation.
I believe that substantive feedback is necessary to improving a paper under consideration. It was not unusual for three or more reviewers to reflect a wide range of responses, which only served to underscore the importance for editors to select reviewers who were diverse relative to a paper needing review. For example, I tried to select one reviewer who was very familiar with the topic and another who had expertise with the methodology. I often selected a third reviewer whose area of expertise was different because I felt that his or her questions and comments would prompt crucial aspects of what the paper might need in order to capture a wide readership.
Respectful feedback was important, and I was often pleasantly surprised how reviewers could frame the most negative comments in ways that were respectful and even encouraging to the author. When this did not happen, I considered it my responsibility as editor to re-phrase reviewers' remarks so that authors received comments oriented toward improving their paper rather than discouraging them. When a paper was rejected for publication in the journal, I made every effort to provide the author with other possible publishing outlets after considering reviewer feedback. While my responsibility as an editor was to see that the journal published high quality, strong interest material, I had an equally important commitment to support the writer.
Another experience of editor mentoring involved a guest-edited issue of the LFD journal. As guest editor, I issued an international call that emphasized democratic educational leadership and democratic schools, but I was also able to invite colleagues working in the area of democratic schooling to submit their work. A new assistant professor in my department joined me in co-editing this issue, a mentoring step that was taken purposefully. While a fine developing scholar, I wanted to extend this collaborative, beginning opportunity for him to be an editor, which I believe has had a direct influence on our own academic skills and professional development. I endeavored to demonstrate many of the principles involved in guiding authors, such as timely, substantive, critical feedback given in a respectful manner, in this collaboration. Such principles undergird my editorial mentoring perspective and continue to frame my work on behalf of and with authors, junior faculty members, and doctoral students.
Initial Suggestions for the Field
From our review of perspectives from the relevant literature, and our joint construction and contemplation of these vignettes, in addition to our collective experiences as editor-mentors and authors, we suggest a compendium of ideas. It is our hope that editors and their boards consider the efficacy of these in framing the role of editor-mentor.
* Use team-based approaches in journal policies, guidelines, and practices. (Bull et al., 2006)
* Institute online or electronic training for reviewers. (Bull et al., 2006)
* Create editor networks to learn how others form democratic-open policies.
* Develop a multi-tiered mentoring structure inclusive of gender and underrepresented populations. (Garcia-Retamero & Lopez-Zafra, 2006)
* Provide pathways for authors and other mentees' access to expanded, diversified networks through such opportunities as serving authors, reviewers, and assistant editors. (Mullen & Kochan, 2000; Mullen et al., 2008)
* Encourage multi-modalities for publishing worldwide for which open access journals are uniquely poised. (Brown et al, 2008)
* Demonstrate supportive and timely editorial review and detail in written responses. (Johnson, 2006)
* Encourage author inquiry and interaction, suggestive of an ethic and respect for an open society. (Gattei, 2006)
* Provide previews or informal reviews of manuscripts online to inquiring authors. (Mullen, 2011)
Because little empirical analysis of the journal editorial culture exists, what is known about the myriad roles and responsibilities of journal editors is mostly, albeit not exclusively, informal and anecdotal in nature. Notably, researchers and practitioners have produced prolific numbers of guidebooks that authors use for professional publication (e.g., Henson, 1999) and mentoring program descriptions and guidelines are posted on university websites (e.g., University of Colorado Denver, 2007) and provided in books and articles (e.g., Mullen, 2008). Moreover, as shifting beliefs about the role of the editor envision a more encompassing and participatory global-citizenry, it is imperative that practices inside democracies divest themselves of regulatory solitude and report impacts of the editor-mentor role.
In our follow up to this discussion, we have prompted an audience of editors and authors (our participants at the 2011 conference) to respond to the following questions:
* What feedback do you provide to authors (or have you personally received) before, during, and after a manuscript submission?
* What guidance do you provide (or have you received) for revision and re-submission to a journal?
* What challenges or roadblocks might we be overlooking in this hypothesis that the role of the editor broadens opportunities in the open society?
We plan to forge ahead by analyzing responses to these questions aimed at changing the power imbalances in academe and allowing for much greater diversity through the emerging role of editor-mentor.
Bull, G., Bell, L., Thompson, A., Schrum, L., Sprague, D., & Maddux, C. (2006). An invitation to join an early career mentoring network. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 6(1), 1-10.
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Brown, G., Irby, B. J., & Yang, L. (2008, March). Advancing Women in Leadership Journal: Open access journalism as a foundation for social justice. Retrieved from http://www. shsu.edu/%7Eedu_elc/doctoralCounseling/documents
Burrough-Boenisch, J. (2006). Negotiable acceptability: Reflections on the interactions between language professionals in Europe and NNS scientists wishing to publish in English. Current Issues in Language Planning, 7(1), 31-43.
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Galbraith, M. W. (2003). Celebrating mentoring. Adult Learning, I4(1), 2.
Gatti, S. (2006). Respect as the ethic of the open society. Learning for Democracy: An International Journal of Thought and Practice, 2(3), 5-20.
Garcia-Retamero, R., & Lopez-Zafra, E. (2006). Prejudice against women in male-congenial environments: Perceptions of gender role congruity in leadership. Sex Roles, 55(1/2), 51-61.
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Harper, F. D. (2006). Writing research reports, and scholarly manuscripts for journal publication: Pitfalls and promises. Journal of Negro Education, 75(3), 322-340.
Henson, K. T. (1999). Writing for professional publication: Keys to academic and business success. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
Johnson, W. B. (2006). On being a mentor: A guide for higher education faculty. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
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Lillis, T., Magyar, A., & Robinson-Pant, A. (2010). An international journal's attempts to address inequalities in academic publishing: Developing a writing for publication programme. Compare: A Journal of Comparative & International Education, 40(6), 781-800.
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Mullen, C. A. (2011). Journal editorship from mentoring, democratic, and international perspectives. Unpublished manuscript.
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Mullen, C. A. (Ed.). (2008). The handbook of formal mentoring in higher education: A case study approach. Norwood, MA: Christopher-Gordon.
Mullen, C. A., & Kochan, F. K. (2000). Creating a collaborative leadership network: An organic view of change. International Journal of Leadership in Education: Theory & Practice, 5(3), 183-200.
Mullen, C. A. (2005). The mentorship primer. New York: Peter Lang.
Munro-Turner, M. (2003). Mentoring on purpose. Retrieved http://www.mentoringforchangc. co.uk/articles_mentpurpose.php#mentp
Nickerson, R. S. (2005). What authors want from journal reviewers and editors. American Psychologist, 60(6), 661-662.
Popper, K. (1945/2011). The open society and its enemies. London, UK: Routledge.
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Stanley, C. A. (2007). When counter narratives meet master narratives in the journal editorial-review process. Educational Researcher, 36(1), 14-24.
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Caroline R. Pryor is an associate professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. Carol A. Mullen is a professor and chair of the Department of Educational Leadership & Cultural Foundations at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Tricia Browne-Ferrigno is an associate professor in the Department of Educational Leadership Studies at the University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky. Sandra Harris is a professor and director of the Center for Doctoral Studies in Educational Leadership at Lamar University, Beaumont, Texas.
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|Author:||Pryor, Caroline R.; Mullen, Carol A.; Browne-Ferrigno, Tricia; Harris, Sandra|
|Date:||Sep 22, 2013|
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Aspidoscelis marmorata — Marbled Whiptail
Subspecies I've seen:
A. m. reticuloriens
Eastern Marbled Whiptail
Aspidoscelis marmorata reticuloriens — Eastern Marbled Whiptail
This whiptail was not cooperative in the slightest. I followed it around for way too long, and ended up with only cruddy photos like this one. It would move slowly only when it was at least twenty feet away. If I got any closer than that, it would dash off to another far away spot, and then start moving slowly again, obviously deliberately mocking me.
This whiptail was just a little more cooperative than the one I followed around near Rio Grande Village in Big Bend National Park. It never did stop moving for more than an instant or two, but it did tend to stay out in the open and circle warily around me.
- Behler, J. L., King, F. W. 1979. The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Reptiles & Amphibians
- Conant, R., Collins, J. T. 1998. Peterson Field Guide to Reptiles and Amphibians of Eastern and Central North America, Third Edition, expanded
- Crother, B. I. (ed.) 2017. Scientific and Standard English Names of Amphibians and Reptiles of North America North of Mexico, with Comments Regarding Confidence in Our Understanding, Eighth Edition
- Degenhardt, W. G., Painter, C. W., Price, A. H. 1996. Amphibians & Reptiles of New Mexico
- Smith, H. M. 1995. Handbook of Lizards: Lizards of the United States and Canada
- Stebbins, R. C. 2003. Peterson Field Guide to Western Reptiles and Amphibians, Third Edition | <urn:uuid:716db052-91cf-45d7-8a04-19d5ca25ac3e> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | http://www.wildherps.com/species/As_marmorata.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570913.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20220809064307-20220809094307-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.90091 | 394 | 2.21875 | 2 |
These are non-credit or “recreational” classes offered to all ages regardless of residence. Some of these classes may provide a good introduction into an area for older homeschoolers. Continue reading
The following article is from the Office of Educational Research and Improvement which is part of the Department of Education.
Much media attention has recently been focused on the importance of early learning experiences on brain development. Newsweek devoted a special edition to the critical first 3 years of a child’s life and indicated that there is a “window of opportunity” for second language learning starting at 1 year of age. A February 1997 article in Time magazine suggested that foreign languages should be taught to children as early as possible. With so many demands already placed on children, parents might ask: Is it important that my child learns a second language at a young age? Why? What options are available? Continue reading | <urn:uuid:84e94d82-2fff-48af-8219-cb28414131b0> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | http://homeedsa.com/tag/foreign-languages/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571190.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810131127-20220810161127-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.958902 | 183 | 2.46875 | 2 |
On centering reproductive health and access in the public health agenda
Thoughts on the possible overturn of Roe v. Wade and public health’s responsibilities in this moment.
A few days ago, Politico obtained a draft majority opinion written by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito. If the draft becomes the Court’s final opinion, it will end the constitutional protection of abortion access, first established by the 1973 decision, Roe v. Wade. If that happens, decisions about abortion access will fall to the states. Even recognizing that this leak is not yet the settled opinion of the Court, the news is heartbreaking. This leak suggests there could soon be a seismic shift around this issue, as federally protected abortion access—a fact of life in this country for nearly 50 years—reverts to a status quo not seen since before many Americans were born. The implications of this decision are enormous. 19 states will effectively ban abortion, immediately affecting access for more than 40 million women, and abortion rights will no longer be protected in a majority of states.
This possibility is simultaneously shocking and expected. It is shocking that access to a foundational right could be suddenly restricted for so many. It is expected because we have long known this was likely coming. Roe v. Wade was always fiercely contested. For decades, the push for its fall has been an animating principle of the country’s conservative movement. The shift to a majority of right-leaning Justices on the Court has for many months now made the overturn of Roe seem inevitable.
It is important to state unequivocally that abortion is inextricably linked to the health of the public. As such, our ongoing engagement with abortion and the broader issue of reproductive health is at the heart of our mission as a field. Reproductive health is public health, and abortion access is core to how we address reproductive health in this country. Throughout our history, generations of scholars have engaged with the issue of abortion—its social, legal, economic, medical, and political implications. I have also engaged with this issue in my own writing and thinking. This work, as with the work of many others in the public health community, has long aimed to address the many challenges at the heart of the abortion debate, while keeping a core focus on health.
Central to our concern with the consequences of this moment needs to be an acknowledgement of who the abortion debate—and the potential overturn of Roe—most affects. Abortion rates are deeply influenced by the structural factors that shape all aspects of the health of populations, with race and socioeconomic status playing a central role. Black women are five times more likely to have an abortion than white women. 49 percent of abortions are concentrated among women below the federal poverty level (Figure One). Restricting access to abortion is a quintessential regressive act that harms the health of populations overall, but also widens health gaps through harming the health of those who need health protection the most.
Source: Abortion rates by income. Guttmacher Institute Web site. https://www.guttmacher.org/infographic/2017/abortion-rates-income. Accessed May 3, 2020.
The future of Roe, then, is intertwined with the future of marginalized populations who have long borne the brunt of health gaps. In particular, recognizing that access to healthcare is already more limited for people of color than it is for White Americans, further limiting access perpetuates and exacerbates our shameful national history of structural racism. Engaging with the issue of abortion access and reproductive health then is inextricable from public health’s mission of placing the health of marginalized groups at the heart of all we do.
In keeping with public health’s engagement with these issues, we have a role and a responsibility to work towards a just status quo around abortion and reproductive health, regardless of the Court’s decision about Roe. I offer here three actions that might help support our engagement going forward.
First, we can state clearly—as I am here—that abortion is both a right and a health issue. While I realize that there are legal challenges to the first of these statements, it is hard to countenance that something as intimate as an abortion can be separable from the foundational right to bodily autonomy. On the latter, even those who are inclined to oppose abortion access should be able to see there are times when the context of health makes such an option necessary, and that a individual and their doctor should be free at those moments to pursue that option without state interference. There is abundant evidence that criminalizing abortion results in complications—including death—due to illicit abortions; estimates of the number of worldwide deaths due to unsafe abortions range from 20-68,000 women annually. By contrast, there is little evidence that banning abortion reduces its incidence. While the availability of safe, at-home abortion pills have increased via telehealth, its access could also be in jeopardy. We should therefore continue to argue for legal abortion access as the health issue it is, appealing to the fundamental human right to health and the principle of universal access to healthcare. The same is true of the broader range of issues that inform our support of reproductive health, from making contraceptives more available, to providing sex education, to advancing a more equal, egalitarian world in which women no longer face disproportionate burdens due to outdated attitudes about sex, birth, and childrearing.
Second, we should maintain and deepen our partnerships with organizations that share our commitment to reproductive health. Such partnerships help us advance the provision of necessary services and they help us engage, at the political level, with the legal underpinnings of health. The problem posed by the opinion that may soon come from the Supreme Court is not one that public health can solve on its own. It will take working with a broader movement, as we organize towards a healthier world. For my part, I have for several years now had the privilege of serving on the board of the Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts, following the lead of many colleagues who have worked with such organizations. Thank you to all who engage in these partnerships.
Finally, this moment calls on us to return to the fundamentals of our field. I realize that abortion is a highly emotional issue, intertwined with morality, philosophy, religion, and intimate lived experience. But I have often found a focus on the foundational principles of public health can be clarifying, helping ground our efforts in core values. Guided by our values, it strikes me that our responsibility in this moment is to bring clarity to and inform the public conversation around abortion and reproductive health, as we work to advance the public health practice that shapes a healthier world. Perhaps this is always our responsibility, and now, in a time of challenge, more so than ever. | <urn:uuid:faf279d9-58c1-4f14-b318-93f6b0f4ddbf> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://sandrogalea.substack.com/p/on-centering-reproductive-health | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570913.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20220809064307-20220809094307-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.956811 | 1,369 | 1.882813 | 2 |
At Diamond Dental Group in Lutz, Florida, we’re aware of the anxiety surrounding dental work, and are committed to providing our patients with an experience that is as stress and pain-free as possible.
IV sedation is one of the options we provide to manage the discomfort and fear often associated with dental procedures.
What Is IV Sedation?
IV (meaning intravenous) is medication administered through the veins. Because of its almost immediate affect, many patients prefer this option.
Is IV Sedation Safe?
IV sedation is a very safe choice when carried out under the supervision of trained medical staff.
Advantages to IV Sedation
Will I Experience Any Pain During IV Sedation?
Even though you are not completely unconscious, most patients feel extremely relaxed, drowsy, and some even actually fall asleep completely, remembering little, if anything at all from the visit. The drugs will also contribute towards a pain-free period after the procedure.
Possible Side Effects of IV Sedation
As with any medication, the use of sedative anesthetic agents can result in side effects. However, the incidences of side effects with sedation are very rare and include unintended loss of consciousness, drowsiness, dizziness, shivering, headaches, and post-sedation nausea and vomiting.
Before Intravenous Anesthesia Sedation
Our highly trained team is committed to making you feel as comfortable as we can during your visit. We offer simple techniques that allow you to rest comfortably and safely while receiving your dental care. If the fear is what’s keeping you away, ask us about our IV sedation option to ease you through your next dental experience.
As with any procedure we perform, your safety remains our top concern. We understand your fear about visiting the dentist, as well as your desire for healthy, beautiful teeth. We can help you achieve the smile and the compassionate care you deserve. Contact the best dentist in Lutz, Florida today. | <urn:uuid:4ea69d2e-e5c6-4f83-a6d8-26278ded56e9> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.diamonddentalgroup.com/services/iv-sedation/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571190.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810131127-20220810161127-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.941722 | 408 | 1.546875 | 2 |
- Doctoral Candidate
- City University of New York, The Graduate Center
Since the 2008 debt crisis, Greeks have relied on the circulation of multiple informal currencies, using exchange schemes such as barter, time banks, and mutual credit clearing to trade goods and services without euros. These solidarity economies help people reclaim community resources in response to the staggering inequalities precipitated by Greece’s government debt, privatization of public assets, structural reforms, and the devaluation of currency in the drachma-euro conversion. This dissertation explains how the circulation of currencies not recognized by the state shapes social and political life and understandings of money and value, and, in turn, redefines the boundaries of the nation in the context of a single European currency. As a case study of the Local Alternative Unit "TEM," this project analyzes the relationships between local governance and European unity, money and nation building, and the consequences of creating currency during crisis at local-informal and European levels. | <urn:uuid:c2a5127b-cb7b-40d7-8e7a-c31fed74d1df> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.acls.org/fellow-grantees/helen-panagiotopoulos/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571190.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810131127-20220810161127-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.897494 | 210 | 1.992188 | 2 |
Shangqing Ancient Town
Shangqing Ancient Town is a thousand-year-old town located inside the Shangqing Taoist Temple Scenic Area, 25 kilomeetrs away from downtown Yingtan. It gets fame not only by its unique historic sites but also by its long history of Taoism and simple and kind folk custom.
Covering over 50 square kilometers with a population of nearly 20,000, Shangqing Ancient Town is endowed with beautiful natural environment and possesses many places of interest. Lingering for about 2 kilometers, the Shangqing Ancient Street strings the Changqing Workshop, the Liuhou Family Ancestral Hall, the Mansion of Taoist Master, the Tiandeyuan Drugstore of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Christianity Church and some other attractions; Along the river traditional Diaojiaolou (wooden houses projecting over the water) , fisherboats and ducks bring a kind of country glamour.
Wandering around the peaceful Shangqing Ancient Street, people do not need to worry about rampageous traffic in big cities and can observe the ancient town as much as you can, and what are worthy of having a taste is the local food such as Shangqing rice noodle, Shangqing tofu, Taoist master Chinese chestnuts.
Moreover, the Shanqing Taoist Temple, Dongyue Taoist Temple and the Xiangshan Academy (one of the four famous academies of Southern Song Dynasty) locate east, which makes the Shangqing visit not being confined in the ancient street.
Shangqing Ancient Town Travel Tips
1. The Mansion of Taoist Master and the ancient dwellings are must-sees;
2. The Mt. Longhushan Taoist Festival is held at the Mansion of Taoist Master from October 3rd – 9th every year, during which Taoist ceremonies can been seen. | <urn:uuid:bd0adc2e-bec6-4fac-b0ba-fa60850e4752> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://m.visitourchina.com/yingtan/attraction/shangqing-ancient-town.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571190.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810131127-20220810161127-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.941253 | 383 | 1.835938 | 2 |
prom·is·so·ry /ˈprɑməˌsori, ˌsɔr-/
Prom·is·so·ry a. Containing a promise or binding declaration of something to be done or forborne.
Promissory note Law, a written promise to pay to some person named, and at a time specified therein, or on demand, or at sight, a certain sum of money, absolutely and at all events; -- frequently called a note of hand.
adj : relating to or having the character of a promise; | <urn:uuid:54656456-ffa2-4e6c-b23a-e467e821fe8b> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | http://dict.tw/dict/promissory | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571502.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811194507-20220811224507-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.79804 | 164 | 1.625 | 2 |
Indian cobra (Naja naja)
A large international team of researchers affiliated with corporate and academic institutions has sequenced the genome of the Indian cobra. In their paper published in the journal Nature Genetics, the group describes their goal of using the sequenced genome to develop an antivenom.
Every year, approximately 5 million people around the world are bitten by venomous snakes—approximately 400,000 lose limbs and 100,000 lose their lives. Scientists have identified what they call “the big four” of snakes—the four species of venomous snakes that inflict the most harm. They are, the common krait, the Russell’s viper, the saw-scaled viper and the Indian cobra. Scientists have worked for many years to develop an antivenom for each of these snakes, but have thus far come up short. The current method involves injecting a small amount of venom into an animal such as a horse and collecting the resulting antibodies—an approach that is both expensive and prone to errors. The scientists with this new effort began with the idea of sequencing the genome of the Indian cobra hoping that it would lead to the development of an antivenom based on synthetic recombinant venom built from proteins.
The researchers employed a variety of long-read and short-read sequencing technologies. They also used chromosomal contact data and optical mapping. In all, they used tissue from 14 different cobras, which they used to predict 31,447 transcripts and 23,248 protein coding genes. Because they were interested in the genome data that was associated with venom production, they annotated genes relevant to venom glands and closely studied the genomic organization of the gene families that were encoding toxin proteins involved in venom glands.
They found 19 genes that were associated with toxin production in the venom gland. Using mass spectrometry, they were also able to verify the proteins that were produced due to the gene . As an aside, they compared what they found with available data on prairie rattlesnakes—in so doing, they determined that 15 of the toxin genes they found were unique to the Indian cobra. The researchers suggest their findings could allow for research to commence on the development of a synthetic recombinant venom for use in creating an antivenom.
More information: Kushal Suryamohan et al. The Indian cobra reference genome and transcriptome enables comprehensive identification of venom toxins, Nature Genetics (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41588-019-0559-8
Journal information: Nature Genetics | <urn:uuid:a775df69-3abc-4c48-826d-6b234594be7d> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.soulask.com/indian-cobra-genome-sequenced-in-search-for-new-antivenom/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571190.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810131127-20220810161127-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.955181 | 519 | 4.03125 | 4 |
Background: Topoisomerases are a set of nuclear enzymes that play a vital role in handling of topological consequences of DNA during various genetic activities necessary for vitality of cell. Inhibition of these enzymes consequently leads to the blockage of ligation step of the cell cycle which generates single and double strand breakage in DNA strand. Introduction of these breaks subsequently leads to programmed cell death (Apoptosis). Objective: In the past several years, topoisomerases have become one of the most expedient and strategic molecular targets for anticancer drugs and numerous patents have been filed and published on topoisomerase inhibitors. This review compiles the patent literature up to 2016 embracing topo I and II inhibitors as well as dual inhibitors which are structurally adjacent to camptothecin (CPT), natural products such as lamellarins and synthetic trisubstituted pyridines. The present assemblage can be extremely advantageous for the medicinal chemists who are in crave for the development of potential anticancer agents targeting topoisomerases. Conclusion: Recent patents indicated that some of the nitrogen containing heteroaromatic compounds have immense potential to inhibit topoisomerase enzyme. In particular, fused N-Heterocycles can be anticipated for their promising therapeutic potential alone or in combination with other anticancer agents. Naphthyridinone and indenoisoquinoline derivatives, described in the preceding sections of this review, are endowed with significant potency against topoisomerase I which clearly indicates the need of preclinical and clinical studies to place them in forefront as potential future drug candidates.
ASJC Scopus subject areas | <urn:uuid:aeb555d9-7e1c-4b22-a976-853c2ad796b0> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://tmu.pure.elsevier.com/zh/publications/topoisomerase-i-and-ii-inhibitors-a-patent-review | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571190.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810131127-20220810161127-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.926559 | 395 | 2.28125 | 2 |
Welcome to Neutron's developer documentation!
Neutron is an OpenStack project to provide "network connectivity as a service" between interface devices (e.g., vNICs) managed by other OpenStack services (e.g., nova). It implements the Neutron API.
This document describes Neutron for contributors of the project, and assumes that you are already familiar with Neutron from an end-user perspective.
This documentation is generated by the Sphinx toolkit and lives in the source tree. Additional documentation on Neutron and other components of OpenStack can be found on the OpenStack wiki and the Neutron section of the wiki. The Neutron Development wiki is also a good resource for new contributors.
Go to http://api.openstack.org for information about OpenStack Network API extensions. | <urn:uuid:db936d76-18e4-46f2-ab41-08513fd5aab3> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://opendev.org/openstack/neutron/src/commit/1715eb7c8e1f2433df3c081e357f8c40dfe2a28a/doc/source/index.rst | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573118.26/warc/CC-MAIN-20220817213446-20220818003446-00665.warc.gz | en | 0.810845 | 208 | 1.8125 | 2 |
Introduction to PayPal (Personal & Business Accounts)
So you’re thinking of signing up for a PayPal account? You’re undoubtedly aware that PayPal has numerous account kinds, such as personal and commercial accounts. Now, depending on whatever type you like or require, you may want to understand the differences between the two and why you should choose one over the other.
PayPal Personal Account
This is a PayPal account that enables users to make safe and secure online payments. It can also be used to send and receive money. It’s a great account for people who purchase and sell things online. You can also link your checking and PayPal accounts for more convenient money transfers and payments. Aside from all of these compelling reasons to sign up, a PayPal Personal Account is free and accepted by thousands of online retailers.
Limited Monthly payments of $500 can be increased to $10,000 if the account is validated through bank accounts.
PayPal Business Account
Similar to a personal account, it enables users to make safe and secure online payments as well as accept payments for a minimal cost. It’s a business account that’s best suited for online retailers and other businesses. It also permits you to conduct business under the name of a corporation or a group.
Many additional capabilities are available with a business account, including accepting payments on your website and sending and receiving money among users from over 203 countries. You can also use Debit MasterCard BusinessCard to get access to the money in your PayPal account; you can download your account history into a spreadsheet, make payments to hundreds of people at once, and accept unlimited credit card payments.
Accounts for personal use vs. accounts for business use
What’s the difference between a PayPal personal account and a PayPal corporate account?
The difference between the two accounts is in the features you can get from each.
While both allow safe and secure online payments, the business account comes with a lot more, such as the ability to receive payments straight from your website and a PayPal Debit MasterCard. A personal account would be preferable for regular users who will most likely only use their accounts to purchase products or receive payments. The business account is excellent for business owners because you’ll be able to send payments to numerous employees at once and have multi-user access.
To summarize, the accounts were created specifically for separate individuals with distinct purposes, one for personal use and one for corporate use.
|Personal Account||Business Account|
|Is free with an option to buy special features||Is free with an option to buy special features|
|Has a $500 monthly limit of receiving money from PayPal users (Unless upgraded to premium then unlimited). For a verified account, the limit is increased to $10,000.||Has an unlimited limit of receiving and sending money from any probable sources|
|Can send and receive payment/money||Can send and receive payment/money|
|Has a 24-hour fraud surveillance||Has a 24-hour fraud surveillance|
|Customer service||Customer service|
|eBay Tools||eBay Tools|
|Has limited merchant services||Has full merchant services|
|Does not accept credit or debit cards||Accepts credit or debit cards|
|Has limited PayPal Debit Card services||Has full PayPal Debit Card services|
|Has no Multi-user access||Has Multi-user access| | <urn:uuid:8830f611-c3b9-42b3-8d36-669eeca8c053> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://moderncatalysts.com/personal-and-business-paypal-account/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570913.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20220809064307-20220809094307-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.922392 | 702 | 1.875 | 2 |
Beca.ai digital engagement space demonstration
Take a tour of our Beca.ai digital engagement space, a 360-degree virtual environment and consultation tool, combined with conversational Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Beca.ai engagement is designed to help the people in your communities be heard on the projects and issues that matter most to them - in a platform that is accessible anytime, anywhere. Engagement can be customised to your project and community needs - from an interactive virtual project environment like this, to a chatbot that can have a natural conversation and be trained in a variety of languages.
With this tool, visitors to your unique virtual project site can explore and interact with an array of visualisations and project information to better understand any proposed changes, and potential impacts on the existing environment.
Underpinned by natural language processing, the visualisations can be easily linked with our Beca AI chatbot, enabling your visitors to provide feedback on specific areas of the project that are important to them. It also gives visitors the opportunity to engage with your project team through a live chat option.
To try out what Beca.ai digital engagement might look like for you, scroll to the bottom of the screen and click on the give your feedback button.
We understand that fast, accurate data capture and analysis of stakeholder feedback is important to robust decision-making. You will receive access to an easy-to-read insight dashboard, showing the fine detail of responses through to summaries of sentiment on key issues and trends, and how this varies by location and over time.
If statistics excite you, check out the type of dashboarding we can provide.
Copyright Beca 2022 | <urn:uuid:bb655f01-c673-4998-bbe4-32443c511dd8> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://digitalengagement.beca.ai/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571190.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810131127-20220810161127-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.896498 | 356 | 1.789063 | 2 |
We’ve become accustomed to these fraught addresses from President Bush: the cadences of loss and resolve, the biblical echoes, and the strain of a voice trying to whip up hope. We heard them over and over after 9/11 and before the Iraq war. But tonight was different. President Bush has never spoken from a position of such weakness. The country is as uncertain about his leadership as it has ever been. He created the very Department of Homeland Security that failed to prepare itself or citizens for Hurricane Katrina or manage its aftermath. Bush has spoken at length about compassion for the least among us, and yet their condition has not improved.
Second terms usually start on the steps of the Capitol. George Bush hopes that his starts in Jackson Square. Before the storm, his second four years had been defined by impotency. The war he started in Iraq became even bloodier and looked more hopeless. Cindy Sheehan appeared to be working harder than he was. Gas prices jumped, and he admitted there was little he could do to help. He had to install John Bolton in the United Nations after the senators who wouldn’t confirm him had gone home for the summer. His plan for revamping Social Security fell flat in the turf almost right out of the gate.
Katrina is his disaster, but also his chance. The president announced his plan for “Gulf Opportunity Zones” tonight. No one has a better Gulf Opportunity Zone than he does. Thanks to Katrina, at least now he can act. Bush can shuttle to the newly uplifted: visiting homeowners in their gleaming kitchens, or small-business owners turning profits in the reviving Gulf. Iraq will never offer up such made-for-television opportunities.
Katrina allows the president to cut away from all the other miserable news and do one of the things he does best: spend money. Bush may talk like a fiscal conservative, but he spends like a liberal. He binges for his priorities. Tonight he made a lot of promises. The federal government will pay to rebuild infrastructure, pay rent for the displaced, pick up state expenses, and deliver mobile homes. If you have any favorite federal programs you’d like enacted, please bring them to the front of the room. The costs to rebuild the Gulf will skyrocket, but Republican leaders are also going to have to pay hush money outside the region: funding projects from politically key areas. Lawmakers will find ways to tie their requests to Katrina.
As a political matter, tonight’s immediate goals were limited. By standing alone and detailing his plan, Bush hoped to court disaffected Republicans with an image of leadership that will conjure memories of his post-9/11 performance.
The larger goal is harder: to restore the image of Republican competency with the broader voting public. That’s important for Bush’s legacy and Republicans up for election in 2006 campaigning on safety and leadership. Polls show Americans now view Bush’s leadership abilities at their modest pre-9/11 levels, and only half the country trusts his ability to handle terrorism, his former strong suit. On the question of homeland security he seemed to invite more doubt. “I consider detailed emergency planning to be a national security priority,” he said tonight. Yikes. It wasn’t before?
The president has hitched his second term to the Gulf reconstruction, and that may require a surprising amount of political courage. Congress has been willing to spend like crazy in the past few weeks, but that profligacy will end. Fiscal conservatives in his party are furious at the new government spending. Conservative Democrats and independents in key districts outside of the affected area are also already balking: Why is the president pandering to the Gulf? Why doesn’t he show as much effort helping me get a job or lowering my gas prices?
Bush will be rebuilding his presidency along with New Orleans. He has the money to spend—as he did after 9/11, as he did in Iraq. The question is what it always is with the president. His resolve and certainty are not in doubt; his competence is. Is his administration capable enough not to waste those billions but to turn them into a genuine Gulf recovery? | <urn:uuid:2a49bec1-9682-4272-a665-3f2714923ac1> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2005/09/can-bush-s-new-orleans-speech-save-him.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573623.4/warc/CC-MAIN-20220819035957-20220819065957-00665.warc.gz | en | 0.981599 | 867 | 1.757813 | 2 |
As the US nears the year anniversary of shutting down schools, the results of a year without education are starting to come in and it has been a devastating one for America's children.
A study conducted among students in San Francisco, who are only heading back to school at the end of this month, uncovered the truth that those who are most impacted by school closures are minority and low-income students.
The San Francisco Chronicle reports that low-income students have fallen even further behind during the pandemic-inspired closures. The school board has instead prioritized the renaming of schools over getting schools open. They are more concerned with the appearance of racism than they are with actually making sure minority students get an education.
Still another study shows that students who are English language learners are "falling behind more compared to others."
McKinsey released an analysis in December that showed that black and Hispanic are both "more likely to remain remote" and face more challenges than their peers as a result.
The McKinsey report stated that "the cumulative learning loss could be substantial, especially in mathematics—with students on average likely to lose five to nine months of learning by the end of this school year."
"Students of color could be six to 12 months behind, compared with four to eight months for white students," it said. "While all students are suffering, those who came into the pandemic with the fewest academic opportunities are on track to exit with the greatest learning loss."
Meanwhile, many states are reporting that their enrollment numbers have significantly fallen during the pandemic. In New York City alone, the public school enrollment went from 1.1 million students at the beginning of the pandemic to under 950,000.
Michigan's enrollment fell by over 50,000, but of those, 13,000 are completely unaccounted for, not having been enrolled in alternative schools, or homeschool. Texas has lost track of approximately 9,000 high school students, 2,000 middle schoolers, and 1,000 primary grade students. Florida lost 88,000 students as enrollment dropped from 2.8 million to 2.7 million.
Florida's House Speaker Chris Sprowls said that this was "alarming," and urged school districts "to locate these missing children. We have a moral obligation not to allow any of these children to slip through the cracks of the system."
Many US students have "simply fallen off the grid," reports ABC News, "not showing up for online or in-person instruction, their whereabouts unknown by school officials."
Students who are particularly affected include the most vulnerable, including minority and low-income students, English language learners, students with disabilities, homeless students, and those in temporary living situations, like foster care.
A Bellweather Education Partners study estimates that about 3 million of the "most educationally marginalized students in the country" have been likely missing from school since the closures began. Their results are based on a calculation of the "likely percentage of at-risk groups not in school, based on media reports and available data."
ABC reports that this is a nationwide problem after reaching out to education departments in all 50 states. Many school districts went fully remote without ensuring that this would provide an education to all their students, and it has not.
The National Education Association, the nation's largest union, representing approximately 3 million educators, has issued demands for funding before they would advocate school reopening. Among their funding asks is for increased broadband to ensure remote learning lives on into the future.
The Biden administration has said they would get schools open in their first 100 days in office, but have repeatedly back-peddled, issued conflicting guidance, and changed the definition of what "open" means.
For New York City public school students, even being in school only provides a remote learning experience but in a classroom location, as teachers must instruct synchronously to ensure that students at home are following the same lesson. | <urn:uuid:0923f3d7-7e0c-459f-9d91-1dcbbe83d54b> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://thepostmillennial.com/us-students-are-falling-behind-and-dropping-out-amid-prolonged-pandemic-school-closures | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571190.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810131127-20220810161127-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.979655 | 801 | 2.84375 | 3 |
Reuters, LONDON – An Iranian exile group on Tuesday called on the U.N.’s atomic watchdog to inspect an extensive network of tunnels which it says the Islamic Republic has built to conceal a clandestine nuclear weapons programme.
The National Council of Resistance of Iran, which first made allegations of the tunnels in September, said their sources in Iran had evidence of underground complexes in 14 locations, near Tehran, Isfahan, Qom and other cities.
"These have been built by military agencies and their front companies," said Hossein Abedini, a member of the foreign affairs committee of the NCRI at a news conference.
"The purpose of the tunnels is to conceal parts of the Tehran regime’s atomic and missile programmes," he said, adding they were used for hiding research centres, workshops, nuclear equipment and nuclear and missile command and control centres.
He said the NCRI, which has previously reported accurately about hidden atomic facilities in Iran, had sent the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency its latest information and urged the body to inspect the tunnels.
"Today we call on the International Atomic Energy Agency to immediately and urgently act," said Abedini.
No one was immediately available at the IAEA to comment.
The NCRI is a coalition of exiled opposition groups that seeks to overthrow Iran’s clerical rulers and is listed by the United States as a terrorist organization.
The allegations come a day before Britain, France and Germany meet Iranian officials to discuss the possibility of restarting negotiations on Iran’s disputed nuclear programme.
Almost two years of talks collapsed earlier this year when Iran said it would restart some sensitive nuclear activity. The West suspects Iran of developing atomic weapons but Tehran argues it needs nuclear technology to generate electricity.
Abedini gave more details about the tunnels than previously available and named companies and engineers involved.
He said a complex of tunnels at Parchin, east of Tehran, was used for work on laser techniques for uranium enrichment.
Another tunnel system in Khojeer, southeast of Tehran, was used to assemble ballistic missiles and was 1 km (0.6 miles) long and 12 metres (yards) wide.
The NCRI believes Iran could develop an atomic bomb in "a couple of years". | <urn:uuid:677edcb7-24a2-4402-ac4e-c3620c470bc2> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.ncr-iran.org/en/news/nuclear/exiles-say-iran-uses-tunnels-to-hide-atomic-work/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571190.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810131127-20220810161127-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.965931 | 463 | 1.726563 | 2 |
There’s an old saying: “The devil is in the details.” This could certainly be applied to almost any HVAC system, including those using hydronics technology.
Variation in piping details, controller settings or component placement is common from one system to another. The differences often are based on personal preferences of the designer, the availability or cost of specific hardware and what the default settings of various controllers within the system have been set to by their manufacturer.
The generic concept of a solar thermal combisystem that provides domestic hot water and some amount of space heating is certainly “open to interpretation” when it comes to design detailing, component selection and controller settings. Although there are many possible combinations that likely would lead to successful applications, the pathway to success is definitely shorter and straighter when the design is well-documented.
This month, I want to show you one approach to a solar thermal combisystem that includes plenty of details and a full description of operation. The latter aspect of documentation is critically important to proper setup and maintenance over the system’s life. It sequentially describes what the installer or service tech should be witnessing as the system operates in each of its various modes.
The system shown in Figure 1 (see above) is a solar combisystem that provides domestic hot water and some amount of space heating for the building it serves. It uses a propylene glycol-based antifreeze fluid within the collector circuit to protect against freezing. It also uses a thermal storage tank with multiple connections that allows for proper stratification and leveraging of thermal mass to buffer both the space heating and domestic water heating loads.
The storage tank shown in Figure 1 is very well-insulated and has multiple connections at various heights. These connections help encourage and preserve temperature stratification within the tank. This tank also has no internal heat exchanger coils. To my knowledge, this specific tank is not a currently marketed product in the United States, although some commercially available tanks come quite close. For more details, see: “If I Made the Tanks,” in the spring Solar Thermal Report.
Domestic water is partially (and sometimes fully) heated by solar heat input to the storage tank. When solar heat input is lacking, supplemental heat input is provided by a mod/con boiler. An electric tankless water heater provides the final “top off” to domestic hot water delivery temperature when necessary.
Whenever there is a demand for domestic hot water of 0.6 gpm or higher, the flow switch inside the tankless electric water heater closes. This closure is used, in combination with a relay, to turn on the circulator that routes water from the upper portion of the storage tank through the primary side of the heat exchanger.
The electric tankless water heater is thermostatically controlled. When flow through it reaches 0.6 gpm or higher, the unit measures the incoming water temperature, compares it to the outgoing water temperature and quickly calculates the necessary electrical power that must be supplied to the heating elements to keep the outgoing water temperature within 1º F of the setpoint. Thus, if solar preheated water is delivered to this heater at 115º and its setpoint temperature is 120º, the power supplied to the element will only be that required for the 5º temperature boost. If the water entering the tankless heater is already at or above the setpoint temperature, the elements are not turned on. All heated water leaving the tankless heater flows into an ASSE 1017-rated mixing valve to ensure a safe delivery temperature to the fixtures.
Because of the way domestic water is heated, the thermal storage tank in this system does not have to be maintained at a temperature suitable to provide the full temperature rise of the domestic hot water.
Instead, during periods of little or no solar energy input, the tank temperature can be maintained by the mod/con boiler based on outdoor reset control. If space heating is provided by low-temperature radiant panels, the maximum water temperature at the top of this tank may only have to be 120º. On partial load days, the boiler’s internal outdoor reset controller allows for even lower tank temperatures, perhaps in the range of 90º to 95º. The lower the tank temperature is the better the chances of solar heat contribution from the collectors.
Figure 2(see above) shows how the outdoor reset control within the boiler could be configured for this system. This reset curve assumes the heating distribution system can supply design heating load when supplied with 120º water and the corresponding outdoor design temperature is -10º.
The thermal mass of the heated water in the upper portion of the thermal storage tank provides excellent buffering for the highly zoned heating distribution system. This desirable trait greatly reduces the chance of boiler short-cycling.
This design allows the boiler to be completely turned off during times of the year where space heating is not required. If solar input is low, the tankless water heater provides the needed boost to ensure consistent domestic hot water delivery temperature. It’s long-term economic viability depends on the unit cost of electricity vs. the natural gas or propane used by the boiler. In most cases, natural gas will be less expensive, and thus it is used to supply the larger space-heating load.
The use of electricity is limited to “topping off” the temperature of domestic water that always will be partially preheated by the energy from the thermal storage tank. A complete economic analysis also should factor in the monthly service charge associated with a natural gas meter (assuming that space heating and domestic water heating is the reason the gas service would be provided). On energy-conserving homes, this monthly service charge could rival the average month usage charge.
Figure 3(see above) shows the electrical wiring for this system in the form of a ladder diagram.
Ladder diagrams are great for both design and documentation of “custom” control systems. The line voltage components are shown in the upper part of the ladder. The lower voltage (24 VAC) is shown in the lower portion below the transformer. When drawn with a CAD system, these diagrams are easily expanded to include additional control hardware if and when necessary. Note that only three of the eight independent heating zones are shown in Figure 3. All eight zones would have identical wiring.
The following is a description of operation of the system. Each mode of operation is separately described. Each description is sequential. It narrates what happens when based on the presence of various demands on the system. There is frequent reference to component designations such as (P2) or (DTC). These designations also allow easy cross-referencing between the piping and wiring diagrams.
1. Solar energy collection mode:Whenever the main switch is closed, line voltage is applied to the differential temperature controller. This controller continuously monitors the temperature of the collector sensor (S1) and the lower sensor in the thermal storage tank (S2). Whenever the temperature of the collector is 10º or more above the temperature of the lower storage temperature, the DTC turns on circulators P1 and P2. Whenever the temperature of S1 is 5º or less above the temperature of S2, the DTC turns off circulators P1 and P2. The DTC also monitors sensor S3 in the upper portion of the thermal storage tank. If the sensor reaches 180º, the DTC initiates a nocturnal cooling mode in which it operates circulators P1 and P2 to release heat through the collector array until the tank temperature drops to 160º.
2. Domestic water heating mode:Whenever there is a demand for domestic hot water of 0.6 gpm or higher, the flow switch inside the tankless electric water heater closes. This closure applies 240 VAC to the coil of relay (R2). The normally open contacts (R2-1) close to turn on circulator P5, which circulates heated water from the upper portion of the storage tank through the primary side of the domestic water heat exchanger (HX2).
The domestic water leaving HX2 is either preheated or fully heated depending on the temperature in the upper portion of the storage tank. This water passes into the thermostatically controlled tankless water heater, which measures its inlet temperature. The electronics within this heater control electrical current flow to the heat elements based on the necessary temperature rise (if any) to achieve the set domestic hot water supply temperature.
If the water entering the tankless heater is already at or above the setpoint temperature, the elements are not turned on. All heated water leaving the tankless heater flows into an ASSE1017-rated mixing valve to ensure a safe delivery temperature to the fixtures. Whenever demand for domestic hot water drops below 0.6 gpm, circulator P5 and the tankless electric water heater are turned off.
3. Space-heating mode:The distribution system has several zones — each equipped with a 24 VAC thermostat (T1, T2, T3, etc.). Upon a demand for heat from one or more of these thermostats, the associated 24 VAC manifold valve actuators (VA1, VA2, VA3, etc.) are powered on. When a valve actuator is fully open, its end switch closes. This supplies 24 VAC to the coil of relay (R1). This closes the normally open contacts (R1-1), which supplied 120 VAC to circulator P4. P4 operates in constant differential pressure mode to supply the flow required by the distribution system based on how many zones are calling for heat. A call for heat also supplies 24 VAC to the integral controller operating mixing valve (MV1). The valve’s controller measures outdoor temperature from sensor S5. It uses this temperature, in combination with its settings, to calculate the target supply water temperature to the distribution system. It then adjusts the valve’s internal porting to steer the temperature detected by sensor S6 toward the calculated target temperature. When all thermostats are satisfied, power is removed from MV1 and circulator P4. A spring-loaded check valve near the storage tank prevents heat migration from the thermal storage tank into the space-heating distribution system.
4. Auxiliary boiler:The boiler continuously monitors the outdoor temperature detected by sensor S7. The boiler’s internal reset control logic uses this temperature and its settings to calculate the target temperature required by the distribution system. It then compares the temperature in the upper portion of the thermal storage tank as detected by sensor S4 with the calculated target temperature. When necessary, the boiler turns on itself and circulator P3 to maintain the temperature in the upper portion of the thermal storage tank close to the calculated target temperature.
There you have it; a fully functional solar combisystem that, with the possible exception of the thermal storage tank, uses readily available hydronic components.
Be sure that any combisystems you create have good documentation. It’s essential to a long, serviceable life, and that is critical to continued growth of solar thermal technology. | <urn:uuid:5dfebe32-6c49-4575-9e25-5a7047693baa> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.pmengineer.com/articles/90912-proper-documentation-is-critical-for-a-well-functioning-solar-combisystem | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571190.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810131127-20220810161127-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.912219 | 2,295 | 2.203125 | 2 |
An attempt to describe the social good in detail seems to carry with it an implied willingness to impose this good, independently of observed or prospective agreement among persons. By contrast, my natural proclivity as an economist is to place ultimate value on process or procedure, and by implication to define as “good” that which emerges from agreement among free men.
I add here that, unlike Jim, I regard spontaneous agreement – agreements made at ‘micro’ levels, in local situations, and with no intention by individuals to participate in any system for making law for the larger society – as being a far-superior process of law-making than is deliberative democracy. Law made by deliberation and imposed consciously on a group of people is more properly called “legislation” and is less likely to be informed by the – and to allow individuals to be guided by their – ‘knowledge of the particular circumstances of time and place.’
Legal central planning is no more likely to work well than is economic central planning. The process of making law decentrally and spontaneously (no less than the process of making resource-allocation decisions decentrally and spontaneously) is far superior to making ‘law’ – i.e., legislating – centrally and consciously. (Such consciously designed and centrally, top-down imposed legislation is also far more likely than is spontaneous law to serve special interest groups at the expense of the general public.) | <urn:uuid:5af80520-2bd8-40ab-83dc-a912cb4df976> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://cafehayek.com/2012/05/quotation-of-the-day-284.html/print/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571502.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811194507-20220811224507-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.969179 | 305 | 1.78125 | 2 |
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All that day, though he waited for Mr Abel until evening, Kit kept clear of his mother's house, determined not to anticipate the pleasures of the morrow, but to let them come in their full rush of delight; for to-morrow was the great and long looked-for epoch in his life--to-morrow was the end of his first quarter--the day of receiving, for the first time, one fourth part of his annual income of Six Pounds in one vast sum of Thirty Shillings--to-morrow was to be a half-holiday devoted to a whirl of entertainments, and little Jacob was to know what oysters meant, and to see a play.
All manner of incidents combined in favour of the occasion: not only had Mr and Mrs Garland forewarned him that they intended to make no deduction for his outfit from the great amount, but to pay it him unbroken in all its gigantic grandeur; not only had the unknown gentleman increased the stock by the sum of five shillings, which was a perfect god-send and in itself a fortune; not only had these things come to pass which nobody could have calculated upon, or in their wildest dreams have hoped; but it was Barbara's quarter too--Barbara's quarter, that very day--and Barbara had a half-holiday as well as Kit, and Barbara's mother was going to make one of the party, and to take tea with Kit's mother, and cultivate her acquaintance.
To be sure Kit looked out of his window very early that morning to see which way the clouds were flying, and to be sure Barbara would have been at hers too, if she had not sat up so late over-night, starching and ironing small pieces of muslin, and crimping them into frills, and sewing them on to other pieces to form magnificent wholes for next day's wear. But they were both up very early for all that, and had small appetites for breakfast and less for dinner, and were in a state of great excitement when Barbara's mother came in, with astonishing accounts of the fineness of the weather out of doors (but with a very large umbrella notwithstanding, for people like Barbara's mother seldom make holiday without one), and when the bell rang for them to go up stairs and receive their quarter's money in gold and silver.
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Aliases: Chautauqua Park, Flagstaff Mountain
One of the finest birding areas in Boulder, Gregory Canyon is on the edge of the city, where the foothills begin. The thick riparian tangles here support species, including Warbling Vireo, Gray Catbird, Virginia’s and MacGillivray’s Warblers, and Yellow-breasted Chat. The surrounding pine forest add Lesser Goldfinch, three species of Empidonax flycatcher, Black-headed Grosbeak, and Western Tanager. The cliffs overhead are home to Canyon Wrens and a few pairs of Peregrine and Prairie Falcons. Arrive very early at this popular park in order to secure a parking spot. Note: there is a fee to park at this property.
Directions: From Denver: go west toward Boulder on US Hwy 36. Exit at Baseline Rd. and head west. Baseline Rd. will curve sharply north at the base of the foothills. Just past the curve on the west is Gregory Canyon Rd. Go south on Gregory Canyon Rd. until it ends at the parking lot.
Dates of Access: Open all year
Hours: Daylight hours
Admission: Free; there is a parking fee
Restrictions: Please obey all rules and regulations.
Parking: Paved parking area; All park visitors whose motor vehicles are not registered in Boulder County must possess either a daily or annual permit to park
Lodging: Hotels in Boulder
Handicapped Access: Some viewing from parking lot and paved entrance road; beware of traffic.
» Visit the website for Gregory Canyon
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A Learning Management System (LMS) is an essential platform for organisations to implement an agile, future-proofed e-Learning programme. Companies need to be prepared to supply quality training content to employees at all levels of business, in addition to their other stakeholders (including customers, suppliers and partners where relevant) as regulations continue to change and the trend of hybrid working becomes more pervasive.
A learning platform is a powerful tool for increasing the efficiency of learning. Unlike traditional training methods that offer the same level of content to learners regardless of their level, an LMS has powerful tools and capabilities to address both the needs of the individual learner, whilst support the overall learning culture of your organisation.
Having the right learning platform as part of a strategic organisational learning strategy is now vital for future success. According to a recent Forrester report, "The time it takes to close a skills gap through traditional training has increased by more than 10 times in the past four years, jumping from three days to 36."
Tugela People provide a complete solution for your learning needs
Identifying and selecting the right LMS for your organisation can be a challenging task. With our expert systems and industry knowledge and experience, Tugela People can work in partnership with you to identify a solution that meets your requirements.
As an LMS solution, Tugela People offers TalentLMS – an all-in-one, feature-rich remote learning solution, that's ideal for organisations of any size - regardless of industry and geographic location, enabling you to implement a training programme that benefits your employees (and other stakeholders including customers and partners – as appropriate) from one platform. TalentLMS is ideal for any type of training --from onboarding to compliance-- in any industry --from manufacturing to aviation. Like all of the solutions Tugela People offer their clients, TalentLMS is considered the best in breed and highly rated.
Once we have assessed that TalentLMS is right for your organisation (given your requirements and budget), Tugela People can provide you with a complete support service for your e-Learning programme. Services include configuration, set up and ongoing support of your LMS, in addition to developing and setting up your company's digital learning content.
To enhance your systems capabilities, Tugela People also provide bespoke integration of TalentLMS (over and above the native integrations already offered) into any system that allows API integrations.
Full details of Talent(LMS) are listed in our brochure. Click on the image below to download your copy:
The reasons for adopting an LMS as the foundation for training
Understanding how an LMS works along with the different features and potential benefits is vital before evaluating any systems. To help you on this journey we have compiled an eBook that takes you through this process step-by-step. Request your copy now by clicking here
What is a Learning Management System (LMS)?
An LMS is a cloud-based training tool that can be used by any company regardless of size, geographic location, or industry. It can be used to educate, train, and empower every stakeholder of your organisation.
An LMS provides a simple and efficient online training platform, focusing on the effective distribution of training and development resources. Learners can easily access the training courses on any device at a suitable time, paving the way for a conducive, learner-friendly environment. A seamless LMS is easy to use, and the design and structure are intuitive and standardised, and many companies are now adopting an LMS as the foundation for their overall training programs.
Advantages include supported learning, online and blended learning solutions that facilitate and improve upon traditional educational methods. Learning Management software can also save organisations time and money by allowing the easy administration of large amounts of information in a user-friendly, web-based environment.
Industry trends towards Learning & Development (L&D)
COVID-19 sparked transformation, collaboration, agility, and innovation in the learning and development industry. Research conducted by Brandon Hall through the end of 2020 paints a picture of shifting priorities and a renewed focus on making learning agile and adaptable to meet the future needs of the business.
Even before the current crisis, changing technologies and new ways of working were disrupting jobs and the skills employees need to do them. Respondents on a recent McKinsey & Company survey expect to see skills gaps as market and technology trends alter organisations' talent needs.
Why Consider an LMS
An LMS enables an organisation to create a learning culture through a remote training platform and meet the challenges presented by market and technology developments. Research undertaken and papers published on the subject, all highlight the requirement and importance of having an established online training platform.
Adopting an LMS enables an organisation to:
- Drastically improve the long-term efficiency of training and development, removing the need for expenditure on training events, related expenses, and printed materials.
- Accelerate the training process without sacrificing quality. Because it’s cloud-based, your targeted LMS audience can access training on-demand and at their own pace, without the need to juggle individual schedules, enabling learners to prioritise their time more effectively. Having instant access to training, users can move at their own speed and navigate through the training according to their individual needs.
- Centralise all training materials; this allows you to scale your training over time, manage your content more easily and oversee everything from user registration, course attendance, and statistics from a centralised dashboard. An LMS addresses the arduous task of organising, updating, developing, evaluating, assigning and distributing a huge variety of training content for different audiences/stakeholders across departments and/or geographies, with additional language requirements where appropriate.
- Additionally, in the case of a blended learning strategy, it also enables you to have access to readily available content when required, making training more accessible.
- Grow the business and drive engagement by building a culture of continuous learning. An LMS can motivate people to build skills that benefit your organisation and engage learners by making it easy to find courses and identify future roles that might be of interest. An efficient and effective LMS provides key tools in addressing the five areas of talent management that are part of the Chief HR Officers (CHRO) playbook, i.e. finding and hiring the right people, learning and growing, managing and rewarding performance, tailoring the employee experience, and optimising workforce planning and strategy.
- Enhance your people experience to drive retention. An LMS enables organisations to customise their learning pathways and to align them to roles required both now and, in the future, helping to improve retention rates.
- Build the skills people need for future roles; An LMS can also enable career advancement with customised learning and credentialing, providing learners with the opportunity to earn transferable credentials and tangible rewards for contributing innovative ideas and digital assets. A recent McKinsey Global Survey highlights the urgent need for reskilling across industries, with respondents saying that skill-building (more than hiring, contracting, or redeploying employees) is the best way to close those gaps.
- Drive increased operating margins. Empowering your workforce with digital skills can help reduce hours spent on manual tasks, minimise errors and allow more time for innovation, team collaboration and serve to drive growth.
- Unlock top-line growth by providing access to tools that promote efficiency, reducing the cost of service delivery and freeing up time to create revenue growth opportunities.
- Monitor your organisation's skill-building progress in real-time and generate learning analytics. This can be used to track training performance and ensure that learners are on track with their professional training goals and requirements. Data can also be used to identify the relative success of courses and broader learning and development trends. Activate learning plans that meet diverse needs by individual and/or group and monitor an individual's progress in real-time. Get insights to make better-informed decisions around workforce initiatives.
- Extend your training to your clients, partners, resellers, vendors, franchisees, or a complex combination of these to enhance product and service knowledge, helping you to strengthen your business and brand.
- Create a potential new revenue stream, by extending the LMS outside of the organisation to other stakeholders, to whom training content may be relevant and valuable. Often companies can get more from their existing content by marketing it to a wider audience and charging course fees.
The success of implementing an LMS can be measured in many ways. Having the right skills, available at the right place and at the right time is key. In addition to this success can be measured in terms of financial results, company growth and efficiencies, customer satisfaction, employee retention and talent attraction. It can also be measured for its societal impact, with your organisation contributing to the future success of your people.
Adopting an organisational training culture, by investing in people and helping them continually develop their skills, should be more than training people in what the organisation decides is important. Part of the learning agenda should be based on what the individual chooses to learn about. The role of the company is to continually challenge and develop its people, starting at the top.
LMS VS Traditional learning
According to recent research undertaken by Fosway, as many as 97% of organisations surveyed are now using 'virtual classrooms' (an online environment for delivering training and for learning to take place) to support learning and development. An LMS creates a learner-centric environment, where the learner actively participates in the process of learning and is not just an inactive recipient of information.
Key attributes that differentiate an LMS from traditionally learning include:
- Learner Involvement
An LMS goes beyond routine learning, with built-in quizzes, tests, and interactive tools and elements, ensuring learner involvement in the course. These interactive elements help learners comprehend the concepts well, thereby improving the rates of retention. Engaged learners are motivated, inspired, and willing to invest effort in learning. In other words, they are a dream to teach. Luckily, while there are almost as many barriers to learner engagement as there are benefits, they can be eliminated with a few smart learner engagement strategies.
- Gamified learning
According to Gartner, gamification uses game mechanics and experience design to engage digitally and motivate a target audience to achieve their goals (be that of your staff, customers, employees or channel). An LMS that provides a gamified environment becomes more engaging and interactive, enabling learners to complete courses whilst having a fun and interesting learning experience.
- Easy Analytics
In addition to delivering a holistic learning experience, an LMS provides good reporting and tracking provisions, enabling better learner management. Each learners training path can be tracked, monitored, and reported on, highlighting the need for intervention when required.
- Mobile Learning
Being cloud-based, an LMS provides a compatible environment with the new-age learner. Learners can access training remotely from any device, any location and at any time.
- Collaborative Learning with Digital Repositories
Adopting an LMS can make learning more collaborative with the integration to tools, such as journals, blogs, wikis, chats, discussion forums, social media. The easy and intuitive navigation of social and collaborations tools makes the interface more appealing to learners.
- Audio/Visual Stimulations
Unlike traditional training methods, LMS brings with it the art of the possible when it comes to integrating audio and visual stimulations into the content, making it far more interactive and engaging.
The essential attributes of an LMS
To be successful, the learning experience provided by an LMS must be easy and fun to use and require no training beyond set-up, to engage with the system.
- A Learner-Centric Experience
The LMS should enable you to tailor the learning experience to each user or user group (such as internal employees, channel partners, customers, external users), with the ability to assign users to specific groups. This ensures that each user and/or group only has visibility of the appropriate training and information pertinent to them. Branding is another way to create a learner-centric experience. A great LMS will let you brand the interface based on user groups or departments. It also helps keep consistency across your company's online training presence.
- An Intuitive User Experience
The LMS must be easy to navigate, with a clean and modern interface that highlights the important information that users want and need to see, front and centre. When navigation is complicated, and users can't easily find what they need, this can negatively impact training. The interface should be customisable to suit your organisation's needs and the target audience for your training.
- Mobile Capabilities
In line with cloud-based trends, the LMS should, at a minimum, be mobile-responsive, resizing appropriately based on screen size. Some LMS solutions offer mobile apps to make training on the go even more accessible. One of the biggest benefits of these mobile apps is the offline sync feature that can save information and coursework even when a user isn't connected to a network.
- Built-in Reporting
One of the most essential features for system administrators should be reporting. LMS reports will help you prove training Return On Investment (ROI) to stakeholders and executives. Comprehensive reporting also provides specific measurement on training metrics and gauge effectiveness. Therefore, it is essential to ensure that the LMS you select has built-in mechanisms for tracking performance and ROI. Being able to set up and extract these reports without vendor reliance is also an important consideration.
- Native Integrations
A great LMS should easily integrate with most major HRIS, CRM, Payroll, Active Directory, and other business systems to make data syncing between departments and job functions easier and provide automation across platforms. This becomes increasingly important for companies who enforce specific training deadlines as a prerequisite for promotion or pay increases. These integrations can come as out-of-the-box integrations or be custom built. The real difference between the two is whether they work with just a few mouse clicks or a custom connector.
Survey tools can be used to administer pre-training assessments, post-training evaluations and gain training feedback, significantly improving training effectiveness. The LMS selected should have an integrated survey tool that administrators can use to easily and quickly create reports based on the collected data.
- Blended Learning Capabilities
Although the primary focus of an LMS is to provide online training, many organisations still require a blended (or Hybrid) approach that incorporates instructor-led and on-the-job training. For these organisations, a good LMS will have the tools and capabilities to track online registrations for face-to-face training sessions and to send email and SMS reminders at a minimum.
- Regular Updates
To keep up with industry trends and regulatory standards, the LMS provider should be SCORM or xAPI compliant
6 Top Tips on how to Select an LMS
Companies are moving to modern, cloud-based Learning Management Systems (LMS) in huge volumes, and the pandemic has only increased that urgency. If you think it looks like a bit of a minefield, some suggestions that will help you to determine and agree on your priorities and find an approach that works for you is contained in our latest ebook. Click here to download your copy.
Tugela People – Your Partner in Learning
Tugela People provide a complete solution for your Learning needs
Your e-Learning Platform
Train your people. Measure results. Drive growth.
Additionally, as part of the free trial, you can also have 14-days complimentary access to TalentLibrary (a collection of ready-made courses with a focus on soft skills, created by TalentLMS)
Having a Learning Management System (LMS) is just the start. An LMS provides you with a platform from which to deliver and manage your companies training programs. However, to ensure that the learning delivery is successful, you need to engage your learners through appealing and appropriate content.
Tugela People provide a complete and extensive e-Learning service to assist you in producing bespoke learning material that delivers on your desired outcomes and helps to achieve your company goals.
Post Implementation Support
Ongoing support for your LMS post-implementation ensures that your online training platform is streamlined and continues to meet your organisational requirements. Tugela People provide this as part of our Managed Services offerings.
HR Automation Services
LMS integration with other key business applications, allows you to move data between systems to automate tasks and gain access to integrated reporting. It is therefore strategic to combine L&D and HR assets to ensure a successful LMS integration with your existing HR systems.
Integrating your LMS with your HR System will enable you to
- reduce redundant data,
- provide more personalised online training,
- lower the risk of inaccurate user data,
- help to identify trends,
- provide more effective online training analytics,
- improve resource allocation,
- identify top talent, and
- improve online training ROI.
Tugela People provide a full Automation Service.
By partnering with Tugela People you’re assured of the best and most cost-effective LMS, with the confidence that your online learning is professionally implemented and managed.
To discuss your e-Learning requirements or book a demo, please contact us on tel +44(0)1908 030360 or email: email@example.com. Alternatively, complete the ‘Get in touch’ form and a member of our e-Learning team will be in contact with you. | <urn:uuid:4536f333-68ad-4452-a42b-5b67121ddab4> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://tugelapeople.com/solutions/learning-services/learning-management-systems-lms/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570741.21/warc/CC-MAIN-20220808001418-20220808031418-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.934993 | 3,643 | 1.5625 | 2 |
The news that Amtrak will ramp up repairs to its century-old Hudson River rail tunnel while a project to build a new tunnel languishes likely will translate into more headaches for already beleaguered commuters.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao told a House subcommittee Thursday that federal officials are working with Amtrak on a plan to accelerate the work now on the 110-year-old tunnel.
The new tunnel, proposed nine years ago as part of the larger Gateway project to transform rail capacity in the New York region, is mired in a funding dispute between the federal government and New York and New Jersey and currently is ineligible for federal grants.
Amtrak already shuts down one of the existing tunnel’s two tubes during overnight and weekend hours to repair damage accelerated by flooding from 2012’s Superstorm Sandy. The Gateway plan called for shutting down the tunnel for a complete overhaul once a new tunnel is built, but Chao said Thursday that beginning the repair work now “is the right move.” She noted that building a new tunnel would take seven to 10 years and cost an estimated $11 billion, under the most favorable conditions.
The new plan calls for more extensive repairs that will require further service disruptions, said Stephen Gardner, Amtrak’s senior executive vice president and chief operating and commercial officer.
“We’re trying to balance what we can do now with the impacts of doing it now,” Gardner told The Associated Press at a transportation conference in New York on Thursday. “If we have to curtail rush hour for the next five years to do some interim work, there’s huge impacts to that. So we’re tying to find that right balance.”
The most disruptive repairs could “require a complete outage at some point,” he added.
The problems — including water leaking in, crumbling walls, an outdated track bed and overhead wire issues — are so extensive that they won’t all be repaired, even under the new plan, Gardner conceded.
Gardner also cast doubt on the idea that 12,000-volt electrical cables currently encased in concrete damaged by Sandy can be installed on racks on the tunnel walls. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo opted for that approach to avoid a lengthy planned shutdown last year of New York City’s L subway line connecting Brooklyn and Manhattan. The idea has gained traction for the Amtrak tunnel in recent months, and Chao referred to it Thursday.
“This is not the same situation as the Canarsie tube, which is low voltage, 600 DC volts,” Gardner said. “People get confused about applying a method to a completely different technological solution. With 12,000 volts, it explodes, it arcs. You have to protect it in a fireproof, very robust encasement of some sort.” | <urn:uuid:4f008c19-0081-4ea1-a9ff-14d4dc6bb79c> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://thejewishvoice.com/2020/03/new-york-rail-tunnel-repairs-could-mean-more-rider-headaches-2/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571190.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810131127-20220810161127-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.941758 | 589 | 2.125 | 2 |
The popular tourist attraction in Jalgaon district is the famous Ajanta Caves which people come to see from all over the world. There are also many forts and temples in the city for the tourists. Located in the back water area of Hatnur dam is the Changdeo Temple which has fine work of art of the ancient times and marvelous designs which enchant the tourists. Then is the famous Ecchapurti Ganesh temple in Navi Peth which attracts a lot of devotees. There are also various other places to see in Jalgaon , one of which is the Gavtala Forestry which has a fountain that has originated from the Titur River. The Pitalkhora Caves in the forestry is another attraction which preserves rare wild creatures.
The Mahalaxmi Temple, Panhala Fort, Rankala Lake, Shahuji Chhatrapati Museum, Narsinhwadi Datta Mandir, Jyotiba Temple, Maharaja’s Palace, Kopeshwar Temple, Sajja Kothi, Dajipur Wildlife Sanctuary, Rautwadi Waterfall are some of the best places to visit in Jalgaon. From the best things to do in Jalgaon is to experience the Khandesh Mahotsav which provides a platform for showcasing various talents in art and culture. During this time one can also get a flavour of the typical Khandeshi dishes.
A beautiful hill station of Jalgaon known as Pal is counted among the top sightseeing places here.
The hill station is surrounded by villages which are homes for many tribal people. The place has a very cool climate and a very peaceful ambience making it a perfect picnic spot. The other tourism places in the district include the Parola Fort, which belonged to the Great Rani Laxmibai’s father, Patnadevi where the great scientist Bhaskaracharya was born.
The Swinging Towers of Farkande is another mesmerizing construction to be seen in Jalgaon. The speciality of these towers is that when on of the tower is waved the other starts waving naturally. Another holy place is the Unapdev hot-water body which had been touched by Lord Rama at the time of his exile from Ayodhya. Valjhari is the place which has the “Samadhi Sthala” of ‘Walmik Rishi’.
The other holiday places of the city include the Suki dam, Pitalkhore near Chalsigaon, Shirsoli Lake and the Kusumba Goshala. It is an amazing place to be visited by tourists heaped with exquisite temples, forts, waterfalls and many beautiful villages. We are here to provide you with best travel guide which is bound to make your trip remarkable. | <urn:uuid:eb2bf4bc-8239-4c89-86a4-b6f6b5389494> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.tourmyindia.com/states/maharashtra/jalgaon-tourist-attractions.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571190.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810131127-20220810161127-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.966695 | 585 | 1.820313 | 2 |
The Department of Justice and Housing and Urban Development have just issued a guidance document concerning sober homes and other types of group living arrangements. It should help provide some clarity to cities and towns still wrestling with issues related to group living after decades of litigation. At the same, however, the document reminds us of the sobering reality that the Department of Justice and Housing and Urban Development believe they are above the law in their roles as advocates for the disabled, and will not hesitate to use their essentially unlimited resources to litigate intellectually unsustainable positions.
On the helpful side, the Joint Statement provides Title II entities and even home owners associations some specific guidance. HUD and DOJ agree that neutral restrictions on the number of unrelated residents in a single family residence do not, by themselves, violate the Fair Housing Act. The same is true of facially neutral health and safety regulations. Problems arise under the Fair Housing Act when the operators of a group home request exemptions from these requirements.
At the same time, the Joint Statement makes it clear that HUD and DOJ will oppose ordinances that set distance or density restrictions that limit group homes. The argument is that such restrictions will effectively exclude group homes from certain neighborhoods, which violates the principle that those with disabilities, like members of other races and ethnic groups, should be integrated into the community as a whole. For reasons explained below, the Joint Statement probably overstates its case, but at least communities know where they stand.
The Joint Statement also includes a brief explanation of reasonable accommodation as it applies to both zoning restrictions and health and safety laws. The recommendation is typically bureaucratic; that is, cities should create new processes and probably hire new employees to deal with requests for exemptions related to the Fair Housing Act. A better recommendation might be that political decision makers be better educated in the requirements of the FHA. Looking at decisions involving zoning challenges under the FHA there is a clear pattern of stubborn politicians following the demands of their constituents right up to the point that a federal court of appeals tells them they are wrong and that they will have to pay the plaintiffs tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees. The Joint Statement properly reminds municipalities that if a zoning or health regulation has a discriminatory impact then there must be some rational non-discriminatory justification. Discrimination may get votes, but it won’t please the courts.
The Joint Statement does have a few defects. The most important is the lack of specificity about what will and will not pass muster. Zoning litigation concerning disability rights and group homes has long history, and given the time that has passed and the number of court decisions HUD and DOJ could have provided more specific guidance about what is and is not permitted.
Which brings me to the most serious problem with the Joint Statement. One reason HUD and DOJ do not discuss the abundant case law may be that they don’t agree with the courts and do not intend to follow the interpretations of the courts. The Joint Statement claims, for example, that “density restrictions are generally inconsistent with the Fair Housing Act.” A determination of whether density restrictions violate the FHA involves a complex analysis of housing patterns both in a municipality and in its immediate surroundings. See, County of Westchester v. U.S. Dept. of Hous. and Urb. Dev., 802 F.3d 413 (2d Cir. 2015). There is also an element of intent, with cases concerning density usually turning on whether the zoning was intended to discriminate. See, Quad Enterprises Co., LLC v. Town of Southold, 369 Fed. Appx. 202, 207 (2d Cir. 2010)(unpublished). In short, density restrictions are not “generally inconsistent” with the Fair Housing Act. HUD and DOJ would like a rule that density zoning violates the FHA, but it is not the law.
In a similar vein, the Joint Statement asserts that: “‘Handicap’ has the same legal meaning as the term “disability” which is used in other federal civil rights laws.” This is a position completely at odds with the language of the Fair Housing Act and the relatively few relevant court decisions. The definition of “disability” in the Americans with Disabilities Act was amended in 2008 to specifically overrule certain Supreme Court decisions that limited the definition. The Fair Housing Act was not amended, and every ordinary canon of construction requires the conclusion that Congress expanded the definition of “disability” under the ADA and chose not to expand the definition of “handicap” under the Fair Housing Act. One can argue that amending the FHA would have been a good idea, but it didn’t happen.* Again, HUD and DOJ are not describing the law as it is, but the law as they wish it were.
Of course even with this overreaching the Joint Statement is helpful. Knowing where DOJ and HUD stand is important because they have essentially unlimited resources for advancing their agenda, and in many cases it will be easier to avoid the fight than to win it. The Joint Statement gives municipalities and others involved in this kind of decision a reasonably clear picture of what will not satisfy HUD and DOJ, and that has its own value.
* For more on the meaning of “handicap” see “Disability” and “Handicap” are not the same, and it matters. | <urn:uuid:92ba9097-9d1e-48e9-9a22-806a63ac9529> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | http://accessdefense.com/?p=3306 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571190.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810131127-20220810161127-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.952671 | 1,100 | 2.1875 | 2 |
A week after Narendra Modi ordered the largest national lockdown the world has ever seen, Delhi's Bhogal market is little quieter than usual.
Rather than being confined to home to stop the spread of Covid-19, large groups of residents instead huddle together in the shade, drinking tea and playing cards.
Street vendors continue to hawk fresh fruit and vegetables and the police watch as daily life in the capital's backstreets continues, apparently content to enforce movement restrictions only on the capital's major thoroughfares.
The failure to abide by the prime minister's decree is due to necessity, rather than defiance, said Muhammad Asif, 21, a cycle-rickshaw driver scanning the crowd for customers.
The three-week-long social distancing precautions ordered by Mr Modi are an unaffordable luxury for tens of millions of daily-wage labourers.
With no savings to his name, Mr Asif cannot afford to remain at home and needs his daily earnings of a little over £5 to cover food, rent and medical bills for his family.
"We absolutely do not have any money to take the government precautions," Mr Asif he explained.
Sanitiser, a mask, soap and even excess water to wash his hands are beyond his reach.
"If death has to come, it will come wherever I am, I can’t afford to run away," he says.
The problem of millions forced to choose between poverty and defying restrictions is quickly turning into both a public health emergency and political headache for the Indian leader.
An estimated 120 million Indian labourers are in the same predicament as Mr Asif, and Mr Modi has been accused of causing a humanitarian disaster by locking down the cities and unleashing a wave of poor migrant workers.
Many of those who have been forced out of work have streamed back along highways and railway lines to their home states and villages, potentially spreading the coronavirus infection into the country's hinterlands.
Mr Modi's lockdown was a knee-jerk reaction without thought for the consequences to the poor, claimed Manish Tewari, an MP for the Congress party.
"You have millions of poor, marginalised, displaced on the march and the government has left them to their own fate," he told The Telegraph.
"You have millions of people carrying their meagre belongings and having to march hundreds of kilometres to find safety."
The spectacle of destitute workers setting out to walk hundreds of miles home after they lost their jobs caused Mr Modi to make a rare apology.
Many of those hardest hit are from his own party faithful.
"I apologise for taking these harsh steps that have caused difficulties in your lives, especially the poor people," Mr Modi said in his monthly address on Sunday, broadcast on state radio.
"I know some of you will be angry with me. But these tough measures were needed to win this battle."
While India by Tuesday, 31 March had reported barely 1,500 cases and fewer than 50 deaths, health officials fear the virus could wreak havoc in the world's second most populated nation.
A lack of testing is thought to hide a far more widespread infection among the 1.3 billion population.
Moreover, in a country which spends little on healthcare and where many poor extended families live in cramped lodgings, the conditions could favour a rapid spread of the killer virus.
India's young population may be expected to provide some protection from worst of the death rates seen elsewhere.
The median age in the country is 28, compared with 47 in Italy.
But at the same time, the country is plagued with health conditions known to increase the impact of the pneumonia-causing virus.
India has more diabetics than any other country, while it also has the highest burden of tuberculosis. Indian cities top the world for the worst air pollution.
Faced with the threat, and a widespread failure to comply with restrictions, some neighbourhoods were taking their own protective measures on Tuesday.
After the south Delhi neighbourhood of Nizamuddin was identified as one of 10 coronavirus hotpots, residents of the neighbouring Sarai Kale Khan area used police barricades to block a connecting underpass.
Those trying to cross were threatened.
One distraught mother said she had crossed to buy groceries and become trapped, unable to reach her young children stranded on the other side.
Several streets away, The Telegraph was chased away by an angry mob claiming the disease is only being spread by foreigners.
Back at Bhogal market, Rakesh Kumar Jain, a 60-year-old greengrocer, said business was good despite the lockdown.
Few people had fridges, forcing them to come out and shop each day and add to the daily crowds, he said.
"People are seeing all the facilities around them in the market, so why would they stay at home," added one resident, Sanjay Goel, from his balcony.
"They are leaving their homes even for one lemon. It is going to spread." | <urn:uuid:82437f0f-ce84-484a-bcb3-f97832ffe932> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/03/india-coronavirus-lockdown-covid-19/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571190.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810131127-20220810161127-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.977663 | 1,031 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Heidelberg Catechism Question and Answer #28 says:
Q. What advantage is it to us to know that God has created, and by His Providence doth still uphold all things?
A. That we may be patient in adversity; thankful in prosperity; and that in all things, which may hereafter befall us, we place our firm trust in our faithful God and Father, that nothing shall separate us from His love; since all creatures are so in His hand, that without His will they cannot so much as move.
Faith in God feels belief in His unfailing providence.
Three precious everyday results are summarized in the answer above.
- Patience in adversity.
- Thankfulness in prosperity.
- Trust for the future.
How desparately our world needs faith in God!
How desperately I, and every believer, need to daily apply our faith in God as we interpret what we experience. Yes, to more patience, thankfulness, and trust. But from where do they originate? They sprout as fruit of the Holy Spirit as we feed upon God’s gracious promises to us in scripture. | <urn:uuid:86157a54-1567-40dc-a13b-448671fa7012> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | http://trinitynorman.com/what-difference-does-faith-make-6-15-2020/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571502.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811194507-20220811224507-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.95023 | 234 | 2.40625 | 2 |
The second part of a three part piece on incentives. It turns out that if you've grokked the primary incentives of an industry, you can do one other thing: identify aberrations, and use that as a guide to dig further.
What an understanding of incentives can do for you, through the lens of one industry that we're all familiar with.
Good news: we have a neat, universal milestone on the journey to mastery. What that looks like, and how to use it.
In countries with weak institutions, how things should work is often different from how things actually work. A reminder of what that feels like at the ground level.
Mentor relationships can be absolutely wonderful over the arc of a career. This is a simple way to think about finding and keeping good mentors.
How to hunt for useful expertise research, emotional regulation work, or better learning techniques, straight from the primary literature.
Cognitive Flexibility Theory: the caveats. Also: a look at kind vs wicked learning domains, and what this tells us about building expertise in messy, real world domains.
What happens if cases are more important than principles in your domain? Some non-obvious implications.
What Cognitive Flexibility Theory tells us about the acceleration of expertise in ill-structured domains.
Why bother learning history, when history isn't likely to repeat itself? We take a look at what Cognitive Flexibility Theory tells us about the best way to learn from other people's experiences. | <urn:uuid:1be2eb5e-824c-467a-8c88-9a40fec383a9> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://commoncog.com/page/2/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570913.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20220809064307-20220809094307-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.928448 | 304 | 1.992188 | 2 |
Nintendo and Sega. Hardware rivals for decades, and even today they remain the archetype Japanese video game companies. Only, Sega isn't entirely Japanese. It was founded by some American guys.
While Nintendo, with its history in trading cards and love hotels, is as Japanese as they come, Sega's history can actually be traced back to two companies and four men, who saw an opportunity to make a buck from American forces serving in occupied Japan.
What follows is not a complete history of Sega itself; just that of its origins as a pair of American companies pioneering amusement machine entertainment in Japan.
In 1940, just prior to America's involvement in the Second World War, three businessmen - Martin Bromley(who was actually at Pearl Harbour when the Japanese attacked on December 7, 1941), Irving Bromberg, and James Humpert - formed a company called Standard Games, which was located in Hawaii. The idea was that, with war on the horizon, there would be a lot of men on military bases, and those men would need something to kill their spare time with. So Standard Games sold coin-operated amusement machines (mostly slot machines) to these bases.
After the war, and especially given the fact Japan was now under Allied occupation, Standard Games' (which was now known as Service Games thanks to its military focus) saw a massive opportunity with the number of relatively idle American personnel stationed in Japan. Its US-based business was also under attack from state governments seeking to outlaw coin-operated gambling machines. So in 1951 the company upped sticks and moved to Tokyo. A year later, the company changed its name again, to Service Games of Japan.
The move to Japan saw the company's focus change; while initially only selling machines to US military bases, Service Games of Japan quickly found a market with private Japanese consumers and businesses as well.
Meanwhile in 1954, another Japan-based amusement company run by an American (David Rosen) was founded. Rosen Enterprises' speciality was importing photo booth machines from America, which led the company to expand its business to later include coin-op machines as well.
In 1965, seeing the advantages to be had in pooling their resources in a booming market, these two businesses would merge. The resulting company would thus be known as Sega (a shortening of Service Games) Enterprises.
In 1966, Sega released its first arcade game: Periscope. Appearing before electronic arcade games were invented, Periscope was a submarine battle game which was operated mechanically. Your targets were small plastic ships, and the player's torpedo attacks were illuminated on the game "screen" by flashing light bulbs.
Periscope was a hit, so much so that machines were sold and shipped to America, and it set Sega on a path of electronic arcade gaming it's still on to this day. Yet it was also a catalyst for the end of the unique and sole American ownership of the company.
In 1969, giant corporation Gulf+Western purchased Sega. While they presided over a continued enlargement of Sega's business (including Sega's first home console, the SG-1000), by the time of the video game market crash of 1983, the now gaming-focused company was in dire straits, and was split in two by its owners. Its American components were sold off to pinball company Bally, while the Japanese side of the business was snapped up by a group led by Japanese arcade magnate Hayao Nakayama and one of the original four founders, David Rosen (pictured left).
A year later, this "new" Sega was purchased by Japanese IT giants CSK Holdings Corporation, whose boss - Isao Okawa - was actually a friend of Rosen. The last American to be involved so closely with the upper echelons of Sega, Rosen would continue on with the company, first as head of Sega of America and then as a Chairman of Sega, until his retirement in 1996.
[Slot machine pics: Sega Retro] | <urn:uuid:9ce3a05c-767b-4739-adf6-0a18befb4fea> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://kotaku.com/meet-the-four-americans-who-built-sega-5788468 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570741.21/warc/CC-MAIN-20220808001418-20220808031418-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.98245 | 805 | 2.46875 | 2 |
Amount of cash in circulation increased in June to 12.4 trillion roubles, estimated the Central Bank of the Russian Federation.
According to the regulator, from June 2019 to March 2020 the amount of cash ranged between 10-10,6 trillion roubles, depending on the month, then at the end of March the figure had risen to 11.2 trillion rubles at the end of April to 11.7 trillion rubles, at the end of may — up to 12 trillion rubles, reports TASS.
the number in circulation in Russia of metallic money broke the record, reaching 68.2 billion coins showing growth since the beginning of the year by 0.5%, says RIA “Novosti”.
In total in the Russian economy are traded money metal on the 108,8 billion rubles, which is 1.9 billion more than six months ago.
Recall also that, according to the CBR, the monetary base in narrow definition has increased from 3 to 10 July 2020 117,9 billion to 12 trillion 980,4 billion.
the Monetary base in narrow definition includes the released cash (taking into account balances in tills of credit institutions) and balances on accounts of compulsory reserves by attracted by credit organizations resources in the national currency, deposited in Bank of Russia.
Stories about how you tried to get help from the Russian state in terms of coronaries and what came of it, email it to email@example.com | <urn:uuid:091905dd-bc76-4e29-baf6-7d6e2e38049e> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.tiendagourmet.co/in-russia-they-have-calculated-the-amount-of-cash-in-circulation | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571190.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810131127-20220810161127-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.956945 | 303 | 2.140625 | 2 |
Market Research Future published a research report on “Covid-19 Impact on Gesture Recognition Market Research Report- Forecast to 2023” – Market Analysis, Scope, Stake, Progress, Trends and Forecast to 2023.
Gesture Recognition refers to an emerging technology that recognizes human gesture to communicate and control the electronic devices. Gesture refers to movements of hands, fingers, body and other physiological controls. This technology uses various sensors namely infrared sensors, image sensors among others to recognize and interact with the devices. Therefore, the global Gesture Recognition market is segment on the basis of product into two segments as touch less and touch based segment.
The various application that includes education, construction, gaming and among others where gesture recognition technology are widely being used. Gesture-based technologies have the potential to be transformative technology because of its potential that are used beyond learning. They don’t just replace one form of passive learning with another, i.e. the text book with an eBook but also create endless possibilities as to how to engage the learner in a multitude of resource types and scenarios.
Get Sample of Report @ https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/5244
Apart of automotive industry this technology is also being used in the gaming industry, unlike Microsoft Kinetic system for the Xbox game console. This device helps to detect motion from a distance of upto 10 feet. As compare to the 2D camera gesture recognition is gaining more populartity due to its enhanced results. Due to the enhanced output various process manufacturing companies are investing in gesture recognition technology, as a result of which gesture recognition is expected to become common in tablets, smartphones, and other devices in the years to come.
The Covid-19 Impact on Gesture Recognition Market is growing rapidly over ~27.58% of CAGR and is expected to reach at USD ~ 26.94 billion by the end of forecast period
Global Gesture Recognition Market Segmentation:
The global gesture recognition market is segmented on the basis of technology, product, application and region. On the basis of technology the segment is further classified into sensors, 2D gesture technology and 3D gesture technology. On the basis of product the segment is further classified into touch less and touch based system. The gesture recognition technology is having wide area of application such as automotive, healthcare, transportation, IT, commercial, telecom and many more.
- Component and equipment suppliers
- Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs)
- Original design manufacturers (ODMs)
- Installers and maintenance service providers
- Research organizations
- Component integrators
- Technology providers
Some of the key players in the market are Microsoft Corporation (U.S.), Intel Corporation (U.S), Apple Inc. (U.S), Iris guard (Jordan), Qualcomm Inc.(U.S), Prime Sense Limited (Isreal), Omron Corporation (Japan), SoftKinetic (Belgium), Texas Instruments (U.S.), Infineon Technologies (Germany) and others.
Market Research Analysis:
On geographic basis, global gesture recognition market is studied in different regions as North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and Rest of world. The Asia Pacific region dominated the gesture recognition market in terms of revenue in 2016 and is expected to have significant growth over the forecast period. Companies are adopting partnership strategies for targeting untapped markets and product innovations. The market at present is leaded by North American and European countries on account of higher safety and hygiene concerns. In future, Asia-Pacific region is expected to hold largest revenue share due to rapidly increasing adoption of touch-less biometric products.
Get complete Report @ https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/gesture-recognition-market-5244
TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Tables
Table 1 Market Factor Analysis
Table 2 Global Gesture Recognition Market, By Technology (Usd Billion)
Table 3 Sensor Technology, Gesture Recognition Market, By Region (Usd Billion)
Table 4 2d Gesture Technology Gesture Recognition Market, By Region (Usd Billion)
Table 5 3d Gesture Technology Gesture Recognition Market, By Region (Usd Billion)
Table 6 Global Gesture Recognition Market, By Application (Usd Billion)
Table 7 Automotive Gesture Recognition Market, By Region (Usd Billion)
Table 8 Healthcare Gesture Recongnition Market, By Region (Usd Billion)
Table 9 Consumer Electronic, Gesture Recognition Market, By Region (Usd Billion)
Table 10 Transport Gesture Recognition Market, By Region (Usd Billion)
Table 11 Commercial Gesture Recognition Market, By Region (Usd Billion)
Table 12 It/Telecom Gesture Recognition Market, By Region (Usd Billion)
Table 13 Others Gesture Recognition Market, By Region (Usd Billion)
Table 14 Global Gesture Recognition Market, By Product (Usd Billion)
Table 15 Touchless Gesture Recognition Market, By Application (Usd Billion)
Table 16 Touchbased Gesture Recognition Market, By Application (Usd Billion)
Table 17 Global Gesture Recognition Market, By Region (Usd Billion)
Table 18 North America Gesture Recognition Market, By Country (Usd Billion)
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At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.
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+1 646 845 9312 | <urn:uuid:38d7ab51-d218-4709-8f39-5f3eb498c2ac> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://akashict.mystrikingly.com/blog/covid-19-impact-on-gesture-recognition-market-with-focus-on-competitive | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571502.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811194507-20220811224507-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.890812 | 1,251 | 2.03125 | 2 |
MILWAUKEE (AP) — Hillary Clinton embraced rival Bernie Sanders' call for fixing a "rigged" economy that favors the wealthy in Thursday night's Democratic debate, but said the Vermont senator's plans to pay for it add up to promises "that cannot be kept."
Clinton and Sanders split the first two states in the Democratic primary battle, potentially setting the stage for a long fight for the party's nomination. After contests in overwhelmingly white states, the race now turns to states with more racially diverse populations.
While Sanders has energized young people with his call for free tuition at public colleges and universities, as well as a government-run, single-payer health care system, Clinton said those proposals come with unrealistic price tags. And she accused Sanders of trying to shade the truth about what she said would be a 40 percent increase in the size of the federal government in order to implement his policies.
"I feel like we have to level with people," she said.
Sanders didn't put a price on his policies, but neither did he shy away from the notion that he wants to expand the size of government.
"In my view, the government of a democratic society has a moral responsibility to play a vital role in making sure all our people have a decent standard of living," Sanders said. | <urn:uuid:406188e6-1adb-4389-bfa1-938667300817> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.wkbw.com/news/us-news-world/clinton-says-sanders-making-promises-that-cannot-be-kept | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571190.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810131127-20220810161127-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.970757 | 266 | 1.640625 | 2 |
The last post was all about Swallow Greenhouses a great range of timber frame greenhouses to suit a wide range of garden styles, below is what they say on the back of their brochure some sound advice about greenhouse bases.
Greenhouse Base Advice
The idea base for the greenhouse would be;
- Paving slabs to encourage natural drainage
- Solid concrete base to the size of the greenhouse with a minimum 4″ thickness
- Concrete strip footing again with a minimum 4″ thickness
- Dwarf wall can be built – heights to be advised
The base can be larger than the greenhouse if required by the customer but it must not be any smaller.
Most importantly the base must be level
Lean to Base Advice
There are additional factors to be considered if a lean-to greenhouse is purchased. In addition to the advice above, the following must also apply;
- The base must be 90 degrees to the wall and level
- Swallow (GB) will ask if the wall is straight and will request photographs if necessary Swallow (GB) will ask the type and height of the wall upon receipt of the order.
Swallow(GB) will ask the type and height of the wall upon receipt of the order
We require the following height clearances for access as all panels are pre-glazed in the factory;
- Finch, Cygnet, Jay, Kingfisher – 6′ 6″
- Heron, Mallard, Swan, Raven, Rook, Falcon, Eagle – 8′ 6″
Once the order is received, we will forward a base plan for the building. We then ask you to contact us when the base is ready to enable us to plan installation.
All Swallow (GB) Buildings have the following features as standard
- All the redwood pine is thermally modified
- All the boards are fixed with stainless steel nails
- The inward-opening door has a mortice lock and lever handle
- All the glass is toughened (tempered) safety glass (three times stronger than standard)
- The glass is slid into a groove and sealed with quality silicone (this is very reliable and makes it resilient to adverse weather conditions)
- The glass shapes are joined with a clear plastic ‘H-Section’ (clean looking and easy to wipe)
- Each roof vent is fitted with a Bayliss automatic opener
- There is a plastic section fixed around the bottom of the greenhouse. This keeps the timber off the ground, prolonging the life of the building. | <urn:uuid:a0f15499-cfd0-404b-ba1e-8addd6821140> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.taylorsgardenbuildings.co.uk/blog/category/greenhouses/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570741.21/warc/CC-MAIN-20220808001418-20220808031418-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.917509 | 528 | 1.78125 | 2 |
The AZ Museum (Museum of Anatoly Zverev) presents one of its most successful exhibition projects "Faces / Faces / Muzzles". The exhibition is timed to coincide with t...
April 25, 2022 marks exactly 100 years since the organization of the first restoration workshop at the Russian M...
The exhibition dedicated to the 165th anniversary of Mikhail Aleksandrovich Vrubel (1856-1910) will present the main stages of the path ...
The exhibition dedicated to the 350th anniversary of the birth of the first Ru...
The language of animation ever more often is replacing the language of traditional figurative art. The exhibition showcases works by Russian arti...
|Monday||10:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.|
|Mikhailovsky Palace, Benois Wing are open until 8:p.m.|
|Tuesday||The museum is closed|
|Wednesday||10:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.|
|Thursday||1:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.|
|Friday||10:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.|
|Saturday||10:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.|
|Sunday||10:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.|
Ticket offices close 30 minutes earlier
4 Inzhenernaya Str., St. Petersburg
Metro - Gostiny Dvor, Nevsky Prospekt
After the October Revolution of 1917, thousands of nationalized works of art from private collections and religious objects belonging to cathedrals and monasteries across Russia began to converge on the walls of state museums. The enlargement of collections and the creation of new departments that held pieces of various ages and materials were a reason for major museums of the country to organize conservation departments. In 1922, by a decision of the Council of the Department of Arts, such a studio was created at the Russian Museum. It was run by the experienced art conservator N.A. Okolovich, an enthusiast of activities in the museum sphere. In order to restore various kinds of items for exhibition, he and his colleagues had to creatively rethink the traditional methods of the national school of art conservation, and create new methodology for the preservation of various materials. These years laid the foundation upon which all subsequent generations of conservators have built their work, transferring their knowledge and skills to one another. During the war years of 1941-1945, conservators, along with the rest of museum staff, actively participated in the evacuation of the museum’s works to Perm, where the main part of the collection was stored. Some staff members remained in blockaded Leningrad, where they monitored the building and the works of art that remained.
After the war, a new period began for conservation work and bringing the work into exhibition condition. The focus of art conservation department’s work became preserving works of art and preventing further damage. The staff of the department also participated in the recreation of new exhibitions. During the postwar period, the art conservation department’s work was concentrated on preservation and the conservation of artworks. In a number of cases, the old methods needed to be reexamined, especially regarding the conservation of Old Russian painting.
The museum’s wide-ranging expedition activities in the 1950s drastically increased the size of the collection. The scientific study of the new acquisitions, the accumulation of information and analyses, and the necessity of broadening knowledge about materials and the execution of conservation techniques led to a differentiated approach to the study and preservation of the pieces. A result of this process was the goal of having conservators with narrower specializations. At the beginning of the 1950s, the conservation studio was divided into new subdivisions. Thus, the studio for graphic restoration (1953) and Old Russian painting (1954) were created. At the beginning of the 1960s, the wooden sculpture, decorative carving and furniture department and the textile department were created. In 1969, an independent studio for the restoration of plaster and stone sculpture was created.
In later years, new studios were created, in particular, the division of Conservation of Applied Arts (1970), which works with ceramics, glass, and metal pieces; and the Frame Restoration Division (1981). The studio for paintings in mixed media was made into its own division (1990). This process continues to the present day. Aiming toward a complex study of the works and the reveal of its characteristic peculiarities on the one hand, and the emergence of new technology and methods of scientific research based on the latest scientific achievements on the other led to creation of physics and chemistry laboratories in 1970. These divisions became bases for analysis and scientific experiments in solving problems for preservation and conservation of pieces. The goal of analyzing and understanding processes connected with the development of the theory of conservation and the study of the ethics of restoring works led to the establishment of the Division of the Theory and History of Museum Art Conservation.
A defining characteristic of the contemporary state of art conservation at the Russian Museum is the scientific approach to all stages of work. This applies to the comprehensive technological, historical, and artistic study of the work before conservation work begins, the development of the optimal and safest method of intervention based on the results of said study, the discussion of the information received from conservation councils, and objective and accurate documentation and monitoring while the work is in progress.
Today, the Russian Museum’s Art Conservation Department is a contemporary scientific conservation center consisting of 16 divisions staffed by 96 specialists of the highest professional level.
The collection of masterpieces, chosen by the Russian Museum will allow you to make a first impression of the collection of the Russian Museum.
Russian Museum - one of the world's largest museums and is perhaps the only country where such a full treasure of national culture are presented.
Virtual tour of the museum complex. 2009 (Rus., Eng., Ger., Fin.)
In the online shop of the Russian Museum presented a huge range of souvenirs, illustrated editions and multimedia disks.
Be informed about news, events and exhibitions of the Russian Museum
The State Russian Museum
The Russian Museum is the exclusive owner of all the interior images and pieces of art of the Russian Museum collection, as well as all the images and text information given on its official site. The usage of the texts and images provided on the site is only allowed with the permission of the Russian Museum. | <urn:uuid:2fb07544-507d-42cd-8de4-45caa4176a98> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | http://en.rusmuseum.ru/about/the-art-conservation-department/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571502.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811194507-20220811224507-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.950913 | 1,335 | 2.109375 | 2 |
Antarctic Summer Ice Melting Intensifies 10-Fold And Higher Over 1,000 Years
15 April, 2013
A new 1,000-year Antarctic Peninsula climate reconstruction shows that summer ice melting has intensified almost ten-fold, and mostly since the mid-20th century. Summer ice melt affects the stability of Antarctic ice shelves and glaciers.
The research, published this week in the journal Nature Geoscience, adds new knowledge to the international effort that is required to understand the causes of environmental change in Antarctica and to make more accurate projections about the direct and indirect contribution of Antarctica's ice shelves and glaciers to global sea level rise.
In 2008, a UK-French science team drilled a 364-metre long ice core from James Ross Island, near the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, to measure past temperatures in the area. They discovered that this ice core could also give a unique and unexpected insight into ice melt in the region.
Visible layers in the ice core indicated periods when summer snow on the ice cap thawed and then refroze. By measuring the thickness of these melt layers the scientists were able to examine how the history of melting compared with changes in temperature at the ice core site over the last 1,000 years.
Lead author Dr Nerilie Abram of The Australian National University and British Antarctic Survey (BAS) says, "We found that the coolest conditions on the Antarctic Peninsula and the lowest amount of summer melt occurred around 600 years ago. At that time temperatures were around 1.6°C lower than those recorded in the late 20th Century and the amount of annual snowfall that melted and refroze was about 0.5%. Today, we see almost ten times as much (5%) of the annual snowfall melting each year.
"Summer melting at the ice core site today is now at a level that is higher than at any other time over the last 1000 years. And whilst temperatures at this site increased gradually in phases over many hundreds of years, most of the intensification of melting has happened since the mid-20th century."
This is the first time it has been demonstrated that levels of ice melt on the Antarctic Peninsula have been particularly sensitive to increasing temperature during the 20th century.
Dr Abram explains, "What that means is that the Antarctic Peninsula has warmed to a level where even small increases in temperature can now lead to a big increase in summer ice melt."
Dr Robert Mulvaney from the British Antarctic Survey led the ice core drilling expedition and co-authored the paper. He says, "Having a record of previous melt intensity for the Peninsula is particularly important because of the glacier retreat and ice shelf loss we are now seeing in the area. Summer ice melt is a key process that is thought to have weakened ice shelves along the Antarctic Peninsula leading to a succession of dramatic collapses, as well as speeding up glacier ice loss across the region over the last 50 years."
In other parts of Antarctica, such as the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, the picture is more complex and it is not yet clear that the levels of recent ice melt and glacier loss are exceptional or caused by human-driven climate changes.
Dr Abram concludes, "This new ice core record shows that even small changes in temperature can result in large increases in the amount of melting in places where summer temperatures are near to 0°C, such as along the Antarctic Peninsula, and this has important implications for ice instability and sea level rise in a warming climate."
The story is reprinted from materials provided by British Antarctic Survey.
Nerilie J. Abram, Robert Mulvaney, Eric W. Wolff, Jack Triest, Sepp Kipfstuhl, Luke D. Trusel, Françoise Vimeux, Louise Fleet, Carol Arrowsmith. Acceleration of snow melt in an Antarctic Peninsula ice core during the twentieth century. Nature Geoscience, 2013; DOI: 10.1038/ngeo1787
British Antarctic Survey (2013, April 14). New insight into accelerating summer ice melt on the Antarctic Peninsula. ScienceDaily. Retrieved April 15, 2013, from
Comments are moderated | <urn:uuid:a4822b4e-1a75-4549-b933-535f0b07d01c> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.countercurrents.org/cc150413B.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571190.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810131127-20220810161127-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.93864 | 894 | 3.640625 | 4 |
Accounting is no stranger to automation. In fact, it was one of the first professions to automate. If you don’t believe us, take a look at the number pad on your extended PC keyboard. That 7-8-9 on the top row comes straight from the old adding machines. Keyboard designers wanted accounting users to have a familiar key layout for typing in financial information. Yes, accountants and bookkeepers were automating their work more than a century ago.
The profession is slightly stuck, however. While computers revolutionized accounting, a lot of people in the field are still using that PC number pad to enter figures by hand. Manual processes abound in accounting. It’s not optimal, but don’t worry. Help has arrived.
Today, it is possible to automate many repetitive, time-consuming accounting tasks using modern systems like Sage 100cloud. We have advised many clients on the adoption of this powerful accounting and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software. It’s a wise practice, for reasons we will now discuss.
How Accounting Automation Works
Until recently, accounting systems were only semi-automated. They stored financial data in organized accounts and performed the arithmetic of accounting for us. Accounting software could also automatically perform previously manual tasks like tax return preparation and deadline reminder notification. These were indeed time savers, but so much is now possible.
Sage100cloud employs artificial intelligence (AI) to enable accounting systems to perform “thinking” tasks. For example, the system can ingest paper invoices, digitize them, post them to accounts payable (AP) journal and determine when they are due. It can perform account reconciliations, and more.
Why It’s Smart to Automate Accounting
In our experience, accountants reap many returns on the investment in automation. Reducing errors is an immediate and compelling benefit. Keying in numbers by hand inevitably leads to errors, with accidental transposition of digits and so forth. The resulting mistakes come with a cost. There can be rework and time wasted looking for where things went wrong. Errors can negatively affect client relationships as well.
Other advantages of accounting automation include:
- Increased efficiency—automation makes accounting employees more productive. When they can let the machine do tasks that previously had to be done by hand, they can handle more work.
- Staff satisfaction—accounting work can be dull and repetitive if it’s largely manual. This leads to burnout and potentially to staff turnover. Automation lets people concentrate on more challenging and interesting tasks.
- Mobility—modern accounting software packages like Sage100cloud come with intelligent mobile apps. They give clients the ability to engage in accounting processes while they are out of the office. For example, with automated, app-based expense tracking, a user can snap a picture of a receipt and the accounting software will automatically log it into the expense ledger and categorize it. This is arguably preferable to having clients turning over boxes of paper receipts at the end of the year.
- Growth—automation can help your practice grow by making your staff more productive. People can handle more client work because they no longer have to deal with the repetitive grind of manual accounting processes.
To learn more about accounting automation, contact us for a free consultation and demonstration of Sage100cloud. | <urn:uuid:c8a3c60b-4735-46cd-b722-788e509e848e> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://kissingerassoc.com/the-importance-of-automating-your-accounting-process/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572163.61/warc/CC-MAIN-20220815085006-20220815115006-00665.warc.gz | en | 0.936547 | 686 | 2.546875 | 3 |
Daily Oracle Card ~ Blessings
In many ancient cultures, it was believed that there were some springs that were holy. Gods and goddesses were thought to reside in or near these special places, and they were revered.
Greek mythology is replete with stories of these special places. Many of the Christian hallowed water sources, such as the Chalice Well, were used for sacred purposes long before Christianity rose to prominence. These kinds of springs were thought to be healing waters where blessings were bestowed by mystical beings.
The Sacred Landscape Wants You to Know:
Immense blessings are emerging into your life from those in Spirit. Angels, guides, and spirit guardians are watching over you. Angelic intervention is available to you.
Be open to the voice of the Divine. Messages are all around you.
You are protected; you are safe. Have faith that your path is guided.
Watch for signs that spiritual beings are present. Profound healing energy is flowing to you in wondrous ways.
Refreshing, replenishing energy is filling your life.
Sacred Destiny Oracles | <urn:uuid:3775ece1-670e-401c-887b-dc84776bba0b> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.psychiccowgirl.com/blessings-2/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571190.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810131127-20220810161127-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.978955 | 226 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Farmers have already exceeded the fixed potato cultivation target by 0.19 percent in Rangpur agriculture region where sowing of its seeds continues during this Rabi season. Officials of the Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE) said a bumper potato production is likely as harvest of its early varieties continues with excellent yield rates in the region. Market sources said farmers got excellent prices between Taka 35 and Taka 50 per kg depending on varieties of potatoes in the beginning of harvest of early varieties of potatoes from late November last. However, farmers are currently getting comparatively lower prices between Taka eight and 20 per kg of potatoes amid huge supply of the newly harvested potatoes in local markets. The DAE officials said a target of producing 23.67 lakh tonnes of potato has been fixed from 93,350 hectares of land for all five districts in the region this season. "Meanwhile, farmers have already brought 97,305 hectares of land under potato cultivation crossing the fixed farming target by 0.19 percent," Additional Director of the DAE for Rangpur region Agriculturist Md. Mahbubur Rahman said. Farmers will continue sowing potato seeds till this month-end alongside harvesting early varieties of potatoes in all five districts of Rangpur, Gaibandha, Nilphamari, Kurigram and Lalmonirhat in the region. Presently, early varieties of potatoes that were cultivated after harvesting short duration and hybrid varieties of Aman rice on their croplands are being harvested while harvest of late varieties will begin from March next.
The DAE, Bangladesh Agricultural Development Corporation, Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute and related agencies and institutions provided quality potato seeds to farmers to make the potato cultivation program a success.
"The field level DAE officials are providing the latest technologies to farmers for ensuring proper nursing of their growing potato plants to get better yield in the face of the current cold wave," Rahman added.
Talking to BSS, farmers Mohammad Ali, Abdul Wahab, Mansur Ali, Lokman Hossain and Shamsul Haque of different villages in Rangpur Sadar said they have cultivated early varieties of potatoes after harvesting short duration Aman rice.
"We earned better profits after harvesting early varieties of potatoes last month and are transplanting Boro rice seedlings on the same land," said farmer Manik Miah of Doroshna village in Rangpur.
Farmers Mohsin Ali, Dulal Hossain, Shariful Haque, Arshedul Alam and Ariful Haque of different villages said they have completed sowing of potato seeds last week on their crop lands. Predicting a bumper potato production, farmer Ariful Haque of village Najirdigar in Rangpur Sadar stressed on taking additional steps for ensuring proper preservation facilities of potatoes in the region.
President of Rangpur Chamber Mostafa Sohrab Chowdhury Titu also stressed on enhancing potato preservation facilities and export to make potato farming more profitable to farmers in Rangpur region. | <urn:uuid:15e142ff-eda4-446d-9772-ebb7dd2285fe> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://bangladeshpost.net/posts/potato-farming-target-exceeds-in-rangpur-region-77369 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570913.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20220809064307-20220809094307-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.943479 | 605 | 1.601563 | 2 |
A message from Alexander Höptner, CEO of BitMEX
Reader beware: the following piece contains unpopular opinions, but it will make you think.
It’s such an interesting time to be in the crypto world. It’s a true meritocracy – the market identifies the most effective technology, the most creative applications, and the best ideas.
Zoom out, and there’s also a ‘battle of ideologies’ happening on a more macro level. Amid the constant hum of new regulation, product innovation, and the merging of crypto and popular culture (NFTs, anyone?), there’s a raging debate about the risks inherent to crypto markets, and what should be done about them.
The truth is that this is the first time in history when so many people all over the world are grappling with the fundamental differences between traditional markets and crypto markets. And, as anyone who has jumped into the crypto universe knows, there’s a learning curve.
So I thought it appropriate to share my perspective on one hot topic that’s at the centre of the ideological tussle – leverage.
The simple truth is this – leverage is useful for a range of trading strategies, both in the traditional markets and in the crypto markets. But there’s a key improvement in crypto markets that takes away significant downside to the trader – the nonexistence of near unlimited liability. This structural improvement is often ignored by critics, yet is the key to understanding how our markets differ. So let’s shake off our biases and talk about it.
Let’s talk about leverage
In the relatively short history of crypto derivatives, leverage has been celebrated and criticised in equal measures, and gravely misunderstood.
In crypto markets, using leverage allows a trader to magnify the effective size of their position by multiplying their exposure in relation to their initial margin. In other words, if you would like to use US$100 as margin to take a position on the rise (or fall) of the price of bitcoin, you can choose to use 5x leverage to make the effective position size US$500.
When your position size is higher on a successful trade, your return will also be higher (although it’s a misconception that 5x leverage = exactly 5x increased return on such a trade).
But it’s what happens when a trade doesn’t go your way that illustrates the fundamental difference between crypto and traditional markets.
As a product of the traditional world (I was previously CEO of the Börse Stuttgart exchange in Germany) I have a perspective on this. The availability of leverage is widespread in classical finance, with 200x leverage on forex and CFDs not hard to come by.
In traditional markets, when you enter into some normal options/ margin/ leveraged contracts, you could have near unlimited liability toward the downside, meaning if the price changes suddenly you can end up owing the intermediary a nearly unlimited amount of money.
It’s different in crypto, where leveraged trading is typically designed to have limited liability to the downside. A user’s liability is their initial margin, and nothing more. That’s not to say that leverage trading in crypto is not inherently risky – it absolutely is, because higher leverage tightens the amount of price variance that is allowed before liquidation happens. But it is also not fair to suggest that leverage in crypto is equivalent to leverage in traditional finance.
In favour, then out of it
BitMEX pioneered the use of leverage up to 100x as the price of bitcoin rose from a few hundred dollars to around US$43,000 at the time of writing this (keep this long-term trajectory in mind when considering the 10% drop seen on 20 September). Others like Binance and FTX offered even higher, at 125x and 101x respectively.
Binance and FTX recently lowered their available leverage to 20x. This is their prerogative, and I respect their decision. But I also think that there is no magic number for a ‘good’ level of leverage. And although one could engage in ‘whataboutism’ by pointing to the rampant levels of leverage in the traditional finance world (here’s another example of 200x), I think the most convincing and honest discussion to have revolves around these fundamental differences.
Leverage is useful because it allows for greater exposure without risking your total effective position size. In markets, especially volatile ones, this can be lucrative if a trade goes your way. Leverage is also risky. But in classical markets, the near unlimited liability aspect makes it more so.
Would it not be more ‘responsible’ to reduce leverage, I’m asked? The answer is that users are already choosing on their own to opt for less risky strategies. The average leverage is around 6x on BitMEX between retail and institutional users, which is similar to other platforms.
More education and emphasis from the crypto industry on proper risk management is certainly needed (and we’re establishing an Academy to help). But from my perspective, an unrelenting focus on dialing back leverage is more about optics than it is about making crypto more responsible. It’s far more impactful to ensure that a platform such as ours has the most robust KYC and AML procedures in place, sound index protections, platform performance, and transparency.
These align with BitMEX’s core beliefs, and we’ve made tremendous progress on each – becoming the first of our peers to finalise comprehensive user verification, building out our compliance function, upgrading our trading engine, and becoming the first major crypto derivatives exchange to make our proof of liabilities and reserves available publicly.
Through it all, we are working closely with regulators and are in pursuit of a license in a respected jurisdiction. If we cross a bridge and need to revisit leverage, so be it. But that can come later.
The Coming Challenge
Crypto is disrupting the status quo, and we should welcome outside critique – it makes us stronger. But it’s also on us to build knowledge of where crypto and traditional markets differ – and why these differences matter. Leverage is a classic example.
The truth is that the fusion of crypto and traditional finance is inevitable. As our worlds collide, it is our challenge to get to a future where we can have an honest and open dialogue so that the best ideas rise to the top. In a meritocracy of ideas, the user benefits. And that’s what crypto is all about. | <urn:uuid:e3dfea78-7c92-4768-8408-dc3448e49436> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://blog.bitmex.com/leverage-is-not-the-enemy/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=CTD1OCT | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571190.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810131127-20220810161127-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.94191 | 1,356 | 1.625 | 2 |
BCPS is Excited to Join Jumpstart’s Read for the Record® and
Provide 40,000 Free Books to Students
Broward County Public Schools (BCPS) is excited to participate in Jumpstart’s Read for the Record® and join millions of people across the nation by reading the book “Quackers” by author Liz Wong. The national event takes place on Thursday, October 19, 2017; however, this year BCPS is expanding activities and guest readings to take place between October 17 – 20, 2017.
In addition, through a partnership between BCPS, the Children’s Services Council, and multiple Broward County early childhood stakeholders, a free copy of “Quackers” will be provided to each pre-kindergarten and kindergarten child in Broward County. That’s 40,000 books for 40,000 children! Guest readers include School Board members, BCPS Superintendent Robert W. Runcie, District staff and local elected officials, as well as representatives from the Broward County judicial system, local organizations, hospitals, libraries and more. | <urn:uuid:0562af49-05c7-4f98-917a-3d9158c9725e> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://aldeaeducativamagazine.com/get-ready-to-read/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571502.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811194507-20220811224507-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.943123 | 228 | 1.992188 | 2 |
Although the thyroid gland itself is a major site of the autoimmune response, the study of T-cell function in autoimmune thyroid disease has usually relied on peripheral blood as a source of cells. In this study, we have established thyroid-derived T-cell lines from six patients with Graves' disease and one patient with Hashimoto's thyroiditis by culturing the thyroid lymphocytes on an autologous thyroid follicular cell monolayer in the presence of exogenous interleukin 2 (IL-2). These T-cell lines have allowed in vitro investigation of thyroid-derived T-cell function, an approach which was previously limited by the number of lymphocytes obtained from the gland. The lines were predominantly OKT3, OKT4, and HLA-DR positive but showed heterogenous proliferative responses. Some lines gave autologous or allogeneic mixed lymphocyte reactions but other did not. Only one of the seven lines responded well to the thyroid antigens thyroglobulin and microsomes presented by autologous monocytes. However, six of the lines proliferated in the presence of live but not dead autologous thyroid follicular cells, particularly when interferon-γ (IFN-γ) was added. This treatment has been shown to enhance HLA-DR and -DQ antigen expression by thyroid follicular cells in vitro. Furthermore, the proliferation induced by IFN-γ-treated thyroid follicular cells was increased when thyroglobulin was also added. Together these results support the hypothesis that the expression of Ia antigens such as HLA-DR by thyroid follicular cells in autoimmune thyroid disease may be important in enhancing the autoimmune response, conferring on these cells the ability to present thyroid autoantigens to T cells. The use of thyroid-derived T-cell lines should permit a more detailed evaluation of the disordered immunoregulation in Graves' disease and Hashimoto's thyroiditis than has been possible previously.
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Immunology and Allergy
- Pathology and Forensic Medicine | <urn:uuid:6df9b559-e097-40c9-a704-5c26dd6a4101> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://jhu.pure.elsevier.com/en/publications/the-production-and-characterization-of-thyroid-derived-t-cell-lin-3 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570913.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20220809064307-20220809094307-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.945624 | 431 | 1.78125 | 2 |
STATE CONSTITUTION (EXCERPT)
CONSTITUTION OF MICHIGAN OF 1963
§ 20 Rights of accused in criminal prosecutions.
In every criminal prosecution, the accused shall have the right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury, which may consist of less than 12 jurors in prosecutions for misdemeanors punishable by imprisonment for not more than 1 year; to be informed of the nature of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him or her; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his or her favor; to have the assistance of counsel for his or her defense; to have an appeal as a matter of right, except as provided by law an appeal by an accused who pleads guilty or nolo contendere shall be by leave of the court; and as provided by law, when the trial court so orders, to have such reasonable assistance as may be necessary to perfect and prosecute an appeal.
History: Const. 1963, Art. I, § 20, Eff. Jan. 1, 1964
Am. H.J.R. M, approved Aug. 8, 1972, Eff. Sept. 23, 1972
Am. S.J.R. D, approved Nov. 8, 1994, Eff. Dec. 24, 1994
Former Constitution: See Const. 1908, Art. II, § 19. | <urn:uuid:05e7947d-5a53-4703-9316-0a5c8d7a6f35> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | http://www.legislature.mi.gov/(S(jcu3t3lrh0euezkgngsu441u))/mileg.aspx?page=getObject&objectName=mcl-Article-I-20 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570741.21/warc/CC-MAIN-20220808001418-20220808031418-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.956489 | 290 | 2.1875 | 2 |
Q: What is the difference between a phase converter and a variable frequency drive (VFD)?
A:Phase converters provide three-phase, 60 Hz power like what a utility would provide and can be used to power machines that have internal electronics that control motor speed. Variable frequency drives are used to vary the speed of electric motors.
Q: Why are my lights flickering when the equipment is running and how do I remedy it?
A: This phenomena is called electromagnetic interference (EMI) and is typically caused by poor grounding or wire routing. A poor electrical ground doesn’t allow high frequency noise to easily travel to ground, causing interference on other circuits. Additionally, if power lines are routed near adjacent wiring, high frequency noise can be radiated onto nearby wires, causing interference. An EMI filter can sometimes eliminate EMI but the ideal method is to address grounding and wiring issues. See Phase Technologies’ recommendations to mitigate EMI here: https://www.phasetechnologies.com/download/category/104-mitigating-led-flicker
Q: What is the advantage of a voltage-doubling variable frequency drive?
A: Voltage-doubling VFDs is a technology unique to Phase Technologies. The main advantage comes when dealing with deep set well pumps. 460 V power require smaller wires than 240 V power, meaning substantial savings if your application requires several hundred feet of wire.
Q: Will my VFD run a pivot?
A: No, pivots contain their own electronics to control speed and would require utility three-phase power or a phase converter. Phase Technologies offers a unique solution allowing you to run a pump and a pivot. 1LH-C and -X models have a standard VFD output and an additional 480 V three-phase output that will run a pivot.
Q: Will my VFD run a CNC machine?
A: No, CNC machines have their own electronics to regulate motor speed so a phase converter is the correct option to run CNC equipment.
Q: Can I use a phase converter to power my VFD?
A: You can, but Phase Technologies offers phase-converting VFDs, eliminating the need for a phase converter. See our SD and 1LH product lines. If you decide to use a phase converter to power a VFD, see product manual for enabling VFD mode.
Q: What if my load needs 208 V but I only have a 240 V source?
A: All Phase Technologies drives have a parameter called Output Voltage, which can be reduced below the incoming voltage to meet the motor specifications. It is recommended to increase the drive by one model size to handle the additional current.
Q: In Constant Pressure, why is pressure dropping below the Drawdown psi (aka Wake Up psi)?
A: When a valve opens and pressure drops below the value set for “Drawdown psi,” the drive will start pumping until the pressure setpoint is reached, or until it reaches the value set by Boost Amount. If the pressure drops very quickly, the system may need more time to respond. Adding or increasing the size of a pressure tank is one way to allow the system more time to respond.
Use the keypad to navigate to Read Measured Values to ensure that the 4-20 mA pressure transducer is reading correctly. See Transducer Troubleshooting Guide for more information:
Other potential solutions include moving the transducer out of turbulent water flow, increasing the Integral Gain and/or Boost parameters, or using a larger pressure tank.
Q: My utility company requires drives to comply with IEEE519 harmonics standards. Does Phase Technologies offer products that will comply?
A: Yes, our 1LH and 3LH products utilize an active front-end and a harmonic filter to limit total harmonic distortion (THD). Phase Technologies guarantees that these drives will meet the strictest IEEE519 standards as long as the drive is operating at 50% of its rated load or higher.
Q: What are the benefits of an active front-end (AFE) VFD, such as 1LH and 3LH products?
A: Because AFE VFDs have active switches (IGBTs) on the input instead of passive diodes like six-pulse drives, they offer several benefits without the need for an additional harmonic filter:
LH products are guaranteed to comply with the strictest IEEE519 requirements as long as the drive is operating at 50% of its rated load or higher. This means less distortion on the grid that can cause problems for nearby equipment and eliminates the need for an additional harmonic filter.
AFE drives also allow the user to boost the output voltage, so if your source voltage is lower than needed, the output voltage of the VFD can be increased to meet the demands of the load.
AFE drives power condition the incoming power, allowing it to feed clean, balanced power to the load even in areas with poor power quality.
Because LH products are regenerative, they will not work with generators and a standard six-pulse drive, such as the DX and SD products, would be a better fit. | <urn:uuid:f6e80000-6ec8-43a9-b592-b7ce050219bc> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.phasetechnologies.com/explore/faq/vfd | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570913.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20220809064307-20220809094307-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.920093 | 1,068 | 2.03125 | 2 |
America to end its combat mission in Iraq
The US will call time by the end of the year, it was confirmed yesterday. President Joe Biden has promised Iraqi PM Mustafa al-Kadhimi that the US would continue to train and advise Iraqi forces who continue to fight Islamic State jihadists. And Kadhimi, who is walking a fine political line in the region, thanked the US for the “blood and treasure that America has given for a free and democratic Iraq.”
BACK IT UP A BIT…
Troops from America, the UK and Australia invaded Iraq in 2003 to remove President Saddam Hussein and his regime. Coalition forces were also tasked with finding and eliminating the weapons of mass destruction believed to be held by Hussein’s regime, which they feared could be unleashed on the West. Plot twist: they didn’t exist, and once the old guard was removed, the flowers of peace did not bloom. What happened was Iraq was engulfed by a bloody sectarian insurgency. US troops eventually withdrew in 2011 but were back in 2014 thanks to the rise of Islamic State. It was defeated by the end of 2017, but about 2,500 US troops have stayed on to block any resurgence. Last year, PM Scott Morrison said the 300 Aussie troops and diplomats in Iraq would stay put to help counter IS. More than 4,000 US, 179 British and 4 Aussie troops died in Iraq during this period.
ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL?
Hmm, Iraq faces no shortage of problems. In recent months, Iranian-backed militias operating inside Iraq have ramped up attacks on US forces, and soaring COVID infections have added to the pressure. Plus, there and ongoing concerns about an IS revival… That said, reports say many Iraqis would like to see the back of foreign forces, and it would be a feather in Kadhimi’s cap ahead of an election in October. As for the US, it’s getting out of the Middle East as its attention turns its attention elsewhere. Ahem, China…
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Quick, agenda-free news that doesn't take itself too seriously. Get on it. | <urn:uuid:5388fd75-4ba3-4f7f-8031-45f8560f6d7b> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.thesquiz.com.au/world-news/america-to-end-its-combat-mission-in-iraq/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570913.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20220809064307-20220809094307-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.976487 | 485 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Showing Collections: 1 - 3 of 3
Scope and Contents This collection consists of a selection of papers from Ellen C. Sabin, president of Downer College from 1890 to 1895 and Milwaukee-Downer College from 1895 to 1921. Materials primarily include articles about Sabin, photographs, and correspondence to and from friends and acquaintances.
Collection — Box: 4
Scope and Contents This collection is composed of the papers of Jill Beck, President of Lawrence University from 2004 to 2013. The collection primarily documents Beck's presidency from her selection through her departure. Materials are in both paper and digital format and include articles and biographical information, documentation of Beck's installation, correspondence, and speeches and writings.
Scope and Contents This collection includes the correspondence of Lucia R. Briggs, the second President of Milwaukee-Downer College, along with articles written about and by her. It also contains photographs documenting Briggs’s 30 year tenure at Milwaukee-Downer College. | <urn:uuid:242b8d3c-d032-435f-8a80-df87bc3ca1a8> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | http://archives.lawrence.edu/public/repositories/resources?q%5B%5D=%2A&op%5B%5D=&field%5B%5D=title&from_year%5B%5D=&to_year%5B%5D=&limit=resource&sort=title_sort%20asc&filter_fields%5B%5D=subjects&filter_values%5B%5D=Women+college+presidents | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571502.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811194507-20220811224507-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.907825 | 227 | 1.523438 | 2 |
6 May 2022
WHO: World’s True COVID-19 Death Toll Estimated at Nearly 15 Million
The Index Today
The World Health Organization (WHO) on Thursday announced that the real global death toll associated with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has been estimated at nearly 15 million, amounting to almost three times that of the official mortality count.
According to BBC News, the WHO has attributed the present figures to the inaccuracy and underreporting of actual data by several countries. The UN health body has also termed the figures as “excess deaths” which stand for above-expected death rates in a given geographical area prior to the arrival of the pandemic.
WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, “These sobering data not only point to the impact of the pandemic but also to the need for all countries to invest in more resilient health systems that can sustain essential health services during crises, including stronger health information systems.” He added, “WHO is committed to working with all countries to strengthen their health information systems to generate better data for better decisions and better outcomes.”
The WHO’s Assistant Director-General for Data, Analytics, and Delivery Samira Asma contended, “It serves as an encouragement for governments around the world to sharpen their data tools.” “We need to honor the lives tragically cut short and lost. And we must hold ourselves and policymakers accountable,” reported BuzzFeed News. | <urn:uuid:5fa02d81-a18d-4ade-80ad-ab763cac343e> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.theindextoday.com/news/who%3A-world%E2%80%99s-true-covid-19-death-toll-estimated-at-nearly-15-million- | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570913.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20220809064307-20220809094307-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.945518 | 318 | 2.546875 | 3 |
Once a prosperous port city, Hoi An is a well-preserved ancient town with a 140-hectare coastal nipa palm forest. enCity’s proposal for the Hoi An Waterfront Eco-Community project creates a modern development in harmony with the rich architectural and ecological heritage of its surroundings. A thoughtful urban structure engages residents in quiet niches for retreat, while expanding the nipa palm forest and integrating it with public parks to preserve the rich biodiversity of the area.
This will be the largest land development project in the heritage town of Hoian, near the town’s protected nipa palm forest. It is also a project that is close to our hearts, as it was the first contract enCity was awarded at our inception.
A waterfront destination for both tourists and the local community, with nightlife and lifestyle attractions.
Summary of enCity Solution
At the heart of the site, a waterfront plaza creates a vibrant public centre and frames views to the nipa palm forest. The masterplan proposal ensures that the nipa palm forest is fully conserved and even expanded into the residential areas of the site. The location of the site, on former aquaculture land, will also reduce development pressure on farmland and forests in the surrounding Cam Thanh district. | <urn:uuid:e469460e-5707-4e33-be61-d56f9bb6d686> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://encity.co/hoi-an-waterfront-eco-community/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570913.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20220809064307-20220809094307-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.930752 | 268 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Are you looking for GED® testing locations in Fittstown OK? The examination is only offered in person and not online. Typically in order to sit for the exam the student must be at least 17 years old. The examination cost in the state of Oklahoma ranges from $40-$90.
The test consists of five topics: reading, writing, math, science and social studies. Each part of the test awards a score between 200-800. Most states require test takers to get a score of 410 on each of the five topics and an overall average of 450 for the GED® test to pass.
Numerous GED® testing locations in Fittstown OK are offered at:
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- Fittstown Adult Education Centers | <urn:uuid:1928b86e-0483-4b6e-817b-4e82885c04a2> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.cited.org/ged-testing-in-fittstown-ok.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571190.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810131127-20220810161127-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.929018 | 171 | 1.953125 | 2 |
Reviewed by Lukas Meisner
Being a ‘critique of architecture’, Douglas Spencer’s new essay collection is ‘necessarily part and parcel of the critique of capitalism’ (190) as well. This is because architecture provides exemplary material for a critique of capital’s material(-ised) ideology – a critique that sets ‘base’ and ‘superstructure’ not as two separate units unilaterally determined but as a fundamentally reciprocal relationship. As David Cunningham writes in his foreword: ‘Positioned in complex ways between the “infrastructural” and “superstructural”, and consequently mediating between them, architecture is, it may be argued, a privileged site for an interrogation of the productive operations of capital.’ (15) Understanding architecture in this way, Spencer questions not only the positivist, affirmative or immersive takes of his discipline but also its alternatives – like Fredric Jameson’s neo-Althusserian quasi-mystification of the economic sphere as something theoretically impenetrable yet allegorically catchable. Hence, with its persistent counter-hegemonic sensitivities, Spencer’s book is an excellent specimen of critical theory. With it, he is seated between the early Frankfurt School, highly complex Marxisms and critical architectural theory. Accordingly, the essays in the volume are historically finetuned to the developments of the present and its continuities with the past: from the (late) Fordist ‘production of the producer’ (203) to the neoliberal ‘politics of depoliticization’ (101).
Along these lines, each of Spencer’s texts is a determinate negation of a specific yet dominant and ideologically laden approach to architecture, capitalism and their relation. In his book, he successively deals with
- educational buildings like Ravensbourne in London as factories for networked human capital under flexible accumulation (30-60);
- system-theoretical, ecological and environmental designs as immanent to the Hayekian naturalisation of ‘spontaneous orders’ – including its ban on the hubris of reason, planning and intentionality (61-77)
- the ‘new spirit of capitalism’ sunk into platform architecture and extractive ‘smart cities’ to lure subjects into self-exploitation masked behind ‘participation’ (78-99);
- and Pier Vittorio Aureli’s monastic ‘project of autonomy’ as a self-seclusive depoliticisation of the ‘political’ that risks reproducing neoliberal individualisation (102-129).
The shorter essays later in the collection delve into topics ranging from Silicon Valley’s wild-wild-west-logic derived from 1968’s nomadological deterritorialisations (130-149) via the problematisation of identifying modernism with Fordist city planning (163-175) to today’s ‘non-referential architecture’ as the built meta-ideology of a supposedly post-ideological or post-historical age (176-188). Informing all these detailed architectural studies, however, is the more extensive scope of Spencer’s concern against what may be dubbed ‘post-critical post-theory’. His respective argument runs as follows: ‘Our new, post-political, and post-critical positions seem to have relieved us of the burdens of critique. But these positions have themselves to be recognized, critically, as power grabs on the practice of theory; discursive manoeuvres valorized in the currency of the current.” (80) Indeed, the neo-Nietzschean scapegoating of critique as ressentiment, envy and lack in imagination – if not as sheer parasitism – is to be found from Deleuze to Latour, and in their manifold disciples. Although this neo-Nietzscheanism propagates itself as an ‘affirmation of affirmation’ (35), Spencer does a good job in deconstructing it as a destructive (but no longer revolutionary) and negative (but no longer transcending) strategy that, in fact, totalises as much in the ivory towers of academia as capitalism totalises in the real world (Meisner 2020).
For this purpose, the volume’s first essay, ‘Architectural Deleuzism’ – dealing with the affective turn against (Marxist and Derridean) critiques of architecture – is as important as is the later essay on the parliamentarian of reification, Bruno Latour. Spencer not only asks, rightfully, ‘how any architecture which makes strategic allegiance with the market, and at the same time so vehemently disavows the practice of critique, can be “advanced” or “progressive” – other than to the extent that it advances or progresses the cause of the generalization of the market form itself.’ Even more, Spencer reminds us that the collapse of (inter-)subjectivity in and alongside the object known from ‘Actor-Network Theory’, ‘new materialism’ and ‘speculative realism’ can and must be read, under capitalist conditions, as a scholasticism of the commodity fetish. As Spencer himself puts it: ‘Seemingly radical in their extension of agency to nonhuman actors, they effectively mirror capitalism in their fetishization of the object. Supposedly progressive in their denouncement of human hubris, they align with neoliberal ideologies in refusing the human subject any agency other than that of accommodating themselves to things as they already are.’ (57) Developed in theoretically versed manner in the book’s last essay on method, such ‘deconstruction’ is of decisive importance because the post-, anti- or pre-critical trend reigns not only in architecture or art, but in the humanities and the social sciences as a whole. Indeed, the ‘flattened ontologies of Actor-Network Theory and OOO (object-oriented ontology) have to be contested as attempts to dislodge critique’ (81) not despite but because they are hegemonic even or particularly on the left. In this sense, the theoretical as much as political merit of Spencer’s Critique of Architecture is that it unfolds a counter-hegemonic critique of today’s ‘poverty of post-theory’.
In this vein, however, the only question is whether postmodernists like Michel Foucault are reliable allies to align with in this argument for theory, critique, and totality analysis. Perhaps, to sit ‘somewhere between a Marxist and a Foucauldian approach’ is not only to sit ‘uncomfortably’ (211) but to fall short of a radically anti-capitalist critical theory – which must, arguably, be anti-postmodernist as well (Zamora and Behrent 2015). Although Spencer convincingly argues that both New Materialism and OOO do not allow much critical insight due to their anti-critical framing (215), he does not sufficiently reflect on their theoretical background – which would show a family resemblance between the postmodern and the post-critical paradigm (Meisner 2021). In this sense, ‘the best way to sustain critical reflection in academia’ may not necessarily be ‘to have an openness to the thought of others’ but, rather, to remain resilient in the face of the opportunism with which academics wall themselves in inside the confines of fashionable hegemonies – not least to be, at least academically, safe from ‘individual competitiveness’ (215). Such resilience, however, should be practised not for the sake of any sectarian puritanism or careerist power struggle, but for the interrelated vulnerable forces of criticality and theorisation.
Still, Spencer’s development of a Marxian theory of capitalist totality from within architectural critique is not only laudable but strongly argued for and strictly thought through. This is not changed by the fact that for some readers, the impression may remain that not every abstraction in Spencer’s essays results from one in reality (Küpper 2021). For sure, some analyses read like slipping into analogous or intuited thought, despite the author’s own repeated lament on such practice in the writing of others. Along the same lines, it might be complained that the form of the essay is not always persevered, since Spencer’s opinion occasionally appears as if only added, missing further mediation with what has been paraphrased or quoted before and after. Yet, let us make clear that most of these problems are internal to any version of totality critique that does not hide in the consoling divisions of intellectual labour. However imperfect the results must be, to be daring enough to capture capitalism as a totality remains the crucial and central task of all critical theory worthy of its name. Since he tries to grasp, against the ‘personification of the object – the defining mark of fetishization’, ‘how the object mediates, and is mediated by, the larger totality in which it exists’ (183), Spencer is a critical theorist as the term was understood from Theodor W. Adorno to Manfredo Tafuri.
To sum up, Spencer’s Critique of Architecture criticises both the marketed, pseudo-concrete, integrative teamwork of flows and desires within networked landscapes, and the unpolitical, abstract, monastic autonomy of form as a Robinsonade – and he does so by explaining how these alleged antipodes are, effectively, just two sides of the same coin. As such, Critique of Architecture is both at the same time a critique of ideology (including ‘post-critical post-theory’) and a critique of political economy (including neoliberalism) – as much as an illustration of why the two are a dialectical one. Consequentially, after ‘a now decades-long period of assault on critical theory’ (80), Spencer’s essay collection should be mandatory for the academic left far beyond the often obscure realms of architectural theory.
*This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (GA n. 725883 EarlyModernCosmology).
7 December 2021
- 2021 Einfach laufen lassen. Alptraum in Beton: Douglas Spencer entlarvt die Architektur des Spätfordismus Junge Welt 22/7/21, Feuilleton https://www.jungewelt.de/loginFailed.php?ref=/artikel/406826.kritik-der-baukunst-einfach-laufen-lassen.html
- 2020 Becoming-Critical with/out Deleuze and Guattari: Three Anarchies Beyond Post-Critique https://www.db-thueringen.de/receive/dbt_mods_00047254
- 2021 Political Economy of Postmodernism and the Spirit of Post-Bourgeois Capitalism &&& Platform. The New Centre for Research & Practice https://tripleampersand.org/political-economy-postmodernism-spirit-post-bourgeois-capitalism/
- 2015 Foucault and Neoliberalism Cambridge: Polity Press. | <urn:uuid:8c086029-a77e-4304-9af2-29c37f58bceb> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://marxandphilosophy.org.uk/reviews/19801_critique-of-architecture-essays-on-theory-autonomy-and-political-economy-by-douglas-spencer-reviewed-by-lukas-meisner/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571190.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810131127-20220810161127-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.91132 | 2,382 | 1.804688 | 2 |
The single-phase welding structure of commercial pure titanium produces serrated-like framework at space temperature. According to the cooling rate, its mechanical homes do not change considerably compared to the base steel, as well as its welding efficiency is great. The amount and residential or commercial properties of Martensite (α-phase) formed in α+ β titanium alloys such as Ti-6Al-4V during cooling from β stage vary according to alloy element and cooling rate. As a whole, with the boost of α-phase, the alloy's prolongation and durability decline. When the material of β steady aspect Vanadium is above 5%, the weldability decreases. All of us understand that titanium alloy is challenging to weld, but with the practical welding parameters, safety gas as well as sufficient preparation prior to welding, best welding of titanium alloy has been widely made use of in numerous fields like aerospace, petrochemical, shipbuilding, medical and other areas. Today here we introduce one of the most typically utilized welding method for titanium alloy:
Tungsten-argon arc welding is just one of the most typically made use of approaches of titanium alloy welding, is a friendly welding approach of slim plate
as well as support welding, it has the benefits of arc stability, good developing, yet there are also arc energy thickness is low, welding stress and anxiety as well as deformation, simple to produce holes and also various other flaws, directly affect the efficiency of welding components. weldermetals VIDEO
A-TIG welding technique is A new modern technology established over the last few years to boost the welding deepness as well as enhance the weld formation. A-TIG welding technology is A welding procedure in which A layer of energetic flux is coated externally of the titanium alloy workpiece prior to welding, and then TIG welding is carried out along the flux layer. Compared to the standard TIG welding procedure, the penetration capability of A-TIG welding arc is substantially enhanced, as well as the heat input, welding contortion as well as tension are minimized.
Under the exact same welding current condition, the single-pass welding without groove or surfacing layers can be considerably lowered when welding the same specs of product components.
On top of that, the energetic flux can greatly minimize the porosity issues of the weld seam in the process of argon arc welding, so regarding directly enhance the fatigue residential or commercial properties of the welded joints and welded frameworks. The examination results show that the tiredness limitation of GR5 titanium alloy A-TIG welding joint is 16% greater than that of traditional TIG welding, and can reach 90% of the base material.
Plasma arc welding
Plasma arc welding has the advantages of high power thickness, high line energy and also high performance. "little hole" approach can be bonded through a thickness of 2.5 ~ 15mm titanium alloy plate as well as can successfully protect against the generation of pores, "infiltration" technique appropriates for different plate however a weld via a small thickness, groove needed when more than 3mm.
Presently, micro-beam plasma arc welding has been efficiently related to the welding of titanium alloy sheet. The welding current of 3 ~ 10A can weld the sheet with the thickness of 0.08 ~ 0.6 mm.
The power thickness of plasma arc autumn in between tungsten-argon arc as well as electron beam of light, the warm influenced area is narrow as well as the welding contortion is simple to manage when the plasma arc welding titanium alloy. The tensile properties of the plasma welded joints are similar to that of the base steel. The effect sturdiness of the welding seam is reduced compared to that of the base steel. The microstructure of the welding seam is residual β stage as well as martensite acicular α stage, which has higher firmness as well as stamina than that of the base steel, however low plasticity.
Vacuum cleaner electron light beam welding
Vacuum cleaner electron beam welding appropriates for the welding of titanium alloys since it has a series of benefits: slim weld joint, little weld angle contortion, great grains in weld and also heat-affected zone are not contaminated by air, and high performance in welding thick parts.
We need to notice its issue is liable to happen weld porosity, huge residual stress and anxiety and more application in titanium alloy sheet: electron beam regional heat treatment can boost the weld microstructure of titanium alloy efficiency, make the weld area grains are fine-tuned, not only the longitudinal tensile stress in the weld facility offshoring top, and also makes the transverse recurring anxiety is compressive anxiety, substantially enhancing the welding residual tension distribution.
The rate of laser welding is quick as well as there is no welding void, and the joint top quality is excellent.
High power thickness and welding deepness can be acquired by focusing throughout welding. If the area to be welded is tough to get to, remote welding can be adopted. Reasonable specification choice can accomplish the joint tensile toughness, shear stamina and other properties of the base metal, and also the fatigue homes of the joint can be substantially boosted after vacuum cleaner warm therapy. Although the bending Angle is enhanced after vacuum warmth therapy, it can only reach 1/2 of the base metal. Consequently, the welding seam should not be positioned at the maximum flexing moment in the structure design of titanium alloy. Compared to LBW, the laser-MIG welding joint has better ductility, can additionally remove microcracks and impede the formation of pores.
Diffusion welding and also brazing
Diffusion welding is commonly made use of in the welding between titanium alloy as well as stainless-steel, with less weld pollution as well as much less deformation, but rigorous demands on surface area tidiness.
Titanium alloy as well as stainless-steel have been bonded by means of constant temperature level and also stress diffusion welding phase modification superplastic diffusion welding and also pulse stress diffusion welding. Diffusion welding straight welding is hard to prevent joint stress and anxiety and weak intermetallic compound phase, easy to fracture the welding joint, so a lot of the intermediate layer of steel such as titanium components externally of a layer of copper or nickel plating.
Brazing is the most basic and also most reliable welding technique of titanium and also its alloys with other steels. The isomerization shift of titanium alloy identifies that the brazing procedure is restricted by temperature and also time. When the temperature is greater than (α-β) phase shift temperature level, the microstructure and also residential properties of titanium alloy will certainly undertake crucial modifications. From the point of view of metallurgy, it is more crucial that the brittleness phase is formed by the reaction in between the matrix as well as the filler steel, which makes the performance of the brazed joint deteriorate. Consequently, the ideal filler steel as well as the welding temperature is maintained below the β stage change temperature as far as feasible, which can not just preserve the residential properties of the base metal, however also form a brazed joint with superb mechanical properties.
In addition, individuals are additionally establishing a variety of titanium alloy welding techniques, such as surface self-nanocrystallization, stage change superplastic diffusion bonding and also the application of self-spreading modern technology to satisfy different welding demands. | <urn:uuid:acf4ea1c-a856-452d-b74c-9c09bf41117d> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://canvas.instructure.com/eportfolios/139741/metalsreviewfnv/The_welding_procedures_for_titanium_alloy | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571190.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810131127-20220810161127-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.946395 | 1,532 | 2.390625 | 2 |
Human Performance and Limitations in Aviation, 3rd Edition
Pooleys stock code: BTG098
This book was first published when the UK Civil Aviation Authority introduced an examination in human performance and limitations for all private and professional pilot licences. Now the Joint Aviation Authorities of Europe have published a new syllabus as part of their Joint Aviation Requirements for Flight Crew Licensing.
The book has been completely revised and rewritten to take account of the new syllabus. The coverage of basic aviation psychology has been greatly expanded, and the section on aviation physiology now includes topics on the high altitude environment and on health maintenance. Throughout, the text avoids excessive jargon and technical language.
"There is no doubt that this book provides an excellent basic understanding of the human body, its limitations, the psychological processes and how they interact with the aviation environment. I am currently studying for my ATPL Ground Exams and I found this book to be an invaluable aid. It is equally useful for those studying for the PPL and for all pilots who would like to be reminded of their physiological and psychological limitations."
–General Aviation, June 2002
Table of Contents
Human factors in aviation;.
Part 2: Basic Aviation Physiology and Health Maintenance.
The basics of flight physiology; Man and the environment - the sensory system; Health and Hygiene.
Part 3: Basic Aviation Psychology.
Human information processing; Human error and reliability; Decision making; Avoiding and managing errors: cockpit management; Personality; Human overload and underload; Advanced cockpit automation.
In Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.
Michael Bagshaw is Head of Medical Services for British Airways. He is a current professional pilot, flying instructor and examiner, and a recognised authority on human factors in aviation. He was formerly Senior Medical Officer Pilot and specialist in aviation medicine at the RAF Institute of Aviation Medicine, Farnborough, UK.
The Wiley Advantage
* a readable guide which avoids too much complexity
* suitable not only for private but also commercial pilots
* based on an international syllabus, the book will appeal to overseas training in English
* 'a very useful reference book ... worthwhile and recommended' - Australian Air Pilot
"The writing is concise, easy to follow, and enjoyable to read." (Aviation, Space and Environmental Medicine)
"a very useful reference book...worthwhile and recommended" (Australian Air Pilot)
£45.95 £45.95 inc. VAT (Exempt)*
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Air Pilot's Manual Volume 6 Human Performance & Operational Procedures – Book only
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- Advance Bio-compatable Material to Ensure Maximum Adhesion to Natural Tooth.
- Procedure and Placement Using Latest Digital Technology.
When it’s time to put on the veneer, our dentist will trim and shape the veneer so that it fits perfectly on top of your tooth. Our dentist will then etch the surface of the tooth to make it rough so that it will better attach to the porcelain veneer.
Our dentist will then permanently cement the porcelain veneer to your tooth. A special light beam will be used to activate chemicals in the cement, causing it to harden very quickly. Our dentist removes any extra cement on the edges and checks your bite to make sure the porcelain veneer fits perfectly.
Porcelain veneers don’t usually need as much shaping as a crown does, and are easily accepted by the gums. Porcelain veneers don’t need any special care, just brush and floss them as you would with your teeth. The better your oral hygiene, the longer your porcelain veneers will last. While porcelain veneers are normally stain-resistant, you may want to avoid stain-causing foods and drinks.
It could take you a couple of weeks to get used to porcelain veneers, but you will be amazed how much better your teeth look. After one or two weeks, you should see our dentist again just so he can check on your veneers and make sure everything is going well.
Porcelain veneers are often the best choice for cosmetic purposes, and they are very affordable. To find out if porcelain veneers are right for your teeth, please call our office at 702-803-1810. We will be happy to answer your questions and set up an appointment with our dentist who will go over your options. We can help you achieve that killer smile with porcelain veneers. | <urn:uuid:545c1cc0-82fd-4be5-bfc7-8f5b2c7a473b> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.northviewdentallv.com/veneers/porcelain-veneers/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573118.26/warc/CC-MAIN-20220817213446-20220818003446-00665.warc.gz | en | 0.929704 | 777 | 2.03125 | 2 |
The Cancer Council wants a ban on all smoking in CBD green spaces.
Brisbane’s Lord Mayor won’t commit to the move, saying Council has to monitor current smoke free laws.
Harrison Bain reports.
Since late last year smoking in many public places in Brisbane’s CBD has been prohibited.
Now the Cancer Council is calling for the ban to be extended to the so-called ‘ash trays of the city’ King George Square and ANZAC Square.
Chris Mcmillan, CEO, Cancer Council Queensland:”We live in a beautiful environment here in Queensland so we should be making the most of it in fresh clean healthy air.”
But the Lord Mayor believes the openness of the squares sets them apart from existing legislation.
Graham Quirk, Lord Mayor: “You’ve got 26 million visitations in that mall, it’s in a confined space so I think King George Square is a much more open arrangement and that’s the view I would have at the moment.”
Tough anti-smoking laws introduced late last year have widespread public support.
Vox 1: “I don’t smoke in these sorts of areas and maybe smokers should go where there’s less public people.”
Vox 2: “It’s fine. Yeah less smoking in public, the better.”
Around 12% of Queenslanders smoke daily.
10 years ago this figure was at 20% and with the majority of smokers wanting to quit, this number is set to drop even further.
Almost 4,000 Queenslanders die from tobacco related diseases each year with at least one death a week caused by second hand smoke.
Harrison Bain, QUT News. | <urn:uuid:928ae76e-4c40-43e6-b9c8-62774e845a1c> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.qutnews.com/2017/05/03/cancer-council-calls-for-bans-on-smoking-in-city-squares/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570913.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20220809064307-20220809094307-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.929227 | 376 | 2.0625 | 2 |
May 1 Opening
|Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema||Toronto|
|ReelShorts FF Grande Prairie||Grande Prairie|
|Dauphin Community Cinemas||Dauphin|
|Calgary Int’l Film Festival||Calgary|
|Rotary Centre for the Arts||Kelowna|
May 8 Opening
|Cinema du Parc||Montreal|
For more than 40 years, Robert Fisk has reported on some of the most violent and divisive conflicts in the world. This Is Not a Movie captures Fisk in action—feet on the ground, notebook in hand, as he travels into landscapes devastated by war, ferreting out the facts and firing reports back home to reach an audience of millions. In his relentless pursuit of the facts, Fisk has attracted his share of controversy. But in an era of fake news, when journalists are dubbed “the enemies of the people,” Fisk’s resolve to document reality has become an obsessive war to speak the truth.
Yung Chang is the multi-award-winning director of Up the Yangtze (2007), China Heavyweight (2012), The Fruit Hunters (2013), Gatekeeper (2016).
“I believe we’ve created a film,” notes Yung, “that will test the audience’s own beliefs of journalism, the subjectivity of truth, our complicity in war, and what, if any, is the relevance of the written word in the changing face of media consumption.”
This Is Not a Movie is produced by Anita Lee (NFB), Allyson Luchak and Nelofer Pazira (TINAM) and Ingmar Trost (Sutor Kolonko). | <urn:uuid:4af84e99-524c-4d6a-8b95-6c62871eaff0> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | http://www.orcasound.com/2020/05/02/blue-ice-docs-presents-this-is-not-a-movie-a-film-by-yung-chang-available-through-d-o-c-on-cinema-websites-across-the-country/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571190.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810131127-20220810161127-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.887644 | 408 | 1.53125 | 2 |
In Siberia sugar is delivered from the West. Attempts to establish its production in Siberia failed because there are no raw materials for the traditional sugar production in Siberia. For example, beet needs160 sunny days to ripen, while there are only 90 sunny days in our clomate conditions. Besides, in the Westthere can be noticed a sharp reduction of the sugar production.
The suggested new method for the sugar production from grain can solve many problems of the Siberian region.
As a raw material Altai wheat can be used. It contains a high percentage of gluten. The cos of the gluten is in 10 times higher than that of sugar. This product can cover the cost of the project during 1 year.
Sugar can be produced from any grain-crops and potatoes. The intermediate product at the sugar production is starch.
There is an opportunity of turnkey project of the Plant producing:
- refined А-tarch;
- dehydrated В-starch.
The productivity of th plant is 5000 kg per hour, using wheat as the initial material. There is a complete list of componentry of th plant with a detailed description of the working technology and basic calculations. | <urn:uuid:87d04e51-d896-463d-bc3b-4eb57cd02097> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://icht.ru/english/agrotechs/sugar.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571190.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810131127-20220810161127-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.925071 | 247 | 3.03125 | 3 |
Cognitive behavior therapy (CBT; broadly defined) is overtaking psychoanalysis as the dominant model of psychotherapy across the world. The evolution of CBT can be traced into three distinct generations or “waves,” including early behavior therapy beginning in the 1950s, cognitive therapy beginning in the 1970s, and approaches that highlight mindfulness and psychological acceptance beginning in the 1990s. Mindfulness-based approaches arose in part from limitations of traditional cognitive models of CBT, but controversy continues regarding their degree of uniqueness in terms of theory, technique, and efficacy. Research over the past decade suggests that these models are indeed distinctive from earlier approaches, and may offer new approaches to the treatment of difficult clinical disorders, as well as insights into novel interventions targeting broader social problems (e.g., discrimination, stigma). In this talk, I will briefly review the history of behavior therapy, followed by the theory and research on these newer approaches to CBT. The “third wave” model that has attracted the most attention from both clinicians and scholars, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, will be highlighted.
P.S.: The seminar will be in English. | <urn:uuid:4f700f2e-6340-46df-a0ab-31e4ec7d9e65> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://cult.sabanciuniv.edu/en/events-detail/10068 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571502.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811194507-20220811224507-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.947676 | 244 | 2.21875 | 2 |
|Arch → Project
|Introduced in version
|Arch Site, Arch Building
The Arch Project is a special object suitable to add better compatibility with IFC files. Every IFC file is required to contain an IfcProject entity. The IfcProject is mostly used to define general project settings such as projection systems, for GIS compatibility, or units systems.
When exporting a FreeCAD model to the IFC file format, if your model does not contain any Project object, a default one will be created automatically, which in most cases will be sufficient. However, you might want to be able to fine-tune the project settings, in which case adding a Project object can be useful. When importing an IFC file, a Project object will always be created. However, if not specifically using it, you can simply delete it after import.
Note that, although any other BIM object can be added to a Project, which the IFC standard does not prohibit, the common way of doing is always to only have sites or buildings as direct children of a project. All other BIM objects should be inside these sites or buildings. The Project itself should always be at the top of your model structure, that is, it shouldn't be included in any other object.
- Press the Arch Project button, or press the P then O keys.
- Add any object to your project by drag-and-dropping them onto the Project in the Tree view.
- Elements: Wall, Structure, Curtain Wall, Window, Roof, Space, Stairs, Equipment, Frame, Fence, Truss, Profile, Pipe, Pipe Connector
- Reinforcements: Straight Rebar, U-Shape Rebar, L-Shape Rebar, Stirrup, Bent-Shape Rebar, Helical Rebar, Column Reinforcement, Beam Reinforcement, Slab Reinforcement, Footing Reinforcement, Custom Rebar
- Panels: Panel, Panel Cut, Panel Sheet, Nest
- Materials: Material, Multi-Material
- Organization: Building Part, Project, Site, Building, Level, External reference, Section Plane, Schedule
- Axes: Axis, Axes system, Grid
- Utilities: Component, Clone component, Split Mesh, Mesh to Shape, Select non-manifold meshes, Remove Shape from Arch, Close Holes, Merge Walls, Check, Toggle IFC Brep flag, 3 Views from mesh, Create IFC spreadsheet, Toggle Subcomponents
- Additional: Preferences, Import Export Preferences (IFC, DAE, OBJ, JSON, 3DS, SHP), IfcOpenShell, IfcPlusPlus, Arch API
- Getting started
- Installation: Download, Windows, Linux, Mac, Additional components, Docker, AppImage, Ubuntu Snap
- Basics: About FreeCAD, Interface, Mouse navigation, Selection methods, Object name, Preferences, Workbenches, Document structure, Properties, Help FreeCAD, Donate
- Help: Tutorials, Video tutorials
- Workbenches: Std Base, Arch, Draft, FEM, Image, Inspection, Mesh, OpenSCAD, Part, PartDesign, Path, Points, Raytracing, Reverse Engineering, Sketcher, Spreadsheet, Start, Surface, TechDraw, Test Framework, Web
- Deprecated or unmaintained workbenches: Complete, Drawing, Robot | <urn:uuid:7525355e-44c9-481c-973e-9c4d431b3a15> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://wiki.freecadweb.org/Arch_Project | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570913.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20220809064307-20220809094307-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.837039 | 763 | 2.203125 | 2 |
If you want to change your life, you have to make different choices every single day. It isn’t something you can be successful at only focusing on it here and there. Here are four steps you need to take to change your life.
- Change your thoughts
If your thoughts tend to be on the negative, pessimistic side, it’s time to start focusing on the positive. If you constantly feel that your life isn’t good, you don’t have the job you want, or you have nothing to be grateful for, you need to change your way of thinking. You can adopt a positive outlook for the future. Instead of thinking about the things you don’t have, spend time each day being grateful for what you do have. You can be grateful you have the job you don’t particularly like while you look for a job that’s better suited to you. Changing your thoughts can impact the way your life changes. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to create a better life if you hold on to negative thoughts. Start looking for the positive in your life and situations you encounter. This will make you a happier, more optimistic person.
- Stop planning, start acting
When you want to change your life, you might spend weeks or months planning exactly how to proceed. You may set goals and lay out a detailed plan. If you don’t actually being taking action though, you won’t achieve those goals or change your life. Instead of sitting on the couch for the third night in a row making a list of how you can start making changes, get up and act on something on your list. You can’t change your life by making a plan alone. Planning can be a form of procrastination.
- Stop living on auto-pilot
If you do the same things day after day, week after week, at the same time, in the same place, your life will remain exactly the same. Stop living on auto-pilot and take yourself out of your comfort zone in order to make change in your life. When you stop living your life on auto-pilot, you can start making better choices for your life. If you’ve eaten the same lunch for the last year, you’re living on auto-pilot. You might not even think about whether you actually enjoy it anymore or if it’s healthy. It’s easy and that’s probably why you continue to have it. Stop taking the easy way out and you will change your life. When you live on auto-pilot, you’re not really living, but existing. Spend less time on social media, texting your friend about the weather, watching tv, and taking selfies, and more time chasing your dreams.
- Be a little selfish
If you’re the type of person who puts others first and yourself last, it’s time to start being a little selfish. You can’t change your life if you’re unwilling to focus on yourself. You might want to take an hour every day to exercise and finally lose the weight you’ve wanted to lose for years. You might want to write romance novels. In order to do this, you will need to devote time to writing them. It can’t be something you do once a week or once a month or on the rare occasion you have the house to yourself. When you have a yearning or a goal in your life, you need to dedicate time to getting it.
Changing your life requires desire and action. You have to be willing to step outside of your comfort zone and be uncomfortable sometimes to get the life you really want. | <urn:uuid:40751f44-cad6-4a7a-b9a8-98d6d341c387> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://55pluslifemag.com/four-essential-steps-to-change-your-life/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571190.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810131127-20220810161127-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.921673 | 768 | 1.914063 | 2 |
by Ken Lain, the mountain gardener
- How do I keep my indoor plants humid?
- How to naturally humidify my plants.
- What is the healthiest indoor humidity?
- Best temperature and humidity for plants.
- How to increase humidity for plants without a humidifier.
Houseplants thrive with 50% humidity, yet most winter homes barely register moisture in the winter air. The most popular houseplants at Watters Garden Center are native to the tropics or subtropical regions. They flourish in the loamy, humid underbrush of a more immense forest. These plants are poorly acclimated to growing in our typical home. Many of the aroids and most popular orchids fall into this category. Even English ivy is meant to grow in humid and moist forests.
The Percentage Disconnect
For these plants, a humidity of even 50 percent isn’t enough. Some prefer humidity that reaches the 80% range. By contrast, many homes are virtually bone dry, primarily through winter months as heat pumps kick in and blow hot, dry air throughout. In these homes, a humidity of 20% percent is standard.
How to Increase Humidity
Look for signs of humidity stress, such as brown leaf tips or brown leaf margins.
#1 Group your plants. Plants release moisture through their leaves in a process called transpiration. By grouping plants together, you create an artificial microclimate benefiting all the plants. It’s also a good idea to keep plants with similar humidity requirements near each other. When Aroids are your passion, group them together in one place where their more rapid transpiration rates create higher ambient humidity in the growing area.
#2 Place plants in trays with pebbles. This is a popular way to raise humidity immediately around each plant. Use clean trays, put 1″ inch of gravel in each tray, and then set the pots on the pebbles. Fill the tray with water halfway up the stones. Every time you flush your plants, make sure to empty and rinse the tray. This will ensure your tray doesn’t become a breeding ground for insects and reduce the concentration of fertilizer salts accumulated in the tray.
#3 Misting plants. This is another popular method to increase humidity. Keep a misting bottle filled with clean water and spray your plants every so often. Misting is especially helpful at the beginning of the winter season when the humidity drops rapidly with the temperature. Avoid misting plants with hairy or velvety leaves, such as African violets. Misting these plants encourages diseases.
#4 Use a humidifier. Humidifiers raise the humidity in the whole house. Plants love humidifiers as much as you do.
#5 Terrariums. If you’re growing unsatisfied plants, try switching to terrariums. A terrarium is an enclosed environment with soil and a few small plants. The system is sealed, so the plants exhale moisture through transpiration, only to have the water gather on the terrarium walls and fall back into the soil. Terrariums are perfect for smaller plants that require higher humidity and temperatures.
Until next week, I’ll be helping local gardeners grow healthier plants here at Watters Garden Center. | <urn:uuid:9a0c238e-f4c8-4567-8b73-986f10411be9> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://wattersgardencenter.com/better-humidity-for-healthier-houseplants/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570741.21/warc/CC-MAIN-20220808001418-20220808031418-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.909642 | 674 | 2.984375 | 3 |
Introduction and the Basic System: Social security is designed as safety net national insurance system to protect individuals from financial distress caused by unforeseen catastrophes. In the United States, the Social Security Program was created in 1935 (42 U.S.C. 301 et seq.) to provide old age, survivors, and disability insurance benefits to workers and their families. Unlike welfare, social security benefits are paid to an individual or his or her family at least in part on the basis of that person’s employment record and prior contributions to the system. The program is administered by the Social Security Administration (SSA) and since 1965 it has included health insurance benefits under the Medicare program. While social security benefits under the act are most often associated with old age, survivors, and disability insurance, in its broadest sense, they also includes federally funded welfare programs and unemployment compensation.
The Federal Old Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) pays out monthly benefits to retired people, to families whose wage earner has died, and to workers unemployed due to sickness or accident. Workers qualify for its protection by having been employed for a minimum amount of time and by having made contributions to the program. Once an individual has qualified for protection, certain other family members are also eligible. Financial need is not a requirement.
While the Social Security Act (federal law) governs an applicant’s right to benefits, state law governs some of the family relationship issues that may affect a person’s rights of entitlement under the act. The program is administered by the Social Security Administration (SSA), an independent federal agency. Unlike welfare, which is financial assistance given to persons who qualify on the basis of need, Social Security benefits are paid to individuals on the basis of their employment record and the amount they contributed to Social Security during their employment careers. In 1965 Social Security was expanded to include health insurance benefits under the Medicare program. 42 U.S.C.A. sections 1395 et seq.
Two funds have been created to be held in trust to pay benefits under OASDI:
- the Old Age and Survivors’ Trust Fund (OASTF) and
- the Disability Insurance Trust Fund (DITF).
As workers and employers make payroll contributions to these funds, money is paid out in benefits to people currently qualified to receive monthly checks. The OASTF provides benefits to retired workers, their spouses, their children, and other survivors of deceased workers, such as parents and divorced spouses. The DITF provides benefits to disabled workers, their spouses, and their dependent children. DITF also pays for rehabilitation services provided to the disabled.
The OASDI program is funded by payroll taxes levied on employees, employers, and the self-employed. The tax is imposed upon the employee’s taxable income, up to a maximum amount, with the employer contributing an equal amount. Self-employed workers contribute twice the amount levied on employees. However, to put self-employed individuals in approximately the same position as employees, self-employed individuals can deduct half of these taxes for both Social Security and income tax purposes.
The above programs, together, constitute the basic social safety net for most Americans. It is important to realize that while some aspects of the plan are predicated on the circumstances of the recipient (disability or death of a spouse) the basic social security benefit for old age are paid regardless of income or need to every person contributing to the system.
This article will examine the benefits in more detail and discuss how social security payments should be factored into the financial and estate planning of all Americans.
Old Age and Retirement Benefits:
There are three requirements for an individual to be eligible to receive old age Social Security benefits.
First, the individual must have attained the age of 62.
Second, the individual must file an application for old age benefits.
Third, the application must demonstrate that the individual is “fully insured.”
The extent to which an individual is insured depends on the number of quarters of coverage credited to his or her Social Security earnings record. 20 CFR section 404.101(a). A quarter is a three-month period ending March 31, June 30, September 30, or December 31. A worker becomes “fully insured” when the individual has been credited with working the requisite number of quarters. 42 U.S.C.A. section 414(a). The Social Security Administration’s regulations contain a table specifying by birth date the quarters of coverage required to obtain fully insured status. 20 CFR § 404.115. But irrespective of birth date, any worker who has 40 quarters (i.e., 10 years) of coverage is fully insured.
Workers born before 1950 can retire at age 65 with full benefits based on their average income during their working years. For workers born between 1950 and 1960, the retirement age for full benefits has increased to age 66. Workers born in 1960 or later will not receive full retirement benefits until age 67. However, any worker, regardless of birth date, may retire at age 62 and receive less than full benefits. At age 65, a worker’s spouse who has not contributed to Social Security receives fifty percent of the amount paid to the worker.
Workers who continue to work past retirement age may lose some benefits depending on the amount they earn after retirement because Social Security is designed to replace lost earnings. If earnings from employment do not exceed the specified amount exempted by law, persons working past the age of retirement will receive full benefits. If earnings are greater than the exempt amount, one dollar of benefit is withheld for every two dollars in wages earned above that amount. Once a worker reaches age seventy, however, he or she no longer has to report earnings to SSA, and thus his or her Social Security benefits will cease to be reduced.
Since 1975 Social Security benefits have increased annually to offset inflation. Known as cost of living adjustments (COLAs), these increases are based on the annual increase in consumer prices as reflected by the consumer price index (CPI). Allowing benefits to increase automatically eliminated the need for Congress to pass special acts each year to address the issue. Some fiscal conservatives argue that COLAs are responsible for unnecessarily driving up the costs of Social Security. They contend that the CPI overestimates current rates of inflation, and, as a result, Social Security benefits are over adjusted upward. Most recipients would disagree strongly.
The amounts payable to the retired person depend on the amount contributed and one receives notice of eligibility and requirements annually from the Social Security Administration. Said information is also available on line.
Survivors and Disability Insurance
Federal Old Age, Survivors’, and Disability Insurance (OSADI) benefits are monthly payments made to retired workers, to families whose wage earner has died, and to workers who are unemployed because of sickness, injury, or disability. Workers qualify for these benefits by having been employed for the mandatory minimum amount of time and by having made contributions to Social Security. There is no financial need requirement that must be satisfied. Once a worker qualifies for OSADI benefits, his family is entitled to those benefits as well. The entire program is geared toward helping families as a matter of social policy.
As stated above, two funds are held in trust to pay benefits under OASDI: the Old Age and Survivors’ Trust Fund (OASTF) and the Disability Insurance Trust Fund (DITF). As workers and employers make payroll contributions to these funds, money is paid out in benefits to people currently qualified to receive monthly checks. The OASTF provides benefits to retired workers, their spouses, their children, and other survivors of deceased workers, such as parents and divorced spouses. The DITF provides benefits to disabled workers, their spouses, and their dependent children. DITF also pays for rehabilitation services provided to the disabled.
Survivors’ benefits are paid to family members when a worker dies. Survivors can receive benefits if the deceased worker was employed and contributed to Social Security long enough for someone his or her age to qualify. Surviving spouses of deceased wage earners are the primary class of beneficiaries entitled to survivors’ benefits under the Social Security Act. Although sometimes referred to as “widow’s” or “widower’s” benefits, beneficiaries also include surviving divorced spouses who have minor or disabled children in their care.
Note that neither a surviving spouse nor a surviving divorced spouse may collect survivors’ benefits if they have remarried following the death of the wage earner. Surviving spouses and surviving divorced spouses can begin collecting survivors’ benefits at age sixty, unless the surviving spouse or surviving divorced spouse is disabled, then he or she can begin collecting survivors’ benefits at age fifty. In addition to monthly checks, a worker’s widow or widower may receive a lump-sum payment that is dependent upon current rates (but is not large) upon the worker’s death.
Survivors’ benefits are also payable to unmarried, dependent children under age 18 and to unmarried children of any age who are disabled prior to age 22. Thus, if a disabled, unmarried, dependent child of a worker became disabled prior to age 22, he or she will be entitled to receive survivors’ benefits for the duration of the disability. However, if the disabled surviving child remarries, his or her survivors’ benefits will be terminated, unless the disabled child marries another Social Security recipient.
The original Social Security Act of 1935 only included programs for needy elderly persons and blind persons. In 1950 a program for needy disabled persons was created under the act. Known as the “adult categories,” these three programs were first administered by state and local governments with partial federal funding. By the 1960s, studies showed that the programs were being unevenly administered by more than 1,300 state and local agencies, resulting in a gross disparity of benefit payments to beneficiaries in different jurisdictions. These disparities were addressed in 1972, when Congress federalized the Supplemental Security Income (SSI). 42 USCA sections 1381 et seq.
SSI is payable to workers who become “disabled,” which the law defines as a worker unable to engage in substantial gainful activity by reason of a medically determinable physical or mental impairment that can be expected to result in death or that has lasted or can be expected to last for a continuous period of not less than twelve months. 42 USCA section 1382c.
Courts have said that “substantial gainful activity” means more than the ability to find a job and physically perform it. It also requires the ability to hold the job for a significant period of time. Andler v. Chater, 100 F.3d 1389 (8th Cir. 1996). Examples of disabilities that meet the criteria set forth in the Social Security law include brain damage, heart disease, kidney failure, cancer, severe arthritis, and mental illness.
In cases where the gravity of a disability is less clear, the SSA uses a sequential evaluation process to decide whether a person’s disability is serious enough to justify awarding SSI benefits. If the impairment is so severe that it significantly affects a “basic work activity,” the worker’s medical records are compared with a set of guidelines known as the Listing of Impairments. 42 USCA APP., 20 CFR § 404.1529. A claimant found to suffer from a condition on this listing is entitled to receive SSI benefits. If the condition is less severe, the SSA will make a determination as to whether the impairment prevents the worker from doing his or her former work. If not, the application will be denied. If found to be incapable of doing his or her former work, the SSA proceeds to the final step, in which it determines whether the impairment prevents the applicant from doing other work available in the economy.
In making this determination, the SSA relies on a series of medical-vocational guidelines that consider the applicant’s residual functional capacity as well as the applicant’s age, education, and experience. The guidelines utilize three types of work, “sedentary work,” “light work,” and “medium work.” Sedentary work involves lifting no more than 10 pounds at a time and occasionally lifting or carrying articles such as files, ledgers, and small tools. Light work involves lifting no more than 20 pounds at a time with frequent lifting or carrying of objects weighing up to 10 pounds. Medium work involves lifting no more than 50 pounds at a time with frequent lifting or carrying of objects weighing up to 25 pounds. 42 USCA APP., 20 CFR § 404.1567.
If the SSA finds that an applicant can perform work that falls into one of these three categories, benefits will be denied. A claimant may appeal this decision to an administrative law judge, who will then hear evidence presented by both the claimant and the SSA. If the judge denies the claim for benefits, the claimant may appeal to the SSA’s Appeals Council. Claimants who lose this appeal may file a civil action in federal district court seeking review of the appeal’s council decision. 42 U.S.C. section 405(g).
Workers who meet the disability eligibility requirements may receive three types of benefits, monthly cash payments, vocational rehabilitation, and/or medical insurance. Monthly cash payments begin with the sixth month of disability. The amount of a monthly benefit payment depends upon the amount of earnings on which the worker has paid Social Security taxes and the number of the worker’s eligible dependents. The maximum payment for a family is roughly equal to the amount that the disabled worker is entitled to receive as an individual, plus allowances for dependents.
Vocational rehabilitation services are provided through a joint federal-state program. A person receiving cash payments for a disability may continue to receive them for a limited time after beginning to work at or near the end of a vocational rehabilitation program. Called the “trial work period,” this period may last for as long as nine months.
Medical insurance is available through the Medicare program (a federally sponsored program that provides hospital and medical insurance). A recipient of disability benefits may begin to participate in Medicare twenty-five months after the onset of a disability. The Medicare program is discussed in more detail in the next section.
Disabled workers are eligible for disability benefits even though they have not reached the age of retirement, so long as they have worked enough years under Social Security prior to the onset of the disability. The number of work years required to qualify for SSI depends on the worker’s age at the time of the disability. For workers under 24 years of age, the number of work years can be as few as one and a half years of work in the three years before the onset of the disability. However, the number of work years required for SSI eligibility can never exceed ten for any worker, regardless of his or her age.
A waiting period of five months after the onset of the disability is imposed before SSI payments begin. A disabled worker who fails to apply for benefits when eligible can sometimes collect back payments. But no more than twelve months of back payments may be collected. Even if a worker recovers from a disability that lasted more than twelve months, the worker can apply for back benefits within fourteenth months from the date of recovery. If a worker dies after a long period of disability without having applied for SSI, his or her family may apply for disability benefits within three months from the date of the worker’s death. Family members are also eligible for survivors’ benefits.
Note that in 1996 disability benefits altered significantly. The Contract with America Advancement Act of 1996 changed the basic philosophy underlying the disability program. Pub.L. No. 104-121, March 29, 1996, 110 Stat 847. The act provides that new applicants for Social Security or SSI disability benefits will no longer be eligible for SSI benefits if drug addiction or alcoholism is a material factor in their disability. Unless new applicants can qualify on some other medical basis, they will not receive Social Security disability benefits. Individuals who were receiving Social Security disability benefits prior to the act’s passage had their benefits terminated as of January 1, 1997.
Congress also narrowed the class of beneficiaries eligible for SSI payments when it passed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. Pub.L. No., 104-193, August 22, 1996, 110 Stat 2105. The law terminated SSI eligibility for most non-citizens, including most non-citizens who were receiving SSI payments at the time the law was passed. Before its enactment, nearly all aliens lawfully admitted to the United States could receive SSI if they met certain other requirements.
The Future and Reliance on Social Security:
Almost eighty million Americans born between 1946 and 1964 are expected to retire in the next twenty seven years. In 2001 thirty nine million Americans were enrolled in Medicare, and that number is expected to swell to nearly eighty million by 2030. In 2001 thirty five million Americans were eligible to collect Social Security, while in 2030 more than seventy million will be eligible. The ratio between employed workers and Social Security recipients is expected to drop from 3.4 in 2001 to 2.1 in 2030.
These figures have alarmed both politicians and experts, who have demanded that something be done to “save” Social Security from a possible future of bankruptcy and elimination of benefits. Proposals to “fix” the system have varied from conservative efforts aimed at “privatizing” Social Security by allowing workers to invest their payroll deductions in the securities market to more liberal efforts aimed at placing Social Security funds in a “lock box” to keep them safe from tampering and theft by other federal programs.
Others claim that the future is far from dire and that the influx of new migrant workers and immigration will increase the percentage of those working to those retired and that the goal of those claiming a potential crisis is to eliminate social security for political or ideological reasons.
Efforts to make radical reform of Social Security have been unsuccessful regardless of the party in power, with most Americans fearing a reduction in their possible benefits. The sad fact is that especially after the downturn of 2008, most Americans depend on Social Security in their own planning for retirement. Millions of Americans would be unable to live a middle class lifestyle without Social Security benefits and some avoid hunger based on these benefits. It is noteworthy that if President Bush’s plan to privatize Social Security had been enacted, the collapse in the stock market of 2008 would have greatly increased the desperate circumstances of most persons dependent on Social Security. Put simply, most citizens are not capable of the type of careful and balanced economic planning that retirement investment requires.
On the other side, unlike one’s own control of one’s own portfolio, keeping the funds in the full control of the Federal government exposes the trust fund to “borrowing” from other programs and is subject to the vagaries of political agenda and demagogues.
That said, Social Security has lasted since the mid 1930’s, is a mainstay of American society, and will exist in one form or another for the foreseeable future minus truly catastrophic alterations in the American economy. That is not to say the benefits will not alter appreciably.
For those who have the ability, it is vital not to rely on Social Security benefits continuing unaltered in the future. Either via pension plan, 401K plans, or just saving, it is vital to build as much of a nest egg as possible to supplement whatever Social Security may provide in the future. It should be viewed as a safety net but not the center of one’s retirement plan for the family.
Keep in mind that Social Security retirement benefits, as of 2011, can approximate thirty thousand dollars a year. To achieve that from investments, at five percent, would require a portfolio of $600.000.00 (before taxes, closer to $800,000.00 with taxes.) To put aside that much money in savings, even with a 401K, is extremely difficult for most people and with housing collapsing, impossible for the majority of Americans.
Which means that Social Security is a central part of the retirement and family financial planning of most Americans and will likely remain so for many more decades. | <urn:uuid:a6a22000-2b6f-4350-89d2-0ac034ed3fdb> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.stimmel-law.com/en/articles/basic-social-security-benefits-and-retirement-planning | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570913.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20220809064307-20220809094307-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.965409 | 4,189 | 3.453125 | 3 |
Central sterile processing technicians are essential members of health care teams. They maintain the cleanliness of hospital rooms, diagnostic equipment, and medical supplies to ensure the safety of staff and patients. In order to get this job in most countries, an individual must complete an accredited vocational training program and earn certification by passing written exams. An individual who is interested in the profession can investigate the costs and curricula of different programs and explore employment opportunities in his or her area.
A person who wants to become a central sterile processing technician can usually find out about educational programs by performing an Internet search and talking to representatives at local schools or hospitals. Training programs are commonly offered at community colleges, vocational schools, and specialized hospital programs. The length and cost of programs can vary considerably, though most take between one to six months to complete. Students get the opportunity to receive classroom instruction and demonstrations from trained professionals in the field. They learn about human anatomy, medical terminology, the importance of sterile practices, and the ethical elements of the job.
Upon graduation from an accredited program, a student is typically awarded a degree or a certificate of completion. Many schools offer job placement services, which help new graduates find entry-level work or internships at local hospitals, clinics, nursing homes, or surgical centers. In order to earn certification and officially become a central sterile processing technician, an individual is usually required to log several hundred hours of supervised, on-the-job experience. New employees work closely with experienced professionals to learn the specific tasks of the job.
Some states and countries require passing scores on certification exams to become a central sterile processing technician. Exams are typically offered by nationally or internationally recognized governing committees. By doing well in school and gaining several hundred hours of practical experience, an individual can be confident that he or she will do well on written and practical certification exams. Many websites and reliable publications offer exam preparation material and study guides, which provide additional information and test-taking strategies to ensure success.
After gaining experience and certification in the field, an individual may be able to get a job in a larger organization or a more specialized setting. Many professionals become managers or supervisors of entire departments by proving their competence for the job and pursuing continuing education. Central sterile processing technicians are often in high demand, and top workers generally enjoy high levels of job satisfaction and security. | <urn:uuid:e066ad93-79c3-491d-ade3-7ebd695faef8> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.wise-geek.com/how-do-i-become-a-central-sterile-processing-technician.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571190.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810131127-20220810161127-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.958244 | 470 | 2.46875 | 2 |
Leadership, Business Models, Technologies and Change
The book "Toolbox Digital Business" provides important guidelines and instruments for the digital transformation process. It shows how established companies in particular can use digitization for their strategic development. It highlights developments in IT and data management, supported by Artificial Intelligence. It also analyzes how marketing, sales, human resources, controlling and the whole corporate organization must be transformed in the digital age. This is the only way to take advantage of the new opportunities as early and comprehensively as possible. The tools offered here will support companies in actively shaping the change. | <urn:uuid:7cbfb504-eed6-48ed-858c-aca33b6b17b1> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.ralf-kreutzer.de/book/toolbox-digital-business/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570913.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20220809064307-20220809094307-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.91754 | 122 | 1.609375 | 2 |
People with disabilities and their families are missing out on critical services and care because the Federal Liberal Government is withholding an estimated $1.6 billion committed to the National Disability Insurance Scheme across Australia.
Minister for Disability, Ageing and Carers Luke Donnellan today joined New South Wales Minister for Families, Communities and Disability Services Gareth Ward in calling for the Federal Government to fulfil their promise and release the cash to deserving Australians.
This money was saved by the Commonwealth from a massive underspend during the transition period as thousands of Victorians struggled to navigate the scheme and access the services they deserve. It is estimated that up to $600 million is owed to Victoria.
It was meant to be established as a Reserve Fund and set up by the end of 2019, with the accumulated funds committed to helping people with a disability.
Despite repeated requests from both Governments, the Commonwealth has not only refused to release the money – they are yet to establish the fund or even provide the proposed fund design or governance arrangements so it can be established.
This systemic neglect is another blow to people with a disability who continue to wait far too long for an NDIS plan. The result is families and carers being placed under unnecessary stress, people with complex needs struggling to find appropriate accommodation, and disabled Australians not getting the care they deserve. | <urn:uuid:88d3c9e5-dc23-4731-88dd-1aa26eb2f57f> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://disabilityinsider.com/2020/02/21/misc/victoria-goes-into-bat-for-vital-disability-funding/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571190.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810131127-20220810161127-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.963972 | 266 | 1.5 | 2 |
The innocence of childhood is a precious jewel, to be gently cared for and nurtured, allowing the child, whose future we are building, to develop happily and safely in an atmosphere of love and peace. But for many Palestinian children their childhood is lived under a cloak of fear, and the threat of violence and abuse at the hands of an armed force that stalks the streets of their homeland.
In the eleven years since 2000, Israeli forces have killed “1,471” (1) children in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the bulk of which are aged between 13 and 17 years old. The children of Gaza have been and continue to be at greater risk, with almost a thousand murdered in the last twelve years, on the streets of their city, on their way to and from school, whilst playing with friends, shopping for their family or simply relaxing in their homes. Most are shot randomly, indiscriminately, or killed as a result of Israeli air and ground attacks. Around 50 were taken prematurely from their families by unexploded ordnance.
This latest attack on the people of Gaza began on Friday 9th March, “killing 25 Palestinians.” (2) The Israeli air force fired missiles from the comfort of their warplanes at civilians in an arbitrary way, shooting onto the streets of Gaza and into peoples homes, “in the Jabaliya refugee camp that were mostly full of women and children,” (PM) The faceless attackers even shot at mourners attending a funeral. Such is the callous, vicious nature of the Israeli security forces, that kills, injures and intimidates innocent women and children, destroying all hope of living peaceful decent lives, and all in the name of ‘security’. Nonsense, this is criminal violence nothing more or less. These most recent atrocities come on the back of the massacre that took place in December ‘08/January’09, when a total of “1417” (IOAK) Palestinians were murdered, of which ‘318” (IOAK) were children and 116 women. Fresh in the children’s young memories lie the echo of that horrendous time, the constant bombardment, the loss of loved ones, and the shootings. In addition to the deaths around 1000 children were injured in the three-week assault, many children were left with severe physical disabilities and deep psychological wounds. The mental/emotional effects more difficult to see and or to treat than broken bones and scared flesh. “The Gaza Community Health Programme estimates that half Gaza’s children – around 350,000 – will develop some form of post-traumatic stress disorder.” (3) This is staggering but unsurprising, and the attacks this March on unarmed civilians, will serve to intensify the mental suffering and anguish that these children are living with, “both parents and psychologist fear that Gaza children could be affected psychologically in the long run.” (OP)
Children make up around 45% of the four million or so total Palestinian population in the occupied territories (4) – a fact that terrifies an aging Israel. And what impact does living under the brutal Israeli occupation have on them, are they inclined towards peace and brotherhood, is tolerance fostered in their hearts and minds or are the seeds of hate and the desire for revenge being carefully sown. Does violence ever bring peace, or perpetuate conflict. Violence we see begets not harmony but further violence. Colonel Travers: “we spoke to a psychiatrist in Gaza,” (5) who said, “We already see in our schools in Gaza the next generation of Hamas revolutionaries, children exposed to so much violence, they have no option but to terminate their childhood and move into a different frame, and the likelihood is that they will never stabilize.”(Ibid) In order to justify the un justifiable, the unjust Israel needs to instil hate into another generation of Palestinians – to maintain their (Israel’s) position as the ‘enemy within’, thereby excusing in some perverted distortion of the facts, their continued aggression, violence and violation of international laws, too many to count.
Intimidation and Torture
Palestinian children living in the West Bank and the Gaza strip under the illegal Israeli occupation are subjected to brutal treatment, illegal imprisonment, torture and intimidation by the Israeli security forces. Defence for Children International states “a pattern of systematic ill-treatment [of Palestinian children] emerges, [from their report ‘Bound, Blindfolded and Convicted’] much of which amounts to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, as defined in the UN Convention against Torture, and in some cases, torture – both of which are absolutely prohibited.” (6) Since 1967 Palestinian children as well as adults have been subjected to Israeli Military Law, a legal system based on prejudice and short on justice. In the time since this emergence system was instigated 726,000 Palestinians have been arrested and detained. The numbers of children arrested and taken from their homes is shocking. “In the past 11 years alone, around 7,500 children, some as young as 12 years, are estimated to have been detained, interrogated, and imprisoned within this ‘system. This averages out at between 500-700 children per year, or nearly two children, each and every day.” (BBCC) Mostly the arrested children live in villages in areas of tension, “friction points, namely settlements built in violation of international law, and roads used by the Israeli army or settlers.” (Ibid) The situation seems to be escalating particularly in certain areas of the West bank. “The extreme Golani Unit of the Israeli military is escalating its arrests of Palestinian children in Al Khalil (Hebron), targeting boys between the ages of 12 to15 years old with at least 10 reported cases of child arrests made (in early February 2012) just in the span of one week.” (7)
As well arrests, incarceration in solitary confinement has also increased, with almost a quarter of all children arrested being held in isolation. Children, mainly boys, aged from 12 to 17 years old are forcefully taken from their family, often at night, imprisoned in a tiny, dank cell, illegally beaten and tortured, intimidated and on occasion subjected to electronic shock treatment. Most children are detained for the terrible crime of throwing stones at soldiers armed with M16 rifles and tear gas, all courtesy of the American arms industry.
Like 15-year-old Yahia, who, with four friends was arrested and taken to the [illegal] Israeli settlement of Zuffin, where there “hands tied behind their backs, they were blindfolded, before being forced to kneel on the ground for several hours.” (BBCC)The inevitable insults then began to rein down on the children. “After about two and a half hours the boys were loaded into a truck and transported to a police station … the boys were interrogated … the interrogator grabbed the boys head and slammed it against the wall, slapping him twice, a short time later he returned holding a small electric shock device [Taser]. ‘He placed the device on my body and I felt a great powerful shock and my body started shivering’. This shock treatment continued until ‘I couldn’t feel my arms or legs and I felt extreme pain in my head. I felt I was going to be paralysed, so I decided to confess”(BBCC) In another example of torturous abuse at the hands of the Israelis, there is 16-year-old Mohammad Shabrawi from the West Bank town of Tulkarm, arrested in January 2001, again accused of throwing stones. His ordeal mirrors in part that of Yahia – taken to a settlement, his hands tied and being forced blindfolded to kneel on the asphalt for an hour or so, before being taken to “Cell 36, deep within Al Jalame prison in northern Israel.”(8) Reports The Guardian: “It is one of a handful of cells where Palestinian children are locked in solitary confinement for days or even weeks. One 16-year-old claimed that he had been kept in Cell 36 for 65 days.” (Ibid) Mohammad spent “17 days in solitary, apart from interrogations. He first saw a lawyer 20 days after his arrest, he said, and was charged after 25 day” And the effect of this terrible ordeal on the boy, “Since his release, he said, he was “now afraid of the army, afraid of being arrested.” His mother said he had become withdrawn.” (Ibid)
The use of hand ties and blindfolds is extensive, in 2010 the UN documented 90 cases of “ill treatment” (9) of Palestinian children in Israeli detention, of which 75 had their hands tied behind their backs and were also blindfolded. Almost a third of children were under 15 years of age. Of the 90 detained “62 children reported being beaten, 35 children reported position abuse and 16 children were kept in solitary confinement. In three cases, children reported the use of electric shocks on their bodies. Particularly concerning was the fact that there was an increase in documented cases of sexual violence” (UNDOPI). All of this contravenes international law and conventions signed and ratified by Israel and the democratic principles Israel so loudly proclaims. Mark Regev, the chief Israeli purveyor of propaganda and deceit, and Spokesman for Prime Minister, Benyamin Netanyahu said, according to the Guardian, “The test of a democracy is how you treat people incarcerated, people in jail, and especially so with minors.”(TG) Democracy damned by words of duplicity. Much of the mistreatment exercised towards Palestinian children not only contravenes international law, but also violates Israel’s own domestic laws.
When in Israeli custody children are violently interrogated; they are shackled, blindfolded and bound to a chair whilst being questioned. According to Israeli Law, “Interrogation of a minor may be conducted only by an interrogator who is trained as a youth interrogator. A parent is allowed to be present at all times,” (10) and ”Minors have the right to consult with the parent before the interrogation.” (BTSR) They are verbally insulted “You’re a dog, a son of a whore is common. Many are exhausted from sleep deprivation. Day after day they are fettered to the chair, then returned to solitary confinement.” (TG) Eventually the majority of children sign confessions that they later state were coerced, “Children under interrogation unsurprisingly eventually admit to the ‘crimes’, DCI “in the end at least 90 percent will plead guilty, as this is the quickest way out of a system that denies children bail in 87 percent of cases.”(BBCC) Accusations of crimes justifying these illegal detentions are commonly, throwing stones, or occasionally Molotov cocktails at soldiers or settlers – both of whom let us remember are illegally present upon Palestinian land. A few are arrested for “more serious offences such as links to militant organisations or using weapons,” states the Guardian
Major Violation, Minor Insecurity
And what ‘National security information’ is being elicited from the interrogation of these children, who the Israelis are abusing? “They are pumped for information about the activities and sympathies of their classmates, relatives and neighbours.” (TG)) Within walls of intimidation a child can be forced to betray their friends and families, eliciting the names of other stone throwers is a primary aim of the torturer. B’Tselem: “One method the police use to identify juvenile stone throwers is incrimination: the police arrest one or more youths, they are required to give names of other youths whom they saw throwing stones, and these youths are then arrested and required to provide the names of others, and so on.”(BTSR) The children under interrogation in a frightening isolated place, far from the sanctity of home, are under great emotional stress and inevitably give up the names of friends, the experience then compounded by the added trauma of guilt.
Children are mostly held inside Israel itself, which restricts access to legal support and excludes family members from visiting, their freedom of movement is constrained under the occupation, the necessary permit to visit the prisons is often impossible to obtain. Families are therefore unable to support their children through the ordeal of confinement. Holding children in prisons inside Israel is in violation of Article 76 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits such transfers. According to DCI, “testimonies [from 310 children] reveal that the majority of children are taken away to an unknown location for interrogation.” (BBCC) This process of arrests, detention and torture operating inside Israel and outside international and national law, offers the victims no legal recourse, DCI (“there is a general absence of effective complaint mechanisms.” (Ibid)
Legally Binding, Illegally Bound
The Israeli judicial system as it currently pertains to Palestinian children, allows illegal practices to take place within the walled settlements –themselves illegal, inside police stations and Israeli prisons. International law on the rights of the child, to which Israel is bound, is clear and extensive: “The main document establishing the rights of children is the Convention on the Rights of the Child, adopted by the UN in November 1989. Israel signed the Convention in July 1990 and ratified it in August 1991.”(BTSR) In the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict, we find: “Condemning the targeting of children in situations of armed conflict and direct attacks on objects protected under international law, including places that generally have a significant presence of children, such as schools and hospitals.” (11) Schools are repeatedly targeted by Israeli security forces, according to the UN in 2010 there was an increase in the number of attacks on education institutions. The Un continues its findings, “these attacks resulted in damage to schools or interruption of education, placing the safety of the children in Gaza and the West Bank at risk. The majority of cases involved the presence of Israeli security forces within school compounds following raids, forceful entry, and search and arrest operations, including the use of tear gas on students.” (UNDOPI) All international treaties and conventions signed by the lawbreaker, Israel, safeguard children in conflict, and Israel ignores them all. DCI: “These treaties relevantly provide that: in all actions concerning children their best interests shall be a primary consideration; children should only be detained as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time;” (BBCC) Held for ‘17 days in solitary’ as Mohammed was, is neither short nor appropriate, indeed it is illegal. It is one example within a catalogue of atrocities that sees Israel contravening another convention, breaking yet another international law and doing so with impunity. This must stop, urgent action is required to safeguard the children of Palestine and protect them from the tyranny that is Israeli policy in the OPT’s.
In order to fuel what is a raging furnace of legal standards raging around Israel, let us add The Fourth Geneva Convention, which “grants special protections to minors” (IOAK) and provides 146 articles that protect in law the lives of all Palestinians living under the illegal Israeli occupation. Israel is in breach of them all. Indeed ‘grave breaches’, which in itself constitutes war crimes, “the world has seen those [grave breaches] inflicted every day by Israel against the Palestinian People living in occupied Palestine: e.g., wilful killing of Palestinian civilians by the Israeli army and Israel’s illegal paramilitary settlers.” (Ibid) Israel is guilty of ‘grave breaches’ of the convention and the more serious offense of ‘Crimes Against Humanity’ against Palestinians “as determined by the U.N. Human Rights Commission” (Ibid), which is the “legal precursor to the international crime of genocide as defined by the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.” (Ibid) The argument that Israel is or has in fact already committed the crime of genocide, is powerful and to many indisputable.
Genocide, ethnic cleansing, apartheid, crimes against humanity; titles that all fit Israel bespoke. Call it what you will, the actions of Israel in the OPT’s are vile, murderous, calculated and illegal. It is for the international community acting in unity, and led by the UN to finally stand up and act to protect the lives of the innocent men, women and children of Palestine, lifting the shadow of constant fear, intimidation and aggression from their lives. Humanity is one. Together we must stand in the face of injustice, violence and hate to safeguard the lives of the innocent, the oppressed the defenceless.
(1) If only Americans Knew. (IOAK) http://www.ifamericansknew.org/cur_sit/dec08.html
(2) The Palestine monitor (PM) 13th March 2012 http://www.palestinemonitor.org/?p=4401
(3) Occupied Palestine (OP) 17th March 2012
(4) See Wikipedioa.
(5) See Mondoweiss.
(6) Defence for Children International report, bound-blindfolded-and-convicted-children-held-military-detention-2012 (BBCC)
(7) See International Solidarity Movement.
(8) The Guardian (TG) The Palestinian children – alone and bewildered – in Israel’s Al Jalame jail
(9) United Nations Developments in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel (UNDOPI)
(10) B’TSELEM report No Minor Matter: Violation of the Rights of Palestinian Minors Arrested by Israel on Suspicion of Stone-Throwing (BTSR)
(11) OHCHR Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/crc-conflict.htm | <urn:uuid:d6fdd8bb-27e8-4496-92ee-7796b6be0858> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.eurasiareview.com/27032012-israeli-treatment-of-palestinian-minors-confined-cruelty-oped/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571190.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810131127-20220810161127-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.960818 | 3,838 | 2.109375 | 2 |
SAN DIEGO—Despite a global slowdown in Zika infections, researchers are still working to better understand the complicated mechanisms of the virus. Researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego)—using a technique to label, or tag, infected and non-infected cells in a culture—have revealed the key mechanisms the Zika virus (ZIKV) uses to outsmart the immune system. Their findings, recently published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, illuminate how Zika is able to stop macrophages from performing their key functions for immune cell recruitment and antiviral defense.
Zika has proven to be much more effective at penetrating the body’s natural barriers against infections than other viruses, primarily because of its effect on an immune cell type called a macrophage. Researchers knew that macrophages are a key part of the innate immune system system that protects us from viral infections, but wanted to better understand how Zika successfully infects those cells that normally kill viruses.
“How Zika virus (ZIKV) is able to infect different cell types and cause human disease/ pathology is not well understood,” according to Dr. Aaron Carlin, an associate physician at the UC San Diego School of Medicine. “Flaviviruses, like ZIKV, are known to infect innate immune cells (macrophages and dendritic cells) during infection. Human and animal studies of ZIKV show that ZIKV infects macrophages in brain and placenta that are potentially important for human disease. We wanted to know how ZIKV infects these cells and how this might contribute to ZIKV disease.”
Derived from the Greek term for “big eaters,” macrophages are a type of white blood cell that engulfs and digests cellular debris, foreign substances, microbes, cancer cells and anything else that doesn’t make the proper proteins consistent with healthy body cells. Macrophages typically float throughout the bloodstream and when a virus invades, they flock to the site of the disease to fight it. This is not, however, what happens when Zika enters the body, researchers found.
“Our method of FACS isolation of ZIKV-positive and ZIKV-negative bystanders cells for transcriptome and epigenetic analysis was novel,” says Carlin. “Bioinformatically comparing the two groups allowed us to quickly identify the key genes and pathways that are regulated by the virus.”
By tagging infected and non-infected cells, and sorting them to study their behavior, they found that ZIKV uses two mechanisms for suppressing gene production in cells. According to the published paper, ZIKV infection causes both targeted suppression of type I interferon responses (commonly known to trigger immune response) and general suppression by reducing RNA polymerase II protein levels and DNA occupancy.
“Our data clearly showed that in human macrophages the dominant mechanism is ZIKV degradation of STAT2 consistent with work from Adolfo Garcia-Sastre and others,” adds Carlin. “What was unexpected was that we found that ZIKV infection also leads to a suppression of RNApol2 genome occupancy, or general gene transcription. This loss was most notable at genes involved in maintaining or defining the core identity of a macrophage.”
The study will allow researchers to explore the design of inhibitors that could block STAT2 degradation, thereby restoring antiviral interferon responses that would clear the virus. They are also currently determining if ZIKV causes a loss in cellular identity in other cell types including neural stem cells, and if so, how? If the mechanism allows ZIKV to deprogram neural stem cells, perhaps this is the reason ZIKV causes microcephaly. If that is the case, then therapeutics that block this deprogramming could stop the devastating effects of Zika on the brain. Researchers are optimistic that their mechanism of separating cells, and the uncovered disruption tactics of ZIKV, will be of therapeutic value for many other diseases in the future.
“Our technique and analysis approach should be broadly applicable to the study of host-pathogen interactions,” asserts Carlin. “Other viruses, like influenza, chikungunya and herpes simplex virus type I, target RNApol2 in order to disrupt transcription. It is unknown if interference of RNApol2 by these viruses leads to preferential loss of expression of core transcription factors/genes. In addition, some studies have used ZIKV as a therapeutic to target and destroy glioblastoma. It is possible that this same mechanism of loss of expression of critical core genes may also be important for why ZIKV can kill these cancer cells.” | <urn:uuid:16d46512-a3e1-40c1-a88d-362603a8f65b> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.drugdiscoverynews.com/understanding-zika-s-methods-12952 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570913.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20220809064307-20220809094307-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.928984 | 984 | 3.390625 | 3 |
Poduptime helps you find a pod to use and join the Fediverse (Federated Network). The Fediverse (a portmanteau of “federation” and “universe”) is an ensemble of federated (i.e. interconnected) servers that are used for web publishing (i.e. social networking, microblogging, blogging, or websites) and file hosting, but which, while independently hosted, can communicate with each other. On different servers (instances), users can create so-called identities. These identities are able to communicate over the boundaries of the instances because the software running on the servers supports one or more communication protocols which follow an open standard.
Since they do not check if these instances are trade-free, I give them 4 blocks. Howver because this is the fediverse, pretty much all of these instances should be trade-free. | <urn:uuid:f8daa7d2-4b41-415c-89d4-d35cae370c27> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.directory.trade-free.org/goods-services/podupti-me/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571190.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810131127-20220810161127-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.904114 | 186 | 1.664063 | 2 |
Objectives: To review what we have learned from the policing systematic reviews funded by the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA) and to examine the importance of funding and influential individuals in advancing scientific knowledge.
Methods: We use the history of randomized experiments in criminology and policing to emphasize how influential individuals and funding agencies have played a key role in advancing science in particular areas. We focus on the impact the NPIA has had on dramatically increasing the number of policing systematic reviews and advancing knowledge about effective policing strategies.
Results: The nine completed Campbell reviews funded by the NPIA have more than doubled the number of Campbell Collaboration reviews related to policing and have increased our knowledge about a number of policing programs and strategies. Collectively, these reviews suggest a number of areas where the police can be successful in increasing fairness and effectiveness in policing.
Conclusions: Key individuals, particularly when connected to funding agencies, can have a major impact on the trajectory of scientific knowledge. The NPIA program on systematic reviews in policing demonstrates the influence dedicated funding can have on advancing our knowledge on important policing topics.
- National Policing Improvement Agency
- Systematic review
ASJC Scopus subject areas | <urn:uuid:22d283d6-5286-4e56-b715-5cbbebf98028> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://asu.pure.elsevier.com/en/publications/generating-knowledge-a-case-study-of-the-national-policing-improv | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571502.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811194507-20220811224507-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.913691 | 255 | 2.421875 | 2 |
- In-app marketing has many benefits, including the ability to granularly target audiences, tools to measure results and optimize efficiently, brand safety and a variety of formatting options to drive engagement.
- To be successful with in-app, advertisers must think from the perspective of their audience and determine what will drive them to take the next step to conversion.
- Important elements of in-app ad design and creative, include interactivity, bite-sized messaging, dynamic imagery, and effective and relevant calls to action.
- It’s not enough to take creatives used for television or web and port them over to in-app as-is. You’ll need to develop a custom in-app advertising strategy that takes into account how people use apps and what they expect from in-app advertising.
- With a close eye and an understanding of these best practices, you can be sure that your creatives are always leading to campaign success and major dividends.
In-app marketing has proven to be one of the most effective channels for brands that are looking for results.
The benefits include the ability to granularly target audiences, tools to measure results and optimize efficiently, brand safety and a variety of high performing ad format options to drive quality engagement.
Of course, it helps that mobile app usage has grown tremendously over the past few years and has spiked of late as consumers largely stay at home.
Consumers in the U.S. are now spending over four hours day using mobile devices, and close to 90% of all time spent on mobile is spent using apps. As apps overtake television as the most popular mass media, it’s critical for brands to advertise where consumers are spending their time.
But to be successful with in-app advertising, it’s critical that advertisers think from the perspective of their audience and determine what will drive them to take the next step to conversion.
The mobile app environment is very different than even other digital channels, so advertising in-app should understand what mobile app users want and what they expect.
So what does quality in-app advertising look like? Important elements of in-app ad design and creative include these four points.
Traditional advertising is inherently passive to some extent. And while mobile in-app advertising can function similarly, the best mobile ads include interactivity and make the advertising experience much more active. With mobile, it’s possible to make the consumer a key component of the ad.
Interactivity is especially valuable when the action is tied to the product offering being sold, as it helps to connect the ad and the message. Here are a few examples of how this can work:
- Adding clickable elements helps the end user to dive into a product or service on their own terms. For example, an in-app ad for a new car can allow consumers to click on different parts of the car as shown in the ad to learn about the car’s features that most matter to them.
- Including augmented reality as part of the ad can help consumers better understand how the product can work in their daily lives. For instance, it can be deployed in an ad creative to help someone see how jewelry might look on them or to determine whether a piece of furniture will fit and work in their home.
- Playable ads (i.e. ads that essentially serve as a short game) help capture attention and prove more memorable than just display ads. This type of advertising is especially effective for mobile game advertising as it allows people to try out the game for themselves before they buy, but really any kind of company looking to boost brand awareness can benefit from this kind of mobile in-app advertising.
2) Bite-sized messaging
On mobile, attention spans are short. A minute or 30 seconds may be fine for television, but even 30 seconds is too long for mobile. There’s a reason that 70% of all video ads served by InMobi Exchange in 2019 were 20 seconds long or shorter, while 10% being six seconds or shorter.
It’s essential to consider that when using phones, consumers are looking for bite-sized information. They’re opening the app, quickly scrolling or just accomplishing a particular action and then closing the app.
For example, how many people are opening and using a weather app for longer than 15 seconds?
As a result of all this, ads should be short and to the point.
3) Dynamic imagery
When I was a child, I used to love my uncle’s National Geographic magazines. I wouldn’t always read the articles, but I always noticed and enjoyed the photography. As the old saying goes, a picture is worth 1,000 words.
This same principle of more is more applies to mobile in-app advertising. What do you think is more likely to catch your attention: a static banner ad or a fullscreen video ad with rich media creatives?
Our research brings this to light and show just how effective dynamic imagery is for mobile in-app advertising.
For example, we found that during the first six months of 2020, the average click-through rate of a mobile video ad was over 17x greater than the average click-through rate of banners.
Consider bringing an image to life with effects to animate and make the ad more visually stimulating. Videos are great, but even adding animations to banners and interstitials can make a big difference.
In fact, for all advertisers that use InMobi DSP, we make sure that all creatives include subtle transitions and animation meant to capture user attention.
4) Effective and relevant calls to action
Having a clear call to action is essential to ensure consumers follow the steps to conversation. This is true for all advertising, but it’s especially necessary for mobile in-app advertising.
For mobile in-app advertising, there are two key points to keep in mind when it comes to calls to action: 1) what do you want the consumer to do after seeing your ad? and 2) how easy is it for the end user to complete this action on mobile?
The best CTAs lead to a desired result not only because the ad itself was effective but also because the ad made it easy for the person to complete the desired result.
So what does this look like in action? Let’s say you’re a retailer looking to drive sales during the all-important holiday shopping season. What’s the best next step for someone to take?
For some people, the CTA should lead them to the retailer’s own app to make a purchase. For others, the CTA should lead them to a third-party app they already know and love, like Amazon, to make a purchase.
For still others who prefer to buy in person, an effective CTA shows where the nearest retail brick-and-mortar location is from them. In short, the best CTA is the best for that particular person.
Crafting a path forward for effective in-app advertising
As time spent using mobile apps rises, it’s critical to reach consumers where they are through in-app advertising. But to see success from in-app advertising, you can’t just take creatives used for television or web and just port them over to in-app as is. However, by developing a custom in-app advertising strategy that takes into account how people use apps and what they expect from in-app advertising, any brand can see major dividends from an in-app marketing investment.
Supriya Goswami is the VP and Head of Marketing for InMobi Marketing Cloud. She leads strategic marketing for InMobi and has global experience spanning the U.S., Europe, Asia and India. She is passionate about complex, multi-channel, integrated marketing campaigns, influencing go-to-market strategies, shaping product marketing strategy, driving digital transformation and working collaboratively with diverse teams in sales, product and technology.
The post The 4 essential elements of effective in-app advertising appeared first on ClickZ. | <urn:uuid:148ab342-73e8-4bfd-b34e-ea368eec64a2> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | http://wikimakemoney.com/2020/10/14/the-4-essential-elements-of-effective-in-app-advertising/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570913.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20220809064307-20220809094307-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.948204 | 1,668 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Turkey is in talks with three countries as it seeks help in developing a space port in Somalia and a rocket to carry out lunar landings, according to the head of its space agency.
Serdar Huseyin Yildirim, head of the Turkish Space Agency, made his comments to the Sputnik news agency on the sidelines of the Global Space Exploration Conference, held in St Petersburg between the 14 and 18 of June.
Although he did not say which countries were involved, his remarks suggested Russia was one of them. "We could work with Russia in many areas, on the spaceport, on rocket engines. We discussed the possibility of Russia providing assistance in the construction of our spaceport. They have a great deal of experience in this area, both in launch pads and spaceports themselves," Yildirim commented.
It was reported in February that Ankara was considering the construction of a spaceport in Somalia as part of a $1bn plan to develop a space exploration programme.
According to Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the president of Turkey, this is aimed at carrying out a "hard" landing on the Moon in 2023, the centenary of the founding of modern Turkey. This mission would allow Turkish scientists to gain experience for a soft landing in 2028 followed by the carrying out of scientific experiments and the deployment of an exploration vehicle.
Yildirim added that Turkey had held talks with the Centre for Operation of Space Ground-Based Infrastructure, a subsidiary of Russian space agency Roscosmos, and more detailed planning may begin in the next year, once the location of the spaceport is finalised.
Turkey launched its space agency in December 2018. In 2020, it announced the testing of a rocket developed by defence contractor Roketsan.
It is also planning to send a Turkish astronaut to the International Space Station, and launch satellites to set up its own global positioning system.
In an interview with Sputnik last year, Yildirim indicated that the country’s space agency was working on nearly 30 separate projects, and that it has held talks with about 20 countries on space cooperation, including Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Russia, Japan, China, Pakistan, India and Azerbaijan.
Image: President Erdogan announced Turkey’s $1bn space programme in February (Dreamstime) | <urn:uuid:69adc4e6-7602-4bcf-907f-467039cf4dcc> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.globalconstructionreview.com/turkey-talks-over-somalia-space-station-and-missio/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570913.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20220809064307-20220809094307-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.965806 | 476 | 1.867188 | 2 |
Solution for injection phosphorus 10 mg/ml, 200 ml
solution for injection
Transparent colorless or yellowish liquid. During storage, a precipitate forms, which disappears when heated.
1 ml of the drug contains active substances:
phosphorus – 10 mg;
hexamethylenetetramine – 200 mg.
Excipients: water for injections.
Phosphorus ions contained in the preparation actively participate in the processes of phosphorus and calcium metabolism in the animal’s body and, together with hexamethylenetetramine, bind and neutralize underoxidized toxic products of disturbed metabolism and contribute to their removal from the body. The drug accelerates the growth of bones in case of fractures, stimulates enzymatic processes and increases the body’s resistance to adverse environmental factors.
From the application
With disorders of phosphorus and calcium metabolism (rickets, osteomalacia, osteodystrophy), ketosis, tetany, intoxications, with bone fractures, to increase the body’s resistance.
Intravenous cattle – 0.2 – 0.4 ml of the drug per 1 kg of body weight, sheep, goats – 0.1 – 0.2 ml per 1 kg of body weight. If necessary, the introduction is repeated 2-3 times with an interval of 24-48 hours. Before administration, warm up to 40 °C until the crystals disappear.
*Kilograms to a Pounds conversion table
|Kilograms (kg)||Pounds (lb)||Pounds+Ounces
|0.1 kg||0.220 lb||0 lb 3.527 oz|
|1 kg||2.205 lb||2 lb 3.274 oz|
|5 kg||11.023 lb||11 lb 0.370 oz|
|10 kg||22.046 lb||22 lb 0.740 oz|
Simultaneous parenteral administration of phosphosan and calcium salts is not allowed.
Out of caution
The drug is incompatible with iodine, papaverine hydrochloride, acetylsalicylic acid.
Bottles made of glass, closed with a rubber stopper under an aluminum break-in of 200 ml.
Out of care
Dry, dark place inaccessible to children at temperatures from 5°C to 25°C.
The shelf life is 2 years.
For use in veterinary medicine! | <urn:uuid:73ee78a0-cf1b-4072-b2a2-a39312ea31b1> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://homelabvet.com/product/solution-for-injection-phosphorus/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570913.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20220809064307-20220809094307-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.786224 | 535 | 1.992188 | 2 |
Startups are typified by big ambitions with small marketing budgets, and with few employees wearing many hats. Here are some marketing tips that don’t have to cost a bundle, and that can drive efficiency from expert bloggers around the web. This is by no means exhaustive or a blueprint for success, just some ideas that have worked for others and might work for you.
Focus (from Jacob Cass at Just Creative)
Choose your targeted audience. Don’t try to please everyone as this road leads nowhere. Let us quote Sally Hogshead’s book “Fascinate”: “If you’re not generating a negative reaction from someone, you’re not fascinating anyone.” Icebergs don’t freeze overnight and you don’t have to be for everyone immediately. Start with something smaller, focus, and then broaden later. By the way, Facebook once was for students at specific universities, and look what is happening now. We, our teen kids, moms, dads, and even grandparents have their Facebook accounts. This is a bright example of the right focus.
Although you may not have a great deal to offer people in terms of discounts and giveaways in order to attract potential customers, you can present good, quality content that’s related to your target audience.
When it comes to social media, keep in mind that the most successful brands continually share interesting content that’s frequently not obvious advertising or a direct call for action. Successful companies often post and share ideas that their audience is most interested in. Take it one step further by actually interacting with your audience. Directly connect with your audience by responding to their comments about the content you’re submitting. This marketing process is huge in terms of building a long, trustworthy relationship with your potential customers.
Invest in Great Tools (from Rakesh Kumar at Your Story)
Now that you have the funds, you should start looking at working with premium tools that do a better job than the free ones that you’ve been using all this time. There are many good tools out there that can help you with SEO, lead generation, project management, and analytics. Give their free trials a spin and see which ones fit your requirements. Suggested tools: Moz Pro, Crazy Egg, WebEngage, SumoMe, Wishpond, Mixpanel, or Kissmetrics.
Web Presence (from Smart Insights)
In the age of social media and digital marketing, your web presence is both more important and more complicated than ever. It no longer requires just a functional site, you need a sophisticated website that performs multiple roles. Think of your website as a customer ‘application’ rather than just for information. You’ll also need a rich blog site, a dynamic Facebook fan page and the right Twitter page at a minimum. Some also need Web apps, Facebook apps, iPhone apps, and more.Get your Web presence right before launch! It’s all in the design, but content and structure are critical – embedded with the most relevant keywords, SEO tags, and visual elements.
While you’re focusing, focus on quality content (from Ivana Taylor at Question Pro)
With the continuing onslaught of mobile internet access and ecommerce, you need to ensure your website is fully responsive to all users’ devices, be they desktop, laptop, mobile, or tablet.
Engage with your followers (from Derek Miller in Entrepreneur)
Social media is a way for your startup to interact with current and future customers. Leverage your followers and make them feel like valuable members of your brand. Also, do not be afraid of social confrontation. Approach any complaint as an opportunity to show your brand’s customer service capabilities.
Lastly, do not hide from failures. You are a startup and are bound to face some hurdles along the way. Strategically approach these as opportunities to win over customers with good customer service and express your brand’s long-term vision as frequently as possible.
Incentivize People to Share (from Elisha Hartwig at Mashable)
If you want people to talk about your product or service, there’s nothing quite like giving them an incentive to do so. Offer an immediate discount for tweeting about your product or service or ask them to post about it on Facebook. Or, in exchange for “liking” your company, maybe they could receive some additional perk.
Another way to incentivize your customers is through a contest. Rafflecopter is a great resource to manage giveaways — you can embed the giveaway code anywhere, including your own site, then you can pick a winner at the end. Get creative with how you incentivize your customers, just make sure there is actual value in it for them.
Facebook Advertising: Finding your perfect audience using segmentation (from Venture Harbour)
Most people think of Facebook Ads as an acquisition channel for driving signups. The truth is that it’s also one of the best customer research tools we have available to us. Let me explain. There is no limit to how finely you can segment a Facebook advert. If you wanted, you could run identical adverts to 500 different demographic and psychographic audience segments. Using conversion tracking, you can see which demographics and psychographics then have the highest conversion rate on your service.
Here are a few examples. I work with many music startups and I’ve found time and time again that guitarists are typically more likely to sign up to a music service than a drummer or a bassist. For one of our clients, FanDistro, we found that 23-year-old Canadians are approximately 3x more likely to convert than 21-year-olds. We know that musicians in New Zealand are more likely to convert than Australians.
Facebook Ads are, in my opinion, the best way to quickly and affordably verify who your audience are and what your cost-per-acquisition is for different demographic groups.
Add Value Through Email Marketing (from Phong Ly at Tech.co)
Email marketing is not the same as spamming your customers’ inbox. Jokes aside, when used properly to help and provide value to users, email marketing can work wonders for promoting your startup.
Successful email marketing campaigns have a well-planned schedule so that people will know when to expect your emails and can look forward to updates from you. The trick to keeping this going is to focus on your target audience when deciding on the emails’ theme, template, and content to ensure what you send them will be helpful.
Our company uses emails to make the process of looking for a car more efficient. Users can sign up for alerts and we email them whenever we have newly-listed cars that match what they’re looking for. Users who sign up for our alerts are two to three times more likely to contact the sellers of cars on our site than non-alert users.
Blog (from Jenny Zhang at SpareFoot)
The concept of blogging has come a long way since 2003 when some of us still were publishing furious love poems on the blogging platform Xanga. Today, most businesses, organizations, and public figures operate blogs. It’s not just for show. With increased emphasis on rich, high-quality content for search engines, blogs have accrued clout as one of the best ways to gain visibility online.
If you’re a startup, blogging can be one of the most useful, valuable and inexpensive ways to get the word out about your company and its products and services.
Create SEO greatness (from Scott Makin at Kompyte)
The real lesson that Google wants you to take away from the SEO evolution is to pour your entire heart and soul into creating amazing content. Search engines exist to connect their users with the best possible resources to match their search inquiry. So what should you do? Create the best possible resources to match the search inquiries from the people you are trying to attract. Don’t write for SEO. Don’t write for robots. Don’t create content for the sake of creating content. And for god sakes, don’t talk about yourself so much! Create value for your brand’s audience, NOT FOR YOUR BRAND! No one cares about you, they care about themselves and solving their own problems. Help them solve their problems and you will be recognized as an expert authority in your industry and future customers will start lining up to hire the new prodigy. Your amazing content will get passed around and shared on social media because it’s effing amazing. This is the real kind of link building and it’s the only kind you should care about.
Want to learn more about online marketing and how it can work for your business? Get the ebook, Why You Need Marketing Automation.
Feel free to comment on what has worked for you! | <urn:uuid:b8285a40-e856-4352-aaaa-a324e1c1b9f7> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.alanizmarketing.com/blog/startup-marketing-on-budget-10-tips/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570913.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20220809064307-20220809094307-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.945486 | 1,835 | 1.53125 | 2 |
EXTRA: Made to measure sports wheelchair for a better performance
EXTRA: Made to measure sports wheelchair for a better performance
Solid and adapted – this is how auxiliary means for competitive sports such as wheelchair basketball should be. That's why EXTRA wheelchairs from Turkey offers made to measure sports wheelchairs to professional sports people. REHACARE.com talked to Demirhan Serefhan, Managing Director of EXTRA Wheelchairs, about the importance of customization and valuable feedback directly from the basketball court.
Özgür Gürbulak (below left) has already been convinced by EXTRA Wheelchairs. The Turkish national player, who became European champion with his team in 2017, relies on the light and indestructible wheelchair from his own country as well as Cem Gezinci (up left), and tennis player Ugur Altinel.
Mr. Serefhan, what is special about your basketball wheelchair, EXTRA?
Demirhan Serefhan: Sports like wheelchair basketball are very tough. Wheelchair basketball is one of the most difficult sports among the Paralympic sports. The players want to be very fast and they don’t want their wheelchairs to get damaged so easily. When you look from their way of thinking, you have to make a wheelchair which is very strong, light and fast. Therefore, we are using a very special aluminium grade which is also used at aeronautical engineering. The type of the aluminium is called "Aluminium 7020". We are shaping those aluminium tubes and plates in accordance with the specific body measures of the user. This method is called "Made to Measure" or "Tailor Made". We are proceeding a very special heat treatment after the final welding. This heat treatment process is very special and unique. Sometimes it is said that aluminium 7020 T6 does not need heat treatment, but we are applying our own methods and the wheelchairs become much stronger. There are so many players who are over 130 kg and couldn’t succeed to break EXTRA wheelchairs.
In addition, we are working with Spinergy, a company for high quality wheels, and manufacturing our own breathable and strong upholstery. Users mostly require an embroidery at the back of the wheelchair. This can be their motto, their name, a logo or a number. This option is free of charge at EXTRA. Actually, most of the options are included in the total price of the wheelchair, i.e. the carbon underseat plate, carbon footrest, straps, ergonomic seating, two antitips and so on. We do not charge those options as an extra cost for the users. We want our clients to have access to a high-quality product with a reasonable price.
Demirhan Serefhan – who is also looking for distributors worldwide for EXTRA Wheelchairs.
So the sports wheelchair is completely adapted to the respective person?
Serefhan: We have an order form where there are so many different points of the user to be measured. Our experts are taking the measurements especially at the sports halls. We want the user to sit on the wheelchair that he or she is currently using or to borrow the most convenient wheelchair, from one of their friends. Before starting the measurement, we want them to use the wheelchair on the court. This is very important, because we have to see how fast they are, how they make the turns, how they push the wheels, how they take the rebounds and how they shoot the ball. We also want their coach to be with us to have some more feedback about the player and to listen the future planning for the player where their coach wants them to be.
The wheelchair should function as if they belong to the body of the users. It should follow the movement of the users. Sometimes I say that the wheelchair should have an advanced sense to feel the next drill of the player. For those reasons, we are having the necessary measurements of the users to build up the most adequate wheelchair. If the users want, they can come to our facilities and try the wheelchair before the heat treatment, enabling us to make some changes if required before giving the final shape.
Why is such customization so important?
Serefhan: We don’t see the disabled athletes as they are disabled. They are athletes, that’s all. They need special adapted instruments to make their sports life more joyful and maybe more successful. In order not to cause any problems at this perspective they have to use the most appropriate wheelchairs at daily life and at sports. A user can buy the most expensive wheelchair, but if the measurement was not done properly the wheelchair is garbage. The wheelchair should function like a part of the user’s body.
To what extent are the future users themselves involved in the product development?
Serefhan: We are manufacturing EXTRA since the last quarter of 2018. We have all the ISO standards and the certificates like Capacity Report, Industrial Registration Certificate, Production Certificate and so on. These certificates are not so easy to be obtained. They are being given after special technical inspections that are done by the various experts of the government. Nothing is hundred percent perfect. We are modifying EXTRA when we receive complaints or suggestions from the players, or the persons involved in sports. To give an example: Some of the players were not happy with the front wheels. We immediately designed a new front wheel model and changed the hardness grade. We are always open to the new ideas of the players since they are the best users of EXTRA.
What feedback do you otherweise get from EXTRA users?
Serefhan: We are very proud of manufacturing a high-quality basketball wheelchair. The players in Turkey were admiring other brands before we started to sell EXTRA. But at the same time, they were complaining about the extremely expensive prices of the other brands from different European countries. When we made the first EXTRA Basketball Wheelchair and showed it to the most successful player of Turkey, he used it and said that there is no difference with the other European products. This was the startup which encouraged us to continue the production of EXTRA as a new branding in Europe. We have players using EXTRA at the European teams like Galatasaray, Köln99ers, Basket Clube De Gaia, Irodikos, Besiktas and so on. We also have many players using EXTRA at the national team with in only 1.5 years time. Now we are having inquiries from different countries asking to be our distributor.
EXTRA wheelchairs does not only manufacture basketball wheelchairs. The company is also well versed in other sports, such as fencing and tennis. Busra Un for example is one of the first female Paralympic tennis players in Turkey and trusts in EXTRA Wheelchairs.
Which known basketball players use EXTRA?
Serefhan: For example, a very famous player named Özgür Gürbulak. He was using another European brand as an ambassador. He has started to use EXTRA for almost two years. He is a very well-known wheelchair basketball player in the world. He became MVP (Most Valuable Player) so many times at so many European and World Championships. He is a brilliant and high skilled player. He has played at Galatasaray and now playing at team Besiktaş (BJK). But I want to underline that all the players are very important, and they deserve the highest appreciation. To learn more about our focus area you can visit our web page at www.extrawheelchairs.com.
What else can we expect from EXTRA in the future?
Serefhan: Besides the sports wheelchairs like basketball, tennis and fencing we will release a new daily active wheelchair very soon. We want people with disabilities to be more active and have no limit at daily life by using our active and sports models. We are sponsoring some events and some people with disabilities from time to time. We are sponsoring some basketball and tennis players. The customer satisfaction is very important for us. We are planning to organize sports organizations like street wheelchair basketball. We are supporting a very well-known Facebook group named Basketball without Disability. We are aiming to be one of the best-known companies in the world. As much as much we win, we like very much to share with disabled people enabling them to participate at social and sports activities. | <urn:uuid:31f76d12-3164-4c5d-ad8a-6bdbbf915551> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.rehacare.com/en/All_about_REHACARE/EXTRA_Made_to_measure_sports_wheelchair_for_a_better_performance?utm_source=REHACARE_Newsletter_08102020_2&utm_medium=Email&utm_content=All-about-REHACARE&utm_campaign=Portalnewsletter-2020 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570913.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20220809064307-20220809094307-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.972701 | 1,744 | 1.53125 | 2 |
How to Test for STDs at Home
- Method 1 of 5: Doing a Urine Test. Buy an at-home, FDA-approved STD test kit.
- Method 2 of 5: Using a Blood Sample. Buy an FDA-approved blood sample kit.
- Method 3 of 5: Doing a Saliva Swab. Purchase an FDA-approved saliva test kit.
- Method 4 of 5: Looking for Symptoms of Common STDs. Check for symptoms of chlamydia.
- Method 5 of 5: When to Seek Medical Care.
Which STD tests should I get?
There is no single STD test that can test for all STDs—let alone give you a full and accurate picture of your sexual health. Sexually active individuals should be regularly screened for at least chlamydia, gonorrhea, and cervical cancer. The CDC also recommends universal HIV testing.
What are home remedies for STDs?
Top Home Remedies For STDs
- Tea Tree Oil. This oil has tremendous medicinal values which addresses a wide range of diseases and disorders.
- Neem. This evergreen tree abounds in amazing medicinal values which have been used since ancient time in curing and healing a vast number of diseases and ailments.
- Garlic. Garlic has manifold medicinal uses.
- Green Tea.
Where can I go to get tested for STDs?
You can get tested for STDs at your doctor’s office, a community health clinic, the health department, or your local Planned Parenthood health center.
Is STD testing free?
There are many places you can visit for free or nearly free STD tests including most state health departments, local nonprofit health organizations, Planned Parenthood locations, and various college and university programs. For the most part, free STD testing is funded federally through non-profit organizations…
What is recommended STD testing?
Doctors may use urine tests to check for the presence of gonorrhea or chlamydia, for example. Alternatively, doctors may send swabs of the inside of the penis or cervix to a lab to check for these STDs. Blood tests are usually used to check for syphilis, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), and hepatitis.
How do you take a home STD test?
People can test for other STDs, such as gonorrhea and chlamydia, using home testing kits. These tests usually consist of taking a urine sample or a swab from the genital area to a lab facility for testing. Get an at-home test kit at a drugstore or online.
How long do at home STD results take?
How Long Do STD Results Take from Home? From start to finish, the full process takes between three and eleven days. That’s counting from the moment you click “Order” to the moment you get your lab-certified results! Here’s a brief overview of convenient myLAB Box process: Order Your Test Online. This first step will be over in a snap!
What is included in a STD test?
A typical full-panel STD test includes a urine test for Chlamydia and gonorrhea, and a blood test for HIV, syphilis, and hepatitis B and C. It doesn’t always include all STIs. | <urn:uuid:41571699-53d7-41c8-a33d-e7ad03875c9f> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.vodogram.com/how-to-check-yourself-for-stds-at-home/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571190.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810131127-20220810161127-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.883896 | 683 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Rainbow has been in the tree injection game for a long time. In fact, Rainbow Ecoscience’s sister company, Rainbow Treecare, began exclusively as a tree injection company protecting elm trees in the 1970's. Tree injection has roots as far back as the 12th century. In recent times, there have been advancements in research and technology that have moved the practice of tree injection forward. This guide provides a high level overview and some of the most important things to know when it comes to tree injection. | <urn:uuid:38992861-3426-4999-a92a-8a540b8d3f44> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.rainbowecoscience.com/about-rainbow/news/download-the-tree-injection-ebook | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570913.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20220809064307-20220809094307-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.965346 | 105 | 1.75 | 2 |
Grown on small, organic farms Terrasoul raw sunflower seeds are harvested then carefully hulled so all that you're left with is the soft, nutty, nutritious seed. Sunflower seeds are an excellent source of vitamin E and selenium, which is a mineral that works with vitamin E as an antioxidant to help protect cells from damage. Sunflower seeds also contain healthy monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats, as well as folate, protein, copper, zinc, iron, and fiber.
- Raw & unsalted, grown on organic farms
- Source of healthy fats, protein, and minerals
- USDA certified organic, non-GMO, raw, gluten-free, vegan
Our 100% organic, raw, unsalted, hulled sunflower seeds are grown on sustainable organic farms and can be used for sprouting. With their crunchy, nutty taste, sunflower seeds can easily become a regular part of your daily diet.
Great in trail mixes or to top salads with.
Packaged in a facility that also processes tree nuts. Refrigeration recommended.
Organic Sunflower Seeds (Helianthus Annuus). | <urn:uuid:1e44b899-f90d-450e-a711-0003f3c83682> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.thestore.com.hk/products/terrasoul-superfoods-organic-sunflower-seeds-hulled-2lbs-907g | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571190.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810131127-20220810161127-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.930818 | 249 | 1.804688 | 2 |
The motor industry always provides interesting news. It would be tempting to focus on the troubles that Nissan and Jaguar Land Rover are having, but latest statistics show that Europe are falling out of love with the SUV, Sports Utility Vehicle anyway, so do we really mind?
Meanwhile, engineers and car boffins are always coming up with new inventions to keep motorists excited - it looks like energy generating tyres are the next hot topic on the scene.
Car enthusiasts (like me!) relish in collecting rare cars in order to be able to showcase them on TV or film for the regular motorist to equally enjoy.
SUVs - are we falling out of love?
According to JATO, who collate and analyse sales statistics throughout Europe. SUV registrations grew by only 0.7% in June 2019, as well as the overall market decreasing by 7.9%. This is the highest monthly drop so far in 2019 and the lowest result since 2015, which was due to a decline in private registrations. However, Tesla and Toyota still managed to thrive as they posted the highest market share gains.
Diesel cars are also facing hard times, as in June 2019 car registrations fell by 21% and made up only 31% of the total market, while demand for electrified vehicles increased by 20%. However this was still not a big enough impact for the latter as they still account for just 7.5% of all registrations.
Overall, SUV popularity is on the wane, diesel is decreasing across Europe but electric vehicles are not making up for this this decline, perhaps because of their cost.
Tyre powered cars?!
In terms of positive changes, a new technology that could see tyres generate electricity whilst driving is being developed by engineers in Japan. Falken’s parent company, Sumitomo Rubber Industries, together with Professor Hiroshi Tani of Kansai University, have developed the Energy Harvester that takes advantage of the build up of energy created by a wheel turn to produce power efficiently for the car.
Simply, two layers of rubber are covered in electrodes with oppositely charged films. When a conventional tyre deforms during rotation these electrodes will generate electricty. This could lead to practical applications as a power source for sensors used in Tyre Pressure Monitoring Systems and other car devices without the need for batteries. How clever is that?
Rare car collections
Rare cars regularly come around full circle. Studio434®, which is believed to be the largest private car collection in Europe, has added a rare 1989 Railton Claremont. There is a link between this model and other models in the collection, which were designed by the late William Towns. The Railton Claremont is based on the Jaguar V12 XJS engine and underpinnings and was the brainchild of William Towns. It is also one of only two Railton tourers manufactured in 1989.
“I am a great fan of the iconic British car designer William Towns”, said Studio434® owner, Rodger Dudding, ”and when I saw that the Railton Claremont was available at auction, I had to add it to our collection. It will now sit alongside our other William Towns’ designed cars including the Aston Martin Lagonda “Wedge” models, together with the unusual Hustler and Hunter vehicles”.
Studio434® now has over 460 cars and motorcycles representing models from the early 1900’s to the present day. Many of the cars are used in films and TV series including Mr Selfridge, Peaky Blinders and The Crown, most recently some of Rodger’s cars were used in the Elton John biopic Rocketman.
New Car News
There are so many boring models to choose from in your local car showroom that it comes as a relief when manufacturers go out on a limb and provide something more exciting than the standard offering.
Jaguar's Special Vehicle Operatons division has developed a slightly restrained road going version of their extreme XE SV Project 8 model. Now a Touring specification (estate car) is avaliable as well as the exsiting 200mph Project 8.
This new car replaces Project 8's adjustable carbonfibre rear aerodynamic wing and is complemented by a fixed front splitter to maintain aerodynamic balance, Jaguar tell us. It accelerates from 0-60mph in 3.3sec (0-100km/h in 3.7sec) and on to a limited top speed of 186mph (300km/h).
A limited number of 200mph Jaguar XE SV Project 8s with adjustable front and rear aerodynamic devices, in either the four-seat or the two-seat Track Pack specifications, are still available and prices start at £149,995. We look forward to it being a lot cheaper in a few years time.
A significant anniversary is the best excuse to produce a special model, and Ford have done exactly this. The Mustang55 special edition model celebrates the 55th anniversary of the iconic sports car.
Having been based on the 450PS Ford Mustang 5.0-litre V8, the new Mustang55 Edition features a high specification interior, alongside unique exterior stying including distinctive bonnet and side-stripes, badging and optional rear spoiler.
There is the opportunity to own this car in unique colours, such as Twister Orange, Grabber Lime, Iconic Silver and Lucid Red. Also with technological improvements as FordPass Connect on-board modern technology turns the car into a WiFi hotspot with the opportunity to connect to up to 10 devices.
Avaliable to order now, this is the Mustang to buy due to its decent specification and sensational look.
When it comes to builders of unique and very special sports cars, no one comes close to Caterham. These are supercars for people who don’t mind getting very wet when it rains, and the company has just launched a CSR version of its most powerful car - the Seven 485.
This car is not short of impressive features. It includes the 485 CSR push-rod inboard front suspenstion, a fully independent double-wishbone rear suspenstion, 15" CSR alloy wheels. As well as Avon ZZS tyres and area front wing guards, and that's just the exterior. It's interior is kitted out with carpeted interior panels, a carbon dashboard, adjustable leather seats, and a collapsible Momo steering wheel. All with the choice of four paint options.
Aimed at the European market it is priced from €54,995 (excluding VAT and local taxes), the Caterham 485 CSR accelerates from 0-100kmh in 3.9 seconds and a top speed of 139 mph. That is what a Caterham is all about. Performance, fun and relative affordability. | <urn:uuid:b22d70fa-f169-4a66-95e0-059a6d6a5a5e> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://autoexpress.motoreasy.com/magazine/357/New-Trends-New-Technologies-and-New-Cars | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571502.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811194507-20220811224507-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.95892 | 1,408 | 1.828125 | 2 |
I have made mistakes and hurt people. I cringe when some of those events come to mind. What happens when make mistakes are made that reach the court system? The idea of getting wrapped up in court or dealing with police would cause me enough stress that panic attacks would not be far behind. So when I read news reports like the recent one that an elderly nun, Sister Catherine Rose, while in court dealing with a lawsuit collapsed and died I immediately think of the frustration and the anxiety of that situation contributed to this sad news. The court case is regarding a property dispute in that the nuns wanted to sell their property to a particular individual but Katy Perry, the famed pop star, also wanted to purchase the property. Before fighting for my rights in anything when it comes to judgment of a court I would want to take measure of the cost and make sure I was well represented. This nun spent her last moments in court and her death is now sadly linked with Katy Perry and Perry must live with the result. As intimidating as man-made laws and courts might be I have a greater fear and that is standing before the God of Creation and being left to represent myself on my own merits.
Eli a priest of God for the nation of Israel had a problem with his sons. His evil sons were breaking laws of men and God for their own selfish gain. These sons were abusing the people they should have been serving. Eli pointed out a problem and truth that they refused to understand.
25 If someone sins against a man, God will mediate for him, but if someone sins against the Lord, who can intercede for him?” 1 Samuel 2:25a ESV
Eli’s question is profound. We have arbiters, mediators, and peace makers who might broker restitution between men but who is qualified and who is strong enough to broker reconciliation between God and man? Eli’s protégé Samuel years later answers the question that Eli proposed. Samuel had become the priest and leader of Israel when the rebellious people came to him seeking God’s mercy.
5 Then Samuel said, “Assemble all Israel at Mizpah, and I will intercede with the Lord for you.” 6 When they had assembled at Mizpah, they drew water and poured it out before the Lord. On that day they fasted and there they confessed, “We have sinned against the Lord.” Now Samuel was serving as leader of Israel at Mizpah. 1 Samuel 7:5-6 NIV
Eli asked who could intercede between man and God. Samuel answers the question with action. As priest and leader between the people and God he could intercede and he could bridge that gap. Samuel is a great defense attorney navigating the perfect justice of God. Samuel tapped into God’s mercy just as Moses had done generations before.
7 And the people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord and against you. Pray to the Lord, that he take away the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people. Numbers 21:7 ESV
This kind of intercessory prayer seems to have been lost in the generations between Moses and Samuel. Eli the previous priest asked the question, but had no answer and it does not appear that he knew how to intercede for even his own children. God knowing that people are limited put into motion a plan to create the perfect unlimited priest. A priest that would not die or be limited by space and time. God provided for mankind a priest that could be perfect representation to all people at all moments.
22 This makes Jesus the guarantor of a better covenant. 23 The former priests were many in number, because they were prevented by death from continuing in office, 24 but he holds his priesthood permanently, because he continues forever. 25 Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them. Hebrews 7:22-25 ESV
Jesus always lives, Jesus continues to live making intercession for anyone ready to accept his gift. Notice when Moses and Samuel interceded for the people it was an act that started by the people asking for help and submitting to the authority that Moses and Samuel represented. Jesus does not just represent that authority. He is that authority and he ready to intercede for anyone who calls on his name and that is God’s perfect gift to creation. | <urn:uuid:21646525-c78a-493e-93e2-252cbdfd407e> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://humaneffort.blog/1-samuel-225-intercede-for-me/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571190.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810131127-20220810161127-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.98479 | 930 | 1.671875 | 2 |
The purpose of the Replay Money League (RML) is the enjoyment of tabletop baseball by league members.
The league name derives from the fact the league originally used the game Replay Baseball. It is now using Strat-O-Matic Baseball. The league is devised to reward members who understand the subtlety of baseball and can recognize talented players early in their careers.
The league is divided into two conferences: the American and the National. Each conference has three divisions, designated as East, Central, and West. Two wild card teams from each conference will be the two non-division winners with the best records.
All decisions are made by the league Commissioner. Commissioner duties may be divided among as many people as the Commissioner desires. When the duties are handled by a single individual, that person will be the Commissioner. All decisions are final. Duties of the Commissioner consist of setting the rules of play and administering league business.
Whenever possible, league members will be given an opportunity to comment on proposed rules. Manager suggestions are welcome and an effort will be made to reach a consensus among league members, but the Commissioner has the final word. Rules will be based on the goals of recreating the aspects of major league baseball as much as possible while being as fair to the league and to individual members as possible. If put to a league-wide vote, two-thirds of those voting must approve of any rules changes.
In addition, the Commissioner also will keep current money balances for all members, conduct player drafts, record and report trades, publish rosters, establish schedules and reporting deadlines, assess fines, select new managers and expel those who violate rules, establish conferences and divisional alignment, and adjust game rules to conform to league needs. In addition, the Commissioner may decide to disband teams, or on the other hand, to have league expansion.
The duties of managers are as follows:
- Pay dues.
- Keep accurate statistics for all players.
- Maintain their own current rosters, trades, and money balances for their own teams. The Commissioner keeps these records, but the team manager keeps his records as a safety net.
- Send road instructions for his team to the home manager in an easily readable and understood format and in a timely fashion.
- Play all games and report results by the deadlines.
- Send box scores and computer game files to the road team manager.
- The home manager should send game result files to the league stat keeper.
The Commissioner may maintain a waiting list of potential managers. It may replace managers either during the season or at the conclusion of a season. A potential manager slated to take over an existing team at the conclusion of a season, may be designated an associate member.
Dues for all members are payable in October for the coming season with the dues being $10 annually. Dues may be waived at the discretion of the Commissioner.
Bonus points are awarded for prompt payment of dues. The Commissioner also may arrange delayed payment plans on the request of individual members. Failure to meet dues deadlines or to arrange for delayed payment may result in expulsion from the league.
RULES AND ROSTERS
Generally, all league rules are included in the Constitution. A synopsis of league rules, with any adjustments to the game rules, will be published by the Commissioner before the start of play each season.
The maximum major league roster size per team is 30 players. The maximum minor league roster size per team is 45 players. This also includes those minor league players selected in the inverse order (linear portion) of the Minor League Draft.
Before the start of play each season, each team must have enough pitchers for 162 starts and enough position players to provide 600 or more at bats for each position (including the DH). Specifically, each team must have a minimum of 5 outfielders, 6 infielders, and 2 catchers for a total of 13 position players. One player can serve as a backup for more than one position, but every starter must have a backup even if they are eligible to play every game of the RML regular season.
Some position players and pitchers may be designated as ‘unlimited’ players. Unlimited status is calculated on the basis of on base average plus slugging percentage (OPS). The Commissioner will, each year establish the OPS, which will be used as the demarcation between regular players and those who are unlimited. The demarcation number for determining unlimited players will be 125 points below the major league average OPS for batters and 50 points higher than the same average for pitchers. The Commissioner will adjust the OPS figures yearly in order to keep the number of unlimited players in the league at a relatively constant level so that there are sufficient players for all teams, but not so many as to flood the league and distort play.
Unlimited pitchers are restricted to a maximum of 38 starts and a total of 81 appearances if also used as relievers, unless they made more starts or more appearances during the major league season. An unlimited pitcher must have at least one start historically in order to be used as a starter.
Pitchers with an OPS under the cutoff figure are limited to their actual number of starts or their actual innings pitched plus 10 percent. Pitchers with more starts than relief appearances are considered starters and are restricted to their actual starts and relief appearances regardless of innings. Pitchers with more relief appearances than starts are considered relievers and are limited to their actual innings pitched plus 10 percent regardless of the number of appearances made. If a pitcher has more starts than relief appearances, BUT averages less than 3 innings per start (i.e., “openers”), he shall be deemed for RML usage as a relief pitcher, subject to relief pitcher limitations. Relievers who made starts may still be used as starters up to the number of actual starts, but are limited by innings pitched. If a pitcher has exactly the same number of starts as a reliever, he is considered to be a reliever for determining usage during the regular season play. However, during the playoffs, this same pitcher usage will be determined as if that pitcher were a starting pitcher. A non-unlimited starting pitcher who made no relief appearances may not be used in relief even if that pitcher does not use all of his starts. Position players are restricted to their historical major league at bats plus 10%.
Players who had fewer than 100 AB are considered minor league players. Any player who had more than 500 historical AB is considered to have unlimited usage for RML purposes. Those players who qualify as unlimited due to the OPS standards mentioned above, also have unrestricted use.
Starters need 3 days of rest between starts, but relievers need no rest between appearances unless the next game after an appearance they are scheduled to start a game; then they need one day of rest.
For players who played on multiple major league teams during the season, RML will use the “composite” card.
THE MONEY CONCEPT
Teams have three sources of income: finish money from their divisional standings at the end of the season, playoff winnings, and bonuses as established by the Commissioner. Bonuses (see below) may include a one-time grant to new managers and awards for meeting dues, drafts, rosters, and statistics reporting deadlines.
The basic unit of money is $1,000 and fractions of $1,000 are not allowed. When salary rules or other procedures call for a fraction of $1,000, always round to the manager’s detriment. For example, a 10 percent increase of a $151,000 salary is $16,000, which would drive the salary to $167,000. However, a 10 percent cut from $151,000 is $15,000 lowering the salary to $136,000.
Each team also receives a minor league subsidy of $300,000 per year. This money must be used for drafting and salaries of uncarded minor league players and may not be transferred to major league accounts. Major league funds may be transferred to minor league accounts with such transfers being reported to the Commissioner. Once money is transferred to the minor league account, it cannot be transferred back to the major league account.
The Commissioner may adjust the finish money awards, but will publish the amounts before the start of each season. Until otherwise adjusted, the finish money awards are determined by finish order within your division as follows: 1st - $2,100,000; 2nd - $2,000,000; 3rd - $1,900,000; 4th - $1,800,000; 5th - $1,800,000.
In case of a tie in the order of finish, the finish money for the two positions is split between the teams. If there is a tie for first place in the same division, the two teams will split first and second place monies. Also, there will be a one game playoff with the home team being decided by a coin toss. This will determine who is the second place team for playoff purposes and may qualify as a wild card team.
In addition to finish money, playoff teams also receive awards for their playoff appearance. Both teams participating in the wild card round will receive $10,000. Second round (division series) playoff winners will receive $20,000 and losers receive $10,000. Conference champions receive $40,000 and the losers $20,000.
Finally, the winner of the League Championship Series gets $69,000 while the runner-up receives $23,000.
The basic annual sum for operation of the league is $53,000,000, which does not include the automatic sums received in the minor league account. Finish money and playoff money is paid from this fund. The remainder is designated the bonus fund. All fines assessed are paid into the bonus fund. Bonus points (see below) will be given to teams that report statistics promptly and meet deadlines. At the end of the season, but before salary negotiations, the Commissioner will divide the money existing in the pool by the bonus points awarded to all teams to determine the value of each bonus point. That result will be awarded to each team for the number of points it has been awarded.
Individual teams may carry balances from year to year, and no team may operate in a deficit condition.
However, there may be certain circumstances, deemed by the Commissioner, where a team may be awarded players after the Waiver Draft has been concluded and the team does not have enough money to cover the expense of the use of the assigned player(s). Thus a negative balance may exist.
PENALTIES AND BONUSES
The Commissioner has authority to assess penalties against managers. All managers have the obligation to make prompt reports of game results and game stats. The penalty for late report of a series will be $50,000 to be assessed at the bonus date of the following series in addition to the loss of the potential bonus point. Also a penalty of $1,000 a day will begin running at that time. When the total penalty has reached $72,000, the Commissioner will then either ask the visiting manager to play the games for the delinquent home manager, or assign the games to another manager to be played. No penalty will be assessed in cases in which a manager, not otherwise delinquent, asks for help in keeping current.
If the visiting manager fails to send instructions, but the home manager does not contact the Commissioner for contingency instructions, each manager may be fined. Each time contingency instructions are used, the road team will be fined $5,000.
Should the home manager consistently fail to send game results to the visiting manager, the home manager may be fined up to $25,000 for each such failure when the failure is reported to the Commissioner in a timely manner.
Teams may be fined at the conclusion of the season for overuse of players. The fines are $1,000 for each at bat over the player limit, $2,0000 per relief appearance, $5,000 for each pitching appearance over the limit for starters, and $1,000 for each IP over the limit for relievers. Usage limits for every player will be provided to managers and maintained by the Commissioner at the beginning at the beginning of each season. These are the official limits, which will be used to determine overusage. The Commissioner may use his discretion to forgive overuse that it deems incidental to play-by-mail league operation, but teams are also deemed responsible to oversee their usage. An inadvertent “extra” start in mid-season should not be an excuse for overusage if a team owner is conscientiously monitoring usage throughout the season.
The Commissioner has the authority to fashion other penalties or bonuses as circumstances dictate.
Twenty (20) bonus points may be earned during the season as follows: 1 point awarded for timely reporting of home series (12 total); 2 points awarded for timely and correct submission of pre-season contingent Computer Manager (“CM”); 2 points awarded for timely submission of payroll; 2 points each for timely submission of unowned draft and minor league draft lists. In addition, 1 bonus point shall be deducted for each player cut after the “waiver cutoff date” established annually by the Commissioner. Each bonus point shall be worth 10K.
NEW MANAGER RELIEF
When a new manager enters the league and inherits a weak team, the Commissioner has the discretion to grant relief to that team. If the Commission deems relief is in order, they may take one or more of the following actions:
- Forgive all fines that may have accumulated against a team because of the actions of a prior manager.
- Allow the new manager to void a maximum of two multi-year contracts he inherited with the team.
- Grant a new manager bonus of $250,000 to the team. The bonus is ‘new’ money and is not taken from the league bonus fund.
Trading is permitted only during limited periods designated by the Commissioner. When managers agree on a trade, one of the managers must be designated to report the trade to the league office. Reporting the transaction must be immediate. When making a trade, one of the participants shall send an e-mail to the other participant and the Commissioner, outlining the trade. The other participant shall respond to that e-mail, addressed to both the other owner and the Commissioner, acknowledging the trade. The Commissioner will then notify the rest of the league, by posting the trade on the league website.
No trade may be made based on promises for future considerations or delayed payment. No trades are permitted for the popular “player to be named later”. Major league funds may be traded, but minor league funds may not be traded.
The Commissioner must approve all trades made by first year managers. The Commissioner must also approve trades between teams controlled by members of the same family, or by the same manager in a proxy position. If one of the managers involved in the trade is the Commissioner, another manager not involved in the trade must review the transaction and give approval. Trades judged to be contrary to the best interest of the league may be voided or modified.
No player may be traded a second time until the first trade has been reported.
Managers are expected to keep accurate records and to make accurate reports to the Commissioner. If abuses occur, the Commissioner may require written trade reports, assess fines, or take other action against offending managers.
All trades are off-season transactions. During the first trading period, which traditionally commences Sept. 1 and runs through October 31, the RML regular season is still in progress. Players do not change teams until the conclusion of the season. Trading ends for all teams on the deadline date.
A second trading period runs from January 1 thru February: this occurs after such off-season activities as the payroll process and the free agent draft. The unowned player draft usually occurs in mid-January, as well.
A third trading period runs for one week (late February or early March) after the waiver draft and before final roster cut-down.
Beginning with the 2019 RML season, there will be an in-season trading period in June. Trades can be made during the month of June, from the 1st to the 26th, to take effect during the July block. Trades would not have to be "even." To compensate for "uneven" trades, teams may select from the unowned players to fill their playing roster back up to 30. Teams must cut down to 30 if they end up with more. These moves would be made on June 27th. "Added" players may not be retained at the conclusion of the season--they will go back into unowned when the season ends. Players "cut" for June trades are not "pick-up-able" by others on the 27th. "Added" players must be paid their minimum RML salary, based on experience, for the rest of the season. Teams needing “added” players will pick them up in reverse standing order as of the end of the June block. Tie-breaker will be worst division record. Teams may have more than 45 minor leaguers after the June trading period is completed.
Trading ends for all teams on the deadline date(s).
Each year, on a date set by the Commissioner, (usually in early November) teams will pay salaries for all players on their rosters. A trading period will be held before payrolls are due.
The Commissioner shall set minimum at bats, pitching appearances, and innings pitched limits from time to time to control the number of players available for the league. Currently players with 100 or more MLB at bats and pitchers with either 10 or more MLB starts, pitchers with 30 or more MLB appearances, or pitchers with 60 or more MLB innings pitched qualify for RML play, thereby being “carded” for RML purposes. All others who appeared in MLB, but did not meet any of those thresholds, are RML minor leaguers. The Commissioner may permit the use of players who might otherwise be assigned to the minor leagues on a player-by-player basis upon the application of the particular team manager.
Players are paid according to their seniority, and this is determined by the years of continuous service qualifying for RML play. Each seniority level has a minimum salary, which protects players from being bid on by rival teams. The salary for all regular minor league players is $10,000. A scale for paying players is as follows:
- A rookie or a player in his first carded year is paid $15,000 and is protected at this salary.
- A player in his second year is paid $20,000 and is protected at this salary.
- A player in his third year must be paid $25,000, and to be protected from bidding by rival teams during the Free Agent Draft, the player must be paid $50,000.
- A player in his fourth carded year must be paid a minimum of $30,000, but must be paid $60,000 to be protected from bidding by rival teams during the Free Agent Draft.
- A player in his fifth carded year of service must be paid a minimum of $35,000, but must be paid $70,000 to be protected from bidding by rival teams during the Free Agent Draft.
The minimum salary for veterans (players with more than five years experience) is $40,000. The protected rate for veterans is a percentage increase based on their previous year’s salary. A veteran who earned less than $101,000 the previous year must get a 50 % increase and must be paid, at least, $80,000 to be protected. A veteran who was paid between $101,000 and $150,000 must get a 25 % increase to be protected. A veteran who earned $151,000 or more must get a 10 percent increase to be protected.
If a player is protected, he remains on his team’s roster, but if the team chooses not to protect a player, it has three options:
- Cut the player and allow him to be placed in the pool for the Unowned Player’s Draft.
- Reduce the player’s salary by up to 25 percent, which allows other teams to bid on him in the Free Agent Draft. The owning manager has no answering rights, and the player is lost to the highest bidder who bids more than the original salary offer. A special clarification needs to be made on this point. If a player were in his 4th year of service and had been paid 60 the previous year, for example, the player could only be cut to, at most 45 (25% cut from 60); not 35 which would be ½ the 70 the player would need to be paid in order to protect him from the Free Agent Draft. This is an exception to the regular salary pay scale.
- Pay the player at least as much as he was paid the previous year. The player goes into the Free Agent Draft, but the owning team can match the highest bid and keep the player.
In addition to protecting players for single year contracts, teams have the option of offering multi-year contracts to players with three or more years of seniority including players bid on in the Free Agent Draft. The minimum rate for a multi-year contract is $80,000 with the maximum length of a multi-year contract being five years. Multi-year contracts may not be offered to major league players in their first or second years of being carded.
Yearly salaries for players on multi-year contracts are paid during salary negotiations of each year of the contract. A player on a five-year, $100,000 contract would be paid in $100,000 increments in the salary phase of each year of the contract. Multi-year contracts are guaranteed for the players and are paid regardless of performance. Salaries cannot be reduced and contracts are retained by the players when they are traded. The only way a multi-year contract can be reduced is if the player does not get “carded” for RML purposes in a given year. In that case, the manager can buy off the player’s contract by paying 50 % of the salary for the remaining years of the contract. The player can then be cut or retained as an RML minor leaguer, being paid the $10,000 minor league salary. For example, if the player has three years remaining on a $100,000 contract, but will not get be “carded” (meaning that the player is not eligible for play in the RML for the upcoming season), he can be paid $150,000 (out of the team’s major league funds) and returned to the RML minors for $10,000 of minor league funds.
Managers who wish to remove carded players with multi-year contracts from their rosters may do so by paying off the full value of their contracts. This means a carded player with three years left on a $100,000 contract must be paid $300,000 to be removed from the roster. In addition, if a team has a player on a multi-year contract and the player is jailed or suspended, the team may cut the player without paying off the contract. If a player is cut under this provision, and the player later is reinstated and qualifies for RML play, the team that cut the player is barred from reclaiming him either as a major leaguer, or a minor league player. To retain rights to such a player, the team must pay off the player under the regular salary rules and carry the player on the minor league roster.
Players who do not qualify for RML play lose all seniority and become minor leaguers. If they qualify in a subsequent year, they are considered to be in their first carded year.
When a multi-year contract expires, the protected rate for the player is calculated by extrapolating what the protected rate would have been as if the player had received regular yearly increases during the life of the contract. For example, if a player had been given an $80,000 contract in his third year of service, upon its expiration, the new protected rate would be calculated at the point with three more years of service. The salary progression would begin at $50,000 (year one of contract, 3d year protected salary) then go to $60,000 (Y2 of contract, fourth year protected salary), $70,000 (Y3, 5th year protected), and the protected rate at that point for the first year after the contract expires would be $105,000 (6th year player=”veteran”=50% raise from previous year). Or, say, the player had been given an $80,000 contract in the fifth year of service, the progression calculation would be: $70,000 (5th year protected salary); $105,000 (50% raise from previous year); $132,000 (25% raise); $165,000 (25% raise); $182,000 (10% raise), and the new contract protected rate would be $201,000 (10% raise). If the player had been granted a multi-year contract as a veteran, the progression starts at the contract figure. Thus, an $80,000 four-year contract granted in the sixth year would produce a progression of $80,000, $120,000 (50% raise), $150,000 (25% raise), $188,000 (10% raise), would need to be paid $207,000 (10% raise) to be protected the year after that contract expired. Please see the payment of players under salaries for the 50%, 25%, and the 10% increase in salaries for these types of players.
Players who are left unprotected (salary-wise) after the payroll process are subject to bids in the Free Agent Draft. The date of the draft (really a bid/auction process) will be announced by the Commissioner after the salary negotiation phase is completed. A list of unprotected players, their protected rates, the owning teams, and salaries offered to players will be provided for consideration prior to the draft.
Teams participating in the Free Agent Draft must submit a written list of no more than 10 bids, but may acquire no more than three players. Bids are to be listed in order of priority. Teams will be required to designate a specific maximum amount of their major league money to bid on free agents. Current owners will be required to provide a written priority list of answers they will make to bids on their exposed players including the maximum amount of major league money to be used to answer bids. The priority lists will be used when a given team makes more than three successful bids or has made bids that would exceed its designated funds if all the top bids were successful.
Single year offers may be made for any amount greater than the original team’s offer. Multi-year offers must be at the protected rate or greater. In this draft, when single year offers are for more than the protected rate, the excess over the protected rate is considered a bonus. For example, if a veteran has a protected rate of $80,000 and the successful bid on the player is a single year offer of $101,000, $21,000 is considered a bonus and the player goes on the roster with an $80,000 salary. There are no bonuses involved with multi-year contracts.
For purposes of determining highest bid, single year bids will be taken at face value. Multi-year bids will be taken at face value for the first year and 50% of face value for any additional years. For example, player X has been exposed by Team A at $80,000 with a protected rate of $165,000 with answering rights. Team B bids $85,000, Team C bids $300,000, and Team D bids $165,000 for 2 years. The Team D bid is valued at $247,000. That means Team C is the high bidder. Team A, however, has indicated it will answer up to $165,000 for 3 years (a bid with a total value of $330,000). In the above situation, if Team D had bid $166,000 for 3 years, Team D’s bid would have been successful. If Team E makes a high bid of $166,000 for 3 years on the player for a total value of $332,000 and Team A had indicated they would protect a player for $165,000 for four years, team A is considered to have answered at $165,000 for 4 years; the amount sufficient to meet the Team E bid.
If a team submits no bids, it is deemed to be abstaining from the Free Agent Draft. If a manger submits no list of answering offers on players he has exposed, he is deemed to be answering no bid on his players. The bid lists and answering lists must be received by the deadline set by the Commissioner. The Commissioner retains the right to void or modify any bids deemed contrary to the best interest of the league as a whole.
The other drafts are the carded Un-owned Player’s Draft, the Minor League Draft (which includes a linear and auction section of the draft), and the Waiver Draft. Dates for each draft will be announced annually by the Commission.
Teams participating in the carded Un-owned Player’s Draft and the auction segment of the Minor League Draft will be required to designate a maximum amount of money to be spent on players and the maximum number of players to be acquired. Managers must list the desired players in priority order. There is no limit on the number of players who can be acquired.
Bidding lists can include contingency instructions in the carded Un-owned Player’s Draft as to the type and number of players desired. For example, a team can stipulate that it wants only one second baseman, or that it wants three pitchers and no more. Contingency instructions cannot include offers to pay $1,000 more than any other bids. Additionally, monetary bids may not be conditional, ie.: “I’ll take Player X for $50,000, but if nobody else bids on him, I’ll take him for $25.” One name, one bid. Teams are expected to keep their instructions as short and clear as possible. The formula for determining the value of competing multi-year offers will be the same as outlined above for the free agent draft.
The linear draft for minor league players will be conducted firstly in two rounds in inverse order of finish determined in the previous season. In case two or more teams have identical records, the draft order for those teams will be determined by a coin flip. Each player drafted will cost the drafting team $20,000 of its minor league money. No draft position may be traded or sold. A team may draft any player who would otherwise be eligible for the auction segment of the Minor League Draft.
Thereafter, minor leaguers will be selected via auction. In the auction draft for minor leaguers, the bids must include the complete name of the player and the name of the owning major league organization or other affiliation. Any other identifying information should also be included—birth dates are helpful, especially when names are otherwise similar. This is to assure that the RML team is credited with the right player.
Incomplete bids will be ignored.
Rosters may include more than 30 major league players and more than 45 minor league players at any point up until the time the Commission sets for submission of final rosters for the coming season. Rosters must then be cut to the limit.
Following the submission of the final rosters, but before the start of the season, the Commissioner will publish a waiver list of all un-owned players including players who have been cut. Teams may draft these players for their major league roster. If their major league roster is already at 30 players, and the team wishes to take part in the Waiver Draft, it must cut one or more players at the waiver cut-down date to create roster space for each new player to be taken on waivers.
The Waiver Draft is a linear draft with the team with the worst record in the previous season drafting first and the best record last. Managers participating must submit a priority list of the players desired, the maximum number of players to be taken, and the maximum amount to be spent.
In the Waiver Draft, in the first round, the cost of each player will be the minimum salary for the experience level of the player: $15,000 for the first year; $20,000 for the second year, $25,000 for the 3rd; $30,000 for the 4th; $35,000 for the 5th; and $40,000 for veterans. In the second and later rounds of the Waiver Draft, the cost of each player will be $15,000 regardless of years of experience. However, this cost will not in any way change the years of experience of the player. Thus, if a veteran is acquired in the second or subsequent rounds, the protected rate for that player in the next season will still be $80,000.
Should teams make identical offers in any auction segment of a draft, the edge goes to the team with the poorer record from the previous season. In case of a tie, the winner is determined on the basis of the order of draft, which is the same one used for the linear segment of the Minor League Draft.
GENERAL PROVISIONS OF PLAY
Before the season begins, each manager must provide the Commissioner, by a date designated, with a season pitching rotation and a contingency lineup. A computer manager is the preferred method. These rotations and lineups will be used to give the home manager instructions in the event instructions from opponents are not received or are not sent.
If a team believes it has insufficient at bats, or pitching for the season, the manager may request the Commissioner to assign additional players from the pool of players unclaimed after the Waiver Draft (this would avoid over use of players in the upcoming season and a subsequent end of season fine). The cost of such players will be deducted from the finish money of the team at the end of the season. Also the Commissioner may assign such players without request if it is decided that a team has insufficient at bats or pitching appearances. The procedure for assigning a player (or players) to a team is as follows: the assigned player(s) shall be the worst player(s) available at the position needed, with one exception. If the worst player(s) available is/are deemed "extremely inferior" to the next worst player(s), the next worst player(s) shall be assigned. In cases where two teams need a player at the same position, the reverse finish order shall determine which team gets the better player.
Visiting team instructions for each series should be provided to the home manager by the starting date of the series. This might be providing the home manager with a CM custom-made for that series, or it might be simply informing the home manager to “go ahead and use the contingency CM in the league file.” If a home manager has not received instructions after the starting date of the series, he may call the Commissioner for permission to use contingency instructions.
Managers are expected to keep instructions as simple as possible, and home managers are expected to follow the instructions as nearly as possible in both the letter and the spirit. If instructions are unclear, managers are urged to contact their opponent for clarification.
Home managers must play the games, compile the statistics, and send a copy of the statistics along with game box scores to the opponent by the reporting deadline.
A copy of the computer game files must be sent to the stat keeper, and a copy of the game box scores may be required by the stat keeper in case of disputes. Computer game files are the mandatory format for reporting series results to the Commissioner. Failure to provide uniform stats may be cause for fines being levied. The league statkeeper will send out a new .lzp file at the conclusion of each block to monitor usage.
Managers who believe their teams were misused by home managers may protest any lost games to the Commissioner. Protests must include score sheets, instructions, and details of why the game is being protested. The decision of the Commissioner is final.
The RML is a mail league, and except for the playoffs, face-to-face play or netplay is always optional. Managers can insist that regular season games be played by instructions/computer manager. Attempts to arrange face-to-face play will not be an excuse for late reporting of results.
The league schedule will be set by the Commissioner and distributed at such time as will enable managers to meet their deadlines for season pitching rotations and mail instructions for the start of the season. The season playing schedule will be comprised of six monthly “blocks.” Home game results for each block must be submitted to the stat-keeper by the 30th day of each month during the season. The stat-keeper will distribute a new .lzp file as shortly thereafter as possible for the next block.
- There are players who are termed “unlimited players”. The determination as to whom qualifies under this category is predicated on the average final season OPS of the major leagues. A batter is not affected by AB limitations, but is only limited, as are other players, by the end of game injury rule. Starting pitchers who are unlimited are shown on the pitching roster file by a 38/43 designation which shows that they may appear in 81 games, no more than 38 of which may be starts (and are not limited by innings pitched) during the course of the RML playing season. Unlimited RML starters who did not relieve that season in MLB (and thus do not have a relief rating) will be assigned a 3-inning relief rating for RML. Unlimited relief pitchers who did not have any starts during the regular major league season may make up to 81 appearances, with no innings limit.
- Players who have 500+ AB during the regular major league season are considered to be unlimited or “fully carded” for league purposes. This means they have no limitations on potential usage during the regular RML season. All other players are limited by their actual AB's plus a predetermined percentage for each playing season.
- Each team may carry a roster of 30 major league players for each season/game. There are no roster limitations when playing the games.
- All injuries are only for the rest of game. On frequent occasions, SOM will injure a player for more than the end of game. However, managers should use the “Days Off” function before each game to ensure that all players are ready for the next game to be played. There are no carry over of injuries to the next game played.
- Squeeze plays may not be used against written instructions. They may be employed when playing face-to-face, against a CM or during netplay.
- A player normally may only play a position at which he is rated by Strat. Players may be played out of position only if there are no rated players remaining for that position, subject to the defensive ratings that Strat gives the out-of-position player. Outfielders may play any outfield position, subject to the defensive rate shift implemented by the Strat game engine for an unrated position.
- All unlimited starting pitchers must remain in the game until after the 3rd inning of the game, or if they give up 3 runs whichever comes first. For instance, if an unlimited starter has started a game and they have pitched 2.2 innings, have given up 2 runs, have two outs, but have the bases loaded, they must either get the 3rd out or give up a third run before being relieved. Starters must have at least three days off between starts. A pitcher may not relieve the day after a start, nor start the day after a relief appearance.
- All teams in RML utilize the designated hitter (DH)
- RML does not use ballparks, clutch or weather effects.
Playoffs are conducted in four rounds, starting with the two wild cards in each conference playing a best-of-five game series. (The team with the best record will have the home field advantage, hosting games 1, 2 and 5.) In any series, should the two teams have identical season records, a coin toss will be used to determine who has home field advantage for this round, and the same applies for determining home field advantage in the first round. (The only exception to this will be that, regardless of record, the division winner with the best record will always have the home field advantage when playing the wild-card winner.)
The next round, best-of-seven, will, in each conference, be the division winner with the best record (home field advantage, hosting games 1,2, 6,7) playing the winner of the wild card series and the other two divisional winners will play each other with the team having the best record having home field advantage.
In the next round, winners of the previous round meet for the conference championship.
And, finally, Conference champions meet in the World Series. American Conference champions have the home field advantage in odd numbered years and the National Conference champions have the home field advantage in even numbered years.
Should a conference have a division where no team has a winning percentage above .500, then the team with the next best record after the two wild card teams will be selected for the playoffs, regardless of the division. Should this occur, the two wild card team with the lesser records will play in the wild card round. If there are two teams which have identical records, there will be a one game playoff to determine which team will make the playoffs.
The Commissioner will notify the playoff teams of their first round opponents as soon as playoff teams for each conference can be determined, and will send out a playoff .lzp. In as much as the RML is a mail league, playoffs may also be handled by mail, although face-to-face play or netplay is encouraged whenever possible.
It is the responsibility of the participating managers to make their own arrangements, exchange instructions, and proceed with play in a prompt manner. They also must inform the Commissioner of the arrangements and report the game-by-game playoff results to the Commissioner and the stat keeper. In the event a playoff manager is unable to play his games in a timely manner, he must designate a proxy to handle all playoff games on his behalf.
If the playoff managers have not made their arrangements and reported them to the Commissioner within ten days of the time they have been notified by the Commissioner, the Commissioner may proceed to arrange for completion of that playoff series. In the event that the Commissioner must make such arrangements, each of the participating teams may be fined an amount equal to the amount that the winner of the series would otherwise receive.
For all playoffs, including the League Series, a day of rest is counted for pitchers between games two and three and between games five and six. This means that a pitcher who starts game one can also start games four and seven. The most games that any pitcher can start in the series, is three. Limitations of pitchers classified as starters are season starts divided by ten and rounded down. For example, a starter with thirty-three starts will be eligible for three starts in the series.
Starting pitchers can be used as starters and/or relievers in the playoffs, using the following formula based upon how many starts they had:
- 10-14 Starts: 1 start or 1 relief appearance
- 15-19 Starts: 2 appearances with no more than 1 being a start
- 20 -24 Starts: 2 appearances in any combination of starts and relief appearances
- 25-29 Starts: 3 appearances with no more than 2 being starts
- 30+ Starts: 3 appearances in any combination of starts and relief appearances
Limitations for relievers will be five percent of their regular RML season innings allowance using normal rounding procedures plus three innings (example: a reliever who had 50 IP during the regular league season would be available for 6 innings during the playoffs).
At bat usage during the playoffs for players with regular season limitations are based on 5 percent of regular RML season allowance totals, using normal rounding procedures, plus 5 at bats.
All injuries are treated as “rest of game” injuries requiring an immediate replacement for the player injured. This enables managers to exchange instructions for the entire series without regard to any carry-over injuries between home and road games. | <urn:uuid:6b7f7d14-d50c-402c-9447-2f009d6a55b0> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | http://rmlbb.com/constitution.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571502.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811194507-20220811224507-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.970979 | 9,271 | 1.6875 | 2 |
Internet SafetyYou are here:
At Wexham School, we promote the use of technology. This enhances their engagement and application of subjects both in class and at home. The potential for the Internet to be a valuable and a fun resource for entertainment, making friends, keeping in touch and learning is huge. But if misused you could be at risk of something serious.
Just as we want to keep our children safe in the real world, we will want to do the same in the virtual world. While it is important that we understand enough about the Internet to keep our children safe from harm, it is equally important that we equip our children with the skills they need to keep themselves safe so that they can experience the Internet positively and responsibly.
To help promote E-safety across the school, Wexham school has a group of students known as Digital Leaders. These students have been trained by Childnet to help support and educate their peers on E-safety.
Below are some useful links that will help provide you with key information regarding technology use and how to keep your children safe online.
Some key facts
- 15% of UK 9 to 16 year olds have been bothered, uncomfortable or upset by something online in the past year
- 29% of UK children aged 9 to 16 years old said they had contact online with someone they have not met face to face
- 4% of UK 9 to 16 year olds have gone to an offline meeting with someone they first met online
Ofcom report on Internet safety
Some useful links:
What's the problem? - a guide for parents of children and young people who have got into trouble online. It is designed to answer some of the immediate questions you may have after learning that something is happening, or has happened, in your child's online life.
Parents Protect! - a project of The Lucy Faithfull Foundation.
NSPCC's Online Safety
CEOP helps any child or young person under the age of 18 who is being pressured, forced or tricked into taking part in sexual activity of any kind. This can be something that has taken place either online or in ‘the real world’, or both. The CEOP Safety Centre has clear information and advice on what can be reported to CEOP, the reporting process and what will happen if you do decide to make a report. You can visit the CEOP Safety Centre and make a report directly to CEOP by clicking the Click CEOP button. | <urn:uuid:0ad40259-1718-4e5f-9727-5350e400b1c1> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.wexhamschool.co.uk/page/?title=Internet+Safety&pid=89 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570913.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20220809064307-20220809094307-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.9627 | 533 | 3.015625 | 3 |
I’ve never understood why people design systems in python to use config files. IMO there are two types of data and we can handle them both in dead simple ways:
First: Read/write data, like UI/user preferences. I say, just use python dictionaries, and serialize them however the hell you want (json, yaml, pickle, cPickle, I don’t care). I don’t understand why anyone would build anything more complex (except maybe a wrapper over this functionality), and especially why anyone would bother using a non-serialized format like ini or cfg. Can there be a good reason?
Second: Read-only data, like application configuration (nothing that is edited by your app). This, too, is very commonly in config files with special like xml or ini. Well in this case I say, why bother even with serialized data at all? Just make it code! This data, by definition, does not have to be statically known and serialized, it is only needed at runtime. So why not make it a python module, have your code import/exec the python file, and access attributes from the python module? There’s a good deal of data we may only know at runtime, or we cannot statically represent, so we end up making the systems that consume this configuration data much more complex. (For an example, see Sphinx’s config, I think it does it right).
An example of where I think python-as-configuration has huge power is with complex configuration data like for a plugin system. Instead of relying on some static functionality, the configuration can even be callables that return a plugin instance- so now you don’t have to refer to globals inside of your plugins, you can have your own initializer with a much larger signature, and the plugin system can have its well-defined initialization interface.
I’m not sure I did a great job explaining that example- it deserves its own post. We’ve used it extensively for new tools and systems we’ve developed and it seems to work great (and results in zero globals or singletons used by the plugins, which is an artifact of most plugin systems I’ve seen).
These are my opinions and practices and I know there are plenty good modules which rely on ini/xml/config files. Other than legacy decisions or to be compatible with pre-existing systems, why would someone choose a config file/format over 1) serialized python objects and/or 2) python code? | <urn:uuid:22f3c8d7-790f-4a48-a4bc-afe6562096fb> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.robg3d.com/2012/06/why-bother-with-python-and-config-files/?shared=email&msg=fail | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571190.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810131127-20220810161127-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.92196 | 537 | 1.84375 | 2 |
Cal Newport is the best-selling author of such books as So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for the Work you Love and How to Become a Straight-A Student: the Unconventional Strategies Real College Students Use to Score High While Studying Less.
Cal teaches computer science at Georgetown University in Washington DC. The following interview is over Newport’s latest book, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World (http://www.amazon.com/Deep-Work-Focused-Success-Distracted/dp/1455586692/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8).
Moore: Give our readers a feel for the impetus behind writing this book.
Newport: We spend so much time wringing our hands over distraction that we’ve forgotten what’s so valuable about its opposite. If you hone your ability to work deeply, and prioritize this activity, you’ll become much more successful, and your professional life will become more satisfying. This seemed like a message worth sharing.
Moore: You provide some wonderful examples (including your own) of those who have been able to accomplish considerable work-related goals without being stressed workaholics. Why do most of us equate productivity with long hours and significant stress?
Newport: Not all work is created equal. If you spend all day answering emails between jumping on calls and attending meetings, you might feel busy, but you should not feel proud. You did very little that created new value or made you better at your craft. Once you recognize the value that true deep work creates, it becomes easier to treat the shallow alternative with suspicion – a nuance at best, a serious obstacle at worst, in your quest to make an impact on the world.
Moore: A computer scientist can’t be a Luddite, but you find Facebook and Twitter a waste of time. However, you do regularly blog. Personally, I am in the same boat: regular blogging, but no Facebook and Twitter. Preach to the non-choir who think Facebook and Twitter are the best things since sliced bread.
Newport: There’s a difference between being a Luddite and being picky about which technologies you allow to lay claim to your time and attention. There are a lot of technologies I love. But there are also a lot that I think are nonsense. I include most social media in the latter category. These commercial services are cleverly designed to prey on your quest for social approval and craving for lightweight distraction so that your eyeballs and personal data can be harvested then sold to advertisers. I have a hard job and two young kids at home. I want to preserve the small amount of free time that remains in my life for more meaningful pursuits.
Moore: During my time in radio I had the opportunity to interview Neil Postman for the hour. He was insightful in writing about the tradeoffs which come with new technology. Unpack that a bit for us.
Newport: Neil was a gifted and influential media critic. Among the many things he wrote about, an idea of his that stuck with me is the danger of the “technopoly.” In short, he warned that we have a tendency to deify new technologies as being intrinsically good and a prophetic source of wisdom regarding how best to run our governments, companies, and personal lives. I think we’re definitely seeing this play out today. When I say, for example, that Facebook is stupid, even if not everyone agrees with this claim, this really shouldn’t be that controversial—but I find instead that it throws people into a tizzy. This is the mark of a technopoly: dissent is seen as desecration not debate.
Moore: You have to do a lot of “deep work” for your role as college professor and writer. Should the rest of us be concerned about setting up our schedules in such a way that we can also do deep work?
Newport: Yes. Deep work is like a super power for many, many different knowledge work professions. To quote The Economist: “Deep work is the killer app of the knowledge economy.” There are three reasons to embrace deep work. First, if hone your ability to concentrate, you can produce significantly better output in significantly shorter time. Second, deep work allows you to learn complicated things quickly. And third, it makes your life more meaningful and satisfying. We were created to create things of value—not send emails.
Moore: I found your book a great encouragement for what I am doing right and a further motivation to tweak my schedule so as to allow for increased deep work. Two book projects are propelling me forward! What would you say are a few reasons why people ought to consider buying your book?
Newport: The book has two parts. The first part makes the case for deep work. If you’re on the fence, or if you’re a believer but want more ammunition to convince others, you’ll find what you need in part one. The second part provides detailed practical instructions for how to better cultivate and apply deep work in your own life. So if you’re looking to improve your ability to work deeply, this part will provide exactly what you’re looking for. | <urn:uuid:29c20a80-afe7-4e30-af62-7709f6015a31> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | http://www.twocities.org/?p=6139 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571502.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811194507-20220811224507-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.956469 | 1,099 | 1.601563 | 2 |
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Apologia’s homeschool math curriculum is specifically designed to work with young minds as they expand their understanding and unlock the power of numbers in everyday life. This homeschool elementary math curriculum is intentionally designed to build a strong foundation so that your child’s familiarity with numbers becomes second nature as they learn how to manipulate numbers with addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, data collection, graphing, fractions, and geometry.
The Exploring Creation with Mathematics series will set the tone for your child’s math experience for years to come. The goal of homeschool math is to clarify the connections and relationships between math and life in an age-appropriate manner. Your elementary school child should never be asking, “Why do I have to learn this?” A well-designed elementary homeschool math curriculum will make the connections for your child so they can see and understand the power of numbers and how it all fits together in God’s wonderful creation.Shop Our Homeschool Math Curriculum
This math has been a game-changer in our house! I would battle so much with my daughter over math. Now, she asks to do it first and sometimes completes more than what is required! Thank you for releasing a product that has given me confidence we can continue homeschooling without the fight every day.
We have really enjoyed this curriculum! Easy to use and prep for! Such a natural approach to math! I have tried so many 1st-grade math curriculums. This one is my favorite!
Exploring Creation with Mathematics is the perfect balance of practice problems and hands-on activities. My daughter has loved all the games. I highly recommend it!
We are several weeks into our Apologia Math book, and my daughter begs to just do one more lesson at the end of every day! Thanks for such a fun math adventure.
I think I finally found it! I’ve been searching for YEARS for the perfect math curriculum. Something hands-on, that has short lessons and has everything laid out in an easy-to-use parent manual for me. Apologia knocked it out of the park with this one!
I have been recommending your math books to all the homeschool moms. Thank you for everything you contribute to the homeschooling world. We are grateful!
Thank you so much for writing this math curriculum. My son absolutely LOVES it, and we are having so much fun together. Math is his favorite subject, and he looks forward to it every day.
We are using Apologia math in our homeschool. My kids never get bored since each lesson uses different manipulatives and activities to teach the concepts. I am so impressed with how well the books are written and especially love using household items as manipulatives!
With Apologia’s elementary homeschool math, your child won’t be learning this year’s math facts so that he or she can go on to the next level. Your child will be learning how to expand his or her world with mathematical knowledge.
The courses utilize hands-on activities to introduce new concepts, worksheets for students to practice concepts, games to enhance learning, and end-of-unit projects that involve many concepts learned in that unit. There is a strong emphasis on mastering both math facts and conceptual understanding. The courses link mathematical concepts to the real world, primarily through word problems. And each title is visually connected to a science theme with icons and illustrations such as those related to insects in Level 3.
– Cathy Duffy Reviews, Read the Full Review
Each grade level in the series develops math ideas in a deep and well-thought-out way. The lessons are carefully crafted and steadily lead children towards a lasting understanding of mathematics. We also explain concepts in multiple ways – visually and with tactile options.Shop Homeschool Math Curriculum
Sign up below and we will send you two FREE downloads! You’ll receive our math activity e-book, 5 Ways to Make Math Fun, and our Apologia math placement guide!
In Exploring Creation with Mathematics, Level 1, students learn addition, subtraction, place value, measurement and data, and geometry. This is a hands-on, interactive math curriculum filled with activities, projects, and games that help students comprehend lessons. Students will also see the connections between math, science, business, art, our world, and our universe. Most importantly, students will begin to comprehend how mathematics gives us a glimpse of our Creator.Shop Math Level 1
Exploring Creation with Mathematics, Level 2 is a hands-on, interactive elementary math curriculum. Students will dig deeper into place value, patterns such as even and odd numbers, addition, subtraction, money, time, measurement, data and graphs, and geometry. Filled with activities, projects, and games that help students understand how they can manipulate numbers as they investigate the world, students will also see the greater connections between our world and our God.Shop Math Level 2
Exploring Creation with Mathematics, Level 3 was designed to encourage your child’s thinking to soar to new heights on a joyous journey of discovering new things about the world and its Creator. In level 3, students learn addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, data collection, and graphing, fractions, and geometry. This hands-on, interactive elementary math curriculum also encourages your child to ponder creation on a new level.Shop Math Level 3
In Exploring Creation with Mathematics, Level 4, students learn addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, data collection and graphing, fractions, and geometry.
They’ll explore the beauty of mathematics in all aspects of life, including the symmetry and patterns that surround us every day. Activities, projects, and games help students see the beauty, order, and truth of creation.Shop Math Level 4
Fun, Hands-on Activities
Apologia’s Exploring Creation with Mathematics combines color, photos, hands-on activities, engaging projects, and games.
The units in Exploring Creation with Mathematics culminate in end-of-the-unit projects that reinforce the math the student has learned through real-world scenarios. We build up to complex concepts gradually, with just enough challenge each day.
Daily Skills Practice
Each day, Exploring Creation with Mathematics has the student spend 5-10 minutes reviewing a previously-learned skill. Easy-to-set-up games and activities are listed in the Teaching Guide and Answer Key. These practice sessions ensure that students remain well prepared and confident with their current knowledge when learning to incorporate new concepts.
Suggested Daily Schedule
A daily schedule is included in the accompanying Teaching Guide and Answer Key for each level, and it can be adjusted to fit the needs of your child. On average, each lesson takes 30 minutes.
The 28-week lesson plan is broken into 4-days/week. This suggested daily schedule was designed with thoughtful pacing to help students progress from one skill to the next.
And while learning math for the sake of math is admirable, Apologia believes that you shouldn’t study math to pass a test, excel in a school subject, or even advance a career. The true purpose behind mathematics is to learn more about the God who created it. Math is a part of Creation and as such, it mirrors aspects of God. We can witness His beauty, faithfulness, and love as we study numbers.
Each unit within the Exploring Creation with Mathematics series helps students make these connections as it opens with “Seeing Our Creator” sections that connect the student with the mathematical journey they are beginning.Shop Now
Apologia’s homeschool elementary math curriculum has 2 components:
Each level of the student workbook follows the same design:
Every Apologia title has its own website. These Book Extras contain additional materials that help parents and students succeed.
The Teaching Guide and Answer Key includes the following:
Our math placement guide will help you to determine which level is the best homeschool math curriculum for your child.
Start by reviewing what is covered at each level of Exploring Creation with Mathematics. We’ve broken down each grade level according to its component units and chapters. Ask yourself, Does my child know this concept? and has my child mastered this concept? Mark each skill according to whether your child knows it well or requires more practice in this area.View Math Placement Guide
Kathryn (Bell) Gomes holds an M. Ed. in mathematics from the University of Pennsylvania and a B.S. in mathematics from the University of Pittsburgh. She has taught math to homeschooled students for thirteen years and is very familiar with the challenges of learning math at home; Kathryn is a homeschool graduate. As a homeschooling parent herself, Kathryn and her tester families have had their hands on this elementary math curriculum long before they approved it for your family.
She spent three years teaching mathematics in inner-city Philadelphia through Teach for America. She then taught in the most ethnically diverse high school in Pennsylvania. During this time, Kathryn designed Algebra 1 and Algebra 2 curricula for English as second language learners. Now one of her great passions is improving mathematics education for homeschoolers by increasing rigor while still maintaining the creativity and free-thinking that she enjoyed in her schooling.
Shop Elementary Math Curriculum | <urn:uuid:1e67b9c1-de48-4623-93e8-8b635ac70ede> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.apologia.com/homeschool-elementary-math-curriculum/?a_aid=5a021808c87aa&a_bid=4d69d9e0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570913.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20220809064307-20220809094307-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.945609 | 1,956 | 2.125 | 2 |
Euro money market reference rate
Published for the first time on 30 December 1998 – a few days ahead of the introduction of the euro – Euribor® is a euro money market benchmark calculated for five maturities: one week, and one, three, six and twelve months.
It measures ‘the rate at which wholesale funds in euro could be obtained by credit institutions in current and former European Union and European Free Trade Association countries in the unsecured money market’.
Euribor® has been declared a critical benchmark by the European Commission in 2016 because of its systemic importance for financial stability. According to in-house estimates based on official or trusted sources, the total outstanding amount of financial instruments and contracts using Euribor® as a reference exceeds €100 trillion.
Publication of rates
Euribor® is published every TARGET2 day, at or shortly after 11:00 CET for each of its tenors.
Intraday refixing may happen at 15:00 CET in case of reported revisions to input data, or errors in the collection, calculation, or publication of the benchmark.
To calculate the impact of the revisions, the original input data is replaced by the revised input data, or by the correct benchmark calculation, and the benchmark is recalculated for each fixing day in the period. The recalculated benchmark rates are then compared with the original published rates. | <urn:uuid:5b242055-a9e1-4ead-9ec7-cbf46592ed4f> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.emmi-benchmarks.eu/benchmarks/euribor/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570913.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20220809064307-20220809094307-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.937704 | 287 | 2 | 2 |
How To Play Wordle Game Online. The board consists of 30 overturned tiles; Playing wordle online is a simple and fun game that’s available for free online.
There are two modes of play: Visit the link above on the browser app like chrome on your phone or pc and you will be automatically redirected to your browser. After entering the word, press the enter button on the virtual keyboard.
Table of Contents
Guess The Uk English Word.
Keep in mind that you need to keep the letters in the right location. Playing the online nfl wordle game is to guess the nfl mysterious players. Once you load up the website, click on play now.
Now Wordle Can Be Played By Accessing The Official New York Times Games Section.
You have until midnight, when the word resets and a new word is there for you to guess. It is an entirely free online wordle guessing game. You can play using a mobile or desktop browser;
The Challenge Is To Guess Words With Only 6 Attempts Given To You.
A puzzle mode where you have to get rid of all the tiles on the board, and a create mode where you can generate your own word cloud. Amazing as wordle is, it doesn’t allow you to play together with your friends and family as a multiplayer game. Please note that this must be a real word.
A New Wordle Is Available Every Day, The Website Says.
Find out what letters are in the hidden word The board consists of 30 overturned tiles; To play wordle with your friends or strangers online, you can head to wordletogether.com.
First You Need To Enter In The First Line A Word Consisting Of The Selected Number Of Letters.
You can visit this website via your mobile and your pc. After entering the word, press the enter button on the virtual keyboard. The task of the game is to guess the hidden word. | <urn:uuid:ce591010-0091-4631-a2de-431318332dd1> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://cofe-formec2021.org/make/how-to-play-wordle-game-online | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571190.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810131127-20220810161127-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.89337 | 396 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Aromatherapy and Its Benefitsadmin
Although the human sense of smell is hardly as developed as it is in many animals, we still respond favourably or unfavourably to different odours. Just smelling a fragrant flower can help to elevate our mood and clear our minds momentarily of care and worry. Aromatherapy is based on the connection between what we smell and the reactions that our mind and body produce. While aromatherapy is still considered to be a non-conventional approach to medicine, recent studies have shown that this is a valid branch of healing.
The Basis of Aromatherapy
Aromatherapy is based on the volatile oils that plants produce. The scent of flowers comes from volatile oils that the plant makes to attract insects, bats, or birds to assist in pollination; it is simply a happy coincidence that these volatile oils have benefits for mankind. It is not only the scent of flowers that is used in aromatherapy, oil from leaves, roots, bark, stems, and fruit is also employed to alleviate mental and physical problems.
The French perfumer, Rene-Maurice Gattefosse is the originator of aromatherapy. Using his skills not only in distilling perfume, but as a chemist, Gattefosse wrote a book in the early 20th Century that detailed his research into the subject of aromatherapy. This was the beginning of using essential oils for treatment of various disorders.
Essential oils from plants are considered to be volatile oils because they evaporate and react quickly. This property allows these oils to be readily picked up by nerves in the nose and sinuses, delivering a message rapidly to the brain. Essential oils are thought to interact with the neurotransmitters and also react with the parts of the brain involved with emotion. Research has shown that the essential oils used in aromatherapy can actually cause changes in brain waves and in behaviour patterns.
Although aromatherapy is considered to be an alternate form of healing, it has shown itself to be useful in dealing with a number of health problems. The nice thing about aromatherapy is that it is non-invasive, and at its most simple level helps to clear the air and provide a more comfortable and enjoyable atmosphere.
- Stress is one of the banes of modern existence and can lead to serious health problems such as depression, high blood pressure, and insomnia. Using lavender, frankincense, chamomile, and rose oils can help to reduce the amount of cortisol, the stress hormone, in the bloodstream.
- Depression is a life-deadening condition that is often treated with powerful psychoactive medications. Fortunately, depression can also be alleviated using aromatherapy. Many of the same oils that are used to treat stress also work well to fight depression, with the addition of clary sage, ylang-ylang, sandalwood, and basil essential oils.
- Skin conditions such as acne and pimples respond well to aromatherapy. Using a compress made from sandalwood, clary sage, geranium, and lemongrass (either alone or in combination) can help break the cycle of clogged pores and bacterial infection. Cuts and scrapes can heal more quickly when essential oils are used.
- Summer fun often translates into sunburn. Those who find their skins red and painful can get some relief by combining aloe vera with essential oils such as rose hip, avocado, hazel nut, or sunflower. These oils can be added to a cool bath to begin the healing process and compresses can be applied to especially painful spots.
- Headaches and migraines can make life miserable. While aromatherapy might not be able to dispel a migraine completely, it can help to lessen its severity. Compresses containing peppermint and eucalyptus seem to provide the most relief, and soaking the hands in warm water containing lavender and ginger essential oils is particularly effective when dealing with migraines.
There are several different ways for aromatherapy to be used. While some can be done at home at a personal level, in most cases it’s best to use a qualified therapist to administer the treatment as some therapies require a mixture of oils for the best results.
- Inhalation is the most common use of aromatherapy. The essential oils are placed in a bowl of warm water for inhaling. A towel can be draped over the head to concentrate the aroma. Another way to benefit from inhalation is by using a diffuser or light bulb ring to provide more general aromatherapy.
- Adding oils to the bath will provide not only tactile therapy but also provide for inhalation benefits. Essential oils for treating skin conditions can be dispensed by this method. Taking a bath before bedtime, with the proper essential oils, can help those with sleep disturbance problems to get needed rest.
- Compresses using a carrier oil or alcohol along with the essential oil can give direct relief to problem areas, such as skin irritations. Compresses are also valuable at relieving when applied to the forehead.
- Massage using essential oils is a definite win/win for the subject. Many massage therapists will use hot stones along with the essential oils to provide maximum relief and relaxation.
The use of aromatherapy need not wait until a problem arises in body or spirit – it can be used simply to make everyday life more pleasant and rewarding. | <urn:uuid:b833df4a-4cee-4018-b1b9-d0156995b58d> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.somaticservices.com/2018/12/16/aromatherapy-and-its-benefits/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571190.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810131127-20220810161127-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.944234 | 1,134 | 2.765625 | 3 |
WHAT IS THE START SMART PROGRAM? The California Highway Patrol's Start Smart program is a driver safety education class which targets new and future licensed teenage drivers between the age of 15 - 19 and their parents/guardians.
Freedom. Getting their driver's license opens a new world to young drivers. Suddenly, the possibility of new destinations and experiences with friends are within grasp. But a new driver lacks the experience that is sometimes needed on the road. Situations can appear in a second, sometimes too fast for a new driver to respond to. But, there are ways to avoid dangerous situations. There are ways to keep a new driver - and their passengers - safe on the road.
Find out how to keep new drivers safe on the road
DID YOU KNOW ?
Teen drivers are found at fault in 66% of ALL FATAL collisions that they are involved in, although they only represent 4% of the state's licensed drivers.
The leading cause of DEATH for Americans 15 - 20 years old is motor vehicle collisions.
Grossmont Union High School District programs and activities shall be free from discrimination, harassment, intimidation, and bullying based on age, gender, sex, race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, nationality, ethnic group identification, ethnicity, marital or parental status, physical or mental disability, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation or the perception of one or more of such characteristics. (GUHSD Board Policy 5145.3) 4119.26 BP Employee/Student Interaction Policy Additional non-discrimination and related policies
Our school food facilities offer products with peanuts, tree nuts, soy, milk, eggs and wheat. For our students with food allergies, we offer a variety of foods which are intended to be free of these ingredients. While we take steps to minimize the risk of cross contamination, we cannot guarantee that any of our products are safe to consumers with peanut, tree nut, soy, milk, egg or wheat allergies. Consumers with severe allergies should consume food items with caution. | <urn:uuid:6264a58d-b61f-460b-85f5-9466aa18c671> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://valhalla.guhsd.net/Parents/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573623.4/warc/CC-MAIN-20220819035957-20220819065957-00665.warc.gz | en | 0.929542 | 410 | 2.625 | 3 |
One of the prettiest fables of the sea is that relating to the Paper Nautilus, the constructor and inhabitant of the delicate and beautiful shell which looks as if it were made of ivory no thicker than
a sheet of writing paper.
It is an old belief that in calm weather it rises from the bottom of the sea, and, elevating its two broadly-expanded arms, spreads to the gentle air, as a sail, the membrane, light as a spider's web, by which they are united; and that, seated in its boat-like shell, it thus floats over the smooth surface of the ocean, steering and paddling with its other arms. Should storm arise or danger threaten, its masts and sail are lowered, its oars laid in, and the frail craft, filling with water, sinks gently beneath the waves.
When and where this picturesque idea originated I am unable to discover. It dates far back beyond the range of history; for Aristotle mentions it, and, unfortunately, sanctioned it. With the weight of his honoured name in its favour, this fallacy has maintained its place in popular belief, even to our own times; for the mantle of the great father of natural history, who was generally so marvellously correct, fell on none of his successors; Pliny, and Ælian, and the tribe of compilers who succeeded them, having been more concerned to make their histories sensational than to verify their statements.
Naturally, the Paper Nautilus has been the subject of many a poet's verses. Oppian wrote of it in his 'Halieutics':—
Montgomery also thus exquisitely paraphrases the same idea in his 'Pelican Island':—
Byron mentions the Nautilus in his 'Mutiny of the Bounty' as follows:—
The very names by which this animal is known to the science which some persons erroneously think must be so hard and dry are poetic. In Aristotle's day it was called the Nautilus or Nauticus, "the mariner," and though two thousand two hundred years have passed since the great master wrote, the name still clings to it. As the Pearly Nautilus, a very different animal, also bears that name, Gualtieri perceived the necessity of distinguishing the Paper Nautilus from it, and was followed by Linnæus, who therefore entitled the genus to which the latter belongs, Argonauta, after the ship Argo, in which Jason and his companions sailed to Colchis to carry off the "Golden Fleece" suspended there in the temple of Mars, and guarded by brazen-hoofed bulls, whose nostrils breathed out fire and death, and by a watchful dragon that never slept. According to the Greek legend, the Argo was named after its builder Argus, the son of Danaus, and was the first ship that ever was built. Oppian ('Halieutics,' book I.) expresses his opinion that the Nautilus served as a model for the man who first conceived the idea of constructing a ship, and embarking on the waters:—
Pope, too, in his 'Essay on Man' (Ep. 3), adopted the idea in his exhortation—
Poetry, like the wizard's spell, can make
but the equally enchanting wand of science is able by a touch to dispel the illusion, and cause the object to appear in its true proportions. So with the fiction of the "Paper Sailor."
I have elsewhere described the affinities of the Nautili and their place in nature, therefore it will only be necessary for me here to allude to these very briefly, to explain the great and essential difference that exists between the two kinds of Nautilus which are popularly regarded as being one and the same animal.
The Pearly Nautilus (Nautilus pompilius) and the Argonaut, which from having a fragile shell of somewhat similar external form is called the Paper Nautilus, both belong to that great primary group of animals known as the Mollusca, and to the class of it called the Cephalopoda, from their having their head in the middle of that which is the foot in other mollusks. In the Cephalopoda the foot is split or divided into eight segments in some families, and in others into ten segments, which radiate from the central head, like so many rays. These rays are not only used as feet, but, being highly flexible, are adapted for employment also as prehensile arms, with which their owner captures its prey, and they are rendered more perfect for this purpose by being furnished with suckers which hold firmly to any surface to which they are applied. The Cephalopods which have the foot divided into ten of these segments or arms are called the Decapoda, those which have only eight of them are called the Octopoda. All of these have two plume-like gills—one on each side—and so are called Dibranchiata; and in the eight-armed section of these is the argonaut or Paper Nautilus. Of the Pearly Nautilus and the four-gilled order I shall have more to say by-and-by: at present we will follow the history of the argonaut.
Notwithstanding all that has been written of it, it is only within the last fifty years that this has been correctly understood. An eight-armed cuttle was recognised and named Ocythoe, which, instead of having, like the common octopus, all of its eight arms thong-like and tapering to a point, had the two dorsal limbs flattened into a broad thin membrane. Although this animal was sometimes seen dead without any covering, it was generally found contained in a thin and slightly elastic univalve shell of graceful form, and bearing some resemblance to an elegantly shaped boat. It did not penetrate to the bottom of this shell; it was not attached to it by any muscular ligament, nor was the shell moulded on its body, nor apparently made to fit it. Hence it was long regarded as doubtful, and even by naturalists so recent and eminent as Dumeril and De Blainville, whether: "Mutianus reports that he saw in the Propontis a shell formed like a little ship, having the poop turned up and the prow pointed. An animal called the Nauplius, resembling an octopus, was enclosed in the shell with its owner, for its amusement in the following manner. When the sea is calm the guest lowers his arms, and uses them as oars and a helm, whilst the owner of the shell expands himself to catch the wind; so that one has the pleasure of carrying and sailing, and the other of steering. Thus, these two otherwise senseless animals take their pleasure together; but the meeting them sailing in their shell is a bad omen for mariners, and foretells some great calamity."
Although the animal was never found in any other shell, and the shell was never known to contain any other animal, and though, when the shell and the animal were found together they were always of proportionate size, this octopod, as I have said, was looked upon by some conchologists as a pirate who had taken possession of a ship which did not belong to him, until Madame Jeannette Power, a French lady then residing in Messina, having succeeded in keeping alive for a time an argonaut the shell of which had been broken in its capture, discovered that the animal quickly repaired the fracture, and reproduced the portions that had been broken off. Induced by this to make further experiments, she kept a number of living argonauts in cages sunk in the sea near the citadel of Messina, and in 1836 laid before the "Academy" at Catania the following results of her observations of them:—
1st. That the argonaut constructs the shell which it inhabits.
2nd. That it quits the egg entirely naked, and forms the shell after its birth.
3rd. That it can repair its shell, if necessary, by a fresh deposit of material having the same chemical composition as its original shell.
4th. That this material is secreted by the palmate, or sail, arms, and is laid on the outside of the shell, to the exterior of which these membranous arms are closely applied.
Madame Power was mistaken on two points. Firstly, the construction of the shell does not commence after the birth of the animal, but, as has been shown by M. Duvernoy, its rudimentary form is distinctly visible by the aid of the microscope in the embryo, whilst still in the egg; and secondly, she continued to believe in the use of the membranous arms as sails, and of the others as oars. This fallacy was exploded by Captain Sander Rang, an officer of the French navy, and "port-captain" at Algiers, who carefully followed up Madame Power's experiments, and confirmed the more important of them. Thus were set at rest questions which for centuries had divided the opinions of zoologists.
The "Paper Nautilus" is, in fact, a female octopod provided with a portable nest, in which to carry about and protect her eggs, instead of brooding over them in some cranny of a rock, or within the recesses of a pile of shells, as does her cousin the octopus. From the membranes of the two flattened and expanded arms she secretes and, if necessary, repairs her shell, and by applying them closely to its outer surface on each side, holds herself within it, for it is not fastened to her body by any attaching muscles. When disturbed or in danger she can loosen her hold, and, leaving her cradle, swim away independently of it. It has been said that, having once left it, she has not the ability nor perhaps the sagacity to re-enter her nest, and resume the guardianship of her eggs. From my own observations of the breeding habits of other octopods I think this most improbable. The use and purpose of the shell of the argonaut will be better understood if I briefly describe what I have witnessed of the treatment of its eggs by its near relative, the octopus.
"The eggs of the octopus," as I have elsewhere said, "when first laid, are small, oval, translucent granules, resembling little grains of rice, not quite an eighth of an inch long. They grow along and around a common stalk, to which every egg is separately attached, as grapes form part of a bunch. Each of the elongated bunches is affixed by a glutinous secretion to the surface of a rock or stone (never to seaweed, as has been erroneously stated), and hangs pendent by its stalk in a long white cluster, like a magnified catkin of the filbert, or, to use Aristotle's simile, like the fruit of the white alder. The length and number of these bunches varies according to the size and condition of
It has been suggested that the syringing may be for the purpose of keeping the water surrounding the eggs well aerated; but this is evidently erroneous, for the water ejected from the tube has been previously deprived of its oxygen, and consequently of its health-giving properties, whilst passing over the gills of the parent. Week after week, for fifty days, a brooding octopus will continue to attend to her eggs with the most watchful and assiduous care, seldom leaving them for an instant except to take food, which, without a brief abandonment of her position, would be beyond her reach. Aristotle asserted that while the female is incubating she takes no food. This is incorrect; but in every case of the kind that has come under my observation the mother octopod, whenever she has been obliged to leave her nest, has returned to it as quickly as possible; and so I believe can, and does, the female argonaut to her shell, and that, too, without any difficulty. In her case the numerous clusters of eggs are all united at their origin to one slender and tapering stalk which is fixed by a spot of glutinous matter to the body-whorl of the spiral shell.
This "paper-sailor," then, whom the poets have regarded as endowed with so much grace and beauty, and living in luxurious ease, is but a fine lady octopus after all. Turn her out of her handsome residence, and, instead of the fairy skimmer of the seas, you have before you an object apparently as free from loveliness and romance as her sprawling, uncanny-looking, relative. Instead of floating in her pleasure boat over the surface of the sea, the argonaut ordinarily crawls along the bottom, carrying her shell above her, keel uppermost; and the broad extremities of the two arms are not hoisted as sails, nor allowed when at rest to dangle over the side of the "boat;" but are used as a kind of hood by which the animal retains the shell in its proper position, as a man bearing a load on his shoulders holds it with his hands. When she comes to the surface, or progresses by swimming instead of walking, she does so in the same manner as the octopus: namely, by the forcible expulsion of water from her funnel-like tube.
But if truth compels us to deprive her of the counterfeit halo conferred on her by poets, we can award her, on behalf of science, a far nobler crown; namely, that of the Queen of the whole great Invertebrate Animal Kingdom. For, the Cephalopoda, of which the argonaut is a highly organised member, are not only the highest in their own division, the Mollusca, but they are as far superior to all other animals which have no backbones, as man stands lord and king over all created beings that possess them.
Although in outward shape the spiral shell of the Pearly Nautilus (Nautilus pompilius) somewhat resembles that of the argonaut, its internal structure is very different. A section of it shows that it is divided into several chambers, each of which is partitioned off from the adjoining ones, the last formed or external one, in which the animal lives, being much larger than the rest. The object and mode of construction of these chambers is as follows. As the animal grows, a constant secretion of new material takes place on the edge of the shell. By this unceasing process domicile is borne lightly above the body of the Nautilus, without in any way impeding its progress.
The chambers are all connected by a membranous tube slightly coated with nacre, which is connected with a large sac in the body of the animal, near the heart, and passes through a circular orifice and a short projecting tube in the centre of each partition wall, till it ends in the smallest chamber at the inner extremity of the shell. Dean Buckland believed this "syphon" to be an hydraulic apparatus acting as a "fine adjustment" of the specific gravity of the shell, by admitting water within it when expanded, and excluding it when contracted. As it contains an artery and vein near its origin at the mantle, Professor Owen has regarded it as subservient to the maintenance of a low vitality in the vacated portion of the shell. Dr. Henry Woodward is of the opinion that, whilst in the early life of the Nautilus this siphuncle forms the main point of attachment between the animal and its shell, it is in the adult "simply an aborted embryonal organ whose function is now filled by the shell-muscles, but which in the more ancient and straight-shelled representatives of the group (the Orthoceratites) was not merely an embryonal but an important organ in the adult."
Every one knows the shell of the Pearly Nautilus. It may be purchased at any shell-shop in a seaside watering-place, and is imported by hundreds every year from Singapore.
Mr. Owen's investigations confirmed his previous supposition that the Pearly Nautilus is inferior in its organisation to octopus, sepia, or any other known cephalopod; that it is not isolated, but that it recedes towards the gasteropods, to which belong the snail, the periwinkle, &c., and that in some of its characters its structure is analogously related to the still lower annulosa, or worms. Mr. Owen was just about to start for Paris with the intention of presenting a copy of his book to his celebrated contemporary and friend, and of showing him his dissections of the Nautilus which had been the subject of his research, when he heard of Baron Cuvier's death. It must have been to him a great sorrow and a grievous disappointment.
The Pearly Nautilus, then, is a true cephalopod, in that it has its foot divided and arranged in segments around its head, but the form and number of these segments are very different from those of any other of its class. Instead of there being eight, as in the argonaut and octopus, or ten, as in sepia and the calamaries, the Nautilus has about ninety projecting in every direction from around the mouth. They are short, round, and tapering, of about the length and thickness of the fingers of a child. Some of them are retractile into sheaths, and they are attached to fleshy processes (which might represent the child's hand), overlying each other, and covering the mouth on each side. They have none of the suckers with which the arms and tentacles of all the other cuttles are furnished, but their annulose structure, like the rings of an earthworm's body, gives them some little prehensile power. None of these numerous finger-like segments of the foot are flattened out like the broad membranous expansions of the argonaut, and, in fact, the Nautilus is without any members which can possibly be regarded as sails to hoist, or as oars with which to row. It has a strong beak, like the rest of the cuttles; but it has no ink-sac, for its shell is strong enough to afford it the protection which its two-gilled relatives have to seek in concealment.
The Pearly Nautilus usually creeps, like a snail, along the bed of the sea. It lives at the bottom, and feeds at the bottom, principally on crabs; and, as Dr. S. P. Woodward says, in his 'Manual of the Mollusca,' "perhaps often lies in wait for them, like some gigantic sea-anemone, with outspread tentacles." The shape of its shell is not well adapted for swimming, but it can ascend to the surface, if it so please, in the same manner as can all the cuttles—namely, by the outflow of water from its locomotor tube. The statement that it visits the surface of the sea of its own accord is at present, however, unconfirmed by observation.
But, if the Pearly Nautilus is the inferior and poor relation of the argonaut, it lives in a handsome house, and comes of an ancient lineage. The Ammonites, whose beautiful whorled and chambered shells, and the casts of them, are so abundant in every stratum, especially in the lias, the chalk, and the oolite, had four gills also. These Ammonites and the Nautili were amongst the earliest occupants of the ancient deep; and, with the Hamites, Turrilites, and others, lived upon our earth during a great portion of the incalculable period which has elapsed since it became fitted for animal existence, and in their time witnessed the rise and fall of many an animal dynasty. But they are gone now; and only the fossil relics of more than two thousand species (of which 188 were Nautili) remain to tell how important a race they were amongst the inhabitants of the old world seas. They and their congeners of the chambered shells, however, left one representative which has lived on through all the changes that have taken place on the surface of this globe since they became extinct—namely, Nautilus pompilius, the Nautilus of the pearly shell—the last of the Tetrabranchs.
I need offer no apology for endeavouring to explain the difference between the Nautilus of the chambered shell and the argonaut with the membranous arms which it was supposed to use as sails, when Webster, in his great standard dictionary, describes the one and figures the other as one and the same animal; and when a writer of the celebrity of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes also blends the two in the following poem, containing a sentiment as exquisite as its science is erroneous. I hope the latter distinguished and accomplished author, whose delightful writings I enjoy and highly appreciate, will pardon my criticism. I admit that the beauty of the thought might well atone for its inaccuracy, (of which the author is conscious,) were it not that the latter is made so attractive that truth appears harsh in disturbing it.
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Sci-fi stories love to fantasize about the technological singularity, the moment in which artificial intelligence makes human civilization obsolete. Authors and futurists often will use this moment as a boogeyman, a cipher for what ails modern society in the present.
But then are some who understand technology is an outgrowth of human existence. Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s latest film Bigbug is a French sexual farce that tackles the singularity while wrestling with the notion of what differentiates us from the machines. What makes us human?
Jeunet also toys with the idea that our reliance on technology will be our downfall. Not because we will become lazy, are too reliant, but because we will cede authority to them. Jeunet and his co-writer Guillaume Laurant imagine a world where everything is very much the same, only now civilizations are more automated.
Bigbug is not a dire warning so much as a heartfelt plea. Far from an “us versus them” mentality and much like Matrix: Resurrections, both Jeunet and Laurant are interested in redefining who exactly “us” might be, and in that the question of what makes us human. If this all sounds odd and a little offbeat, that’s because it is.
It’s easy to misread Bigbug as just an overtly stylized, tonally irregular, typical warning about the dangers of the over-reliance on technology. Except, the oddness is vital; it allows for the strangeness in our behaviors to be reflected on. Not to mention, of course, that the world feels odd; it’s the future, and there’s a strange sense of recognition of familiarity mixed with the exoticism of what we know is possible.
Never mind that Jeunet and Laurant plop us down smack dab into the middle of the action with no explanation of how anything works. Alice (Elsa Zylberstein) is on a blind date at home with Max (Stephane De Groodt), his son Leo (Helie Thonnat) sits nearby, being forced to come along. Meanwhile, the house robot Monique (Claude Perron), who looks as human as anyone else except for her movements, observes from the kitchen.
Their date is soon interrupted when Alice’s ex-husband Victor (Youssef Hajdi) shows up unannounced with his new girlfriend Jennifer (Claire Chust). The two are on their way to an exclusive luxury island resort to get married, Victor and Alice’s adopted daughter Nina (Marysole Fertard) in tow. If that isn’t enough, Alice’s busybody neighbor Francoise (Isabella Nanty) shows up to add to the growing crowd.
Soon, they will all be trapped inside Alice’s house. The sweltering heat and rising passions threaten to consume them as they go from trying to get into each other’s pants to trying to break free from their robotic-induced sauna of a prison. The robots look on bewildered, bemused, and hopeful that soon they too will be counted among the ranks.
Refreshingly Jeunet and Laurant, unlike so many others, realize that technology is generational, meaning there are a variety of robots with varying designs and intelligence. Einstein (voiced by Andre Dussollier) is a wire mechanized head designed for amusement but seems to be the head, figuratively and literally, of the house robots. There is also a tiny robot that once belonged to Nina. It has a more straightforward design and program, but it still works and Nina still treasures it.
While that may be the plot of the movie, it is by no means what the film is about — or, at least not entirely what the movie is about. For you see, the domestic robots inside the house have trapped the humans partially for their protection. Outside Yonyx (Francois Levantal), a robot with a steel body but a human face, calling to mind the image of Robocop without his face mask on, is possibly staging a coup. Yonyx is a company and a brand of artificial intelligence. The Yonyx robots have become a force of the government, an automated police state capable of automatic debits, filing charges, and handing out sentences, often in one conversation.
Underneath all the sexual frustrations and sprinkled in all the slapstick attempts to get out, Jeunet shows how easily we give into and create authoritarian situations in exchange for creature comforts. Interestingly, neither Jenunet nor Laurant believes art will save us; although they do believe art has its place, it’s in the way of expressing oneself.
A popular television show called “Homo Ridoclus” shows naked humans in constant peril or being forced to perform humiliating acts, usually at the hands of the Yonyx. The humans sometimes mention how sad it is, but necessary, as often the people seen in this show are poor and need the money. Later on, a Yonyx visits the house. They force Alice and the others to be in an episode of the show as payment for fines incurred for their disobedience.
The books that Alice loves to read and the art Max hosts on his website have little to no bearing on the world around them. Climate change haunts the background of Bigbug. The heat both inside and outside is overwhelming and affects the computers. Yet, the people seem to care very little and merely complain of a hassle when the robots don’t function properly. One of the characters even mentions Nina is a refugee from the Netherlands, now underwater.
Humans have done such a good job adapting that they’ve stopped trying to fix the world and now merely figure out how to fix the things that amuse them. None of this is subtle but could easily be ignored simply because of how oddly the humans behave. The humans may be foolish and crass, but Jeunet can’t help but love them all the same.
Bigbug looks too shiny and artificial, but it’s offset by how much of a mess the humans are. Angry, sweaty, half-naked — Jeunet doesn’t cast movie stars so much as normal-looking people. Thomas Hardmeier’s camera swings about, as acrobatic as one of the many drones or other domestic robots in the house. But the wild camera movements never feel jarring and consistently enhance the oddly sensual slapstick demeanor of the film.
Hardmeier goes for a sense of artificiality yet gives them a sense of texture that allows tactile awareness to blossom throughout the movie. The broadness of the tone belies the complexity underneath the story. Not all humans are good, and not all robots are evil. The crux of Bigbug is humorous nihilism.
But it comes from understanding how humans relate to them today. Far from being an old man shaking his fist at passing clouds, Bigbug shows us how vital connection is regardless of if the connection is between humans and humans, robots and robots, or humans and robots. The same foibles that plague us will also haunt our creations.
The Yonyx, for example, aren’t tyrannical dictators. In fact, they seem to be petty bullies who enjoy pushing people around simply because they can. They even seem to be bigoted towards other inferior robots and enjoy demeaning them.
Jeunet and Laurant understand that artificial intelligence, more than being some objective mechanical vice of reason, is at its heart a reflection of who we are as a species. The good and the bad, our hopes and dreams, and the poison of our hatred and bigotries. The other robots’ desire to protect the humans comes from their desire to be human, certainly, but also to care and be cared for in return.
Bigbug is about the singularity, yes, but Jeunet uses that as a way to explore our humanity. He uses the robot’s desire for humanity to show our desire to be loved. The facades we put on for physical intimacy, and the beauty of our imperfections are masked by our desires to be desired. The human soul may not exist, but Bigbug explores how the many ways of trying to understand what a soul even is, is part of what makes us human, microchips be damned. The desire to understand the world around and inside us is our defining characteristic; everything else is just a distraction.
Images courtesy of Netflix
Have strong thoughts about this piece you need to share? Or maybe there’s something else on your mind you’re wanting to talk about with fellow Fandomentals? Head on over to our Community server to join in the conversation! | <urn:uuid:8b28da15-45c8-479d-9bf3-fe1a76289989> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.thefandomentals.com/bigbug-film-review/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571190.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810131127-20220810161127-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.947673 | 1,822 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Google used to be simple. You search a term, and it would give you a list of links that should include what you were looking for. Then it brought in monetization schemes like Adwords and other monetizable products like Maps and Zagat recommendations.
But it wasn’t apparent just how absurd things had gotten until Aaron Harris, co-founder of Tutorspree, broke down Google search page results into simple real estate percentages. As it turns out, on a 13-inch Macbook Air, a mere 13% of Google’s results page are dedicated to results when searching “auto mechanic.” (More literally, that means Google gives you three links for your troubles.) More than twice that space is spent on ads–yielding almost four times the number of links. Imagine that in any other context–maybe a TV show in which the commercials were the main attraction–and it’s beyond absurd.
That sounds bad, right? But it gets worse. From Harris:
Open your iPhone. Search for “Italian Food.” What do you see? If you’re in NYC, you see 0 organic results. You see an ad unit taking half the page, and then a Google owned Zagat listing. Start scrolling, you’ll see a map, then Google local listings. After four full page scrolls, you’ll have the organic listings in front of you.
Google has long been phasing out its infamous blue links in the interest of more effective pre-chewed content. In fact, we’ve praised their use of “cards” as a watershed design strategy for the era of information overload. After all, why click a link when Google can simply mine the relevant information from that link?
But especially with its recent push of Zagat listings, which impose a lot of its purview onto the public, Google needs to tread carefully and maintain their hard-built aura of objective omniscience. Because at the moment, Google appears more interested in its own needs than ours. And that’s a very scary place for any company to be.
[Hat tip: Gizmodo]
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A while back I wrote about the trouble that can occur when the managers of large organizations overestimate the utility of large data sets and sophisticated statistical tools, with Robert McNamara’s problems in Vietnam as a poster child. In 2010 that example seems remote, so let’s talk about an example that’s closer to home: the financial crisis.
We’ve seen that decision-makers are at greatest risk of being seduced by data when there are several layers of abstraction between themselves and the people on the “front lines.” Consider the case of making a loan. In a traditional small bank, you might have a president who establishes guidelines for the kinds of loans that are issued, and a handful loan officers who evaluate individual applications and make decisions based on the guidelines. There’s not much danger of the bank president getting out of touch with reality here: if a loan officer thinks the rules don’t make sense, he can probably go down the hall and talk to the president about his concerns.
Things get trickier as the bank gets bigger. There will be more applications to evaluate, and that requires branches, more loan officers and a more complex bureaucracy to manage them. This can create problems. For example, if loan officers are paid on commission, they might not have much incentive to report if the rules are too lax.
Still, things get a whole lot worse when securitization comes along. Securitization works like this: a bank approves a bunch of loans to various customers, combines those loans into a big bundle called a Collateralized Debt Obligation, slices them into “tranches” (so that each slice has a piece of each loan), and sells the slices to a bunch of third parties.
Now there are many layers of abstraction and bureaucracy between the guy evaluating an individual loan application and the guy who will ultimately lose his money if the loan goes bad. And the incentives have become extremely perverse. The bank earns fees the moment it originates a loan, but it may bear little or no long-term risk for making bad loans. Meanwhile, the assets are so fragmented that it’s not practical for buyers to do due diligence. In hindsight, this seems like an obviously terrible idea. Yet lots of otherwise smart people endorsed the concept. What happened, in a nutshell, is that the financial industry fell prey to the same intellectual error that befell Robert McNamara: confusing large amounts of data for knowledge.
In the last decades of the 20th Century, Wall Street developed what they thought were sophisticated statistical tools that allowed them to accurately estimate the riskiness of complex portfolios without firsthand knowledge of the underlying assets. For example, as banks got larger, they increasingly relied on numerical standards like income and credit scores, rather than more subjective personal factors, to decide which loans to approve. This made a certain amount of sense because as banks got larger, it became more important to have consistent standards across the organization.
Second, investors increasingly relied on a handful of large credit ratings agencies who evaluated CDOs for riskiness. The firms creating the CDOs carefully packaged these bundles of securities so that as many slices as possible would get an “investment grade” rating. This was important not only because it gave buyers confidence, but also because government regulations mandated that financial institutions hold a certain fraction of their balance sheets in investment grade assets.
Finally, the buyers themselves developed (ostensibly) sophisticated statistical techniques like value at risk that purported to give the institution a high-confidence estimate of the maximum amount the institution could lose on a given portfolio. Wall Street had armies of well-paid “quants” whose job it was to compute these figures.
As the system became more complex and centralized in Wall Street, it became increasingly difficult for the people creating the securities to do a “reality check.” The Wall Street quant who never looked at individual mortgage applications is in precisely the same situation as a general who’s never been to the front lines in Vietnam. In both cases, the people who are on the front lines had a strong incentive to skew the data to make themselves look good. And they began doing just that. Loan officers began encouraging their customers to fudge the information on their loan application to ensure they’d be approved. Companies came up with ever more elaborate CDO structures designed to convince ratings agencies to give a large fraction of their securities investment-grade ratings. So for Wall Street executives, the numbers looked great right up until the moment his balance sheet imploded.
The fundamental problem, I think, was the size of the firms and the complexity of the financial instruments. No statistic can perfectly summarize a messy, real-world asset. There’s no substitute for understanding the (literal) “facts on the ground”: for knowing something about the individual properties and property owners who are the ultimate anchor for any loan. And the more complex and fragmented an asset is, the harder it is to perform due diligence. Yet as firms grow larger, senior management is forced to rely on increasingly abstract statistical measures. Ken Lewis couldn’t possibly have developed an in-depth understanding of all the CDOs (and other exotic financial instruments) Bank of America was buying in the years before the financial crisis, both because they were extremely complex and because there were just too many of them.
There’s been a lot of talk about the need for a systematic risk regulator to monitor the entire financial sector and raise the alarm if major financial institutions are making loans that are too risky. But if the financial system continues to be structured the way it was in 2007, then it’s not clear how much good such a regulator can do because he’ll be fundamentally in the same boat as the CEO. The balance sheets of the largest banks were so complex that regulators had no real alternative than to rely on statistics supplied by the bank itself. And that means that the regulator is going to have the same blind spots as the bank’s management.
So the most important part of any reform package has to be limiting the size of financial firms. A financial institution with $2 trillion of assets under management is a recipe for disaster. Smaller firms not only reduce the risk of too big to fail problems, which is important in its own right, but it also makes it easier for everyone—bank executives, regulators, and members of the general public—to understand what these institutions are doing. No executive can possibly manage it responsibly, and no regulator can possibly understand it well enough to conduct meaningful oversight.
Unfortunately, the Brown-Kaufman amendment to the financial reform bill, which would have limited the growth of large financial firms, failed in May. All signs point to continued consolidation on Wall Street. Which seems like a recipe for another crisis and more bailouts in the coming years. | <urn:uuid:62630de5-59d8-40dd-9866-63a49c769803> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://timothyblee.com/2010/07/08/seduced-by-data-in-the-financial-industry/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571190.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810131127-20220810161127-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.968688 | 1,403 | 1.890625 | 2 |
Detroit Bathtubs has announced the launch of its innovative DuraStone One Day Bath Systems in line with the goal of the company of making bathroom remodeling easily accessible to all by reducing the cost and duration involved in such projects while offering clients the best possible quality of products and services on the market.
Studies have shown that the national average cost to remodel a bathroom ranges from $12,500 to $15,000 depending on the size and extent of the project. It is also worth noting that the cost of remodeling a bathroom varies depending on the current state of the space, the specific bathroom design plans for the remodel and the material costs. The bathtub is one of the major items considered in remodeling projects and removing it can be sometimes difficult and process depending on the remodeler. This is in addition to the process causing damage to the floors, walls, and even plumbing of the bathroom, consequently putting the bathroom out of service for days or even weeks. This is where Detroit Bathtubs is looking to make a huge difference with its recently launched DuraStone One Day Bath Systems.
The Detroit Bathtubs material is a non-porous material that helps to resist the growth of mildew, with a grout-free design that eliminates the need for tough scrubbing. The solid surface DuraStone products are built to be 400% stronger than products from other brands, providing customers with a durable product to last for a long time.
While the Detroit Tubs is similar to Bath Fitter and other acrylic companies DURASTONE ONE DAY BATH SYSTEMS are better and stronger, they are designed to have 3 times density per sheet for the thickest on the market while offering a full demo for a beautiful finish unlike Bath Fitter acrylic liners that simply installed right over existing tiling, causing even more damage in the future.
The affordability of the remodeling solutions offered by Detroit Bathtubs that allows customers to enjoy a full installation of a new Tub or Shower for as little as $4,995.00 for new plumbing, tub or shower, and new drains.
More information about Detroit Bathtubs can be found on their website.
About Detroit Bathtubs
Detroit Bathtubs is leading provider of bathroom remodeling solutions. Headquartered in Michigan, the company has become one of the most sought-after service providers in the industry, handling more than 7500 jobs in the past 5 years and earning an A-rating with the BBB and over 80 reviews on Google with 4.8 out of 5 stars. | <urn:uuid:f4a9b5e7-f481-4727-8117-43d85ebd96b3> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.getnews.info/882572/detroit-bathtubs-launches-the-durastone-one-day-bath-systems.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571190.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810131127-20220810161127-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.952811 | 521 | 1.5625 | 2 |
|Day / Night||Big Sky Snow-Forecast Snow||
|Base Wind 2286m||Freezing Level Freeze Alt.||
|Top Wind 3403m|
Weather forecast & 0 day predicted precipitation.
Weather data is from 09/08/2022 forecast for USA
Predicted 0 day weather forecast is for 7 cm new snow fall expected by 15 Aug 2022.
Weather predictions last updated 18 Dec 2020 at 13:00
Find great skiing close to Big Sky with these nearby resort weather forecasts.
|Current Conditions||Weather Today|
Weather and Man Made Snow in Big Sky
On an annual basis, Big Sky's average frozen precipitation is 1015cm.
This natural weather-created snowfall is helped along with ? snow guns or "cannons" on ?km of piste - that's over 10% of the total length of Big Sky trails.
Off-piste snowboarding and sking is allowed and of course this has the secondary effect of reducing the wear and tear on snow condition on the pisted runs.
Big Sky Official & Local Weather Info Source
You can call the Big Sky Weather Information phone number 9955900 to hear their forecast in these languages: English.
Ski area & ski slope orientation - S E
The ski slopes in the Big Sky ski area face in these directions: S E
In the coldest winter months of January and February choose a resort with south facing areas, more light and warmth in the depths of alpine winter.
In warmer spring months the best riding is on cooler and shady North facing slopes.
Latest weather forecast for All American Ski Resorts | <urn:uuid:6ce5994a-4fae-4857-9476-28dee57f094c> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.sno.co.uk/ski-resort/big-sky/weather-big-sky-snow-forecast/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570913.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20220809064307-20220809094307-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.814454 | 423 | 1.664063 | 2 |
|Part of a series on the|
|Culture of India|
The Manipuri Dance, also referred to as the Manipuri Raas Leela (Meitei: Jagoi Raas, Raas Jagoi), is one of the eight major Indian classical dance forms, originating from the state of Manipur. The dance form is imbued with the devotional themes of Madhura Raas of Radha-Krishna and characterised by gentle eyes and soft peaceful body movements. The facial expressions are peaceful mostly expressing Bhakti Rasa or the emotion of devotion, no matter if a dancer is Hindu or not. The dance form is based on Hindu Shastras of Vaishnavism and is exclusively attached to the worship of Radha Krishna. It is a portrayal of the dance of divine love of Lord Krishna with Radha and the cowherd damsels of Vrindavan, famously known as the Raas Leela.
The roots of the Manipuri Raas Leela dance, as with all classical Indian dances, is the ancient Hindu Sanskrit text Natya Shastra, with influences and the culture fusion between various local folk dance forms. With evidence of Vishnu temples in the medieval era, this dance form has been passed down verbally from generation to generation as an oral tradition. Interestingly, at a time when other Indian classical dances were struggling to shake off the stigma of decadent crudity and disrepute, the Manipuri classical dance was a top favorite with girls of 'respectable' families.
This Manipuri dance drama is, for most part is entirely religious and is considered to be a purely spiritual experience. It is accompanied with devotional music created with many instruments, with the beat set by cymbals (kartal or manjira) and double-headed drum (pung or Manipuri mrdanga) of sankirtan. The dance drama choreography shares the plays and stories of Vaishnavite Padavalis, that also inspired the major Gaudiya Vaishnava-related performance arts found in Assam and West Bengal.
Though the term Manipuri Dance is associated with the Raas Leela, Manipuri dance consists of jagoi, cholom and huyen langlon. Due to the latter, it is the only Indian classical dance form to feature violence as a motif.
The first reliably dated written texts describing the art of Manipuri dance are from the early 18th-century.
Historical texts of Manipur have not survived into the modern era, and reliable records trace to early 18th century. Theories about the antiquity of Manipuri Raas Leela dance rely on the oral tradition, archaeological discoveries and references about Manipur in Asian manuscripts whose date can be better established.
The Meitei language text Bamon Khunthok, which literally means "Brahmin migration", states Panniker, states that Vaishnavism practices were adopted by the king of Manipur in the 15th century CE, arriving from Shan kingdom of Pong. Further waves of Buddhists and Hindus arrived from Assam and Bengal, after mid 16th-century during Hindu-Muslim wars of Bengal Sultanate, and were welcomed in Manipur. In 1704, the Meitei King Pitambar Charairongba (Meitei: Charairongba) adopted Vaishnavism, and declared it to be the state religion. In 1717, the Meitei King Gareeb Niwaz (Meitei: Pamheiba) converted to Chaitanya style devotional Vaishnavism, which emphasized singing, dancing and religious performance arts centered around Hindu god Krishna. In 1734, devotional dance drama centered around Hindu god Rama expanded Manipuri dance tradition.
Meitei King Rajarshi Bhagyachandra (Meitei: Ching-Thang Khomba) (r. 1759–1798 CE) of Manipur State adopted Gaudiya Vaishnavism (Krishna oriented), documented and codified the Manipuri dance style, launching the golden era of its development and refinement. He composed three of the five types of Raas Leelas, the Maha Raas, the Basanta Raas and the Kunja Raas, performed at the Sri Sri Govindaji temple in Imphal during his reign and also the Achouba Bhangi Pareng dance. He designed an elaborate costume known as Kumil (the cylindrical long mini-mirror-embellished stiff skirt costume, that makes the dancer appear to be floating). The Govinda Sangeet Lila Vilasa, an important text detailing the fundamentals of the dance, is also attributed to him. Meitei King Rajarshi Bhagyachandra (Meitei: Ching-Thang Khomba) is also credited with starting public performances of Raas Leela and Manipuri dances in Hindu temples.
Meitei King Gambhir Singh (Meitei: Chinglen Nongdrenkhomba) (r. 1825–1834 CE) composed two parengs of the tandava type, the Goshtha Bhangi Pareng and the Goshtha Vrindaban Pareng. King Chandrakirti Singh (r. 1849–1886 CE), a gifted drummer, composed at least 64 Pung choloms (drum dances) and two parengs of the Lasya type, the Vrindaban Bhangi Pareng and Khrumba Bhangi Pareng. The composition of the Nitya Raas is also attributed to these kings.
In 1891, the British colonial government annexed Manipur into its Empire, marking an end to its golden era of creative systematization and expansion of Manipuri dance. The Manipuri Raas Leela dance was thereafter ridiculed as immoral, ignorant and old-fashioned, like all other classical Hindu performance arts. The dance and artists survived only in temples, such as in Imphal's Shree Govindajee Temple. The cultural discrimination was resisted and the dance revived by Indian independence movement activists and scholars.
The classical Manipuri Raas Leela dance genre got a second life through the efforts of the Noble Laureate Rabindranath Tagore. In 1919, he was impressed after seeing a dance composition of Goshtha Lila in Sylhet (in present-day Bangladesh). He invited Guru Budhimantra Singh who had trained in Manipuri Raas Leela dance, as faculty to the Indian culture and studies center named Shantiniketan. In 1926, Guru Naba Kumar joined the faculty to teach the Raas Leela. Other celebrated Gurus, Senarik Singh Rajkumar, Nileshwar Mukherji and Atomba Singh were also invited to teach there and assisted Tagore with the choreography of several of his dance-dramas.
Chali or Chari is the basic dance movement in Manipuri Raas dances. The repertoire and underlying play depends on the season. The dances are celebrated on full moon nights, three times in autumn (August through November) and once again in spring (March or April). The Basanta Raas is timed with the Hindu festival of colors called Holi, while others are timed with post-harvest festivals of Diwali and others. The plays and songs recited during the dance performance center around the love and frolics between Radha and Krishna, in the presence of Gopis named Lalita, Vishakha, Chitra, Champaklata, Tungavidya, Indurekha, Rangadevi and Sudevi. There is a composition and dance sequence for each Gopi, and the words have two layers of meanings, one literal and other spiritual. The longest piece of the play focusses on Radha and Krishna. The dancer playing Krishna expresses emotions, while the body language and hand gestures of the Gopi display their feelings such as longing, dejection or cheer.
In other plays, the Manipuri dancers are more forceful, acrobatic and their costumes adjust to the need of the dance. Dozens of boys synchronously dance the Gopa Ras, where they enact the chores of daily life such as feeding the cows. In Uddhata Akanba, states Ragini Devi, the dance is full of vigor (jumps, squats, spins), energy and elegance.
The classical Manipuri dance features unique costumes. The women characters are dressed, in doll-like Potloi costumes. The brilliant design of the Potloi was conceived in a dream by Vaishnavite Meitei King Rajarshi Bhagyachandra (Meitei: Ching-Thang Khomba) of Manipur, in which he saw his daughter dancing in a Potloi. The Potloi costumes for women are tailored such that it is avoids arousal of any unhealthy stimulus in the audience.
The dancers do not wear bells on ankles but do wear anklets and foot ornaments. Manipuri dance artists wear kolu necklaces on the neck and adorn the face, back, waist, hands and legs with round jewellery ornaments or flower garlands that flow with the dress symmetry. The face is decorated with the sacred Gaudiya Vaishnava Tilak on the forehead and Gopi dots made of sandalwood above the eyebrows. The symmetrical translucent dress, states Reginald Massey, makes "the dancers appear to float on the stage, as if from another world".
The male characters dress in a dhoti (also called dhotra or dhora) – a brilliantly colored broadcloth pleated, wrapped and tied at waist and allowing complete freedom of movement for the legs. Dancers wear a bright yellow-orange dhoti while playing Lord Krishna and a green/blue dhoti while playing Balaram. A crown decorated with peacock feather adorns the dancer's head, who portrays Lord Krishna.
The Pung Cholom dancers wear white dhoti that covers the lower part of body from waist and a snow-white turban on the head. A shawl neatly folded adorns their left shoulders while the drum strap falls on their right shoulders.
The costume tradition of the Manipuri dance celebrates its more ancient artistic local traditions, fused with the spiritual themes of prema bhava of Radha-Krishna found in the tenth book of the Bhagavata Purana.
The Huyen langlon dancers, however, typically wear costumes of Manipuri warriors. The costume varies depending on their gender.
The musical accompaniment for Manipuri dance comes from a percussion instrument called the Pung (a barrel drum), a singer, small kartals (cymbals), sembong, harmonium, and wind instrument such as a flute.
The drummers are male artistes and, after learning to play the pung, students train to dance with it while drumming. This dance is celebrated, states Massey, with the dancer wearing white turbans, white dhotis (for Hindu dummers) or kurtas (for Muslim dummers), a folded shawl over the left shoulder, and the drum strap worn over the right shoulder. It is known as Pung cholom, and the dancer plays the drum and performs the dance jumps and other movements.
Another dance called Kartal cholom, is similar to Pung cholom, but the dancers carry and dance to the rhythm created with cymbals. This is a group dance, where dancers form a circle, move in the same direction while making music and dancing to the rhythm. Women dance too as groups, such as in the Manipuri dance called Mandilla cholom, and these usually go with devotional songs and playing colorful tassels-string tied cymbals where one side represents Krishna and the other Radha. Shaiva (tandava) dances are choreographed as Duff cholom and Dhol cholom.
The songs in Huyen langlon can be played with any Manipuri instruments such as the pena and are usually aggressive sounding but they contain no lyrics.
The traditional Manipuri Raas Lila is performed in three styles – Tal Rasak, Danda Rasak and Mandal Rasak. A Tal Rasak is accompanied with clapping, while Danda Rasak is performed by synchronous beat of two sticks but the dancers position it differently to create geometric patterns. The Gopis dance in a circle around the Krishna character in the center.
The Manipuri Raas Leela dance style embodies dreamy wavelike movements where one movement dissolves into another like the waves of an ocean. The dance features rounded soft movements of women, and occasional fast movements by male characters. Unlike the other classical dance forms of India, the Manipuri dance artists do not wear anklet bells and the footwork is subdued and gentle in the Manipuri style. The stage movements is part of a composite movement of the whole body.
There are five types of accepted Ras Leela, they are Maharas, Basantaras, Kunjaras, Nityaras and Dibaras.
The Maharas Leela is the most prominent. This dance is performed in the month of Kartik (around November) on a full moon night. It is a story of the Gopis sorrow after the disappearance of Krishna. After seeing the Gopis disheartened, Krishna then reappears and multiplies himself so that he is dancing with each Gopi.
The Basantaras is celebrated on Chaitra (around April) on a full moon night welcoming the spring season. During this time Holi is also celebrated where participants throw colored water or powder at each other. The story of Basantaras is based off of Jaidev's Gita Govinda and the Brahma Vavairta Purana.
Kunjaras is celebrated on Ashwin (October) in Autumn on a full moon night.
Nityaras is celebrated any night of the year except for the previous three raas (Maharas, Basantaras and Kunjaras). The story is of the divine union of Radha and Krishna after Radha surrenders herself to Lord Krishna.
Dibaras is celebrated any time of the year during the day besides the periods of Maharas, Basantaras and Kunjaras. The performance comes from the chapters in the Shri Krishnaras- Sangeet Samgraha, Govinda Leelamritya, Shrimad Bhagavata and Sangitamahava. | <urn:uuid:d2bef99e-8242-4e5d-982a-11e9966edabf> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://demo.azizisearch.com/starter/google/wikipedia/page/Manipuri_dance | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570913.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20220809064307-20220809094307-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.923893 | 3,208 | 2.875 | 3 |
Context & Rationale Digital Natives & 21st Century Learners
Growth Mindset Needed, Not Digital Natives
According to Prensky, digital natives are “native speakers of digital language”, while a digital immigrant is defined as those who didn’t grow up with technology and had to learn/adapt along the way (2001a). But are these terms still relevant with the constantly changing and evolving uses of technology in the classroom? Technology has become an expected area of understanding for teachers as part of the overall best practice, similar to good classroom management being expected in all classes. While I would be more considered a digital native by Prensky's terms, I know people from all ages who are very competent using technology.
I believe the idea of digital natives and digital immigrants is very outdated in my international context. If we consider our students to be digital immigrants now, what will our students be in 50 or 100 years? Are these terms even necessary? Our school is a 1 to 1 laptop school for both teachers and students. It is essential that all students and teachers embrace the use of technology when appropriate for teaching and learning. The idea of digital natives and digital immigrants is erased and replaced with terms such as growth mindset and fixed mindset becoming more relevant for integrating technology. In a previous post, I focused on the importance of expanding our knowledge by problem solving, resiliency and pushing boundaries of personal understanding with an emphasis on growth mindset and not labelling individuals as digital natives or immigrants (MacLean, 2015). For further reading of my ideas of the importance of a growth mindset, please read here.
We should be encouraging our teachers and students to be open-minded and willing to learn regardless of the medium. We should be encouraging our students to be risk-takers, to make mistakes and to learn from them. Having a growth mindset, allows us to be open to new challenges (which could be technology for some).
Our current school policies do not lend themselves to the terms digital natives or digital immigrants. Rather, again, there is an expectation of teachers using technology only when appropriate for best practice and students using technology as a resource only when it enhances their learning.
21st Century Learner Or Just a Learner
As a teacher, it is my role to facilitate learning for students by helping them develop skills and conceptual understandings that can be transdisciplinary and transferred into any avenue for their future. Students need to learn to be good communicators, creative and critical thinkers, collaborative, with an ability to be self-managed, engaged and passionate about learning. These skills can be developed through a multitude of learning experiences in both formal and informal settings. In addition, being reflective needs to be combined into this learning process as well.
Again, I truly believe that the label of a 21st century learner is now irrelevant. To me, it is just being a learner. We want our students to develop skills to be lifelong learners, now and always. It is not something that is restricted to only the 21st century and many educators understood the importance of teaching transdisciplinary skills before the 21st century and will continue to after the 21st century.
From an ICT integration standpoint, I use the 6 ICT in PYP skills as a way to fuse effective technology implementation into the curriculum where necessary. These include: creating, collaborating, organising, communicating, investigating and developing a digital citizen (The role of ICT in PYP, 2011). In order to be effective using any technology tool, students need to develop the finer skills associated with these to be successful. There are so many collaborative tools that exist, but it is more important for students to understand how to use group roles, taking turns, respectfully disagreeing and having healthy debates than how to use Padlet or Google Docs. Students need to learn how to build on others ideas while giving credit and not feel that someone is stealing their idea. These skills can be taken out of the technology world and applied into other real world experiences, which makes the learning meaningful and longlasting.
Through an inquiry-based, constructivist teaching model, students can develop their curiosity for learning and learn the skills to find the answers to what they want to learn. When passion and enthusiasm is involved as a learner, the learning really is limitless.
The role of ICT in PYP. (2011). International Baccalaureate. UK: IB. | <urn:uuid:6d66e621-50b5-4847-8a85-bf9497967737> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | http://emilymacleanmed.blogspot.com/2016/03/context-rationale-digital-natives-21st.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571190.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810131127-20220810161127-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.952359 | 902 | 3.421875 | 3 |
Since 1999 Europe has embarked on a long – and often painful – process of policy harmonisation designed to deliver a common European asylum policy. The recent history of European migration policy has been dominated by two objectives that are pulling in opposite directions. On the one hand, the ageing populations and changing labour markets of most European countries have created employment opportunities for both high- and low-skilled labour migrants. On the other there has been growing concern about the ‘asylum problem’ – despite the reality that the number of people seeking asylum in the EU is steadily decreasing. Many politicians, policy makers and members of the public believe that asylum is being (mis)used as a means of gaining access to the EU and that this reduces the efficiency of EU labour markets, involves substantial expenditure on processing and welfare and undermines public confidence in Europe’s ability to control its borders.
As these developments have taken place in Europe UNHCR and others have encouraged states to address the root causes of forced migration and to devise durable solutions to forced migration which enable people to remain in their regions of origin rather than make long and often dangerous journeys to access protection. For many years UNHCR has made efforts to link humanitarian assistance with the development process in less prosperous regions of the world. Most recently UNHCR has attempted to establish a comprehensive framework for refugee protection and to address the root causes of forced migration through its Global Consultations on International Protection, and subsequent Agenda for Protection and ‘Convention Plus’ initiative. This focuses on the strategic use of resettlement, measures to address irregular secondary movements of refugees and asylum seekers and the targeting of development assistance to achieve durable solutions.
The desire of countries in Europe to reduce the number of asylum seekers for which they are responsible and the concerns of UNHCR that durable solutions be found have come together – in a rather unexpected and worrying way – in recent European discussions about so-called ‘extra-territorial processing’.
Proposals to process applications in Africa
Early in 2003 the European Council – the main EU decision-making body whose meetings are attended by EU leaders or senior ministers – received two proposals, one from the UK Government and one from UNHCR, each mapping out their ideas for a future European Asylum System.
The UK’s proposal was circulated to EU ministers by the UK Prime Minister, Tony Blair, and was entitled New International Approaches to Asylum Protection. It had two separate but inter-related elements:
- Regional Protection Areas (RPAs) – to be established in regions of origin. Asylum seekers from certain countries could then be returned to their home regions where ‘effective protection’ could be offered to them, and where they would be processed with a view to managed resettlement in their home regions or, for some, access to resettlement schemes in Europe.
- Transit Processing Centres (TPCs) – to be established along major transit routes into the EU, close to EU borders, to which those asylum seekers arriving spontaneously in the UK or another EU member state would be removed and where their claims would be processed. Those given refugee status could then be resettled in participating EU states whilst other would be returned to their country of origin.
UNHCR’s proposal – which has been widely viewed as an attempt to ameliorate the most damaging aspects of the UK proposal – was presented as the ‘EU prong’ of its wider Convention Plus initiative. The ‘EU prong’ proposes separating out the groups that are clearly abusing the system, and sending them to one or more reception centres somewhere within the EU, where their claims would be rapidly examined by joint EU teams.
The UK proposals provoked a public and political outcry because they were seen not as a genuine initiative to address the causes of formed migration but as a populist attempt to be seen to be ‘tough’ on asylum. In the UK, as in many other countries in Europe, talking tough on asylum has become very popular for politicians of all political persuasions. Although the UNHCR proposals received a more favourable reception than the British proposals, they were regarded with caution by some who were concerned that the notion of setting up a parallel determination process represented a retreat away from the principles of the 1951 Refugee Convention.
What happened to the proposals?
Although not entirely new, the UK proposals provided the catalyst for an intense debate within and outside Europe about the future of the international protection regime.
The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, responded to both sets of proposals by publishing a document which effectively rejected the UK proposals as unworkable and instead set out its own approach for establishing more accessible, equitable and managed asylum systems in Europe. The Commission reiterated that any new approach should aim to enhance international protection rather than shift responsibility for it elsewhere, and should be underpinned by ten key principles – including the need to fully respect international legal obligations of Member States, the need to improve the quality of asylum decision making in Europe, and a recognition that the most effective way of addressing the refugee issue is by reducing the need for refugee movements. The Commission also strongly recommended an EU-wide resettlement scheme to enable refugees to travel legally to the EU to access protection and durable solutions.
Although the UK’s proposals were rejected at the European level, individual European countries – and to some extent the Commission itself – have continued to look to Africa to solve the ‘asylum problem’. The UK Government, for example, has continued discussions ‘behind the scenes’ with a number of EU countries (most notably the Netherlands and Denmark) in an attempt to establish a ‘coalition of the willing’. In April 2004 the UK Government indicated that it had moved away from the idea of Regional Protection Areas and was instead looking to develop ‘migration partnerships’ with third countries in the region of origin. Tanzania, Kenya and Somalia have been identified as possible countries with whom such partnerships might be established. Although it is not clear what any partnership might consist of or how it might be implemented, it has been reported that these proposals may involve plans to process asylum seekers in their own region of origin in a scheme possibly linked to extra development aid and assistance. The Dutch and Danish Governments have shown particular interest in the UK’s proposal for extra-territorial processing, both governments having previously put forward similar agendas.
Germany objected strongly to the UK’s proposals but in October 2004 put forward its own plans to set up transit camps in North Africa where EU officials would receive and examine asylum applications. According to the German proposal, those found to be refugees in Africa would be allowed to settle in European countries although they would not be given the same status afforded by European law. Those deemed not to be at risk would be sent back to their country of origin.
Although no country has explicitly vetoed the proposals, they appear to be deeply divided over the practicalities of such a plan, with France, Sweden and, to a lesser extent, Ireland being strongly opposed to proposals for processing asylum applications outside Europe. The German proposals, however, are strongly backed by the Italian government which has recently called on Libya to block efforts by two million people allegedly waiting to cross the Mediterranean. As part of a unilateral agreement between Italy and Libya, the Italian government is planning to send 150 police officers to Libya to help train their Libyan counterparts. In addition, Libya will be purchasing military equipment and vehicles from Italy – including airplanes, boats, helicopters and jeeps needed to block the trafficking of illegal immigrants into Europe. Italy has said that plans to set up transit camps in Libya will go ahead, no matter what the opposition to them.
Although it has indicated that it is keeping an open mind about the various proposals, it is worth nothing that the European Commission has also proposed funding a scheme to help Mauritania, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya to develop their asylum laws and train personnel capable of processing asylum claims in close cooperation with UNHCR. Unlike the proposed transit camps, the Commission-funded centres would not be allowed to process asylum claims for Europe. Rather, having signed up to 1951 Refugee Convention, countries which pick up asylum seekers – presumably on their way to Europe – will process the applications themselves and determine whether the individual concerned is in need of protection in that country. Should asylum seekers fail to claim asylum and instead enter Europe, they will be deemed to have passed through a ‘safe third country’ and will be required to return there for their asylum application to be considered. Although the pilot scheme should not be confused with the various proposals for transit centres and is in many ways quite different, this initiative, when seen alongside the others outlined here, suggests that Europe is continuing to look to Africa for solutions to its perceived ‘asylum problem’.
The end of protection in Europe?
Recent developments in asylum policy and practice in Europe have multiple implications. A number of organisations including Amnesty International and UNHCR have expressed concern about the countries in which the transit camps are proposed to be located. Whilst they may be the most appropriate from a geographical point of view, several of the countries – most notably Libya and Algeria – do not themselves live up to international human rights standards and cannot therefore be expected to safely house asylum seekers whilst a decision is being made. Moreover, experience shows that large-scale refugee camps, wherever they are located, often have their own internal difficulties in terms of both service provision and security, and in some cases lead to instability in the surrounding area. There are also concerns that the quality of decision-making may not be sufficient to ensure that those who are in need of protection are identified and not returned to their countries of origin. Even in European countries initial decisions are often wrong. Between 30 and 60% of all people with refugee status in the EU are only recognised as such after appeals against initial decisions which have denied them refugee status.
At a more strategic level, there are issues around whether the ‘asylum problem’ has been correctly identified and therefore whether transit camps are the solution. As indicated earlier, the problem for Europe has been identified in terms of the numbers of asylum seekers and the associated cost of processing applications. In terms of numbers, whilst the proportion of asylum seekers entering Europe through Africa is not insignificant, it does not represent the greatest proportion of applications. Large numbers of asylum seekers also come from other regions of the world where there is conflict and political repression. In 2003 and 2004 the largest number of asylum seekers to Europe came from the Russian Federation, Serbia and Montenegro, Turkey, China, India, Iraq and Iran. Although there were some African countries in the list of top refugee-producing countries – including Nigeria, the DRC and Somalia – these did not count for a significant proportion of the overall total. Moreover, there is evidence that existing policies which have tried to prevent people from accessing Europe have simply pushed people underground and increased their vulnerability.
Similarly, in terms of cost it appears that analyses of ‘the asylum problem’ and the proposed solution are not in line with one another. Whilst it is true that the estimated $10bn spent each year by the industrialised states on their asylum systems is substantially greater than the $1.1bn that UNHCR spends on the 20 million refugees and displaced persons in less prosperous countries around the world, any new system of transit camps for processing asylum applications outside Europe is likely to be very expensive, particularly if developed in parallel with systems for spontaneous arrivals. These resources could arguably be devoted to more effectively addressing the underlying causes of forced migration.
Perhaps most significantly the proposals have raised concerns that the concept of extra-territorial processing undermines the principles of international protection itself and could spell the beginning of the end of any meaningful refugee protection in Europe. Many NGOs have commented that the UK’s ‘new vision’ proposal bears striking similarities to the highly controversial Australian ‘Pacific Solution’, under which the Australian government persuaded Nauru and Papua New Guinea to permit the establishment of Australian-funded detention centres where asylum seekers were held, pending determination of their status. In the same way it is feared that camps in North Africa and elsewhere could be used by Europe to dodge its responsibility to deal with refugees and asylum seekers.
At the very least the current policy discussions and tone of the political debate send a very negative message to other countries in the world hosting much larger numbers of refugees and asylum seekers than those in Europe. Both historically and at the current time, the overwhelming majority of refugees are located in the developing world, close to their countries of origin. It is arguably here that political effort and financial resources should be focused. These efforts should aim at addressing the root causes of forced migration flows and at supporting neighbouring countries in protecting those who have no choice but to leave their countries of origin.
Joining up European policies
Since the early 1990s the EU has recognised that it needs a comprehensive approach to migration addressing political, human rights and development issues in countries and regions of origin and transit, and that this requires combating poverty, improving living conditions and job opportunities, preventing conflicts, consolidating democratic states and ensuring respect for human rights, in particular the rights of minorities, women and children. In reality, however, Europe has prioritised fighting illegal immigration over fighting the root causes of refugee flight and improving refugee protection in third countries. This has resulted in lack of coherence between the EU’s measures to integrate migration issues into external policies and its human rights and development objectives.
Proposed new approaches to tackling the ‘asylum problem’ similarly fail to take a genuinely long-term view of forced migration issues – because of the institutional context in which policy making takes place and to domestic political electoral pressures. It is also due in significant part to a number of ‘gaps’ (institutional, financial and conceptual) that have obstructed efforts in this area for the past 50 years. These gaps are due in large part to differences in policy objectives and targets, where for instance powerful economic interests stand to lose if human rights and poverty reduction policies are given priority.
The most effective and durable solution to Europe’s ‘asylum problem’ is to address the root causes of the initial flight. Although this is widely understood and accepted, it is proving difficult to turn rhetoric into reality. Tackling the underlying causes of forced migration is not easy. But if it can be achieved it offers rewards that go way beyond headlines in the national press. There remains huge unused and untapped potential for ‘joined up’ policy making in Europe that establishes coherence across the EU’s policies in the areas of conflict prevention, Common Foreign and Security Policy, trade, humanitarian and development aid policy, and Common Agricultural Policy. With its great comparative advantage deriving from its presence in numerous geographical locations, sectors and policy fields, the EU is well positioned to take a lead in the migration-development field. The question which remains is whether it has the political courage to do so.
The UK proposal can be found at www.refugeecouncil.org.uk/downloads/policy_briefings/blair_newvision_report.pdf
See FMR 13 www.fmreview.org/FMRpdfs/FMR13/fmr13.7.pdf
Tampere European Council 15/16 October 1999, Presidency Conclusions (para 11), available at www.europarl.eu.int/summits/tam_en.htm | <urn:uuid:647d6b8c-57f4-463c-a6ac-e1f18a1f75a5> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.fmreview.org/europe/crawley | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570741.21/warc/CC-MAIN-20220808001418-20220808031418-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.962296 | 3,152 | 2.421875 | 2 |
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