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Want to Reduce Stress? Check Out These Childhood Habits - 4th Week
By Genevieve Cunningham
It often seems that the older we get, the more stress we experience. As kids, most of us are relatively stress free. As teens, we begin to feel the stresses of life in the way of major tests and part-time jobs. As adults, we begin to really add stress to the mix. Full-time employment, relationships, kids, community obligations … the list could go on forever. While a little stress is really OK, too much can lead to serious health implications. To get your stress levels under control and manage it long-term, check out these fun little ways to cope.
It’s actually a bit difficult to play as an adult. It’s almost as if we forget how to play along the way, and it can be more exhausting than work. But, if you can find ways to play and have some fun, it can seriously reduce stress levels. Grab some friends and play a sport. Take some kids to the park and swing or slide. Buy some board games and puzzles and set up shop in your living room. There are so many ways to have a little fun, so choose one and relax.
The act of creating something is soothing to the soul. You’ve been wanting to make wooden signs? Do it. Feel like painting? Buy some paints and get busy. Create something new and exciting. Write a poem, make a craft, build a table. Just use your brain and body to develop something new, and your stress levels are more likely to go down and stay there.
This one is hot in the world of psychology lately. Adult coloring is a thing. The repetitive motions, the act of creation, and the flashback to childhood all have a calming effect on the body and mind. You’re welcome to buy the latest princess or Mickey Mouse coloring book at your local store, or you can search the internet for adult centered coloring books that portray complicated designs and pictures.
Stress is unlikely to completely disappear from your life any time in the near future. It’s just a part of the ride, and learning to deal with it is part of the experience. Management is necessary for both success and happiness. Try adding some of these fun childhood habits back into your life. You may find your stress levels go down, your mind regains some peace and calm, and you begin to feel better than you have in years. | <urn:uuid:eb5f8c32-5942-4b15-a923-127d6465b231> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.thejoint.com/minnesota/minnetonka/minnetonka-32013/188346-want-to-reduce-stress-check-out-these-childhood-habits | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279933.49/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00126-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955975 | 509 | 2.1875 | 2 |
Deborah Chasnoff, Director / Producer
Academy Award–winning documentary filmmaker Debra Chasnoff is a nationally recognized champion of using film as an organizing tool for social justice campaigns, and a pioneering leader in the international movement working to create safe and welcoming schools and communities. Debra’s highly acclaimed documentaries addressing youth and bias issues are widely hailed by educators and advocates as among the best tools available today to help open up dialogue and activism around many of the most challenging issues affecting young people’s lives and school environments. Her award-winning films include Straightlaced—How Gender’s Got Us All Tied Up, about the gender and sexuality pressures that teens and young adults face today, It’s Elementary—Talking About Gay Issues in School, Let’s Get Real (about bias and bullying) That’s a Family! (supporting youth growing up in diverse family structures) and the Academy Award-winning Deadly Deception—General Electric, Nuclear Weapons and Our Environment. Her first film, Choosing Children, explored the once unheard of idea that lesbians and gay men could become parents after coming out. In addition to dozens of film festival awards, Debra is the recipient of the Wallace A. Gerbode Foundation Fellowship for outstanding non-profit leadership, the Pathfinder Award from the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, and the first-ever alumnae achievement award in documentary filmmaking from Wellesley College. Debra has been a featured speaker at dozens of colleges and conferences, and is a Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow for the Council of Independent Colleges as well as a Visiting Scholar in Public Policy at Mills College. She is the founder of GroundSpark and co-creator of our renowned Respect For All Project. She has served the organization in a directing capacity since 1982. Debra also serves on the GroundSpark Board of Directors.
Sue Chen, Producer
Sue Chen is a documentary and commercial producer in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to Straightlaced, she worked with Debra on the award-winning documentaries One Wedding and a Revolution, about the first gay marriage performed in San Francisco in 2004; and It’s Still Elementary, a follow-up to It’s Elementary, the groundbreaking documentary about teaching gay issues in k-12 schools. As a producer at the George Lucas Educational Foundation, she profiled public schools around the country practicing innovative teaching and learning. Sue’s other credits include the PBS documentary In Defense Of Food, based on the best-selling Michael Pollan book about modern Western diets and nutrition. Her work extends into outreach and education around social justice documentaries. She is a graduate of Oberlin College. | <urn:uuid:86ced0d7-cd90-41dc-bad3-443c63d9fc40> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | http://www.straightlacedfilm.org/filmmakers/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571987.60/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813202507-20220813232507-00274.warc.gz | en | 0.945769 | 564 | 1.828125 | 2 |
We posted a top 5 reasons 'why solar now' back in 2016 but a lot has changed since then. Costs have come down, the market has matured, new technologies are available, and incentives have come and gone. For this 2020 edition, there are very different, increasingly urgent, and more compelling reasons than before. So, without further ado, here are the Top 5 Reasons Why Solar Now - 2020 Edition:
The value of solar power just got a huge boost thanks to the Georgia Public Service Commission. For the first time in state history, Georgia Power customers that install solar panels for their home or business can get full retail credit for energy sent back to the utility! The new policy is capped for the first 5,000 customers or 32MW, whichever comes first. Program details are being worked out now and we will update you when we learn more. | <urn:uuid:8692921e-baad-4abf-8f5c-60062b482cef> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://blog.solarcrowdsource.com/archive/2020/01 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572286.44/warc/CC-MAIN-20220816090541-20220816120541-00270.warc.gz | en | 0.953793 | 176 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Fawkes became synonymous with the Gunpowder Plot. His failure has been commemorated in England since 1605.
Does Donald Trump know Gaelic?
Would boycotters support a Hamas organized feis?
Experience of how British handled North tells a grim story.
Pontiff has it right on who is deserving in the animal kingdom.
Are Catholic guilt and the presumption of racism good defenses against rape charges?
Forgetting the lessons of American and Irish history with royalty.
A champion on Ireland forgets his past drive against police violence.
Daily News Wayne Barrett destroys Giuliani assault on Obama.
Despite GOP warnings, the president is said to be ready to announce new immigration legislation.
SNP leader was likely the best politician in Britain today.
Cameron cuts short vacation after Irish American journalist beheaded.
A realism and compassion that was sadly lacking becomes clear.
President must stand firm in taking on fanatical group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
This Remembrance Day poppy fascists are out in force in Britain.
His focus is on the beatitudes not on a punishing God.
Attitude to US visa seekers a key part of new job.
Surprise choice with few obvious ties to Ireland,
A complex identity issue for British Open champ.
Poised to grab power in Ireland North and South?
Millions more Irish birth, marriage and death records free online
New York bride travels to great-great-grandmother’s Kerry home for dream wedding
Look inside Ireland’s oldest pub - it might be the oldest in the world
Arthur Guinness, founder of the Dublin brewery, dies in 1803
New Billy the Kid photo bought for $2 to sell for $5 million
Rich and creamy Kerrygold Irish mac and cheese recipe
Do you know the story behind the Irish flag?
Banned Irish priest says Mass for 1,000 in Galway
President Trump now in charge of U.S. Irish policy
Sinn Féin name Martin McGuinness replacement in Northern Ireland
Bill Clinton regards Good Friday agreement as his greatest foreign policy achievement says aide
Numbers of Irish Americans not going down - here’s the proof
Irish cannot trust British on Brexit - Good Friday Agreement not negotiable
Trump has his own set of facts so now so do I | <urn:uuid:d0990251-bf24-449b-b47c-6ea55d671eaa> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.irishcentral.com/opinion/patrickroberts?month=August&month=August&year=2010&year=2010 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560283689.98/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095123-00347-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938408 | 473 | 1.695313 | 2 |
California Department of Transportation
Date: October 8, 2013
Contact: Trisha Coder
Phone: (530) 229-0511
$359 MILLION IN NEW FUNDING WILL UPGRADE STATE’S TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM AND PAVE WAY FOR ECONOMIC GROWTH
Bay Area gets $140 million from high-speed rail bond
Redding – The California Transportation Commission (CTC) today allocated $359 million to 36 projects, an investment that will create jobs bolstering the state’s economy, reduce traffic congestion, repair highways and bridges, and improve rail service.
“These projects allow millions of dollars to flow into construction and produce enormous economic benefits for California,” said Caltrans Director Malcolm Dougherty.
Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) received $140 million from Proposition 1A, the high-speed rail bond, to purchase 46 new rail cars that will provide new service from the BART/Caltrain Millbrae Station directly to San Francisco International Airport.
The Millbrae facility is one of several key regional connectivity points California’s High-Speed Rail Authority has identified that will link BART and high-speed rail, creating a “blended” rail system. To handle additional transferring of passengers at Millbrae from the blended system longer trains will be needed. The $140 million will help pay to lengthen all three rail storage tracks at the south end of the station, enabling the facility to handle BART’s maximum train length of 10 cars and make it possible to run longer trains from the East Bay to the airport.
Today’s allocations also included $44 million from Proposition 1B, a 2006 voter-approved transportation bond. To date, nearly $17 billion in Proposition 1B funds have been put to work statewide for transportation purposes. The remaining $175 million in allocations today came from various state and federal transportation accounts
Other highlights of the CTC funding allocations include:
Modoc County - $143,000 was allocated for the installation of a closed circuit television (CCTV) and Roadside Weather Information System (RWIS) approximately ½ mile south of the Perez Inspection station. The RWIS is a weather monitoring station that uses environmental sensors to measure atmospheric and pavement conditions. This information is used by highway maintenance and operations to make real time traffic safety decisions based on changing weather conditions. This information is also available to the public for pre-trip planning.
For information about all projects that received allocations today please see the attached file.
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Public mistrust of vaccines is causing the outbreak of diseases like measles, according to researchers.
Scientists from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Imperial College London and the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health in Singapore questioned 66,000 people across 67 countries to discover their views on whether vaccines are important, safe, effective and compatible with their religious beliefs.
People in southeast Asia showed the highest level of confidence in vaccines, with Africa second.
The survey comes as a major yellow fever vaccination program is under way in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Angola.
An outbreak of the disease has killed hundreds of people. The World Health Organization aims to vaccinate more than 15 million people in both countries.
"If everyone agrees to be vaccinated, we can eradicate yellow fever from our country," said Mosala Mireille, one of the head doctors overseeing the program in Kinshasa.
Europe showed the lowest level of confidence, driven largely by France where 41 percent of the population questions the safety of vaccines.
Scares dent public confidence
Doctor Heidi Larson from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine says recent high-profile press coverage in France of vaccine scares has dented public confidence.
"Anxieties about links between Hepatitis B [vaccines] and multiple sclerosis several years ago, scientifically deemed unlinked, but still caused anxiety,” Larson said. “There still is today concerns about side effects related to the HPV vaccine, again not scientifically confirmed."
Mistrust in France was also driven by the response to the H1N1 flu outbreak fears in 2009, when the government spent $1.4 billion on 94 million doses of the vaccine. The majority were sold off or destroyed.
Larson fears the consequences of that mistrust.
"We will get some combination of influenza strains that will be very fatal,” Larson said. “And if we have such poor compliance with a pandemic vaccine in the future, I would be very worried about that."
Researchers warn that decreases in confidence can lead to people refusing vaccines, which in turn can trigger disease outbreaks. But the study found a high level of global support for vaccinating children against disease. | <urn:uuid:0a26d519-0b17-4797-8fe3-b90a066eb823> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.voanews.com/a/lack-confidence-vaccines-disease-outbreaks-scientists-warn/3503670.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280791.35/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00361-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945938 | 449 | 3.171875 | 3 |
Last night, I saw a screening of the fantastic film Green by Patrick Rouxel. The movie tells the sad tale of a female orangutan in Indonesia who loses her home, and life, to loggers growing palm oil. Palm oil is used in millions of products around the world – from cosmetics to candy bars. In fact, Greenpeace recently launched a boycott of Nestle because of their ties to palm oil in Indonesia. Nestle has cut its ties with some of its suppliers, but Greenpeace wants more.
The Indonesian rainforests are a major part of the earth’s ecosystem and their destruction is a loss for all of us. There was also just a recent article in La Presse on the deforestation in Indonesia and how it is controlled by organized crime. Money talks. While deforestation in the Amazon has stabilized, there are some cases of really strong protection of forests, notably in the Dominican Republic. In the Dominican Republic, tree harvesters would be shot on site if they were found illegally cutting trees. The result is that the DR has a lot of vegetation and though not a rich country, it is far better off than its neighbour, Haiti. Deforestation really matters and the film Green outlines the impacts on humans and wildlife. You can watch the entire film online for free, here. | <urn:uuid:0d0fc84d-e29f-4e0c-8dd6-9bf12c77d907> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.nimonik.ca/2010/04/indonesian-palm-oil/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280761.39/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00094-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972878 | 263 | 2.34375 | 2 |
Preserving Agency During Electrical Muscle Stimulation Training Speeds up Reaction Time Directly After Removing EMS
Shunichi Kasahara (Sony CSL), Kazuma Takada (Sony CSL), Jun Nishida (UChicago), Kazuhisa Shibata (RIKEN CBS) , Shinsuke Shimojo (Caltech) , Pedro Lopes (UChicago).
Collaborative projects with UChicago Human Computer Integration Lab (Pedro Lopes, Jun Nishida) , Kazuhisa Shibata (RIKEN CBS) and Shinsuke Shimojo (Caltech)
This paper will be presented in ACM CHI’21 (full paper)
Abstract: Force feedback devices, such as motor-based exoskeletons or wearables based on electrical muscle stimulation (EMS), have the unique potential to accelerate users’ own reaction time (RT). However, this speedup has only been explored while the de- vice is attached to the user. In fact, very little is known regarding whether this faster reaction time still occurs after the user removes the device from their bodies–this is precisely what we investigated by means of a simple reaction time (RT) experiment, in which participants were asked to tap as soon as they saw an LED flashing. Participants experienced this in three EMS conditions: (1) fast-EMS, the electrical impulses were synced with the LED; (2) agency-EMS, the electrical impulse was delivered 40ms faster than the participant’s own RT, which prior work has shown to preserve one’s sense of agency over this movement; and, (3) late-EMS: the impulse was delivered after the participant’s own RT. Our results revealed that the participants’ RT was significantly reduced by approximately 8ms (up to 20ms) only after training with the agency-EMS condition. This finding suggests that the prioritizing agency during EMS training is key to motor-adaptation, i.e., it enables a faster motor response even after the user has removed the EMS device from their body.
Talk / Presentation
Shunichi Kasahara, Kazuma Takada, Jun Nishida, Kazuhisa Shibata, Shinsuke Shimojo and Pedro Lopes . 2020, Preserving Agency During Electrical Muscle Stimulation Training Speeds up Reaction Time Directly After Removing EMS. In Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’21). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445147
Source code : https://github.com/shks/EMSSpeedUp | <urn:uuid:324c5623-6654-4290-9c24-38bb74eedfc9> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://shunichikasahara.com/portfolio/ems-speeds-up/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573908.30/warc/CC-MAIN-20220820043108-20220820073108-00275.warc.gz | en | 0.923116 | 560 | 1.78125 | 2 |
When Kerry Hammerton was offered a chocolate chip muffin at a yoga function, her peers were astonished by her response. “I don’t eat sugar,” she told the waiter. “I’m a sugar addict.”
One of her yoga partners remarked: “Surely one would be alright? You’re not even fat.”
But Hammerton retorted: “If I was a cocaine addict, would you offer me cocaine and say it’s okay to just have a little bit? It’s exactly the same with sugar. If I have it, it will trigger my addiction.”
The yoga room flushed with surprise. “They thought I was crazy,” she recalls.
Hammerton had been struggling with fluctuating weight for years. In April 2013 she began following a low-carb-high-fat lifestyle that required her to stop eating sugar and also drastically reduce her intake of foods containing other carbohydrates. “Every time I eat sugar, it makes me crave more of it. It drives my hunger,” Hammerton says. “Sugar is addictive, like drugs are addictive.”
Cutting sugar is the "long-term solution"Hammerton, who has lost 12kg since she began the new diet, is part of a growing movement of people trying to understand overeating, and the consequences of obesity, such as diabetes and related heart problems, in terms of food addiction.
One of the lobby’s biggest proponents is sports scientist Tim Noakes. Last week Noakes co-hosted an international summit in Cape Town, the Old Mutual Health Convention, on low-carb-high-fat diets.
On the website of Cape Town’s Harmony Addictions Clinic, which treats obesity as a food addiction by getting patients to follow Noakes’s low-carb-high-fat Banting diet, he proclaims: “The only long-term cure for obesity is to remove all addictive food choices [foods that contain sugar and other carbohydrates] from one’s diet. There is no other long-term solution.”
According to Hammerton, her food cravings disappeared when she stopped eating sugar and carbohydrates. “My metabolism stabilised as a result of this diet,” she argues.
But the science of sugar and carbohydrate addiction is not nearly as simple.
Mental order: Kerry Hammerton says she’s a recovering sugar addict.
Scientists are dividedThe field of sugar and carbohydrate addiction is divided between those who believe sugar and carbohydrates are as addictive as, or in some cases even more addictive than drugs or alcohol, and those who say true addictions are limited to psychoactive substances that produce symptoms such as physical intolerance and withdrawal.
All carbohydrates are ultimately sugar; sugar is a type of carbohydrate with simple chemical structures. During digestion, complex carbohydrates, such as those contained in food such as potatoes, rice and bread, are broken down into the simple chemical structure called glucose that the body uses as energy.
Some public health experts, such as Paul van der Velpen, who heads the Netherlands’s health department in Amsterdam, maintains that sugar is so harmful to our bodies that sugary products, particularly fizzy drinks, should be labelled with warnings such as those on cigarette packets. Such notices, he argues on the Dutch government’s website, should caution that sugar is a “dangerous addictive drug” associated with obesity and diabetes.
Last year, David Kessler, a former commissioner of the United States Food and Drug Administration, told the Mail & Guardian: “Fifty years ago the tobacco industry, confronted with the evidence that smoking causes cancer, decided to deny the science and deceive the American public. Now we know that highly palatable foods – [those with] sugar, fat, salt – reinforce and can activate the reward centre of the brain. We quickly became trapped in a vicious cycle of dopamine-fuelled urges when we want food and opioid releases when we eat.”
The “dopamine-fuelled urges” that Kessler refers to are connected to “feelings of reward”. Dopamine is a chemical, known as a neurotransmitter, in the brain that affects emotions, movements and sensations of pleasure and pain.
Studies have shown that dopamine is the key player in the reward system – which gives us that feeling of pleasure – of the brain. When we eat something that tastes good, our dopamine levels rise, making us feel good and, some scientists argue, wanting more of it.
Rise in obesityA Lancet study last year found that overweight and obesity rates among adults have increased by 27.5% over the past three decades worldwide. The study reported that South Africa was the fattest nation in sub-Saharan Africa.
Researchers into sugar addiction have warned that the alarming rise of obesity has mirrored the use of high-fructose corn syrup as well a sharp increase in general sugar intake. High-fructose corn syrup is a liquid sweetener introduced in the late 1970s to enhance the taste of cereals, processed foods and soft drinks; it is found in most of those products in the US and consists of extremely high percentages of fructose, a type of simple sugar that is roughly 1.2 times as sweet as table sugar, according to the American Dietetic Association. In South Africa, however, sucrose derived from cane sugar is used more commonly as sweetener than high-fructose corn syrup.
A 2011 study, published in the journal Front Psychiatry, estimates that about 10-20% of people would present with addiction-like symptoms toward hyperpalatable [with high amounts of sugar] foods. According to a 2014 review of sugar addiction studies in the Clinical Nutrition and Metabolic Care, this proportion is similar to the proportion of “cocaine or heroin users who go on to develop addiction”.
Not recognised as an addictionBut sugar and carbohydrate addiction is not recognised as an addiction in the “rule book” that most psychiatrists use to diagnose mental disorders: although the latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) includes binge eating disorder as a psychiatric illness, it does not acknowledge it as an addiction. Binge eating disorder also does not apply to everyday overeating, but rather to a specific condition in which unusually large amounts of food are consumed in relatively short periods at least once a week over a period of three months.
The authors of the DSM, the American Psychiatric Association, only include conditions when they consider the available evidence for such illnesses to be conclusive.
Noakes argues that sugar and other carbohydrates make you hungry, so you overeat. “They do not satiate you and drive your appetite … Sugar, probably more than other carbs, drives that hunger and has fuelled, if not caused, the world’s obesity epidemic.”
But many of his peers have been highly critical of him for this.
No single nutrient to blameIn August 2014 Cape Town anaesthetist Luc Evenepoel, who published the diet book Dr Luc’s Promise – Lose the Weight and keep it Off (2012), warned in a letter published in the Star: “To blame one single group of molecules [carbohydrates] for two such mind-bogglingly complex problems [obesity and diabetes] is like saying that global warming is solely caused by the bowel gas of livestock.”
Stellenbosch University dietician Celeste Naudé agrees: “To demonise any single nutrient in isolation is not helpful. Yes, the load of added sugar in our food system is a big part of the problem, as are added fat and sodium [salt].
“But we should focus more on the quality of the foods and drinks we consume and less on blaming single nutrients – sugar-sweetened beverages are not the same as lentils, although both contain sugar and carbohydrates. The health effects of sugar added to foods and drinks during manufacturing are not the same as the sugar and carbohydrates occurring in fresh, whole foods such as milk and fruit.”
Several studies on rats have confirmed that sugar stimulates the same pleasure centres in the brain as psychoactive drugs or alcohol. One such study, published in the journal Neuroscience & Behavioural Reviews in 2008, found that, after a month of an intermittent sugar feeding schedule, the rodents showed “a series of behaviours similar to the effects of drug abuse”, such as bingeing, withdrawal and craving.
But critics have cautioned that the results of studies such as this one aren’t necessarily applicable to humans, as they analyse the behaviour of rats in controlled environments rather than that of humans in everyday living environments, in which a series of additional factors, such as personality, values, tastes and preferences, will influence people’s intake of sugar.
Sugar is a "hazard"Some researchers, such as the authors of a study published in a 2013 study in Biological Psychiatry, argue that the ready availability and affordability of foods with high amounts of added sugar have turned sugar into a “serious modern hazard to public health”.
In a meta-analysis study, which reviewed 68 studies on sugar intake and its relationship to weight, researchers found that the more sugary foods participants consumed, the fatter they got, and the less, the thinner they became.
The study, which was published in the British Medical Journal in 2014, concluded that, “when considering the rapid weight gain that occurs after an increased intake of sugars, it seems reasonable to conclude that advice relating to sugar intake is a relevant component of a strategy to reduce the high risk of obesity in countries”.
But this study also stated that “isoenergetic replacement of sugars with other carbohydrates [that is, equal kilocalories in the diet from other carbohydrates] did not result in any change in body weight”.
A balanced diet may be the solutionAccording to Naudé, this finding demonstrates that total kilocalories fundamentally drives weight gain.
“The long-term solution to weight loss is not necessarily to cut carbs entirely from your diet, but rather to pay attention to your total kilocalorie intake and the foods you choose to eat,” says Naudé. “Different diets work for different people. The most important thing is to find what helps you keep your energy intake in check and to make quality food choices for good nutrition. Steering clear of aggressively marketed, ultraprocessed, highly palatable, energy-dense foods, loaded with added fat, sugar and sodium (such as junk food: fast foods, chips, pastries, chocolates and fizzy drinks), is half the battle won.”
Research that Naudé and her colleagues at the Centre for Evidence-based Health Care at Stellenbosch University conducted last year, in which the results of 19 clinical trials were pooled, found that low-carb-high-fat diets did not result in more weight loss than traditional balanced diets in the long term when kilocalories in the diets were equal.
A 2012 study in the Nutrition Journal, which followed the self-reported food and nutrient intake and measured body weight of 14 000 Swedish men and women over a period of 25 years, had similar results: it found that a low-carb-high-fat diet, which contains significantly less sugar than balanced diets, was not associated with less body fat.
Sugar taxIn South Africa, a growing number of health experts and consumer bodies have been calling for a sugar tax of 20% on products that contain high amounts of added sugar, such as soft drinks, as a way to curb South Africa’s increasing obesity levels. As a result, a sugar tax is being considered by the health department.
The University of the Witwatersrand has reported that a 20% tax on sugar-sweetened beverages could lead to more than 220?000 fewer cases of adult obesity in the country. South Africans drink large amounts of sugar-sweetened beverages: In 2010, intake was almost three times greater than the global average, according to Naudé. Reducing the intake of sugar-sweetened beverages is seen as one strategy that could help reduce kilocalorie intake and obesity.
Does that mean sugar is addictive, and if so, to the same extent as drugs and alcohol?
Is sugar addiction real?Not necessarily, say the authors of the Clinical Nutrition and Metabolic Care review: while there is evidence in non-humans – mainly rats – that foods high in sugar can induce reward and craving responses that are at least comparable to those of addictive drugs, this has not been proven conclusively in humans.
“In most cases … the experienced psychoactive effects of sweet foods is mild and does not seem to match those of drugs,” the authors conclude. “In other words: sweet foods are clearly not as behaviourally and psychologically toxic as drugs of abuse can be at high doses.
“For instance, unlike drugs, consumption of hyperpalatable foods, even [when] extremely high in sugar, does not produce any abnormal mental state or change in behavioural disposition.
“This explains why no police officer will arrest a driver because he or she had eaten several doughnuts before driving the car or why no judge will consider drinking half a gallon of sugar-sweetened soda before committing a crime as a mitigating circumstance.”
On a Wednesday night in April 2013, Tania Bosman (23) arrived at her brother’s house in Brackenfell, near Cape Town, with all his favourite snacks – Simba and Doritos chips, Zoo biscuits and Salticrax.
“I wanted to spoil him because he had broken his foot … the day before,” she recalls.
Bosman arranged the nibbles on a few plates on the kitchen counter and positioned herself next to them. She started to eat. And eat. And eat?... she just couldn’t stop.
Soon, Bosman, who weighed 145kg at the time, realised she was eating far more than her brother and his friends. She felt embarrassed and stopped.
It wasn’t the first time.
At work Bosman would hide snacks in her drawer. “I would only eat in front of people if it was healthy foods because I didn’t want them to know I was eating chocolates. Obviously you could see that I had an eating problem – I was enormous – but I tried to hide it as much as possible.”
But on that April evening at her brother’s house, one of his friends, who had just been released from a drug rehabilitation centre, started to talk about his drug addiction.
“As I was listening, I thought, maybe I have a similar problem with eating. So many of the emotions he experienced with drugs, I experienced with food: cravings, binges and withdrawal symptoms,” she recalls.
When she got home, Bosman googled “food addiction”.
She stumbled on to the Harmony Addictions Clinic in Hout Bay’s website.
There she found the “Harmony Eating and Lifestyle Programme (Help)”.
“Do you find carbohydrates and sweet fatty foods difficult to manage in moderation, often leading to overeating and binge eating?” a question on the programme’s website asked. “Do you experience guilt or shame due to your eating behaviour?” And finally: “Do you feel better after eating sweet foods or feel withdrawal when trying to cut these out of your diet?”
If so, according to the website, you might be addicted to carbohydrates and sugar.
Tania Bosman has lost 37kg on the
The next afternoon, Bosman enrolled herself in an eight-week carbohydrate and sugar addiction treatment programme as an outpatient at the clinic.
“While I discovered that, emotionally, I eat to suppress my feelings, I also learned that the carbs – and sugar is a carb as well – made me crazy. It made me moody and depressed but, most importantly, constantly hungry.
“It became very easy to accept I was a sugar and carb addict, because it made sense.”
Help dieticians put Bosman on sport scientist Tim Noakes’s low-carb-high-fat diet, known as Banting. It contains unusually low amounts of carbohydrates and sugar.
She lost 37kg over the past 22 months – the longest that she’s maintained weight loss on a diet.
“It curbed my hunger,” Bosman says. “I used to eat three to four slices of bread [which is high in carbohydrates] when I woke up for breakfast.
“By 10am I was starving and I wanted something else. It was always bread, crisps, chocolates or pies – that kind of stuff – that I would then start to binge on.
“But now I have a high-fat breakfast of egg and bacon, and I can go for five, six, sometimes even seven hours without eating again, because I’m legitimately not hungry. This is what works for me.”
Sugar should make up less than 10% of our daily energy intake, according to the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) draft guidelines.
That works out to about 50g or 12 teaspoons of sugar for a person of normal weight.
The WHO further recommends that a reduction to below 5% (six teaspoons) would have additional benefits for dental health.
A 2012 study published in the British Medical Journal reported that South Africans consume an average of 84g, of sugar a day – far more than what is good for us.
Much of the sugars consumed today are “hidden” in processed foods that are not usually seen as sweets. According to the WHO, one tablespoon of tomato sauce contains about four grams, or one teaspoon, of sugar.
A 500ml bottle of sugar-sweetened soda, such as a Coke, has 40g, or 10 teaspoons, of sugar – almost the entire recommended daily sugar allowance.
Up to half of grade eight to 10 pupils in South Africa in 2008 were reported to be consuming fast foods, cakes and biscuits, cool drinks and sweets at least four days a week, according to Stellenbosch University dietician Celeste Naudé.
This is the second part in a two-part series on sugar and carbohydrate addiction and low-carb-high-fat diets
Binge-beating Banting: Why Tim's take is hard to stomach
Banting is found wanting
The Banting diet reimagined for politicians
This summer, get the body you want with a healthy, balanced eating plan, instead of relying on fad diets.
Crime stats released in 2015 reported a drop in rape cases, but experts say this is because fewer people are bothering to report rapes to the police.
A revolutionary antiretroviral prophylaxis is helping all people, no matter their sexual orientation. A cheaper generic will soon be on the shelves.
Bhekisisa means "to scrutinise" in Zulu
In South Africa, Zulu patients who would like to be thoroughly assessed by a doctor, would ask the physician to "bhekisisa" them. | <urn:uuid:62c682bc-89bd-47df-94be-0c31f0259a66> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://bhekisisa.org/article/2015-02-27-are-carb-cravings-a-red-herring-or-is-sugar-addiction-a-thing | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988718278.43/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183838-00240-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96366 | 4,006 | 2.21875 | 2 |
Hadid and Schumacher's team used computational design to create the pavilion, which is constructed from laser-cut and perforated steel surfaces, aluminium box sections and timber loops.
"Defined by digital processes, the pavilion has been developed in such a way that its components are, at most, singly curved," said the London-based practice.
Volu appears to be made from a continuous piece, and features an oval roof that tilts downwards over diners like a mushroom cap. The skeleton of the 3.2-metre-tall structure houses cut-out irregularly shaped sections that form a pattern across the roof and the supporting stem.
The pattern is repeated in the floor of the 20-square-metre pavilion, although the gaps have been filled with wooden boards.
"Comprised of a series of structural bands collecting at the spine and expanding overhead, the patterning of the pavilion is guided by the varied structural loading conditions," said the practice in a statement.
"Through the analysis of the geometry under load, the pavilion's structure and skin have been digitally optimised to remove unnecessary material, resulting in the lightest possible design solution — following an organic structural logic that recreates many of the same principles found in nature."
The structure houses a circular wooden dining table, accompanied by three curved benches that can seat up to ten diners.
The piece has been commissioned by property developer Robbie Antonio for his ongoing Revolution project, which invites international architects and designers to create prefabricated living spaces.
Volu is installed inside the collector's lounge at this year's Design Miami fair, which is taking place from 2 to 6 December 2015. A sculptural table by Janne Kyttanen and loopy chairs by Aranda\Lasch are also on show at the event.
Hadid currently has a high-rise residential tower under construction in Miami, and was chosen by the City of Miami Beach to design a parking garage at Collins Park in 2011. | <urn:uuid:d4c0398a-8f54-4420-ab12-9d02ed4f8dea> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.dezeen.com/2015/12/02/zaha-hadid-creates-prefabricated-volu-dining-pavilion-for-design-miami/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571190.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810131127-20220810161127-00070.warc.gz | en | 0.954469 | 413 | 1.609375 | 2 |
Central Michigan University recruitment and marketing efforts have converged again with the launch of a
high-tech virtual tour.
The tour targets prospective students and parents while also serving the campus community, friends and alumni.
Members of the Xbox/iPhone generation will use it as an online playground, exploring CMU's academic programs, facilities, campus life, events and activities. Virtual guests can choose their tour "stops" based on academic goals and interests.
Spearheaded by Enrollment and Student Services and University Communications, the tour has a photorealistic 3-D map, hundreds of photos, a walking tour led by students and many links to academic programs and colleges on the main website.
The tour also includes more than 35 short videos, including college overviews and student profiles that offer a glimpse of academic programs, student services and hands-on learning opportunities.
"The virtual tour takes CMU to prospective students and families, any time, anywhere," said Steven Johnson, vice president of Enrollment and Student Services. "It lets them ask, 'what's this?' a thousand times and still discover something new, fun and interesting."
"This is a multimedia look at life as a Chippewa, accessed by phone, tablet and computer," said Sherry Knight, associate vice president of University Communications. "It engages students and families, reconnects alumni with campus, and delivers ah-ha moments even for those of us on campus every day."
The tour is available via the cmich.edu homepage and CMU's marketing microsite, go.cmich.edu. | <urn:uuid:8779945d-d791-48c8-81ff-54c9b1fbe412> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.cmich.edu/ourcmu/Pages/virtual-tour.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280292.50/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00345-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954736 | 323 | 1.671875 | 2 |
On Tuesday, the Catholic Substack newsletter The Pillar published an investigation into Monsignor Jeffrey Burrill, who had, up until that day, been the top administrator in the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops based in Wisconsin. Burrill resigned, The Pillar said, in anticipation of their report, which alleged he had regularly used the LGBTQ dating app Grindr and visited gay bars from 2018 to 2020.
Their source? “Commercially available app signal data.”
Catholic and LGBTQ advocates alike condemned The Pillar’s report as homophobic in its insinuations that Burrill’s alleged use of a LGBTQ dating app somehow proved he “engaged in serial sexual misconduct.” Others argued Burrill’s alleged behavior was hypocritical, as Catholic doctrine considers same-sex relationships a sin. Burrill himself was not immediately available for comment and has not made a statement publicly.
Regardless, many online commentators raised the same question: Wait, just how exactly did The Pillar get this information?
The article cites “commercially available app signal data” from “a mobile device correlated to Burrill” that was “obtained and analyzed by The Pillar.” It says the data “conveys mobile app data signals during two 26-week periods, the first in 2018 and the second in 2019 and 2020,” and says the information was “obtained from a data vendor and authenticated by an independent data consulting firm contracted by The Pillar.”
Privacy experts tell TIME the controversial report highlights the sorry state of the current data privacy landscape.
“It’s an excellent example of the lack of data protection in America,” says Jennifer King, a privacy and data policy fellow at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. “It shows just how low the threshold is if you want to actually target an individual.”
How third party vendors get your data
It’s still unclear how exactly The Pillar obtained Burrill’s phone data and Grindr denies that it came from the app.
“We do not believe Grindr is the source of the data behind the blog’s unethical, homophobic witch hunt. We have looked closely at this story, and the pieces simply do not add up,” a Grindr spokesperson said in a statement to TIME. “Grindr has policies and systems in place to protect personal data, and our users should continue to feel confident and proud in using Grindr regardless of their religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or gender identity.”
Grindr did not respond to follow-up questions asking for details on how it had investigated the issue internally, but in a statement received after the initial publication of this article, said that it “has not and does not sell anonymized user data to data brokers.”
It is not yet clear how The Pillar obtained the data it analyzed. Regardless, Andrés Arrieta, director of consumer privacy engineering at the data privacy non-profit the Electronic Frontier Foundation, tells TIME the practice of sharing data with third party vendors is incredibly common among mobile apps.
“There’s an industry whose full existence is to gather as much data about everyone, and then to sell it to anyone that will buy it,” Arrieta says.
Many apps, especially free ones, sell aggregated data—which can include demographics or location information—about their users to third party vendors as an extra source of revenue; these vendors then turn around and sell that data to advertisers looking for information on particular types of users, explains King. The data is transferred under the expectation that user identities will be made anonymous.
Someone could feasibly approach one of these third party vendors, King says, and pay for a package of location data, which might include when a user logged in and out, their approximate locations, and their phone’s static ID number (a unique string of numbers assigned to each mobile device). These packages can feature users of specific apps, like dating apps, explains Ben Zhao, a professor of computer science at the University of Chicago.
The issue, King explains, is that if you wanted to find the static ID number of a particular individual’s phone, and knew identifying factors like where they lived, worked, and traveled, you could parse through all of the location data to figure out which static ID number belongs to that person.
It appears The Pillar did just this. In its report, The Pillar said it “correlated a unique mobile device to Burrill when it was used consistently from 2018 until at least 2020 from the USCCB staff residence and headquarters, from meetings at which Burrill was in attendance, and was also used on numerous occasions at Burrill’s family lake house, near the residences of Burrill’s family members, and at a Wisconsin apartment in Burrill’s hometown, at which Burrill himself has been listed as a resident.”
The Pillar did not respond to TIME’s question as to whether someone tipped them off about Burrill having an account on Grindr.
This tactic isn’t unprecedented, King says. There’ve been examples of debt collectors using similar methods to track people’s movements in the repossession industry.
“In essence, the privacy protection that you get from anonymizing things before you aggregate them and package them to be sold, is really a facade,” says Zhao. “Oftentimes companies think that they’re doing the right thing by anonymizing data, but what they’re doing actually falls short of what is really necessary to completely protect users from privacy attacks.”
“People in academia and in some industry circles have understood this for a long time,” he continues. “But I think there’s a general lack of understanding of this for the public, and that perhaps is why this particular story is so shocking to many people.”
The Conference of Catholic Bishops directed TIME to a Tuesday statement announcing Burrill had stepped down after it became aware of coming reports alleging “possible improper” behavior. “In order to avoid becoming a distraction to the operations and ongoing work of the Conference, Monsignor Burrill has resigned, effective immediately,” the statement said.
A lack of protection for users
Data privacy advocates have pointed to The Pillar’s report as the latest example of why the United States should impose stricter regulations on the buying and selling of personal user data.
“Experts have warned for years that data collected by advertising companies from Americans’ phones could be used to track them and reveal the most personal details of their lives. Unfortunately, they were right,” said Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden in a statement on The Pillar report shared with TIME. “Data brokers and advertising companies have lied to the public, assuring them that the information they collected was anonymous. As this awful episode demonstrates, those claims were bogus – individuals can be tracked and identified.”
In 2020, Wyden and Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy sent a letter signed by 10 other Senators asking the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate the online ad economy and the ways personal data, including locational information, is sold by brokers. A FTC spokesperson confirmed to TIME that they received Wyden’s letter but did not have any further comment. (FTC investigations are nonpublic.)
Congress has also failed to pass any comprehensive data privacy legislation, and only a handful of states have enacted laws tackling the issue on their own. California became the first to do so in 2018 with its Consumer Privacy Act, which intends to give users the right to ask companies to delete their data and not sell it, but doesn’t actually stop the practice by third party services, King explains.
Arrieta argues regulation should make it so users opt into their data being collected and sold, rather than opting out. Regulation will also need an enforcement mechanism, he argues, and users need to be given the ability to see what data is being collected on them, who it’s being shared with and the option to delete it.
The European Union’s model for privacy protections is the strongest in the world, and its General Data Protection Regulation law, implemented in 2018, has taken steps to crack down on the collection of data in the ad tech industry. Yet still, Arrieta explains, The Pillar’s investigation could have happened in any country.
Legislation won’t be a complete fix for the U.S. though, Zhao argues. It will also take a higher level of awareness among consumers, he says, and leadership from tech companies to strengthen their privacy policies.
Arrieta says he has hope that greater privacy protections are on the way—but cautions it’ll be an uphill battle. “There’s billions of dollars in this industry,” he says. “It’s gonna be a big fight.”
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- Want to Do More Good? This Movement Might Have the Answer | <urn:uuid:9e2b51cc-f6a8-4234-83d2-c0f367893174> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://time.com/6083323/bishop-pillar-grindr-data/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572161.46/warc/CC-MAIN-20220815054743-20220815084743-00472.warc.gz | en | 0.958066 | 2,002 | 1.648438 | 2 |
Original Research ARTICLE
The Cognitive Costs of Context: The Effects of Concreteness and Immersiveness in Instructional Examples
- 1Department of Psychology, Susquehanna University, Selinsgrove, PA, USA
- 2Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Indiana University, Bloomington, Bloomington, IN, USA
Prior research has established that while the use of concrete, familiar examples can provide many important benefits for learning, it is also associated with some serious disadvantages, particularly in learners’ ability to recognize and transfer their knowledge to new analogous situations. However, it is not immediately clear whether this pattern would hold in real world educational contexts, in which the role of such examples in student engagement and ease of processing might be of enough importance to overshadow any potential negative impact. We conducted two experiments in which curriculum-relevant material was presented in natural classroom environments, first with college undergraduates and then with middle-school students. All students in each study received the same relevant content, but the degree of contextualization in these materials was varied between students. In both studies, we found that greater contextualization was associated with poorer transfer performance. We interpret these results as reflecting a greater degree of embeddedness for the knowledge acquired from richer, more concrete materials, such that the underlying principles are represented in a less abstract and generalizable form.
Educators at all levels are frequently encouraged to incorporate concrete, meaningful, real-world examples into their lessons (e.g., Rivet and Krajcik, 2008). In fact, this advice probably seems like a truism to most teachers. For instance, although the principles of Mendelian inheritance could be discussed in an entirely abstract and general way, instructors are far more likely to introduce these ideas in terms of specific, familiar, real-world domains such as eye color or the traits of pea plants. There are solid practical and theoretical reasons for couching new material in terms of familiar examples. Maintaining student attention and engagement is a constant concern, and research shows that more concrete materials tend to increase student interest (Sadoski et al., 1993). Furthermore, there is considerable evidence that familiar and concrete examples are simply easier to process than more abstract representations. For example, in the original abstract version of the Wason (1966) selection task (a classic test of conditional reasoning), only 4% of the participants were able to generate the logically correct solution. However, when the task was instantiated in a familiar concrete domain (such as legal drinking ages), success rates rose to 70% or more (Johnson-Laird et al., 1972; Griggs and Cox, 1982). Similarly, when LeFevre and Dixon (1986) gave participants a task in which the verbal instructions and the concrete instructional example were inconsistent with one another, over 90% of the participants simply followed the example while disregarding the instructions. This suggests a strong preference for the processing of concrete, instantiated information (also see Anderson et al., 1984; Ross, 1987). In fact, meaningful connections to existing knowledge seem to play a fundamental role in memory and understanding. For example, Bransford and Johnson (1972) found that recall and rated comprehension for a written passage doubled when it was framed in terms of a familiar schema. It is therefore no surprise that meaningful, concrete examples are encouraged in pedagogy—they are typically associated with substantial improvements in comprehension, memory, and reasoning.
Cognitive Costs of Concreteness
Despite these compelling benefits, more recent evidence suggests that concrete instructional examples may also come with some significant costs. For example, any extraneous detail in the presentation of information tends to distract learners from the relevant content, leading to poorer recall for that material (the “seductive details effect”; Garner et al., 1989; Harp and Mayer, 1998). More insidiously, even those concrete details that are integral and relevant to the examples may harm learning by impairing transfer to new situations. For example, Goldstone and Sakamoto (2003) taught participants about the principle of competitive specialization through a simulation portraying ants foraging for food. In this case, neither the ants nor the food were superfluous to the learning—they were integral components of the training example. The researchers nonetheless found that the perceptually detailed representation of these entities could impair participants’ ability to generalize their knowledge to a new, dissimilar case, especially for poorer learners. When the ants and food were depicted in a more abstract, idealized form (as dots and color patches), transfer was improved. Other studies using very different kinds of materials have reported similar patterns (e.g., Clement et al., 1994; Kaminski et al., 2008). In all of these cases, the concreteness that likely improved learners’ comprehension also appeared to more firmly embed the concepts in their original specific context. When confronted with a new analogous situation in which the surface details were changed, the richness of the previously learned representations seems to have made it more difficult for individuals to perceive the relevant connections.
In addition to the more objective aspects of concreteness, similar effects may be observed when interacting with materials that are particularly personally engaging. For instance, Son and Goldstone (2009) taught participants the fundamentals of Signal Detection Theory through the example of a doctor diagnosing patients. When the training case was “personalized” by using passages written in the second-person (“Imagine that you are a doctor who looks at blood samples…”), performance on a transfer test was impaired relative to a more general third-person description (“Imagine a doctor who looks at blood samples…”). Even a third-person description, if given a personalized referent (“Juan has to know how many gallons of milk…”), can lead to poorer transfer than non-personalized materials (Riggs et al., 2015). DeLoache has found similar patterns in work with younger children (e.g., DeLoache, 1991, 1995; DeLoache and Burns, 1994). In addition to demonstrating poorer generalization from materials that are objectively more concrete, she also finds that personal interaction with the physical training materials can impair transfer. There are competing results that indicate benefits of personalizing learning materials to the goals of the learner (Moreno and Mayer, 2004) and incorporating personal pronouns (“your lung”) vs. a more generic framing (“the lung”; Mayer et al., 2004), but the tests of learning in these cases did not involve generalization to new and dissimilar situations.
Perversely, then, it is those very same qualities that are so beneficial in the learning of new material—concreteness, familiarity, personal relevance—that appear so detrimental to the generalization of that knowledge. This is no minor annoyance. The primary goal of education is to prepare students to think outside of the classroom. Students may be learning about basic algebra in terms of apples and oranges, but the hope is that they will then be able to appropriately apply these principles in order to understand their mortgages, modify their recipes and calculate their gas mileage. A failure to support generalization could reasonably be interpreted as a failure of education overall (see Day and Goldstone, 2012).
Integrating Concrete and Idealized Materials
Of course, the relationship between knowledge acquisition and knowledge transfer is more complex than a simple “either/or” dichotomy. Most obviously, acquisition is a prerequisite for transfer: students cannot generalize information that they have not first learned. A teacher therefore cannot simply decide to emphasize generalizability while disregarding comprehensibility. The situation is further complicated by the fact that contextualization and concreteness can have effects that vary under different circumstances and with different measures. For instance, McNeil et al. (2009) asked participants to solve money-based word problems either with or without the use of perceptually rich manipulatives (bills and coins). On the one hand, they found that these participants were less successful in generating the correct answer when concrete objects were used, consistent with the previously discussed research. On the other hand, use of these manipulatives was associated with fewer conceptual errors. That is, while these participants performed more poorly in their calculations, they appeared to have a more accurate and meaningful understanding of how the numbers in the problems should be integrated. Koedinger et al. (2008) also reported a more complex relationship between problem solving and grounded representations, finding that simple mathematical word problems were solved more successfully when they were described verbally, while more complex problems benefited from formal mathematical representations that stripped away the grounded references.
While laboratory studies seem to support a decreased reliance on contextualized materials, one might reasonably be skeptical about whether these results would extend to real students in real classroom contexts. Considering the obvious ramifications of these laboratory results for the field of education, it is particularly important to test these effects in naturalistic educational settings, as the experimental contexts common in laboratory research may not necessarily warrant generalization to authentic classroom environments (Bronfenbrenner, 1976; Newman and Cole, 2004). For one, students enrolled in real classes endure real consequences (namely, worse grades) when they fail to learn the material, and they may have more invested in learning transferable representations than study participants. Moreover, authentic learning contexts would include self-guided study (with frequent opportunities for interruption and distraction), and extended time (days or weeks) between initial exposure and testing. Given the even greater likelihood of distraction and poor comprehension in these environments, it is possible that the balance of priorities would shift in favor of those factors that most directly support student attention and engagement. Consistent with this possibility, some prior work has reported reasonably strong transfer effects from fairly concrete training materials (e.g., Fong et al., 1986).
In order to assess these issues, we conducted two studies involving the presentation of curriculum-based materials in the course of regular instruction. In particular, we sought to answer the questions: In natural educational settings in which students are learning material of direct relevance to their classes, will the use of contextualized materials impair students’ ability to transfer their knowledge to new situations, consistent with most previous laboratory studies? Or, in contrast, will the benefits of improved attention, engagement, and comprehension associated with contextualization prove more important given these learners’ particular vulnerabilities to distraction?
Given that this is an initial attempt to generalize a diverse body of laboratory findings to a more natural environment, we have chosen to construe “contextualization” in a fairly broad manner. For the present purposes, we define contextualization as the inclusion of potentially salient content that embeds the learning material in a specific domain or scenario, but that is extraneous to the general principle of interest. This definition includes increases in the concreteness, or the degree of physical, perceptual detail presented in training materials, as well as superfluous situational information that is not inherently perceptual. Furthermore, we include in our construal the possibility of extraneous detail that is introduced by the learners themselves as a function of their prior knowledge about and associations with a given context. For instance, a dog expert would be likely to experience more contextual effects from an example involving dogs than from one that describes a less personally familiar domain, because the former could engage a large body of existing specific knowledge.
The present experiments manipulate context in a variety of complementary ways. While we make some efforts in our experimental design to distinguish these and assess their relative contributions, in other instances we explore conditions in which a number of different kinds of contextualization are simultaneously brought to bear.
Our first study was conducted in undergraduate Introductory Psychology classes. This course can present particular challenges to instructors. The material covered is quite broad, class sizes tend to be especially large, and the typical student is close to the beginning of his or her college career. However, despite the course’s breadth of content, it is traditional for instructors to emphasize experimental research methods, and this material is usually presented early in the course to enable students to understand and interpret the empirical studies that form the basis for the remaining class (Homa et al., 2013).
Our topic of interest was the measurement of central tendency (including mean, median, and mode), which brings a number advantages. First, it is broadly relevant to the course and tends to be covered early across different instructors and textbooks, which allowed us to coordinate participants from several course sections. This topic also involves understanding at different levels of explanation. For example, these measures can be described in a purely procedural way (e.g., the mean is calculated as the sum of the values divided by the number of values) or at a more conceptual level (e.g., the mean is the measurement most influenced by outliers). Finally, the measurements are inherently general and broadly applicable across content domains, allowing us to freely vary the degree of contextualization in the training materials and measure transfer of these concepts to new content areas.
In this study, contextualization was independently varied in two ways: the graphics presented in the training could be rich and realistic or abstract, and the written description could include an engaging backstory or could be sparse and detached. These training materials were presented in either of two content domains; some students’ training involved summarizing exam scores on a math test (a relatively familiar content domain for undergraduates), while others’ involved summarizing the number of quality control tests passed by table lamps. Students were assigned to access the training materials for homework credit, and the final assessment of learning involved test items on standard in-class mid-term exams that were separated from the training by at least 2 weeks.
The instructors of six different sections of Introductory Psychology (P101) volunteered to integrate the training materials about measures of central tendency (and corresponding exam questions) into their courses during the Fall 2012 term. Total enrollment across all six sections was 1,447 students. The rights of student participants were protected under a research protocol approved by the Indiana University Institutional Review Board. Participants provided written informed consent during the first week of the semester, and 205 students were excluded from our analysis because they did not provide (or were not present to provide) written informed consent. Another 176 students were excluded because they did not return pretest responses, did not take the subsequent exam, or did not access the tutorial. After these exclusions, 1,066 students remained in our analysis, 639 females and 427 males by self-report. In addition to the ecological validity provided by this group of participants, they also represent quite a large sample size for experimental work of this kind. This allows us to overcome many common inferential problems associated with small samples when interpreting our data.
We wrote four multiple-choice test questions evaluating P101 students’ knowledge about measures of central tendency (mean, median, and mode). Two of these questions pertained to the mean, median, or mode for exam scores on an elementary school’s math test, and the other two questions involved quality control scores for a set of table lamps. Variants of these same four questions were asked during pretest and posttest, with different datasets to summarize during pretest and posttest, different wordings, and different answers and answer orders. Two of the questions, one for each domain, involved calculating median, mode, and mean scores. The other two questions were conceptual, requiring students to understand how the distribution of scores differentially affects median, mode, and mean. For example, a conceptual lamp question was: “If most lamps pass about the same number of tests, but one lamp passes far fewer tests, will this lamp’s performance affect the mode or the mean more?” (All materials and datasets are available online through Open Science Framework at the following link: osf.io/kdf6y/).
Training consisted of a set of instructions about calculating means, medians, and modes, followed by a series of nine questions (with response-level feedback), implemented online using Qualtrics. The questions all involved students’ calculating means, modes, or medians for a given data set. Accordingly, the training was more procedurally oriented than the conceptual test questions. There were three different manipulations of this tutorial: (1: Domain) the instructions and training questions were either about summarizing grades on a math test (“grades” domain) or about summarizing quality control tests for a set of table lamps (“lamps” domain); (2: Graphics) the instructions either included real pictures of students and table lamps (“detailed” graphics), or dots to symbolize these students and lamps along a number line (“idealized” graphics; similar to Kaminski and Sloutsky, 2013); and (3: Immersion) the instructions either included an immersive backstory describing the situational importance of calculating these measures of central tendency (e.g., a fight has broken out over the correct way to summarize math scores; “high” immersion) or a simple statement that it is sometimes useful to have different summary statistics (“low” immersion). Furthermore, the high immersion materials were written in the second-person (“Imagine that you are invited into a classroom as an expert statistician”) while those for the low immersion group were in a more neutral third-person. These three manipulations were fully crossed (domain × graphics × immersion; 2 × 2 × 2) for eight different versions of the tutorial (see Figure 1 for sample materials).
We visited the six P101 classes in person during the first week of the semester, and invited all students to take a short ungraded multiple-choice pretest and to consent to our analysis of their P101 coursework. Even though the pretest was ungraded, students were encouraged to pay attention to the questions because very similar questions would appear on their next test. During the second week, when students were learning about psychology research methods, instructors assigned them to do the training tutorial for homework credit, to be completed prior to the subsequent test date. Every student was randomly assigned to one of the eight versions of the tutorial, and these tutorials were linked from class websites (access was restricted so that students could only see the link for their assigned version of the tutorial). On the subsequent exam (either the third or fourth week of the semester, depending on the section), the four post-test questions about central tendency were embedded among the other P101 multiple-choice test questions, presented sequentially in the same order as in the pretest.
A mixed design ANOVA was conducted, including two within-subjects factors (test item domain: math grades vs. lamps, and test item type: conceptual vs. calculation) and four between-subjects factors (training domain: lamps (low familiarity) vs. math grades (high familiarity), graphics: detailed vs. idealized, story immersiveness: high vs. low, and P101 section), with improvement between pretest and posttest as the dependent variable. (see Table 1, for a summary of results.)
Our primary interest in this study was in the effects of contextualization on transfer to new domains. To explore such effects, we examined the interactions between the training and test domain, and particularly how these were influenced by the varied contextual factors. A three-way interaction between training domain, test domain and immersiveness [F(1,1018) = 4.09, MSE = 0.876, p = 0.04, = 0.004] showed that transfer was indeed influenced by the contextual detail of the story (see Figure 2). Specifically, transfer to a new domain (measured by the test items that were from a different domain from a participant’s training) was most successful when the training material was less immersive, rather than when it involved the relatively engaging back story [M = 0.40 (SD = 0.76) vs. 0.31 (SD = 0.71), F(1,1065) = 3.96, MSE = 2.15, p = 0.047, = 0.004]. No such difference was found for non-transfer test items [items that matched the participant’s training domain; M = 0.30 (SD = 0.75) vs. 0.33 (SD = 0.75)]. A numerically similar pattern was found for graphical concreteness, with greater transfer after training with materials that were less graphically detailed [M = 0.39 (SD = 0.73) vs. 0.33 (SD = 0.75)], although this difference did not reach statistical significance, perhaps because the graphics were not as captivating as the immersive backstory. Overall, then, our data are consistent with previous research showing that knowledge transfer is best supported by less contextualized learning. There was a significant main effect of P101 section [F(5,1018) = 2.88, MSE = 0.916, p = 0.014, = 0.01], as students in different classes had different improvements from pretest to posttest. However, there were no significant interaction effects between P101 section and any of the experimental factors manipulated in this study.
Figure 2. Mean posttest improvement in Experiment 1. Transfer was superior when training involved a less immersive narrative. Error bars represent standard errors.
An additional focus of interest in this study was in the role of domain familiarity in these effects. A main effect of test domain [F(1,1018) = 70.48, MSE = 15.12, p < 0.001, = 0.07] reflected the fact that items involving math grades improved substantially more than items involving lamp ratings [M = 0.46 (SD = 0.68) vs. M = 0.22 (SD = 0.79)]. This effect held regardless of training domain, and was entirely the result of differences in post-test scores, with pre-test performance being very similar for the two types [M = 1.43 (SD = 0.62) vs. 1.45 (SD = 0.70; out of a possible 2)]. Overall, participants in this study had an easier time applying their learned knowledge to a more familiar domain. Interestingly, this was true even when students’ initial training was in the less familiar domain of lamp ratings.
Analysis also revealed a relationship between domain familiarity and the type of test item (procedural vs. conceptual). Specifically, an interaction between item type and training domain [F(1,1018) = 6.82, MSE = 1.648, p = 0.01, = 0.007] reflected the fact that there was greater improvement on the conceptual items after training in the less familiar domain [lamp quality scores; conceptual improvement M = 0.50 (SD = 0.84)] vs. the more familiar domain of grades [conceptual improvement M = 0.41 (SD = 0.83); see Figure 3]. One possible interpretation of this result is as an example of “desirable difficulty” (Bjork, 1994). That is, students who were trained with materials from an unfamiliar domain were less able to rely on their existing knowledge structures to scaffold their understanding. While this would have made initial comprehension more challenging, this difficulty would have demanded that students process the material more deeply in order to achieve an appropriate level of understanding, leading to a stronger conceptual grasp of the material. The unfamiliar domain would have posed less of a problem for (and therefore provided less of a benefit for) the more procedural calculations of central tendencies. Consistent with this interpretation, we did not observe a similar advantage for these [M = 0.24 (SD = 0.64) vs. 0.20 (SD = 0.68), for grades and lamp ratings, respectively].
Figure 3. Means showing the interaction between training domain and test item type in Experiment 1. Training in the less familiar domain led to greater improvement on conceptual test items. Error bars represent standard errors.
Contextualization in learning can involve important potential tradeoffs between the ease of understanding material and the ease of generalizing it. While a growing body of research has found advantages for decreasingly concrete training materials in situations where transfer is the ultimate goal, there was reason to question whether this effect would hold in actual educational environments, where the high potential for distraction might give a greater priority to the facilitation of comprehension afforded by concreteness. Our results did not support this possibility, however. Consistent with previous research, students in our study were better able to apply their learned knowledge to a new domain when it had originally been presented during training without an engaging narrative context. Thus, even in an introductory undergraduate educational context in which attention and engagement may be challenging to maintain, the net costs of contextualization appeared to outweigh any potential benefits.
We also discovered significant effects of the familiarity of the content domain. Overall, students had an easier time learning within the familiar domain of grades, and test items on this subject showed significantly greater improvement than items from the less familiar domain. On the other hand, we found evidence that training in a less familiar area could lead to a better conceptual understanding of relevant principles. When students were trained in the unfamiliar domain of lamp quality ratings, they showed greater overall improvement on the conceptually-oriented test questions.
These results raise interesting issues regarding the relationship between familiarity and contextualization. In one sense, familiarity represents a kind of additional context, because it suggests that individuals will be supplementing any given material with a large body of previously known facts and details. This interpretation is consistent with some of the previously discussed literature in which greater personal relevance was associated with decreased transfer (e.g., Son and Goldstone, 2009), and it helps to explain the enhanced conceptual understanding that we found following training in an unfamiliar domain. At the same time, the processing benefits associated with this familiarity seemed to provide important advantages in those situations that did not involve the acquisition of new conceptual knowledge. Students’ improvement was greatest on test items from the familiar domain of grades, and training in that domain was statistically equally good at supporting transfer of simple procedural content. Familiarity, like other more concrete kinds of contextualization, seems to be associated with both important costs and benefits.
The first experiment provides evidence that in educational contexts, as in prior laboratory research, concrete detail may be detrimental to knowledge transfer. The second experiment serves to replicate these results in a younger classroom population and extend them to cases of far transfer.
While the overall research goals of this study are similar to those of Experiment 1, we modified the operationalization in several ways. First, the participants in this experiment were seventh and eighth grade students rather than college undergraduates. Second, the learning phase of the study involved an in-class activity rather than a self-guided homework assignment. We also attempted to extend the manipulation of contextualization outside of the actual learned example. Whereas the materials in Experiment 1 varied the concreteness, immersiveness and familiarity of the training example itself, the example in Experiment 2 is identical for all participants. The only factor that varies between individuals is the immersiveness of a separate paragraph preceding the training task that serves to motivate interest in the topic, although it is not directly relevant to understanding it. Moreover, these immersive paragraphs were written without reference to any specific person, allowing us to explore the effects of immersion without the potential confounds of personalization.
The study also makes use of a different learning topic. Positive feedback systems, in which changes to one part of a system produce effects that lead to additional changes to that initial part, are widespread in any number of domains, and are particularly relevant in the sciences. (For simplicity with our population, we described positive feedback in terms of mutual influence between two parts of a system, e.g., A increases B, and B further increases A.) The training materials in this study involved processes of positive feedback in the reflectance (or albedo) of the Earth’s polar ice, an important factor in global climate change. Finally, Experiment 2 made use of a different dependent measure of conceptual knowledge: students’ ability to classify new cases according to their underlying structure. Classification is a fundamental cognitive process, and it serves as a basis for many other processes. Among other things, it is particularly relevant within complex problem solving. For example, individuals with expertise in physics are able to classify problems according to their meaningful structural commonalities (e.g., problems based on conservation of energy) rather than their more immediately obvious surface characteristics (e.g., problems involving an inclined plane; Chi et al., 1981). Because of this, these experts will be much more likely than novices to apply appropriate problem strategies and generate accurate solutions.
Our use of a middle school population also allowed us to examine possible individual differences in the effects of context. A significant minority of our students were participating in an accelerated science program within the school, reflecting achievement on a test of scientific knowledge. There are many independent factors that could contribute to membership in this program, including innate ability, high need for achievement, and interest in the subject matter. However, these students tend to possess a relatively deep understanding of the material. Prior research has shown that expertise in a field is associated with a greater ability to focus on the relevant structural content of a problem while being less influenced by any irrelevant “surface” features (e.g., Chi et al., 1981; Schoenfeld and Herrmann, 1982). Because of this, it is possible that students in the accelerated program will prove less susceptible to the influence of irrelevant contextual information in our study. This would be consistent with the results of Goldstone and Sakamoto (2003), who found that perceptual concreteness exerted the most influence over those who performed poorly on the initial task.
Given that participants in our task were asked to determine whether new cases follow a particular underlying structure, we were also able to assess the possibility of bias effects. That is, it is possible that posttest responses would be biased toward classifying all of the examples as instances of positive feedback—the principle underlying their training simulation. Our primary questions will be whether any such bias effects might interact with the contextualization of the materials.
This study was conducted with 144 students at a public middle school, who participated as part of their regular class time in a General Science course. These included 70 seventh-grade students and 74 eighth-grade students, drawn from six different class periods meeting throughout the day. Participants were roughly evenly divided between males (n = 68) and females (n = 74), and approximately one-third of these students (n = 49) were part of the school’s accelerated learning programs (ALPs), composed of individuals who had passed a rigorous science achievement test. Eleven students were dropped from the final analysis because of failure to complete the test materials. The rights of all student participants were protected under a research protocol approved by the Indiana University Institutional Review Board. Written consent was obtained from the parents of all students at the beginning of the semester, and was separately obtained from the students themselves at the beginning of the class session.
Materials and Design
Our measure in this experiment was students’ ability to correctly identify scenarios as examples of positive feedback systems, tested both before and after training. Training itself involved a written description motivating the topic, followed by an interactive computer simulation demonstrating the phenomenon of positive feedback in a specific concrete context: global climate change. Testing and training were identical for all students, with the exception of a brief motivating paragraph at the beginning of the written instructions, which varied between participants in terms of its narrative richness and immersiveness.
The test materials were designed to assess students’ understanding of positive feedback systems across a wide range of domains. First, students read a definition of positive feedback (which was slightly simplified in order to be understandable by their age group; see online materials). Students then read eight brief scenarios describing a variety of real-world phenomenon, half of which were examples of positive feedback systems. For each scenario, students were asked to rate whether the described situation was an example of positive feedback on a five-point scale ranging from Definitely not to Definitely yes.
Instructions and Simulation
All students read introductory materials (presented on computer) describing ice-albedo feedback, a kind of interaction between the reflectivity of polar ice and the absorption of solar heat. The first page of these instructions was a brief paragraph motivating the topic by describing the impact of global warming. For roughly half of the students (the Low Context group, n = 75), this paragraph described recent patterns of melting in the Hudson Bay area (see Figure 4). This topic is relevant to the issue of global climate change and is straightforward to understand. However, for most individuals in our study it is not particularly personally relevant or emotionally engaging, and does not draw on much existing background knowledge. The remainder of the students (the High Context group, n = 69) read a motivating paragraph describing the effects of climate change on polar bear populations. This passage was designed to be more directly relevant to students’ knowledge and interests, and it described the plight of these animals in more personal terms.
Figure 4. High (left) and low (right) context materials for Experiment 2. These materials were shown prior to the description and instructions for the training task.
This paragraph was followed by a general introduction to the task and a description of ice-albedo feedback effects. All students then interacted with a computer simulation of ice-albedo feedback (developed and implemented in NetLogo; Wilensky, 1999). Students were guided through the task with specific instructions designed to highlight the feedback behavior of the system.
The simulation itself displays a top-down view of a polar ice cap, surrounded by water (see Figure 5). The primary dynamics of the system involve the size and shape of the ice surface, which is constantly changing. These changes are driven by several factors, including general cooling and diffusion of heat. The most relevant factors for the students, however, are sunlight and albedo. The earth is receiving a steady flow of energy in the form of sunlight, which can be absorbed and can increase an area’s temperature. However, not all of this energy is absorbed: much of the light is reflected back into space. Furthermore, the amount of light that is reflected depends on a given area’s albedo or reflectance. Critically, ice has a much higher albedo than land or water, because of its white color. In our simulation, ice only absorbs one quarter of the energy that is absorbed by the surrounding water. Because of this, greater ice coverage results in less overall warming. It is this factor that produces the system’s feedback behavior. A decrease in ice coverage results in more heat being absorbed, leading to even more melting, and so on. Conversely, an increase in ice coverage causes the reflection of more light, reducing the temperature and potentially causing even more water to freeze.
The simulation uses a grid of colored points to indicate each region’s overall light reflectance and absorption (the “reflection grid”). Red dots (darker in Figure 5) indicate absorbed energy, while blue dots (lighter) indicate reflected energy. This grid provides a way for students to directly perceive the relative balance of reflected and absorbed energy in different locations. Specifically, 80% of the dots on frozen areas show reflectance (blue dots), compared with 20% of the dots on the water. When active, this grid flashes on and off in one second increments.
Students were guided through the simulation via specific instructions, given through popup messages. Initially, students were familiarized with the operation of the system, first without the reflection grid, and then with. Messages appeared at brief intervals reminding them of the relevant principles of the system (see online materials for full protocol). Next, students were instructed to interact with the system in various ways. For example, students used the simulation’s controls to melt a significant area of the ice. At this point, the reduced albedo led to a positive feedback loop in which additional ice melted at an accelerating rate, until eventually all of the ice had melted. Next, students used the controls to observe the complementary feedback effect, with greater ice coverage causing additional freezing. After each of these tasks, students were explicitly reminded of the way in which this reflected positive feedback behavior.
Finally, students were able to freely interact with simulation for up to 3 min. Additionally, at this point we added sliders that allowed students to directly control the reflectance of ice and water in the simulation.
After the simulation, students were asked to define positive feedback systems in their own words: “We would like you to tell us what a positive feedback system is. Just do your best to describe it in your own words. Please don’t just write about the simulation you just saw. Instead, try to write about positive feedback systems in general.”
We coded the pre- and post-training classification tests according to each response’s proximity to the correct end of the rating scale. For instance, if a particular scenario described a positive feedback system, then a response of “Definitely yes” would be assigned a score of four and a response of “Definitely not” would be assigned a score of 0, with intermediate responses receiving appropriate intermediate scores. For scenarios that were not examples of positive feedback this coding would be reversed, with “Definitely not” receiving a score of 4 and “Definitely yes” receiving a score of 0. Each participant was assigned an improvement score calculated as the difference between totaled pretest and posttest scores.
A 2 (condition) × 6 (class period) ANOVA revealed a significant effect of condition on posttest improvement [F(1,121) = 4.36, MSE = 20.71, p = 0.039, = 0.035], but no effect of class period [F(5,127) = 1.45, n.s.], and no interaction between condition and class period [F(5,127) = 1.24, n.s.]. Specifically, planned comparisons showed that those students in the Low Context condition improved significantly between pretest and posttest [M = 1.58 (SD = 3.97), F(1,68) = 10.91, MSE = 7.89, p = 0.002, = 0.138] while those in the High Context group showed a small numerical decrease in performance after training [M = –0.36 (SD = 5.21), F(1,63) = 0.31, n.s.]. The decrease in posttest performance by the High Context condition meant that no significant improvement was seen when pooling across all students [M = 0.65 (SD = 4.69), F(1,132) = 2.53, MSE = 11.00, p = 0.114, = 0.019].
To ensure that this effect was not being driven by a small subset of the test items, we also performed an item analysis. A repeated measures t-test, comparing each item’s average posttest improvement in Low [M = 0.20 (SD = 0.25)] and High [M = –0.04 (SD = 0.31)] context groups, confirmed a difference between conditions [F(1,7) = 6.10, MSE = 0.039, p = 0.043, = 0.465]. For seven of the eight test items, posttest improvement was greater under conditions of low contextualization.
One possible explanation for the poorer performance by the High Context group is that those students were confused or distracted by the additional engaging information. If so, we should expect that group to have a poorer understanding of the material that was learned in training, in addition to their decreased scores on the classification task. To assess this possibility, we used a five-point rubric to code the accuracy of students’ posttest attempts to define positive feedback. In simplified terms, this rubric was as follows: (1) basic statement of cause and effect; (2) statement that a change in one variable causes a change in another; (3) inclusion of direction of change; (4) inclusion of mutual influence (second variable influences the first); (5) mention of continuing loop and consequences (e.g., movement toward a maximum or minimum). We found no difference between the groups on this measure, with those in the High Context condition actually showing a slight numerical advantage over the Low Context group [M = 2.11 (SD = 1.53) and 1.99 (SD = 1.46), respectively, out of a possible 5; F(1,132) = 0.48, n.s.]. The difference in classification performance therefore cannot be attributed to poorer initial learning, but instead seems to reflect a greater difficulty in applying the knowledge acquired during interaction with the simulation to new situations.
Next, we compared the performance of students in the accelerated ALPs program with that of their (non-accelerated) classmates. We had hypothesized that these potentially more advanced or engaged students might be better able to focus on the relevant structural content of the training, and would therefore show a smaller effect of contextualization. However, this was not the case. A 2 (ALPs membership) × 2 (condition) ANOVA on improvement scores revealed no main effects for accelerated class membership [F(1,132) = 0.10, n.s.] and no interaction between ALPs membership and condition [F(1,132) = 0.02, n.s.; see Figure 6]. Thus, while those in the ALPs group outperformed their peers at both pretest [F(1,131) = 48.84, MSE = 24.65, p < 0.001, = 0.272] and posttest [F(1,131) = 41.36, MSE = 28.32, p < 0.001, = 0.24], their overall improvement and susceptibility to context effects did not differ from that of their classmates. Like the non-accelerated students, performance for the ALPs students in the High Context condition actually decreased numerically relative to pretest [M = –0.62 (SD = 3.85)].
Figure 6. Means from Experiment 2 for accelerated and non-accelerated students. Performance in both groups was equally affected by richer background context. Error bars represent standard errors.
Finally, we examined the possibility of bias effects in students’ responses. To measure whether students were biased to make responses that were consistent with the subject of their training, we calculated each response’s proximity to the end of the rating scale marked “Definitely yes,” regardless of whether this was the correct response. Therefore, each “Definitely yes” response was scored as a four, each “Definitely not” response was scored as a 0, and intermediate responses were assigned the appropriate intermediate value. For each participant, bias was coded as the difference in this score between pretest and posttest.
Across all students, this average bias score was significantly greater than 0 [M = 0.30 (SD = 1.01), t(132) = 3.47, p < 0.001, d = 0.30]. Overall, students were more likely to classify a scenario as an example of positive feedback after having received training, regardless of the accuracy of that classification. However, a 2 (ALPs membership) × 2 (condition) ANOVA on the scores showed that this bias effect did not vary as a factor of condition [F(1,132) = 0.32, n.s.] or ALPs membership [F(1,132) = 1.04, n.s.].
As in Experiment 1, students in this study were negatively affected by exposure to a richer, more engaging background story for the learning example. High Context students showed absolutely no posttest improvement as a result of their training. These effects were found despite the use of a relatively subtle manipulation. All of the students in this experiment received identical training and instructions, with the only difference between conditions being the immersive vs. detached nature of a motivating paragraph prior to the training simulations that included content only indirectly related to the simulation itself.
Furthermore, we found the effects of a rich context to be resistant to learners’ prior knowledge. Prior research has shown that individuals with greater expertise in a subject area are better able to disregard irrelevant surface details and focus instead on the underlying structure of a situation (e.g., Chi et al., 1981; Novick, 1988). Students in the accelerated science program could reasonably be expected to have greater expertise in general scientific principles than their non-accelerated peers, and consistent with this their pretest and posttest performance was significantly superior to that of their classmates. Despite this, we found them to be equally vulnerable to our context manipulation.
However, these effects did not appear to be the result of a poorer understanding of the relevant principles by those receiving a richer context. When students were asked to define a positive feedback system in general terms at the end of the experimental session, those who had read the more engaging motivating paragraph produced an equally accurate definition as those who had read the more detached passage.
If poorer understanding is not the cause, then what is the source of these students’ impaired transfer? We would argue that the rich context provided by the High Context passage served to tie students’ understanding of positive feedback systems more tightly to this one particular content area. Rather than being able to represent the principles in a more contextually independent and general way, through concepts such as variability, causation and mutual influence, their understanding was intimately tied to a single concrete example involving heat and reflectivity.
On reflection, one interesting way in which the contextualization may have occurred in this case is that the inclusion of the polar bear may have drawn participants’ attention to the specifically negative change in this feedback example (the decreasing ice habitat). Since all of the correct posttest items involved positive change, this more specific representation may have put the High Context group at a particular disadvantage. Thus, the concrete contextualization in this example may have influenced participants’ representations of positive feedback at a fairly deep and abstract level [Schwartz (2015), personal communication].
There are solid practical reasons for the traditional advice that educators should use concrete, meaningful examples in instruction. Research has consistently shown that this type of contextualization can enhance understanding, improve retention, and facilitate effective reasoning about the subject matter. Furthermore, making connections to students’ existing knowledge and interests can help to maintain their attention and motivation, which are critical factors for learning. However, research has also shown that there are costs associated with this approach: the more contextualized a training case, the more difficulty learners can have in recognizing and applying its principles in new and dissimilar situations.
The undermining of generalization and transfer by contextual detail could be particularly problematic in general education, where the ultimate goal is typically to train students for a wide and unpredictable variety of real-world applications. We had reason to question whether contextualization would actually be as detrimental in the classroom as previous laboratory research has suggested, however. In particular, it would be reasonable to suggest that attention and motivation would be especially difficult to maintain in these environments and populations, and that the benefits associated with engaging and meaningful material might exceed any of the conventional costs. Furthermore, whereas the materials learned in a laboratory experiment may be interpreted as restricted in relevance to that particular and peculiar context, materials learned in a classroom context may be construed in a more expansive manner if taught well (Engle et al., 2012). However, this did not appear to be the case. In two experiments utilizing different populations of students enrolled in science classes, material from different subject areas, different delays for retention, and different types of tasks and tests, we again found that greater contextualization impaired students’ ability to apply their knowledge in new cases.
Interestingly, this was the case even though our studies represented a kind of cued rather than spontaneous recall. A large body of previous research has established that concrete dissimilarities typically impair individuals’ ability to recognize when prior knowledge is relevant (e.g., Simon and Hayes, 1976; Weisberg et al., 1978; Gick and Holyoak, 1983). In our studies, however, participants were explicitly aware of the relevant concept and example. Contextualization was therefore leading to specific issues with mapping the original case to new examples.
Our results indicate important differences between materials that promote good immediate performance and those that promote transfer. In Experiment 2, definitions of positive feedback loops as they pertained to the training simulation were not better for the Low Context narrative compared to High Context, but transfer was better in the Low Context condition. In both experiments, transfer was best with relatively simple and detached narratives. This is somewhat reminiscent of earlier results showing that understanding of a scientific concept from a simulation was best when simulation elements were relatively detailed and concrete, but that transfer of the concept to a superficially dissimilar simulation was best when the training elements were idealized (Goldstone and Sakamoto, 2003). One implication of this pattern of results is that as an instructor designs their instructional materials, they should be asking themselves whether they are trying to optimize their students’ demonstrated mastery of the material itself or their ability to transfer their understanding to new materials. While we might intuitively believe these to be highly correlated, design decisions about narrative immersion appear to affect these learning outcomes in opposite ways.
What lessons should educators take from these data? To address this question, we must first consider the scope of our results. The present studies represent an attempt to generalize laboratory results to authentic educational contexts. However, in reality they reflect only a limited subset of educational experience. For example, the learning episodes in our experiments involved expository instruction rather than constructive learning exercises such as learning by invention (e.g., Schwartz and Martin, 2004). While there was some degree of interactivity in the computer simulations used in Experiment 2, this is far removed from the degree of flexibility and involvement in an interactive group, where students are free to ask clarifying questions and instructors and peers may adapt their responses in real time. It therefore remains to be seen how broadly these effects may generalize to other instructional settings.
The precise origin of these effects is also unknown. By definition, contextually-rich learning materials, such as those that we’ve manipulated in this study, are multifaceted. They may involve personalization, urgency, social pressures, and a cornucopia of other factors. Future research may ultimately attempt to isolate these effects under ideal comparison conditions, but in the current study, we instead opted to create materials that were more pertinent to routine educational practice, a sort of pragmatic trial approach (Roland and Torgerson, 1998). These immersive qualities (the familiarity of the domain, the presence of an alluring backstory, the inclusion of pictures and graphics, etc.) would all commingle in routine classroom settings. While our current work lacks the explanatory power of a laboratory study, it nevertheless demonstrates that the combined effects of contextually-rich training materials are indeed germane to naturalistic learning scenarios.
Even acknowledging these limitations and taking our results at face value, the immediate pedagogical implications of our results are not entirely clear. Should we conclude that meaningful concrete examples should be eliminated from the classroom? There are several reasons why we do not believe that this is the correct conclusion to draw. First, as suggested above, whether narrative concreteness is positive or negative depends on whether one is teaching for immediate performance or future transfer. Second, it is important to remember that all of the materials in our studies were in fact contextualized. There were no control conditions in which information was presented in a completely abstracted or idealized manner. If the concepts involved in central tendency measurements or feedback systems were given without any meaningful context at all, it is likely that students would indeed have had a very difficult time understanding them, and that both learning and transfer would have suffered as a consequence. The issues addressed by our data are therefore not so much about the use of meaningful examples as they are about the degree of context that will be most effective.
Furthermore, the potential benefits of contextualization are substantial enough that researchers have invested a great deal of time into finding ways to overcome their costs (see Day and Goldstone, 2012). Most of these approaches involve the presentation of multiple concrete cases. However, simply being exposed to more than one training example is often not effective on its own—the way in which these cases are chosen and presented has been shown to matter a great deal. For example, Goldstone and Son (2005) found evidence for improved transfer after training following a pattern of “concreteness fading.” In that research, participants first learned about a set of principles through a richly instantiated set of materials. Afterward, this initial concreteness was “faded” from the instruction as participants interacted with materials that presented the same relevant principles in a more idealized way. An even more complete concreteness fading regime that goes first from concrete to idealized, and then from idealized to formal symbolic, representations has been shown to fairly consistently improve generalization of training (Fyfe et al., 2014). Evidently the initial, more contextualized presentation allows learners to scaffold their understanding by connecting it to their existing knowledge and schemas, while the subsequent idealized case helps to dissociate these initial representations from their original context (also see Kotovsky and Gentner, 1996; Scheiter et al., 2010). Thus, learners in this condition seem to gain at least some of the benefits of both concreteness and genericity.
Another method that has been shown to be quite effective in supporting transfer is the active comparison of multiple training cases. For example, Loewenstein et al. (2003) taught a group of management students about the use of “contingency contracts” as a technique in negotiation. All of these students learned about the technique by reading two concrete instantiations of the method in practical application. However, those who simply studied the two cases in succession showed no benefit from the training, and they were no more likely to apply the principles appropriately than a control condition that had received no training at all. Students who had actively compared the two cases and identified commonalities between them, however, were nearly three times as likely to successfully apply their knowledge. Many other studies have found similar benefits of comparison (e.g., Gick and Holyoak, 1983; Catrambone and Holyoak, 1989; Cummins, 1992; Gentner et al., 2009; Christie and Gentner, 2010; Richland and McDonough, 2010).
The question of contextualization in instruction is therefore neither simple nor settled, but we are progressing in our understanding of the issues involved. Simply adding richer meaningful content to in-class examples may make intuitive sense, and may have immediately obvious benefits in terms of student engagement and comprehension. But as the results of our experiments make clear, these short-term benefits seem to come at the cost of students’ long-term ability to apply their knowledge. If educators are to take advantage of these inherent benefits, they will need to give careful consideration to how such examples are designed and used together in order to plan the most effective instruction.
SD was responsible for the first drafting of this manuscript, and was involved in all subsequent revisions. SD was also directly involved in the conceptualization, creation of stimuli, materials and interactive simulations, running of participants, and analysis of data for Experiment 2. BM was directly involved in the conceptualization, creation of stimuli and materials, running of participants and data analysis of Experiment 1. He provided additional content and valuable critical revisions to the manuscript. RG was directly involved in the conceptualization of both Experiments, and provided invaluable ongoing contributions and feedback throughout the experimental process. He also provided additional content and valuable critical revisions to the manuscript. All three authors have approved the final version of the manuscript, and agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work.
This research was supported in part by National Science Foundation REESE Grant No. 0910218 and Department of Education IES Grant No. R305A1100060.
Conflict of Interest Statement
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
We thank Sarah Manlove, Nancy Martin of Jackson Creek Middle School; the participating instructors of Introductory Psychology at Indiana University, Jim Cuellar, Megumi Kuwabara, Carolina Tamara, and Carol Watson; as well as Tiffany Drasich and Akshat Gupta for their assistance with this research. Special thanks to Dan Schwartz for valuable feedback on a previous draft of this paper.
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Engle, R. A., Lam, D. P., Meyer, X. S., and Nix, S. E. (2012). How does expansive framing promote transfer? Several proposed explanations and a research agenda for investigating them. Educ. Psychol. 47, 215–231. doi: 10.1080/00461520.2012.695678
Fyfe, E. R., McNeil, N. M., Son, J. Y., and Goldstone, R. L. (2014). Concreteness fading in mathematic and science instruction: a systematic review. Educ. Psychol. Rev. 26, 9–25. doi: 10.1007/s10648-014-9249-3
Garner, R., Gillingham, M. G., and White, C. S. (1989). Effects of ‘seductive details’ on macroprocessing and microprocessing in adults and children. Cogn. Instr. 6, 41–57. doi: 10.1207/s1532690xci0601_2
Gentner, D., Loewenstein, J., Thompson, L., and Forbus, K. D. (2009). Reviving inert knowledge: analogical abstraction supports relational retrieval of past events. Cogn. Sci. 33, 1343–1382. doi: 10.1111/j.1551-6709.2009.01070.x
Homa, N., Hackathorn, J., Brown, C. M., Garczynski, A., Solomon, E. D., Tennial, R., et al. (2013). An analysis of learning objectives and content coverage in introductory psychology syllabi. Teach. Psychol. 40, 169–174. doi: 10.1177/0098628313487456
Koedinger, K., Alibali, M., and Nathan, M. (2008). Trade-offs between grounded and abstract representations: evidence from algebra problem solving. Cogn. Sci. 32, 366–397. doi: 10.1080/03640210701863933
Loewenstein, J., Thompson, L., and Gentner, D. (2003). Analogical learning in negotiation teams: comparing cases promotes learning and transfer. Acad. Manage. Learn. Educ. 2, 119–127. doi: 10.5465/AMLE.2003.9901663
Mayer, R. E., Fennell, S., Farmer, L., and Campbell, J. (2004). A personalization effect in multimedia learning: students learn better when words are in conversational style rather than formal style. J. Educ. Psychol. 96, 389–395. doi: 10.1037/0022-06184.108.40.2069
McNeil, N. M., Uttal, D. H., Jarvin, L., and Sternberg, R. J. (2009). Should you show me the money? Concrete objects both hurt and help performance on mathematics problems. Learn. Instr. 19, 171–184. doi: 10.1016/j.learninstruc.2008.03.005
Rivet, A. E., and Krajcik, J. S. (2008). Contextualizing instruction: leveraging students’ prior knowledge experiences to foster understanding of middle school science. J. Res. Sci. Teach. 45, 79–100. doi: 10.1002/tea.20203
Sadoski, M., Goetz, E. T., and Fritz, J. B. (1993). Impact of concreteness on comprehensibility, interest, and memory for text: Implications for dual coding theory and text design. J. Educ. Psychol. 85, 291.
Scheiter, K., Gerjets, P., and Schuh, J. (2010). The acquisition of problem-solving skills in mathematics: how animations can aid understanding of structural problem features and solution procedures. Instr. Sci. 38, 487–502. doi: 10.1007/s11251-009-9114-9
Schoenfeld, A. H., and Herrmann, D. J. (1982). Problem perception and knowledge structure in expert and novice mathematical problem solvers. J. Exp. Psychol. Learn. Mem. Cogn. 8, 484–494. doi: 10.1037/0278-73220.127.116.114
Schwartz, D. L., and Martin, T. (2004). Inventing to prepare for future learning: the hidden efficiency of encouraging original student production in statistics instruction. Cogn. Instr. 22, 129–184. doi: 10.1207/s1532690xci2202_1
Weisberg, R. W., DiCamillo, M., and Phillips, D. (1978). Transferring old associations to new problems: a non-automatic process. J. Verb. Learn. Verb. Behav. 17, 219–228. doi: 10.1016/S0022-5371(78)90155-X
Keywords: transfer, analogical transfer, analogical reasoning, learning, context, concreteness, cognition
Citation: Day SB, Motz BA and Goldstone RL (2015) The Cognitive Costs of Context: The Effects of Concreteness and Immersiveness in Instructional Examples. Front. Psychol. 6:1876. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01876
Received: 05 October 2015; Accepted: 20 November 2015;
Published: 01 December 2015.
Edited by:Gabriel Radvansky, University of Notre Dame, USA
Reviewed by:Paula Goolkasian, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA
Claudia C. Von Bastian, University of Colorado Boulder, USA
Copyright © 2015 Day, Motz and Goldstone. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Samuel B. Day, email@example.com | <urn:uuid:1842c79a-5312-40bd-90c7-2865b4bf1f91> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01876/full | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279169.4/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00209-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949175 | 13,069 | 3.078125 | 3 |
Though clinical depression is often the subject of memoirs and autobiographies, I have very rarely read fictional stories with depressed main characters. This is what stands out the most to me after reading Where We Fall by Rochelle B. Weinstein. The sensitive portrayal of a woman emotionally out of control forms the center of this examination of marriage, parenthood, and personal development.
Abby Holden should be happy. Her daughter is a high school student, and her husband, Ryan, is a much beloved high school football coach. She lives in a lovely home and it seems as though everything is going well. But the truth is that Abby has trouble getting out of bed. She cannot be a proper parent to her daughter, Juliana, who seeks support from her father, Ryan, instead. Though Abby has always felt this pull to depression, it is an outrageous act of betrayal that is at the forefront of her mind.
Lauren and Abby were inseparable in college. When Lauren began dating Ryan, Abby seemed to be part of the package. Awkward and fragile, Abby clings to her friends and finds acceptance with them. As the transition from college to adulthood looms, it is clear that free-spirited Lauren needs more than just the small town life to which she is accustomed. Promises are made and plans are set. But, when circumstances intervene, it is Lauren who is at the mercy of the decisions of those she loves best.
After a seventeen-year absence, Lauren returns to the mountains that she loves. This return will put her right in the path of Ryan and Abby. Will she have the courage to face the fallout from long ago events or will she run back into the new life she has created for herself?
Where We Fall is written from several points of view: Abby, Lauren, Ryan, and Juliana. I am not sure how effective this was for me as a reader. I agree that we needed Abby and Laura’s perspective, but I think that Juliana’s subplot was a bit too much for the story. The focus on Juliana’s boyfriend and his hardscrabble life took away from the main narrative and dulled the focus of the story. In addition, I would have liked to see a more convincing relationship between Abby and Ryan. It seemed so unlikely that the two of them ever got together in the first place, so I was never really rooting for them to succeed. The motivations of the characters did not ring true to me.
I did appreciate that Abby’s character was a realistic picture of depression. She was not a black and white character, and I appreciated that she did not behave in an over-the-top manner. It was a sensitive portrayal.
I sensed the ending a mile away, but I think that is the only ending that Where We Fall could have had to make sense. Unfortunately, it seemed contrived and not as authentic as it should have been. It did not ring true or realistic for me.
Where We Fall gets high points for its portrayal of character, but the plot did not do it for me. It was an easy read, and one that many people would enjoy.
*I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Regina | <urn:uuid:1d17fa4a-6fc3-4510-8154-e514c6f2407c> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://mindingspot.blogspot.com/2016/04/where-we-fall-by-rochelle-b-weinstein.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280900.71/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00006-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.985616 | 664 | 1.53125 | 2 |
MK Yaakov Litzman of UTJ today submitted a private Knesset Member’s bill that would expand the laws on racism to include the “ostracizing” of chareidim. Such laws exist today for other groups, and Litzman’s proposal would expand the law to include chareidi Yidden.
The penalty for violating the law could be as much as ten years in prison. In addition, if the offender achieved a material benefit as a result of their actions, that benefit could be taken away. In an explanatory note, Litzman said that the formation of the current government was carried out specifically to exclude chareidi parties, and thus excluded a significant portion of the country’s population from representation in the government. Many hurtful things were said and done during and after the election, he wrote, and many of those wounds are still open.
Litzman said that the law was not aimed at guaranteeing a place for chareidim in every government. Negotiations can bring about specific decisions that may or may not enable parties such as UTJ or Shas to join a government. “With that, the ostracizing in advance of a whole group, only because they are chareidi, dressed in beards and peyos – as occurred in the formation of this government – is a serious phenomenon that we as a society cannot accept. The best way to prevent a repeat of this is through legislation,” he wrote.
Read more at ARUTZ SHEVA. | <urn:uuid:b46ddbac-0553-40ab-9f65-6d54ea60ab1e> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://matzav.com/litzman-law-needed-to-prevent-ostracizing-chareidim/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988721558.87/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183841-00044-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979288 | 318 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Implementations: Revision 25
Perl 6 has several compilers and interpreters, and none is called "official Perl 6". Larry Wall has explained that anything that passes the test suite is Perl 6. So far several partial implementations exist. With their feedback, the Synopses and test suite that form the language specification are evolving. This page is about software that can parse Perl 6, not VMs or runloops.
Historical Implementations are definitively closed projects. | <urn:uuid:5dc8ff4c-6c46-465d-bfe1-37fa8b4da6f1> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.perlfoundation.org/perl6/index.cgi?action=revision_view;page_name=implementations;revision_id=20100225233027 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560283689.98/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095123-00345-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.92861 | 97 | 1.78125 | 2 |
Expansion and Reform: "Crossing the Plains"
Students examine the time period of westward expansion. They listen and analyze song lyrics. They use their writing skills to keep a journal as well.
9th - 12th Visual & Performing Arts 3 Views 19 Downloads
Postcards From the American West
Why did people move westward in the United States? Your young historians will examine the experiences of various groups on the American frontier, from a miner working near the Comstock Lode in Nevada, to an Apache chief from the...
7th - 11th Social Studies & History CCSS: Adaptable
Designing a Hiking Trail
Put your students' map skills to the test with this engaging cross-curricular project. Given the task of developing new hiking trails for their local community, young cartographers must map out beginner and intermediate paths that meet a...
6th - 12th Science CCSS: Adaptable
Utopia/Dystopia: The American Dream
America was founded by dreamers, and the American dream still resonates in our country today. Track the American dream from its Puritan beginnings to its optimistic descendants with a instructional activity that focuses on speeches by...
9th - 12th Social Studies & History CCSS: Adaptable
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington: Historical and Cultural Context
An insult to American politicians? A satire of news media? Or a critique of censorship, political corruption, and media propaganda? As part of a unit study on film, class members examine how director Frank Capra's develops these themes...
11th - 12th Social Studies & History CCSS: Adaptable
The Free Silver Movement and Inflation
Why are US dollars no longer backed by gold and silver? What is our medium of exchange, and what would it be like to live in a barter economy? Learners consider these questions, as well as learn about the major historical events in the...
7th - 10th Social Studies & History CCSS: Designed
Songwriting Skill - Elaboration: Vanessa Hudgens - “Sneakernight”
The second in a series of nine exercises designed to develop songwriting skills introduces the idea of elaboration. After a close reading and discussion of the elaborations in Vanessa Hudgens' "Sneakernight," young songwriters practice...
5th - 10th English Language Arts
A Study Guide for The Phantom of the Opera
Immerse yourself in the beautiful, twisted world of Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera. A detailed lesson plan provides important details about the writing, stagecraft, music, and literary elements of the famous musical, as...
9th - 12th English Language Arts CCSS: Adaptable
Rosa Parks: 3 Day Lesson
How can evidence and perspective challenge even the most well-known of stories? Through primary and secondary source analysis, think-alouds, and discussion, young historians evaluate the historical narrative of Rosa Parks across multiple...
7th - 12th Social Studies & History CCSS: Adaptable
Study History through Journal Keeping
Journal writing can be a fun way to bring history to life. Upper graders read a series of journals from the time of the westward expansion, specifically the pioneer journey along the Oregon Trail. They compose an ongoing journal from the...
8th - 12th English Language Arts CCSS: Adaptable | <urn:uuid:5f1b4a0d-9fea-44aa-ac7f-33548eddae61> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.lessonplanet.com/teachers/lesson-plan-expansion-and-reform-crossing-the-plains | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280242.65/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00072-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.911544 | 700 | 3.78125 | 4 |
One way to mitigate the increased risk of cyber attacks is to look to low-cost and no-cost solutions that can offer an immediate risk management benefit without added expense or complexity. NYC Bar Insurance and CyberLock Defense have prepared this list of 12 low-cost and no-cost ways to help legal professionals prevent cyber attacks.
1. Identify Key Accounts and Systems
Every firm has key accounts and systems they need to run. An inventory of your vulnerabilities can help illuminate opportunities to protect them.
Think through all the key accounts and systems vital to your firm. Ask yourself if you could continue to operate without issue if something were to happen to them. Jotting down a few notes about protecting these key vulnerabilities is a great place […] | <urn:uuid:3de9f0aa-9c3f-4097-a834-db91a175d222> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://nycbarinsurance.com/2022/03/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571097.39/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810010059-20220810040059-00264.warc.gz | en | 0.957113 | 149 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Salo or The 120 Days of Sodom
A film by Pier Paolo Pasolini
"There is nothing either fundamentally good, nor anything fundamentally evil; everything is relative, relative to our point of view. This point once established, it is extremely possible that something, perfectly indifferent in itself, may be indeed distasteful in your eyes, but may be most delicious in mine; and immediately I find it pleasing, immediately I find it amusing, regardless of our inability to agree in assigning a character to it, should I not be a fool to deprive myself of it merely because you condemn it?" –Marquis de Sade, The 120 Days of Sodom
Pasolini was trenchant when discussing Sal�. Below are two pieces in which he introduces and then annotates his film, paying particular attention to its relationship to Sade's novel and to Italian fascism. The first, a 'Foreword', was written in 1974, a few months before filming began. The date of the second is unclear, but appears to have been written later. Both pieces are reproduced from an English-language press book (in the collection of James Ferman) issued, it seems, in Italy to accompany the release of the film. (Both pieces have been lightly edited.) There is no record of any translator in the press book.
This film is a cinematographic transposition of Sade's novel The 120 Days of Sodom. I should like to say that I have been absolutely faithful to the psychology of the characters and their actions, and that I have added nothing of my own. Even the structure of the story line is identical, although obviously it is very synthetised. To make this synthesis I resorted to an idea Sade certainly had in mind - Dante's Inferno. I was thus able to reduce in a Dantesque way certain deeds, certain speeches, certain days from the whole immense catalogue of Sade. There is a kind of 'Anti-Inferno' (the Antechamber of Hell) followed by three infernal 'Circles': 'The Circle of Madness'; 'The Circle of Shit', and 'The Circle of Blood'. Consequently, the Story-Tellers who, in Sade's novel, are four, are three in my film, the fourth having become a virtuoso - she accompanies the tales of the three others on the piano.
Despite my absolute fidelity to Sade's text, I have however introduced an absolutely new element: the action instead of taking place in eighteenth-century France, takes place practically in our own time, in Sal�, around 1944, to be exact.
This means that the entire film with its unheard-of atrocities which are almost unmentionable, is presented as an immense sadistic metaphor of what was the Nazi-Fascist 'dissociation' from its 'crimes against humanity'. Curval, Blangis, Durcet, the Bishop - Sade's characters (who are clearly SS men in civilian dress) behave exactly with their victims as the Nazi-Fascists did with theirs. They considered them as objects and destroyed automatically all possibility of human relationship with them.
This does not mean that I make all that explicit in the film. No, I repeat again, I have not added a single word to what the characters in Sade have to say nor have I added a single detail to the acts they commit. The only points of reference to the 20th century are the way they dress, comport themselves, and the houses in which they live.
Naturally there is some disproportion between the four protagonists of Sade turned into Nazi-Fascists and actual Nazi-Fascists who are historically true. There are differences in psychology and ideology. Differences and also some incoherence. But this accentuates the visionary mood, the unreal nightmare quality of the film. This film is a mad dream, which does not explain what happened in the world during the 40s. A dream which is all the more logical in its whole when it's the least in its details.
Sal� and Sade
Practical reason says that during the Republic of Sal� it would have been particularly easy given the atmosphere to organise, as Sade's protagonists did, a huge orgy in a villa guarded by SS men. Sade says explicitly in a phrase, less famous than so many others, that nothing is more profoundly anarchic than power - any power. To my knowledge there has never been in Europe any power as anarchic as that of the Republic of Sal�: it was the most petty excess functioning as government. What applies to all power was especially clear in this one.
In addition to being anarchic what best characterises power - any power - is its natural capacity to turn human bodies into objects. Nazi-Fascist repression excelled in this.
Another link with Sade's work is the acceptance/non-acceptance of the philosophy and culture of the period. Just as Sade's protagonists accepted the method - at least mental or linguistic - of the philosophy of the Enlightened Age without accepting all the reality which produced it, so do those of the Fascist Republic accept Fascist ideology beyond all reality. Their language is in fact their comportment (exactly like the Sade protagonists) and the language of their comportment obeys rules which are much more complex and profound than those of an ideology. The vocabulary of torture has only a formal relation with the ideological reasons which drive men to torture. Nonetheless with the characters in my film, although what counts is their sub-verbal language, their words also have a great importance. Besides their verbiage is rather wordy. But such wordy verbiage is important in two senses: firstly it is part of the presentation, being a 'text' of Sade's, that is being what the characters think of themselves and what they do; and, secondly, it is part of the ideology of the film, given that the characters who quote anachronistically Klossowsky and Blanchot are also called upon to give the message I have established and organised for this film: anarchy of power, inexistence of history, circularity (non-psychological not even in the psychoanalytic sense) between executioners and victims, an institution anterior to a reality which can only be economic (the rest, that is, the superstructure, being a dream or a nightmare).
Ideology and the meaning of the Film
We should not confuse ideology with message, nor message with meaning. The message belongs in part - that of logic - to ideology, and in the other part - that of irreason - to meaning. The logical message is almost always evil, lying, hypocritical even when very sincere. Who could doubt my sincerity when I say that the message of Sal� is the denunciation of the anarchy of power and the inexistence of history? Nonetheless put this way such a message is evil, lying, hypocritical, that is logical in the sense of that same logic which finds that power is not at all anarchic and which believes that history does exist. The part of the message which belongs to the meaning of the film is immensely more real because it also includes all that the author does not know, that is, the boundlessness of his own social, historical restrictions. But such a message can't be delivered. It can only be left to silence and to the text. What finally now is the meaning of a work? It is its form. The message therefore is formalistic; and precisely for that reason, loaded infinitely with all possible content provided it is coherent - in the structural sense.
Stylistic elements in the film
1. Accumulation of daily characteristics of wealthy bourgeois life, all very proper and correct (double-breasted suits, sequinned, deep cut gowns with dignified white fox furs, polished floors, sedately set tables, collections of paintings, in part those of 'degenerate' artists (some futuristic, some formalistic); ordinary speech, bureaucratic, precise to the point of self caricature.
2. 'Veiled' reconstruction of Nazi ceremonial ways (its nudity, its military simplicity at the same time decadent, its ostentations and icy vitality, its discipline functioning like an artificial harmony between authority and obedience, etc.
3. Obsessive accumulation to the point of excess of sadistic ritualistic and organised deeds; sometimes also given a brutal, spontaneous character.
4. Ironic corrective to all this through a humour which may explode suddenly in details of a sinister and admitted comic nature. Thanks to which suddenly everything vacillates and is presented as not true and not crude, exactly because of the theatrical satanism of self-awareness itself. It is in this sense that the direction will be expressed in the editing. It is there that will be produced the mix between the serious and the impossibility of being serious, between a sinister, bloody Thanatos and curate Bauba (Bauba was a Greek divinity of liberating laughter or better: obscene and liberating laughter).
In every shot it can be said I set myself the problem of driving the spectator to feeling intolerant and immediately afterwards relieving him of that feeling.
More sutff like that at GREYLODGE | <urn:uuid:11e2bd36-3513-44cf-bee3-1a9132adb8d0> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.e-limbo.org/articulo.php/Art/1926 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280364.67/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00030-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963004 | 1,893 | 1.648438 | 2 |
BLACK iz IT Inst. Photo Editing Coures
Digital cameras allow us to take lots and lots of pictures, but that does not mean we have to keep them all. I confess--I used to keep every shot no matter how lousy it was. Thank goodness I got past that mental block! The first thing you should do after you take the pictures off your camera is to give them an initial review and mark the bad ones in some way.
Most software includes a rating or tagging function to help you do this. Then just get rid of those bad pictures! and thats why BLACK iz IT Institute introduced BLACK iz Photo Editing course.
On The BLACK iz IT Institute Photo Editing course is for anyone who is interested in learning how to edit photographs. Students will not only learn how to correct flaws and common to digital photography but also how to enhance photographs, giving them more impact.
The BLACK iz IT Institute Photo Editing course will begin with the student learning how to correct common photographic mistakes and problems and how to improve photographs that are already acceptable. From there on the we will deal with image corrections and creative techniques that are more complex. The BLACK iz IT Institute Photo Editing course concerns itself with editing photographs but many of the techniques learned can be applied to digital graphics as well. Classes will consist of lectures and exercises with provided sample images.
Lessons will be taught using the latest version of the industry leading Photo Scape program. An extra lesson on Adobes’ Lightroom photo editing program is also included. Students will be provided with a free 8 day(4 weeks). Notes and sample files will also be provided.
Key Features Of The BLACK iz IT Institute Photo Editing Course
A There may be one or two photos that are technically bad, but you see some potential there for a special effect or art treatment. Go ahead and flag those in some way and keep them for later experimentation. And if you just can't bring yourself to delete the bad shots completely, mark them hidden, or mark them for later review, but please don't show the world every single shot you took from a particular event.
As a Photoscape introduction, its Photo editing software is features rich and with its Intuitive User Interface (mainly drag and drop), make it a top choice of photo editing.
Introduction of tool is especially beneficial for those new comer whereby you need to load many attractive photos/pictures in your blog or site to catch the eyes of the visitors. croping photo grPA, Clour devination, photo features, photo format introducing and creating like, jepg, png, gif and more.
BLACK iz IT Institute’s Freelancing Course Details:
Training Course: BLACK iz IT Institute Photo Editing course
Course Duration: 4 weeks
Time: Morning and Day Shift
Venue: Kalabagan Bus Stand, MABS Coaching Centre Building
Number of Participants: Up to 30 per batches.
Registration Fee: 200BDT
Course Fee: 300BDT
Phone : 01671502396,01717695631
Email : email@example.com
Website : www.inst.black-iz.com | <urn:uuid:5afd9d2d-8156-4e29-8931-5f2fa3b863e4> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://black-iz.com/institute/photoedetingcourse.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560282935.68/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095122-00244-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.90759 | 655 | 1.796875 | 2 |
Software is notorious for providing default credentials (e.g., username: admin, password: admin) upon installation. These default credentials are publicly known and can be obtained with a simple Google search. While vendors are slowly moving away from default credentials (where they require the organization to define the credentials themselves), many organizations are either following their defined strict password policy, or setting them to weak passwords that are no better than the defaults some software provide.
Hardening standards are used to prevent these default or weak credentials from being deployed into the environment. With the recent news coming out of the Equifax breach which disclosed that admin:admin was used to protect the portal used to manage credit disputes, the importance of hardening standards are becoming more apparent.
What is a Security Hardening Standard?
A hardening standard is used to set a baseline of requirements for each system. As each new system is introduced to the environment, it must abide by the hardening standard. There are several industry standards that provide benchmarks for various operating systems and applications, such as CIS. Each hardening standard may include requirements related but not limited to:
Physical security – setting environment controls around secure and controlled locations
Operating systems – ensuring patches are deployed and access to firmware is locked
Applications – establishing rules on installing software and default configurations
Security appliances – ensuring anti-virus is deployed and any end-point protections are reporting in appropriately
Networks and services – removing any unnecessary services (e.g., telnet, ftp) and enabling secure protocols (e.g., ssh, sftp)
System auditing and monitoring – enabling traceability and monitoring of events
Access control – ensuring default accounts are renamed or disabled
Data encryption – encryption ciphers to use (e.g., SHA-256)
Patching and updates – ensuring patches and updates are successfully being deployed
System backup – ensuring backups are properly configured
Why are Hardening Standards important?
Having consistently secure configurations across all systems ensures risks to those systems are kept at a minimum. Keeping the risk for each system to its lowest then ensures the likelihood of a breach is also low. Any deviation from the hardening standard can results in a breach, and it’s not uncommon to see during our engagements. It’s almost always one system that was just brought online or a legacy system that is missing the hardening and is used as our way to pivot. Attackers that are on your network are waiting for these opportunities, so it’s best to harden prior to deploying it on the network.
Staying Compliant with your Hardening Standard
To stay compliant with your hardening standard you’ll need to regularly test your systems for missing security configurations or patches. The best way to do that is with a regularly scheduled compliance scan using your vulnerability scanner. The vulnerability scanner will log into each system it can and check it for security issues. Doing so will identify any outlier systems that have not been receiving updates and also identify new issues that you can add to your hardening standard. By continuously checking your systems for issues, you reduce the time a system is not compliant for. | <urn:uuid:09671e17-bf40-4c40-a639-01c3cbabb7b0> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.packetlabs.net/posts/security-hardening-standards/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573760.75/warc/CC-MAIN-20220819191655-20220819221655-00670.warc.gz | en | 0.92926 | 643 | 2.65625 | 3 |
4th Scottish Parliament
|4th Scottish Parliament|
|Jurisdiction||Scotland, United Kingdom|
|Meeting place||Scottish Parliament Building|
Second Salmond government|
First Sturgeon government
|Presiding Officer||Tricia Marwick|
This is a list of members (MSPs) returned to the fourth Scottish Parliament at the 2011 election. Of the 129 MSPs, 73 were elected from first past the post constituencies with a further 56 members being returned from eight regions, each electing seven MSPs as a form of mixed member proportional representation.
|Party|| May 2011 |
| March 2016 |
|•||Scottish National Party||69||64|
|Scottish Labour Party||37||38|
|Scottish Conservative Party||15||15|
|Scottish Liberal Democrats||5||5|
|Scottish Green Party||2||2|
Government parties denoted with bullets (•)
This is a graphical comparison of party strengths as they were in the 4th session of the Scottish Parliament.
- Note this is not the official seating plan of the Scottish Parliament.
List of MSPs
|This article is part of a series on the|
politics and government of
|Park, JohnJohn Park||Mid Scotland and Fife||Regional||Scottish Labour Party||resigned 7 December 2012|
|Adam, BrianBrian Adam||Aberdeen Donside||Constituency||Scottish National Party||died 25 April 2013|
|McLetchie, DavidDavid McLetchie||Lothian||Regional||Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party||died 12 August 2013|
|Walker, BillBill Walker||Dunfermline||Constituency||Independent||resigned 7 September 2013|
|Eadie, HelenHelen Eadie||Cowdenbeath||Constituency||Scottish Labour Party||died 9 November 2013|
|MacDonald, MargoMargo MacDonald||Lothian||Regional||Independent||died 4 April 2014|
|Baker, RichardRichard Baker||North East Scotland||Regional||Scottish Labour Party||resigned 11 January 2016|
|11 May 2011||Mid Fife and Glenrothes||Presiding Officer||SNP||Tricia Marwick is elected as the Presiding Officer and had to take voluntary suspension from her party.|
|4 March 2012||Dunfermline||Independent||SNP||Bill Walker was suspended from the SNP pending an investigation into domestic abuse allegations.|
|23 October 2012||Highlands and Islands||Independent||SNP||John Finnie resigned from the SNP because of its conference decision on NATO membership. Though he joined the Scottish Green Party in October 2014, Finnie continued to sit as an independent MSP until the end of the parliament.|
|23 October 2012||Highlands and Islands||Independent||SNP||Jean Urquhart resigned from the SNP because of its conference decision on NATO membership.|
|07 December 2012||Mid Scotland and Fife||Labour||Labour||John Park resigned as an MSP to take up a full time Trade-Union position, he is replaced by Jayne Baxter.|
|25 April 2013||Aberdeen Donside||SNP||Brian Adam dies of cancer at age 64, causing a by-election.|
|14/15 May 2013||North East Scotland||SNP||SNP||Mark McDonald resigns his position as an MSP in order to contest the Aberdeen Donside by-election, 2013. Christian Allard takes up the vacant seat as the next (and final) name on the SNP's list for the region.|
|20 June 2013||Aberdeen Donside||SNP||Mark McDonald holds the seat for the SNP in the Aberdeen Donside by-election, 2013.|
|12 August 2013||Lothian||Conservative||Conservative||David McLetchie dies of cancer, aged 61. He was replaced by Cameron Buchanan.|
|7 September 2013||Dunfermline||Labour||Independent||Bill Walker resigned following his conviction for assault, precipitating a by-election in the constituency. He was replaced by Cara Hilton.|
|9 November 2013||Cowdenbeath||Labour||Labour||Helen Eadie dies of cancer at age 66, causing a by-election. She was replaced by Alex Rowley.|
|4 April 2014||Lothian||Independent||Margo MacDonald died, age 70. She had been elected as an independent to a regional seat and therefore no-one could be nominated as a replacement.|
|23 September 2014||Central Scotland||Independent||SNP||John Wilson resigned from the SNP because of its 2012 conference decision on NATO membership. Though he joined the Scottish Green Party in December 2014, Wilson continued to sit as an independent MSP until the end of the parliament.|
- "Independent MSP Margo MacDonald dies". BBC News. BBC. 5 April 2014. Retrieved 13 January 2016.
As Ms MacDonald was an independent MSP elected to Holyrood as a regional list member, there will be no by-election, and her seat will remain vacant until the next Scottish Parliament election, in 2016.
- "SNP MSP John Wilson quits party over Nato row". BBC News. BBC. 23 September 2014. Retrieved 13 January 2016.
- "SNP MSP Tricia Marwick elected presiding officer". BBC News. 11 May 2011. Retrieved 11 May 2011.
- "MSPs John Finnie and Jean Urquhart quit SNP over Nato policy". BBC News. 23 October 2012. Retrieved 23 October 2012.
- Why I’ve joined the Scottish Greens, John Finnie MSP.
- "Member's Oath/Affirmation: Jayne Baxter". BBC News. 10 December 2012.
- "Aberdeen SNP MSP Brian Adam dies aged 64". BBC News. 25 April 2013.
- "Former Scottish Conservative leader David McLetchie dies". BBC News. BBC. 12 August 2013. Retrieved 13 August 2013.
- "Labour MSP Helen Eadie dies, aged 66". BBC News. 9 November 2013.
- "SNP MSP John Wilson quits party over Nato row". BBC News.
- "John Wilson MSP joins the Scottish Greens". Scottish Greens. | <urn:uuid:d88c9e46-0ef2-486c-90fa-e165725f8b2d> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://gateway.ipfs.io/ipfs/QmXoypizjW3WknFiJnKLwHCnL72vedxjQkDDP1mXWo6uco/wiki/Members_of_the_4th_Scottish_Parliament.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573118.26/warc/CC-MAIN-20220817213446-20220818003446-00673.warc.gz | en | 0.90478 | 1,467 | 1.75 | 2 |
The latest news from academia, regulators
research labs and other things of interest
Posted: Sep 29, 2015
Researchers disguise drugs as platelets to target cancer
(Nanowerk News) Researchers have for the first time developed a technique that coats anticancer drugs in membranes made from a patient’s own platelets, allowing the drugs to last longer in the body and attack both primary cancer tumors and the circulating tumor cells that can cause a cancer to metastasize. The work was tested successfully in an animal model.
“There are two key advantages to using platelet membranes to coat anticancer drugs,” says Zhen Gu, corresponding author of a paper on the work ("Anticancer Platelet-Mimicking Nanovehicles") and an assistant professor in the joint biomedical engineering program at North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “First, the surface of cancer cells has an affinity for platelets – they stick to each other. Second, because the platelets come from the patient’s own body, the drug carriers aren’t identified as foreign objects, so last longer in the bloodstream.”
On the left is the schematic design of the TRAIL/Dox loaded platelet membrane-coated nanogel delivery system. The TRAIL is attached on the surface of membrane and Dox is loaded in the core of nanogel. On the right is a transmission electron microscope image of the drug delivery system. Black is the synthetic core nanogel, the outside shell is the platelet membrane.
“This combination of features means that the drugs can not only attack the main tumor site, but are more likely to find and attach themselves to tumor cells circulating in the bloodstream – essentially attacking new tumors before they start,” says Quanyin Hu, lead author of the paper and a Ph.D. student in the joint biomedical engineering program.
Here’s how the process works. Blood is taken from a patient – a lab mouse in the case of this research – and the platelets are collected from that blood. The isolated platelets are treated to extract the platelet membranes, which are then placed in a solution with a nanoscale gel containing the anticancer drug doxorubicin (Dox), which attacks the nucleus of a cancer cell. The solution is compressed, forcing the gel through the membranes and creating nanoscale spheres made up of platelet membranes with Dox-gel cores. These spheres are then treated so that their surfaces are coated with the anticancer drug TRAIL, which is most effective at attacking the cell membranes of cancer cells.
When released into a patient’s bloodstream, these pseudo-platelets can circulate for up to 30 hours – as compared to approximately six hours for the nanoscale vehicles without the coating.
When one of the pseudo-platelets comes into contact with a tumor, three things happen more or less at the same time. First, the P-Selectin proteins on the platelet membrane bind to the CD44 proteins on the surface of the cancer cell, locking it into place. Second, the TRAIL on the pseudo-platelet’s surface attacks the cancer cell membrane. Third, the nanoscale pseudo-platelet is effectively swallowed by the larger cancer cell. The acidic environment inside the cancer cell then begins to break apart the pseudo-platelet – freeing the Dox to attack the cancer cell’s nucleus.
In a study using mice, the researchers found that using Dox and TRAIL in the pseudo-platelet drug delivery system was significantly more effective against large tumors and circulating tumor cells than using Dox and TRAIL in a nano-gel delivery system without the platelet membrane.
“We’d like to do additional pre-clinical testing on this technique,” Gu says. “And we think it could be used to deliver other drugs, such as those targeting cardiovascular disease, in which the platelet membrane could help us target relevant sites in the body.”
Source: By Matt Shipman, North Carolina State University | <urn:uuid:2b41136b-7309-45d7-8770-2d26a9f589e6> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://www.nanowerk.com/nanotechnology-news/newsid=41455.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988719079.39/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183839-00033-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.918573 | 848 | 3.09375 | 3 |
Potted plants offer a creative way to enhance your home's landscaping, particularly those areas that don't get much sunlight, such as under a patio awning or in a dark corner in the garden. Just about any small or mid-sized plant that grows in the ground can be grown in ordinary pots or eclectic planters, including hanging baskets, hollowed out stumps, barrels or birdbaths. Container gardening with shade-tolerant plants allows you to get creative, mixing and matching different colors, textures and fragrances.
Amethyst (Browallia speciosa) is a perennial that thrives in shady areas and doesn't mind diffuse sunlight. The "Blue Bells" cultivar produces vibrant blue flowers with white centers and small, light green leaves. Other varieties flower in sky blue, purple and white. Amethyst is a fast grower that likes well-drained, loamy soil and blooms throughout the summer and early fall. With proper care, this striking plant will live from three to 10 years.
Ornamental kale (Brassica oleracea) grows well in partial shade, and not only is it pretty to look at, it's edible. Several varieties grow leaves in red, pink and dark lavender rosettes with frilled edges, their color deepening in cool weather. Plant one head of kale or several in a large planter, providing regular watering and well-drained soil. Apply a liquid fertilizer every other week. Kale grows fast and produces sprays of yellow flowers in sunny weather.
Lemon balm (Melissa officinalis) is a fragrant plant with white flowers that attract butterflies. The leaves are green, golden or variegated. This herb thrives in a planter if supplied with quality potting soil and good drainage. Placing it in the shade helps the plant retain moisture as it grows, reaching up to 4 feet if not pruned regularly. The harvested leaves can be dried and used for a flavorful tea or added fresh to tossed salads.
Blueberry (Vaccinium ashei 'Powderblue'), also known as rabbiteye blueberry, grows well in partial shade if planted in a medium such as bark or peat moss. Planted in a 5-gallon container, it maintains its original size with regular pruning, or it can be replanted in a bigger pot as grows. Blueberry plants like frequent watering to keep soil moist, but they don't like soggy roots. The plant, which flowers in pinkish white, produces slightly tart berries ripen from late spring to mid-summer.
- University of Delaware College of Agriculture and Natural Resources Cooperative Extension: Container Gardening or "How to Get the Most out of a Small Garden"
- Learn2Grow: Browallia Speciosa 'Blue Bells'
- Sunset: Colorful Plants for Shade Gardens: Amethyst Flower (Browellia Hybrids)
- Sunset: Kale In Containers
- Sunset: Edible Ornamental Kale
- Purdue University: Purdue Agriculture, Horticulture and Landscape Architecture: Department of Horticulture: Growing Herbs
- Sunset: Plant Finder: Melissa Officinalis:
- Sunset: Plant Finder: Blueberry (Rabbiteye)
- Digital Vision/Digital Vision/Getty Images | <urn:uuid:cbd4cba9-f400-448d-b7c6-09647f2bfd60> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://homeguides.sfgate.com/ideas-potted-planters-shade-22529.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280761.39/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00096-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.899218 | 686 | 2.71875 | 3 |
We introduce EmotionLines, the first dataset with emotions labeling on all utterances in each dialogue only based on their textual content. Dialogues in EmotionLines are collected from Friends TV scripts and private Facebook messenger dialogues. Then one of seven emotions, six Ekman’s basic emotions plus the neutral emotion, is labeled on each utterance by 5 Amazon MTurkers. A total of 29,245 utterances from 2,000 dialogues are labeled in EmotionLines.
|Rachel||Oh okay, I’ll fix that to. What’s her e-mail address?||Neutral|
|Rachel||All right, I promise. I’ll fix this. I swear. I’ll-I’llI’ll-I’ll talk to her||Non-neutral|
Dialogue from Friends | <urn:uuid:f2562116-75c4-4d0b-88c3-e41ac0b6b24f> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | http://doraemon.iis.sinica.edu.tw/emotionlines/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572021.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20220814083156-20220814113156-00070.warc.gz | en | 0.771278 | 222 | 1.609375 | 2 |
Harriet de Onís was one of the most influential translators of Latin American literature and foresaw its mid-century boom.
In December of 1948, The New York Times ran an article on translator Harriet de Onís titled “Mrs. de Onís puts Latins’ Lore in Book, but Their Cuisine Goes Into Her Kitchen.” The article began by briefly mentioning The Golden Land: An Anthology of Latin American Folklore in Literature, edited by de Onís and published by Alfred A. Knopf just two months earlier, but then went on to reduce her accomplishments to domestic work. The journalist described what the translator cooked for her husband Federico de Onís, a renowned scholar of Hispanic literature, and quoted Carl Ackerman, then the dean of Columbia’s School of Journalism, who said that an “apple pie lesson” that de Onís gave in Venezuela “would do more to cement relations between North and South America than all her literature lectures.” Yet Harriet de Onís was one of the most influential translators of Latin American literature during the mid-twentieth century. In addition to translating approximately 40 books from Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese to English, she edited two anthologies, mentored other translators, wrote reviews, gave lectures, and acted as an editorial advisor for Alfred A. Knopf.
Born Harriet Wishnieff, she grew up in Sheldon, Illinois, and moved to New York to study foreign languages at Barnard College, graduating in 1916. After working for a time as a secretary for dancer Isadora Duncan, she decided to pursue graduate work in Spanish at Columbia University. She then managed the Spanish department at Doubleday, Page & Co. and edited an anthology titled Today’s Best Stories From All The World (1922), a volume associated with her work as editor at World Fiction magazine. While at Columbia, Harriet met Federico de Onís, a professor from Spain who had founded Columbia’s Instituto de las Españas, later renamed the Hispanic Institute. The couple married in 1924. Through Federico and the Hispanic Institute, the translator met most of the leading Latin American authors of the time. These contacts certainly boosted her career, but she was an influential figure in her own right.
De Onís’s first book translation was an abridged edition of Martin Luis Guzman’s El águila y la serpiente, a semi-fictional memoir of the Mexican Revolution translated as The Eagle and the Serpent. The translation was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1930, a time of increased U.S. interest in Latin America. Before the beginning of the twentieth century, there was very little Latin American prose available in English translation. As the first truly prolific translator of Spanish and Portuguese into English, de Onís helped establish the canon of translated Latin American literature in the U.S. For a number of the works she translated, including The Eagle and the Serpent, she also acted as an editor and abridged texts to conform to Knopf’s specifications. In addition, she promoted some writers so effectively that one of them, Colombian author Germán Arciniegas, asked her to represent him as a sort of unofficial literary agent (she declined, though she maintained a close relationship with him). De Onís translated books by Alejo Carpentier, Ernesto Sabato, Ricardo Güiraldes, Jorge Amado, Alfonso Reyes, Fernando Ortiz, João Guimarães Rosa, Gilberto Freyre, and other Latin American authors. The majority of her translations were published by Alfred A. Knopf.
De Onís maintained regular correspondence with Alfred and Blanche Knopf, editors such as Herbert Weinstock, and many of the writers whose work she translated. These letters, which are archived in the Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. collection at the Ransom Center, offer insight into the ways in which her choices as a translator were shaped by her biography, political contexts, and market forces. Her Golden Land anthology, for instance, was published during a time when Good Neighbor policy sentiment still lingered, and the book was marketed and reviewed accordingly. Later, she recommended the publication of books that examined themes relevant to McCarthyism and the Cuban Revolution. She also seemed to foresee the Latin American Boom, the publishing phenomenon that saw writers such as Gabriel García Márquez rise to international prominence. In 1956, she wrote to Blanche Knopf saying, “As Charles Poore once said to me, whenever we run into international difficulties we start loving Latin America again, and I think such a moment has come in view of the Russian overtures in those areas. There will probably be a big upswing of at least official interest.”
The correspondence in the Knopf collection also reveals that de Onís’s influence extended beyond her work as a translator. At a time when Knopf had few editors who could read Spanish and even fewer who knew Portuguese, the publishing house relied heavily on de Onís to evaluate Hispanic and Brazilian texts. Her reports on the books she received often determined whether or not Knopf would publish an English translation of the work. A self-described “glutton for books,” de Onís read, for Knopf and for pleasure, at an incredible pace. In July of 1967, late in her career and just two years before her death, she told Bill Koshland at Knopf, “I have read about eight books in the last three weeks.” At the time she wrote that letter, she was coping with her husband’s death, managing his estate, taking care of her sick mother, and translating Brazilian writer Jorge Amado’s Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands: A Moral and Amorous Tale.
Despite the constant flow of books awaiting her assessments, de Onís often requested that Knopf pay her reading fees in literature. Instead of money, she requested other titles published by Knopf, including works by Alexis de Tocqueville, H. L. Mencken, Albert Camus, and André Gide. However, even if she had consistently requested financial compensation for her work as a reader, her fees would have been low. A 1964 agreement with Knopf shows that they paid her $500 a year to read, evaluate, and report on books in Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian. Translation fees were similarly low. For her translation of Fernando Ortiz’s Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar, published by Knopf in 1947, she was paid a total of $725 for nearly 105,000 words, less than a penny per word. De Onís could afford to devote herself fully to a low-paying career. At home, she had domestic help and never worried about paying the rent. Yet the privilege she enjoyed does not discount the fact that she was a hard-working, dedicated translator. In 1962, she wrote to Alfred Knopf saying that she never needed the money she earned as a translator, but was “intensely interested in helping to bring to the attention of the American public the work of Latin American authors.”
De Onís had a good sense of books that deserved to be translated. In addition to reporting on books Knopf sent her, she pitched authors to them, though not always successfully. In 1952, she sent her editors a volume of stories by Jorge Luis Borges, accompanied by a letter in which she called his work “superb.” She continued, “I am sure there is no more finished writer, or one who knows his craft better in Latin America than Borges.” Editor Herbert Weinstock responded saying, “There is no doubt that the stories of Jorge Luis Borges are remarkable. There is every doubt, however, that a book of them in translation could be sold to the American public. I cannot urge such a book on Alfred and Blanche in view of the uniformly bad sale of Latin American fiction here.” In many cases, however, the editors at Knopf followed her advice. In 1960, they asked her to report on Amado’s Gabriela, Cravo e Canela (later translated as Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon). After evaluating the book, de Onís told Alfred Knopf that the publishing house “ought to proceed to nail down [Gabriela] before someone else snaps it up… It is absolutely Brazilian and at the same time universal.” Knopf followed her advice and secured translation rights quickly. In 1962, Knopf wrote to de Onís saying, “I purr with pride every time I see Gabriela move up a notch on the best-seller list. You were right about this one breaking the sound barrier.”
At her urging, Knopf also published translations of work by Brazilian writer João Guimarães Rosa. Although she understood the challenges of translating the work of an author often compared to James Joyce for his difficult syntax and use of invented, regional, and archaic vocabulary, de Onís convinced Knopf to publish an English translation of the author’s masterpiece, Grande Sertão: Veredas, which de Onís co-translated (with James L. Taylor) as The Devil to Pay in the Backlands in 1963. De Onís and Knopf did not expect the book to circulate widely, and in fact it was a commercial failure in the U.S. Despite the difficulties Guimarães Rosa’s work presented, de Onis felt that it was important to introduce his books to English-speaking readers. In 1966, she translated the author’s collection of short stories, Sagarana, its title a neologism that remained unchanged in the translation.
For her rendering of Sagarana, de Onís received the 1967 PEN translation prize. In her acceptance speech, she emphasized the importance of translation: “[I]t is not my intention to paint us translators as altruistic souls whose objective or incentive is merely to share with others or bring to their knowledge works of which they would otherwise remain ignorant. I know of nothing that so enriches the spirit and the awareness of one’s own culture as acquaintance with others.” De Onís’s apple pie lessons may have contributed to mutual understanding, but her literary contributions were far more significant and her influence extended well beyond the kitchen. | <urn:uuid:adf2f228-f18b-4c05-83d1-662bc0dc8e89> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://sites.utexas.edu/ransomcentermagazine/2017/11/21/a-glutton-for-books/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573540.20/warc/CC-MAIN-20220819005802-20220819035802-00476.warc.gz | en | 0.967253 | 2,179 | 2.65625 | 3 |
The very thought of a male babysitter is enough to make some parents anxious.
Every online parenting forum seems to have a thread on the issue of male babysitters, such as "Hiring a Male Babysitter (or Manny)" on the site Park Slope Parents. In a satire on The Onion titled, "Desperate Mom Okays Male Babysitter," the mom normally wouldn't hire a male babysitter and knew it wasn't ideal, but she really needed the night off.
In an article for the Washington Post earlier this year, author Petula Dvorak hires a male babysitter and realizes it "is apparently something few parents would do." She said she received raised eyebrows from other parents at the playground when she introduced the new sitter and felt compelled to explain how long she's known him and how much she likes him to anyone who would listen. "When it comes to kids, we are pretty close to being a society that has demonized men," Dvorak writes, noting that a government study found that in 96 percent of sexual assaults on children the offenders were male.
This anxiety about male babysitters is remarkable when you look at the history of babysitting.
Throughout the twentieth century, boys were not only as accepted as babysitters, they were often preferred over girls. The reason is twofold: Teenage girls were dismissed as flighty and self-absorbed; and young boys needed male role models as their fathers were unemployed during the Great Depression or gone all week at work in the latter half of the century.
According to Miriam Forman-Brunell, a history professor and the author of Babysitter: An American History, babysitting in its modern incarnation came about in the 1920s, with "the expansion of suburbs for the first time." Parents were more likely to be separated from extended family members that once were relied on to watch children. Coincidentally, the 1920s also gave rise to the notion of a modern teenage girl who cared more about boys, movies and makeup than taking care of kids. To adults, the rise of the teenage girl signaled disorder and fueled anxieties.
As Forman-Brunell writes, because adolescent girls "attended sports events and flirted with men on the street corners, especially in front of the innocent babies they trundled about," the authors of a popular mid-1920s child-rearing manual disparaged adolescent girls and dismissed them as acceptable child-care providers.
Although babysitting first appeared in the 1920s, it didn't flourish as a cultural phenomenon until after World War II. The baby boom created ample jobs for babysitters. Still, though women had enjoyed greater employment opportunities during World War II, parents were hesitant to use a female babysitter. During this period, "parents were very anxious about hiring the girl next door, as has always been the case. It just has so much to do with their perception of teenage girls," says Forman-Brunell.
Even as teenage girls were provoking anxiety in parents, male babysitters were idealized as the perfect solution. During the Great Depression, Forman-Brunell says, unemployed adolescent boys became "saviors to distraught mothers and weary housewives unsatisfied with neighborhood girls."
In glowing descriptions in Parents Magazine from the 1930s, it seemed as if there was nothing boy helpers couldn't do. Some child-rearing experts during the Great Depression believed that male babysitters could go so far as to "restore boyhood" for their young charges. While husbands became depressed due to unemployment or deserted their families, Parents Magazine reassured readers that boys were up to the task of babysitting.
"It's surprising that you would find the entrepreneurial, perfect male babysitter in popular culture, but he's everywhere," says Forman-Brunell, "and he's not burdened by the same expectations that girls are." Being smart, competitive, and business-oriented were all considered positive characteristics of a male babysitter.
By the late 1940s, some Ivy-League schools institutionalized babysitting for male college students. For example, Forman-Brunell writes, male undergraduates at Princeton organized the "Tiger Tot Tending Agency" where, beginning in 1946, "college boys babysat for the children of faculty members and married students for thirty-five cents an hour." One mother who hired male babysitters through the Tiger Tot agency told Princeton Alumni Weekly, "I loved the idea of four strapping young men watching over my baby daughter. Diapers were changed with efficiency and aplomb." Four men came for the price of one babysitter so they could have enough people for a bridge game.
A 1940s New Yorker article reported that the Columbia University football coach--a former babysitter himself--created a sitting service for his players and was just as proud of their babysitting accomplishments as their hard work on the football field. The beefy babysitters were able to maintain their manliness while caring for children.
While tales of hellish babysitter experiences with teenage girls who racked up phone bills and ignored screaming children in order to canoodle with their boyfriends continued to populate the media, so did accounts of capable, responsible male babysitters.
When fathers were away at work in the 1950s, it was up to male sitters to instill manliness in young boys and turn boys into hardy men. A Life magazine cover story reported that 23 percent of the 7.9 million boys in the United States worked as babysitters in 1957, collectively earning an estimated $319 million.
Even as gender differences began to blur in the 1970s, male babysitters were still seen as an ideal, as is apparent in the children's book George the Babysitter (1977). Long-haired George would cook and clean each day for the kids he babysat, and at the end of the day liked to sit and read a football magazine. The book made teenage boy babysitters seem both domestic and masculine. Up until the end of the 20th century, popular culture and children's books such as Arthur Babysits (1992) and Jerome the Babysitter (1995) boosted the reputation of teenage boys as smart, dependable babysitters.
But today babysitting is most commonly viewed as a woman's domain. A Red Cross Babysitter Training Course video shows two women, one white and one black, babysitting. But there are no male sitters in the video.
According to a Wall Street Journal article published earlier this year, Sittercity.com, an online marketplace for babysitting, has 94 percent female sitters, while SmartSitting.com, an agency that matches highly educated sitters with New York families reports that 87 percent of its sitters are female.
Men have been so erased from the history of babysitting that the same Wall Street Journal article erroneously compares babysitting with cooking, saying, "Could childcare someday go the way of cooking? In the 1950s everyone assumed that women were better in the kitchen...these days, of course, cooking is gender neutral." The writer envisions a time in the future when babysitting "is no longer considered a girl's job." Little does she know that up until about 20 years ago, it wasn't a girl's job. | <urn:uuid:1c555205-7cae-44f1-8cfe-d8579d97bef0> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/07/dont-fear-the-male-babysitter/277924/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573876.92/warc/CC-MAIN-20220820012448-20220820042448-00072.warc.gz | en | 0.977651 | 1,488 | 2.21875 | 2 |
By Patricia Gianotti, Psy.D.
You noticed that the word narcissist has morphed into a term of derision and contempt that is easily thrown around at will? But how many people really how many people really understand where the term comes from or what it means? How often have we heard, “Her husband is a narcissist,” or “My boss is such a narcissist!”
Understand narcissism from a clinical perspective requires a little historical background. The clinical etiology of narcissism originated from the Greek myth and was used psychologically to describe relational or environmental circumstances that resulted in one or more of the following:
• Injury or damage to a person’s basic sense of self worth (identity).
• Diminished ability to read other people accurately and fairly (qualities of being a good partner or friend).
• Blind spots in how a person processes information and reality (beliefs and perceptions).
The bottom line is that these “injuries” leave individuals compromised in terms of how well they are able to navigate the world as well as contribute to the world.
Vulnerability to narcissistic wounding generally stems from how we were parented, which leads to the question, “Who among us had a perfect childhood?” Even if you grew up in an environment of economic privilege, did you really have the freedom to be who you wanted to be while being taught to treat others with equal value? Where this question leads is — regardless of our circumstances, we all carry around a little bit of narcissism. So, when it comes to labeling others, instead of seeing the log in the eye of our neighbor, let’s first take the splinter out of our own.
Public opinion has identified the narcissist as someone who is grandiose, self-absorbed, so self-serving, and entitled, that he or she doesn’t believe that “the rules should apply to them.” It is easy to find those people. All we have to do is turn on the news.
But, if we were to adopt a compassionate framework, we would understand that the posture of confidence exhibited by many narcissistically-driven individuals can best be understood as just that, posturing. Even though some actually come to believe that the constructed version of the self is true, somewhere
underneath the surface lies a secret fear that they are a fraud or are taking advantage of others and will eventually be exposed.
At the core of most narcissistic behaviors is an underlying feeling of shame. In fact, feelings of shame and uncertainty lie beneath the surface of much of the extreme polarization we are witnessing today, whether the focus is on the political climate, struggles with neighbors, or even closer to home — with families and friends.
From a psychological perspective, most people don’t understand that there is a direct relationship between the narcissistic wounding that occurs when people are misunderstood or marginalized and how quickly this can trigger underlying feelings of shame and the reflexive need to self-protect. When people become triggered, they often become defensive and angry rather than learning to engage in conversations that heal rather than divide us.
As a psychologist, I have found that shame is one of the most difficult emotions to endure, and people try to distance themselves from it at all costs. This distancing behavior can range from: bullying (both kids at school as well as over-bearing bosses), to proving self-worth by trying to be perfect, successful or glamorous, or by escaping from the overbearing pressure to achieve or perform though self-medicating behaviors and addictions.
As long as people don’t see the connection between their underlying fears of being less than and their over- driven need to prove themselves, we will never get off the treadmill of overwork, overspending, over- competition, over-entitlement, and lashing out when we fall short, become frightened or are disappointed.
The good news is that once we see the connection between efforts to prove our value, fear of the others, self-protection, and retaliation, it’s as if we awaken from a hypnotic spell. Our direction becomes clearer. Compassion for others increases.
Shame is the unnamed elephant in the room. Not acknowledging it as a powerful, underlying driver of behavior allows us to continue learned habituated patterns that are destructive and unsustainable. As social psychologist J. A. Whitson (2013) states, “Some of our most dangerous human instincts come from our inability to walk in someone else’s shoes.” Walking in someone else’s shoes is the best antidote to narcissism.
Patricia Gianotti, Psy.D., a licensed psychologist with Woodland Professional Associates, has an expertise in couples and individual therapy; she also leads seminars and retreats on topics that bring spiritual practices into daily living. She is the co-author of a new book “Listening with Purpose: Entry Points into Shame and Narcissistic Vulnerability.” | <urn:uuid:0ecd156a-8983-49db-8fba-0e77aab228e2> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://deep-waters.com/lets-stop-using-narcissism-as-a-four-letter-word/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570879.1/warc/CC-MAIN-20220808213349-20220809003349-00479.warc.gz | en | 0.966643 | 1,036 | 2.546875 | 3 |
SMART MATS are rooted mats of beautifully mixed sedum plants that are ready to lay onto the soil and have a finished, ready-to-go ground cover. The sedum varieties included in the mix have been specially selected to do well in any existing conditions. Even better, they are drought tolerant and fire retardant! Use mat whole or cut (lay upside down to cut) and fill into smaller spaces.
Planting Location: Select a location that receives full to part sun and is protected from frost. Will do well on flat or sloped areas.
Easy Installation: Lightly rake the area to be planted, just enough to loosen the topsoil. Lay the mat in desired location and water well. Water three times per week for the first month to help the sedum roots get established in the new environment. Taper off watering to once or twice a week, depending on the dryness of your area.
We would love to share your usage images, so please send them to us! | <urn:uuid:9bc9279d-9bf6-4a04-8bd5-ccbe241ccf7c> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.smartplanetplants.com/smartmats.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280292.50/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00342-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935971 | 205 | 1.523438 | 2 |
First question of last passage:
Why not A - I had it down to two.
Last paragraph of third passage:
What is the best thing to do on test day if I'm not sure about the content of this entire paragraph. I understood it was the author's point of view and it was generally disagreeing with the first two paragraphs - but I wasn't too sure about what the first two paragraphs really were... I had A's view circled, "disagree" with a question mark on the side notes.
Re-read entire passage quickly? Re-read third paragraph? Or plug and chug onto the questions?
2 posts • Page 1 of 1
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I just did this PT yesterday. I would say A is wrong because passage B doesn't say anything concrete about continuous sounds=pleasure. It sounds extreme mismatches cause displeasure, but doesn't say much more than that. | <urn:uuid:08965af3-7a1b-4e6e-96fc-de954d0106f1> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=140383 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560285315.77/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095125-00565-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979405 | 201 | 1.734375 | 2 |
New Delhi: The Border Roads Organisation (BRO) has constructed and black-topped the highest motorable road in the world at 19,300 ft at Umlingla Pass in Eastern Ladakh, creating a record in high-altitude road construction.
It has constructed a 52-km long tarmac road through Umlingla Pass, bettering the previous record of a road in Bolivia connecting to its volcano Uturuncu at 18,953 ft.
The road now connects the important towns in Chumar sector of Eastern Ladakh. It will prove to be a boon to the local population as it offers an alternate direct route connecting Chisumle and Demchok from Leh. It will enhance the socio-economic condition and promote tourism in Ladakh.
Infrastructure development in such harsh and tough terrain is extremely challenging. During the winter, the temperature dips to -40 degrees and the oxygen level at this altitude is almost 50 percent less than at normal places. The BRO has achieved the feat due to the grit and resilience of its personnel who work in treacherous terrain and extreme weather conditions.
The road has been constructed at an altitude higher than the Mt Everest Base Camps as the South Base Camp in Nepal is at an altitude of 17,598 ft, while North Base Camp in Tibet is at 16,900 ft. The road has been constructed much above the altitude of Siachen Glacier which is at 17,700 ft. The Khardung La Pass in Leh is at an altitude of 17,582 ft. | <urn:uuid:fa9d9fb2-6411-4522-997f-41784de3e5a5> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://thenortheastaffairs.com/india-builds-worlds-highest-road-in-ladakh-beats-bolivias-record/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570767.11/warc/CC-MAIN-20220808061828-20220808091828-00477.warc.gz | en | 0.943886 | 311 | 1.710938 | 2 |
The hubris around Social Business is scaling new heights these days, and yet in many ways the concept seems to be redlining to nowhere. As an example, take a look at this thread on Google Plus by Francine Hardaway. 133 comments later, there’s little agreement on what all of this really is, who the experts are, what it entails and who the buyer is. Foundational elements of anything that you would characterize as a market. With marketers, PR leaders and collaboration specialists racing to lay claim to the movement from their own comfort zone / vantage point, I can only imagine executives getting very confused about what exactly all of this means to their business and if the needed upheaval is even warranted.
In the context of internal collaboration specifically, this report from Charlene Li at The Altimeter Group illustrates just how insufficient the progress has been for general purpose social business in the enterprise. And when you benchmark the technology category of social business software (that includes employee, customer and partner engagement) against say CRM, or BI or ERP, its even more striking how nascent the sector is compared to its predecessors. Yes, I get its about people before technology but tech spend is a good indicator of rubber-meets-the-road market uptake, when it’s all said and done.
I recommend you give the data a good look to see what’s working and what’s not. Some big takeaways for me:
1. We’re still miss firing on what should be big wins, if social business is all that:
The report shows that table-stakes benefits of “social” such as expertise finding and the like are not showing up as runaway successes. To be fair, there is realized benefit but given all the options in Fig 5, you would expect to see at least some categories get a “significant impact” rating, six years after Professor Andrew McAfee coined the term Enterprise 2.0 which laid the groundwork for new approaches to connect enterprises.
2. We’re still asking the wrong questions: Casting Social Business as everyones problem makes it no ones problem. There isn’t a single CEO I’ve spoken with (or that you can speak with – I bet you) who would argue that his/her organization should not be collaborative or should not be innovative. But that nebulous intention is really hard to crystalize and delegate without baselining established strategic goals as yardsticks of success when it comes to becoming collaborative or innovative. Promises made to Wall Street come in the form of revenue, earnings and predictability of forward success. Yet we’re still looking at things such as “Encourage Sharing”, “Enable Action”, “Knowledge Capture” and “Empowerment” as end value points via social business. The report does a good job of highlighting what the typical organization considers to be value drivers of “social business” but I think thats exactly the issue here. If practitioners can’t draw connectors between strategic and tactical objectives and how social networks facilitate execution, end users and executives won’t get experience the needed aha moment.
3. No Context? No Collaboration: The thing that nags me the most about this is that we have an incomplete skill set involved in defining, evangelizing and executing what “social business” (or what ever term you use), entails. No question that we need solid practitioners and community managers to tie it all together and we have some amazing folks in the community without whom all of this would be a non starter. But context points that spark collaboration in the first place lie deep inside functional units – the folks that bring revenue in, ship products, serve customers, build components, close the books. The messaging and potential sources of value presented just won’t keep these people up at night. Those getting work done need to be involved in crafting the value proposition as much as we need “social experts” in the mix so we force the topic of context at the outset and then understand how people, data and process come together.
4. Tactical Measurement:
Look, there have been changes in the public social landscape and we need to change what we measure to some degree when it comesto catering to this new social, vocal customer. But beyond that, performance metrics are in place for managers and business units and we need to support those. Figure 6.1 presents a host of tactical metrics that managers are subsumed in that the business just doesn’t care about, in and of themselves. Each of these programatic health measures need to be casted as ways to meet metrics that have been promised to the market. “More and faster collaboration across the company, frequency of use, lowering reliance on email” are hardly things you’re going to hear at your annual shareholders meeting.
This blog is precicely about the value of connecting our emplotees, customers and partners. Obviously, I’m a believer. But lets call a spade a spade if we want to get this right.
I hope this report will serve as a wake up call to many. The first innings of social in the enterprise is over. Those organizations that like to experiment have done so. Beyond those, a small number of executives who innately believe that collaboration is absolutely critical to execution have put their weight behind these programs. Industry colleague Dion Hinchcliffe has been documenting examples of both kinds. But there’s massive untapped opportunity out there to revise the value proposition for those numbers-driven businesses who will want to understand how all of this enhances what they’ve invested in for the last decade. Until then, this massive bucket of executives will treat “social business” as another Mickey Mouse program until they see how it matters to revenue increase, cost reduction and risk mitigation.
On a related note, ZDNet’s Dion Hinchcliffe and Dennis Howlett are battling it out live here. | <urn:uuid:93ce05ba-83a5-4352-8aa3-8b0285e8c996> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.enterpriseirregulars.com/46119/social-business-facts-and-fiction/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280483.83/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00300-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951734 | 1,238 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Students get the rap on anti-racism
A powerful video clip performed by a hip-hop artist, who also works at a south-western Sydney public school, has been launched by the Australian Human Rights Commission to send a strong anti-racism message to young people.
Shannon Williams aka hip-hop star, Brothablack, is an Aboriginal education officer at James Meehan High School. He wrote and performed the song for the video clip, What you say matters. The clip was produced as part of a suite of resources the commission developed to empower young people to say no to racism.
The video, filmed at the school, features students acting out racist and anti-racist vignettes performed to Williams/Brothablack's lyrics and rap-beat music.
National Children's Commissioner, Megan Mitchell, said the resources found on the What you say matters website were produced to educate young people about racism and to empower them to respond when they experienced or witnessed it.
"We hope the What you say matters clip and resources will be seen as a positive initiative aimed at preventing racism from happening in the first place and ensuring that, when it does, young people are better able to respond in a way that is safe for them and those around them," Ms Mitchell said.
She said more than 2,000 young people aged between 13 and 17 were surveyed about their experiences with racism and asked what they wanted to know about it. The data was used to build the resource.
It was found almost nine out of 10 young people surveyed had experienced racism. Almost half had experienced it at school, and one-third on the internet.
Ms Mitchell said Shannon Williams partly wrote the lyrics in response to these findings and also drew on his own experiences of growing up in Sydney as an Aboriginal man.
The artist then workshopped the video vignettes with the James Meehan High School students. The scenes acted out were based on real life experiences and issues that were important to students.
Mr Williams said the clip was "confronting" but the young people featured in the scene where Aboriginal students were picked on because they didn't look Aboriginal were "some of the bravest people I've met in the country.
"To talk about one of the hottest topics in the Aboriginal community in the country, which is falsifying the proof of your Aboriginality, all the students in that scene were Aboriginal so it was a really gutsy effort."
He said he believed the resource would be invaluable for educators to use as a tool to strike up conversations with their students about racism, particularly during the transition to high school.
“This is something that is applicable to everybody, racism happens everywhere. I know a lot of educators ... have struggles in finding ways to talk about racism. With tools like this it will ignite the conversation quite easily.”
James Meehan High’s deputy principal Peter Flew said the production raised anti-racism awareness among the students.
“Besides the video clip having an impact on the school, the students featured are real people who are going to carry the message on in the school. All the other students are going to see them as role models and that racist comments are not ok.” | <urn:uuid:fe51ce6a-c9e9-4efa-a6c4-7dfad1f9ad78> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.racismnoway.com.au/archive/initiatives/brotherblack-antiracism-video.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281424.85/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00336-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.985388 | 664 | 2.34375 | 2 |
Facts and Events
James Caruthers was one of the Early Settlers of Augusta County, Virginia
Early Land Acquisition in Augusta County, VA
James Caruther's land (Beverley Manor SE, # of acres unknown, prior to August 1773) as shown on the map meticulously drawn by J.R. Hildebrand, cartographer. This map is copyrighted©, used by permission of John Hildebrand, son of J.R. Hildebrand, April, 2009. (Note: the record of James Caruther's tract is not listed in Chalkey's, nor is it on the J.R. Hildebrand Map, but it is listed as adjoining the tract of David Caruthers (probable brother of James) in the 1773 Chalkey's record listed below).
Acquisition of Land in Augusta County:
- James Caruthers appears to have acquired land in Beverley Manor on "McCord's Draft" adjoining David Caruthers (James' probable brother) prior to August 1773. This acquisition is not listed in Chalkley's (Note that Chalkley's does not list all transactions in Augusta County records, only those for families that he had interest in), but is confirmed in David Caruthers' patent and the disposition below, clearly identifying it on "McCord's Draft" as shown on the Hildebrand Map above.
Disposition of Land from Chalkley's:
- Page 179.--17th November, 1777. James Carruthers to James Brent, tract Carithers now lives on known by name of McCord's Draft and on waters of Christian's Creek. Delivered: Daniel Ray, 15th September, 1784.
- Pg. 50 - Will of James Caruthers
- February 13, 1799
- To daughter Jane Smith "all my books" and a legacy willed to her mother by her grandfather.
- Richard Smith, Executor.
- Teste: John Bleakley, John McCall, Jane McCall.
- February Sessions, 1800.
- [Source: "Tennessee Soldiers in the Revolution", by Penelope Johnson Allen, pg. 49].
- (Note: Richard Smith was the son-in-law of James Caruthers, he married James' daughter Jane, named in his will).
Family of James Caruthers
Note: there are few records available to reconstruct the family of James Caruthers. The daughter listed is a probable (but not proven) child of James, based upon some circumstantial records. More research is necessary on this family.
Records of James Caruthers in Augusta County, VA
From Chalkley’s Augusta County Records:
- Page 107.--18th August, 1773. Beverley to David Karethers, corner James Karithers. (Note: David Caruther is a probable, but not proven brother of James).
- Vol. 2 - Insolvents and Delinquents, 1783: James Carithers, gone to Pennsylvania. (Note: possibly this James Caruthers). | <urn:uuid:9537496d-7796-40f7-a92b-d01910716b86> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.werelate.org/wiki/Person:James_Caruthers_(2) | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280835.60/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00474-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.917864 | 646 | 2.03125 | 2 |
“It’s the end of the world as we know it (and I feel fine)” ~R.E.M.
“NASA-funded study: industrial civilization headed for ‘irreversible collapse’?” asked a March 14 article by Nafeez Ahmed on The Guardian’s web site. Such headlines always catch my eye; I’ve been an avid reader of the history of the end of the world since the 1970s classic The Limits to Growth. More recently, there’s been Jared Diamond’s Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, and multiple updates to The Limits to Growth, including Jorgen Randers’ 2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years, which I covered in a previous blog post.
Readers of collapse literature tend to fall into one of two camps. My own sustainability mentor—himself a member of the Club of Rome, which produced the original Limits to Growth—calls these folks “Pollyanas” and “Cassandras.” Pollyanas are the rose-colored-glasses-folks, named after the eternally-optimistic character of literary fame. Pollyanas poo-poo any notion of limits to growth, let alone global collapse due to exceeding such limits. Cassandras, on the other hand, are named for the legendary tragic Greek prophetess whose prophecies were doomed never to be believed. These are the doom-and-gloom folks who, like their namesake, seem cursed never to be believed by government leaders. (What government leader is going to get elected on an “anti-growth” platform these days?)
As I ask my students in my Intro to Sustainability Massive Open Online Course (MOOC): Do you consider yourself a Pollyana or a Cassandra on the question of our ecological future? Is human society—or even the whole biosphere—doomed to collapse from our actions?
Or is there a middle-of-the-road opinion? Where does the “realist” fit on this ideological spectrum? This is an important question for, as Anaïs Nin famously stated, “We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are.”
Won’t you share your opinion with us in the comments section to this blog?
Kyle Crider is Program Chair at Ecotech Institute and Education Corporation of America. He holds a Master of Public Administration degree with a double-emphasis in Urban Planning & Policy Analysis. He is also a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Accredited Professional, Neighborhood Development (LEED AP ND). He is currently in the Interdisciplinary Engineering Ph.D. Program at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. The opinions expressed in this blog are those of the author and not necessarily those of Ecotech Institute or Education Corporation of America. Email Kyle at firstname.lastname@example.org | <urn:uuid:fd0d2c9d-9ac9-44f6-8d11-6ede23a596c9> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | https://www.ecotechinstitute.com/ecotech-news/it-s-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988719136.58/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183839-00467-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930215 | 623 | 2.03125 | 2 |
A surprise move by the Bank of England, the US Federal Reserve and three other central banks to inject cash into money markets has had an immediate effect.
The rate at which banks lend to each other fell to 6.514% from 6.627%.
There have been fears that if the rate, known as the London Interbank Offered Rate or Libor, remained high then this could lead to slower economic growth.
However, some analysts warned that the decline was not significant and may not point to a long-term change in rates.
"The coordinated announcement by five of the world's leading central banks of plans to inject liquidity into the money markets has, so far at least, had little impact on interbank interest rates," Capital Economics said.
"While interbank rates may fall further when the auctions for the extra liquidity actually take place, this will do little to resolve the underlying weakness of the UK economy," they continued.
Banks have become nervous about lending money because of heavy losses linked to problems in the US mortgage market, and have increased the Libor rate as a result.
In order to ease concerns about banking sector losses and add liquidity to money markets, five central banks said on Wednesday that they would make $110bn (£54bn) available in loans.
As well as the Bank of England and the US Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank and the national banks of Canada and Switzerland are also involved.
Analysts said that the promise of extra cash was needed because the interbank rate had remained stubbornly highly despite an interest rate cut in the UK.
Many had expected the interbank rate to dip after the Bank of England trimmed its main borrowing cost last week by a quarter of a percentage point to 5.5%.
However, that did not happen and with banks still having to pay more when borrowing from each other, it was only a matter of time before consumers would also have to dig deeper to finance loans and mortgages, analysts said.
UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown welcomed the move by the central banks, telling the Times newspaper in an interview that it was "the co-operative effort I've wanted to see for some time".
The rate at which sterling is lent over three months was not the only one to be lowered. The three month dollar rate fell to 4.99% from 5.0575%, while the rate for euros dropped to 4.9494% from 4.9525%.
Despite the central banks' best efforts, many analysts were unconvinced that the massive cash injection would help stave off an expected economic slowdown next year.
The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development has forecast that UK economic growth will slow to 2% in 2008 from 3.1% in 2007, largely because of a weaker housing market.
It also predicts that US growth will slow at the start of next year.
The US has already cut interest rates in an effort to boost growth, and most recently trimmed its main borrowing cost to 4.25% from 4.5% this week.
And while some analysts had expected the interbank rates to come down quickly, others have warned that it will take more time before lenders are confident enough to increase the amount of risk they are willing to take.
Financial institutions have been hoarding money to cover their potential losses, say bank analysts.
"Worries about liquidity at year end can become self-fulfilling," said Leigh Goodwin, bank analyst at Fox-Pitt Kelton.
Banks' fears are especially heightened this year because they "think it will be tight, so they are cautious and less inclined to lend", the analyst added.
US shares dropped slightly in early trade on Thursday after wholesale prices increased by 3.2% in November, the biggest rise in 34 years, fuelling wider inflation concerns. | <urn:uuid:5541469f-c32a-4098-876e-21988ef9481e> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7142021.stm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280825.87/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00201-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975212 | 775 | 2.25 | 2 |
A thermometer is an instrument used to gauge temperature of different bodies. Scientists have defined temperature as the degree of the hotness or coldness of any given body. Heat energy always moves from one body to another (from hotter one to colder one) and the fluctuations in the temperature of bodies is quite a natural phenomenon. To know how frequently and to what extent these fluctuations are taking place, people use thermometers.
However, it is important to know that unlike computers and other electronic products, thermometers have not taken birth in 19th century. In fact, the water thermometers had their foundations laid in late 1550’s. On record, it is the name of Galileo who is said to have first formulated the shape of something we call water thermometer. At that time, the water thermometer was called as thermos cope. Galileo is called the water thermometer inventor because it was from his theories that the foundations of the modern thermometers were laid.
Galileo’s thermometer was capable of indicating major fluctuations in the temperature of the given body. However, it was not a precise instrument since it was not made to nullify the effects of pressure on temperature readings. Soon after Galileo, there came Santorio. He was also an Italian scientist who carried the theory of buoyancy from Galileo and conducted more studies on improving the thermoscope that had been put forth by Galileo.
The structure of the water thermometer, at that time, was pretty interesting. It consisted of a container that had water and a few bulbs in it. With change in temperature, there was a natural change in the density of water and resultant, some of those bulbs in the container would rise and some would sink. The level of the lowest bulb, as per rule, used to indicate the temperature. Santorio’s work brought a lot of fame to him since his thermometer was considered the improved model and was adopted by medical practitioners for treating patients.
However, it is interesting to know that both the models of the primitive thermometers (Galileo and Santorio) were not accurate and the results they showed had considerable degree of flaw in them. However, research continued on this subject un till in 1654, a scientist names Grand Duke first used alcohol in place of water and put forth a thermometer with better and reliable results. However, those results were only comparatively reliable but in actual, they had flaws as well.
A basal thermometer is more sensitive to temperature changes than normal clinical thermometer. They can measure even the slight change in body temperature and are accurate to about 0.1 C. Basal thermometers are used for charting basal body temperature of woman who wants to know the best chance for getting pregnant. If you are looking to purchase a basal thermometer to chart your BBT, then go for the best basal thermometer in UK. Not all thermometers give accurate reading and hence the result may not be accurate.
Forehead Thermometers for Babies
Forehead thermometers are also known as temporal thermometer as it takes temperature reading by swiping the thermometer along the forehead. This thermometer is very useful in taking temperature of small babies who usually don’t feel comfortable when using thermometer either orally or rectally. Most forehead thermometer have digital display and give fast and precise temperature reading. You may check out some good forehead thermometers for babies here.
With these humble beginnings, the process of formulation of thermometer evolved. It is sometimes said that there is no single inventor of thermometer since there have been many men involved in the development of thermometer. It took years to come up with the shape and working principle of the present form of thermometer. Today, there are tens of different models and brands of thermometers. But considering that the very foundations were laid by Galileo and that he was the person who first introduced such an idea based on physical principles, he is sometimes called the water thermometer inventor.
How To Take Correct Temperature Reading
Digital thermometers can be used to take someone’s temperature from either their armpit or their mouth. The manufacturer of the temperature device you use, such as an ear or forehead thermometer, provides information on how to use it. In this age range you can use a digital thermometer to take a rectal or an armpit temperature or you can use a temporal artery thermometer. Glass thermometers with alcohol inside may also be used for oral temperatures. However, for children under the age of five, their temperature should be taken from their armpit, because they may bite the thermometer if it is placed in their mouth.
Be sure to read and follow the instructions to obtain an accurate temperature. However, wait until your baby is at least 6 months old to use a digital ear thermometer. This thermometer is a thin glass tube with a red or blue line inside it. A child’s temperature can be taken under the armpit, in the mouth, in the ear, or in the bum. The information may also include how the results of the device correlate with the results from other methods of taking a temperature.
If you use another type of thermometer to take a young child’s temperature and you’re in doubt about the results, take a rectal temperature. These thermometers are safe to use for people over the age of 5. Take your child’s temperature whichever way you are comfortable with, as long as it is appropriate for their age. The right method depends on your child’s age. Clean the end of the thermometer with rubbing alcohol or soap and water.
A child younger than 5 may bite the thermometer, breaking it in their mouth. For more advice and detailed instructions on how to take your child’s temperature, speak to your health care provider. And it’s important that the measurement is accurate. Rinse it with cool water. Glass thermometers with galinstan (GAL-in-stan) may also be used to check an oral temperature.
For instance, taking a rectal temperature is the best way to get an exact reading for children under 2 years of age. Do not rinse it with hot water. Galinstan thermometers have a silver-colored line, but will be marked “mercury-free” when you buy one. But most children don’t like to have their temperature taken this way. Put a small amount of lubricant, such as petroleum jelly, on the end.
Alcohol-filled and galinstan glass thermometers are harder to find in regular grocery stores. Although taking a temperature under the armpit isn’t as precise, it will let you know whether your child has a fever. Place your child belly down across your lap or on a firm surface. Using a thermometer to check your temperature can help you manage an illness. If so, you can then take a rectal temperature for the exact reading.
Hold him by placing your palm against his lower back, just above his bottom. A rise in your temperature is usually caused by an infection. Or place your child face up and bend his legs to his chest. When using any kind of thermometer, make sure you read and follow the instructions that come with the thermometer. Rest your free hand against the back of the thighs. | <urn:uuid:56173950-1180-489b-86e0-7b430b8bc882> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://www.damselflyboutique.co.uk/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988718957.31/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183838-00436-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966734 | 1,503 | 3.671875 | 4 |
Congress Kicks The Can Down The Road
November 4, 2013
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The can, which includes the federal government’s bills and budget, has been officially kicked down the road. In the early hours of Thursday, Oct. 17, President Barack Obama signed a bill that ended the 16-day partial government shutdown and raised the debt ceiling shortly after Congress finally agreed to pass it, which brought an end to days of bitter, and frankly embarrassing, political fighting among lawmakers down the road in Washington, D.C. The end of the shutdown and debt ceiling crisis allowed the innocent victims and political pawns of this fight — federal employees who were unable to work after being deemed non-essential or furloughed — to return to their jobs. The shutdown began on Oct. 1, in large part due to the unwavering desire of a select group of Republicans to defund the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, at all costs. However, this man-made crisis, which plagued our country for much of the month of October, is far from being resolved completely, and in just a few months we may be facing it once again.
The bill that was passed into law and signed by the president on Oct. 17 can be characterized, at best, as a temporary bandage. It doesn’t provide any permanent solutions, nonetheless address any pressing and complex issues that divide lawmakers such as a long-term budget, entitlements or tax reform. The bill only authorizes for current spending levels to continue through Jan. 15, 2014 and the debt ceiling, which allows the government to pay its bills and obligations, to be raised through Feb. 7, 2014. Simply put, if our lawmakers in Washington do not negotiate a budget and a solution to the debt ceiling by then, the federal government will possibly close and be unable to make payments on money it owes. After the deal was reached earlier this month, President Obama held a briefing and stated that politicians need to “get out of the habit of governing by crisis” and “hopefully, next time, it will not be in the eleventh hour.” As he walked off the podium in the White House Briefing Room, a reporter asked if there would be a similar crisis in a few months and the president simply responded, “No.”
I find that quite hard to believe based on the recent actions of Congress. Possibly and hopefully, lawmakers will reach a more permanent agreement on a bill that provides a budget and a solution to the debt ceiling before time runs out in early 2014. However, a couple months are not going to heal the deep divisions between Republicans and Democrats. The Republicans received much of the blame for the most recent crisis, but I would argue both sides have a lot to prove. They have continuously talked past each other and staged nothing but political theater to get their way. In the meantime, all Americans are affected in countless ways due to the childish behavior, and some even face the possibility of being unable to work. This dysfunction among our lawmakers has left the greatest country on Earth looking like anything but that to the rest of the world. The disagreement in Washington is utterly embarrassing, and as a result, our influence over nations will continue to decline. How can we portray American values and instruct others on what to do if our lawmakers are unable to even fund the government and pay our bills?
It is critical that President Obama becomes more involved and more active in preventing another government shutdown and debt ceiling crisis in early 2014. He must become a leading voice in promoting unity among the parties, and it is important that he play a prominent role in negotiating not on behalf of Democrats, but on the behalf of every American. The 16-day crisis in October frightened investors, heightened interest rates, put thousands out of work and cost the American economy $24 billion, according to Standard & Poor’s. However, if it happens again and no agreement materializes, the outcome will be much worse. | <urn:uuid:b9f52590-863c-46c1-84aa-5bfd577f8086> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://supicket.com/commentary/2013/11/04/congress-debt-ceiling/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279368.44/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00319-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971772 | 829 | 1.523438 | 2 |
In this newsletter, I would like to discuss lasers, not from a technical point of view, but strictly from a clinical perspective.
Lasers in dentistry today are used both to remove tooth structure and to treat periodontal disease. I use two types of lasers, one “hot” and one “cold”.
The hot laser is used for minor surgical procedures such as removing a fibroma in the lip or for removing excess gingival (gum) tissue. I also use it to remove gingival tissue when preparing teeth for crowns in order to get a perfect impression. If you pull your lips outward, and look in a mirror, you will see the frenum – the taut tissue between your cheek and gum tissue in the area of your front and side teeth. Often the pull of this tissue will cause gum recession. Surgically correcting this problem used to involve at lot of post-operative pain. With the laser there is virtually no pain. Soft tissue procedures using the laser can often be done with only topical anesthetic.
I can also use the laser to clean out periodontal pockets. When treated with the laser in a series of visits, the pocket will often resolve, with new bone being formed.
Because the laser seals nerve endings and blood vessels, post-op pain and bleeding is minimal. This is why it is also helpful in diminishing the pain of herpetic ulcers. An additional advantage over the traditional scalpel is that sutures are not needed.
I use the cold laser on the roots of sensitive teeth, over the temporomandibular joint, after surgery on sinus and lymph points, and essentially anywhere inflammation is a problem or where I want to aid healing.
Cold lasers promote healing because they increase collagen production, increase vasodilation, increase cell metabolism, reduce edema, and increase tissue and bone repair.
The cold laser I use is a low powered one, in the milliwatt range. My son, Dr. Adam Breiner, has a more powerful 7 watt cold laser. It is FDA cleared. I have seen his laser give remarkable results. A patient had a severely sprained ankle and was worried that she would not be able to take her grandchild on a trip to Disneyworld 4 days later. After two laser treatments, she was fine and able to do all the walking her Disney trip required. Another patient had a bursa on the elbow the size of a golf ball. Laser treatment healed this in a short time. Patients with arthritis are amazed at the relief they feel. A friend of ours was scheduled for carpel tunnel surgery. She used the laser a few times and cancelled the surgery. Over the last two and one half years she has remained pain free with just a few “tune-ups”.
With the use of ozone, homeopathics, lasers and hyperbaric oxygen therapy, surgery for cavitations will probably be necessary in a very small percentage of cases.
Below are just some of the conditions that studies around the world have shown to be helped by laser treatment:
Diabetic ulcers and neuropathy
Soft tissue wounds in general
I think you can see why I am so excited about lasers. I believe that lasers are going to be a big part of medicine and dentistry in the future.
[For the health care practitioners interested in the high power laser, call or mail me and I can give you the contact information of the company.] | <urn:uuid:a3d5d426-cece-48cd-9a8c-4c3de5a0120a> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://wholebodymed.com/newsletters/look-hot-and-cold-lasers-clinical-perspective/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570692.22/warc/CC-MAIN-20220807181008-20220807211008-00667.warc.gz | en | 0.947007 | 747 | 2.171875 | 2 |
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Now incorporating faster vRAM the Gigabyte GeForce GT 740 Graphics Card features 384 CUDA cores running at 1072 MHz coupled to 1GB of 5000 MHz GDDR5 vRAM with a 128-bit interface. This half length card can be used to upgrade from your PC's integrated graphics, so you can drive 4K displays for streaming media or even do some light gaming.
The output board of this card features 2 DVI ports, an HDMI port, and a VGA port. The DVI and HDMI ports can connect to digital displays while the VGA port can be used to connect older analog displays. The HDMI output can be used for displays with resolutions up to 4096 x 2160 to show UHD and cinema 4K content.
This card is cooled with a large active fansink which uses a single fan to force cool air through the heatsink and away from the graphics card, quietly dissipating heat from the chipset. This configuration works best in cases with unrestricted airflow.
NVIDIA's parallel computing platform which enables an increase in computing performance by harnessing the parallel nature of GPU processing. CUDA compatible applications can assign intensive parallel computing tasks, such as real-time video rendering, to the GPU to process, freeing up the computer's CPU to run other tasks.
3D Vision Support
When used with a 3D Vision compatible monitor and 3D Vision active-shutter glasses, full-HD resolution images are delivered to each eye. Additionally, with a 3D LightBoost compatible screen, image brightness will be maintained while using the glasses and ghosting will be reduced.
NVIDIA's hardware accelerated physics engine computes how objects move in space in real time. Having a physics engine precludes the need for programs to pre-animate rendered objects which can give an unrealistic "canned animation" feel. The PhysX engine also allows for designers to create more detailed objects, relying on the GPU's processing power rather than a bloated programming back end.
Temporal Anti-Aliasing is designed specifically to reduce temporal aliasing (crawling and flickering seen in motion when playing games). This technology is a mix of a temporal filter, hardware anti-aliasing, and custom computer generated film-style anti-aliasing resolves.
NVIDIA's Adaptive Vertical Sync minimizes stuttering and tearing by monitoring and adjusting the card's frame rate output. At high frame rates, Adaptive V-Sync is enabled to slow down the output frame rate to prevent tearing as a result of losing sync with your monitor. At lower frame rates, Adaptive V-Sync will automatically be disabled to minimize stuttering.
NVIDIA's Dynamic Super Resolution is a scaling utility introduced with their Maxwell architecture. DSR uses the GPU architecture in order to take advantage of 4K capabilities with lower screen resolutions by having the graphics card render at 4K and then intelligently down-sample the output to fit the smaller screen. Aliasing and jagged artifacts are reduced by having a high-quality filter applied before the image is scaled down. | <urn:uuid:024374fa-720a-4f8d-a775-21949da18fb6> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1129331-REG/gigabyte_ultra_durable_2_gv_n740d5oc_1gi.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281226.52/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00378-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.887576 | 673 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Particle physics research in the United States is a distributed effort involving researchers across the country. In 2013, more than 150 universities and laboratories in 43 states (plus Washington DC and Puerto Rico) received funding from the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation to explore the nature of matter, energy, space and time.
DOE’s national laboratories serve as hubs of innovation, places where scientists and engineers from around the country—and from around the globe—come together to develop technologies and tools, build unique instruments and machines, and run complex experiments.
Together with scientists and students from universities across the country and around the world, this web of researchers is revolutionizing our view of the universe, making significant advances in how we understand, predict and ultimately control matter and energy while training the next generation of scientists. They create tools and applications that help other fields of science and improve the nation's health, wealth and security.
A poster highlighting US universities and laboratories engaged in particle physics is available here. In addition, a larger version of the illustration at the top of this page is available in symmetry's image bank. | <urn:uuid:55d81e08-d342-4459-8c7c-9e8299adb171> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/march-2014/deconstruction-particle-physics-in-the-united-states | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280310.48/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00182-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.923881 | 225 | 3.0625 | 3 |
|Publication number||US4284081 A|
|Application number||US 06/016,350|
|Publication date||Aug 18, 1981|
|Filing date||Mar 1, 1979|
|Priority date||Dec 29, 1976|
|Publication number||016350, 06016350, US 4284081 A, US 4284081A, US-A-4284081, US4284081 A, US4284081A|
|Inventors||Richard F. Kasper, Joseph R. Carvalko|
|Original Assignee||Kasper Richard F, Carvalko Joseph R|
|Export Citation||BiBTeX, EndNote, RefMan|
|Patent Citations (6), Referenced by (47), Classifications (11)|
|External Links: USPTO, USPTO Assignment, Espacenet|
This is a continuation of application Ser. No. 755,259 filed Dec. 29, 1976, now U.S. Pat. No. 4,148,319, issued Apr. 10, 1979.
1. Field of the Invention
It is well recognized in the field of Urology that persons lose control of their urinary function. This loss of control may be temporary or permanent, depending upon the cause of the loss of urinary function. Temporary loss may be caused by a disease entity which is curable by medical or surgical treatment, whereas permanent loss of control may be caused by an incurable disease entity or physical trauma resulting in partial or total paralysis of the muscles which cause normal urination. The bladder is a dome shaped container with muscular walls and which accepts urine from the kidneys for temporary storage. During normal voluntary urination, the muscles in the bladder wall contract and simultaneously the sphincter muscle surrounding the opening in the bladder which communicates with the urethra relaxes so that the urine stored in the bladder is released into the urethra and expelled from the body.
The causes for loss of normal voluntary control of the urination process are manifold and the consequences are indeed severe. If urine cannot be periodically expelled from the bladder, the urine becomes stagnant and bacteria multiply at an exceedingly rapid rate, resulting in infection of the bladder. Chemical changes in the urine due to the infection cause painful urination and can also cause general dibilitation of health. If, after infection occurs, the urine retention is still permitted to continue for any considerable length of time beyond normal voluntary urination frequency, ascending infection can occur, that is the infection in the bladder spreads to the ureters and to the kidneys, thereby causing still more serious consequences, such as failure of one or both of the kidneys to function. If the kidneys do not function to cleanse the blood of impurities and form urine, uremia results and death occurs in the absence of the availability of recently developed artificial kidney machines. If, on the other hand, the kidneys continue to function and fill the non-draining bladder with urine, the bladder can burst, thereby emptying the bacteria laden urine into the abdominal cavity. The usual result of this is peritonitis, which is an inflammation of the peritoneum, the membrane that lines the abdominal cavity, and the results of inflammation of this membrane are always serious. The time between the occurrence of acute peritonitis and death may be only a matter of a few hours to a few days depending upon the severity of the infection. Septicemia, an infection of the blood, is another serious consequence of excessive retention of urine in the bladder, since the bacteria in the bladder, ureters and kidneys invades the blood through the minute blood capillaries in these organs.
Obviously other complications, bodily disorders and disfunctions and serious consequences, too numerous to mention herein, can result from failure of proper urination. It is obvious that constant periodic drainage of the bladder to eliminate urine and other body waste material is essential not only to good health but to maintaining life itself.
Techniques of treatment for loss of normal voluntary control of the urination process are relatively few in number. Depending on the nature of the cause, a super-pubic technique involving surgery may eliminate the drainage problem in some circumstances. Since surgery is involved, this treatment is traumatic and severe, and is utilized only when absolutely necessary. Drug therapy is effective in some cases to promote drainage of the bladder, but due to the relatively few causes of loss of voluntary control which will respond to drugs and the ever presence of undesirable side effects, drug therapy is considered to be a relatively ineffective method of dealing with the problem.
2. Necessity for Practice of Invention
Since the loss of voluntary control over the urinary function is typically a secondary effect caused either by disease or trauma, it has become a well established medical practice to relieve the urinary drainage problem mechanically by means of the process of catheterization. If the primary cause of the loss of voluntary urination control is from a curable disease, the catheterization process is maintained on a temporary basis only for so long as necessary until voluntary control returns. If the cause of loss of control is permanent, as in the case of paralysis such as with paraplegics and quadriplegics, the catheterization process must be maintained on a permanent basis in order to maintain life.
In the catheterization process, a tube or catheter is inserted into and through the urethra until the remote or distal end is located within the bladder, usually being disposed just past the sphincter muscle at the juncture of the bladder with the urethra. The near or proximal end of the tube remains outside of the body and there is thus provided a path or channel through which urine in the bladder can drain as the need arises. Once a catheter has been passed through the urethra and inserted into the bladder, it is generally necessary, in connection with the disease and trauma conditions described above, to have the catheter retained in the urinary tract with the distal end of the catheter in the bladder, such retention being in the order of several days to several weeks without removal. Catheters which are designed for use a function are called urinary retention catheters and are typically provided by including an inflatable balloon at the distal end of the catheter which is deflated during insertion of the catheter and which is inflated by passing a fluid, typically water or saline solution through a passage within the catheter, called an inflation lumen. Thereafter, fluid from the bladder drains through the main passage of the catheter, called the drainage lumen.
3. Problems of Catheterization
Inserting a catheter into the urethra can be a painful and traumatic experience, the degree of pain and trauma depending on the construction of the catheter being inserted, the technique for inserting it, and the experience and the skill of the person performing the insertion whether that person is the doctor or other individual. Since the designers of catheters have no control over the last named characteristic, the present invention has been developed with the first two characteristics principally in mind, but also with consideration for the fact that the catheter may on many occasions be inserted by other individuals who would not be as skilled as the doctor. The reason for possible pain and trauma is that the urethra, whether male or female, is a relatively tortuous tube of varying cross-sectional dimensions and is normally collapsed along most of its length. The upper portion of the urethra is provided with sphincters or valves which it enters the bladder neck. The female urethra is somewhat shorter and straighter than the male urethra but otherwise both are much the same. The urethra is a very delicate organ and cannot withstand any appreciable amount of lateral pressure against the urethral wall without causing some degree of rupture. Since the urethra has a high concentration of pain sensing nerve endings, any distortion, whether of change in size or shape, is very uncomfortable at the least and usually painful, and any trauma to the urethra is accompanied by a great deal of pain. It is not uncommon for the patient to have to be anesthetized in order to insert many common urinary catheters. In addition to the pain, bacteria in the urethra can enter the blood stream if the urethra is traumatized, with the same result discussed above in connection with rupture of the bladder.
Extensive research and development have been carried out over a long period of time in the design of catheters, and a large number of different catheter designs appear in the medical and patent literature. The reason for this is that design characteristics for urinary drainage catheters are highly conflicting from the standpoints of patient discomfort and functionalism. In order to reduce the probability of trauma and resulting pain to the urethra as well as discomfort to the patient during long periods of retention, a urinary drainage catheter should be as thin as possible, highly flexible and pliant, and have a soft rounded end. From the functional standpoint, on the other hand, the catheter must be of sufficiently thick and rigid construction that it will not buckle while being passed through the urethra, it should have as wide a drainage opening and lumen as possible to promote complete drainage and prevent clogging, and the end should be free and unobstructed in order to facilitate the use of the catheter as an aid to the insertion of diagnostic and treatment instrumentation into the bladder. Of great importance is the fact that a retention catheter must have an effective means for retaining the catheter in place in the bladder which will not obstruct either the flow of urine or substantially the complete drainage of urine therefrom, but at the same time has sufficient retaining capability that a patient, particularly a senile patient, cannot forcibly pull the catheter out of the bladder and into the urethra thereby causing extreme damage thereto. Further, any urinary drainage catheter must be formed of a material totally inert to the effects of urine and other waste materials, be capable of absolute sterilization, and be manufacturable to strict tolerances, in high volume and at low cost considering the disposable nature of the product. Still other criteria may be apparent to those skilled in the art.
4. The Prior Art
In view of the foregoing diverse criteria, the basic design of commercially available retention catheters has changed very little over the past half century, and the well known Foley retention catheter is almost universally used by doctors, hospitals, nursing homes, etc. to alleviate loss of voluntary bladder control U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,892,458; 2,936,761; 3,292,627 and 3,394,705 are mentioned as illustrating typical prior art catheters which are usually formed of relatively thick walled construction so as to be insertable without buckling, have a rounded solid tip to prevent trauma to the delicate lining of the urethra, and have side openings adjacent the tip to communicate the interior of the bladder with the drainage lumen. The prior art catheters also have an inflatable balloon portion beyond the drainage opening in order to retain the catheter in place. These catheters, and many more like them, are undesirable from the standpoint that considerable pain may be experienced in introducing a relatively wide, semi-rigid catheter into a relatively narrow urethra. Further, the small side openings can easily clog from clots of sediment material which collects in the bottom of the bladder. Still further, as a result of the solid tip, it is impossible to pass diagnostic or treatment instrumentation through the catheter for the purpose of inspecting or treating the interior of the bladder. The capability of inserting instrumentation through the catheter after it is in place is very important in the urological practice since prior treatment involves the use of anesthesia in order to insert steel tube instrumentation as has been the practice.
In U.S. Pat. No. 2,677,375, recognition was given to the desirability of removing the fixed rounded tip so as to provide a drainage opening adjacent the inflatable retention balloon. Strips are provided across the opening for engagement by an inserting stylet. This construction is disadvantageous in that the strips are likely to obstruct the passage of sediment clots and thus clog the drainage opening, and even more harmful is the fact that the insertion of such a blunt end as is apparent in this device is almost certain to cause considerable trauma to the delicate wall of the urethra. It is also apparent that it would be at least difficult, if not impossible, to pass instrumentation through this catheter in view of the strips across the open end. Such a device would be wholly unacceptable to the urological practitioner.
A significant aspect of the present invention is the provision of an improved stylet which is utilized both during insertion of the catheter through the urethral passage and thereafter as a cleaning implement. U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,118,631; 2,164,926 and 2,856,934 are cited as representative of prior art stylets which are utilized solely to assist in inserting the catheter, the first two being of the typical push rod type and the third being of the filiform type. Although the use of a stylet to insert the catheter obviates the problem of bucking of the catheter during insertion and thereby permits the catheter to have a relatively thin wall construction, the push rod type used in conjunction with a closed end catheter is undesirable from the standpoint that there is no way of accurately ascertaining when the end of the catheter enters the bladder because the stylet blocks the drainage opening or the drainage lumen or both. The filiform device is undesirable because of the possibility of injuring the delicate wall of the urethral passage during the insertion of the filiform unless great care is exercised because of the fact that the filiform is of necessity very thin and therefore must be relatively rigid and sharp nosed. Other disadvantages of this technique for inserting drainage catheters will be apparent to those skilled in the art.
Another significant improvement of the present invention is the novel construction of the inflatable retention balloon to cause the open end of the catheter to expand and widen, which assists in drainage and in retention. Some consideration has been given to this problem as evidenced by U.S. Pat. No. 2,892,458 mentioned above, as well as by U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,438,375 and 3,889,686. In the first patent, the balloon is constructed to be less inflatable adjacent the lateral drainage opening through the catheter wall so that the balloon cannot overlie and block the opening if the catheter tends to settle in the bladder or is pulled by the patient. In U.S. Pat. No. 3,438,375, the opposite theory is applied and the balloon is constructed to purposely overlie the lateral drainage but be spaced therefrom so that the delicate lining of the bladder cannot be drawn into the opening by sub-atmospheric pressure. In U.S. Pat. No. 3,889,686, a lateral opening is provided below the balloon as well as above so as to promote better drainage. All of these techniques have inherent disadvantages in that they present design problems which are difficult to overcome in manufacturing the catheter, they are not nearly as effective in practice as eliminating the lateral drainage opening altogether so that the inflation balloon presents no interference problem whatever, and they cannot function to allow movement of a stylet to indicate when the balloon is inflated because the rounded tip closes the longitudinal end of the drainage lumen.
The present invention substantially obviates if not completely eliminates many of the disadvantages of prior art and commercially available urinary retention catheters and also provides advantages and desirable features not heretofore obtainable with such catheters.
The principles of the present invention are embodied in a novel urinary drainage catheter, a novel stylet for use with the catheter and in a novel cooperation in the combination of the catheter and the stylet together.
In general, the catheter comprises an elongate cannula formed preferably although not necessarily of a plurality of layers of flexible and pliant materials, the inner and outer layers being of relatively soft latex rubber and an intermediate layer being of relatively thinner but stronger silicone rubber. The cannula has both distal and proximal ends, the length of the cannula being such that the distal end is disposed within the bladder and the proximal end is disposed exteriorly of the urethra when the catheter is in operative position in the body. The cannula has an inner tubular wall surface defining a drainage lumen which extends from the distal end substantially to the proximal end. The distal end is open and unobstructed so as to communicate the interior of the bladder directly with the full cross-sectional area of the drainage lumen. There is means on the inner tubular wall adjacent the distal end which defines a portion of the drainage lumen of slightly different diameter than the diameter of the rest of the drainage lumen, which means forms an abutment for the stylet used to insert the catheter. The catheter also includes an expandable means preferably in the form of an inflatable balloon connected to the inner and outer layers of the cannula adjacent the distal end for retaining the distal end in the bladder and for expanding the distal end of the cannula so as to widen the opening and to dispose the end of the cannula lower in the bladder than it is with the balloon uninflated. In one embodiment, the abutment forming means forms a hinge about which the distal end expands and the abutment means distorts to a shape which allows the stylet to pass beyond the abutment means and move freely back and forth for at least a limited distance, thereby providing an indication that the balloon has inflated.
The stylet comprises generally an elongate flexible body member of substantially uniform diameter throughout a major portion of its length. Adjacent one end of the body member is means defining a portion of different diameter than the diameter of the body member and defining an abutment surface adapted to engage with the abutment means disposed in the cannula when the stylet is inserted therein. The stylet is provided with a tapered tip element on the end adjacent the abutment surface, the tip element having a relatively smooth rounded end. The tip element is removably connected to the end of the body member so that it can be removed from the body member after the stylet is withdrawn from the catheter, and a brush element is provided which is connectable to the body member for cleaning the catheter. Both the body member and the tip element have a central bore of relatively small diameter so that the flow of urine therethrough affords a positive indication that the distal end of the catheter has entered the bladder.
Having briefly described the general nature of the present invention, a principal object thereof is to provide a retention drainage catheter and stylet for use therewith which avoids the disadvantages of prior art constructions and provides advantages not heretofore attainable in devices of this nature.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a retention drainage catheter and stylet for use therewith which avoids to the fullest possible extent any likelihood of injury to the urethra during insertion of the catheter.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a retention drainage catheter and stylet for use therewith which is designed to render insertion relatively simple and with a minimum of discomfort so that the insertion process can be carried out without the need for anesthesia.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a retention drainage catheter and stylet for use therewith in which the catheter and stylet have a cooperating abutment relationship by which the stylet is used to insert the catheter into the bladder and which does not interfere with the free flow of urine or other waste materials through the catheter.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a retention drainage catheter and a stylet for use therewith in which the entire full width portion of the catheter is pulled through the urethra rather than a portion thereof being pushed therethrough.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a retention drainage catheter which is constructed to provide the widest possible drainage opening from the bladder directly into the drainage lumen of the catheter in order to minimize if not altogether prevent clogging of the drainage opening due to sediment material collecting in the bladder.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a retention drainage catheter through which various types of instrumentation may be passed into the bladder for performing diagnostic or treatment techniques therein.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a retention drainage catheter having a novel inflatable retention balloon construction which causes the distal end of the catheter to expand to provide a still wider drainage opening which lies lower in the bladder than with conventional retention catheters.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a retention drainage catheter in which expansion of the distal end of the drainage lumen is accomplished in a manner which allows at least limited free movement of the stylet to provide an indication that the balloon has properly inflated.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a stylet for use with a retention drainage catheter which provides a positive indication of when the end of the catheter has passed from the urethra into the bladder by permitting a limited flow of urine through the stylet.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a stylet for use with a retention drainage catheter in which the stylet is used as a cleaning implement for the catheter after the stylet is removed from the catheter and a brush element is substituted for a rounded tip element used during insertion of the catheter.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a retention drainage catheter and stylet for use therewith which is impervious to the effects of urine, is susceptible to complete sterilization and can be easily and inexpensively manufactured in large quantities.
These and other objects and advantages of the present invention will be more readily apparent from an understanding of the following detailed description of several preferred embodiments of the invention when considered in conjunction with the accompanying drawings in which:
FIG. 1 is a longitudinal sectional view of a retention drainage catheter and stylet for use therewith embodying, in one form, the principles of the invention;
FIG. 2 is an enlarged cross-sectional view taken on the line 2--2 of FIG. 1;
FIG. 3 is an enlarged cross-sectional view taken on the line 3--3 of FIG. 1;
FIG. 4 is an enlarged fragmentary view of the distal end of the catheter shown in FIG. 1 showing a modified form of abutment means between the catheter and the stylet;
FIG. 5 is an enlarged fragmentary view similar to FIG. 4 showing a further modified form of abutment means between the catheter and the stylet;
FIG. 6 is an enlarged fragmentary view similar to FIG. 4 showing a still further modified form of abutment means between the catheter and the stylet;
FIG. 7 is an enlarged fragmentary view of the embodiment of FIG. 1 showing the retention balloon in its inflated condition;
FIG. 8 is an enlarged fragmentary view similar to FIG. 7 of the embodiment shown in FIG. 6; and
FIG. 9 is a view of a suitable brush cleaning element for use with the stylet.
Referring now to the drawings and particularly to FIGS. 1-3 thereof, there is shown a retention drainage catheter and inserting stylet therefore in assembled relationship ready for use, the assembly being generally indicated by the reference numeral 10, the catheter and stylet being generally indicated by the numerals 11 and 12 respectively. The catheter has a distal end generally designated by the numeral 16, the length of the catheter being such that the distal end 14 can be fully inserted into the bladder while the proximal end still remains outside of the entrance to the urethra. The catheter 11 is constructed as a multi-layer cannula and has an outer layer 18 of relatively soft and pliant latex rubber which is selected to meet the physical requirements set forth above, but principally which must withstand the corrosive effects of urine and withstand the high temperatures of sterilization. An intermediate layer 20 of silicone rubber is disposed within the outer layer 18, the silicone rubber having greater strength than the latex rubber but otherwise meeting the same physical requirements as the latex rubber. Another layer 22 of latex rubber forms an inner layer disposed within the intermediate silicone layer, the inner wall 24 of the inner layer 22 defining a drainage lumen 26 through which urine drains from the bladder.
A principal feature of the present invention resides in the provision of a longitudinal drainage opening 30 at the distal end 14 of the catheter. In the conventional catheters, as shown in the prior art cited hereinabove, the catheter is provided with a rounded bullet shaped tip to facilitate insertion of the catheter through the urethra with a minimum of discomfort and risk of trauma, and a laterally opening drainage port is provided adjacent the tip of the catheter. In the present invention, however, the conventional tip has, in effect, been removed and the several layers of the cannula 11 terminate to define the longitudinal opening 30 which is open and unobstructed in order to communicate the interior of the bladder directly with the full cross-sectional area of the drainage lumen 26 rather than through a restricted lateral opening as in the prior art. The manner in which the layers of the cannula terminate to define the opening 30 is best seen in FIG. 4 wherein the inner latex rubber layer 22 terminates abruptly in an annular wall 32, whereas the intermediate silicone layer 20 and the outer latex layer 18 are both tapered and merge to points adjacent the distal end 14 of the cannula so as to define a smooth, gradually widening portion 34 of the cannula surface from the annular wall 32 to the widest portion of the cannula 11. The reason for this tapering portion is to provide a smooth, gradually expanding insertion portion of the catheter 11 which cooperates with a gradually widening portion of an inserting stylet to be hereinafter described. It will be apparent that the longitudinal opening 30 provides a wider and less obstructed access from the bladder into the drainage lumen than does the lateral openings in the prior art catheters.
The catheter 11 includes means for retaining the distal end 14 thereof within the bladder after the distal end has been passed through the urethra and has entered the bladder. Since the juncture of the bladder and the urethra is defined by a sphincter muscle which defines a relatively small opening even when the sphincter muscle is relaxed, it is possible to prevent removal of the catheter by providing the end thereof with an expandable means which overlies a small portion of the bottom of the bladder wall surrounding the sphincter. In the present invention, the preferred means for retaining the catheter in place is the inflatable balloon technique which is well known in the art but which is configurated in the present invention to cooperate in a novel manner with the specific construction of the distal end of the catheter to cause the distal end of the catheter to expand and partly overlie the bottom wall of the bladder. More particularly, the inflatable balloon is a relatively thin layer 36 of latex rubber which is integrally molded or suitably bonded to the outer layer 18 of the cannula at a point 38 downstream from the open end 30, the point 38 being selected to provide a balloon of suitable size to retain the catheter in place when the balloon is inflated. Although the balloon may vary in size depending on the location of the molded or bonded juncture 38, it is the practice to select a reasonable compromise in the size of the balloon based on two conflicting considerations. One is that the balloon should be as small as possible in order to place the drainage opening as close as possible to the sphincter muscle at the bottom of the bladder to facilitate substantially complete drainage of urine and sedimentary waste material in the bladder. The other consideration is that retention drainage catheters are very often used by elderly people who, for one reason or another, have lost voluntary control of the urinary function and the catheter must remain in place for extended periods of time. Due to senility or other factors of mental deterioration of the aged, many of these people have a tendency to try to pull the catheter out without realizing what they are doing, and as a consequence can cause themselves severe injury if the balloon is not large enough to retain the catheter in place even against substantial pulling force.
The present invention effectively aleviates both of the aforementioned problems by providing a retaining balloon designed to provide both maximum size for retention purposes and at the same time to keep the drainage opening close to the bottom of the bladder. The balloon layer 36 extends from the molded or bonded juncture 38 to the end of the cannula 11 and has an annular terminal portion 40 which encircles the annular wall 32 of the inner latex layer 18. The balloon layer 36 is separated from the outer layer 18 of the cannula from the juncture 38 to the annular wall 32 where the balloon layer is either integrally molded or suitably bonded to the annular wall 32 so as to form a fluid-tight seal therewith. It will be noted that the terminal portion 40 of the balloon layer 36 is thicker than the balloon layer and is smoothly rounded for ease of insertion as will more clearly appear hereinafter. In its non-inflated condition, the balloon layer lies flat on the tapered surface of the outer layer 18 and forms the gradually widening portion 34 of the cannula.
The balloon is inflated by means of an inflation lumen 42 formed in the silicone layer 20, the silicone layer being thicker in the area of the inflation lumen than the rest of the layer as best seen in FIGS. 2 and 3. With reference to FIG. 1, the inflation lumen 42 extends from a terminus 44 within the balloon layer 36 through the silicone layer 20 to a lateral extension 46 of the outer layer 18, the lateral extension terminating in a valve housing 48 and a fluid injection end 50. Any suitable valve member 52 is provided within the valve housing 48 to prevent the escape of the inflation fluid after the balloon layer 36 has been inflated. The silicon layer 20 is provided for the purpose of resisting any tendency of the inflation lumen 42 to expand into the drainage lumen 26 due to the pressure of the inflating fluid within the inflation lumen 42 and the balloon layer 36. Since the silicone rubber is stronger and less flexible than the latex rubber, it is desirable to maintain the silicone layer as thin as possible around its periphery and to thicken the silicone layer only at the location which surrounds the inflation lumen as shown in FIGS. 2 and 3.
The catheter assembly 10 includes a stylet 12 which is used to insert the catheter 11 into the urethra, and as a cleaning implement as will be more fully described hereafter. The stylet 12 is an elongated tube formed of a relatively rigid rubber or plastic material which meets the same physical characteristics as the material of the catheter with respect to being susceptable to sterilization, impervious to urine, etc. The stylet is sufficiently rigid so that it can be pushed through the urethra without buckling, and yet is also sufficiently flexible that it will conform somewhat to the configuration of the urethra during the insertion process, although a certain degree of straightening of the urethra during the insertion process is inherent in any catheterization process.
The stylet 12 is formed as a rod 54 having a proximal end 56 and a distal end 58, the length of the rod between the ends 56 and 58 exceeding that of the catheter 11. The distal end is formed as a smooth rounded tip at the end of a tapered removable end portion 60 of the rod 54, the rod and the removable end portion being connected together by any suitable means such as the threads 62 or merely a press fit. The rounded end 58 and the taper on the end portion 60 facilitate a smooth sliding passage of the projecting end of the stylet through the urethra. The stylet is also provided with a longitudinal passageway or bore 64 which extends the entire length of the stylet and functions as a limited drainage passageway through which a small amount of urine can flow when the distal end of the stylet enters the bladder. This provides the person inserting the catheter with an indication of when the tip of the stylet enters the bladder, it being known how much further the catheter and stylet must be inserted into the urethra to dispose the distal end of the catheter in the bladder. The end portion 60 is replaced by a suitable brush element 61 such as that shown in FIG. 9 when it is desired to clean the drainage lumen 26.
The stylet and catheter are provided with cooperating abutment means by which the stylet pushes the catheter through the urethra as the stylet is manipulated through the urethra. In the embodiment shown in FIG. 1, an annular boss 66 is formed on the inner surface 26 of the inner latex layer, and a cooperating radial boss 68 is formed on the outer surface of the rod 54. The abuting engagement of the adjacent surfaces of the bosses 66 and 68 prevents the stylet from passing through the catheter and pulls the catheter through the urethra as the person inserting the catheter pushes on the stylet. It will be recognized that, although the annular boss 66 is formed of the relatively soft latex rubber, there is little likelihood that the radial boss 68 on the stylet will slip past the annular boss 66 during insertion of the catheter due to the fact that the tolerance relationships between the stylet and the catheter inside the drainage lumen 26 are very small, and the radial boss 68 is extremely close to, if not actually in sliding contact with, the inner wall 24 of the drainage lumen 26. It will also be noted that the boss 66 on the cannula is located substantially at the widest part of the gradually widening portion 34 of the cannula so that as the stylet pushes the catheter through the urethra, only the portion 34 is in advance of the abutting engagement between the catheter and the stylet. The advantage of this arrangement is that substantially the entire portion of the catheter which is not tapered is being pulled through the urethra with the result that there is no tendency for the catheter to buckle or slide back on the stylet during the insertion process.
Three alternative embodiments of the abutment means between the catheter and stylet are shown in FIGS. 4-6. In FIG. 4 a multiple step abutment means is shown in which the inner layer 22 of the catheter is provided with an annular boss 70 which defines an abutment wall 72, and another annular boss or merely a portion 74 of the inner layer 22 of larger diameter from the rest of the inner layer defines another abutment wall 76 spaced rearwardly from the abutment wall 72. Correspondingly on the stylet, a radial boss or merely a portion 78 of the rod 54 which is of reduced diameter from the rest of the rod 54 defines an abutment wall 80, and a radial boss 82 defines another abutment wall 84 spaced rearwardly from the abutment wall 80. It will be observed that the two abutment walls 80 and 84 on the stylet are much more widely separated than the corresponding abutment walls 72 and 76 on the catheter, the reason for which will be made clear hereinafter. It will be apparent that if for any reason the forward abutment wall 80 should slip past the forward abutment wall 72 on the catheter, the rearward abutment wall 84 on the stylet will engage with the rearward abutment wall 76 on the catheter after the stylet has moved forwardly within the catheter a distance equal to the space between the rearward abutment wall 76 on the catheter and the rearward abutment wall 84 on the stylet. Thus, the plurality of abutment walls provides an added measure of safety against the stylet passing the single abutment means shown in FIG. 1 as well as another advantage discussed below in connection with the expansion of the inflatable balloon as shown in FIG. 8. It will be noted that the rear abutment wall 76 is located substantially at the widest portion of the gradually widening portion 34 of the cannula and the forward abutment wall 72 is located within the gradually widening portion 34 so that only the gradually widening portion of the cannula is pushed ahead of the abutment means during insertion of the cannula regardless of which of the above described pairs of abutment surfaces are in engagement with each other.
Another form of abutment means is shown in FIG. 5 in which the cooperating abutment surfaces formed on the catheter and stylet are in barb-like configuration to give an added measure of assurance against the stylet abutment surface slipping past the catheter abutment surface and failing to pull the catheter through the urethra. Thus, an annular recess 86 is formed on the inner surface 26 of the inner latex layer 22, and a cooperating radial boss or projection 88 is formed on the outer surface of the stylet rod 54. As shown in FIG. 5, the recess 86 is wedge shaped, and the projection 88 is correspondingly wedge shaped so that the recess has an abutment surface 90 and the projection has an abutment surface 92 which surfaces engage when the stylet is inserted into the drainage lumen 26 of the catheter. The abutment surfaces 90 and 92 are both slanted forwardly as they extend outwardly so that the recess 86 and projection 88 have a barb-like configuration. Although the diameter of the radial projection is larger than the diameter of the drainage lumen 26, as distinguished from the FIG. 1 and FIG. 4 embodiments where the stylet projections do not exceed the diameter of the drainage lumen 26, there is nevertheless no difficulty in inserting the stylet into the catheter since the inner latex layer 22 is relatively compressible, and the projection 88 simply compresses the material of the layer 22 as it moves through the drainage lumen 26 until the projection moves into the recess 86. In this embodiment of the invention, insertion of the stylet into the catheter is further facilitated by inserting the stylet from the distal end of the catheter rather than from the proximal end thereof as would be the direction of insertion for the embodiments shown in FIG. 1 and FIG. 4. It should be noted that insertion of the stylet in all of the disclosed embodiments is made easier by lubricating the stylet prior to insertion with any suitable sterile lubricant. For the same advantage as pointed out above in connection with the abutment means of FIG. 1, the abutment surfaces of the catheter and stylet are located adjacent the widest part of the gradually widening portion 34 of the cannula.
FIG. 6 shows another form of multiple step abutment means similar to that shown in FIG. 4 but having the abutment means configurated as shown in FIG. 5. The inner layer 22 of the catheter is provided with a forward annular recess 94 which defines an abutment surface 96 and another rearward annular recess 98 which defines another abutment surface 100 spaced rearwardly from the abutment surface 96. The stylet is provided with a forward radial projection or boss 102 which defines an abutment surface 104 for engagement with the abutment surface 96 and another rearward annular recess 98 which defines another abutment surface 100 spaced rearwardly from the abutment surface 96. The stylet is provided with a forward radial projection or boss 102 which defines an abutment surface 104 for engagement with the abutment surface 96 on the catheter and a rearward radial boss or projection 106 which defines another abutment surface 108 for engagement with the abutment surface 100 of the catheter. As in FIG. 5, the projections on the stylet are wedge shaped and the abutment surfaces on both the stylet and the catheter are slanted forwardly as they extend outwardly so that the abutment surfaces have a barb-like cooperation when they engage with each other. It will be noted that the abutment surfaces 104 and 108 on the stylet are much more widely separated than the corresponding abutment surfaces 96 and 100 on the catheter, as in the FIG. 4 embodiment; it will also be noted that the annular recess 98 has a uniform diameter over the length of this recess, and the reason for both of these details of construction will be made clear hereinbelow. As with the FIG. 4 embodiment, if for any reason the forward abutment surface 104 on the stylet should slip past the forward abutment wall 96 on the catheter, the rearward abutment surface 108 on the stylet will engage the rearward abutment surface 100 on the catheter after the stylet has moved forwardly within the catheter a distance equal to the space between the rearward abutment surface 108 on the stylet and the rearward abutment surface 100 on the catheter, thereby providing the same added measure of safety as discussed above in connection with the FIG. 4 embodiment. Again it should be noted that the rearward abutment surface 100 on the cannula is located substantially at the widest part of the gradually widening portion 34 of the cannula and the forward abutment surface 96 is located within the gradually widening portion 34 so that only the gradually widening portion of the cannula is pushed ahead of the abutment means during insertion of the cannula regardless of which of the above described pairs of abutment surfaces are in engagement with each other.
The present invention provides two unique advantages over any known prior art catheters which advantages are derived from the construction of the embodiments described above and will be more apparent from a description to follow of the manner in which the catheter is used in connection with the insertion and retention of the catheter in the bladder. Both of these advantages result from the manner in which the inflatable balloon operates to cause a certain amount of expansion of the distal end of the cannula thereby widening the opening into the drainage lumen and also, in the plural abutment means of the FIG. 4 and FIG. 6 embodiments, allowing a certain degree of freedom of movement of the stylet within the catheter to provide an indication that the balloon has in fact inflated in the bladder and is retaining the catheter in place.
With reference to the embodiments shown in FIGS. 1 and 5, the construction and connection of the inflatable balloon 36, which is the same in both embodiments, causes a certain amount of expansion of the opening 30 at the distal end of the cannula, thus providing a wider opening into the drainage lumen to facilitate drainage of waste material over a larger area. This expansion results from the forward connection 40 of the balloon 36 to the inner layer 22 of the cannula which causes the balloon to exert a strong radial pull on the end of the inner layer. Since the relatively stronger intermediate layer 20 gradually tapers to practically nothing at the end of the cannula, or may terminate altogether before the end of the cannula, this layer offers little or no resistance to the expansion of the forward end of the cannula. As seen in FIG. 7, when the balloon has been fully inflated, the gradually widening portion 34 of the cannula is flared outwardly from approximately the widest part of the gradually widening portion 34 to the end thereof. By providing the other juncture 38 of the balloon 36 with the outer layer 18 of the cannula at the widest point of the gradually widening portion 34, only that portion 34 of the cannula need be inside the bladder thereby maintaining the balloon relatively flat and the opening 30 as low as possible in the bladder thus promoting maximum drainage of waste material from the bladder.
In the embodiments of the invention shown in FIGS. 4 and 6, the expansion effect is enhanced by the construction of the inner layer 22 of the cannula, and in this form of the invention the stylet is utilized to provide an indication that the balloon has inflated. It will be observed that in both of these embodiments the inner layer 22 is thinner in cross-section at least at the location of the rearward abutment surfaces than it is along that portion of the layer 22 within the gradual widening portion 34 of the cannula. The effect of this, as best seen in FIG. 8, is to provide an effective hinge portion of the inner layer about which all three layers of the cannula can bend in response to the radial force exerted on the forward end of the cannula at the terminal portion 40 of the balloon 36. In these two embodiments, the tapered portion 34 of the cannula bends outwardly far enough to cause the forward abutment surfaces on the cannula to disengage from the forward abutment surfaces on the stylet after the balloon is inflated, thereby allowing the stylet to move forwardly in the cannula until the rearward abutment surfaces on the stylet engage with the rearward abutment surfaces on the cannula. This limited movement of the stylet, which will be relatively free movement in both forward and backward directions, provides a positive indication to the person inserting the catheter that the balloon 36 has in fact inflated within the bladder and that there are no leaks in the balloon or other reason present which would prevent inflation of the balloon.
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|U.S. Classification||604/102.02, 604/921, 604/915|
|International Classification||A61F2/958, A61M25/00|
|Cooperative Classification||A61M25/00, A61M25/1025, A61M25/10|
|European Classification||A61M25/10F, A61M25/10, A61M25/00| | <urn:uuid:ca906fd7-655c-4d76-b4fe-cc9828cfdb49> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.google.com/patents/US4284081?dq=6,240,376 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279933.49/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00119-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.923748 | 11,398 | 2.109375 | 2 |
Agriculture consumer protection: home, The technical workshop “remediation of radioactive contamination in agriculture” will be held at iaea headquarters from 17 – 18 october 2016.. Benchmarking (geolocating) - wikipedia, Benchmarking (also known as benchmark hunting) is a hobby activity in which participants find benchmarks (also known as survey markers or geodetic control points).. Home - uc small farm program, Uc small farm program - home in this one-day intensive ecofarm preconference workshop, you’ll learn how to produce value-added foods from value-added food.
Geocaching > hide seek geocache > geocache log, There millions geocaches worldwide . visit geocaching. geocaches nearby . https://www.geocaching.com/seek/log.aspx Log sheets - geocaching containers, trackables, , Now choose log size cache. , templates free charge! offer free downloads service . http://www.cacheboxstore.com/log-sheets/ Free printable log sheets - geocaching stuff, Thank awesome geocache containers! ~mike (florida) fast shipping nice packaging. wonderful products ~wendy (north carolina). https://www.geocachingstuff.com/content/6-free-printable-log-sheets | <urn:uuid:fc3cb443-1758-4f0e-8df5-66534b75613f> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://calendariu.com/g/geocaching-log-sheet-template.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281162.88/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00530-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.789593 | 284 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Looking for How To Use Grammarly In Google Chrome…
Grammarly was introduced back in 2009, so it’s been around for Around about eleven years now and it was actually discovered it founded in Ukraine.|Let’s start out with some of the important truths, so Grammarly was launched back in 2009, so it’s been around for Around about eleven years now and it was really discovered it founded in Ukraine.}
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This is really the fundamentals and it will help you to remove any errors.
, So it’s really concentrating on simply the basics.
So, for example, if you typed, in effect It would change it in the context of the phrasing to an effect with an A So it really does try to help you can select whatever language you are as well, So they do United States Australian and UK English too, So within that totally free plan also, you get restricted access to something called conciseness.
Conciseness is basically adapting things so that you can make smaller sized more easy-to-follow sentences, So, for example, altering it from it may happen that we require to choose.
Tomorrow, too, we may need to decide tomorrow so that you’re just conserving a little bit of Text too.
Now within the totally free strategy, You also get restricted access to something called tone: detection, which is a relatively current innovation that they have actually released, but essentially when you’re composing.
It will examine that composing and Basically offer you almost like this ranking.
It says your text sounds unwinded, official Polite, for example, so that you’ve got a general thesis of what you’re aiming Towards with that text and what you’re presently composing on now in some of the premium I’ll point out.
They do permit you to improve that in fact make actionable improvements to that, so that you can position your writing in the very best style, However I’ll return to that in a bit inside of the complimentary account as well.
You get all the browser, extensions, the MS word and MS outlook and in which is something that Microsoft users will love.
Google Docs assistance, which is currently in beta, along with access to the native apps on Windows, Mac and also the keyboard apps on iOS and Android, and You just get basic tips across the board in addition to a private license.
To be reasonable, it’s pretty affordable for a free experience and for those who are simply using state, Gmail and Writing bits of text across a day or perhaps publishing something directly to the grammarly website, which you can do in the free account.
In fact, It’s a pretty good bet and a way for you just to improve a few of the standard errors you’re making, but once again keep in mind that some Web browsers already have a spell checker in so that’s something to acknowledge.
Once again the conciseness and some of the punctuation isn’t something.
If you’re utilizing the fundamental sort of default ones, that’s consisted of in those spell checkers.
The premium is $ 11 66 per month, and that is billed yearly.
I’ll return to the prices in a bit as we roll through what functions are consisted of.
As you can envision, that’s rather a steep quantity, however then, if you’re writing on a routine basis, say you’re, an author You’re, a student and you’re a freelancer say or a professional, then it’s most likely a good investment, because you know The chances are if you’re enhancing.
What you’re writing the much better possibility of your success may be with agreements and Even in e-mails and the way you provide yourself online.
It’s ending up being increasingly more essential.
Inside a premium you get all that I pointed out in fundamental.
You likewise get the capability to get consistency in spelling and punctuation.
, For example, if you’re composing Disparities in punctuation.
So if you composed July the 10th with 25 org, then it would alter that to July 10th August 25th, So that you have actually got a bit more consistency across the board when you’re composing, spelling and format.
They also improve the fluency of writing.
It will alter some text from say: we have actually been able to do some development here too.
When you’re conversating, we’ve been able to make some development here so that it appears a bit more natural.
Now the conciseness and I mentioned earlier is across all the sites, So you have the ability to access that without any problems, and you also get something called readability.
For example, recognize sentences and offer you recommendations to reword or Re-read it.
Did you completely comprehend and that can be extremely helpful in case you have actually composed something and it made sense in your head, But maybe not to the end user.
Now something you didn’t get in of the free account is something called engaging Vocabulary.
What’s cool? Is it generally uses as a thoris to discover various vocabulary? Instead of saying I’m very happy to be part of the team, It could change it to a couple of choices like thrilled delighted and delighted, And that can absolutely change the outcome of a message to somebody and I really discovered this feature quite helpful.
When I was utilizing premium, especially to present new vocabulary to both me in teaching Mir and likewise to the end user, there’s also Dynamic sentence range.
For example, if you said I read a fascinating book just recently, It was about computers.
How To Use Grammarly In Google Chrome
, I ‘d, normally read novels.
It would give you some feedback about so your sentence, range stating three: similar sentences in a row consider altering the word order and that’s simply based on the repetitiveness and the Dull passages obviously and enabling you to add some bit of range and flavor to that Now The tone detection I discussed is not minimal inside a premium, You do get it across all websites And you likewise get what’s called some improvements on that delivery.
You get confident language.
So, for instance, if you wrote something like, I believe we need to have the ability to solve this concern for you, It would change.
We can fix this issue for you, which definitely sounds a lot more positive and sort of improves the ending, specifically if you were a Customer advocate or somebody that connects with the den client.
It does sound a lot more confident and it puts their mind at the rest.
You likewise had something inside of there in delivery called politeness.
For example, if you said it’s a VBAC, I disliked the proposal.
You Could alter it to something.
Like I wouldn’t state, I liked the proposal would most likely be a much better way to handle it, But it likewise assists you to enhance that Automatic reaction that you might have.
It also enhances the rule levels.
For example, if you composed something like, is there anything else, I can do for you, Whether you just being you on its own.
It would alter it to you to improve that procedure.
However again it really depends like if you’re sending out a message to a good friend.
That’s quite unwinded, But if you’re sending it to somebody else, then it’s going to be able to catch those errors.
State your messaging between 2 individuals.
It’s also got Inclusive language.
So, for instance, If you composed, the location is accessible for visitors who are confined to wheelchairs, and you would possibly alter that To the place is accessible for visitors, who are wheelchair users, which might be practical particularly for website copy And writing out Elements of your Site to assist enhance it now for trainees There is a popular feature inside a premium called plagiarism and they really have a site called plagiarism.
The plagiarism checker allows you to publish a file or a lot of text that you have, and It will provide you a fundamental report, however you you need premium for this, so if you would get premium, um you ‘d be able to examine analyze.
Whether Graham has actually been taken, whether resources and even the way that you’re formatting, your bibliography, has been You know, taken across the web.
, So you’re just covering your bank, and I understand a great deal of students have actually found benefit from the plagiarism Experience and obviously gramley checks against.
Sixteen billion web pages.
, So that’s again And again, that’s something that truly does assist.
If your school or university does not have a plagiarism tool, then this is an excellent bet for Improving that now, taking a look at the premium prices.
, It is rather steep If you were to choose that eleven dollar 66 each month.
That would be billed every year and come out at a quite high one hundred and thirty 9 pound 95.
Now I don’t see numerous trainees doing this. How To Use Grammarly In Google Chrome | <urn:uuid:2d1ff47e-75c8-4222-810c-ddf8492c8aa4> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.projectlemurplus.org/how-to-use-grammarly-in-google-chrome/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570871.10/warc/CC-MAIN-20220808183040-20220808213040-00277.warc.gz | en | 0.950893 | 2,435 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Is the Science of Getting Rich a Science or a Scam?
One of the ongoing problems that people face each day is a lack of money. Not just a lack of funds to pay for basic food, clothing and shelter, but a shortage of money to buy unique things and services that would make life so much more meaningful and enjoyable. The lack of money for these 'most important' things has caused widespread low self-worth, mental mediocrity and a horrible feeling of a life that has been wasted.
The idea that there is an exact "Science" of getting rich is preposterous to many people. They think that the supply of wealth is limited, and that there is only so much wealth to go around. They also believe that social and governmental institutions must go through a radical change before the masses would have even a chance at getting rich.
Well, this certainly is not true. It is true that if you look around the different parts of the world, the masses mostly live in dire poverty from one generation to the next.
But if these poverty stricken people start learning and acting on the principles contained in the Science of Getting Rich, nothing could stop them from rising out of their poverty and attaining great wealth. This is an exact science.
What does the science of getting rich actually teach? Is it something that I can learn and apply? One of the primary things it teaches is that we need to change the way we look at things and the way we are doing things.
For example, how comfortable are you with the idea of being very, very wealthy? You may think this is a crazy question. But how often have you heard it said "rich people are arrogant, haughty and uncaring?" Many religious people believe that rich people aren't even going to heaven. So if you knew you weren't going to heaven by becoming rich, do you think your sub-conscious "true self" would ever allow you to actually become rich? I don't think so.
So change the way you view rich people. Learn to think like they do. That is a big change. T. Harv Eker has written a great book "Secrets of the Millionaire Mind." This would be an excellent book to help change your wrong thinking about rich people.
Another great classic is Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. This book has a lot of incredible information about wealthy people and exactly how they think and act. It's very important to model and follow those who are very rich, if we also want to be very wealthy.
Another important lesson. We must never regard the supply of money as being limited or finite. We must also never act in a competitive manner. This runs completely contrary to current business practices. Maybe this is a clue as to why they aren't doing so well and why 90% of new businesses fail. Hh..mm!
There is a totally higher plane of thought and energy that is calling us to connect with it. When I think about this higher plane, I think of this: God's method is always for fuller expansion and growth. He is not saving up for lean years ahead. He is not cutting back because of the current economic crisis. God's supply is infinite. He will never run out, and never run short. And you and I ARE connected to that same exact infinite supply. Isn't that a great feeling?
There are natural laws that work with a mathematical certainty. A great definition of "Natural Law" is "The uniform and orderly method of the omnipotent God."
The science of getting rich is anything but a scam. It is all about discovering what those "Natural Laws" are, and then changing our thinking and our actions so they line up with these natural laws. It's very exciting to know that when we do these things, we will get rich beyond our wildest expectations. I consider myself very fortunate to have "stumbled" upon the incredible teaching of The Science of Getting Rich. | <urn:uuid:e8604fa5-668d-42a0-af08-240c71a71c26> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://science-ofgettingrich.blogspot.com/2009/10/is-science-of-getting-rich-scam.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560282926.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095122-00394-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975527 | 815 | 2.234375 | 2 |
Buying Back a Vehicle That Has Been Written Off
Cars can be written off and classified as damaged or broken for several reasons and fall under categories based on the area of the car affected, whether that’s the bodywork, engine, parts or interior.
Many car owners don’t realise that they can actually buy back their written off vehicle from their insurance company. In fact, it’s often a wise move, especially if the damaged car can be easily repaired.
Here’s our guide to everything that you need to know about buying back a vehicle that has been declared a total loss.
Why Does it Benefit a Car Owner to Buy Back a Damaged Vehicle?
If your insurance company believes that your car will cost more to repair than it is worth, they will typically declare the vehicle to be a total loss and give you a cash pay-out, rather than paying for the repairs.
However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that your car is beyond repair. Insurance companies evaluate a damaged or broken vehicle differently to how a car owner would. For example, if your car has been written off by an insurance company but it can still be driven and can be repaired, it could be worth your while buying the car back to fix it or sell it for salvage.
Even if the car isn’t worth repairing, if just one element of the car is damaged, it could be sold on for its parts or sold as salvage, depending on the damage.
A car is often sold on as a salvage vehicle if it requires a certain level of work that is simply not feasible for you.
To help car owners to understand the differences between broken and damaged cars, different salvage categories are used: A, B, S or N
This is the rating given to vehicles that aren’t suitable to be repaired. No parts from the car can be reused and the vehicle must be disposed of immediately.
Category B is given to vehicles that are not suitable for repair, but some of the vehicle parts may be reused. These vehicles can be used for salvage.
Category S refers to vehicles with damage to the structural frame or chassis. The repair costs for the vehicle are greater than the pre-accident value of the vehicle. These vehicles can be used for salvage.
A category N vehicle does not have any structural damage, the damage is to Non-Structural parts of the car or van only, but the repair costs outweigh its pre-accident value of the vehicle. These vehicles can be used for salvage.
Can I Buy a Vehicle That Has Been Written Off?
If a car has been written off, either your insurance company can offer to keep it in return for an insurance pay-out, or you can keep the vehicle yourself, sometimes at a slightly reduced pay-out, and then either repair the it yourself or sell it for salvage.
For example, if your car is written off due to a total loss, you can opt to keep the vehicle, repair it and continue using it. If the vehicle has been written off as a Category S then you would need to inform the DVLA and register it again. In order to do this, you’ll need to send your v5c document or logbook to your insurance company and then apply for a free duplicate log book using a V62 form.
If you decide to buy a car that has been written off, you should consider the following:
An accident that is enough for an insurance company to declare a vehicle as a total loss means that there is also likely to be a lot more damage to the car than meets the eye. Following any accident, a lot of damage can often go undetected.
This means that if you purchase someone else’s car that has been written off, it could end up costing you a lot more in repairs than it is worth. At the same time, although you are perfectly within your rights to sell your car on once it is road worthy, a car that has been a category write off can sometimes be a lot more difficult to sell on or trade in.
The same applies for repairable vehicles, so if you decide to sell your car on, you should always be wary of the potential financial implications involved.
Do I Have to Take the Car Insurance Buy Back Amount?
You don’t have to accept the buy back or salvage deduction amount you are offered by your insurance company. You can also get quotes for how much it would cost to repair your vehicle, so that you can decide whether to repair the car yourself or sell it on.
As your insurer may quote a figure below what they can achieve for the vehicle it’s a good idea to use our salvage calculator to check this.
Here at Scrap Car Comparison, we specialise in buying both damaged and broken vehicles for salvage.
Price quotations for damaged and broken cars are reviewed on a vehicle-by-vehicle basis in order to generate the best quote for your vehicle.
Find out how car insurance buy back value is calculated. | <urn:uuid:8b29e46e-4bec-423e-9676-cfa486ce48f2> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.scrapcarcomparison.co.uk/damaged/buy-back/damaged-vehicle/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573533.87/warc/CC-MAIN-20220818215509-20220819005509-00272.warc.gz | en | 0.965349 | 1,046 | 1.617188 | 2 |
From the Dictionary of Literary Biography Yearbook, 1997.
The Rea Award for the Short Story
Michael M. Rea established the Rea Award for the Short Story in 1986, at that time the only literary award in the United States focusing exclusively on that genre. Aware that the short story was a long-neglected art form in the world of literature and publishing, he felt that it needed revitalizing. As he said in an interview with Connecticut’s Litchfield County Times, “the basic thrust of the award is to foster a literary cause – to ennoble the form, to give it prestige.” The recipient of the Rea Award is nominated and selected by a jury of three, each a notable literary figure.
To administer the annual award, Michael Rea established the Dungannon Foundation. The prize originally was $25,000 and is now $30,000. The Rea Award for the Short Story is not given for a specific title, but rather for literary power, originality, and influence on the genre, to honor a writer who has made a significant contribution to the short story form. To qualify, a candidate must be a U.S. or Canadian citizen. Michael Rea traced his love of the short story back to his Irish forebears. “The Irish were great storytellers,” he said. The Dungannon Foundation is named for his paternal hometown in Northern Ireland.
Born on 19 January 1927, he was the son of Henry Oliver Rea and Margaret Moorhead of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. From 1948 to 1952 he attended the University of Virginia, graduating with a B.A. in English. From 1952 to 1969 he was vice president of Oliver Tyrone Corporation, a family real estate firm in Pittsburgh. From 1970 to 1979 he was active in real estate in the Washington, D.C. area. There he later founded Harrea Broadcasting, which owned and operated radio stations in Pennsylvania and Maryland. In 1980 he moved to New York City and subsequently bought a home in Washington, Connecticut, which became his primary residence. From that time on, he immersed himself in art and rare-book collecting and publishing. His library includes several hundred volumes of first-edition short story collections.
In 1986, the first recipient of the Rea Award for the Short Story was Cynthia Ozick. Since then, the following writers, each nominated by a different panel of panel of jurors, have won the Rea Award: Robert Coover (1987), Donald Barthelme (1988), Tobias Wolff (1989), Joyce Carol Oates (1990), Paul Bowles (1991), Eudora Welty (1992), Grace Paley (1993), Tillie Olsen (1994), Richard Ford (1995), Andre Dubus (1996), and Gina Berriault (1997).
The jurors meet annually in New York City to select the winner. Except for the goal of excellence and the most general guidelines, Rea gave his jurors independence and, in fact, did not participate in the meetings and was not present at the judging process.When they had chosen a winner and notified Michael Rea, he joined them for a private luncheon celebration. During that luncheon, he would telephone the winner so he could personally break the news.
In July of 1996 Michael Rea died of a heart attack at his country home in Washington, Connecticut. In the obituary published in The New York Times on 3 August (“Michael M. Rea, 69, A Collector of Art and First Editions,” by Lawrence Van Gelder) we learned a little more about his life: that he had joined the U.S. Marine Corps at seventeen and served in North China at the end of World War II; that he was a collector of American paintings and sculpture and served as a trustee of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Corcoran Gallery of Art and Norton Museum of Art in Palm Beach; and that through his publishing company, Sweetwater Editions, he published many books, including an edition of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Satan In Goray with engravings by Ira Moskowitz and Early Stone Sculpture, a book about New England tombstone art. Rea also edited an anthology, The American Short Story: Stories from the Rea Award (Ecco Press, 1994). This book consists of twenty-one stories by Rea Award winners and nominees selected by seven Rea Award jurors….
After his death, it was announced that, under the guidance of his widow, Elizabeth Richbourg Rea, the Rea Award will continue, as will other activities of the Dungannon Foundation, which include support for writers-in-residence at various colleges and universities. Dedicating the 1997 Rea Award, the first following his death, as a tribute to Michael Rea, Mrs. Rea selected a special jury composed of three previous winners of the award – Cynthia Ozick, Tobias Wolff, and Andre Dubus.
The jury offered the following citation:
IN MEMORIAM: MICHAEL M. REA
The 1997 Rea Award for the Short Story stands as a superlative tribute and memorial to its founder, Michael M. Rea, and continues as his splendid legacy. In honoring the American short story, and in establishing a significant award for its most distinguished contemporary representatives, Michael Rea sought to celebrate a consummate art with consummately generous devotion. Constituting the highest form of national recognition accorded exclusively to the short story, the Rea Award embodies its creator’s passionate homage to literary achievement.
The jury selected Gina Berriault (1926-1999), a native Californian of Russian Jewish immigrant parents. She is the author of four novels and three collections of short stories, including, most recently Women in Their Beds: New and Selected Stories (Counterpoint), a book that in 1996 also won the National Book Critics Circle Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Bay Area Reviewers Award. Her stories have won several O. Henry prizes and have appeared in such magazines as Harper’s Bazaar, Esquire, Mademoiselle, Paris Review, The Threepenny Review, and Ploughshares.
The recent recognition given to Gina Berriault was of special significance in bringing her to the awareness of the American reading public. In the citation honoring Berriault, the judges wrote: “Her stories astonish – not only in their range of character and incident, but in their worldliness, their swift and surprising turns, their penetration into palpable love and grief and hope. Her sentences are excitingly, startlingly juxtaposed; and though her language is plain, the complexity of her knowing leads one into mysteries deeper than tears. To discover Berriault is to voyage into uncharted amazements.”
The cost of founding the Nobel Prize for Literature was dynamite and war. The Michael M. Rea Award for the Short Story was established by a man of letters whose life, both before and after the invention of his prize, was fixed on the explosive power of small-scale art. The Rea Award seems to me to be the purest of all prizes – an act of homage and love and gratitude for the protean short story, for its narrow deeps and alpine glimpses. The short story is the art of the glimpse: the whole of life seized in the brilliant blink of a sovereign eye. And a short story is a more difficult form than a novel, just as a novel is more difficult than an epic, and a haiku more demanding than a sonnet. The smaller the form, the greater pressure for perfection. That is why Michael himself, and the spirit of his prize, are on the side of the consummate.
It was my privilege and honor – and I confess I was stupefied – to be the first recipient of the Rea Award for the Short Story. I remember the annunciatory phone call: I expected Michael Rea to be an intimidating, even a fearsome philanthropist. Instead I heard the shy and modest voice of a man who was himself a striving writer of stories, though I did not learn that until much later. When, soon after the astonishment of that call, I finally met Michael and Elizabeth Rea, I read in the eyes of both of them all the imperatives of what was unashamedly called Beauty, meaning, as Keats meant it, Truth. Nowadays we try to veil that word, and sometimes say Insight instead. But both words are appropriate to Michael and Elizabeth Rea: Beauty and Insight.
By now the Rea Award is an indispensable American institution and a coveted American prize. It is our little Nobel – little only in the sense that it addresses the short form. But it is as large as Michael Rea’s heart, and no recipient of the Rea Award has ever encountered anything larger, or more capaciously literary, than that.
On Good Friday of 1996 I woke with a mild stomach illness, and went back to sleep. Sometime that morning I heard a man’s voice on my answering machine in the dining room, down the hall from where I slept. I did not know his voice and did not pick up the phone. I slept, and woke at noon, worrying about money. I had a little over two thousand dollars left in the account I live on. To get through the next twelve months I needed another twenty-two thousand, though I receive fifteen hundred a month in retirement and social security checks. This is absurd; it even feels immoral, though usually my only luxuries are music, books, movies, and sometimes a pipe. I remember when a thousand a and month paid for everything, and I remember many years when I did not earn a thousand a month. I think of Haiti; I think of other places.
After making the bed and dressing I played the answering machine. The man whose voice was on it was Michael Rea. I knew of the Rea Award, had hoped for a few years to receive it, but I did not know that it came from a man named Rea. He called me Andre and said he would call me again. I did not want him to, this stranger. I wanted to rest and heal and find some money without plundering from the mutual fund in Texas, emergency money I pretend is not there. At one o’clock I got saltines and Coca-Cola and turned on the television for a Red Sox game. In the early innings the phone rang and I answered.
“Andre? This is Michael Rea. Do you know me?”
He sounded happy. I was not in the mood for a happy stranger, calling an unlisted number during a ball game when I was tired and nauseated.
“No. Am I supposed to?”
“I’m sitting here with George Garrett and Jayne Anne Phillips and Barry Hannah. Do you know them?”
“I know George and Jayne Anne. I’ve never met Barry. Where are you? In a bar?”
“We’re in my living room. I’m calling to give you the Rea Award.”
“Oh my God.”
“It used to be twenty-five thousand, but I’ve raised it to thirty-thousand this year.”
Tears were on my cheeks. I said, “You can’t believe how much I need thirty thousand dollars.”
“I know you do.”
Then he told me he had been a marine at the end of World War II, stationed in China. I asked him what outfit he had been in.
“So was I,” I said.“At Camp Pendleton.”
The next week I got the check and took my family to a Japanese restaurant to celebrate. I lived on the money for over a year, after Michael was dead, and I was grateful for it, month after month, thinking of him as my brother marine who loved stories. Semper fidelis, Michael, and thank you.
I will remember Michael always as a guy who saw something in me nobody else did. What was that? I was bone poor but I didn’t know how to ask for money and I was too proud to apply for a grant (and depend on some fool committee to approve or disapprove of my plans) and I was far too lazy to do any of the paperwork involved in any of the above in any case. Michael sensed that, I think. Or maybe it was just my laziness he sensed. In any case, he had a way of coming up to me at a party and saying, “Bill, how can I help you?” At that I’d manage to blurt out, “Well, I can always use some money.” And sure enough he would send a little something (the first time) and a lot of something (the last time, only months before his death). Michael never knew it, but that last time bailed me out. I had spent the evening at his apartment, an evening for the Rea Award and I talked with Dan Halpern, mostly about how miserable the lit. pub. biz. was (returns were devastating that year, averaging almost 80 percent for some titles industry wide). I didn’t know it then, but Dan was in as bad shape as I was. Michael didn’t hear us crying the blues to each other, but as I walked to the door – that last time – he put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Bill, how can I help?”
We will all remember him for his vision, for his love of the short story, and for the terrific parties that he and Elizabeth gave for the Rea Award winners, but for me those words linger. “How can I help?”
And he did. And that’s why Pushcart lived to celebrate its twenty-fifth year. Without Michael, nada.
I, and hundreds of authors, praise you, Michael.
When Michael Rea, who was at that time a stranger to me, called to ask if I would serve on the panel for the Rea Award for excellence in the short story, I asked what the award was all about. (This was many years ago, when the program had just started.) He described himself as a friend of the arts who had established a small foundation to support the arts with the help of advice from practicing artists, all of which sounded fine to me. “But why the short story?” I asked, genuinely curious. There was a pause. “During the war they more or less kept me sane” (I paraphrase). “In a combat zone you didn’t have time to read anything long.” That was World War II he was talking about. I’m sure others have remembered his words, but I must mention them. There was something in his voice, something completely straightforward in his manner, and I instantly believed him. Why wouldn’t you, you ask. Well, life and a good deal of experience with philanthropy had taught me to take the professed goals and motivations of various organizations and individuals with a large grain of salt. Vanity, politics, narcissism, and a relish in the exercise of power had been the rule rather than the exception, sadly enough, as the late Gerald Freund – who would know better? – pointed out in many occasions.
My first meeting with Mike Rea confirmed what I’d sensed in his voice. He looked at me with his intense blue eyes as we shook hands and I had the spooky feeling that he was looking past my appearance and into what I will call for want of a better word my character. He had a calmness, did Mike, a gravitas – and intuitively I trusted him.This turned out to be the right direction.
In New York, and later when he came for a short visit to Iowa City, we had wonderful talks. What can I say? There was no bullshit to the man, no hidden agendas, no role playing. He was exactly what he appeared to be – a generous and very smart man who knew that doing good required thought and effort, and was in fact much harder to accomplish than might appear at first glance. (In this regard he resembled James Michener.) He seemed not particularly interested in talking about himself, and yet did, in a collapsed fashion, when he sensed he should, simply to get it out of the way. He had done very well in business; the arts had tangibly enriched his life; and now that he was in the last stretch he wanted to be of service. I believe he was unaware of what I take to be the rare purity of his position – to him it was simply common sense.
To know Mike was to take a tonic against cynicism. I’ve known very few people about whom that can be said. A true American gentleman.
Michael invited me to a party in 1989 for Tobias Wolff, winner of that year’s Rea Award for the Short Story. As it turned out, I had just edited a collection of short stories which Michael had picked up. When he introduced himself, he said, “I just read your anthology – you like the form?” Michael was always quick to the point. “Does a rock sink?” I believe I replied, coming immediately under the influence of his keep-it-brief, spirit-of-the-thing approach. “Good,” he said. “You want to be a judge of the Rea Award?” “Sure,” I said, keeping things fast and simple between us.
His love for the short story never flagged, nor did his belief in focused and intense brevity, which may be one of the reasons he favored the genre. The short story was his cause and – along with art – his great love in life. It was Jorge Luis Borges, a favorite of Michael’s, who wrote, “Unlike the novel, a short story may be, for all purposes, essential.”
I have known few people in the literary world who felt as strongly as Michael did about the short story – perhaps only Borges and Ray Carver (I didn’t know Anton Chekov) – but certainly very few others.
In 1993 we published The American Short Story, an important collection of stories, edited by Michael, to acknowledge the contribution of the Rea Award. His anthology included the winners of the prize as well as the finalists. It represented, in effect, the American canon of postwar writers, with work by every major American practitioner of the short story.
The Rea Award for the Short Story has been given annually to celebrate those writers who have made “a significant contribution to the short story.” Michael’s award has been a significant encouragement to writers. You may think writers such as Donald Barthelme, Eudora Welty, and Paul Bowles don’t need acknowledgement of this sorry – but if you believe this, you’d be wrong. To be honored by your peers – in the tasteful way that was always Michael’s way – matters . . . has made a difference to every writer singled out by the Rea Award. It was how Michael acknowledged – and honored!—those writers he loved most.
With Michael Rea’s passing, American arts and culture lost a tremendous friend.
I feel fortunate that I had the opportunity to meet him. I served as one of the judges for the Rea Award in short fiction. The award reflected both Michael Rea’s special affection for and deep knowledge of the short story form. He wasn’t a man who did things in half-measures; his great enthusiasm and vitality wouldn’t allow for that. He was engaged in the award process, and that process reflected his balance of seriousness of purpose and high-spirited good humor. Here was a benefactor who acted not out of noblesse oblige, but out of joy.
The judging process also reflected Michael Rea’s fair-minded, straightforward personality. I came away from the experience with an enormous amount of respect for him. He possessed the intelligence and energy to fully participate in the extensive reading that was required and in the give-and-take discussions, and he had the wisdom to allow the judges he had selected to finally arrive at their own decisions.
I had breakfast with him one morning and it wasn’t long before I realized I was in the company of one good storyteller. I remember the writers we talked about and the stories we traded about fishing and life in Florida. His observations, whether about fishing or writing, were shrewd and grounded in experience.
The Rea Award remains the premier award for short fiction in the United States. Michael Rea saw to it that the award was conducted at a level that properly honored a great American art form. It is fitting that the Rea Award now also serves to honor the memory of Michael Rea.
There are works which wait, and which one does not understand for a long time; the reason is that they bring answers to questions which have not yet been raised; for the question often arrives a terribly long time after the answer.
These striking words of Oscar Wilde are as applicable to certain individuals as to works of art. Michael Rea, with his generous and judicious commitment to the short story, and his presence in the literary community, is one of these individuals.
Michael Rea has been a model of generosity, largeness of spirit, and literary taste; his intense interest in and support of the short story has been enormously appreciated by practitioners of this difficult art. One of the most prestigious literary awards in American is the Rea Award for Short Story, initiated by Michael Rea in 1986. Since its inauguration, the Rea Award has acquired a distinguished reputation. I was greatly honored to be a recipient of the award several years ago; I felt it to be immensely encouraging.
At Princeton University, I’ve been using Michael Rea’s excellent The American Story, a gathering of strikingly diverse and engaging short stories assembled by winners of the Rea Award, and edited by Michael Rea. I believe Michael would be pleased, and stimulated, if he could overhear student discussions arising from this provocative anthology.
I want to add a brief personal note to this gathering of tributes to the late Michael Rea. I served as one of the judges for the award, and, because of his great enthusiasm and his integrity, it was an altogether pleasant experience. Later he pointed out to me a favorite quotation of his from Guy de Maupassant’s introduction to Flaubert-Etude sur Flaubert, which, I think, is appropriate to end here:
he profound and delicious joy which leaps to the heart before certain pages, before certain phrases, does not come only from those who have written them; they come from an absolute compatibility of expression and idea, from a sensation of harmony, of secret beauty, eluding for the most part the judgment of the many.
When I heard of Michael Rea’s death, I felt a sorrow out of all proportion to the time I had actually known him: a few meetings over a period of seven or eight years. Yet I counted him a friend. We all now and then recognize a comrade from the first encounter, and in Michael’s case that recognition was especially vivid because of his directness and honesty. He did not hide himself in detachment, banter, or irony; he was present – there to be known, if you cared to know him.
Michael was not an uncomplicated man (no one with his history and intelligence could be), but he had something of the boy about him in his curiosity and enthusiasm. He knew a lot, yet he was less interested in what he knew than in knowing more, discovering some new passion. I remember his account of his time in China as a marine; what really stayed with him, he said, was the memory of Maupassant’s short stories for the first time.
He loved stories. I’ve known people who loved them as much as Michael did, but no one who loved them more. He seemed to have read everyone with any claim to distinction in the form, and could call up the smallest details from his reading. His largesse with writers was both legendary and a matter a fact, but he was equally generous in the quality of his attention to their work. When he talked about stories, you could see they were as real a world to him as this world, and as essential.
Even as our stories became his stories, some of his became mine. When I think of him now, I think of a young man, far from home, alone in his barracks, his spirit suddenly roused by a French prostitute’s defiance of all the oppressions of circumstance and power. That young man was my friend, and I miss him.
Reprinted from the Dictionary of Literary Biography, 1997 | <urn:uuid:e5d07bab-0a0a-4606-ba37-6646f58dc4e7> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://reaaward.org/tributes/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573029.81/warc/CC-MAIN-20220817153027-20220817183027-00273.warc.gz | en | 0.982893 | 5,254 | 2.015625 | 2 |
Being told your child might die is too much for any parent, but reliving that experience with another child is incomprehensible for anyone.
This was the reality for mum of three, Joanna Perry, when in 2012 her eldest daughter, Lucie, waited for a lifesaving heart transplant and seven years later so did her youngest, Isobel.
From 20 May 2020, all adults in England will be considered to have agreed to be an organ donor when they die unless they recorded a decision not to donate or are in one of the excluded groups. Despite this new change to the law, this is not applicable to under 18s meaning children like Lucie and Isobel will still face the same agonising wait for a donor organ as before. Support for their families from The Sick Children’s Trust will be just as important as ever as often these children undergo treatment at hospitals far from home. Joanna said:
“My husband, Phil, and I were told we could be waiting for up to a year for a heart to become available for Lucie, and while we faced an indefinite wait we were given a place to stay by The Sick Children’s Trust at its Guilford Street House. This meant we didn’t have to move around every day and could focus our energy and time on Lucie. It also meant that Lucie’s brother Jude, who was just a few months old, could come and stay.
“Last year, I walked through the same door I had closed for what I thought would be the final time after Lucie received a donor heart. Suddenly I was back where I left, unlocking the door to The Sick Children’s Trust’s ‘Home from Home’ Guilford Street House. where I could rest while my youngest daughter, Isobel, waited for a lifesaving donor heart just like her sister had.
“For anyone who has doubts about whether to become an organ donor, all it would take is a visit to the cardiac unit to put pen to paper and sign the register. Before Lucie needed a transplant, neither Phil nor I were organ donors but we soon became desperate for a heart for our daughter and years later for another one for Isobel. You can’t be willing to take if you’re not willing to give. All of us are registered organ donors now. Lucie recently asked ‘Why wouldn’t people donate their organs? It’s going to help someone.’ Maybe the answer is people don’t understand the difference it makes. The comfort it brings.”
The Sick Children’s Trust plays a vital role in supporting families with children waiting for an organ transplant by giving them a place to stay in its free ‘Homes from Home’, located just a few minutes’ walk from children’s hospital wards. Even now, during these unprecedented times, the charity is keeping its doors open to families with critically ill children in hospital, ensuring that they can be together as much as possible. | <urn:uuid:714a3699-8180-4678-9b2e-7e3cc446e63c> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.sickchildrenstrust.org/news/incredible-sisters-who-both-needed-heart-transplants-now-given-the-gift-of-life/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571056.58/warc/CC-MAIN-20220809155137-20220809185137-00670.warc.gz | en | 0.98189 | 631 | 1.929688 | 2 |
Constitutional democracies – moving beyond abstraction and reflection – a politics of bodies, things and relations
Part of an unpublished paper by Linda Stewart
“These days it’s the rights of man that provide our eternal values. It’s the constitutional state and other notions everyone recognizes as very abstract. And it’s in the name of all this that thinking’s fettered, that any analysis in terms of movements is blocked. But if we’re so oppressed, it’s because our movement’s being restricted, not because our eternal values are being violated. In barren times philosophy retreats to reflecting “on” things. If it’s not itself creating anything, what can it do but reflect on something? So it reflects on eternal or historical things, but can itself no longer make any move (Deleuze Negotiations 121-122, emphasis added).”
Since the end of World War II, modern human has been ‘consecrated’ with a range of abstract human rights protecting the body from state abuse along with guaranteeing certain rights aimed at the material welfare of the body. These human rights are supposedly directed to curtail the juridical powers (see discussion on power in the Foucaultian sense) of the state along with guaranteeing the livelihood of the body. It has been created and adopted by international organisations (such as the United Nations and International Labour Organisation); it trickled down to regional bodies (such as the European Charter and the African Charter); and found a home in most western societies and more recently in modern democracies in Africa. In the neo-colonial nation state, the concept of democracy and components thereof such as human rights and constitutionalism created a new world in already multitude of worlds. Anthropologist, John Comaroff explains that since 1989, one hundred and five new constitutions have been written. All have very similar features, stressing the rule of law and incorporating a variety of civil political social and cultural rights. In South Africa, the constitution (as most modern constitutions) contains a bill of rights containing what is known as constitutional rights, which plays a primary part in the judiciary’s interpretation of the constitutional text and other legislation including policy. Human rights have also attached itself to discursive and non-discursive practices in neo-colonial South Africa (Stewart LDD 1 – 21). As such it is used as a political tool (of an already negotiated settlement between the former oppressor and the oppressed) used by both the left and right of the political spectra to speak in terms of these rights that originated from a piece of paper and wrapped in total abstraction to fight each other not in the political playing fields as such but within the confines of courts of law in front of a single or number of “wise men” trained and bred in the law.
Although jurists are specialists in the law, they are often separated from other worlds such as the world vulnerable bodies find themselves in. They are furthermore constrained by legal convention, history and interpretative rules that prohibits or discourage them to perceive the constitutional text as a creative component of democracy. In sum, instead of viewing the text and other law instruments as components to creatively solve a singular problematic relation, resist the flow of capital and the resentment contained in a culture of sadness, the judiciary most often rely on approaches/recipes (purposivism and intentionalism) and attach their judgment to abstract and external values and previous case law. However projecting the past into the future is anything but functional. Abstractions need to be explained because it explains little of itself.
Deleuze and Guattari (2, 108) in What is Philosophy, presents us with a challenge. Instead of perceiving philosophy historically, they describe it as the creation of new concepts, where these concepts ‘in itself calls for a future form, for a new earth and people that do not yet exist’. They call on us to create new concepts which questions whether a particular concept works, and whether it unlocks the series of possibilities in a given situation. Philosophical concepts therefore have a transformative power, when inserted into actual fields or assemblages, to produce a change. Deleuze (in Control and Becoming) further argues that the law is a question of jurisprudence that is the creation of new concepts to address relations in specific situations. He remarks, “What interests me isn’t the law or laws (the former being an empty notion, the latter uncritical notions), nor even law or rights, but jurisprudence. It’s jurisprudence, ultimately, that creates law, and we mustn’t go on leaving this to judges.”
Kleinherenbrink in his introduction on his translation of Deleuze’s course on Rousseau explain that Deleuze
“.. reminds us that the Sovereign only has the law itself as its object, in a purely formal sense. In other words, after the completion of the fourth stage, we know how to legislate, but we do not know what to do. One more thing must be added, and this is precisely the relation with things or with concrete situations which confront the people: ‘to determine a law, the general will does not suffice. The formal determination of the will must be joined to the content of objective circumstances of a given society’ and adapt itself to concrete situations. Deleuze sees the figure of the legislator as referring to this ‘injection’ of material circumstances: without the legislator, the general will formally know what it wants. But it needs him to be determined materially. A good law must not consider particular persons – formal aspect – and adapt itself to concrete situations – material aspect- (p. 27) (A politics of things p.5).
The focus of this essay is to explore ways to open the confined spaces of the judiciary in which abstractions such as constitutionalism, democracy and jurisprudence operates. The judiciary when expected to interpret legislation or determining whether a law or conduct is invalid with the Constitution are inter alia confronted with legal constraint and jurisprudential conservatism. Legal constraint is seen as “a particular kind of experience a legal actor has (or may have) in the course of doing legal-interpretive work with legal materials” and includes the perception that judges are only guided by legal factors when confronted with choices (Van Marle Stell LR p. 289). Jurisprudential conservatism is ‘a kind of intellectual caution that discourages appropriate constitutional innovation and leads to less generous and innovative interpretations and applications of the Constitution than are permitted by the text and drafting history’ (Klare SAJHR p. 161). A further point of critique on the judiciary is its overreliance of legislative history. Put differently the judiciary projects the past into the future. Another cause of concern is when the interpreter deals with a text it is done from her perspective and her own historically positioned horizon (Gadamer Truth and Method p. 302). As such the interpreter is inclined to project her pre-understandings onto the text. There exist no method or approach to legal interpretation (be it intentionalism or purposivism) that enables the interpreter to ‘correctly’ reconstruct the past because every understanding of a text is accompanied by the interpreter’s preunderstandings and present position. Furthermore, the search for truth in legal text is a futile exercise because a text does not contain a “true” meaning. Fish (Doing what comes naturally p. 360). We start by analysing the notion that a static/abstract conception of democracy, constitutionalism and human rights order, label and measure bodies relative to its form (Stagoll Concepts p. 53). It creates the illusion of a subject/bearer of human rights (Deleuze Nietzsche and Philosophy p. 134 and see Stewart LDD 1 – 21). In the conclusion we explore the plurality of relations in a constitutional democracy instead of treating it as a binary tension between constitutionalism and democracy. What is indeed needed is a re-thinking of concepts such as democracy, constitutionalism and human rights and the avoidance to project the past into the future by the abstraction of rights and values.
Deleuze’s course on Rousseau corresponds with arguments on human rights. Deleuze explains that
“first of all how a public is formed and reject the idea of a common (democratic) will, followed by a rejection of the social contract (which in many ways reflect on constitutionalism). He argues that “For Rousseau, an association is needed first, product of the reunion proposed to the poor by the rich: a public is formed. But the mystification is such that there is a defect at the origin: the poor can perceive that the will is not common. Thus a contract of governance is necessarily required. This is the second mystification. Because however honest magistrates may be, because of the original defect, it is the rich who will be magistrates” (Deleuze Course on Rousseau 16).
Secondly, Deleuze (ABC) argues that human rights are meaningless, empty, a pure abstraction. For Deleuze, transcendence is a major mistake in human rights discourse. With transcendence he includes idealism (the world is a project of our minds) and religion. He gives the example where the notion of freedom of speech in terms of human rights is a pure abstraction because it merely encloses our freedom in an eminent document like a constitution. Deleuze favours materialism which presuppose an objective world where suffering and exploitation exists and which can be changed by objective interventions. Deleuze thus rejects the idea of a defined and a-historical list of invented human rights and the traditions (such as constitutionalism and democracy) that advance human rights. He criticises human rights as unresponsiveness to move beyond the formal legal construct of a subject in thought. He further criticises our conviction in human rights. He explains that it blinds us to see the suffering of others and it justifies everyday violence as part of the natural ordering of economic affairs in a constitutional state. (Deleuze/Parnet Dialogues pp. 84-98). This brings us to the relationship between the concepts, democracy, constitutionalism and human rights.
Constitutionalism “is the idea that government should derive its powers from a written constitution and its powers should be limited to those set out in the constitution” (Currie & De Waal The Bill of Rights p. 8). On the other hand the concept democracy has no single definition although it is often curtailed with the right to vote, and with it some form of representation and majority rule. Democracy in modernity can be described as “a set of rules (primary or basic) which establish who is authorized to take collective decisions and which procedures are to be used” (Bobbio The future of democracy p. 24). The question of what to legislate is not addressed (Deleuze Course on Rousseau) as Kleinherenbrink (A politics of things p.5) explain “we know how to legislate, but we do not know what to do”. The notions of constitutionalism and democracy in legal and political thought furthermore attributes a fixed identity (what Deleuze refers to as the illusion of a subject) on the bearer of human rights and envisions power as repressive and fixed in the different branches of government. As such it illustrates the inability of constitutional systems to move beyond pre-established conventions (the constitution as a product of history) and the idea of a fixed subject of legal and political thought. On this note before continuing it is necessary to explain what is meant by this typical Weberian notion of ‘power’ in a constitutional text. As explained above the constitution bestows powers on different branches of government. Michel Foucault rejects this juridical model of power which presumes that the individual is a fully shaped, constant and united beings that gets trapped in external power relations that exists irrespective of the individual’s own formation. For Foucault power is not centralised in the state or the administrative and executive bodies governing the state. He perceives power as relational and it exists between individuals or is strategically utilised by networks of groups of individuals. The state is thus a particular permutation of multifaceted arrangements of power relations (Foucault The birth of biopolitics). Similar to Deleuze and Guattari’s argument that certain assemblages produce the subject, Foucault also contends that institutions and knowledge transforms the individual into a subject thereby managing the individual as a part of the population. He explains that his conception of power (sovereign power) no longer deals with subjects over whom the ultimate domination was death. This has been replaced by power over the human body a power directed at life itself (Foucault The history of sexuality Vol 1 pp. 142–143). Foucault explains, “[b]y power… I do not understand a general system of domination exercised by one element or one group over another, whose effects… traverse the entire body social…” He emphasis that the condition of possibility of power should not be sought in the key existence of a central point (in other words the existence of a supreme constitution). He argues power “is the moving base of relations of force that incessantly induce, by their inequality, states of power, but always local and unstable”. For him power regroups everything under its invincible unity, but because it is produced at every instant, at every point, or moreover in every relation between one point and another. “Power is everywhere: not that it engulfs everything, but that it comes from everywhere” (Foucault ibid p. 121-122).
As we return to the constitution as a text that separates the juridical power between different branches of government one should not loose track of Foucault’s exposition of power as not merely repressive but also take into account the productive nature thereof and the relations between political power and the body. Put differently, the way we perceive power as fixed in the sovereign may be part of our expectation and ideals that the constitutional text presents as with a formula to address human rights infringements. Nonetheless, the possible functions of these branches of government are curtailed by stratified constitutional procedures and conventions preventing smooth space where possible creative and constructive solutions may originate. It remains static on the question who or which branch of government should decide (“will it be mommy-daddy-or me”) destroying the possibility of creative solutions between these branches denying a departure from the text and historical conventions.
For now, we can conclude that the language and strategies used by the judiciary function as a deferring mechanism of the judiciary to avoid dealing with the material content (“the what”) of these rights given the specific situations and singularities involved in every individual case (for examples see Stewart DPCE: Una costituzione al lavero). An attachment to deference and an over emphasis on the principle of separation of powers along with the pretext of institutional incapability highlights a kind of idealism attached to the constitutional text, the absolute abstraction of dealing with human rights and the inability of judges to deal creatively with a specific relation. It calls into question the very idea of constitutional democracies as part of a representationalist world. It also stresses that the stratified nature of complex constitutional arrangements and how it obscure the ability of the affected and vulnerable body to participate, engage and oppose decisions made by formal political structures and government.
3 A continues direct confrontation between democratic will and constitutional reason – Is it “either or” or “or” and “and” and “and”?
The nature between the democratic will of a sovereign people (democracy) and the constitutional framework (constitutionalism) that purports to represent the people by containing the expression of its will is often treated as binary. It forms the core of constitutional democracies (Christodoulidis J.S.Afr.L p. 108). Put differently, the constitutional model incorporating the separation of powers, democratic accountability and the promotion and protection of human rights composes an problematic/adversarial relationship between the courts and the other branches of government which may result in an uneven outcome between democratic will and constitutional reason (Davis PER p. 4). It raises the issue whether there is a justification to limit the right of a sovereign citizenry to decide the terms of public life in the name of the constitutional rights. Christodoulidis (pp. J.S.Afr.L 108-112) points out that that instead of viewing the problem posed between democratic will and constitutional reason as binary, we should rather approach it as a triangular relationship between the role of the courts in terms of constitutionalism (or constitutional reason), the representative branches of government (democratic will) and the people (the sovereign people). Brand (Stell LR p. 631) argues that this will shift the perspective and will force the judiciary to focus on the problem presented before them instead of shifting the responsibility to other branches of government to deal with the issue. Such an approach ‘would in fact seek both to engage with these problems [of institutional illegitimacy] in every case in which they arise, and to do so by looking for inventive solutions to them elsewhere than simply in a deferral to the other branches of government’. Thus a possible way for courts to address the tension between democratic will and constitutional law is to adapt their perspective on the tension between themselves and other branches of government different. Instead of perceiving the problem as a tension between democratic will and constitutional reason, the court should view it as problem between the sovereign people, constitutional reason and democratic will. Nonetheless we are doubtful whether a form of added direct participation by bodies will necessarily transform current practices.
4 A minor conclusion
Given what is said above, the constitutional model incorporating the separation of powers, democratic accountability and the promotion and protection of human rights composes an problematic/adversarial relationship between the courts and the other branches of government which may result in an uneven outcome between democratic will and constitutional reason (Davis PER p. 4). It raises the issue whether there is a justification to limit the right of a sovereign citizenry to decide the terms of public life in the name of the constitutional rights. Instead of treating this tension as either as binary or triangular, we argue that although the problem is perceived in these terms it is far more complex. A possible third, fourth, fifth, etc. root of tension is also possible. We thus not only face constitutionalism (or constitutional reason) versus the representative branches of government (democratic will), but also the need to take into account the people (the sovereign people), and specifically the relations between things where bodies is incorporated in the latter.
An image of a day in the Constitutional Court of South Africa | <urn:uuid:afa30f2c-95d0-404f-843e-e8de39e6dacc> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://syntheticzero.net/2014/12/18/a-politics-of-bodies-relations-and-things/?replytocom=16652 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572870.85/warc/CC-MAIN-20220817062258-20220817092258-00672.warc.gz | en | 0.941432 | 3,910 | 2.125 | 2 |
balanced or unbalanced forces
these are some pics of balanced and unbalanced forces. The robot is falling down so it is an unbalanced force. The tightrope walker is being held up but gravity is pulling it down.
the other stuff is going a way like down so they are unbalanced.
the robots are not going down or up so they are balanced forces. | <urn:uuid:dbbb816b-ffc0-4c2e-b7f0-9e7e8904de7c> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://tackk.com/sxyycs | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279169.4/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00211-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971494 | 78 | 2.359375 | 2 |
During our trip out to see Arthur's Pass on the South Island of New Zealand, we saw this beautiful cliff of rocks known as Castle Hill. It's a collection of large boulders just sitting on top of the rolling hills in a valley that serves as pastures for cows and sheep. Castle Hill is a landmark of note right off the main highway and there's a convenient parking lot for stopping and taking a nice walk.
Unfortunately, it was a cloudy day. But, there was a bit of sun when we first got there and it shows off the rocks nicely here. This one was taken while climbing up the cliffs to the tops of the main rocks. I took this one hand-held (no tripod), but it managed to stitch pretty nicely - except for some fuzziness at the rock at the top above you and small bit at the feet. This photo really shows you the boulders towering over you and captures the feeling of their majesty.
I took these in February of 2011, and just realized, two years later, I had not published the panoramas. We had a good time climbing the rocks. I went here a second time with a friend, on our way to do some backpacking. But, didn't take my 360 gear. | <urn:uuid:1438c382-0858-459b-b2a6-75e3829529bc> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://www.360cities.net/en/image/going-up-castle-rock-new-zealand | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988721141.89/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183841-00416-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980497 | 254 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Any one in require of home wellness care deserves non-health-related care or in house healthcare care that is compassionate no matter whether the patient is a youngster, adult or elder. Household well being care solutions are offered anywhere except for in nursing houses or a hospital. These services could even be provided at an assisted living facility, a school, apartment or residence.
As far as care plans go, there are a wide range of personal care and nursing services that are not just available, they are tailored for the demands of every single person recipient. Customized care plans and adhere to up assessments must be supplied by a registered nurse.
Nursing Supervision and Case Management
The care that is offered by individual care assistants and residence overall health aides is typically supervised by a registered nurse. A single of these registered nurses should really be on get in touch with at all instances in order to assist the caregivers as nicely as to deliver healthcare education and oversight and to implement the plans of care.
Elder or Adult Care
Are you aware of the fact that 75% of the health care costs in the US are incurred by only 12% of Americans? These people normally have some sort of chronic illness. The added benefits of this type of individualized household care consist of considerably a lot more than just being in a position to keep a person at home for their illness as opposed to getting institutionalized or place in a extended term care facility. As far as price goes, property care visits are roughly only 10% of what a single day in the hospital will price.
Furthermore, house overall health care has a track record that has been confirmed when it comes to items such as decreasing readmissions to the hospital, highly-priced visits to the emergency area and in managing chronic illnesses. In addition, there is scientific evidence that has confirmed that sufferers are capable to heal more quickly when they are in their own homes. wellness retreat uk and mortality rates are lowered in patients who take advantage of property wellness care. In truth, 90% of seniors facing lengthy term care in nursing residences favor to keep dwelling and get the services of a dwelling overall health care provider.
Private Elder Care Coordination, Arranging and Management
This requires both advising and then assisting families when it comes to figuring out the necessities of an aging adult. These caregivers are able to navigate several of the lengthy term form of care sources that are available in your region. The purpose here is to educate and inform the household of what the choices are and them to help them with the implementation of their selection. Generally this is accomplished by an RN who has been certified and specially trained in the area of geriatrics who can give:
The services of being a liaison for loved ones members who may live a fantastic distance away
Educating and advocating for the patient
Assisting with paperwork and types that are connected to insurance coverage, healthcare assistant and Medicare
Screening, arranging for and then monitoring any in house support or alternatives for institutional or residential care solutions
Care planning that is tailored to the patient
In the extended run property wellness care is a compassionate and caring choice for any individual who wants care and wishes to r | <urn:uuid:5c0bddaa-e897-4614-b8f1-860001c8c2dd> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://hooligans-thegame.com/what-to-appear-for-in-a-dwelling-wellness-care-provider/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572408.31/warc/CC-MAIN-20220816151008-20220816181008-00672.warc.gz | en | 0.972158 | 636 | 1.820313 | 2 |
By Ryan Velez
Many people use Bible scripture not just during worship, but as a part of their daily lives. Whether it’s to find inspiration or a personal mantra to affirm both their faith and their actions, several of these quotes are commonplace now. However, The Preying Narcissist points out that several of these quotes not only don’t appear in the Bible, but can run contradictory to what is actually there. They have compiled a list of some of the most popular examples.
First is the expression that God helps those who help themselves. This actually goes against the Gospel, as while we are provided with gifts and talents, the attitude of self-reliance and self-righteousness interferes with God’s work. A more accurate view would be that Jesus saves those who die to themselves. This view is expressed in the quote “then Jesus told His disciples, ‘If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Matthew 16:24).
Another misconception is the quote that cleanliness is next to godliness. While keeping a clean space certainly has its benefits, this expression never actually appeared in the Bible. For those trying to convince messy children to clean up, perhaps the quote “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you” (Exodus 20:12) may be a bit more apropos.
While the aforementioned expressions may be a bit lighthearted, there are also more serious examples of lines not in the Bible that are actually accepted as scriptural. Such an example is the expression that bad things happen to good people. While many may use this to take solace in hardships, it’s not a Bible quote. While a nice sentiment, The Preying Narcissist explains that it’s subjective who is good and bad. They cite the quote that “None is righteous, no, not one” (Romans 3:10). This isn’t to say that people are inherently bad either, rather that no one is without flaw.
In celebration or in sadness, many may reflect on the concept that God wants them to be happy. This is yet another misinterpretation that is not Biblical. In reality, rather than providing fleeting feelings and emotions of happiness, God’s aim is to work towards your good, even if it doesn’t provide happy feelings at the time. This is shown in the quote “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28). These are only some of the full list of examples provided—so be careful the next time you quote scripture that you’re actually drawing from the real thing. | <urn:uuid:2eef7c0b-1709-4a67-a323-e7c58d05ef8b> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://allchristiannews.com/popular-scripture-statements-arent-actually-biblical/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280929.91/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00419-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972116 | 589 | 1.84375 | 2 |
St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Chelsea was used to near perfect effect as the setting for all three acts of the opera. Tosca’s first act, which does, in fact take place in a church was, precisely because of the narrative, “easy” to stage, but the successful transformation of the St. Peter’s Chelsea chancel into first, the emotional claustrophobia of the villainous chief of police’s quarters and then, for the last act, the open air witness to revenge and tragedy resulted from the imaginative, effective stage direction and set management of Chelsea Opera’s co-founders Leonarda Priore and Lynne Hayden-Findlay.
Samuel McCoy, music director and principal conductor, maintained masterful control of the orchestra. The musicians were placed between the altar and the chancel, thereby requiring McCoy to conduct with his back to the singers. In spite of this difficult placement, McCoy successfully and skillfully retained complex balances and rhythmic patterns as well as dramatic timing of sung entrances, even in passages in which off-stage singers, on-stage singers and the orchestra were all performing. The twenty-three member orchestra played marvelously, filling the intimate church space so as to make it seem huge.
Bigness – robust, satisfyingly large sturdiness – was, in fact, one of the core features of this Tosca. All the singers – especially the three principals – had very big voices, capable of reaching well beyond the farthest-away audience members in much larger concert halls and opera houses than St. Peter’s Chelsea. The sheer size of the musical sound – combined with the consistent excellence of both production details and “minor” characters’ and choral singing – gave this Tosca the feel of a major opera house performance rather than the offering of a small regional company.
An additional important strength of this Tosca lay in the fine acting of the three principals: more than many operas, Tosca falls apart if the relationships among the actress Tosca, her lover, painter Mario Cavaradossi, and the Baron Scarpia, the sadistically self-interested and ruthless police chief, are not delineated with psychological consistency and credibility.
Regina Grimaldi played Tosca as a worldly woman, an accomplished stage actress who has experienced the adoration of many men. Two purities burn inside Tosca: her passionate love of Mario Cavaradossi and her devotion to her art. Tosca’s uncontrollable jealousy debases her; her humble service to artistic beauty elevates her. Grimaldi’s Tosca was a woman of deep contradictions and ultimate dedication to love and art. Grimaldi’s voice is earthy, sultry and bracingly intense: as a singer, she does not hold back at all, stretching her voice to its dramatic limits, and making her passions entirely intelligible to her audience. Though Grimaldi is not a delicate singer, her “Vissi d’arte” was successful because she sang it as an intimate prayer; the action-interrupting applause that followed the aria was well deserved.
Edgar Jaramillo played Mario Cavaradossi as an idealist, a man as devoted to his art as Tosca is to hers, a political activist of yearning for justice and loyalty to his comrades, and a lover whose adoration of his beloved is so profound, so tolerant and so joy-filled as to make him almost naive. Whether because of his own actual youth or as a result of conscious interpretation decisions, Jaramillo’s Mario was more psychologically young and untried than either Tosca or Scarpia. His singing was ardent and passionate, whether responding to the emotional and sexual pleasure of being close to his beloved or terrible torture at the command of Baron Scarpia.
Baron Scarpia, sung by Thomas Woodman, was entirely compelling and credible as the police chief whose habit of cruel and ruthless power has shaped his daily life for decades. Scarpia experiences his obsessive lust for the singer Floria Tosca as not merely a sexual frustration but also a maddening threat to his grip of political and personal power. The notion that he may not get what he wants – neither Mario’s breaking under torture nor Tosca’s acquiescence to his sexual aggression, both extreme physical manifestations of his unbridled desires – summons up cruel rage within him: thwarting of his wishes, for this Scarpia, is simply unintelligible. Woodman is a marvelous artist: acting and singing are of a piece. At the end of Act I, singing about his desire for Tosca while children and clergy sing about their desire for God, Woodman was sinister, powerful and fascinating. Describing Tosca, he lavished on the word “precioza” a full universe of meaning from lascivious perversity to domineering possession to cold-blooded calculations of sexual price.
Other singers were successful, too, in both their musical expression and their acting. The sacristan (Luis Alvarado) was vigorous in his guardianship over the church and benignly tolerant of the full array of human foibles on constant display in its sanctuary; Angelotti (Brace Negron) was an intense political revolutionary, keenly aware of both political ideals and present danger. Spoleta (Hugh Vera) embodied effectively the complacent obsequiousness of the mid-level confidant to a local tyrant. The Shepherd Boy (Erich Schuett) conveyed both innocence and the promise of gentle strength in adulthood, epitomizing the enduring loveliness and order of pastoral life and singing with charming, unaffected confidence.
Altogether, this Tosca was wonderful. The audience – most of them fairly familiar with the opera – was appropriately and happily appreciative. Chelsea Opera has created for itself an important place in the culture life of New York City: its maintenance of both high musical standards and consistent artistic integrity prove the merit of its continued support by loyal individuals and a wide variety of foundations and government agencies. Productions such as Tosca are proof that Chelsea Opera’s accumulated fine reputation over the last decade is well deserved and that its future should be secure.
Chelsea Opera: Tosca (June 4 and 6, 2015)
St. Peter’s Church in Chelsea
346 West 20th Street, in Manhattan
Running time: two hours and 45 minutes including two intermissions | <urn:uuid:adceb148-76f3-430d-b47e-1e0d070cba58> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | http://www.theaterscene.net/music/chelsea-opera-tosca/archive/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570765.6/warc/CC-MAIN-20220808031623-20220808061623-00273.warc.gz | en | 0.965572 | 1,345 | 1.71875 | 2 |
The Coachella Valley School District runs across 22 schools, with 18,000 students and 1000 teachers. In the last 3 years, schools in the district have adopted the use of tablets in their K-6 classrooms. Each student was provisioned an iPad to use both inside and outside the classroom. However, the schools struggled to formalize a process through which the iPads would seamlessly integrate into the academic routines of the teachers and students.
THE MOXTRA SOLUTION
The Coachella Valley School district adopted Moxtra to manage academics both inside and outside the classroom. Students and teachers both grasped the application with ease and integrated the application deeply into their work cycles. Moxtra provided the following uses:
Binders: Students and teachers organized their files by subject into Moxtra binders. Students were able to send their homework to their teachers as well as share notes with their classmates. Teachers kept their classes organized by creating separate binders. Moxtra provided an easy solution to unclutter the large amounts of content involved in day-to-day academic activities.
Rich Annotations: Moxtra’s annotation abilities gave students and teachers the ability to do more with their digital content. Teachers were able to annotate over students’ homework with highlights, drawings, voice notes, and more. Students were able to review notes and readings by highlighting them. By collaborating over their content, students were able to learn more efficiently and teachers were able to deliver thorough feedback in a timely manner.
Moxtra quickly replaced the jumble of edu-creation applications that previously cluttered students’ and teachers’ iPads. It is now completely integrated as a single centralized repository for students and teachers to interact on academic work. According to the Coachella Valley School District administration, the improvements in efficiency gave classes nearly 15 minutes of extra instructional time per day. | <urn:uuid:a29c25f2-c9d2-4385-85b0-2e7f1a6ed760> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://moxtra.com/resource/case-study/coachella-valley/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280266.9/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00501-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982591 | 379 | 2.765625 | 3 |
When a planned rest day turns into a rest week, a nagging injury keeps you from running or you’re off on holiday, you can expect to feel a bit guilty over a dropped exercise habit. Then there’s the fear of how much fitness you will lose.
“If you’re only taking a few days off, it allows your body to recover, replenish glycogen stores, adapt to the training and get stronger, not to mention refresh you mentally so that you’re keen to run again,” explains exercise physiologist, John Feeney (puresportsperformance.co.uk). “Take longer and it will affect your fitness, but the good news is it’s all reversible.”
In the short term, your blood pressure is affected immediately, because running increases blood flow to the heart and this, in turn, prompts your arteries to widen to enable greater circulation. The arteries remain like this for up to 24 hours before returning to normal if you don’t exercise. But these effects are only temporary and it’s only after 12 weeks that your arteries can begin to narrow and harden if you remain inactive.
What to do: Even if you can’t run, other forms of aerobic exercise, such as walking for 60 minutes, will help to keep your blood pressure low. Studies have shown women who walked briskly for at least three hours a week had the same protection against heart disease as women who ran for 90 minutes a week.
As women, it’s difficult to create dramatic changes in muscle by running alone, because we have lower levels of testosterone, which helps men to build muscles. But it does improve tone, strength and elasticity in the muscle fibres, particularly with added hill training and pace work. So, does that mean when we stop running all our muscles will turn to fat?
“No, because muscle tissue is different from fat, so you can’t change one thing into another,” explains women’s running coach Tara Shanahan (girlsruntheworld.co.uk). But if you take time off for over six weeks, you will start to lose muscular endurance, strength and tone.
What to do: How quickly you regain muscle strength and endurance depends on how often you train, but the best news for those who end up having to take a lot of time out? You will see bigger improvements more quickly than someone who was fitter.
When we run, our muscles process insulin and absorb the resulting glucose, which is released to power our movement as we run. Stop running and your muscles quickly become less sensitive to insulin, according to research published in the Journal of Applied Physiology. As well as increasing the risk of Type-2 diabetes, this also means calories from food are no longer converted to energy for the muscles and are instead stored as fat.
What to do: Don’t fear, it’s not as dire as it sounds. Studies show your body can adapt quickly to increased insulin with other forms of exercise and healthier eating. High-volume exercise, such as an hour-long walk or high-intensity exercise of just ten minutes a few times per week is just as effective at ensuring your body continues to process insulin.
Remember how out of breath you felt when you first started running? While research shows you won’t be starting from scratch after taking time out, your VO2 max or aerobic capacity is affected within two weeks. “This is primarily due to a reduction in the heart’s efficiency and the number of capillaries in the muscles, which affects their ability to absorb and utilise oxygen to help you run,” explains Feeney.
What to do: If you were already super fit before you took time out, regaining aerobic fitness won’t be as hard. For anyone else, it will feel harder, which could be more discouraging. The best thing to do is start back from scratch, even if this means returning to a walk-run training plan until you rebuild your aerobic fitness. This way you won’t tax your body too much and be left feeling discouraged. If you’re out due to injury, try sport-specific training like aqua running to prevent reductions in aerobic capacity.
Ever finished a run and found yourself in a bad mood? Unlikely. This is because exercise releases the feel-good hormone serotonin and, the more frequently we run, the more we get used to running as a mood booster. Stop and you can expect to hit the wall pretty quickly.
Not only that, but studies suggest that our ability to handle the anxiety of training and races may also be affected. When we feel challenged, such as at the beginning of a race, our fight or flight response is triggered, causing a rush of adrenaline. The more we run, the better we become at handling this anxiety and harnessing the positive effects.
What to do: “Think of your mind as a muscle that can be trained just like leg strength,” explains Katherine O’Hara, a holistic performance coach (ko-motivation.com). “Coming back from time out and regaining your focus is just a question of training. Ultimately, your mind can talk you into feeling more relaxed. If you tell yourself you’re anxious, you will be. But if you tell yourself it’s a great opportunity, you’ll be excited and are more likely to feel in control.” | <urn:uuid:8c6d3116-af75-46ca-afad-b8eee9ed4df5> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.womensrunning.co.uk/health/quickly-lose-running-fitness | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570692.22/warc/CC-MAIN-20220807181008-20220807211008-00678.warc.gz | en | 0.949779 | 1,156 | 2.1875 | 2 |
On Sat, Aug 20, 2005 at 05:50:05PM +0800, Federico Sevilla III wrote:
> On Sat, Aug 20, 2005 at 11:33:41AM +0200, Markus Meyer wrote:
> > My Smartmontools reported a defect block on one of my disks with an
> > XFS on them. So I wanted to follow the Badblocks-Howto to find
> > the corresponding Inode and the file that I can "repair" the block
> > and restore the file. But I have no idea how to accomplish this on
> > XFS. Is there anyone around who can help me? Well there aren't that
> > many docs around and the man pages are not a big help (or maybe I'm
> > just blind).
> > I'm running Debian Linux under 2.6.12.
> AFAIK you can't do this with XFS. The best thing to do will be to
> replace your hard drive. If you can't do that, try running
> badblocks(8) in non-destructive read-write mode. This will attempt to
> read and then write on every block of your drive. The write, in
> particular, should trigger a remap using your drive's spare blocks,
> and may "fix" things.
I was a tad too quick with that reply. In hindsight, I'm not sure if the
procedure in the Badblocks HOWTO that you linked to can or cannot be
done with XFS. Maybe there's something that can be conjured up using
xfs_db(8). We can wait for the XFS experts to chime in.
The badblocks(8) approach holds, though. You can even give it start and
end blocks, to limit the area it will "scrub". Check the manual page for
Federico Sevilla III : jijo.free.net.ph : When we speak of free software
GNU/Linux Specialist : GnuPG 0x93B746BE : we refer to freedom, not price. | <urn:uuid:d062cd6d-9a46-4e22-9574-11f8e8c829c5> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://oss.sgi.com/archives/xfs/2005-08/msg00441.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280900.71/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00007-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.913746 | 450 | 1.8125 | 2 |
BAX: Symphony No. 6 / Into the Twilight (David Lloyd-Jones/ Royal Scottish National Orchestra/ Tim Handley) (Naxos: 8.557144)
Shipping time: In stock | Expected delivery 1-2 days | Free UK Delivery
Arnold Bax (1883-1953)
Symphony No. 6 Into the Twilight Summer Music
A commemorative plaque graces the house in Streatham where Arnold Bax was born in 1883, but it is unlikely that he would now recognise this busy London suburb as being what was then a quiet parish in the county of Surrey. Although there was no long-standing musical tradition in the family, his paternal uncle, Ernest Belfort Bax, a well-known socialist philosopher, had studied music in his youth and had even published a rousing song entitled All for the Cause with words by his friend William Morris. According to his autobiography, Arnolds own first composition was a piano sonata written at the age of twelve while he was recovering from sunstroke (very fittingly my enemies might snarl, he quipped). Four years later he entered the Royal Academy of Music, where he soon gained a reputation as a phenomenal sight-reader at the piano but was overshadowed as a composer by several of his fellow students, though it is Baxs work that has proved the most enduring. The turning-point in his life came in 1902, when he discovered the Celtic world through the poetry of W. B. Yeats. He soon visited Ireland, where he enthusiastically explored its culture, history and landscape; he even learned to read Irish Gaelic with ease but shied away from using it in the presence of native speakers. His music, which for some years had been under the sway of Wagner, now assumed an Irish identity, and he began to write what he called figures of a definitely Celtic curve. Having no need to earn a living, he was able to spend months at a time in a small coastal village in Donegal imbibing the local atmosphere and pouring forth a stream of emotionally charged poetry and music.
It was here, in November 1907, that Bax completed a five-act play based on the story of the legendary Irish heroine Deirdre of the Sorrows. He had intended it as the libretto for an opera, and during the following months he made some sketches for the music before eventually abandoning the project. Reluctant to waste good ideas, however, he turned the operas prologue into an independent orchestral piece, which he called Into the Twilight after the poem of that title by Yeats. It was to be the first in a trilogy of symphonic pictures collectively entitled Éire, the other two being In the Faery Hills (1909) and Rosc-catha (1910), the latter also based on the Deirdre sketches. The manuscript of Into the Twilight is prefaced by Yeatss poem, and in a programme note for the works only performance during his lifetime (under Thomas Beecham in 1909) Bax wrote that it seeks to give a musical impression of the brooding quiet of the Western Mountains at the end of twilight, and to express something of the sense of timelessness and hypnotic dream which veils Ireland at such an hour. The opening theme was almost certainly intended to represent Deirdre herself in Baxs aborted opera, while the other main theme is borrowed from an earlier homage to Ireland, the orchestral poem Cathaleen-ni-Hoolihan.
By the time Bax came to write Summer Music his reputation had grown considerably, due in part to a series of colourful tone-poems of which The Garden of Fand and Tintagel are the best known. The new work, which is scored for a small orchestra, was written in London during the spring of 1921 and revised for publication in 1932 with a dedication to Beecham. Bax originally called it Idyll but later decided that there were already too many pieces of English music with this title and opted instead for something more evocative. Ever laconic in describing his own music, Bax wrote in a programme note that The piece, a musical description of a hot windless June mid-day in some wooded place of Southern England, is lyrical throughout. During the greater part of it the strings are occupied in providing a murmurous accompaniment to the pastoral reveries of the various wind instruments, and not until near the end is there any great climax of sound. In a letter to the conductor Adrian Boult he confided: I am rather fond of this little bit of southern England under the sun and enjoyed revising the orchestration.
During the decade that separated the original version of Summer Music from its revision, Bax completed five of his seven symphonies and found himself acclaimed by a German critic as the head of the modern English school. The slow movement of the Sixth Symphony, and perhaps also the bulk of the first movement, had begun life as part of a Viola Sonata that Bax had started writing in 1933. He soon realised, however, that the material was more suited to orchestral treatment, and the symphony was completed in Morar, on the west coast of Scotland, on 10th February 1935. It was originally dedicated to the Polish composer Karol Szymanowski, whom Bax had met in England, but his name is crossed through on the manuscript and replaced by that of Adrian Boult.
The first movement opens with a prelude in which a repeated figure in the bass provides the accompaniment to a march-like theme on horns and woodwind. The turbulent Allegro, which follows a series of grandiose chords, is based on the preceding material and eventually gives way to a slower section with a new theme played by three flutes in unison. The fast music resumes for a stormy development section, followed by a brief respite before the movement rushes on in a whirlwind to its emphatic ending, like the slamming of a door. The slow movement is founded on two contrasting ideas: an expressive melody first heard on strings, and then a soft trumpet theme with a Scotch snap, characteristic of Scottish folk-music. Development of this material culminates in two march-like sections, the first harsh and baleful, the second a calm, stately procession leading to the peaceful coda. The tripartite finale (Introduction, Scherzo and Trio, and Epilogue) is the only one among Baxs symphonies to open quietly. The solo clarinets sinuous melodic line, from which the movement grows, is repeated by the strings, now with accompanying harmonies, before the woodwind announce a new theme of a liturgical nature, very similar to the Sine Nomine melody in Vaughan Williamss later Fifth Symphony. At the end of the Introduction the pace gradually quickens, leading into the Scherzo, in which the opening material is now transformed into a kind of symphonic jig full of nervous energy. Contrast is provided by a slower section (the Trio), after which the Scherzo resumes its headlong course with an inflexibly rigid rhythm. A strikingly dramatic moment occurs with the horns braying furiously and the strings above them singing out a theme taken from Sibeliuss Tapiola, a work that had reduced Bax to tears when he first heard it. (The two composers admiration was mutual: in acknowledging the dedication of Baxs Fifth Symphony, Sibelius called him one of the great men of our time.) There is a tremendous climax, with the liturgical theme blared out triumphantly by the brass, and this leads to the peaceful Epilogue, in which the clarinets enigmatic opening music is transformed by the solo horn into something of exquisite beauty set against a backdrop of rippling harp and divided strings. The musical texture becomes gradually sparer and the movement fades slowly away, bringing to a close what some regard not only as Baxs symphonic masterpiece but as one of the finest symphonies from the twentieth century.
At fig. 13 in the second movement of the symphony the autograph and published score show 14 bars for tambourine. However, they | <urn:uuid:94fba30a-7672-4d74-b39d-866026a80cef> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://naxosdirect.co.uk/items/bax-symphony-no.-6-into-the-twilight-david-lloyd-jones-royal-scottish-national-orchestra-tim-handley-naxos-8.557144-146257 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988720468.71/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183840-00489-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975078 | 1,691 | 1.828125 | 2 |
Journeys Within Our Community
(JWOC) strives to create and support projects that will reduce poverty levels and
increase educational and economic opportunities throughout Southeast Asia.
Based on the principle of ‘Learning Today, Leading Tomorrow’, our focus is education, including
opportunities at local universities, JWOC’s Community Center and in the
villages surrounding Siem Reap, Cambodia. Over the years, we have learned that
focusing on education is where we can make the greatest difference in helping
those struggling to better their future and become leaders in their community.
Our current programs are:
Scholarship Program: In the past
10 years 123 students have graduated from JWOC’s university scholarship
program. These students have gone on to do amazing things, creating what we
call the JWOC ripple effect. JWOC admits around 75 students a year into the
scholarship program. These students generally come from rural Cambodian
villages, work full time to support themselves and their families, attend
university and volunteer 6-8 hours weekly at JWOC. Their volunteer work is key to the
implementation of JWOC’s other programs.
Free Classes Program: We offer a
wide range of Free Classes (Kindergarten, English, Digital Literacy, Art) to
the local community complementing what is taught at public schools and
providing a safe environment where students can play and study. We provide
high-quality learning opportunities free of charge to those who cannot afford
extra lessons at school or at private language centers. Each week, JWOC teaches
over 40 classes to around 850 students at our Community Center.
Community Support: While Cambodia’s
bigger cities flourish, many villages remain cut off from the progress with few
educational resources. This program brings tailored education and training into
villages in Siem Reap Province. We provide information about available
community resources, employment information and deliver life skills training.
Education Loans: Unlike other countries
where student loans are common place, student loans in Cambodia are only now
emerging as a way to secure an education. JWOC offers low interest, no
collateral loans for students who wish to continue their education beyond high
school. Students with financial need and who do not have a scholarship can
continue their studies at university or through vocational training by
utilizing a JWOC loan. | <urn:uuid:6bd5f488-c5bf-4777-8a1f-9e771c29d292> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://www.idealist.org/view/org/mPsK2CTKZJjd/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988720962.53/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183840-00386-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935731 | 510 | 1.953125 | 2 |
As CASLE’s paper files are sorted through, more efforts and contributions will be added to this document and website. However, by far the longest list would be the many schools that CASLE worked with directly, one incident at a time.
This document gives an idea of the depth and breadth of CASLE’s work on behalf of schoolchildren and school staffs, for all of us, because our children are our country’s greatest resource.
More About CASLE: an incomplete list of contributions for reference
It became clear to CASLE’s founding five that their children were being put at risk daily while at school. Until then, like most who send their children off to school, they had believed the system was taking good care of everything. CASLE’s founders happened to see incidents – several – in their schools. They worked to correct them and paid the price, but that is another story. While they did this daily in incident after incident, they came to realize the system needed significant changes. Work had to be done on many levels if changes were to be significant, and last any longer than our own daily vigilance. Principals, teachers, custodians, board members, maintenance managers, officials of government departments, politicians, and other parents had to have their eyes opened, as theirs had been, to the importance of healthy school environments.
They found each other and formed CASLE (Citizens for A Safe Learning Environment). It eventually became Canadians for A Safe Learning Environment (CASLE), an information-based Registered Charity with a network of volunteer parents, teachers, affiliated groups and individuals from across Nova Scotia, Canada, and beyond.
Clean air and a healthy environment are important to learning, as are a good curriculum and good teaching. Health, behaviour and learning ability are all influenced by school environments.
CASLE worked hand in hand with the system and with all concerned to improve the condition of school buildings and the products and practices used within, so that school children and school staffs have a safe and healthy daily environment.
Mission: “With solid information, respect and persistence as our primary tools we can help provide environmentally healthy products and practices in schools, and healthy school buildings.”
For over 25 years CASLE worked on more newly recognized environmental health concerns such as toxic chemical use reduction, indoor mould removal, pesticide reduction, scent- free programs and no-idling vehicle zones around schools, but also on shoring up well established and regulated Health and Safety concerns, like asbestos, silica, PCBs and building healthy new schools.
Although most of CASLE’s contributions have been in Nova Scotia, in CASLE’s years of work it assisted many schools and school boards across Canada and in other countries to achieve healthier schools – from Whitehorse to Texas, from Australia to England. CASLE began prior to the internet. Its filing cabinets contain detailed records of the earlier years, and computers contain the later years.
Selected Contributions of CASLE
CASLE played a role in each of these improvements, sometimes minor, sometimes major:
- Raised the awareness and action on healthy school creation and operation within several Nova Scotia (NS) government departments and through several successive provincial governments over 25 years.
- Brought awareness and action to the federal level, primarily through Health Canada, government agencies and committees and public organizations. Worked with Health Canada, CMHC, NRC, and others federally so that Nova Scotia’s pioneering work came into national awareness. Robinson spoke to international and national conferences and served on committees working on public health issues such as indoor mould, evaluation of chemicals proposed for removal from consumer products (such as the Safe Environments Program and Chemicals Management Plan), the Tools for Schools Kit, and more.
- Provided guidance for schools and individuals across Canada and beyond (e.g. Resource/reviewer for Toronto School Board draft scent free policy and resource for public action groups seeking adoption of this document, 2005-7, Fix Our Schools Organization, Ontario, Toxic-Free-Marin, and many, many more)
- Worked with the Occupational Health and Safety Division of NS Dept. of Labour for many changes, including activating Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) Committees in all NS schools, finding ways to enforce workplace standards in schools, including children’s vulnerabilities in those actions; protecting school occupants from common hazards such as asbestos, silica, mould, lead, and more. The OHS Act was interpreted to allow community members to serve on (OHS) committees in schools as long as they did not reduce the participation of employee members. The Dept. of Labour reported that schools with a community OHS member made advancements with remarkable success and with little or no intervention needed from the Dept. of Labour.
- Worked with the NS Dept. of Education to create many changes to the system. All NS school boards now have qualified engineer managers in charge of operations and maintenance, and who meet regularly to share and solve joint problems. All regions were in-serviced by CASLE and had follow-up assistance in choosing less-toxic cleaning and maintenance materials, identifying school Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) problems, and more. IAQ protocols were implemented across the province. Asbestos, radon, lead, indoor mould and other hazards were evaluated, abatement plans were developed, and implemented. School chemistry departments were audited and made less hazardous. Techniques were developed to allow minor and even major renovations to happen without exposure to students and staff. Successive NS governments invested heavily in creating Healthy Schools, both old and new, making NS a leader in Healthy Schools.
- Replacement of school board cleaning materials containing toxic ingredients (including endocrine disruptors, mutagens, carcinogens, sensitizers and teratogens) with safer alternatives Nova Scotia, and partnered with workers unions to improve other parts of Canada. (1994 to present)
- Reduced the use of toxic building materials in existing schools (e.g., low-emission paint, caulks, waxes)
- Fostered use of isolation techniques and scheduling for renovations and maintenance of schools for major and minor renovations (e.g., scheduling paving and tarring roofs when children are not in school) (1994 to present)
- Fostered elimination of pesticide use in and around schools in Nova Scotia (1994 to present)
- Reduced use of CCA pressure-treated wood in school construction and school playgrounds (1997 to present)
- Fostered changes in industries such as the carpet industry, the cleaning industry, and to school design, construction and operation.
- Fostered scent-free programs, no-vehicle-idling-programs, smoke-free programs in schools and other public buildings (1994 to present)
- Advised Department of Education in interventions for environment and health issues such as “sick” schools needing to get by until new schools are built, installation of temporary of air filter machines for select classrooms, and assistance in designing the province’s ECO classroom for environmentally sensitive students and teachers, and healthy school design and construction.
- The summer of 1997 saw the first Provincial Indoor Air Quality Conference on Schools, sponsored by the Department of Education. CASLE made the opening address to “set the tone” for the two days. At this meeting CASLE introduced the US EPA Tools for Schools Action Kit to the Department of Education and School Boards. One school activated the kit as a result, thanks to Chemistry teacher Sandra LeBlanc, who then won a US EPA implementation award for her work with her students in the Kit’s operation. Sandra was to be part of the 2007 major project to implement Tools for Schools in NS schools. We did not achieve funding.
- CASLE executive wrote a report on the new Horton School (near Wolfville) from an environmental health viewpoint. (1998) The Department published the report widely through the province, and led to the Department organizing CASLE presentations on Healthy School Design and Construction to the Nova Scotia School Boards Association, the maintenance managers for the seven provincial school boards, the Department of Transportation and Public Works, Labour and Health Inspectors and the construction consortiums that build our new schools.
- CASLE’s president’s report on ventilation systems was instrumental in the Education Department’s decision to require full ventilation systems rather than less effective rooftop package units, and exceeding ASHRAE’s guidelines for air delivery, including 100% fresh air ventilation systems in all new schools since 1998.
- CASLE’s president chaired and VP served on the NS Department of Education’s Healthy Schools Construction Committee to guide the healthy schools aspects of the new Halifax West High School, a model “Healthy School” and subsequent new schools. Among many other healthy school items, new schools will have no carpeting, 100% fresh air, gymnasiums finished and off-gassed early, use less toxic materials whenever possible, have new locker design, no gas appliances, and much more. See Healthy Schools Design and Construction and its Appendix on www.casle.ca
- CASLE’s president caused formal identification of asbestos content in all Nova Scotian schools and establishment of new procedures for removal of asbestos from schools in Nova Scotia (1994 to present)
- CASLE’s president (chair) and vice-president Hum served on the interdepartmental committee that drafted Healthy Schools Design and Construction (2002), which was integrated into the design requirements manual for the construction of all new public buildings in Nova Scotia, including schools, hospitals, prisons, etc.
- US National Education Association published the document Healthy School Design and Construction on their website and on disc and microfiche. ~ 2003
- CASLE’s Degaust/Ratchford’s Less Toxic Meeting Places and Robinson’s cleaning chemical articles were translated and published in European countries: (early 2000s)
- Reviewed US EPA’s draft Healthy Schools web information, by invitation (1998-2000)
- Reviewed Health Canada’s draft Tools for Schools Action Kit, by invitation
- Key contributor, Scent-Free module Health Canada’s draft Tools for Schools Action Kit (~2007)
- Trainer/reviewer/resource for several NB Lung Association Healthy School projects and documents including the Scent Free Program Video text (2000-2006)
- Train the Trainer for NB Lung Association’s Tools for Schools/Healthy Schools Program (early 2000’s)
- Partnered with Atlantic Health Promotion Research Centre, Dalhousie University on a national study funded by Health Canada to identify and understand the factors that facilitate or hinder the use of existing knowledge about Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) issues and the implementation of existing guidelines (1999-2002)
- Partnered with the New Brunswick Lung Association on a national pilot project to test the use of Tools for Schools (2000)
- President Robinson was a key contributor to a three year IAQ project by Pollution Probe in Ottawa.(1998-2000)
- President Robinson served on the founding committee and national board of directors of the Healthy Indoors Partnership, an organization of government, industry and organizations that works on IAQ issues in Canada. (2002-2004)
- CASLE has served as a resource to local, national and international media.
- Served on Halifax School Board committees:
- Environmental Health (Corinne Harland 1993-95),
- Halifax Regional School Board Tobacco Policy committee (Corinne Harland 2003),
- Scent Free Policy committee (Karen Robinson late 1990s),
- Cleaning Product Evaluation Committee (Avis DeGaust and Karen Robinson 1997-8)
- Anaphylaxis Policy committee (Karen Robinson Corinne Harland Avis Degaust 2000)
- Maintenance Review Committee (Karen Robinson Avis Degaust 2002)
- CASLE’s working board provided talks to schools, governments, and organizations. Speakers over the years were, Harland, Given, Hum, Coughlan, Degaust/Ratchford, Moser, and Robinson. A remarkably small list to have done so much. Behind the scenes there were several more board members at different times, such as Malouf and Stone, plus the long-time Treasurer, Janice Moore. Several board members contributed for shorter periods of time. Names are on CASLE documents.
- Robinson’s selected Speaking Engagements:
- The international Air and Waste Management Association, A&WMA (2003, 2004, 200?)Canada’s first national conference on cancer prevention, Prevent Cancer Now, 2007
- Environment and health panel of the ESAC (Environmental Studies Association of Canada) national conference, 2002
- EECOM 2017 Acadia University
- by invitation, talks to schools, PTAs, provincial government departments, provincial maintenance managers organization, Federation of Home and Schools Associations, two provincial political party policy meetings (and less formally for two more), annual talks to teachers in training at Mt St Vincent U and St FX U…
- She also served on several national committees and organizations, contributed to provincial and national forums on indoor mold, chemicals management, and more.
- CASLE received the Canadian Institute of Child Health’s National Innovation Award of Excellence (2005)
- Two of CASLE’s Board members received Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medals (Debbie Hum and Karen Robinson 2004) | <urn:uuid:48a2033c-d8b5-42c2-97c8-00cfc6e80d44> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://casle.ca/a-casle-summary-2021/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571056.58/warc/CC-MAIN-20220809155137-20220809185137-00671.warc.gz | en | 0.95333 | 2,792 | 2.46875 | 2 |
What amount of Alpine dust do I use in cracks and crevices?
There are some yellow jackets in my siding which I need to get rid of so, I got some Alpine dust insecticide to use.
Did you get a hand duster also? As long as you know where the bees are entering then it is a fairly easy process. At night when they are not active, go up to the opening and place the end of the duster directly in or up to the hole where they are going in and out. Puff twice from your hand duster directly into the hole. Then back the duster away about 5 inches and puff once directly at the hole to cover the sides and around it. Then walk away. When the bees come out the next morning and land on the siding to go in and out of the hole, they will bring the dust on their bodies back into the nest. Typically, this process can take a few days depending on the size of the colony. One important note is that you should only fill your hand duster about 1/4 of the way. You will not need that much dust, and you have to leave enough space in the duster for air to force the dust out.
Answer last updated on: 08/20/2010 | <urn:uuid:56649eae-8d37-42c9-8230-45f89043dde2> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.domyownpestcontrol.com/what-amount-of-alpine-dust-do-use-in-cracks-and-crevices-qa-1486.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279915.8/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00281-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950987 | 261 | 1.796875 | 2 |
'Dinosaur Revolution' speculates on how dinosaurs lived
September 1, 2011 4:00 AM
Chatham University assistant professor of biology Michael Habib appears on Discovery Channel's "Dinosaur Revolution."
By Rob Owen Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Chatham University associate professor of biology Michael Habib is no stranger to TV shows about dinosaurs. In 2009, he was among the experts interviewed in Discovery Channel's "Clash of the Dinosaurs," about dinosaur physiology.
He'll be back on screen in the Sept. 11 episodes of Discovery's latest, "Dinosaur Revolution" (9-11 p.m. Sunday and Sept. 11), but his larger role was behind the scenes.
" 'Dinosaur Revolution' is much more about the dinosaurs' lives and dinosaur behaviors, what they might have done," Mr. Habib said. "It's much less of a typical documentary and more of a story, more of an in-the-field mockup."
"Dinosaur Revolution" is sparsely narrated with lengthy segments of computer-animated dinosaurs in their natural habitats.
When: 9-11 p.m. Sunday and Sept. 11, Discovery Channel.
"Myself and the other individuals interviewed appear on screen in short intermissions between the longer sequences," Mr. Habib said. "It doesn't bounce back and forth the way it does in a more typical natural science documentary."
In addition to the Chatham professor, "Dinosaur Revolution" also includes commentary from another Pittsburgher: Matt Lamanna, paleontologist at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History.
Mr. Habib said he was brought onto the project by his friend, "Dinosaur Revolution" art director David Krentz, whom Mr. Habib calls one of his favorite "paleo-artists" -- an artist who creates illustrations of extinct organisms.
Although Mr. Habib spent a day being interviewed for "Dinosaur Revolution," he said his larger contribution was acting as a consultant on the project for almost two years. Producers would send him rough drafts of the computer animation and he'd give notes on what was accurate or what needed to be changed.
"I would often do response sketches of my own or annotate their sketches," he said. "One of the nice things about living in the digital age is you can do stuff remotely."
Mr. Habib consulted on scene development, anatomical accuracy and general advice on what animals might have existed in any particular scene producers were looking to create.
"They'd say, 'We need a medium-size Pterosaur that ate fish and lived in the early Cretaceous,' and I'd get them a list they could use," he said, noting that "Dinosaur Revolution" producers strove for accuracy and didn't rely solely on a Google image search, a mistake some producers make that can introduce inaccuracies into film productions. "They think, no one knows the difference, but you'd be amazed how often kids know the difference.
"Never underestimate the accuracy of the checking ability of a small child on a show that involves dinosaurs," Mr. Habib said, chuckling. "I'll just throw that advice out there for the [entertainment] industry in general."
Mr. Habib suggested one sequence involving a Pterosaur that couldn't be prepared in time for the Discovery airing but may be included on a DVD release or in a sequel.
He blogs about his work on dinosaur studies with a colleague at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles at http://h2vp.blogspot.com.
A version of this story first appeared in Tuned In Journal blog at post-gazette.com/tv. TV writer Rob Owen:
or 412-263-2582. Follow RobOwenTV on Twitter or Facebook. | <urn:uuid:5d939d9c-e1e7-4084-a68c-24ad2cd2ac4f> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.post-gazette.com/tv-radio/2011/09/01/Dinosaur-Revolution-speculates-on-how-dinosaurs-lived/stories/201109010288 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280730.27/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00248-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964986 | 786 | 1.976563 | 2 |
Pregnancy is synonymous with change. Things begin to change the moment you create a new life. Some of these changes are visible, others, not so much.
Some changes are welcome, like your growing belly. But some changes you can do without! After all, who wants to get acne at any point in their lives, leave alone when pregnant? But the reality is that most women experience changes in their skin during pregnancy. Be it acne, skin darkening or stretch marks – you can expect some or all of these changes while you are expecting a baby (1).
One of the more uncommon skin problems women encounter while pregnant is hives or urticaria. So, today let’s find out more about this unpleasant pregnancy side affect.
What Causes Hives During Pregnancy?
Hives are the reaction of your body to an allergen. It can be some food, medication, chemicals or even a piece of clothing. The pumped up amount of hormones in your body can make simple environmental nuisances turn into scary allergens durin
Here are some common causes of hives during pregnancy:
- Insect bites
If you are carrying twins, you are more likely to experience PUPPS and other skin related problems (3).
Signs And Symptoms Of Hives During Pregnancy:
Are you wondering if the rashes on your body are hives? Check out the list of symptoms and find out!
- Raised welts
- Pain in and around the welts
- Dry skin
[ Read: PUPPP Rash During Pregnancy ]
Are Hives Dangerous During Pregnancy?
Most cases of hives during pregnancy are not dangerous. In fact, most resolve without much effort. But in some cases, these hives can turn into PUPPS, in which case you’ll need to seek medical help (4). In fact, it is wise to see your doctor in case of hives, in any case. Just to be safe. If you find hives around your genital area, go to the doctor, pronto!
How To Treat Hives During Pregnancy?
It is tempting to use OTC drugs to treat these unpleasant pregnancy fallouts. But it is better to stay off medication during pregnancy. If things are getting uncomfortable, you can try medicines like chlorphenamine or loratadine. Both of these treatment options are safe during pregnancy (5).
Some other measures you can take to get some relief includes:
Make sure to keep your skin moisturized. This will prevent dryness as well as provide relief from the constant itch.
2. Avoid Soap:
Yes, you want to be clean. But using soap and scrubbing the affected area can make the condition worse.
[ Read: Skin Care During Pregnancy ]
3. Use Oatmeal Or Baking Soda:
An oatmeal bath is another great way to alleviate the itchiness that comes with hives. You can also include baking soda in your bath water to get some relief.
4. OTC Medication:
While you should avoid OTC oral medicines, you can always use anti-itch creams to banish the icky itch!
Tips To Prevent Hives During Pregnancy:
Apart from the treatment options mentioned above, there are some things you can do to minimize your chances of getting pregnancy time hives. Here are some simple tips to help you out:
- Whenever possible, stay away from hot showers and hot baths. High temperatures are known to increase the risk of hives (6).
- Pregnancy can be uncomfortable. So it is in any case better to avoid wearing tight fitted clothing while your are pregnant. Doing so will also decrease your chances of getting hives.
- This is a tough one! But if you can, avoid scratching your skin.
- Try meditation and other relaxation techniques to prevent stress.
[ Read: Skin Rashes During Pregnancy ]
These simple measures might not prevent all cases of hives while pregnant, but does make the risk lower.
No matter the steps you take, you cannot eliminate the chance of getting hives 100%. In some cases, they can still be around after you give birth. But don’t worry – sooner or later, they will bid your body goodbye, for good! Till then, keep your eye on the final goal – a healthy baby!
Do you know of any other home remedy for treating hives during pregnancy? Share with us!
- 10 Effective Measures To Prevent Itching During Pregnancy
- 7 Most Common Skin Problems During Pregnancy & Their Remedies
- 7 Useful Tips To Reduce Skin Darkening During Pregnancy
- Is It Safe To Use Hair Removing Creams During Pregnancy? | <urn:uuid:7a6a935d-c0b4-4081-a832-c51c6360e810> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://coolmom.info/en/pages/607319 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280835.22/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00049-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.914297 | 978 | 1.734375 | 2 |
FREDERICK, Md. - About 50 young officers in training got the chance to see what it's like to be a real police officer at the 12th annual Youth Police Academy.
Sponsored by the Frederick Police Department, the children learned the in's and out's of the Special Response Team, how to handle equipment, how to stay on the job, and what it feels like to be in a police vehicle.
"It's a great opportunity for the children of our community to come and participate with the police department," said Colonel Thomas Leddwell, Frederick Police Department. "It's a positive bonding experience between the children and the officers, and they get to do fun things and learn what the police department does."
"I learned that assault shields are heavy and you have to squat down on them, and I also know that the first person that can bust down the door always has them and the rest of the squad is behind them," said Noah Matthews, student.
They also saw how police K-9 Dak apprehends the bad guy.
The academy is for kids ages seven to 14, and for some it gave them a glimpse into what they hope to be their future career.
"I want to become a police officer on a SWAT team," said Matthews.
"Yes, I want to be a SWAT dog handler," said Lucas Matthews.
The students also got to run an obstacle course designed for officers in training. The academy continues until Wednesday, July 2 with a different group of students each day.
Copyright 2017 Nexstar Broadcasting, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. | <urn:uuid:d6b792f8-0869-4660-b707-4d9707977137> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.your4state.com/news/news/kids-get-hands-on-experience-at-youth-police-academy | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280730.27/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00246-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978822 | 338 | 1.8125 | 2 |
It was a USPS health fair more than a decade ago that led Joshua Campbell to sign up for the Be the Match Registry as a potential bone marrow donor.
Last fall, Campbell — an operations programs specialist for Gulf Atlantic District in Jacksonville, FL — learned he could make a difference for an anonymous infant who was battling acute lymphoblastic leukemia.
The Postal Service employee didn’t hesitate to help out.
After additional testing to confirm the match, Campbell underwent surgery in December to extract 280 milliliters of bone marrow from his hip that would give the sick baby a chance to have a healthy life.
“Joshua always focuses on doing good things,” said Nathan King, the district’s marketing manager.
Looking back on the experience, Campbell concluded: “I would absolutely do it again!” | <urn:uuid:3098bc7d-62ef-42f9-9158-82ee30eee9a9> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://link.usps.com/heroes_corner/from-the-hip/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573399.40/warc/CC-MAIN-20220818185216-20220818215216-00069.warc.gz | en | 0.958613 | 169 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Can all of Wales be powered by renewable energy?
Wales could meet 100% of its energy needs from renewable sources by 2035, under an "ambitious" new plan set out by policy experts.
It urges Welsh Government to allocate more of its budget to green energy.
The Institute of Welsh Affairs (IWA) predicts 20,150 jobs could be supported annually if the target is achieved.
First Minister Mark Drakeford said Wales was making good progress and the IWA provided a "welcome insight" into what the future could look like.
Watch our video guide to how 100% of Wales powered by renewable energy might look like.
Video production by Gwyndaf Hughes. | <urn:uuid:6f51b152-3232-4f28-bddc-f65a6cfa8543> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-wales-47557690 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571869.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813021048-20220813051048-00070.warc.gz | en | 0.958842 | 142 | 2.734375 | 3 |
Updated on 17 June 2013
Myriad argued that its patents are not on the genes as they exist in the human body, but on isolated, modified versions that have been made useful in a laboratory
In the legal case of Myriad Genetics vs Association for Molecular Pathology, the US Supreme Court's verdict unanimously struck down patents on isolated, natural human genes, in June. Patents on synthesized DNA were however held to be valid. Commercially important patents on cDNA (segments of DNA synthesized using an RNA template) too are included in this category. Even as all the sides claimed victory in the case, Myriad's patents on the BRCA1 and BRCA2 gene were held invalid.
For the last four years, this case was debating whether human DNA can be claimed as intellectual property, sealing the fate of the life sciences industry in unimaginable ways and that of the treatment of a disease that kills one in every eight affected women across the world. Above all, the lawsuit was being looked upon as the most defining chapter in how the world would take forward human genomic and the progress that can be achieved in breast and ovarian cancer treatment - for better or for worse.
The case of Myriad Genetics vs Association for Molecular Pathology has, in recent times, had become an argument between the former and the world. Even as the US Supreme Court examined various aspects of the case since November last year, all the stakeholders in the case made their perceptions publicly clear.
The long drawn legal battle heard every argument including, turning the ethical spotlight on the issue of patenting, the alleged 'forced monopoly' on testing, the apparent impact patenting was said to be having on scientific research, and even the future of the 100,000 or so genetic patents already awarded.
Some had called Myriad Genetics' BRCA gene patent tangle, a move towards blatant corporatization of breast cancer treatment in the US, while others argued that patenting is a way to pay for the investments made by the company in developing the test. | <urn:uuid:49ce58c6-f41e-4276-9b63-87932f87e9ba> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.biospectrumasia.com/biospectrum/analysis/190146/myriad-gene-patenting-suit-win-win-note/page/1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280504.74/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00140-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967285 | 415 | 2.59375 | 3 |
They joined 11 others Tuesday at the White House in receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom -- which recognizes people who have made "an especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States, world peace, cultural or other significant public or private endeavors." The other recipients include civil rights leader U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., visual artist Jasper Johns and billionaire investor Warren Buffett, the White House said.
President Barack Obama also gave the award, not limited to U.S. citizens, to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French-born U.S. cellist Yo-Yo Ma and Auschwitz concentration-camp survivor and humanitarian Gerda Weissmann Klein. Rounding out the list are labor leader John J. Sweeney, civil rights activist Sylvia Mendez, former diplomat and Very Special Arts non-profit founder Jean Kennedy Smith, and Natural Resources Defense Council founder John H. Adams.
Optometrist Tom Little -- who led a humanitarian eye camp in Afghanistan before being killed with nine other humanitarians Aug. 6, allegedly by Taliban fighters -- received the award posthumously.
"President Kennedy once said, during a tribute to the poet Robert Frost, that a nation reveals itself not only by the men and women it produces, but by the men and women that it honors; the people that it remembers," Obama said at the ceremony. "I heartily agree. When you look at the men and women who are here today, it says something about who we are as a people. … This year's Medal of Freedom recipients reveal the best of who we are and who we aspire to be."
Bush, president from 1989 to 1993, was vice president under Ronald Reagan and CIA director. He also served as U.S. ambassador to China and the United Nations, and was the U.S. Navy's youngest aviator during World War II.
Angelou, called "America's most visible black female autobiographer" by scholar Joanne Braxton, is best known for her six autobiographical volumes that focus on her childhood and early adult experiences.
Musial, a Baseball Hall of Famer and record 24-time all-star selection, played 22 seasons for the St. Louis Cardinals, accumulating 3,630 hits and 475 home runs.
Russell, who played center for the Boston Celtics, "almost single-handedly redefined the game of basketball," the White House said. He also was the first black coach of a major U.S. sport.
Lewis, serving in the House since 1987, was head of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee in the 1960s, playing a key role in ending segregation, including Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1963 March on Washington.
Johns, the first visual artist to win the national honor in 34 years, is best known for his 1954-1955 American flag painting. His subject matter often includes images and objects from popular culture.
Buffett, sometimes called the "Oracle of Omaha," is one of the world's most successful investors and a notable philanthropist, pledging to give away 99 percent of his fortune.
Merkel is Germany's first female chancellor and the first Eastern German to lead the reunified country. Ma is considered the world's greatest living cellist. Klein is recognized for sharing a powerful message of hope, inspiration, love and humanity.
Sweeney, president emeritus of the AFL-CIO, worked his way up the labor movement from jobs as a domestic worker and bus driver. Mendez played an instrumental role at age 8 in a landmark 1946 desegregation case that paved the way for the U.S. civil rights movement.
Smith, sister of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, is a former U.S. ambassador to Ireland who founded VSA to help people with disabilities engage with the arts. Adams' 41-year tenure as an environmental leader "is unparalleled," the White House said. | <urn:uuid:4b88d0ad-cdc5-4333-9c91-61dc47ca803a> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2011/02/15/15-receive-Presidential-Medal-of-Freedom/UPI-99531297762200/ph2/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560284405.58/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095124-00032-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965505 | 800 | 1.921875 | 2 |
By Alex Trelinski • 23 May 2020 • 13:58
Image of a horse's face.
Credit: [email protected]
CAR protests have been taking place in Barcelona, organised by the far-right Vox Party in a show of strength against the Spanish government’s handling of the pandemic crisis.
Barcelona was one of many provincial capitals nominated by Vox for the nationwide motorcade demonstrations.
It went ahead today (May 23) after the regional court yesterday decided that there was no legal reason to prohibit a demonstration where the participants sat in their vehicles.
The Catalonia region is not a particularly fertile ground for the relatively new political grouping, with voters at the last general election mainly backing independence parties or the PSOE party of Prime Minister, Pedro Sanchez.
Vox nationally have insisted that social distancing rules are followed during the protests and that people stay in their cars to make sure that nobody’s health is put at risk.
The right-wing party launched the demonstrations over the Madrid government’s use of the State of Alarm, as well as to criticise what they say have been policy mistakes during the coronavirus pandemic.
People have been told not to protest in the streets, though other demonstrations in recent days have not seen those rules followed, especially in Madrid.
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Download our media pack in either English or Spanish. | <urn:uuid:b34c2f29-5c68-4a02-aa05-a5b1fdc62e68> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://euroweeklynews.com/2020/05/23/car-protests-in-barcelona-called-by-far-right-vox-party-against-spains-government-handling-of-pandemic/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571210.98/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810191850-20220810221850-00475.warc.gz | en | 0.946654 | 385 | 1.789063 | 2 |
While on his return, he took some negroes from whom he got notice of the entire defeat of Bermejo, and of the advance of Marchena against himself. He was so disconcerted by this intelligence, that he allowed all his men to disperse, desiring them to save themselves as they best might, and to endeavour to get to the shore, where his brother would take them on board the ships. They all separated, and Ferdinand with some of his people struck into the woods, avoiding the public road, that they might escape Marchena. As the country was much intersected with rivers, and Ferdinand was little accustomed to encounter such difficulties, he was drowned in an endeavour to pass one of the rivers. Several of the followers of Ferdinand were made prisoners, and it was never known what became of the others. The prisoners were carried to Panama, where they, and those others who were taken at the defeat of Bermejo, were all put to death.
When Pedro de Contreras, who remained on board the ships, got intelligence of the miserable fete of his comrades, he was so much alarmed that he would not take time to hoist anchor and make seal, but threw himself into a boat with some of his men, leaving the ships at anchor with all the plunder untouched. He coasted along for a considerable way to the province of Nata; after which no farther intelligence was ever received either of him or any of those who were along with him, but it was supposed they were all massacred by the Indians of that country. On getting intelligence of the favourable termination of this threatening affair, the president returned to Nombre de Dios, giving thanks to God for having delivered him from this unforseen danger. Had the rebels arrived at Panama only a few days sooner, they might easily have made him prisoner, and would have acquired a much larger booty then ever fell into the hands of pirates.
Tranquillity being entirely restored, the president embarked with his treasure, and arrived safely in Spain. One of his vessels, in which Juan Gomez de Anuaya was embarked, with part of the royal treasure, was obliged to put back to Nombre de Dios: But, having refitted at that port, she likewise arrived in Spain. Immediately on landing at San Lucar, the president sent Captain Lope Martin into Germany, where the emperor then was, to inform his majesty of his safe arrival from Peru. This news was exceedingly agreeable to the court, and occasioned much astonishment at the prompt and happy termination of the troubles, which had appeared so formidable | <urn:uuid:2553de42-4377-4720-91bf-1c3196c38580> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.bookrags.com/ebooks/14984/151.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560285001.96/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095125-00303-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.994556 | 532 | 2.65625 | 3 |
PSY 201 Week 8 Depression Brochure
Imagine you work for a small clinic that offers counseling. Recently, a large number of people have come in wanting to seek treatment for their depression. In order to address this need, you’ve been asked to create a brochure that explains depression and its treatment.
Create a 6-8 page/pane brochure which does the following:
- Defines “psychological disorders” and “abnormal behavior”
- Describes the classification that depression belongs under
- Differentiates this classification from other classifications of psychological disorders
- Describes depression and its symptoms
- Explains treatment options, including the pros and cons for each type of therapy.
Note. You can use the Brochure Builder to create your brochure and save it as a PDF to submit or you can create your own brochure using Microsoft Word or another software. Also, be sure to properly cite any resources you use.
Click the Assignment Files tab to submit your assignment. | <urn:uuid:9343249f-5a69-4155-9a5e-7298597c907f> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://store.payloadz.com/details/2492657-ebooks-education-psy-201-week-8-depression-brochure.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280763.38/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00521-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9034 | 211 | 2.65625 | 3 |
write a 5-7 page paper using APA standards for citation of sources that focuses on the following: Interview two different individuals regarding their positions in society. Analyze their responses regarding: Identify each person’s class, race, and gender. What role has class, race, and gender played in their lives? How do you see these stratifiers as playing a role, even if the interviewee is unaware of it? Apply one of the sociological perspectives (structural-functional, social-conflict, or symbolic-interaction) to the individuals’ lives. Why did you choose this particular perspective? How does it explain each person’s life and life choices? What are some the benefits and limitations to using interview as a research methodology? Analyze each person’s components of culture (language, symbols, material objects, and behaviors) and relate them to his/her stratified position in society.
Are you looking for a similar paper or any other quality academic essay? Then look no further. Our research paper writing service is what you require. Our team of experienced writers is on standby to deliver to you an original paper as per your specified instructions with zero plagiarism guaranteed. This is the perfect way you can prepare your own unique academic paper and score the grades you deserve.
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HTML 5 is still a long way from becoming a standard...years in fact. That doesn't mean that you can't use it now. Most of the web browsers out there already support HTML 5, including Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 beta. You don't need to flush your current XHTML website--XHTML is a finished specification, and will remain so for the future.
As far as HTML 5 being a plug-in and Flash killer, that remains to be seen. "Just as when CSS Web fonts weren't widely supported and Flash was used in sIFR to fill the gaps, Flash also saves the day by making HTML5 video backwards-compatible. Because HTML5 is designed to be 'fake-able' in older browsers, the mark-up between the video tags is ignored by browsers that understand HTML5 and is rendered by older browsers. Therefore, embedding fall-back video with Flash is possible using the old-school <object> or <embed> tags, as pioneered by Kroc Camen is his article 'Video for Everybody!'." | <urn:uuid:9844fece-5684-4ab6-9ce2-898dcf652be0> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.htmlgoodies.com/daily_news/article.php/412122/A-JavaScript-Expert-Sorts-Out-The-Myths-and-Facts-of-HTML-5.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280872.69/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00319-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941113 | 214 | 1.945313 | 2 |
Brand Marketing: Why It Matters and What It Means
Today’s marketing landscape is changing rapidly. With the rise of mobile devices and social media, many companies realize they must redefine their branding strategies to fit the realities of the digital world.
Most companies spend significant money on print, radio, television and online advertising to attract customers. However, very few do anything about the branding that attracts customers to their businesses. This is a serious mistake that can kill a brand. It is easy to go down the marketing funnel only to realize that no one is responding to your brand. At this point, it is challenging to reverse the damage.
In our brand marketing world, there’s much talk about building a great brand and what it takes to ensure that the brand effectively promotes your products and services.
What is brand marketing?
Brand marketing involves understanding how you are perceived by other people and using this knowledge to create effective marketing strategies and advertising campaigns.
We know that brand perceptions influence how much we buy products and services. We buy a particular brand because we think it is well-known or because we see it advertised on TV or the radio.
We associate different colors, images and slogans with particular brands and companies, even if we haven’t personally bought anything from that brand. We understand how our choices affect the brand perception of that company.
It is therefore essential to know what a brand is and why it is successful.
Brands represent a collection of memories, expectations, values, beliefs, and personality traits of the people who use them. These memories, expectations, values, beliefs and personality traits are called the brand image. The brand image comprises all the brand’s characteristics – including logos, product design, packaging, websites, slogans, advertisements, and promotions.
Brands are successful when they combine these elements to form an identity that makes customers recognize, like and want to use the product.
In the advertising industry, brand marketing includes a range of tactics that help build the brand image. It includes all the activities to promote a product or service, such as building a website, advertising on television or radio, creating online videos and posting information on social media.
Brand marketing is a long-term strategy
Several people say Brand Marketing is a short-term strategy, and I understand how that can be. Brand marketing has been around for years before most people had heard of it. It’s just that now we know what it is and how it works.
Brand marketing is one of the three key marketing strategies used by companies today. They are Advertising/Promotion, Sales and Service. Brand Marketing involves using a company name or symbol to identify its products or services and create an emotional connection between customers and the brand.
In the 1990s, people were still learning about the power of branding and how to create it. But it’s much easier now than it was in the 90s. Most businesses now have websites. This gives them a platform to create their brand and build awareness.
So, why is it essential to have a long-term plan? Why does it matter if we brand for two years, 3, or 5? The answer is that Brand Marketing is a long-term strategy. It requires time and planning. So, why don’t brands create their brand and then forget about it?
It’s because they need to build relationships with potential customers. This happens over time. You build your relationship with them, and they see how good you are, so they are more likely to buy from you again. In the same way, when you do a favour for someone, they are more likely to do a favour for you in the future.
Brand marketing is a slow process
Brand marketing is a slow process because most of the marketing that brands do has nothing to do with products. The brand identity is more about the company itself than its product.
The brand image is established when a company builds a reputation for doing something right, providing quality service, or delivering value to customers. This reputation is called the brand promise. The company’s ability to deliver on the brand promise is called its brand promise delivery. In this case, the brand promise is the company’s reputation.
Two critical aspects of building a brand are establishing the brand promise and communicating the brand promise to stakeholders. Establishing the brand promise is one of the essential functions of marketing. It includes the company’s positioning strategy. Positioning refers to how a company defines and communicates its brand promise.
Communicating the brand promise is a more gradual process. The company must continually build its brand and creative ways to communicate it to various stakeholders. When a company establishes its brand promise, it needs to make sure that the company’s promise is communicated in the best possible manner. The company can do this through a variety of marketing techniques.
In addition to creating ways to communicate the brand promise, the company must also establish the brand promise. It would be best if you communicated a brand promise consistently throughout the company’s business operations.
The brand promise is a reflection of the company’s culture. It reflects the values of the company’s senior management and employees. The brand promise also includes the company’s vision and mission. A brand promise that incorporates the company’s vision and mission provide a framework for guiding all business operations.
The goal of brand marketing is to grow the business
Brand marketing is an integrated approach focusing on identifying, measuring, and maintaining customer loyalty. To do this, you need to understand the market and the different types of customers. You need to identify the strengths and weaknesses of your brand, and then you need to communicate those to your customers. Brand marketing is not the same thing as advertising.
Advertising is a tactic that is often used in brand marketing. However, advertising is usually short-term and has limited effects. On the other hand, brand marketing is more long-term and is designed to grow a brand over time.
Branding vs Marketing
Branding and Marketing are about getting your message across, but there are significant differences. Branding is about a company’s overall image. Marketing is about how you reach customers.
Branding: Branding is how the public sees your company, which is usually influenced by advertising. This includes how your company is represented regarding products and services and how your employees and managers are seen. In other words, your brand is about how people think of you. Your brand is also about what you stand for and your values.
Marketing: The focus is on what happens in people’s minds. It is about how your company gets into the thoughts and actions of your potential customers and what your company can offer them. It involves getting your message across and persuading people that you can help solve their problems.
Branding: Branding is the “heart” of your business. You use branding to influence how people see your company and its products, services and people. It includes how your company is represented regarding products and services and how your employees and managers are seen. In other words, your brand is about how people think of you.
Marketing: Marketing is getting your product/service/people to the customer. It is about how people see your company and its products, services and people. It involves getting your message across and persuading people that you can help solve their problems.
Brand marketing in 5 simple steps
Understand your brand purpose
When you think about your brand, you should focus on its purpose. A brand is an image you present to the world and represents the company’s idea. The purpose of a brand is to make a connection between your company and your customers. It is the core message behind the business that drives everything else. You should communicate the brand’s purpose to the employees of the company. It should be a part of the employees’ culture.
The first step to building your brand is to figure out what your brand purpose is. The brand purpose is the core idea behind your business. It is the reason for your existence and how you will operate. The purpose defines your brand. The purpose should be clear and easily understood by everyone who works at your company. The purpose should be something everyone knows and can recite at a moment’s notice.
Here are some questions that may help you define your brand purpose.
- What is your purpose?
- Who is your customer?
- How do you make money?
- Why are you here?
- What do you stand for?
- What does your product mean to your customers?
Once you understand your purpose, you need to develop a mission statement. A mission statement is a clear statement of your company’s purpose. It provides clarity about your purpose and sets a direction for plans. It describes the values of the company and the actions you will take to reach your goal. It is the most crucial document in the company. Without a mission statement, no one knows what the company stands for.
A mission statement is a concise and precise description of the company’s purpose. It is a statement of what your company stands for and what it does. It is a simple statement.
There are two types of mission statements:
- Mission statement: This is a lengthy, drawn-out statement. It usually describes the company’s purpose, and it talks about the benefits that the company brings.
- Action statement: This is a shorter statement. It talks about what the company does. The action statement usually mentions the company’s benefits to its clients. It talks about how the company will achieve its purpose.
Research your target market
Branding has many advantages, such as customer retention, increased sales and improved brand awareness. As a brand owner, your audience must know your audience to create effective marketing strategies and products that align with their needs.
It’s a common mistake for marketers to assume that customers know what they want or need and then try to sell them products and services based on this assumption. The opposite approach is researching your audience and designing products and services that fit their needs.
The first step in researching your audience is to understand who they are. This means conducting market research to gather information about your ideal customer, including demographics, psychographics, lifestyles, hobbies and interests.
Once you know your audience, you can develop a strategy to reach them. This includes creating product ideas, deciding on a marketing mix (e.g., print, digital or social media), creating messaging, building your brand, defining your brand identity and developing your marketing strategy.
Below are some tips on researching your target market for brand marketing.
1 – Focus on building an understanding of your audience
Once you understand your target market, you need to focus on building an understanding of them. This means getting to know who they are and how they think.
One way to do this is to conduct market research, which involves asking people about themselves and how they live their lives. For example, you may ask participants to tell you about themselves and then ask about their attitudes, opinions, beliefs and values. You may also ask them about their behaviors, habits, aspirations and motivations.
2 – Analyze what you know
Analyzing what you already know is another great way to get to know your audience. You can determine your strengths and weaknesses as a brand by analyzing existing data. This includes analyzing how well your products and services perform, your product development processes and your marketing activities.
For example, you could review your annual reports and sales figures, evaluate your company’s performance, look at your website traffic, and analyze your product and service reviews.
You can determine your strengths and weaknesses as a brand by analyzing your current data. This can help you decide on new goals, strategies, products and services.
3 – Create personas
Creating personas allows you to explore the world from your customers’ perspectives. Personas are fictional characters that represent your ideal customer. By understanding your customers’ needs and desires, you can design products and services that meet their needs.
You can use personas to create a detailed profile of each customer segment, which helps you to understand their needs, motivations and expectations. You can also use them to make strategic decisions and define a marketing strategy.
In addition, you can use personas to create a comprehensive marketing strategy that you can use to guide your company’s future growth.
Define and sell your story
The brand story is significant because it tells who you are, what you do, and why people should care about you. So, how to define your brand story? You need to think of what makes you different from others. And then you need to think about how it will help people to know who you are and what you do. Here are a few tips for defining and selling your brand story.
Brand stories help people to understand what your brand is all about. And they also help them to understand the benefits of buying from you and using your products or services. A good brand story will make your brand stand out from others.
Here are some examples of good brand stories:
- My company is known for its quality products. I will never sell defective products to my customers.
- My company is the only one that offers the highest customer service. I’m committed to providing an excellent experience for every one of my customers.
- I am the only one offering a new product. And I’m always one step ahead of my competitors.
- I am known for my creativity. And that’s why I always find new ways to improve my products and services.
- I have a strong focus on health and well-being. I believe that being fit is essential to living a happy life.
- I am known for being fast and efficient. I do everything possible to ensure you get your products or services fast.
- I am known for being an environmentally conscious company. And that’s why I try to use only the best materials in my products and services.
- I am known for being reliable. I believe that nothing is more important than your customers. That’s why I always deliver products on time and do my best to keep in touch with my customers.
So, now you know how to write a brand story. Start writing your story, and you’ll be able to build a strong brand. And that will help you to reach your business goals.
Get to know your competitors
What if you are a marketer and want to know how your competitor is doing? Or what they are trying to do? Here, we’re going to share you with some best practices of competitor research in a simple way. So, let’s dive right into it.
The first step is to determine your target audience. You should know whom you’re trying to target and why you’re trying to target them. Who are these people? What do they like, what don’t they like?
Why would they buy your product? Once you know your target audience, you can start the next step.
The second step is to define your competitor’s audience. It will help you know whom they’re targeting and why they’re targeting them. So, the question that you need to ask yourself is, ‘Who are my competitors?’
There are many ways to get this information. One of them is to search on Google or Bing. You can use keywords or phrases related to your business. Google is great for keyword research. However, if your competition uses Google, it might be challenging to know their exact strategy and objectives. That’s where other tools like SEMrush and Similarweb come into play. These tools provide you with data and information about your competitors.
Once you have your list of competitors, you can start collecting data from them. So, the next step is to collect data from your competitors. You can ask them directly by sending out emails or even conducting a phone call.
After getting the data from your competitors, you need to understand them. The next step is to understand your competitors. You need to find out who they are, what they’re trying to achieve, and what they’re trying to accomplish.
The last step is to put all the pieces together and create a plan. Once you have all the necessary information, you can develop a strategy. This includes what you’re trying to do and how you will go about it.
Create brand guidelines
Brand guidelines are essential documents that establish the standards of the business. A brand is an identity representing an organization’s products and services. It is a unique personality that distinguishes itself from others. It creates a positive impression among clients, customers, prospects, and employees.
Brands have been designed in such a way that they communicate the values, vision, and personality of the company. Brand guidelines have a significant role to play in defining what the brand stands for.
Before you start thinking about brand guidelines, it is crucial to understand what a brand means for your company. Brands must be consistent across all communication channels, including advertising, signage, product packaging, print, online, social media, etc. It must reflect your values and the vision of the company. In addition, it should be consistent with the company’s mission and values.
Brand guidelines provide an excellent starting point if you are new to branding. It will help you create a consistent, coherent identity with which people can trust and associate. It will help you communicate effectively with the different stakeholders in your organization.
You can use these brand guidelines to improve the overall design and development process. They will also serve as a reference for employees in various departments.
Brand Marketing Strategy
A brand marketing strategy is a plan to communicate a particular message or position to consumers. Brand marketing strategies should include an objective and a clear definition of what is desired, but it can also mean the strategy of using a brand as a form of advertising.
There is no correct way of developing a brand strategy – there are many different ways of doing this – but a common approach is to identify the benefits of using a brand. You can do this regarding its positive associations or potential to achieve commercial goals.
For example, if a company considered using the brand name ‘Party Zone’, they might identify that it positively correlates with fun and pleasure. It might also be considered an effective way of selling more products or reaching new markets. The point is to identify what the brand can do for you, not how you can use it to your advantage.
Many brand marketers use a similar approach to develop a brand strategy. For example, when considering a particular brand, they ask themselves:
- What does the brand stand for?
- Does the brand have a personality?
- Why does it have that personality?
- What do people like about the brand?
- What do they dislike?
- How could the brand be developed to bring out the best in it?
- What could it be used for?
- What could it do for me?
Brand strategies may be communicated verbally or written. However, some companies use other techniques to communicate their brand strategy. For example, they might use photographs, music, or films to highlight their strengths. Companies that have made videos to highlight their brand can use these as a marketing strategy.
In general, the brand strategy will have some degree of objectivity. It will be based on market research. And, if there are commercial aims in mind, then you will plan the strategy to achieve those objectives.
Brand marketing strategies may be short-term or long-term, but they are often combined with other marketing tactics. We can use them to develop advertising campaigns and incorporate them into marketing plans.
How to build a brand marketing strategy?
Your brand should reflect who you are and what you do, so it needs to align with your target audience and business. Brands are often designed to help you differentiate your company from the competition and to attract customers.
Here are some tips for building a successful branding strategy:
- Define your audience. What are you trying to reach? If you’re a local bakery, you may want to target customers within a certain radius. You may need to go global if you’re an online retailer.
- Determine your goals. What do you want to achieve with your brand? Is your goal to increase sales, build customer loyalty, or promote your products?
- Define your values. What is important to you as a company or business owner? What are your core beliefs and morals? Does your business act ethically? Does it support and promote diversity?
- Create a visual identity. What does your business look like on paper, on the web, and in real life? How do you want your customers to view your brand?
- Determine your tone. Do you want to appear serious, friendly, or casual? How do you want to present yourself online? In-person?
- Identify your brand personality. What is your company’s “personality” – the feelings, emotions, and attitudes you want your customers to experience when interacting with your brand? Does your company have a playful side? An energetic vibe? A sense of humor?
- Create a logo. A logo is the most visible part of your brand. It’s the first thing customers will see when they visit your website or pick up your brochure.
- Develop a tagline. A tagline (or slogan) is a memorable sentence, phrase, or word that represents your brand. It could be a slogan, tagline, or catchphrase. A good tagline should be short, memorable, and relevant to your business.
- Build a strong relationship with your audience. You must build a strong relationship with your customers by having a clear brand identity, communicating consistently, and being approachable and responsive.
The bottom line is that branding is an ongoing process that is best started at the beginning of the business. Don’t try to get it done overnight; instead, focus on building your brand over time.
The most crucial part of brand marketing is the relationship between your business and the public. It’s the foundation of all other aspects of brand marketing, such as advertising, marketing strategies, branding, marketing communications, and customer service.
Achieving success and creating a profitable brand is impossible without this essential component.
Want to be more marketable? Learn everything you need to know about branding. | <urn:uuid:0b0c7373-0731-46cd-9170-666af6ac2741> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://dallasdesignco.com/brand-marketing/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573667.83/warc/CC-MAIN-20220819100644-20220819130644-00066.warc.gz | en | 0.955528 | 4,651 | 1.8125 | 2 |
Introduction: Homemade De-stress Tea
Do you suffer from daily stress? Have you considered making your own tea? We'll show you how in a few simple steps.
First you are going to need your ingredients. For this tea, we used chamomile, peppermint, and lavender. You will also want a mason jar and some coffee filters.
Step 1: Prepare Your Ingredients
Grind up your leaves and set them aside until step 4. To make this easier, you can just buy pre-ground leaves like we did.
Fill your jar with boiling or hot water. If you don’t have a kettle, you can just microwave some warm water.
Step 2: Mix in Your Leaves
Next, put about a tablespoon of each ingredient into the hot water. This amount doesn’t have to be exact, so feel free to experiment with different ratios of ingredients.
Once you mix all of the ingredients together into the water, close the jar and let it sit for 3 minutes.
Step 3: Filter and Finish!
Then, place a coffee filter over the jar and screw the outer ring of the mason jar lid on top of the filter.
Now, you can pour your tea into a cup/mug and drink it.
Step 4: What If I Want Tea Bags?
If you want separate teabags instead of the mason jar technique, you will need to purchase teabags.
When you get your teabags prepare the ingredients as normal, but instead of adding them straight into a mason jar, place the tea leaves into the bags.
The bags can then be steeped in hot water like a normal tea bag. | <urn:uuid:2e2f6ed1-d1ab-43a6-9062-616ef49c7d65> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.instructables.com/Homemade-De-stress-Tea/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572870.85/warc/CC-MAIN-20220817062258-20220817092258-00673.warc.gz | en | 0.884228 | 352 | 1.617188 | 2 |
What is Rape?
IPC has defined Rape under Section 375 as sexual intercourse with a woman against her will, without her consent, by coercion, misrepresentation, or fraud, or at a time when she has been intoxicated or duped or is of unsound mental health and in any case, if she is under 18 years of age, under the circumstances falling under any of the following seven descriptions:
- Against her will and Without her consent,
- With consent obtained under fear of death or hurt,
- With consent given under misconception of the fact that the man is her husband but the man knows that he is not her husband,
- Consent given because of unsoundness of mind, intoxication, or under influence of any stupefying or unwholesome substance,
- With a woman under 18 years of age with or without consent.
What is Marital Rape?
Marital rape is the act of sexual intercourse with one’s spouse without the spouse’s consent. The lack of consent is the essential element and need not involve physical violence. Marital rape is not an offense in India. Section 375, the provision of rape in IPC, mentions as its exception clause- “Sexual intercourse by man with his own wife, the wife not being under 15 years of age, is not rape.” Hence marital rape is viewed as a rape just if the spouse is under 15 years old, and the seriousness of punishment is milder. There is no lawful security agreed to the spouse after the age of 15, which is against human rights directions.
Laws related to Marital Rape in India
India doesn’t consider marital rape a crime yet, but it has an exception in the IPC under Section 375, a man who has intercourse with his wife who is above the age of 15 years is not considered rape by her husband. While intercourse with a separated wife is considered rape and such a person shall be punished with up to 7 years of imprisonment under a separate law.
According to the Doctrine of Coverture, a woman had no independent legal identity of her own after marriage. Her identity was merged with that of her husband and all her property was passed on to him.
Section 375 of IPC (1870), heavily influenced by these doctrines, continues to work on such weaker sex notions of women.
Recently, the Kerala High Court allowed ‘marital rape’ as a valid ground for divorce. The combined message of these efforts is to assert that women have an identity and agency of their own. Being in a marital relationship cannot be used as a cover to violate the same.
Reasons Why Marital Rape should be Criminalized in India
There are plenty of reasons why this immunity requires a relook today:
- Violation of Fundamental Rights
Marital rape is a direct assault on women’s right to life with dignity (Article 21). Forcing a woman for sex and inflicting violence on her, is a blatant breach of her dignity. It is also a cruel suppression of her dissent. Marital rape also violates the right to equality enshrined under Article 14. The notion that consent for marriage denotes ‘consent in perpetuity’, imposes undue coercion on women.
- Inconsistency in Law
In the Chhattisgarh High Court, a wife framed multiple charges against her husband. This included charges under Section 376, Section 377, and Section 498A. The Court bound by law had to dismiss the husband on the ground of Exception 2 to Section 375.
- Impact on women’s health and psychology
Cases of marital rape are mostly driven by the husband’s low self-esteem, unemployment, urge to assert power, alcoholism, etc. Marital rape causes immense physical pain as it is nothing but a sexual assault.
- Government’s Stance
Today people are more aware of the atrocities associated with marital rape. Despite this, the government of India has shown repeated reluctance in criminalizing it.
In the Independent Thought v. Union of India Case (2017) also, the government defended the marital rape exception. The government argued that criminalizing marital rape is ‘against the institution of marriage. It is against Indian culture and will destabilize the whole institution of marriage. However, the judgment by the Supreme Court in the case cleared the mist of misogyny hovering over the government.
The Indian law has clearly failed to provide proper protection to women as they are still being treated as the property of the husband and he has all the rights to utilize her. The topic of marital rape is crucial in establishing equality for married women. It is high time that the Government of India uproots the norm of marital rape immunity. It is a long-overdue decision for making homes safer for women. In fact, criminalizing marital rape is a necessity for India to progress towards a more equal and humane society.
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(MARCH – APRIL 2022) | <urn:uuid:23fa970b-466b-473c-97b2-52f41b0dee15> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://indianlawinfo.in/marital-rape-india/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572581.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20220816211628-20220817001628-00067.warc.gz | en | 0.95752 | 1,034 | 2.625 | 3 |
1 photograph : lantern slide, hand-colored ; 3.25 x 4 in
United States of America, Connecticut, Fairfield County, Fairfield
Spelman Garden (Fairfield, Connecticut)
[between 1914 and 1949?]
Mount reads: "Edward Van Altena."
Historic plate number: "61A."
Historic plate caption: "Mrs. Henry B. Spelman."
Access to original images by appointment only. Researcher must submit request for appointment in writing. Certain items may be restricted and not available to researchers. Please direct reference inquiries to the Archives of American Gardens: firstname.lastname@example.org | <urn:uuid:aafa2592-3707-4760-9389-efa3c07287ea> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://collections.si.edu/search/record/siris_arc_181528 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988719416.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183839-00364-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.72327 | 130 | 1.65625 | 2 |
6 moves for the ultimate butt workout
Try these exercises to lift and shape your glutes’then get ready to show off the results of this butt workout in your jeans and bikini bottoms
Source: Web exclusive: July 2010
Knowing your glutes
The gluteus region is made up of three main muscles: the gluteus maximus, gluteus medius and gluteus minimus. Although the gluteus maximus is the strongest in the group, the gluteus medius and minimus should not be ignored.
Why the glutes are important
The glutes stabilize your pelvis when you sit, stand or walk. This helps with posture and lowers the amount of stress placed on the lower back, spine, hips and knee joints.
The glutes also help with these moves:
‘ Extension of the hip (brings leg back)
‘ External rotation of the hip (moves thigh or pelvis outward)
‘ Abduction of the hip (pulls the thigh away from the body)
‘ Internal rotation of the hip (moves thigh or pelvis inward)
‘ Transverse abduction of the hip (moves thigh away from body when hip is bent).
Choose the routine that’s right for you
Determine the shape of your butt and choose the program designed to make your backside toned and lifted.
Round: Outline begins at the hips and keeps a full figure all around, similar to an apple bottom
Repetitions/sets: 8-12 reps / 2-3 sets
Tempo: moderate or fast
Upside-down: A butt that sits between a small waist and bigger hips; similar to a pear
Repetitions/sets: 0-15 reps / 2-3 sets
Flat: No definite contours; can appear saggy or non-existent
Repetitions/sets: 8-10 reps / 2-3 sets
Note: Tempo is the speed the exercise is performed at.
A slow tempo is a 1-2-3 count up with the same speed down.
A moderate tempo suggests you move in a 1-2 count up and a 1-2 count down.
A fast tempo means that the movement is explosive for a count of 1-0-1.
Adding variety to your routine will keep the muscles guessing and stimulated for better results. Avoid overdoing it; the exercises are divided into two groups to be done on non-consecutive days. Alternating weeks, do the program for four weeks, then repeat with increased intensity or difficulty.
Exercises for program A: Lunges, single-leg deadlift, lying lateral leg lifts
Lunges works glutes, thighs and core
Stand with your feet together, hands on your hips or behind your head.
- Step forward with the right leg. Bend both knees and begin lowering yourself until the front thigh is parallel with the ground and the left knee is almost touching the ground. Both legs should create 90-degree angles at the knee. Your torso should be straight up and down, not bent over.
- Keeping an even weight distribution on both feet, return to starting position and alternate legs.
Intermediate → Try holding dumbbells at your sides or on your shoulders.
Advanced → Add a jump when returning to starting position and quickly switch the forward foot in mid-air.
Single-leg deadlift works glutes, hamstring, core
Stand straight with your feet staggered, holding a dumbbell in each hand, palms facing toward your body.
- Shift your weight onto the front leg and begin bending forward, keeping your back and arms straight, until the weights are just below your knees (you will feel a stretch in the back of your thighs).
- Raise your back leg to form a straight line with your head, hips and heels. The front leg should remain slightly bent throughout the exercise to avoid straining the knee. Avoid leaning forward by drawing your belly button in towards your spine. Keep the majority of your body weight on the heel of your front foot.
- Contract your glutes as you return to the starting position without letting the back leg touch the ground. Repeat on the same leg for the required number of repetitions then switch to the opposite leg.
Intermediate → Try a heavier weight.
Advanced → Add a small hop once back at starting position.
Trouble with balance? Start by holding a weight in one hand and use your free hand to balance against a wall.
Lying lateral leg lifts works glutes ( primarily the glute medius and minimus)
Lie on your side with your shoulder, hip, knee and ankle all forming a straight line. Bend your bottom leg at a comfortable angle and keep the top leg straight with your ankle pointing toward the ceiling
- Lift the upper leg toward the ceiling (approximately 2-3 inches), contracting your buttock muscles at the same time. Ankle points towards the ceiling.
- Lower the leg (but don’t let it rest) and repeat the movement in a small fast pulsing manner.
Change the angle of the leg relative to your body after you have completed the set repetitions at one angle: after straight leg lefts, try leg at 45 degrees and leg at 90 degrees
Intermediate → Do in a side-plank position with forearms on the ground.
Advanced → Do in a side-plank position with your hand on the ground placed directly under your shoulder.
Exercises for program B: Squats, plié squat, bridge
Squats works glutes, thigh and core
Stand with your feet shoulder width apart and toes slightly turned out. Hold a dumbbell in each hand at your sides.
- Initiating the movement from your knees, lower your hips backward until your thighs are parallel with the ground (or as close as you can get them). Maintain an upright torso, a forward gaze and keep your knees aligned over your ankles. To protect your knees, don’t let them go farther forward than your toes.
- Pause and return to starting position by contracting your glutes as your straighten your legs. Your weight should be evenly distributed between the balls of your feet and your heels. Do not lock your knees at the end of the motion.
Intermediate → Try single leg squats. Use a chair for some extra guidance on the squat pattern.
Advanced → Jump out of the squat as high as you can. Start with only your body weight and progress to holding weights. This increases the muscle fibre recruitment, particularly in the gluteus maximus.
Plié squat works glutes, inner and outer thighs
Stand with your feet wider than hip width apart and your toes turned out (approximately 45 degrees). With both hands hold a dumbbell in front of you with arms straight but not locked.
- Keeping your torso upright and your abdominals tight, lower your hips until your thighs are parallel with the ground. Widen your stance if your knees appear to be over your toes.
- Return to starting position.
Intermediate → Try holding the dumbbell at chest level with your arms stretched out.
Advanced → Add a jump at the end of the movement for increased muscle stimulation.
Bridge works butt, lower back, hamstrings
Lie on your back with your knees bent, feet flat on the floor directly below your knees, and hands at your sides.
- Lift your butt off the mat as high as you can go. Press down with the heels of your feet, toes pointing forward.
- Hold the position and lower your butt back to starting position without allowing a rest between repetitions. Repeat.
Intermediate → Put your feet on a bench or stability ball.
Advanced → Do the exercise with one leg.
Jesseny Rojas is a personal trainer who uses a multi-disciplinary approach to empower individuals with a sense of ownership over their health, fitness and overall well-being. | <urn:uuid:37cb8c89-eb51-4394-997a-c4715f022a8c> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://stage.besthealthmag.ca/article/6-moves-for-the-ultimate-butt-workout/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572163.61/warc/CC-MAIN-20220815085006-20220815115006-00673.warc.gz | en | 0.903151 | 1,688 | 1.78125 | 2 |
"Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom." Marcel Proust
My review of I'LL SEE YOU IN PARIS will be on my blog on February 9.
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust (//; French: [maʁsɛl pʁust]; 10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental novel À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time; earlier translated as Remembrance of Things Past), published in seven parts between 1913 and 1927. He is considered by many to be one of the greatest authors of all time. | <urn:uuid:686d2d5c-3d34-401b-ae74-f5959ad670ea> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://silversolara.blogspot.com/2016/01/marcel-proust-and-lovely-quote.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573667.83/warc/CC-MAIN-20220819100644-20220819130644-00073.warc.gz | en | 0.912461 | 168 | 1.726563 | 2 |
inferior constrictor muscle (pharynx, anatomy)
The inferior constrictor is most inferior of the three muscles which envelope the pharynx. It arises from the:
- oblique line on lamina of the thyroid cartilage
- cricothyroid arch
- anterolateral aspect of arch of cricoid cartilage
On each side the muscle passes superiorly and posteriorly to encircle the pharynx. It inserts with the fibres of the contralateral side into a median raphe posterior to the pharynx.
Often it is stated that the there are two separate parts to the inferior constrictor dependent on origin - see submenu.
The inferior pharyngeal constrictor acts to constrict the wall of the pharynx and so facilitates swallowing.
It is innervated by the pharyngeal and superior laryngeal branches of the vagus nerve (X) via the pharyngeal plexus. Motor fibres are derived from the cranial accessory nerve (XI).
Last reviewed 01/2018 | <urn:uuid:02748161-a92c-4f11-ab5b-1484ad1c953e> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://primarycarenotebook.com/simplepage.cfm?ID=-375783347 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571982.99/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813172349-20220813202349-00070.warc.gz | en | 0.828934 | 229 | 3.0625 | 3 |
A birth involving mitochondrial replacement therapy took place as part of a clinical trial in Greece according to a recent article in STAT. Greece is now the second country to allow the procedure which involves using DNA from a biological mother, father, and “third parent”.
The United Kingdom was the first country to approve the therapy but reserved its approval for rare cases where the baby would be at risk of developing the disease.
A Ukranian clinic announced similar births but they were not part of clinical trials.
The United States banned the procedure over concerns that implanting a “third parent’s” DNA into an embryo is a form of genetic modification that would impact future generations. The safety of the child is also a consideration plus there are ethical concerns as well.
About the Procedure
Between one thousand to four thousand babies born in the United States each year develop mitochondrial disease also known as IVF. There is no known method of testing for the disease so that it is only discovered in the mother after giving birth to a baby with IVF.
The babies inherit the disease from their mother’s DNA. It is for this reason that the nucleus is removed from the mother’s egg and implanted into the donor’s egg after the donor’s nucleus is removed.
The donor nucleus is surrounded by a substance that is very much like jelly, called cytoplasm. Mitochondria inhabit the donor egg and are credited with being energy-producing structures. The sperm fertilizes the egg before or after the transfer. Otherwise, the IVF procedure does not change. Details about the disease are available here.
About the Spindle Transfer
- Mother’s egg has abnormal mitochondria
- The nucleus from the mother’s egg is removed and implanted in the donor’s egg
- The nucleus is extracted from the donor’s egg
- A new cell is created and is fertilized by sperm
- The new cell is placed into the mother’s womb
The baby now carries the healthy mitochondrial DNA from three people
Can the U.S. Ban be lifted?
A group of bioethicists, scientists and patient advocates are lobbying to remove the ban. Their platform is based on their assertion that this procedure can help women have healthy children who will be born free of the diseases carried by their biologically related mother.
The group mentioned that in some ways this situation is similar to in-vitro fertilization that also faced many challenges. A few embryologists suggest that improving egg quality through healthy mitochondria will result in successful pregnancies.
The technology is now being used in the Ukraine, Greece and the U.K. mainly for infertility. The scientists point out that if this technique continues to be successful, it will help older women who thus far have been unable to conceive.
Objections to the Procedure
Others in the medical field are concerned that people will have the procedure performed in countries that do not have protective regulations in place.
A director of a clinic in Ukraine stated that seven babies were delivered using the technique and another three pregnancies are underway. He said the clinic has received approval from the Ukrainian government although the data has not been registered in clinical trials.
And then others claim that there is not enough evidence to prove its safety. They contend that these children would have to be followed at least until they are eighteen years of age.
There is also the argument that mitochondrial replacement therapy is not really “therapy” as it is not treating a person. They also contend that the term “mitochondrial replacement” is not proper because it actually replaces the nucleus. This group likens it to cloning such as in the case of Dolly the sheep.
Authorities in the United Kingdom report that they have received fifteen applications in connection with fertility treatment and have approved fourteen for mitochondrial replacement therapy.
There is no doubt that the push to eliminate the ban in the U.S. will be ongoing and will be followed closely by couples anxious to have healthy biological babies. | <urn:uuid:1eb327da-e9a3-4711-be47-6d70748d473f> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://patientworthy.com/2019/04/19/can-mitochondrial-replacement-therapy-ban-u-s-lifted/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571234.82/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811042804-20220811072804-00078.warc.gz | en | 0.972278 | 825 | 3.109375 | 3 |
What Facial Recognition Experts Want You to Know Before You Use This Technology to Curb Serious Threats to Safety
The use of facial recognition software is on the rise. Organizations are looking at ways to integrate the technology to their security systems, but risk managers who are considering implementing it should consider that it may not be the best alternative for every company.
“Facial recognition is a technology that has matured unbelievably in the past few years,” said Richard Revis, the director of group product management at Digital Barriers, a London, England-based surveillance firm. “We are increasingly seeing interest from commercial organizations to protect premises such as stadiums, concert venues and public buildings.”
Surveillance cameras today can produce, in a few seconds, dozens of high-quality pictures of anyone entering a building, and software can compare the data collected with millions of other images in the blink of an eye.
Facial Recognition as a Safety Tool
The technology has progressed enough so that it can do comparisons by focusing on small patches of a person’s face, which makes it possible to recognize someone even if he has grown a beard, is wearing glasses or has dyed his/her hair since the picture was included in the database, said Soren Frederiksen, a vice president at Toronto, Canada-based Omnigo Software.
Facial recognition technology hit the headlines after a number of schools announced they were installing or were planning to purchase facial recognition systems in order to prevent active shooter events.
For instance, the Lockport City District School, in the state of New York, is using a $4 million grant to install 300 facial recognition cameras on eight campuses to try and identify potential shooters before they get to schools.
But organizations such as schools, where there are many entry points through which people are expected to come and go as they please, may not provide the ideal environment for the technology to be deployed. Frederiksen said that, before installing a facial recognition system, organizations must rethink their entry points to optimize the work of surveillance cameras, which need to be positioned in good enough angles to take images of a fairly high quality.
“Lots of companies come to us and say that they want to implement facial recognition technologies. But we tell them that if they are not willing to alter their entrances, it will not work for them,” Frederiksen said. “Sometimes entrance changes that cost a thousand dollars can save a hundred thousand dollars in technology spending.”
“Technology is getting almost better than humans at recognizing faces. What the technology cannot do, and humans can, is to look at how someone walks, the color or his skin or how tall the person is.” — Soren Frederiksen, vice president, Omnigo Software
Another issue is the database to which captured images will be compared to. For a perpetrator to be identified, their photo needs to have been previously added to the digital archives employed by the organization. Schools, for instance, plan to build up databases of expelled students, terminated employees, sex offenders and other potentially violent actors.
The fact that the Parkland shooting, Feb. 14 of last year, was the work of an expelled student with a history of mental health issues indicates the strategy could bear fruit. But Jacob Sniff, the CEO of Suspect Technologies, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based start-up, stressed that only a small fraction of school shooting events were by perpetrators with links to the targeted institution. Other organizations may also be too small to build a reliable image database.
Casinos, which have been at the forefront of the use of facial recognition software, solved this problem by taking pictures of cheaters or gambling addicts who voluntarily requested to be kept away from their premises. Law enforcement agencies, which are also very keen on the technology, can tap an extensive archives of bad guys maintained by the likes of the FBI. Databases can also be built by using photos from social media like Facebook or LinkedIn, which will often have enough quality to allow identification.
Knowing Who’s Who
One option for those companies that want to avoid unknown threats, however, is to use facial recognition to identify people who belong. Instead of having photos of banned individuals, the database in this case includes the mugs of those who are supposed to be in the premises. Anybody who gets inside and does not match one of the photos will trigger an alarm.
“Technology is starting to be good enough to work with white lists,” Frederiksen said. But there are still some potential obstacles for this kind of use. For instance, he mentioned the hypothetical case where an allowed employee crosses the camera while watching their smartphone. This person will not be recognized by the system, because their face is turned down, and an alert will be triggered as a result.
Any company willing to implement facial recognition should also take into account privacy issues, although experts believe that such concerns should become less problematic as the technology is regulated and become more widely used. And they should keep in mind if technology can empower their security systems, it will be a complement rather than a substitute to human security staff, who need to be prepared to act immediately after an alert is sent.
“Technology is getting almost better than humans at recognizing faces,” Frederiksen said. “What the technology cannot do, and humans can, is to look at how someone walks, the color or his skin or how tall the person is.”
It has been reported though that Chinese companies are developing gait recognition technologies capable of identifying people by the way they walk, for example. & | <urn:uuid:9b839d83-23e9-4306-a015-f5a6c57076ee> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://riskandinsurance.com/facial-recognition-technology/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573118.26/warc/CC-MAIN-20220817213446-20220818003446-00678.warc.gz | en | 0.965599 | 1,152 | 2.265625 | 2 |
It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s … an air travel–themed, Thanksgiving double edition of What’s That Thing, Slate’s column examining mysterious or overlooked objects in our visual landscape. (If instead you’re traveling by car this Thanksgiving, click here, here, and here for roadworthy previous installments.) To submit suggestions and pics for future columns, email us.
Flying home for Thanksgiving? If it feels like there must be 25 million other people doing the same thing, then you’re good with numbers: That’s the estimated number of travelers expected to get airborne around the holiday this year, a 1.5 percent increase over 2012.
Busy skies also mean human gridlock on jet bridges from the terminal down to the aircraft door. While you’re waiting to board, you might have time to contemplate the purpose of the jauntily angled strip of metal above the door of most commercial aircraft.
Form follows function, and on airplanes, function usually follows air; anything that messes with the airflow over the fuselage and wings had better be important. And that strip of metal looks pretty high-tech.
But the strip is actually pretty low-tech. And its purpose has more to do with water than air. It’s a gutter, basically. It keeps passengers dry by channeling water to the side of the door while they’re boarding. It also keeps water out of the plane interior, where floors can become slippery.
No one wants an upper fuselage’s worth of water dripping onto their head while they’re waiting for someone farther down the plane to decide just where they would or would not like to stow their hand luggage. The gutters are particularly important when passengers are boarding via steps, rather than a jet bridge. But even with a jet bridge in place, the seal between the bridge and an airplane’s fuselage isn’t always watertight.
Surely, in the high-tech world of commercial aviation, these aero-gutter thingies have some complicated name—maybe an acronym? How about FVHSIs—Fuselage Vane Hydrodynamic Shedding Interfaces? Nah, says Boeing spokesman Doug Alder, Jr.; the official name is “rain gutter.”
Our next object of curiosity is the little wheel attached to the jet bridge, down on the right side of the door in the picture below, resting against the fuselage. What’s it up to?
Well here’s a hint. Let’s think about what happens when a plane arrives at a gate. The jet bridge is attached. Then, passengers get off. The cargo is unloaded. The trash is unloaded. Lots of things are unloaded. And then lots of things are loaded—passengers, bags, and lots of fuel. For the Airbus A380, the operating empty weight—that’s the weight of an aircraft before passengers, cargo and fuel are added, basically—might be around 610,000 pounds. After the aircraft is fully loaded, it could weigh around twice that much (1.27 million pounds is the maximum takeoff weight for an A380).
Even for Thanksgiving, that’s some serious pound-packing. And all these changes in weight cause the plane to rise or fall slowly while it is parked at the gate.
The jet bridge senses this vertical motion in the aircraft using the little wheel you see in the picture. Then the bridge automatically rises or falls to match the aircraft’s new height. According to Frank Moore, global business manager for JBT AeroTech, a leading air bridge manufacturer, “The system is called an autolevel. The wheel touches the aircraft and tracks the motion of passengers deplaning, baggage and freight inserted and removed, along with the weight of fuel.”
Why is it so important for the bridge to follow the aircraft up and down as it loses and gains weight? One reason is that a more-or-less level playing field makes it easier for passengers to get on or off without stepping or tripping. Wheelie bags do better too. The biggest reason, though, is to avoid damage by the air bridge to the door of the aircraft.
You can actually feel the autolevel function at work. Sometimes when you step from an aircraft onto a jet bridge, or when the passenger ahead of you on the bridge steps onto the aircraft, the autolevel kicks briefly into action. It feels like a little motorized jolt. This means that the bridge has sensed a change in the height—i.e., the weight—of the aircraft. It could be the fuel, or the cargo—or it could be you.
Even with our national belt-loosening planned for Thursday evening, it’s probably not the case that these little jet bridge wheels get more of a workout after a big, food-centered holiday. But still, if you feel the jet bridge floor twitch briefly as you fly home next weekend, you might consider it a little outbreak of mechanical applause for your family’s cooking—and an opportunity to give thanks for the blessing of autoleveling technology.
And while you’re still stuck on that jet bridge, ever wonder why no one has found a faster, simpler way to get passengers onto airplanes?
Lots of people have wondered about this and there’s a veritable sub-discipline of airplane boarding optimization strategies out there.
There’s the hallowed back-to-front traditional boarding, of course, with which most of us are familiar. But while back-to-front has the advantage of simplicity, it’s not speedy. Remarkably, it’s only slightly faster than boarding front-to-back. It would be faster just to board passengers at random, according to Jason Steffen, an astrophysicist.
Steffen’s optimal solution would involve passengers boarding “10 at a time in every other row.” His model—based on a Markov chain Monte Carlo optimization algorithm, of course—assumes “that the time that a passenger requires to load his or her luggage is the dominant contribution to the time needed to completely fill the aircraft,” which will sound about right to many travelers this week.
Then there’s the magic carpet idea—line up everyone in their aircraft-seat positions before they even get onto the aircraft. The magic carpet has the advantage of a good name, and the disadvantage of introducing travelers to their seatmates while there’s still time to ask to move. There’s also the proposed side-slip seat, which more than doubles the size of the aisle during boarding. And for really thinking outside of the, uh, tube, check out this patent for a removable aircraft cabin. That’s right—the cabin would detach from the aircraft. After passengers have boarded the “removable cabin module,” it would snap back onto the rest of the aircraft.
See something up there over America this week, and wondering what it is? Airmail a pic and description to firstname.lastname@example.org. | <urn:uuid:3f55df6d-90c1-4870-bfe4-e97f718b2e24> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://slate.com/human-interest/2013/11/what-s-that-thing-what-s-that-metal-strip-above-the-airplane-door.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572127.33/warc/CC-MAIN-20220815024523-20220815054523-00270.warc.gz | en | 0.937745 | 1,493 | 2.046875 | 2 |
Parliament adopts bill to open embassy in Vatican
By Vafa Ismayilova
Azerbaijan will open its embassy in the Vatican, local news sources have reported.
The bill "On the establishment of the Embassy of the Republic of Azerbaijan in the Holy See [the Vatican]" was debated and adopted at the parliament's plenary session on October 29.
At the session, MPs stressed that the embassy's opening will make a significant contribution to the development of ties between the sides.
For the first time in history, Azerbaijan, being a country with a Muslim majority, contributed to the restoration of Christian monuments in the Vatican and other Christian countries.
Azerbaijan ensured the restoration of the catacombs of St. Marcellinus, St. Peter and St. Sebastian in the Vatican. It also funded the restoration of Notre Dame in France.
The country, which has always been distinguished by religious tolerance, is committed to its values of multiculturalism and the preservation of religious monuments both in Azerbaijan and abroad.
Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz | <urn:uuid:684d3353-d3d9-4de3-8144-cdfa0c0094b9> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.azernews.az/nation/184942.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573172.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20220818063910-20220818093910-00271.warc.gz | en | 0.93518 | 223 | 1.835938 | 2 |
I’m currently reading Need You for Always by Marina Adair and while I like the book there is one big issue that I’m having. If you follow the blog’s facebook page, you know what I’m talking about–the heroine’s mother died from ALS nearly 20 years after being diagnosed with the disease. Yes, that has happened, but it is extremely rare (according to alsa.org, only about 10% of people with ALS live 20 years post-diagnosis). As I mentioned on facebook, I get the feeling that when Ms. Adair was writing this book, she looked at all those Ice Bucket Challenge videos and decided that would be a good part of the heroine’s backstory. I find that despicable. ALS and other chronic disorders are not fodder for a book. They are real and effect real people. If you want to include them in your book, do your research and include them in a way that will educate your readers! It isn’t that hard.
The subtitle on this post is Sometimes It Is Personal and for me muscle disease is very personal. My mom was diagnosed with Myasthenia Gravis in 1995 and spent 4 months in a New York hospital and then another 3 weeks in a rehabilitation center, where she had to relearn how to do simple things that most people take for granted. She was one of the lucky ones. Until the advent of modern medicine, anyone with MG had only a 30% survival rate, hence the Gravis part of the name. She is on medication for the rest of her life, but so many others that came before her didn’t get that chance because MG shuts down the muscles that control your body. It is an autoimmune disease, which means that her immune system literally attacks her body if she does not take her medication. For the six months before her diagnosis, we watched her body shut down on itself to the point that she had to manually force her jaw to close in order to chew. When her doctor admitted her into the hospital on that June morning, he told my dad that he’d gotten her there just in time because if he’d waited much longer, she would have died. My mom would have died, so yes, I take this very seriously.
Today’s video is from the 2008 MDA Telethon. Jerry Lewis, the person who started the telethon, would always end it with the song You’ll Never Walk Alone from the musical Carousel. It is an absolute shame that the telethon is no longer on and it saddens me to think that people will soon forget about it and stop donating to the MDA. Please, enjoy the video and then go to MDA.org and make a donation. Believe me, it will go to good use. | <urn:uuid:d3d2866e-fca8-4f9f-bca2-251416b1a814> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | http://mylittlebookcorner.com/2015/10/video-of-the-day-sometimes-it-is-personal/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571097.39/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810010059-20220810040059-00272.warc.gz | en | 0.977105 | 581 | 1.65625 | 2 |
U.S. Department of the Treasury
Treas.gov was created on the unknown, domain is hosted in ip: 18.104.22.168, and owner of this ips: US-DEPARTMENT-OF-THE-TREASURY . Our algorithm estimates Treas.gov worth to be about $66,462 and estimates that it gets about 16,647 visits per day. Treas.gov is located in United States. Treas.gov using BigIP server and powered by unknown.
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We believe that every website pwner is able to earn money from his website.
Our estimations point that your Website Worth is $66,461.98, Your Daily Visitors could be in the area of 16647 per day and your estimated Daily Revenues could be around $49.94.
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Domain Name: TREAS.GOV
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server at RS.INTERNIC.NET. | <urn:uuid:aee6af93-b34d-49dc-bd2d-71860056bd2a> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://treas.gov.outerstats.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560282926.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095122-00396-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.698009 | 691 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Does your perfectionism ever stop you from finishing your novel. I started a new project not too long ago and it was going extremely well until I suddenly decided it wasn’t good enough. We’ve all had these moments and I’m not immune. I’ve developed this new habit of constantly starting my books and stories over again.
Sometimes I decide I want to change the point of view. Sometimes I just think I need to change a few things at the beginning of the story. Instead of going back and making those changes, I just decide to start writing the whole thing over again.
I did that just this morning. I started from the beginning of a novel I’m already halfway through. As I rewrote the first chapter, I realized that I didn’t want to make as many changes as I originally thought. I decided to save the changed first chapter and go back to the original book I was writing and work on that.
This problem of constantly starting over has been a problem with my writing before. I’ve worked hard to get beyond it, but never thought it would sneak up on me again. It’s a common problem for writers to have.
Your Inner Critic
We all have doubts. Some doubts are stronger than others. The critic in your head is trying to keep you safe. It sees you doing things that are different that might put you at risk in some way and wants to stop it.
The risk doesn’t have to be something that is physically harmful. It could be anything that will cause you to step outside of your comfort zone. In writing, it could be putting a story you created out for the public to read. The reality of the situation is that not everyone will like your writing. You are opening yourself up to be criticized by people you don’t know.
Your brain has developed a comfort zone. It likes where you are now and is weary of change. This change can include success as well as failure.
What your critic says to you is deeply ingrained. It comes from your childhood and how as an insecure child you spoke to yourself. That’s why even when you try your hardest not to criticize yourself it can still be quite difficult to stop it, but controlling this critic is important to your success.
Silencing Your Inner Critic
The first step to silencing your inner critic is slowing down the criticisms and taking an honest look at them. Look at the criticisms. Are they valid? Many people are their own worst critics. If you are overly harsh with yourself you may not be able to honestly evaluate your writing. This is why it is good to be in a writing group or to have a writing partner. If you don’t have a writing partner write now, get someone you know to read your writing and give you an honest opinion.
Having an honest evaluation of your work is a big step to silencing your critic so you can get serious writing done.
Think about your audience. I find that when I have a difficult time writing because I think my writing isn’t good enough that I’m thinking more about myself and not about my readers. Think about your readers and how your story will affect them.
Taking these first steps will help you look at your work more objectively and give you the freedom you need to finish your book.
Picture by [Vale] | <urn:uuid:794434f1-8464-4db0-aacd-aad11884384e> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.lovelynbettison.com/2011/12/how-to-silence-your-inner-critic/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560282926.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095122-00395-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978467 | 700 | 1.507813 | 2 |
According to the Mayo Clinic, blood clots in the stool or fecal material are evidence of a bleed somewhere in the gastrointestinal system. Blood clots in the stool will often be accompanied by unclotted blood. If the unclotted blood is bright red, then the bleed is most likely lower in the gastrointestinal system, such as the colon or the rectum. If, on the other hand, the blood is black and resembles tar, this means that it came from further up in the system, such as the esophagus or stomach. Black, tarry blood, also known as melena, gets its color from being partially digested by bacteria in the gastrointestinal tract.
In some cases, blood clots in the stool (and the gastrointestinal bleed that causes them) can be due to certain kinds of infections, such as some strains of salmonella, and some stomach parasites. Gastrointestinal bleeds can also be caused by ulcerations, or ulcers, as they are commonly called. Stomach ulcers are actually typically caused by a bacteria called H. pylori, whereas esophageal and intestinal ulcerations are usually caused by stomach acid or other caustic substances burning the lining. Another cause of gastrointestinal bleeding is called angiodysplasia, which is a condition in which blood vessels near the surface of the intestines expand and break more easily, leading to blood seeping into the digestive system.
In many cases, gastrointestinal bleeding can be caused by conditions that are pre-existing and that will most likely not go away over time. The most serious of these is cancer, especially colon cancer. Colon cancer normally begins from small growths called polyps, which are small clusters of abnormally growing cells in the colon. Both polyps and cancerous tumors will bleed more easily because of their abnormal growth and because they disrupt the healthy tissue around them. Other causes of chronic blood clots in the stool can be grouped under the umbrella term of diverticulitis. This occurs when a portion of the intestines becomes looped around itself or blood vessels, causing constriction. Over time, this causes that portion of the intestine to lose blood flow, causing it to slowly die off and bleed. | <urn:uuid:720d2e95-2e9b-4196-a0fe-3bf119ae17e0> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://www.livestrong.com/article/16211-causes-blood-clots-stools/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988721405.66/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183841-00314-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948536 | 452 | 3.859375 | 4 |
In general, the residential natural gas pressure is less than 1/4 pound per square inch. In areas where the distribution pipeline pressure is greater than the residential pressure, the meter includes a regulator to decrease it to the correct operating range.Continue Reading
The residential pressure of natural gas is only slightly higher than air pressure. It is approximately the same pressure blowing bubbles through a straw into a glass of milk requires. When a gas valve opens, the gas moves through the burner because of the higher pressure.
The distribution system involves many miles of pipelines and valves. It opens and closes regulator valves as necessary to maintain the natural gas at the proper pressure for each segment of the system.Learn more about Heating & Cooling | <urn:uuid:b6ac2277-38e5-4a8e-92ee-83f6c01d475a> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.reference.com/home-garden/residential-natural-gas-pressure-b89254b63686f51d | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280266.9/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00498-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928122 | 144 | 2.859375 | 3 |
The Concept of Wholly Owned Subsidiary is an anti-thesis of the concept of the company. At least two persons are required to form a company which is true for wholly-owned subsidiary – but in case of wholly-owned companies one or more registered shareholder declare that one or more beneficial interests in their shares are with a particular company or body corporate.
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Indiana Governor Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr.
January 10, 2005
Mr. Chief Justice, Sen. Lugar, friends and neighbors:
How simple those words. How familiar these rituals. How natural we find the transfer of authority over the affairs of our state.
How routine, how undramatic the process has been. No shots were fired, no barricades were stormed, no blood was spilled. While in one country a half a world away, people must refight the contest for office after a subverted election, and, in another, people die daily at the hands of those who would kill to prevent a free election from ever being held in the first place.
It is not just the young people of Indiana, watching this ceremony in thousands of classrooms, who take all this for granted, as the natural state of human affairs. All of us in this most blessed of nations have long been bound by, in Lincoln's words, the mystic chords of memory, to the notion that power derives solely from the will of free and equal people, and that power passes peacefully and only by the consent of the governed.
We Hoosiers have marked this passage now forty-eight times before. No wonder we view it so matter-of-factly. But I venture to say that no one receiving the temporary tenancy of the people's leadership ever inherited it from a predecessor of greater good humor or warmth of spirit than the man who tenders it to me today. Governor Joe Kernan, thanks to you and Maggie on behalf of the grateful state you have served so long and so devotedly.
And now, we citizens of the nineteenth state commence our forty-ninth chapter together. For the governed to give their consent fully, they must know full well what they are agreeing to. I hope it is fair to say that the people of Indiana knew what they were choosing, and knew whom, as I have always seen it, they were hiring, when they met in council on November 2nd.
We offered ourselves as people of change. We urged our fellow citizens to aim higher, to expect more from our state government, but also from our schools, our businesses and, ultimately, from ourselves. We tried to hold up the prospect of an era in which we would leave behind old arguments for new solutions, provincialism for unified purpose, timidity and caution for boldness and even risk-taking, all with the goal of restoring our state as a place of prosperity and promise.
We said plainly what kind of change we would bring. The policies we will pursue have been in full view for months. When I leave here today I will sign executive orders making the first of those changes, effective immediately. On arrival at the people's house, I will personally deliver those of our proposals that require legislative approval to our new partners in the Indiana General Assembly.
And, eight days from tonight, I will propose, as a part of my State of the State presentation, approaches to the fiscal emergency in which we enter Chapter 49. We will waste no energy assigning blame for this crisis, and we must waste no time in addressing it. Our actions must be bold, because the problem is huge. They must touch every individual and interest, because they must be fair, and adequate to the challenge at hand.
If we overestimate the task, it means we have underestimated ourselves. When we think of the crises that free peoples before us have rallied to meet, we should gather confidence, and a sense of proportion, about the smaller assignment history has given us in our day. The job ahead may loom large to us, fortunate as we are to live in an age of unprecedented affluence and safety.
But this isn't Britain at Dunkirk. This isn't a newborn nation at Valley Forge. I do not face what Oliver Morton did when he stood on the Capitol steps and summoned a divided state to stand strongly for union and against slavery. When we note what our predecessors overcame in their day, we should be ashamed if we hesitate, sheepish if we pull up short.
When asked to explain America's victory over the dictators in World War II, Gen. George Marshall said, "We had a secret weapon. The best damned kids in the world." Against the relatively manageable obstacles we face, we have a weapon, and it's no secret. We have the quiet resilience of spirit the world has always associated with the term "Hoosier."
In the seats of honor at this ceremony are the VIPs of this weekend, people I met and came to know during my 16-month interview for the job I undertake today. They come from the largest of our cities, from the tiniest of our towns, and from the rural spaces in between. I love them as individuals, but I love equally the way in which they personify the qualities which, if called forth now, will surely carry us over our current difficulties and back to greatness as a state.
Kathy Bond's over there. Eking out a living carving lawn statues out in Modoc, she somehow found a way to take in a friend, stricken with fatal cancer, who had nowhere to go. Dr. Mark Graves is here from Evansville, where at his own expense he and his son devised a computer program that is enabling low-income patients to cut their drug costs from hundreds to a few dollars a month. And Rich Neuberg, who, when he's not organizing charity walks for breast cancer research, is giving discounts in his diner up in Knox for every dollar a customer spends at a local store. And Tom Anton, the longtime Purdue professor from Schererville, whom I tripped over enjoying his retirement by teaching a seventeen-year-old inner-city kid to read for the first time. Our greatest strengths reside where they always have.
I have often observed that, among our many special assets, Hoosiers are really good at rebuilding things. Engines, transmissions, airplanes, and buildings as large as the Pentagon - when something needs fixing, we just get about the chore.
And we are wired to help each other. We've been doing it for 188 years now. When trouble came, and it came often, our forefathers didn't use words like "sacrifice." And they certainly didn't divide into little groups and demand to be excused from taking part.
When there was storm damage to repair or a new barn to raise, everybody found a way to pitch in. Those who could handle a hammer or an axe, did; those who could afford to contribute a little extra for the materials, chipped in; those who could only bring a dish, brought it. Kids carried nails, old folks dispensed lemonade and sage advice, and nobody, nobody stayed home.
It's time to raise a new barn in Indiana, a new, stronger structure to house new tools and to make possible far richer future harvests. We will need the whole community to show up. As a government, we will do all that is possible to clear the path for new jobs and investment, but our businesses must take the risks from which alone new wealth comes.
We will spend the tax dollars of Hoosiers whenever possible inside our state, but our corporations must do likewise, and our universities must also use every opportunity to help the neighbors whose tax dollars support them.
Our utilities, granted special privileges by the nature of their product, must commit themselves to helping us attract new business. Those to whom life in Indiana has been the most kind must be willing to give back in accordance with their good fortune. And every interest group, of every kind and cause, must resolve to demand a little less, relent a little more often, if we are going to get the new barn up with the limited resources on hand.
Let's nobody sit home. Every parent who checks homework or reads to a child is lifting a bigger hammer than they may realize. Every person who volunteers at a free clinic, a food bank, a nursing home is putting a plank in place. Every young person who studies a little harder or signs up for a tougher course is driving a nail. Every citizen who stops smoking, or loses a few pounds, or starts managing his chronic disease with real diligence, is caulking a crack for the benefit of us all.
The young people of Indiana are watching us today, whether their classroom is tuned in or not. I know, from having met thousands of them, in their schools, at their games, and on the streets of their towns, that they love this state, and overwhelmingly they hope to make it their home as adults. Over and over, they have told me in identical words: "I want to stay, but…"
They are watching now to see whether we who are already adults will behave like it. Whether we have a fraction the fortitude our ancestors had in such abundance. Whether we will rebuild the barn, pay our debts, and leave the family business strong, so that they can carry it on and pay the bills when their turn comes.
When we meet again in eight days, I will lay out a design for our new community rebuilding project. I will suggest the roles each of us can undertake. I will urge that our purpose be bold, that if we err, we err on the side of action, of movement, of experiment. And that our aim be high. It's been said that every great achievement was first a dream; cathedrals are not brought into being by skeptics.
Neither are great barns.
En route to Philadelphia in 1776, to put his life, his fortune and his sacred honor all at risk, John Adams wrote in his diary that it was all well worth it because, he said "Great things are wanted to be done." And so with us. Our lives are not at risk. We face much toil and sweat, but no blood and, one hopes, no tears. But, in our day, Adams' excitement, and Churchill's iron resolve, should be our own: Great things are there to be done.
This is our moment. Our children are watching, and so too are those who came before us. They would not recognize our problems as daunting. They'd say "Wipe your nose. Let's get to work."
Good advice. I thank you for your presence today. For the love of our state that it demonstrates. For the confidence and the opportunity you have invested in me and in those who have stepped forward to join our reconstruction crew.
We know our assignment; we will spare no effort; we ask only that you join us, each in your own best way, in rebuilding an edifice of excellence in which a great Hoosier future can be housed.
And now if you will excuse me, I have to get to work. | <urn:uuid:6ec8bd29-17fe-46c5-bc76-f51133ce36ce> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://in.gov/governorhistory/mitchdaniels/2531.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280761.39/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00100-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971133 | 2,240 | 1.953125 | 2 |
Probably in the first centuries AD, Finnish tribes from the Baltic States and the south-east invaded the largely sparsely populated area of today’s southern and central Finland (Finns). Visit printerhall for Finland Since 2000.
Part of the Swedish Empire
After first contact with Christianity in the 11th century, the Christianization of Finland by Swedish missionaries began in the middle of the 12th century. At the same time, the country came politically under Swedish influence. In 1249 (according to other information 1238/39) Birger Jarl declared today’s malice to be part of the Swedish Empire. In a crusade in 1293, Sweden turned against the attempts at influence of Greek Orthodox monks who were evangelizing in Karelia from Novgorod. In the Peace of Nöteborg (today Schlisselburg) the Finnish eastern border between Sweden and Novgorod was established for the first time in 1323. Under King Gustav I. Wasa, M. Agricola promoted with his translation of the Bible he spread the Lutheran faith and at the same time contributed to the development of the written Finnish language. In Finland, which was elevated to a Grand Duchy in 1581, but which was de facto administered like a Swedish province, Swedish colonists continued to advance north and east. In 1595 the Moscow Empire recognized the border up to the Arctic Ocean and, after armed conflicts in 1617, was forced to cede Ingermanland and part of Karelia to Finland. Under the Swedish Governor General Count Per Brahe (* 1602, † 1680), the country experienced an economic and cultural heyday (including the establishment of the University of Turku in 1640).
In the 2nd Northern War Finland was occupied by Russia from 1713-21, which in the Peace of Nystad in 1721 secured the part of Karelia belonging to Finland with Vyborg. In the following Swedish-Russian war, Russia was unable to achieve its goal of establishing an independent Finnish state under Russian rule, but in the Peace of Turku in 1743 it was awarded further parts in the southeast of Finland (up to Kymijoki). After 1743 the Swedish pressure on Finland increased; however, the feeling for Finnish independence also increasingly gained ground. During the Swedish-Russian hostilities of 1788–90 they showed themselves in the Anjalabund first national independence movements, but these were initially limited to officers and small circles of the nobility.
Autonomous Russian Grand Duchy
In the alliance between Tsar Alexander I and Napoleon I concluded in Tilsit in 1807, Russia and France delimited their spheres of interest in Europe, with Finland falling to Russia.
Russian troops conquered the country in 1808. In the Peace of Fredrikshamn in 1809 Sweden had to give up Finland. On March 29, 1809, Alexander I declared Finland an autonomous Grand Duchy within the Russian Empire in a state parliament and confirmed the basic Swedish laws of 1772 and 1789 that had been enacted in favor of Finland. The government was set up by the emperor with the participation of the state parliament. The President of the Senate was the Russian Governor General. A Finnish state secretary took care of Finland’s government affairs in Saint Petersburg and had the right to speak to the emperor. Helsinki was elevated to the capital by the emperor in 1812.
In the first half of the 19th century, as a result of Tsar Nicholas I’s restorative policy, the development of Finland’s state stagnated. Tsar Alexander II (1855–81) ushered in a period of national reforms prepared by the spiritual leaders of the national Finnish movement, who espoused Finnish as the official, school and literary language.
With Juhana Vilhelm Snellman (* 1806, † 1881) and Yrjö Sakari Yrjö-Koskinen (* 1830, † 1903) at the head, they saw their goal in an independent Finnish nation-state, of which the radical Finnish party of the »Fennomans« – as their exponent applied to E. Lönnrot - wanted to see the Swedes living in Finland excluded. Against the nationalist views of this group came the “Svekomanen”, who took the view that Swedes and Finns should jointly oppose Russian attacks in Finland. The language rescript of 1863 stipulated the equality of the Finnish language with the Swedish from 1883 on. In 1865 Finland received its own coin, since 1869 the state parliament met again regularly, in 1878 Finland was granted its own army with the introduction of conscription. While the Swedish-speaking upper class had been the bearer of the culture until the beginning of the 19th century, a Finnish-speaking intellectual class has now developed, partly from the national-Finnish-minded, previously Swedish-speaking, partly from the Finnish.
Under Alexander III. (1881–94) began a policy of Russification, which culminated in the “February Manifesto” of 1899, which abolished Finnish autonomy. After the Russian Revolution of 1905, Nicholas II granted autonomy again. The reform of the state parliament of 1906 introduced a unicameral state parliament with general and equal (including women’s) voting rights. The strongest party was the Social Democratic Party of Finland (SDP), which was organized on the German model. Large sections of the population responded with passive resistance to the policy of russification, which began again after a few years. | <urn:uuid:b7440abc-0668-4286-b902-003a784d2e88> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.ehuzhou.net/finland-history/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572043.2/warc/CC-MAIN-20220814143522-20220814173522-00467.warc.gz | en | 0.96245 | 1,142 | 3.765625 | 4 |
For the backcountry fly fisher, there might not be anything sexier than a lonely beaver pond reflecting a blue-bird mountain sky, and dimpled only by the rises of braindead, off-the-beaten path trout.
God bless beavers and their industrious nature. They make habitat for the fish we love, and opportunities to catch them.
But beavers haven’t always been so fondly considered, even by us anglers. For centuries, they were sought after, not for the work they do to improve stream habitat, but for their luxurious fur. They were trapped throughout the Rockies, nearly to extinction. But, in the last 50 years or so, they’ve made a remarkable comeback, thanks mostly to a cultural shift in how we view the toothy rodents that turn a straight-pipe trickle into a trouty backcountry oasis.
Beavers have value to habitat, and most enlightened folks these days--from farmers and ranchers to conservationists to anglers understand that. It’s not to say the world is perfect and every beaver is loved, but most of us have long since graduated from the misperception that one of God’s creatures could be an evil hurdle to progress.
Yes, a century ago, farmers and landowners were guilty of shoving sticks of dynamite into the woody maze of beaver dams and blowing them up, believing that the dams kept water from running downstream to thirsty crops or thirsty cows. Even those in the conservation arena were guilty of taking a front loader to beaver dams, insisting the dams blocked the migration of native trout to upstream spawning waters (hell, I always thought that to be the case, until a decade or so ago).
But the science is in. Beaver dams do little to hinder water from running downstream. They slow it down, obviously, but it makes its way downhill, as per the simple laws of physics. And those dams actually help with water quantity, too. How so? They serve as a mechanism for groundwater recharge, keeping aquifers full of cold, clean water.
In my day job, it’s my duty to communicate regularly with the press, and a typical week will have me hitting the “send” button on at least a couple of press releases promoting the good work my non-profit employer does to protect and restore trout and salmon habitat all across America. Now and then, I get a reply to one of my press releases from a certain crunchy “journalist” who despises fishing and hunting--and groups like mine that work to improve habitat and opportunity for the benefit of fish and game and those who chase them. Just last week, I got a hateful note from this writer who proceeded to tell me just how much my organization hates beavers, and how we’re out to kill every last one of them.
I quickly called up one of several blog posts we’ve done over the last few years on the positive impacts beavers make to fisheries habitat, pasted the link in an email and suggested she do some research before making such broad assumptions.
And then I thought about it a bit, and did some research of my own. I soon found that we, do, in fact have some examples in the fisheries conservation world where we still take the ax to beaver dams. I think they’re good examples of how, if you view the big picture, a little destruction can help with long-term conservation.
For instance, in southwest Colorado, where efforts are afoot to return a robust population of Colorado River cutthroat trout the upper reaches of the Hermosa Creek drainage, state fisheries managers and volunteers from the local Trout Unlimited chapter have, indeed, removed beaver ponds. But the reason for such a move is hardly sinister--in fact, it was done with the best of intentions.
In order to “treat” a stretch of stream to remove non-native fish from the water and make it habitable for reintroduced native trout, sometimes deconstruction is necessary. Beaver ponds slow water down and make such good habitat for trout--particularly non-native brook trout--that the piscicides used to remove non-native trout often don’t reach every little nook and cranny a pond creates. By removing the dams--yes, the beavers will rebuild--managers can ensure that all stretches of the stream are properly treated. Eventually, when all the non-natives are gone, the natives are reintroduced, and we’ve done a whole lot more good than we have evil.
A year or so later--sometimes it doesn’t even take that long--the beavers have rebuilt and they’re busy once again making habitat better, only this time for the fish that belong there.
For years, biologists have struggled with the questions surrounding beaver dams and fish migration. Do they halt the upstream travel of trout and block off vital spawning and rearing waters. A little over a year ago, a study published in Transactions of the American Fisheries Society proved that beaver dams are not total barriers to fish migration. Bonneville cutthroat trout tagged with telemetry devices were monitored and found to be able to move through beaver dams and swim upstream to spawn, particularly in the high-water season in the spring.
Trout Unlimited’s own science and conservation teams are noting the importance of beavers and their construction talents in helping with many aspects of fisheries conservation, including helping watersheds recover from wildfire and helping aquifers recharge and store waters during drought. Beavers may be some of our best natural tools for combating the ill effects of a warming world when it comes to how climate change impacts cold-water-loving trout.
It’s good to see that science, agriculture and recreation are coming around to the beneficial impacts beavers can have on watersheds, both for the good of the environment and the good of the fishing.
But a lot of us backcountry creek freaks have known along that beavers help make fishing better, simply because they create fish habitat. And habitat translates directly into opportunity.
The next time you’re startled when a beaver slaps its tail on the water and dives into the depths of the pond, say a silent thank you and wait a minute or two. Then, make a cast across that smooth, dark water and hold on tight. | <urn:uuid:13c4196e-c98c-4453-8707-c07ab1d9bfc2> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.hatchmag.com/articles/ward-lets-talk-about-beaver/7712371?page=611 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573104.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20220817183340-20220817213340-00472.warc.gz | en | 0.942222 | 1,318 | 2.40625 | 2 |
“It’s going to blow up.”
That’s what Bob Ebeling told his wife 30 years ago, on January 27, 1986 — the night before the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded in a fiery blaze that killed all seven NASA astronauts on board.
At the time, Ebeling was an engineer at NASA contractor Morton Thiokol, the manufacturer of the shuttle’s O-ring seals that were part of the shuttle’s solid rocket booster. A subsequent investigation would determine that faulty O-rings were the cause of the *Challenger disaster.
Shocking as the accident was for the rest of the country and world, Ebeling wasn’t too surprised. That only made his grief worse.
Ebeling and four other engineers at Morton Thiokol tried to stop the launch at a contentious pre-launch meeting with company managers and NASA. They had determined that the rubber O-ring seals would not function as they should under cold temperatures. The launch the next day was going to be the coldest on record.
Unfortunately, Ebeling’s managers — pressured by higher-ups at NASA who were trying to adhere to an incredibly busy launch schedule that year — decided to overrule these objections and move ahead with the launch.
After the disaster, Ebeling and another engineer separately gave anonymous reports to NPR detailing what had happened: The data they collected and analyzed, the conclusions they made, what they reported to their superiors, the pushback, and the resulting accident.
Now the 89-year-old Ebeling has come forward and allowed NPR to finally identify him as the world remembers the 30th anniversary of the Challenger explosion.
“I was one of the few that was really close to the situation,” Ebeling told NPR. “Had they listened to me and wait[ed] for a weather change, it might have been a completely different outcome.”
During the ‘80s, NASA was moving forward with an incredibly ambitious launch program to tout the reliability of the shuttles and maintain the nation’s position as the world’s preeminent space power. Unfortunately, that push seems to have persuaded NASA officials to take risky measures that ignored very real concerns.
Though Ebeling did his job in raising these concerns to his superiors, he still feels guilty about what happened, and thinks he should have put forth a stronger argument about what the data was indicating. “I could have done more,” he said. “I should have done more.” To this day, he still feels responsible for what happened.
In the aftermath, NASA would conduct a deep cultural overhaul that would emphasize safety over deadlines. Though errors and mismanagement set the stage for the Challenger accident, the agency’s changes have helped ensure engineers like Ebeling are no longer ignored when there’s something on the line that means the difference between the life and death of astronauts set to travel into space. | <urn:uuid:4465ab84-309a-410a-bb90-3021e4f42639> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://nc.inverse.com/article/10800-engineer-who-raised-concerns-about-challenger-explosion-tells-his-story | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573029.81/warc/CC-MAIN-20220817153027-20220817183027-00265.warc.gz | en | 0.97945 | 624 | 2.265625 | 2 |
Since September 11, 2001, more than 1.5 million Americans have put on a uniform and served their country. Millions more went before them. In contemporary times, veterans serve in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. Previous generations have served around the World, too—from faraway places like Europe and Asia to battlefields closer to home in places like Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, Bunker Hill, Massachusetts, and Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
What is a veteran? Simply put, a veteran is a person who at one point in his or her life wrote a blank check made payable to the United States of America for an amount of "up to and including my life."
Those who have made good on this promise in full will be forever memorialized. For the rest, times are tough. Some physical and emotional wounds may heal slowly, or never at all. Others not wounded on the field of battle will face difficulties of their own as they return home. Some will be confronted by financial woes that have accumulated in part because of their attention to their mission. Others will experience professional challenges as they try to pick up where they left off in careers put on hold in some cases for years. In today’s economy, never before have so many veterans needed so much.
ARMing Heroes is here to make sure veterans get the help they have earned through programs oriented to the unique ways in which the accounts receivable management industry can help. So if you are a veteran, click here to get help now. If not, we need you. Read on to learn more. | <urn:uuid:c7b16310-77ff-40be-8f7a-949360eb3cba> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://armingheroes.org/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281226.52/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00384-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974089 | 314 | 2.5625 | 3 |
The brackets are typically made from a mix of stainless steel, nickel, and other metals, and are very durable and long-lasting. Brackets may have little hooks or doors. Brackets are used to secure the orthodontic wire to the tooth. The wire is secured by closing the door, or by applying ties or O-rings (colors for your braces) around the bracket and over the front of the wire.
This is what Dr. Kaplan will use to secure the brackets to your teeth. Although some orthodontists may attach the brackets to a metal band which is then crimped around the tooth to hold it in place, it’s much more common these days to attach the bracket directly to the tooth with adhesive (technically, a form of composite resin bonding material). In cases that require more serious treatment, metal bands may be used with an adhesive to give the braces more leverage and stability.
This thin piece of metal runs from one bracket to another. Dr. Kaplan will change the shape and curvature of the wire in order to move your teeth in the desired direction. Bends may be made in the wire to help move teeth to a better angle or position. In most cases, the wire will pass through all the bottom or upper teeth together but sometimes the wire will pass through connecting just a few teeth to get the desired result.
For patients who need bite correction, elastics are essential. They are generally strung between an upper bracket hook and a lower bracket hook, pulling the upper and lower jaws backward or forward to correct underbites and overbites. We also employ rubber bands for many different situations, to help get the teeth and jaws to match correctly.
Not the same as rubber bands or elastics. These are stainless steel rings that are cemented to the teeth using dental adhesives. These bands can provide an anchor for the braces and oftentimes Orthodontic appliances, but they are not used with all patients.
These small elastic “donuts” or rings can be used to create space in between the teeth when needed, typically before bands are placed. They are also referred to as separators.
These tiny rubber rings can be used to attach the archwire to the brackets. They are less rigid than spacers and come in dozens of colors. | <urn:uuid:eda878ab-acff-4a3b-8411-c2808488833e> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://jkaplanortho.com/parts-of-braces/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571584.72/warc/CC-MAIN-20220812045352-20220812075352-00675.warc.gz | en | 0.937615 | 474 | 2.9375 | 3 |
But is it true that a Chinese bank has taken over an Eskom plant after it failed to repay a loan?
The website Newsoweto published a story on 15 January 2019 claiming China’s Exim Bank had taken “absolute control” of an “Eskom facility plant” after a “default in payment” on a “R33.4 billion” loan.
The story was posted on Facebook, where a user flagged it as false.
Eskom loan ‘is not from Exim Bank’
Eskom spokesperson Khulu Phasiwe told Africa Check that in July 2018 the utility signed a loan agreement worth US$2.5 billion (about R35.3 billion) with China Development Bank – not Exim Bank China.
The loan is to build Kusile power station.
Story from fake Twitter account
Newsoweto based its article on a tweet supposedly by China Exim Bank, posted earlier in January. But the Twitter account @EximBankChina is unverified, and doesn’t use the bank’s official logo.
Phasiwe tweeted: “This is a Parody account. Eskom does not have a loan from Exim Bank China as suggested by the hoax social media post currently circulating. Beware of fake news.”
Research by AFP Fact Check confirms the account is fake and not connected to Exim Bank. The logo may be that of Exim Bank of Bangladesh, AFP says. – Africa Check (20/02/19)
For publishers: what to do if your post is rated false
A fact-checker has rated your Facebook or Instagram post as “false”, “altered”, “partly false” or “missing context”. This could have serious consequences. What do you do?
Click on our guide for the steps you should follow.Publishers guide
Africa Check teams up with Facebook
Africa Check is a partner in Meta's third-party fact-checking programme to help stop the spread of false information on social media.
The content we rate as “false” will be downgraded on Facebook and Instagram. This means fewer people will see it.
You can also help identify false information on Facebook. This guide explains how. | <urn:uuid:094f3a60-4f72-40e8-89de-c37f885c19b2> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://africacheck.org/fact-checks/meta-programme-fact-checks/no-china-exim-bank-hasnt-taken-absolute-control-eskom-power | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571584.72/warc/CC-MAIN-20220812045352-20220812075352-00671.warc.gz | en | 0.94546 | 482 | 1.859375 | 2 |
- Author: IU Robert H. McKinney School of Law
- Number of episodes: 1
- Web site: http://indylaw.indiana.edu/news/events.cfm?eid=548
In January, 2010, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere suffered one of the most devastating earthquakes in modern history. The earthquake’s human and infrastructure toll only added to the Haitian misery caused by vicious hurricanes, grinding poverty, ongoing deforestation, the HIV/AIDS pandemic, and a seemingly endless state of political upheaval.
For solutions to Haiti’s suffering, the international community typically envisions engineers digging wells, construction workers buildin | <urn:uuid:51ad4417-ee94-4f32-a6a2-408d386b36e2> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://podcast.iu.edu/Portal/PodcastPage.aspx?podid=405e68db-059f-4611-b423-90fc7c499b0c | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280761.39/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00088-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.873993 | 136 | 1.515625 | 2 |
There were several compelling speakers Tuesday when the House Education Committee considered Senate Bill 8, the Republican proposal to dramatically increase the number of charter schools and to set up a powerful new charter school commission that would operate almost as a parallel school system.
One of them was Travis Collins, the principal of Meadowbrook Elementary School in Haywood County. Here is part of what he told the committee. It sums up the problems with the GOP charter plan very succinctly.
I don’t think any of us are opposed to the idea of creating and cultivating vibrant learning communities that meet the needs of all of our children. Unfortunately we do not believe that Senate bill 8 does that. Instead it would siphon tens of millions of dollars from traditional public schools and give access to money that our families raise through our various fundraising funds to charter schools.
Furthermore it would limit student access by failing to require transportation, food services or guaranteed enrollment for students with special needs as other publicly funded schools must provide.
I want to believe that the authors of Senate bill 8 crafted it to provide more opportunities for the children of our state. As someone who has devoted the last 16 years of his life to public education, I can tell you that it simply does not. | <urn:uuid:77e1dc28-600f-4df4-ac4d-1d2b60bbe1fc> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://pulse.ncpolicywatch.org/2011/03/09/a-principals-perspective-on-charter-school-bill/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281151.11/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00118-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977407 | 249 | 1.671875 | 2 |
“You treat a disease, you win, you lose. You treat a person, I guarantee you, you’ll win, no matter what the outcome.” Hunter – Patch Adams ( one of the best performances by R. Williams)
In the advent of Robin Williams untimely demise, a great deal of spark and conversation has ensued around the topics of mental illness including depression anxiety and bipolar diseases well as their connection to Neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s.
Let me begin by saying first that although there is news of Robin Williams’s early diagnosis with PD -we do not have any details on his actual neurological condition or whether he was on treatment or not?
Furthermore, we must recall that it has been said that he battled with bipolar disease most of his adult life. Bipolar disease is more likely to result in a higher suicide risk and suicidal ideation and behavior compared to Parkinson’s. Nevertheless, we should not underestimate the severity of depression in any patient no matter the cause. And anyone suffering any type of mental illness like depression, anxiety, bipolar disease, etc. should seek immediate attention and get under the care of a specialist.
But we do need to be aware of some of the facts.
Depression is found to be more common in certain diseases like Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, migraine, and stroke.
This depression is not caused by the fact that patients are given chronic progressive mostly incurable diseases; although, certainly the notion of having these illnesses has sometimes a negative impact on an individual and can accelerate or worsen symptoms. Furthermore, some of the medications used in the treatment of these illnesses themselves can cause depression, anxiety and other mood disorders. (e.g. amantadine, L-dopa, baclofen, bromocriptine, etc. while some meds that are used to treat pain in PD like those in the seizure class-depakote, lamotrigine, carbamaepine, etc.; and of course SSRi’s-Cymbalta, Zoloft, Lexapro, Effexor, etc. can be beneficial) in the majority of neurodegenerative diseases, the depression precedes the neurological deterioration as a harbinger of things to common.
In the case of PD, and Alzheimer’s these can be the very first clues of something amiss especially when there has never been a prior history of mental illness, depression or family history of such problems. According to the National Institute of Mental health roughly 18 million Americans suffer from depression yearly with a 12 month period. Depression is characterized by loss of appetite, although sometimes can be the opposite, loss of interest In things that used to bring pleasure and happiness, poor sleep or too much sleep, lack of energy, suicidal thoughts, poor concentration, feelings of guilt, and low self esteem these symptoms last longer than 2 weeks and the key is that the interfere with activities of daily living.
Women are twice as likely to suffer from depression than men which already puts PD women at higher morbidity this compounding effect maybe one of the reasons are now finding out that women with PD have more negative effects (meaning non-motor symptoms) like depression as opposed to men with PD who have more tremors (positive symptoms)…roughly about 50 % to 60 % of all PD patients suffer depression at one point during their illness and about 1/3 of patients present with depression as an early symptom before diagnosis. Yet despite this knowledge, the overall risk of suicide in PD is somewhat controversial. One study, in 2001 in the U.S. including more than 144,000 people with PD found the rate of suicide in general population to be 10 times greater than in the Parkinson’s population while another study done in 2007 in Denmark found the rate of suicide among PD patients to be equal to those in the general population. Another in 2009 said PD patients although appearing to be at higher risk for depression, they truly were not at higher risk for suicide compared to general population of Denmark. Yet, one thing this study highlighted was the increase in suicidal ideation (thoughts); this was found to be much greater among those with PD than in the general population. This last piece of information is vital to help us remember and keep in mind of the potential for a slip for those suffering from PD. The possibility of suicide is ALWAYS there and given the fact that some of the medications can trigger or worsen or even cause mood disorders, we have to be extra vigilant as patients, caregivers, and health care professionals to discuss this subject at every visit especially when there are concerns before symptoms get out of hand. There are many treatments for depression including medication. I have discovered that in PD patients, the first step is often a matter of adjusting medications if discussed early. In severe cases (ECT) electroconvulsive therapy has been instituted. Treatment of depression and other mood disorders often requires a team approach including a counselor, therapist (behavioral), psychiatrist, psychologist, and neurologist. (Don’t forget about caregivers too- they also have high rate of depression correlating with extent of care)
It is also extremely important to realize that the highest risk and higher than expected rate of suicide noted to date among PD patients has been among those that have undergone DBS particularly in those that had depression or were single. This is why is crucial if you are considering this treatment that you do not partake if you have no social support or have history of mood disorders like depression. (unless absolute last resort and are under strict supervision by a team of specialist as I described above throughout entire life-this is my opinion) Make sure that you seek opinion of an expert that has done thousands of DBS to get best outcome.
So, even though, we have lost a great entertainer and we mourn his loss, his passing although uncertain as to the cause which led him to his final acts of desperation has provided us with a stepping stone to a new beginning of discussions to remember to treat the person and NOT just the disease– no matter if its Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, Multiple sclerosis, Bipolar disease or another chronic illness.
Let us remember to keep in mind all those that suffer mental illnesses like depression …..
If you have questions regarding your Parkinson’s or think that you might have Parkinson’s and depression
… I invite you to call the National HelpLine of the Parkinson’s Disease Foundation at (800) 457 6676 or email us at firstname.lastname@example.org.
Dr. M. De Leon is a movement disorder specialist on sabbatical, PPAC member and research advocate for PDF (Parkinson’s Disease Foundation); Texas State Assistant Director for PAN (Parkinson’s Action Network). You can learn more about her work at http://www.facebook.com/defeatparkinsons101 you can also learn more about Parkinson’s disease at www.pdf.org or at www.wemove.org; http://www.aan.org, http://www.defeatparkinsons.blogspot.com All materials here forth are property of Defeatparkinsons. without express written consent, these materials only may be used for viewers personal & non-commercial uses which do not harm the reputation of Defeatparkinsons organization or Dr. M. De Leon provided you do not remove any copyrights. To request permission to reproduce release of any part or whole of content, please contact me at email@example.com contributor http://www.assisted-living-directory.com Contributor http://www.lavozbrazoriacounty.com | <urn:uuid:ca9d4093-60ff-41d6-b10b-7377475be517> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://defeatparkinsons.com/2014/08/18/depression-in-neurological-diseases-like-parkinsons-by-dr-de-leon/?shared=email&msg=fail | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571246.56/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811073058-20220811103058-00278.warc.gz | en | 0.948074 | 1,585 | 2.640625 | 3 |
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