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Enhancing Self-Motivation by Meeting Basic Needs
For a moment, think about how motivated you've felt at various times over the last few years. At some points, your motivation may have been high – if so, you will have felt engaged, energized, and filled with purpose. At other points, you probably felt listless, disengaged, or apathetic, and it may have been a real struggle to keep things moving forward.
Many of us recognize instinctively that motivation comes and goes. But what causes these highs and lows? Why are some people consistently engaged and motivated, while others feel demoralized and powerless? And why can't we be motivated and engaged all of the time, so that we can consistently produce our best work?
These are just some of the questions that Self-Determination Theory addresses. In this article, we'll look at how you can use it to increase your motivation and improve your job satisfaction.... | <urn:uuid:057de018-ad27-4eff-b149-9fb724627a66> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/self-determination-theory.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280504.74/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00141-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962865 | 190 | 1.945313 | 2 |
Monroe County Health Department officials are silent about the status of a Bloomington woman who was isolated with an active case of tuberculosis late last week, but they say TB ultimately is not as uncommon as it may be perceived. Health educator Penny Caudill says Monroe County tends to see about 10 cases of latent TB a year, and around 5 cases of active TB. She says health care providers will advise those suffering from active TB to wear a mask and to isolate themselves while undergoing treatment. She says when active TB does appear in Monroe County residents, it tends to affect certain populations more.
43-year-old Dorothia Clinton of South Walnut Street Pike was put into isolation last week. Monroe County Health Department officials say Clinton did not follow doctors advice to stay isolated. The Indiana Department of Health reports that 125 new cases of tuberculosis were reported in 34 counties last year. | <urn:uuid:b0a42aee-e0e8-4404-b6e8-db3f049af225> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://indianapublicmedia.org/news/local-tb-patient-isolation-2634/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280310.48/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00181-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973226 | 176 | 1.992188 | 2 |
Adobe Acrobat is family application software of Adobe Systems designed to manipulate, print and manage PDF “Portable Document Format”. If you want to make substantial changes in PDF document you need to use original source of application and then create new Adobe Acrobat PDF. Touch-ups and add-on text are tools used to edit PDF documents. Today I am sharing some tips to use PDF Editor:
Use PDF Editor to create a new document for this purpose select “File” → “Create PDF” → “From Blank Page”.
Adobe Acrobat will automatically add up to 19 additional blank pages while you are typing. Now use the new “document’s toolbar” to format your font, alignments, margins, paper size and orientation. Title and save your new PDF.
After this Re-open your document if you need to add or edit it some more. Then click on “Document” → “Resume Editing”. After completing it select “Document” → “Prevent Further Edits” and then follow the prompts to confirm if you want to prevent any more changes. | <urn:uuid:dca3cb8f-2134-4b32-b739-7508ef1ca72b> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | https://softwaretutor.wordpress.com/2011/03/11/tips-to-use-pdf-editor/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988718296.19/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183838-00539-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.757893 | 241 | 2.359375 | 2 |
There has been a concerted effort in recent years to undertake more strategic, long-term, and cross- sector assessment of national infrastructure. This paper reflects on the assessment of fixed broadband within the recent National Needs Assessment, which aims to identify options for meeting the UK’s infrastructure ‘needs’ up to 2050. It establishes the future ‘need’ for different levels of fixed broadband connectivity and how much investment is required to rollout infrastructure to meet different regional coverage and capacity levels. Two key technologies are initially assessed here using a cost modelling approach, including Fibre-To-The-Premises (FTTP) utilising a Gigabit Passive Optical Network and FTTP utilising a Point-To-Point fibre connection. The results show the aggregate investment required to deliver different levels of fixed broadband access to different proportions of the population. The costs raise linearly for delivery to premises in urban areas, with total urban coverage by FTTP using a Gigabit Passive Optical Network costing £14.1 billion and FTTP using a Point-To-Point network costing £17 billion. The costs for rural and remote areas begin to rise sharply, to the extent that deployment of these technologies to the final third of premises could cost almost the same amount as deployment to the first two thirds of premises in urban areas. Deployment to rural and remote areas was estimated to cost £13.7 billion for FTTP using a Gigabit Passive Optical Network and £15.8 billion for FTTP using a Point-To- Point network. Total FTTP coverage using a Gigabit Passive Optical Network costs £27.7 billion, whereas FTTP coverage using a Point-To-Point network costs £32.8 billion. The largest aggregate investment is required in the South East, North West and East of England, due to their large population sizes. Across these technologies the lowest average marginal cost per premises was in London for urban areas, Scotland for rural areas, and Wales for remote areas. | <urn:uuid:bf20df3a-4e16-4bd5-a111-0b0efc71734e> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.itrc.org.uk/digital-communications/studying-the-costs-of-fibre-deployment-in-fixed-broadband-access-infrastructure-evidence-from-the-uks-national-needs-assessment/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573744.90/warc/CC-MAIN-20220819161440-20220819191440-00478.warc.gz | en | 0.914713 | 411 | 2.015625 | 2 |
Tessa G.,Associazione no profit Zirichiltaggi SWC |
Tessa G.,University of Turin |
Angelini C.,Associazione no profit Zirichiltaggi SWC |
Bielby J.,Associazione no profit Zirichiltaggi SWC |
And 6 more authors.
Italian Journal of Zoology | Year: 2013
Worldwide amphibian declines and species losses are global problems and emerging infectious diseases have been identified as one of the major threats. The worst of these is chytridiomycosis, an amphibian disease caused by the chytrid fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd). Here we review what is known of the distribution of Bd and chytridiomycosis in Italy. We critically summarize the evidence in support of the hypothesis that Bd is an invasive pathogen in Italy. Last we provide recommendations for immediate research needs, both for basic science and applied conservation. © 2013 Copyright 2013 Unione Zoologica Italiana. Source | <urn:uuid:db5ae8d9-9f10-41ff-bb80-508c4551689a> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | https://www.linknovate.com/affiliation/associazione-no-profit-zirichiltaggi-swc-1655957/all/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988722459.85/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183842-00344-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.833525 | 225 | 2.578125 | 3 |
UCSD Scientists Will Develop Mini-Robots To Explore Ocean
The Scripps Institution of Oceanography has been awarded nearly $1 million to develop new tools for ocean exploration.
Scientists will use the money to develop miniature robots that will explore ocean ecosystems in small scale.
Peter Franks is a UC San Diego professor of biological oceanography.
He said the robots can be programmed to track and monitor algal blooms off San Diego's coast.
"How does it emerge at the coast," Franks asks. "How does it develop over weeks and months to finally show up as a really dense red tide that colors our waters. And in other regions I think they're going to be extremely useful for actually tracking toxic plumes as well."
While oceanographers have become skilled in detailing broad ocean processes, Franks says there's a need to turn the focus to a smaller scale. | <urn:uuid:66ddb3ab-897f-49ef-8c3f-18a3e57ef2b3> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.kpbs.org/news/environment/2009/11/10/ucsd-scientists-will-develop-mini-robots-explore-o | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572908.71/warc/CC-MAIN-20220817122626-20220817152626-00077.warc.gz | en | 0.937024 | 179 | 2.828125 | 3 |
(Original title: “Pioneer Zilba Miles built his business on tin”)
Imagine that this “now” and this “then” could be overlaid one on top of the other. Then Ron Edge, heading east across First Avenue in what is now a marked and paved Pioneer Square crosswalk, would be close to bumping into the three bowler-adorned characters watching the photographer from the wooden stairway to the right side of Zilba Miles’ pioneer tinware store.
Yesler Way was narrower before the city’s Great Fire of 1889, after which First Avenue was also widened and cut directly through the rubble of what was known then as “Yesler’s Corner.”
Edge enjoys the irony that he purchased the photograph a block and a half from where it was recorded. He picked it up at Fairlook Antiques on Washington Street about six years ago. A retired computer engineer, Edge has now built up an antiquarian library to help his research as an advanced student and enthused collector of regional ephemera, books and artifacts.
Edge determined that the ornamental detail in the upper-right corner of this photo could be matched with photographs of the pioneer landmark Yesler-Leary Building.
Sometime between the 1883 construction of that imposing structure and 1888, when the prosperous Miles replaced this frame storefront with his own three-story brick block, the pioneer photographer Theo Peiser made this portrait of the “Stoves, Ranges & Tinware” shop and what may be Zilba himself standing before it. Uninsured, Miles suffered losses estimated at $60,000 in the big fire, although he rebuilt and prospered for 20 years more.
And a few more: | <urn:uuid:56cdac12-2704-45a1-8850-b18acfd69e3d> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://pauldorpat.com/seattle-now-then-archive/2009-01-04-the-tin-man-at-yesler/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281069.89/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00270-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96634 | 366 | 1.875 | 2 |
Cognitive impairment appears to be common in ALS patientsIn a study of 40 patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), about one-third showed evidence of cognitive impairment, but these deficits did not appear to be related to survival, according to a study in the March issue of Archives of Neurology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
ALS, commonly referred to as Lou Gehrig disease, is a progressive disorder characterized by the loss of muscle function and the atrophy (wasting away) of muscle tissue. ALS is primarily a disorder involving the motor neurons, which control muscles and movement in the body, but new evidence suggests it also may have an impact on cognition (thinking, learning and memory), according to background information in the article. Previous research has estimated that anywhere from 2 to 52 percent of patients with ALS also experience cognitive impairment.
Gregory A. Rippon, M.D., M.S., and colleagues at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, analyzed 40 consecutive patients with ALS who were evaluated at neurologists' offices between August 1991 and August 1992. Participants underwent examinations and testing to gauge their cognitive functioning and verify the diagnosis and history of their disease, including whether symptoms were first detected in muscles of the throat, jaw, tongue or face (bulbar onset) or those in the arms (limb onset). The researchers selected a control group of 80 individuals without ALS, matched to the ALS patients by age, gender and education, from a series of patients referred to a memory disorder clinic from 1992 to 2003.
Of the 40 patients with ALS, 12 (30 percent) showed evidence of cognitive impairment, including nine (23 percent) who met criteria for dementia. There were no significant differences between ALS patients who had dementia and those who did not in terms of age, sex, education, site of onset, memory loss, emotional stability, severity of the disease or family history. ALS patients and control participants had similar results on cognitive tests, although patients with more severe ALS showed a decline in verbal skills beyond what would be associated with motor difficulties affecting speech muscles. Survival data from public and medical records were available in January 2004 for 38 of 40 patients with ALS, who lived an average of 3.4 years after testing. Cognitive impairment and dementia did not appear to be associated with survival.
"In conclusion, using a conventional test battery, 30 percent of a consecutive series of patients with ALS demonstrated cognitive impairment, and nearly a quarter qualified for a neuropsychologic diagnosis of dementia," the authors write. "Free recall, executive function and naming were most impaired in ALS patients with dementia." Future studies using testing and diagnostic criteria specific to frontotemporal lobar dementia, the type believed to be associated with ALS and other motor neuron diseases, may find that the percentage of ALS patients with cognitive impairment or dementia is even higher, they conclude.
(Arch Neurol. 2006;63:345-352. Available pre-embargo to the media at www.jamamedia.org)
Editor's Note: This study was supported in part by Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award from the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Md.
Editorial: A New Understanding of ALS
Even though ALS was previously thought to affect only the motor system, physicians are increasingly recognizing that the symptoms are much broader, writes Michael J. Strong, M.D., F.R.C.P.C., University Hospital, London, Ontario, Canada, in an accompanying editorial.
These revelations lead to questions about whether information about cognitive impairment is clinically relevant to patients with ALS and also raises controversy about the biological mechanisms involved in the disease, Dr. Strong writes. "It behooves us to understand the nature of this process in detail to truly understand the nature of this aspect of ALS, its influence not only on survival but also on the quality of life of patients with ALS and for their caregivers, and also to shed light on the biological nature of this process," he concludes.
(Arch Neurol. 2006;63:319-320. Available pre-embargo to the media at www.jamamedia.org)
To contact editorialist Michael J. Strong, M.D., F.R.C.P.C., call Kathy Wallis at 519-661-2111, ext. 81136.
Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 30 Apr 2016
Published on PsychCentral.com. All rights reserved. | <urn:uuid:4a3c8443-4fe3-4c59-b293-0929b453a2f1> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://psychcentral.com/news/archives/2006-03/jaaj-cia030906.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560284405.58/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095124-00033-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949123 | 923 | 2.8125 | 3 |
The Grapevine Historical Society celebrated the commemoration of Texas Independence Day with a special ceremony earlier this month at the Torian Cabin on Main Street in historic downtown Grapevine.
The city-owned Torian log cabin, which was built on a headright — a legal grant of land to settlers — was settled by Francis Throop.
The two-room cabin was purchased by John R. Torian in 1886 and was continually occupied by his family until the 1940s.
According to the city, the cabin — originally built in 1845 — was threatened with demolition in 1976 until the Grapevine Historical Society intervened. Working with city of Grapevine leaders, the logs of the cabin were numbered, disassembled and moved to the Main Street site. Then the cabin was rebuilt.
It has been preserved to reflect a home used by early settlers on the Grape Vine Prairie at the time when Texas declared its independence.
The cabin is open for public view and furnished as it would have been in 1880s Texas.
The Texas Declaration of Independence was the formal declaration of independence of the Republic of Texas from Mexico in the Texas Revolution.
It was adopted at the Convention of 1836 at Washington-on-the-Brazos on March 2, 1836, and formally signed the following day.
At the March 1 event, Mayor William D. Tate — sporting historic attire complete with red suspenders, a blue bandanna and tall black boots — and other speakers shared comments on early pioneer life and the spirit of freedom that existed.
A special flag for the occasion — the 178th anniversary of Texas Independence — was presented and raised at the cabin site by Boy Scouts.
Bill Norton, Scoutmaster of Troop 7 in Grapevine, said Troop 7 was honored to work with the Grapevine Historical Society again “to celebrate our shared history.”
“For now over a century our stories have been intertwined,” the Scoutmaster said. “Last year, they celebrated with us as we honored 100 years of Scouting for possibly one of the first chartered Scout troops west of the Mississippi.”
Norton said the celebration of the 178th anniversary of Texas independence gave their organization the opportunity “to look back again at our history because in that history are the struggles, victories, joys, sorrows and the lives of ourselves and our ancestors.”
“The flags raised at this cabin are just cloth but they represent the sacrifice made by those who have come before us to allow us to live free,” he said.
“I believe we live in the greatest city, state and nation in the world and we are thankful for the blessings bestowed upon us.” | <urn:uuid:2cf734a4-cae3-4d41-9327-54688f0c383f> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/community/courier-journal/article3849236.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988719566.74/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183839-00261-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968585 | 553 | 2.78125 | 3 |
NOTE: The article excerpted on this page is from an outside publication and is posted on FIRE's website because it references FIRE's work. The viewpoints expressed in this article do not necessarily represent FIRE's positions.
The campus police at the University of Wisconsin-Stout deserve praise, bravery medals, and $100 gift certificates to their favorite steakhouse for ripping down theater professor James Miller’s Firefly poster before it could murder any students. Oh wait—not praise and etc., but ridicule.
Miller, once described as "a walking encyclopedia on all things theatrical," hung up a poster on his office door that featured Firefly star Nathan Fillion and a quote that included the word "kill." Worried that the poster would result in murder somehow, school police chief Lisa A. Walter decided it was a public safety threat and had it removed. This did not make any sense to Miller, because it does not make sense at all. In a heated email exchange with Walter that is now posted on the website of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), a pro-free speech organization that’s defending his right to hang up posters that promote aborted sci-fi teevee shows, Miller pluckily challenges Walter’s "fascistic manner" of acting. In an email, Walter replies:
My actions are appropriate and defensible. Speech can be limited on a reasonable expectation that it will cause a material and/or substantial disruption of school activities and/or be constituted as a threat. We were notified of the existence of the posting, reviewed it and believe that the wording on the poster can be interpreted as a threat by others and/or could cause those that view it to believe that you are willing/able to carry out actions similar to what is listed. This posting can cause others to fear for their safety, thus it was removed.
As far as we know, no students, faculty members, janitors, or other parties besides campus police reported being frightened by Miller’s poster. But that’s not relevant.
Walter also warned Miller that if he put up the same poster or "something similar to it"—language so vague, it could mean a poster of Justin Bieber, or the Muppets, or anything—that he might face disorderly conduct charges. Miller, being so plucky, did hang up another poster—this one warning against fascism. Campus police removed that poster as well, after spraying it with mace, Tasing it, rolling it up, and securing it with handcuffs. Both of Miller’s terror posters are now behind bars at Guantanamo.
Miller eventually received an email from the interim dean citing "concerns" raised by the campus threat assessment team and summoning him to a meeting with Walter. Pain in the ass! Oh well, surely it was necessary. For his troubles, Miller’s made several new, strategic friends and allies—including Nathan Fillion himself. One alumnus and former student of Miller’s has vowed not to make any donations to the school until it apologizes for the incident.
Someone should cover the entire Stout campus with millions of anti-fascism posters. Then the whole campus would become a "public safety threat," and also an impressive art installation about reactionaries and the absence of critical thinking skills in today’s America. | <urn:uuid:e9827990-e744-41cb-9916-95013dd474ed> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.thefire.org/media-coverage/theater-professors-firefly-poster-declared-a-threat/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280791.35/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00360-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966524 | 683 | 1.5625 | 2 |
By Yvonne Bell
TRIPOLI – Documents found in the abandoned Tripoli office of Muammar Gaddafi’s intelligence chief indicate the U.S. and British spy agencies helped the fallen strongman persecute Libyan dissidents, Human Rights Watch said on Saturday.
The documents were uncovered by the human rights activist group in the abandoned offices of Libya’s former spy chief and foreign minister, Moussa Koussa.
The group said it uncovered hundreds of letters between the CIA, MI6 and Koussa, who is now in exile in London. Letters from the CIA began, “Dear Moussa,” and were signed informally with first names only by CIA officials, Human Rights Watch said.
The current military commander for Tripoli of Libya’s provisional government, Abdel Hakim Belhadj, was among those captured and sent to Libya by the CIA, Human Rights Watch said.
“Among the files we discovered at Moussa Koussa’s office is a fax from the CIA dated 2004 in which the CIA informs the Libyan government that they are in a position to capture and render Belhadj,” Human Rights Watch’s Peter Bouckaert, who was part of the group that found the stash, told Reuters.
“That operation actually took place. He was captured by the CIA in Asia and put on a secret flight back to Libya where he was interrogated and tortured by the Libyan security services.”
The files shed new light on the practice known as rendition, used by the United States under former President George W. Bush, in which the terrorism suspects were handed over to other countries for interrogation. Rights groups have criticized the United States for sending these suspects to countries where they were likely to be tortured.
HANDED OVER FOR TORTURE
Belhadj has said that he was tortured by CIA agents before being transferred to Libya, where he says he was then tortured at Tripoli’s notorious Abu Salim prison.
Western intelligence services began cooperating with Libya after Gaddafi abandoned his programme to build unconventional weapons in 2004. But the files show his cooperation with the CIA and MI6 may have been more extensive than previously thought, analysts say.
The depth of the ties could anger officials in Libya’s provisional government — many of whom are long-term opponents of Gaddafi and are now responsible for charting a new path for Libya’s foreign relations.
Bouckaert displayed photos of several documents on his computer and also photos of letters he said were from the CIA to Koussa and were signed, “Steve.” He also displayed photographs he said were of letters from MI6 giving Libyan intelligence information on Libyan dissidents in Britain.
“Our concern is that when these people were handed over to the Libyan security they were tortured and the CIA knew what would happen when they sent people like Abdel Hakim into the hands of the Libyan security services,” Bouckaert said.
In Washington, CIA spokeswoman Jennifer Youngblood, without commenting on any specific allegation or document, said: “It can’t come as a surprise that the Central Intelligence Agency works with foreign governments to help protect our country from terrorism and other deadly threats. That is exactly what we are expected to do.”
A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, added: “There are lots of countries willing to take terrorists off the street who want to kill Americans. That doesn’t mean U.S. concerns about human rights are ignored in the process.”
“Let’s keep in mind the context here,” the official added. “By 2004, the U.S. had successfully convinced the Libyan government to renounce its nuclear weapons program and to help stop terrorists who were actively targeting Americans in the US and abroad.”
A British government spokesman told Reuters that Britain did “not comment on intelligence matters.”
More recent documents showed that after the war broke out six months ago, Libya reached out to a former rebel group in the breakaway Somali state of Puntland, the Somali Salvation Front, asking them to send 10,000 fighters to Tripoli to help defend Gaddafi.
© Thomson Reuters 2011 | <urn:uuid:11f20e9f-b585-4f70-8956-df8d80499afe> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://news.nationalpost.com/news/cia-mi6-helped-gaddafi-persecute-dissidents-human-rights-watch | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281162.88/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00540-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973264 | 876 | 1.710938 | 2 |
The article below was sent to us recently by a comrade in Japan: it describes the emergence and decline of the squatters' and day-workers' movements which have marked the life of several Japanese cities - more particularly Osaka in this case - since the collapse of the Japanese economic "bubble" at the beginning of the 1990s, to the present day.
Our regular readers may be surprised by the somewhat "literary" style that the comrade adopts. This does not in our view detract from the significance of the events that he describes, and indeed it rather enhances some interesting reflections on the way in which the capitalist productive process organises geography and time.
Historically, there has always been a deep divide between the workers' movement in the industrialised West and the East - in Japan and China in particular. This was largely inevitable given the late arrival of the Japanese and Chinese working class on the historical stage (see our articles in the International Review) and the barriers of language.
The bourgeois media in the West have always worked to emphasise this divide (though usually with more subtlety than Edith Cresson (French Prime Minister 1991-92) who described the Japanese as "yellow ants"!). Japanese workers have been shown as going on "strike" by putting "unhappy flags" on their machines while continuing to work. There was even a short-lived vogue amongst management theorists for Japanese-style "quality committees" where the workers themselves could suggest improvements in the production process. The Japanese workers were presented to their class comrades in the West as hardworking and patriotic contributors to the Japanese "economic miracle", from which it has usually been implied that they profit at Western workers' expense.
Not only that: the workers in Japan supposedly enjoyed the supreme happiness of being guaranteed "jobs for life" thanks to the paternalistic attention of the Japanese mega-companies - something which supposedly set them completely apart from workers in the West.
The article below has the merit of blowing a hole in this completely fraudulent picture of Japan. Here we see the masses of impoverished day workers in struggle against the barbaric exploitation inflicted on them by the almost indistinguishable forces of the state, the bosses, and the mafia (yakuza). But we also - and the author is absolutely right to point this out - see that this is not limited to the most downtrodden sectors of the working class: the whole Japanese "economic miracle" has been founded on the increasingly ferocious exploitation of the entire workforce: factory workers and office workers, but also technicians and scientists as skilled jobs are proletarianised.
In our view, the events described in this article are more than just riots. They are clearly a workers' struggle, fought on the terrain of the working class: initially sparked off by an expression of solidarity with a victim of police aggression, drawing in workers and their families from the entire Kamagasaki area, and directed not only against the police but against employers trying to swindle workers out of their wages.
Western readers may recognise some similarity between the events described below, and the situation in certain European countries during the 1970s. The internal immigration towards cities less touched by the crisis, leading to a housing shortage, property speculation, rack-renting, and the squatting of empty property, was a large-scale phenomenon in London and some Dutch cities during the 1970s for example, although not on the same explicitly working class basis: the social composition of the squatters' movements in Britain and Holland was much more mixed.
Western readers will also recognise the manner in which the Japanese state has dealt with the movement in Kamagasaki: "NGOs replaced the direct discipline of police batons as their mediating roles were appreciated by the city in halting unrest (...) newly radicalized unions, who quickly transformed into facilitators of ritual action: such as protest marches completely surrounded by police". This is precisely the role that has been played historically by the trades unions, ever since they betrayed the working class by giving their support to the imperialist slaughter in 1914. Especially under bourgeois democracy, where they benefit from the appearance of separation from the state, the unions are able to achieve results that the police cannot, by sabotaging the struggle and preventing its self-organisation and extension rather than by open repression. A classic example is the role played by the newly formed Solidarnosc union in sabotaging the workers' struggles in Poland in December 1980, delivering the proletariat, bound hand and foot, to the state repression that followed a year later. In Osaka, once the NGOs and the unions have done their work, the squatters' tents which had once symbolised workers' resistance have become nothing but an empty shell, easily emptied by the police.
The value of this article lies - amongst other things - in its clear demonstration that the workers in Japan face the same problems, and the same enemies, as workers in other parts of the world: one more demonstration that the class struggle is international, that the working class is a world class.
All this being said, the article also contains a certain number of ambiguities, or perhaps we should say internal contradictions, which in our view detract from the force of the argument. There are three which seem to us particularly important.
1 - The first, is the role of the unions and of the left generally. While the article in effect denounces the union sabotage of the struggle (see the quote above), elsewhere it seems to suggest that there is a fundamental opposition between the unions, the left, and the "neo-liberal project", and that the collapse of the former in Japan made possible the success of the latter.
But the attacks on the working class from the late 1970s onwards were by no means a Japanese, they were a global phenomenon. The onset of the first post-war crisis in the late 1960s led to an enormous world wide wave of workers' struggles - of which May '68 in France was only the most impressive moment. The end of this wave of struggle was inevitably followed by a capitalist counter-attack, whose aim was to make the workers pay the price of the crisis that had opened up from the late 1960s onwards. The role played by "the left" in the resulting defensive struggles of the working class - when left governments were not directly imposing austerity themselves, as the "Socialist" and "Communist" government did under Mitterrand in France - was to sabotage the workers' efforts to react by making sure they never escaped the narrow boundaries of corporatism and nationalism (the "coal not dole" slogan and the campaigns against imports of Polish coal during the British miners' strike in 1985 are a clear example). The idea that the workers' struggle "re-composes" into unions and that the result, "far from being exterior to the ‘being' of the class which must affirm itself against them, [is] nothing but this being in movement", obscures the profound opposition between the permanent union structure and the needs of the working class in struggle: this is easily verified in practice by anybody who has tried to oppose workers' initiative to the union line during a mass meeting. More profoundly, this opposition arises from the impossibility today (contrary to the period prior to 1914) of the working class creating permanent mass organisations.
2 - The article's second ambiguity lies in the suggestion that it might be possible to create an "autonomous" space outside the institutionalisation imposed by the capitalist state (notably in its "welfare" version). This, it seems to us, contradicts the article's otherwise striking descriptions of capitalism's totalitarian domination of social life, from housing, to transport, to work, and right down to the helping hand and the friendly smile transformed into waged activity. It is this second emphasis in the article which seems to us correct: the idea that it is possible to create "islands of communism" or even "islands of autonomy" within capitalism, is simply an illusion. The experiment was tried repeatedly at the very beginning of the workers' movement, in the days of the Utopian socialists Fourrier, Cabet, and Owen: it was tried, and failed - 200 years on, the illusion belongs firmly in the past, not in the present. This is true even for more limited experiments: as Marx pointed out, in any society the dominant ideology is the ideology of the ruling class, and it is impossible to achieve "autonomy" from this. It will take whole generations after the revolution for humanity to "rebuild" itself, to rid itself of all the ideological muck accumulated in millennia of class society.
We can be inspired and touched by the spontaneous humanity of the homeless in Tennoji Park (see note 8 of the article), but this does not provide an organisational lesson for the struggle of the proletariat as a whole.
3 - The contradiction we have just described is at its most ambiguous in the final paragraph, where on the one hand the author advocates a struggle with "no commitments, no demands as such, no gathering points and thus no encirclement", yet at the same time posing the question of "how an autonomous space can develop against the crushing weight of capitalism". But what is a "social space" with "no gathering points"? What could it be? Surely nothing other than a contradiction in terms.
In Russia in 1917, the Russian workers did not confront the Cossacks (the riot police of their day) on their own terms, they dissolved the Cossacks' power. They were able to do this because the proletariat represented a massive and organised force able to take decisions as a class and to present a vision of the future that stood firmly and radically against the barbarity of capitalism. The road to revolution leads not through riots born of and ending in despair, but through massive, open, conscious struggle, able to assert its own perspective against capitalism's "no future", to the point where even the riot police begin to doubt themselves.
International Communist Current
You must help yourself: neo-liberal geographies and worker insurgency in Osaka
"I realize as the train pulls in that the station is on fire. The platform is aflame and below the streets are empty with people running past occasionally. Something is happening. I pick up some rocks and start throwing them at a police line."
-anonymous rioter at Kamagasaki
"You must help yourself."
-Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS
Confronting the riot police
October 2nd, 1990. The day started as any other does in Osaka's Nishi-Nari ward, men lined up around the yoseba employment center, in the thousands, waiting for work. If it came, they would load into the cars of construction contractors in groups, with parachute pants and wrapped heads. For eight hours they might wave light wands ‘guiding pedestrians', dig concrete roads, re-pave highways or variously break their backs in the sun. This proletarian fate was ceded by the city's bourgeoisie over a period of thirty years of continuous unemployed unrest; all the union officials touted it as labor ‘won' from an inhuman system. After all, without work, one does not eat, and once conditions have worsened to the point that this phrase becomes dictatorial, one works in a fervor; for work leads to ‘independence'. Work might one day lead out of the slum.
If work didn't come, the men wait out lunch and line up for the daily workfare handout, set aside for ‘unsuccessful job-seekers'. This yoseba is in Kamagasaki, a neighborhood of poverty and celebration, a breathing lung, where the yakuza patrol day-workers with icy looks and stashed weapons; at occupied ‘triangle' park, men, dogs and blue canvas spill out into the street sides. Udon and soba are served at improvised stool stands roofed with canvas. Women and men prepare boxed lunches, noodles and Okinawan fare at shops lining the crowded avenues. Just to the east the brothel neighborhood of Tobita sits in expectant dormancy, for the night will soon fall. The slum is quiet.
For the city hall and the construction capitalists, it was just another Tuesday.
There were multiple flashpoints, like any riot, origins that became history for the individuals and groups that experienced them. For most, the riots began with friends running past, heaving paving stones at the police. But most will point to an account of an old homeless man in the Namba theater district, north of Kamagasaki. Police on patrol had stopped at his improvised blue canvas house, berating him to leave the sidewalk. The man (known by most as 'a bit bizarre') unleashed his dog, which quickly sunk its teeth into a senior patrolman. After a struggle, he was surrounded by police and beaten as a crowd gathered, consisting of other homeless people and some day-workers. Hauled away and arrested, the angry crowd followed the car to the Nishinari police station.
News spread on sprinting legs to the enormous yoseba hiring hall in the south, circulating among groups of day laborers. Without any particular confrontation, a few ‘troublesome' workers were pulled aside by the yoseba police patrol and in front of thousands, beaten. The neighborhood exploded. Yoseba day-workers, witnesses in their thousands, took their comrades back and drove the police from the hiring hall, swarming outward like blood through Kamagasaki's lungs. Crowds formed here and there, with a general movement towards the police station, from which the police re-emerged. A rain of stones fell. After the volleys reached a temporary abatement, barricades were quickly erected, bicycles ignited with cheap lighter fluid, stacked and burned, dumpsters dragged into the street. Capital's tendency to crisis, the proletarian form, was erupting.
Workers in the streets
The police retreated in order to barricade the neighborhoods, to shut off the arteries that connect Kamagasaki to the north, south, east and west. A classic siege strategy was put into action punctuated by sudden, violent streams of steel-shield armed police into the neighborhoods. Mobile riot squads surrounded the area with armored buses and paddy wagons, and soon lined the boulevards in columns with five foot steel shields. All the forces of government and private capital arrived to contain thousands of revolting workers and rapidly arriving allies, to circumscribe a space that was impassable for the surging rage of the rioters. Media vans pulled up and were stoned if they attempted to penetrate the riot line and ‘get the real story'. In several cases cameras were sought after and smashed. All footage of the events comes from behind police lines. Advances by the cops were met with volleys of objects flung from the parapets of apartment buildings by the unemployed, workers and housewives. At times, the riot constituted itself as a castle pocked with archers. When the first barricaded day slipped into night, the cars of the construction barons were smashed and degraded. Parks that had been evicted of squatters had their locks broken and were re-taken.
The insurrection faced its own limit, against the borders of space drawn by the state and its own projectuality. Discussions arose everywhere on where to go next. Many feared that the riotous action would blacklist the neighborhood from construction contracts, that the yoseba would close like the one in Tokyo had just a year earlier, that poverty would worsen. Most gazed over the surrounding steel buses of the riot police and saw the impossibility of expansion, of the riot spreading to other sectors. NGO workers and city hall mediators arrived urging people to ‘calm down', that police violence could be ‘addressed'. But these particular beatings were only moments on a continuum of violent surveillance and control. There was no doubt that the situation was in fact rapidly worsening as police ran wild in the streets, smashing skulls and faces with steel pipes and shields. The Kamagasaki population was at open revolt with the organs of repression, most saw no way back to ‘normality'. Buses and sound-cars of the unions and organizations of the unemployed mobilized from their garages and circled the neighborhood, providing a temporary barrier; they eventually moving through police lines, broadcasting messages to a wider portion of the city. Night fell again.
"I edged back to the crowd. From behind me, someone yelled ‘Aim for the lights!'. Stones were thrown aiming towards the lights of TV cameras stationed behind the riot squad.
I entered the crowd. No one took any notice of the camera that I held in my hand. After a while, a man spoke to me. ‘Are you from the news papers?' When I answered no, he said, ‘If you are, you are going to get killed.'" (-anonymous observer at Kamagasaki )
As the riot entered into its third, fourth day the city's strategy was in continual escalation. The rioting, unarmed workers were meat for the mobile riot squads. Largely defensive formations changed into charges, five-foot steel shields were leveled against the flesh of the disgusted. Barricades collapsed or were extinguished, and the police made real progress into the neighborhoods. If the streets could be cleared, then the tear-gas buses and paddy wagons could move in. Hundreds of the most militant were chased south into a union building where the insurrection made its last, unarmed stand. Concurrently and further south, partly in inspiration from the Kamagasaki rebellion, a youth revolt had exploded, spearheaded by ‘speed tribe' gangs on motorcycles who fought the police in skirmishes. This rebellion was contained even quicker, and most of the young rioters found themselves chased into the same building with the older workers. There would be no cavalry for Kamagasaki.
The building was taken with tremendous violence. The 22nd riot in the neighborhood's 30 year history had ended.
Despite the arrest and imprisonment of many, over the next four years there would be more small riots, sporadically, where the police or contractors were targeted. When unrest broke out, other workers would come running; construction contractors dodging back-wages found themselves at the mercy of mobs. People took inspiration from the riots that raged through the neighborhoods throughout the 1960s, contestation, above all was the agenda!
The strategy against the riot by the city and the bourgeoisie was drawn from every lesson learned in the past forty years of class struggle in post-fordist Japan. Initial direct force, followed by the deployment of mediators, the deployment of advanced technological means of repression, filtering of news about the riots, news blackouts, concluding in total geographical isolation of the proletarian ferment. Riots can not be permitted to spread to other sectors, and therefore Japanese capital's only strategy against the eruption of its own contradictions is containment.
MUZZLED CONTRADICTIONS, STRANGLED PROLETARIANS
Tent city in Osaka
The riots of the 1990s took place amid the massive restructuring of the 1980s and the economic crisis of 1989 as the investment ‘bubble' burst and the promise of a Japanese 'prosperity' proved hollow. Already migrant workers from Okinawa and Tokyo had taken up park occupations all over Osaka, not to mention Nishi-nari ward and the Kamagasaki neighborhood. Improvised huts, roofed with blue tarp, decorated with paint, junk, sometimes city free jazz schedules and at the very least posters of famous female crooners holding beer mugs, sprung up all over the city. The huts were statements of autonomy, arising from the immediate inability of newly-arrived workers to afford housing; as a strategy the ‘tent villages' blanketed the city, in order to stake out an existence independent of the welfare state's institutionalization. Out of the riots, the workers' movement in Kamagasaki re-composed into union coalitions. NGOs replaced the direct discipline of police batons as their mediating roles were appreciated by the city in halting unrest. 16 surveillance cameras at major intersections and shopping streets were installed in Kamagasaki alone. Over 1990-1995, the men at city hall dumped all the previous strategies, and Kamagasaki moved from a zone of discipline to one of control, from containment of outburst to total regulation; the unemployed were channeled, mediated and surveilled like never before; what could once communicate itself as a struggle of autonomy against the control apparatus was now more and more forced to speak the language of social peace. Park occupations were slowly apologized for as a response to the poverty of the city's institutional shelters as well as the lack of viable jobs, instead of their obvious essence, areas autonomous from capitalist time, characterized by relaxation, karaoke songs and games like go and shogi. The occupations were attempts to attain a moderately bourgeois standard of living, actualizing in motion, against an ocean of industrial poverty. Continual violence and harassment by yakuza and police managed to dull the direct-action strategy of spiteful day-workers as well as the heaviest strategies by newly radicalized unions, who quickly transformed into facilitators of ritual action: such as protest marches completely surrounded by police, food handouts and supplication to city officials at any level of struggle.
"As real subsumption advanced it appeared that the mediations of the existence of the class in the capitalist mode of production, far from being exterior to the ‘being' of the class which must affirm itself against them, were nothing but this being in movement, in its necessary implication with the other pole of society, capital." (Theorie Communiste)
NEO-LIBERALISM: TRANSFORMED EXPLOITATION, TRANSFORMED GEOGRAPHIES
Outside of Kamagasaki and Osaka, across the social terrain of Japan, the neo-liberal project had been advancing at least since the collapse of the new left in the late 1970s. A near collapse of the social safety net ensued: previous welfare guarantees were transformed increasingly into workfare, an entire landlord class was born atop workfare-registered workers struggling to pay ‘discounted' rents on yoseba wages. The retirement age was officially moved from 60 to 65 for most businesses in 2005, completing an already unofficial shift planned long-term by the LDP; a whole generation of parents suddenly found themselves working longer and harder and by desperation turning their children's' schools into factories for the production of workers who could support them post-retirement, as pension guarantees seemed bound for an irreversible crisis. Elderly workers who laid-off in the crisis often found themselves on the street with no employment prospects. Among the bourgeoisie, support for privatization and the gradual wearing away of the ‘welfare state' gained steam.
Nothing characterized the period more than speed-up. With the unification in the late 60s of train lines around the country under the JR Company and the rapid acceleration of bullet train technology, capital smoothed space towards a white plane, one with no resistance to the circulation of raw materials, labor power and surplus value. Highways brought the same changes, and inside the workplace a collapse of the labor movement ensured human beings snared in 60-70 hour weeks became the norm for full-time employees. The individual experience of labor became more and more an endless conveyor belt between home, transit and the workplace. A metropolitan factory modeled on assembly lines, bound by its very constitution, to disaster.
ENCLOSURE, SPEED, DISASTER
As an island chain along major fault lines, Japanese civilization is fraught with constant disaster. The 1995 earthquake in Kobe was only the most recent massive demonstration of the power of continental plates (5,273 people were killed, most crushed to death in the collapse of their houses or consumed by the fires that followed the earthquake, 96.3 billion dollars of damage were assessed). Earthquakes are phantoms, haunting all considerations of the future. Last December, a scandal broke in the news media; Hidetsugu Aneha, a 48 year old architect working at a construction firm called Hyuza in Tokyo had, under pressure from his superiors to cut costs on the buildings he was designing, reduced steel reinforcements in building skeletons and falsified data to cover his tracks. As his actions were uncovered and an investigation was launched by the city, it came out that the building for which design statistics had been falsified was not a lone example; the number quickly mushroomed, resulted in the implication of 78 hotels and buildings as being at 30-80% of minimal earthquake preparedness, meaning likely collapse during a strong earthquake. In his defense Aneha protested that when he raised these issues to his superiors they told him the firm would simply lose the contract to other firms if proper costs were covered, and so he must cut expenses any way he could; Aneha's comments therefore implicate not only himself and his corporation, but the construction industry as a whole. These vast, condensed metropolises of the Japanese islands contain millions of bodies on foundations increasingly precarious, and despite the spectacular efforts by city governments at reform and revision, thousands will not survive the next earthquake (as many were killed in recent Niigata prefecture earthquakes). Capitalism has developed all formalized dwellings, all massive dormitories of the exploited that stretch from the city to suburbia, into potential coffins.
In ironic contrast stand the humble hut-dwelling day-workers of Osaka whose low-impact ‘outside dwellings' are in no danger of killing them during a disaster.
In 1987, Japan's nationalized train lines were divided into west and east and privatized. Adding a profit motive to trains, already circulating on the rhythm of breakneck post-Fordist Japanese capitalism, guaranteed the narrowing of bottom lines and an amplified pursuit of speed between stations. In 2005, a rush-hour train derailed between Amagasaki station and Takaradsuka station north of Osaka. The young train driver had been berated repeatedly by supervisors and his supervising senior driver to cut seven minutes off of the recommended transit time for the 25 km between these two stations. The train derailed, traveling at a tremendous speed and collided with a large apartment building, destroying part of its foundation and causing the building to collapse on top of the train car. 105 people died either instantly or before rescue workers could reach them. Unfortunately for the bureaucrats and company officials rolled out to the scene to beg apology (and for all who ride these trains) no uptake of individual responsibility for this massacre can erase the obvious but unspeakable culpability of the economy, cloud of massified instrumental necessity, which by shearing away life-time from the individual worker according to its internal pressure, must constantly flirt with cheap materials and disastrous speed. The reaction of the individual: ‘Where is my train? My son is waiting.' gives form to this pressure. Universal demand for the reduction of transit time, born out of the stubborn intransigence of work time, pushes the trains faster and faster. The social pressure of work time against life time produces derailments, just as the concrete capitalist organization of geography ensures this acceleratory dynamic across space. Crisis is therefore implicit in the accumulated forms of capitalist working class subsumption. To which again, capital can only respond with containment.
"When the ship goes down, so too do the first class passengers... The ruling class, for its part incapable of struggling against the devil of business activity, superproduction and superconstruction for its own skin, thus demonstrates the end of its control over society, and it is foolish to expect that, in the name of a progress with its trail indicated by bloodstains, it can produce safer (trains) than those of the past..." (Amadeo Bordiga, Murdering the Dead)
DISINTEGRATING WORKPLACES; ANTAGONISTIC SPACES
During the neo-liberal wave, an expansion of ‘irregular employment' brought about the birth of a precarious class of workers that would precede Europe's ‘precariat' in conditions if not consciousness. It would also create new forms of social labor that were 'out', roving the cities.
Inside workplaces, an increasing concentration of fixed capital within factories accompanied by off-shoring meant that Japanese government had a mostly idle labor force, steadily being undermined in its real conditions of subsistence by welfare reform, one that could be put to work in entirely new ‘service' industries. Jobs were invented. Escalator girls, elevator girls, kyaku-hiki (customer pullers), street megaphones, flyering, etc. new ‘services' that were above all ‘out and about', social forms that seized forms of inter-human sociality, the tap on the shoulder, the kind holding of the elevator door, the smile, amplifying them, valorizing what had been mostly unwaged action. Population shifts led to the unavoidable importation of foreign labor, causing a gradual cosmopolitanization that has thrown the idea of a ‘Japanese' identity into crisis, while also strengthening reactionary ideologies that take strength from it. The growth of an English education industry brought thousands of temporary workers to Japan, and with them, historical methods of class struggle that clashed strongly with Japanese welfare state compromises of the 70s and 80s. As capitalists continually sought to preclude the ability of foreign labor to organize itself, the workplace form quickly dissolved from private schools to dispatch offices, private lessons in libraries, citizen halls, cafes everywhere. In a unique way, this foreign labor also became ‘out', dislocated, social.
To contain these new socialities arising across old geographies, the police and city planners are continuously at work. In late 2003, the already barricaded and privatized Tennoji Park in Osaka was invaded by 300 riot police who had come to evict what was known as the ‘karaoke village', a large area of the park taken over by karaoke carts, venders and crooners, gathering point for hundreds of day-workers daily who belted out song classics after work. For forty years the plaza was a hot-spot, even tourist attraction known as the ‘soul of Osaka', a musical space occupied by the downtrodden, who sunk into song and drink, dulling the pain, remembering more riotous times. In December 2003 the riot police moved in and barricaded the park for ‘construction purposes'. Vendors and crooners showed up in hundreds to watch the demolition and vent their rage. Barricades were thrown at the police, but the disobedients were quickly arrested. There would be no repeat of October 1990. All that is left of the karaoke village now is a steel fence, wrapping a completely empty lot. The park is silent.
Osaka city now plans a wave of evictions of squatters from parks all over its map. The first of the year is already underway in mid-city, and the park's residents are crouched down, preparing to resist the riot squads. The proletarians of Osaka's wards must learn the lessons of the past: against the brutal technological barricades of the riot police, surveillance and containment, they must adapt an improvised, mobile capability. The riots around Clichy-sous-bois provide a possible source of inspiration, totally mobile, skirmish-based attack, no commitments, no demands as such. No gathering points and thus no encirclement, no containment. Also in question is how social space can be re-worked and decelerated, how an autonomous space can develop against the crushing weight of capitalism, while simultaneously understanding its own limitations, how we might ‘help ourselves' to a future that doubtlessly awaits us if we seek it. The strange new crisis-ridden social geographies of post-fordist capitalism offer gates for the fleeing proletariat, which now finds itself everywhere.
It was revealed earlier that week that the police chief in Nishinari had been taking bribes from Yakuza gangs for a variety of ‘favors'.
Except for the Yakuza gangs who had all run away from the scene.
The information sharing grid between media, yakuza and government is well known in most parts of the islands.
Some of these older workers had cut their teeth on the anti-Yakuza struggles of the 1980s in Tokyo's Sanya district, some who were ex-members of militant groups like the red army, some who had served prison time for throwing bombs at police in the 60s. Incidentally, the Kamagasaki revolt was a big inspiration for Otomo Katsuhiro's Akira.
NGO workers can now be seen every day on the winding employment lines, monitoring workers with friendly armbands that say ‘safety patrol'!
Some hut plots in the autonomous parks have gorgeous gardens growing in them, in one case an occupant had improvised a permaculture system, with over-arching grape vines shading greens below and tomatoes flanking.
Many factory jobs were also shipped to East Asia at this time.
One phenomenon that may offer inspiration on this point: in Tennoji park, the same park that has been fenced and barricaded, robbed of most autonomy, two homeless men living in the lower part of the park have set out before their home five comfortable leather chairs, apparently open to anyone to sit in, chat or play go. The path on which these men live and on which their chairs are situated is a vital walking path for commuters, who everyday gaze curiously or longingly at these lounging non-workers, these jesters of the free community. | <urn:uuid:1e8d4cb6-a837-454d-8c97-85ccadf306ba> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2007/kamagasaki | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570977.50/warc/CC-MAIN-20220809124724-20220809154724-00472.warc.gz | en | 0.969887 | 6,930 | 2.359375 | 2 |
A few years ago The Blair Witch Project promoted their film by claiming there were students missing after investigating a local folk tale. The campaign was a fraud. The movie was wildly successful. It unfortunately left behind a terrible legacy, where filmmakers feel no responsibility to advertise their films with an ounce of honesty.
Unfortunately, The Fourth Kind is following in the footsteps of The Blair With Project. Not only did they advertise that the information and news footage in the film was real, they state at the start of the film that the news footage is real. Then, they state it again at the end of the movie. Guess what? The film is a hoax. Aliens won’t be arriving any time soon, and people are not disappearing from Nome, Alaska in abnormal numbers.
According to Wikipedia
“On September 1, 2009, an investigation by the Anchorage Daily News examined the validity of the film’s premise, and its relation to actual disappearances that have occurred in and around the town of Nome. The investigation found no specific events to back up the claims in the film and also revealed that unsolved deaths in Nome are no more frequent than any other small Alaskan town. The consensus is that the high rate of alcoholism combined with the harsh landscape surrounding Nome accounts for a majority of disappearances (just as in other remote areas).
“On November 12, 2009 Universal Pictures agreed to a $20,000 settlement with the Alaska Press Club “to settle complaints about fake news archives used to promote the movie.” Universal acknowledged that they created fake online news articles and obituaries to make it appear that the movie had a basis in real events. “
I personally I think the filmmakers from The Fourth Kind should get a major fine from the FTC for fraudulent advertising practices. I don’t trust filmmakers at all lately. They change facts in biopics, create conversations that didn’t exist (like in Frost/Nixon), and completely misrepresent events, including supposed police footage, like this film did.
If the footage had been real in The Fourth Kind, the film would have been interesting, although only moderately well done. Since the footage is not real, it does not even have the interest factor going for it. I am rather shocked that Chapman University allowed the filmmakers to plaster their logo throughout the film. I had mentioned to my kids that it was either a solid promotion of their psychology department with very poor interview setup and control, or a somewhat shameless promotion of their film department with bogus footage. Sadly, it appears to have been the latter. Shame on them. I can see that Chapman University needs to re-examine their ethics policy in their film department.
If you decide to see The Fourth Kind, I’d recommend that you wait until it comes on cable. Keep in mind that the disclaimers about real footage at the beginning and end of the film is apparently not true, and then relax and enjoy the film for what it is.
- MLA style
- Cynthia Kirkeby, “The Fourth Kind – A Hoax.” Point Of View Reviews- Movie reviews by DW Kirkeby, and more, from ClassBrain's Movies in the Classroom. 2 January 2015, 20:06 UTC. . 25 Oct 2016 <http://pointofviewreviews.com/the-fourth-kind-a-film-hoax/>.
- The Chicago Manual of Style
- Cynthia Kirkeby, “The Fourth Kind – A Hoax.” Point Of View Reviews- Movie reviews by DW Kirkeby, and more, from ClassBrain's Movies in the Classroom, http://pointofviewreviews.com/the-fourth-kind-a-film-hoax/ [accessed October 25, 2016]. | <urn:uuid:ce1fd012-c2c9-4d2c-aa31-c12f0a5cfe47> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://pointofviewreviews.com/the-fourth-kind-a-film-hoax/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988720468.71/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183840-00487-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965846 | 779 | 1.734375 | 2 |
"Public ranges allow hundreds of thousands of hunters, competitive shooters, and target shooters to work on their marksmanship under safe and responsible conditions," said Liz Bush, managing director of NRA Community Engagement. "More than 90 public ranges have been awarded funds to date and we look forward to assisting the next 90."
In addition to physical improvements, NRA's Public Range Fund allows qualifying agencies or local governments to improve community relations and address any range-related environmental issues. With grants awarded on a 50/50 matching basis, 50 percent of project cost are provided by the applicant and the remaining 50 percent are provided by the fund. In-kind services such as labor, materials, and equipment may be considered to provide the applicant’s 50-percent contribution. Projects including Pittman-Robertson Funds covers 90 percent of the applicant's share with the remaining 10 percent coming from the NRA Public Range Fund.
"Our grants provide financial stimulus and recreational facilities for entire communities. We are incredibly happy to restart the program so we can begin making a positive impact once again," Bush concluded.
More than $2 million have been award in NRA Public Range Fund since the program began. For more information on this program and other available range grants, please visit rangeservices.nra.org/funding-grants. | <urn:uuid:398880ff-cfc7-44f9-9b52-d5885e673157> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.americanhunter.org/content/nra-reopens-public-range-fund/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571502.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811194507-20220811224507-00069.warc.gz | en | 0.949591 | 264 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Unpublished research conducted by the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz) in Brazil detected the presence of Zika virus in mosquito, Culex quinquefasciatus, collected in the city of Recife. This finding confirms the species as a potential vector of the Zika virus, which to date, according to scientific literature, had not been proven to date, according to a Fiocruz news release (computer translated).
The survey was conducted by Fiocruz Pernambuco in the metropolitan area of Recife, where the population of Culex quinquefasciatus is about twenty times greater than the population of Aedes aegypti . Preliminary results of field research identified the presence of Culex quinquefasciatus naturally infected with Zika virus in three of the 80 pools (A pool of mosquitoes consists of 1 to 10 mosquitoes collected in each location, separated by sex and species) of mosquitoes analyzed to date. In two of these samples they were not fed mosquitoes, indicating that the virus was widespread in the insect body and not in a recent power in an infected host.
The technique used in the experiment was quantitative RT-PCR based detection of RNA (genetic material) virus. The material of these positive pools was used to isolate the circulating virus strains in Reef, in cell culture, where it was observed cytopathic effect induced in the cells – i.e., destruction or damage of vero cells was observed, which proves the presence viral activity.
The collection of mosquitoes was made based on the addresses of the reported cases of Zika in the cities of Recife and Arcoverde, obtained from the Health Department of Pernambuco State (SES-PE). The total number of mosquitoes examined in the study was approximately 500. The aim of the project is to compare the role of some species of mosquitoes in Brazil of arbovirus transmission. Priority was given to zika virus because the epidemic of the disease in Brazil and its connection with microcephaly.
In the laboratory stage, in order to investigate the vector competence of the species Culex quinquefasciatus and Aedes aegypti , mosquitoes were fed a mixture of blood and viruses, allowing the monitoring of pathogen replication process within the insect. There were two mosquito infections each infection with two different virus concentrations (104 and 106) of Ziku BRPE243 / 2015 lineage. “The smallest simulates viremia condition of a real patient. Then the mosquitoes were collected at different times: at time zero (after infection), three days, seven days, 11 and 15 days after virus infection, “says Constance Ayres, coordinator of the study.
A control group with mosquitoes fed on blood without the virus, was also maintained. Each mosquitoes was dissected to extract the intestine, and salivary gland tissues that present barriers to the development of the virus. The procedure takes place so that, if species vector is not at a given moment the development of the virus is blocked by the mosquito. However, if it is vector, virus replication occurs, spreads in the insect body and just infecting the salivary gland, from which can be transmitted to other hosts during the blood meal, the release of saliva containing virus. According Constancia, from the third day after artificial feeding has been possible to detect the presence of the virus in the salivary glands of both species of mosquito investigated. After seven days, it was observed the peak of infection in the salivary glands which was confirmed by electron microscopy.
Besides the detection of virus in these tissues (intestine , and salivary gland), saliva samples were investigated expelled by mosquitoes infected by quantitative RT-PCR. The viral load found in two species ( Aedes aegypti and Culex quinquefasciatus ) was similar.
From the data obtained will require additional studies to assess the potential participation of Culex in the spread of zika virus and its role in the epidemic. The current study is very important, since the vector control measures are different. Until the results of new evidence, the Zika epidemic control policy will remain guided by the same guidelines, with its central focus on the control of Aedes aegypti .
- Chikungunya up significantly in Brazil this year
- Brazil: Dengue down big after release of Friendly™ Aedes genetically engineered mosquitoes in Piracicaba
- H1N1 influenza kills more than 1200 in Brazil to date, 40 percent in São Paulo | <urn:uuid:0eb4df75-85cc-4a64-8b0c-aae9e31eaa60> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://outbreaknewstoday.com/zika-virus-detected-in-culex-mosquito-brazilian-researchers-36669/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279489.14/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00007-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955712 | 936 | 2.859375 | 3 |
A late but interesting tidbit from the 2012 presidential election: when it came to fundraising, all roads led to L.A.
Los Angeles County donors were the top sources of campaign cash to candidates and political action committees last year, according to an analysis by The Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan group that tracks money in politics.
It's no wonder that Democrat-dominant L.A. is seen more as an ATM for President Barack Obama than a place to stump for votes. Los Angeles voters put up with traffic jams but don't often see the person whose visit causes them — he's busy hitting up the heavy donors.
The Sunlight Foundation totes up the money spent on political campaigns and maps it by county, with a neat slider bar allowing the viewer to animate the display over time.
What it shows is that L.A. individual donors put $149 million into political campaigns in 2012. That works out to about $15 for every single one of the county's 9.9 million residents. Political giving, of course, is not spread out evenly, it tends to be concentrated among the wealthy.
Some 58 percent of L.A. County donations went to Democrats; in neighboring Orange County, 60 percent of the donations went to Republicans. Republicans claimed 68 percent of donations in Riverside County, and 50 percent in San Bernardino County
Third party candidates got very little from Los Angeles County donors, less than one-quarter of one percent of all donations nationwide came from L.A. County. | <urn:uuid:548ac8c3-373a-4e22-b014-9d2863c041f4> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.scpr.org/blogs/politics/2013/11/13/15188/the-atm-effect-la-s-the-place-for-campaign-cash/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281226.52/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00374-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956845 | 305 | 1.796875 | 2 |
Official ceremony of Hawaii's Statehood celebrations at Honolulu stadium.
Hawaii USA Date:1959, March 13 Duration:1 min 31 sec Sound:NO SOUND
Official ceremony of Hawaii's Statehood celebrations at Honolulu stadium. Parade beigns with flags representing individual States of the Union and other flags. Trailer with 'Royal Hawaiian Band' written on it, drives past. Cameraman takes pictures. 25th Infantry Division marches while playing band. The Hawaian girls perform Hula dance in the stadium.
This historic stock footage available in HD and SD video. View pricing below video player.
Have a correction or more info about this clip? Edit Now
Be the first to correct or edit this clip's info! Edit Now | <urn:uuid:ae635783-fcc7-4dee-8a76-a5f779974840> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://www.criticalpast.com/video/65675022665_Statehood-celebrations_Honolulu-stadium_States-of-the-Union-flags_Royal-Hawaiian-Band | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988721278.88/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183841-00147-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.848939 | 149 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Posted by Melissa on Sunday, January 18, 2009 at 8:48pm.
Find perimeters , use formula;
p=(2 x l)+(2 x w)
5m by 650cm
- 6th math - DrBob222, Sunday, January 18, 2009 at 8:52pm
Change m to cm (or the other way around) and plug into the formula.
- 6th math - bobpursley, Sunday, January 18, 2009 at 8:52pm
change the width to meters, 6.5m
P=2l + 2w
= 2*5m + 2*6.5m
= 10m + you finish it.
- 6th math - Ms. Sue, Sunday, January 18, 2009 at 8:53pm
First, we need to change the cm to m.
Since there are 100 cm in a meter, then 650 cm = 6.5 m.
P = (2 * 6.5) + (2 * 5)
p = ??
Answer This Question
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Only about four percent of clinical laboratories in the U.S. use the CKD-EPI creatinine equation, developed by the Chronic Kidney Disease Epidemiology Collaboration, to estimate glomerular filtration rate (GFR), a 2011 CAP survey shows.1 But the authors of a new study of the CKD-EPI equation believe that, with their findings, that percentage is about to radically increase.
The study, published May 9 in the Journal of the American Medical Association, compiles and analyzes data from 1.1 million adults, adding to the already substantial evidence demonstrating the value of the CKD-EPI equation over the commonly used MDRD (Modification of Diet in Renal Disease) Study equation in estimating GFR (Comparison of risk prediction using the CKD-EPI equation and the MDRD Study equation for estimated glomerular filtration rate. JAMA. 2012; 307:1941–1951).
Across a broad range of populations, the study authors find, the CKD-EPI equation classified fewer individuals as having CKD and more accurately categorized the risk for mortality and ESRD (end-stage renal disease) than did the MDRD Study equation. “We found that the newer CKD-EPI equation consistently classified future risk better than the older MDRD Study equation,” says lead author Kunihiro Matsushita, MD, PhD, assistant scientist in the Department of Epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health. “This was true for both mortality and need for dialysis, and across a wide range of studies and subgroups.”
“Our paper is significant in adding a huge amount of data showing that, consistently across the world and across different populations, both general populations and those at high risk of CKD, one can improve risk predictions by using the CKD-EPI equation,” says study co-author Josef Coresh, MD, PhD, MHS, professor of epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health and principal investigator of the Chronic Kidney Disease Prognosis Consortium.
With this study, the CKD-EPI equation “should now replace the MDRD equation,” says an editorial in the same issue of JAMA (Kalantar-Zadeh K, Amin AN. 2012; 307:1976–1977). Dr. Coresh is optimistic that clinical laboratories will follow that advice. Among those that have already made the switch are Quest Diagnostics and LabCorp.
Clinical guidelines typically recommend reporting estimated GFR when serum creatinine level is measured, and 84 percent of U.S. laboratories report eGFR. The first strong evidence that the CKD-EPI equation performs better than the MDRD equation appeared in 2009 with a study that described the CKD-EPI equation in 10,000 people with measured GFR and found it improved on the validating of estimating GFR particularly by reducing bias at the high GFR range (Levey AS, et al. Ann Intern Med. 2009;150:604–612). “Since then, there have been a number of papers and the majority have confirmed that conclusion,” says Dr. Coresh.
“I think this study is particularly significant to those laboratories reporting eGFR because, first of all, most labs currently report eGFR from creatinine in an automated manner, and second, I think the field is mature enough now to have all the evidence people need to switch from the MDRD equation to the CKD-EPI equation,” Dr. Coresh says. A Canadian consortium member, he adds, just released a similar study of almost 1 million people that demonstrates the same finding (Matsushita K, et al. Am J Kidney Dis. 2012;60:241–249).
Like the MDRD equation, the CKD-EPI equation estimates GFR using the variables of age, sex, race, and creatinine level, but it applies different coefficients to those variables. The study in the May 9 issue of JAMA, a meta-analysis of data from 45 cohorts—25 general population cohorts, seven high-risk cohorts of vascular disease, and 13 CKD cohorts—was conducted between March 2011 and March 2012 through a collaboration of more than 100 leading researchers. More than 1 million individuals in 40 countries were included, and the participants were followed up for 9.4 million person-years. The primary adverse outcomes analyzed were all-cause mortality (84,482 deaths from 40 cohorts), cardiovascular mortality (22,176 events from 28 cohorts), and ESRD (7,644 events from 21 cohorts).
The researchers stratified patients according to their eGFR into six categories: 90 or greater, 60–89, 45–59, 30–44, 15–29, and less than 15 mL/min/1.73 m2. When the CKD-EPI equation was used instead of the MDRD Study equation, significant percentages of patients were reclassified to a higher eGFR category: 24.4 percent of participants from the general population cohorts, 15.4 percent from high-risk cohorts, and 6.6 percent from CKD cohorts. The CKD-EPI equation found a lower prevalence of CKD in all cohorts except the elderly.
The CKD-EPI equation also reclassified 0.6 percent of participants from the general population cohorts to a lower eGFR category when the CKD-EPI equation was used, as well as 1.2 percent from the high-risk cohorts and 3.2 percent from the CKD cohorts.
The study found that the reclassifications were associated with more accurate risk predictions. Using the outcomes of all-cause mortality and ESRD, the researchers found that, “Participants who were reclassified upward had lower risks of mortality and ESRD compared with those not reclassified, even after adjusting for age, sex, race/ethnicity, and other potential confounders.” Conversely, individuals who were reclassified downward (0.7 percent) had higher risk of mortality and ESRD than those who were not reclassified.
“We focused on the GFR categories that have been established in the clinical practice guidelines for patients’ CKD status,” Dr. Coresh says. “We then watched people’s movement across those categories when they were reclassified from the MDRD equation to the CKD-EPI equation. And the percentage of people who moved, particularly from the CKD range to the non-CKD range, is very large: over 24 percent. So it shows a lower fraction of the entire population have CKD, because CKD is common but not that common. It’s about 11 percent of the population.” The improvement that the CKD-EPI equation brings via reclassification means that “between one in three and one in four individuals will no longer be starred as abnormal with a low GFR.”
Another advantage of the CKD-EPI equation, Dr. Coresh says, is that it allows reporting of eGFR at any point along the continuum of results. “With the MDRD Study equation, because of concerns about bias at GFR levels above 60, many labs reported numbers below 60, and above 60 just reported that the result was ‘above 60.’ So if somebody on MDRD before had a GFR of 58 and now it’s 65, not only would they be moved to a new category so they’re not considered abnormal, but you’d also get the actual value ‘65.’” That added information will be important in certain subpopulations, he notes. “If a person is quite stable and doesn’t have proteinuria, you may say they are above 60 and that’s perfectly fine. But if that person is young and diabetic, or has progressive disease, you may be concerned about that.”
There is a long way to go before a majority of laboratories make the switch, since in the CAP survey last year 92 percent still used the MDRD Study equation. “I think only a few labs are using the CKD-EPI equation right now,” says John Lieske, MD, medical director of the Mayo Clinic Renal Testing Laboratory in the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology. “The older equation has been available for several years and the CKD-EPI equation is somewhat of a moving target that comes out in new versions. In fact there’s a newer version now than what was used in the study. It’s difficult to keep changing those equations in the lab.”
But the recent decisions by Quest Diagnostics and LabCorp to switch to the CKD-EPI equation have already significantly boosted the total number of eGFRs now calculated with the new equation because these national laboratories do such a high volume of tests. Quest Diagnostics announced in a “Laboratory Update” about new tests last year that, effective May 2011, it would be using the CKD-EPI equation to estimate GFR. “We converted to the CKD-EPI equation, exclusively,” Harvey W. Kaufman, MD, senior medical director at Quest Diagnostics, said in an e-mail, adding that Quest is “actively looking into offering the new equation with cystatin C to those who request it.”
It’s probably inevitable that most laboratories will adopt the CKD-EPI equation in the next few years, Dr. Lieske agrees. “And I think that’s a good thing.” But he views the switch as more of a “fine-tuning” than a paradigm shift. “It’s not going to be as big a change as going from not reporting anything to reporting the eGFR with the MDRD equation. But it will be an improvement, especially for those people who are going to be in the range of maybe less than 65 mL/min/1.73 m2. It’s significant in that it has an impact on a certain number of people, though it’s not huge numbers. At this point with the new iterations of the CKD-EPI equation, I don’t know that much more tweaking of this will be all that helpful. They’ve gone about as far as they are going to be able to go.”
Creatinine has many strengths and weaknesses, he points out. “It’s widely available and it’s been in use for a long time. But another iteration of equation is still not going to make it work perfectly for every single patient” in estimating GFR. “So I think there’s not going to be that much more change with creatinine-based equations and there will be a move toward other biomarkers such as cystatin C.”
The federal National Kidney Disease Education Program (NKDEP), headed by Andrew Narva, MD, has adopted a cautious approach in its recommendations on estimating equations for eGFR. The NKDEP Web site says that either the MDRD or CKD-EPI equation can be used. “However, a laboratory that reports eGFR numeric values >60 mL/min/1.73 m2 should consider using the CKD-EPI equation” because it is on average more accurate for values in that range.
Some of the federal agencies’ concerns may be reflected in the minutes of the NKDEP Laboratory Working Group meeting in July 2011, when there was debate among various researchers over a potential shift to CKD-EPI. At the meeting, Dr. Narva explained the factors dictating the agency’s approach. He noted that the NKDEP has put strong emphasis on both eGFR and urine albumin in the assessment of CKD, and, “We want to address broader challenges as we move forward and develop criteria by which newly developed equations can be considered acceptable.” Rather than endorse a single equation, he said, “NKDEP will list those equations that can be used and under what circumstances a specific equation is useful.” That is now the approach taken on the NKDEP Web site.
Dr. Narva also stressed the importance of coordinating the approach to assessing CKD across the key federal agencies—his own (National Institutes of Health), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
CDC representative Desmond Williams, MD, PhD, leader of the Chronic Kidney Disease Initiative, expressed reservations about switching equations. Significant resources have gone into the MDRD equation, many other equations are under development, and a good reason is needed to change equations, Dr. Williams said at the meeting.
The qualifications he listed: 1) a statistically significant improvement in the delineation of disease status and risk compared with the gold standard (measured GFR), 2) significant improvement in the prognostic value for progression to ESRD and to development of complications and premature death using outcomes related to kidney disease, 3) reliability and reproducibility of the new standard, and 4) other factors such as simplification, lower cost, and the capability of addressing disadvantages of the current standard. On these criteria, he said the CKD-EPI equation did not present an advantage.
However, at the meeting there was evident controversy over this conclusion, as John Eckfeldt, MD, PhD, medical director of clinical pathology at the University of Minnesota, stressed that the CKD-EPI equation does seem to statistically improve the prediction of ESRD and death. He also made the point that the cost of converting to a new equation is in programming the changes in the laboratory information system, and it makes sense to make the change if it is easy to do in the LIS.
Dr. Coresh believes that many of these earlier reservations have likely been addressed in the research published in the past two years. He also feels the costs of switching will be minimal. “Serum creatinine assay is the same assay and for both equations GFR should be calibrated to a reference standard. The covariates are the same—age, sex, and race—so it’s just a matter of changing the equation in the computer. When we’ve spoken to physicians, it seems like they are basically ready to accept the switch. There doesn’t need to be a massive re-education.” However, he emphasizes, when labs make the switch it is worth making sure eGFR results are reported with a footnote so that people know what equation is used. “If a patient is followed up on, you would want the physician to know there was a switch” in the eGFR equation, Dr. Coresh says.
He does not believe that the collection of racial data that the equation requires will pose a problem. “Both the MDRD and CKD-EPI equations require this term. I think we’re becoming a more multiracial and diverse nation, so needing race isn’t ideal. It is a bit complicated because, biologically, creatinine seems to relate to muscle mass and probably because of that and diet, there seems to be a difference between blacks and whites, so performance of the eGFR equation is improved if one knows the patient’s race.”
While the JAMA editorial published with the study maintains there is a “disconnect” between eGFR and patients’ clinical course, Dr. Coresh contends that, on the contrary, the connection is a strong one. “There’s no substitute for having physicians know their patients,” he points out. “However, we’ve found in a number of studies that the two key markers of chronic kidney disease, which are eGFR and a measure of protein in the urine, typically albuminuria, are very strong risk factors for nearly all outcomes of kidney disease.”
It’s also true that the cause of kidney disease can provide additional information, he says. “And there will be modifying factors other than that, such as heart failure which can aggravate fluid overload, and infection which can lead to sepsis, which is a strong risk for acute kidney injury which can make the course much worse, plus specific immunologic conditions that lead to rapidly progressive disease.”
But as for the best equation for estimating GFR from creatinine, he says, this most recent study confirms that the jury is no longer out. “With the CKD-EPI creatinine eGFR equation, we’re reducing the number of people labeled as having kidney disease and the people we do label are at higher risk than they were previously.” It’s time for laboratories to make the switch from MDRD to the CKD-EPI creatinine equation, he believes. “We think that using the CKD-EPI creatinine equation for eGFR will both improve clinical care of CKD patients and reduce the costs of that care.”
1. Current status of reporting estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) for adults.
Anne Paxton is a writer in Seattle. | <urn:uuid:b6934c0d-3ed8-461f-a46b-a96c9f76c2af> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.cap.org/apps/cap.portal?_nfpb=true&cntvwrPtlt_actionOverride=%2Fportlets%2FcontentViewer%2Fshow&_windowLabel=cntvwrPtlt&cntvwrPtlt%7BactionForm.contentReference%7D=cap_today%2F1012%2F1012c_latest_study.html&_state=maximized&_pageLabel=cntvwr | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279915.8/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00280-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955755 | 3,622 | 2.234375 | 2 |
Official Community Plan
On May 25, 2010, The District of Elkford adopted a new Official Community Plan (OCP). The new OCP is an integrated community sustainability plan designed to increase the community’s resilience to climate change, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and support the long term sustainability of the community.
An Official Community Plan (OCP) establishes a long-term vision for a community’s future. It describes the community’s broad objectives around form, character and community life and it reflects the ideas and input of participants, including residents, stakeholders, professionals, District staff and District Council. Municipalities in British Columbia are given the authority to adopt an OCP through Part 26 of the Local Government Act (LGA). This legislation stipulates what must or may be included in an OCP. It also establishes adoption procedures. Elkford’s OCP has been prepared in compliance with that legislation.
Elkford’s OCP integrates land use, economy, environment, transportation, community facilities, services, and climate change and creates a broad strategy to direct growth and development while protecting and enhancing residents’ current quality of life. In addition, the Elkford OCP is unique as it is the first in BC to incorporate both an integrated Climate Change Adaptation Strategy and a Greenhouse Gas Reduction Strategy. Both strategies were developed concurrent with the OCP. Collectively, the policies contained within the OCP are intended to provide a degree of certainty for the future of the community.
Detailed information on the plan is available in the background report
Reports and Information | <urn:uuid:82f2f2a6-dea4-4645-b38c-c3a6866344e2> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.elkford.ca/official_community_plan | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279410.32/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00165-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.920463 | 323 | 2.25 | 2 |
An animal keeper was mauled to death by a rare white tiger at a New Zealand wildlife park while visitors watched in horror.
The animal – one of only 120 white tigers in the world – was killed because it would not release the keeper's body.
The keeper, Dalu Mncube was the second person to be attacked this year by one of the park's white tigers – he had helped rescue another employee mauled in February.
Mr Mncube was attacked yesterday after he and a colleague entered the cage at Zion Wildlife Park on New Zealand's North Island to clean it.
There was nothing to indicate why the white tiger attacked.
Mr Mncube, who was a South African national, died at the scene before help could reach him, with serious injuries to his abdomen and lower legs.
"Despite the best efforts of the second keeper and a rapid response from other wildlife park staff, the tiger would not let the park worker go," police said. The park's manager, Glen Holland, who was not at the park at the time, said Mr Mncube was a very experienced keeper and "fantastic with the cats".
A spokeswoman for the park, Sarah Reed, said staff were "devastated" by the attack.
Care-workers were called to the scene to help distressed staff and visitors, including eight foreign tourists who witnessed the attack. Their nationalities were not known.
In February, another of the park's employees, Demetri Price, required surgery after he was also attacked by a white tiger.
Mr Price, who no longer works at the park, told TVOne's Close Up program that his colleague, Mr Mncube, had "got the tiger off me" after he was bitten in the knee. He said that Mr Mncube "had a great ability with animals".
The park, which is near the northern city of Whangarei, has 42 rare lions and tigers – four of which are white tigers – which are kept in large wire-cage enclosures that include trees and grassy areas.
In another incident last year, Scottish teenager Lisa Baxter was left scarred after she put her hands through a hole in the fence and a white lion bit her.Reuse content | <urn:uuid:d662d2a6-e939-4283-ae42-abb17578452c> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/australasia/white-tiger-fatally-mauls-its-keeper-at-new-zealand-park-1691832.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280761.39/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00095-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.988752 | 462 | 1.632813 | 2 |
READ Global was inspired by a simple wish from a Nepalese trekking guide: to have a library for his village. Dr. Antonia “Toni” Neubauer, a former language teacher and education researcher, was traveling throughout Asia with her adventure travel company, Myths and Mountains. Embracing the opportunity to give back to a part of the world that had filled her with so much joy, Toni harnessed her resources and founded Rural Education and Development (READ) Global in 1991 with the establishment of the first READ Center in the village of Junbesi, Nepal.
A READ Center is a community library and resource center that is owned and managed by the community. READ works in partnership with each community to establish the center and launch at least one sustaining enterprise to help the center become self-sustaining over time. READ Centers offer resources such as books and newspapers, a children’s section with colorful books and educational toys, a computer room with free access to the internet, a training hall and a community gathering space. READ Centers – often through partnerships with other organizations and local government agencies – offer a variety of programs to meet the unique needs of each community. Programs offered in READ Centers may include microcredit, women’s empowerment, technology training, literacy, livelihood skills, agricultural programs, youth development, health programs and services – and more. Because READ Centers are locally managed, programming can evolve over time as community needs change.
In 2006, READ Nepal won the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Access to Learning Award (ATLA), given annually to one organization globally in recognition of the innovative efforts to connect people to information. The next year, READ received a Replication Grant from the Foundation to bring its unique and sustainable model to Bhutan and India and expand in all three countries.
Today, READ Global is headquartered in the United States with local and independent country offices in Bhutan, India and Nepal. More than 2.52 million people have access to 112 READ Centers and their programs. | <urn:uuid:69fc7913-a5f4-44e1-9201-3da878807279> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.readglobal.org/who-we-are/our-story/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573163.7/warc/CC-MAIN-20220818033705-20220818063705-00077.warc.gz | en | 0.96389 | 414 | 2.15625 | 2 |
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A New York Times article published on April 20, 2020 said: Business travel worldwide has basically come to a standstill in the coronavirus pandemic. “Everyone will have to learn how to be comfortable around people, especially in large airports, on crowded planes, and in very large convention hotels and resorts,” said Henry Harteveldt, founder of Atmosphere Research Group, a travel analysis firm in San Francisco.
In a survey, this month by the Global Business Travel Association, a trade group for corporate travel managers, nearly all its members said their employers had cancelled or suspended all or most previously booked or planned international business travel, while 92% said all or most domestic business travel had been cancelled or suspended, the article said.
In India, too, there was huge speculation about air travel and with the government shutting down flights till May 31, 2020, the month is gone for the hospitality sector. “We have already lost May, where hotels were more focused on business travel, normally decent business, compared to April which was slow because of year ending,” a highly placed hospitality executive, on condition of anonymity, told us.
Flights coming back also doesn’t guarantee business to return. In fact, with alarming and tragic news—like the passing of the BMW CEO for India, even if its reportedly due to cardiac arrest, top executives may not be willing to travel across the country, our source added.
At this stage, everyone is speculating, no one knows. From a business perspective if the Covid-19 infection goes and comes back and the government keeps shutting and opening sectors, things will take a long time to recover. With Delhi and Mumbai shut, where will the revenue come from? They added.
Rumours are rife in the market as far as jobs are concerned and there is news of people resigning from their position.
A prominent Indian hospitality company may be doing a round of VRSs post the reopening of the economy, while a very prominent international management company may be shutting their India operations, again, if the grapevine was to be believed, the source added.
From what is happening in China, where ARRs have crashed, luxury is going to be hit worse than upscale, midscale and budget hotels which have recorded an uptake, the source opined. | <urn:uuid:a31f9bb0-c9b3-4df7-b481-8bb8518fd17e> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://hospitality.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/hotels/post-covid-world-will-reinterpret-hospitality-experts-believe/75267512 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570977.50/warc/CC-MAIN-20220809124724-20220809154724-00465.warc.gz | en | 0.965604 | 514 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Since some people in the UK probably have forced air heating and cooling systems in their houses, there are likely a number of good air conditioning filters available. The link below is to the type I use in my air conditioning system. Select the link for "Best 1" Air Filters."http://www.filtrete.com/wps/portal/3M/en_US/FiltreteUS/Filtrete/Products/Catalog-Air/
These filters work a treat in my A/C system. They claim to have electrostatically charged fibers in them that grab all sorts of microscopic nasty things that would blow right through a normal filter.
They are pleated to increase the surface area available for filtration. If you can manage to work a 1" (25.4mm)thick filter under your intake fans, that would be great. If not, then you can always take some of the material and flatten it out. If possible though, it is best to use the filter while it is still pleated. The added surface area will let it collect more dust and things over a longer time, and you won't be having to worry about changing it so often.
The ones that I use are 20" X 20" by 1" thick, cost about $15 to $18 USD, and last about 3 months in our A/C system. Keep in mind that a central A/C system moves much more air through it than a PC does, probably several orders of magnitude more. And, here in Florida, the A/C will run literally constantly, day and night, at times in the summer. Thus I take the filter's ability to last 3 months under those conditions as an indication that it has a very high capacity before it clogs up.
If you can't find these in the UK, you can always search for a filter that is similar in construction.
PS: Your idea for the external control unit for the PC is pure genius. How were you able to extend all the cables that you needed to extend 5 meters? Did you need any signal boosters, or did just long cables work? And, may we assume that you simply extended the mouse, keyboard, and monitor cables the same way, or was something special needed there.
With eager anticipation I will await your video that explains the making of the external control unit, and the cable (I hope). | <urn:uuid:f5c6d3f8-beee-4e5a-b938-73d7e6820589> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=66261&view=next | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988721278.88/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183841-00148-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952804 | 494 | 1.570313 | 2 |
A Toy Piano embedded on a T-shirt. It has 8 keys from Do to Do (1 octave). You can play simple music by wearing the shirt and pushing the fabric button
on the shirt. All the components from the toy piano (batteries, speaker, circuit board) are placed on the shirt and connected with poppers. All these hard components are detachable so that you can wash it if you wish.
This particular Instructable is made for the Electronic Textile workshop
that will be held in Zurich/Switzerland on Saturday 7th December 2009 as part of the DIY Festival Zurich
. If you are interested in this workshop, please contact the festival. | <urn:uuid:80a7f581-be5d-48a2-b79a-f067da955097> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.instructables.com/id/Wearable-Toy-Piano/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280128.70/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00388-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938046 | 138 | 1.765625 | 2 |
Dr. Ajrawat's Air-Pulse Autonomic Meditation Therapy is a non-denominational therapy that allows individuals to balance body and mind without the loss of identity many feel when adopting ancient mind controlling meditative healings.
Potomac, MD (PRWEB) August 14, 2008 –- Dr. Ajrawat's http://www.painmanagement.com/ [Air-Pulse Autonomic Meditation Therapy], a revolutionary therapy developed by Dr. P.S. Ajrawat, recently received a patent trademark. The therapy, also referred to as a http://www.painmanagement.com/[scientific, non-denominational khalistani meditation therapy], is part of Dr. Ajrawat's Dynamic Model designed to effectively manage and treat pain and stress from a scientific perspective, bringing balance between the body and mind.
Dr. Ajrawat's Air-Pulse Autonomic Meditation Therapy is based on the fact that the mind and body is one functional unit, where balance is essential for homeostasis. With the application of multiple components, the therapy brings changes in vital signs, such as a decrease in heart and respiratory rates; general vasodilatation and improvement of circulation; blocking of mental chatter; increased energy; improvement of focus; relaxation and increased insightfulness, among others. It also helps an individual meditate upon self and look inward for solutions, making the individual more aware and insightful. The therapy can be done in any posture (Khalistani) and involves no autosuggestion or mantra.
Millions of individuals undergoing pain and stress suffer without appropriate help. It was frustration and a desire to aid those suffering that brought Dr. Ajrawat to create http://www.painmanagement.com/[Dr. Ajrawat's Air-Pulse Meditation] and Dr. Ajrawat's Air-Pulse Autonomic Meditation Therapy and Dr. Ajrawat's Image Therapy.
"As the world reaches a threshold with modern science and its failures to provide for a relaxed, functional state of mind, people are turning to old and ancient methods to achieve that paradigm. Until now, nobody created a scientific meditation that held solid ground, reflecting its mechanism and therapeutic effects," Dr. Ajrawat says.
"The civilized world has used traditional http://www.painmanagement.com/[meditation] as a spiritual discipline for millennia and has believed it to be the ultimate source to relax and merge with universal consciousness. Regardless of effort and interest, ancient meditations could never translate into a scientific mode, as their conception, perception and projection were primarily spiritual, social or philosophical in nature," Dr. Ajrawat says.
Despite the assertion of various methods and theories of relaxation and application of certain posture, focusing on imaginary energy circles (chakras), autosuggestion (mantra) or use of sound, people continue to feel more stressors in life, be they psychological, physical or social. Even in the medical field, the limitations of various methods including various types of medication are apparent. Often, people in need of help for mental and physical ailments begin certain types of meditation, but soon feel dissatisfied or at times violated or helpless when they find themselves dragged or trapped in a philosophy where they can face loss of personal autonomy in the name of, and search for, robust mental or physical health. This often results in further identity loss and more stress. Hence, a journey meant to bring realization of self, physical and mental health instead brings more self alienation, dependency, misery and pain.
As a scientific invention, http://www.painmanagement.com/[Dr. Ajrawat's Air-Pulse Autonomic Meditation Therapy] is non-denominational and open to all. Persons of any faith can participate without feeling intruded upon or violated. Though Dr. Ajrawat is a religious man, he believes autonomic meditation therapy is likely to transform some of the basic concept of spirituality and faith. This meditation therapy will be administered by qualified individuals.
"The ultimate goal of this http://www.painmanagement.com/[scientific meditation] is to achieve sound mental and physical health and an empowerment of mind," Dr. Ajrawat says.
Dr. Ajrawat's Air-Pulse Autonomic Meditation Therapy is based on his concept of Bidirectional Psycho Somatic Autonomic Feedback and is designed to restore autonomic balance at will, improve the level of hormones, neurotransmitters, sympathetic and parasympathetic functions and general circulation of the body. This http://www.painmanagement.com/[meditation therapy] helps both healthy individuals and those with medical conditions such as anxiety, post-traumatic stress, depression, substance abuse, drug addiction, ADHD, bipolar disorder, hypertension, fibromyalgia, myofascial pain, irritable bowel syndrome, cancer pain, Alzheimer's and more, a majority of which involve imbalance of the autonomic nervous system.
Dr. Ajrawat has experimented and performed studies on patients using the autonomic meditation therapy with promising results. Qualified (fellowship trained and certified in pain management) as a pain specialist, Dr. Ajrawat's knowledge of human anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, neural mechanisms, pain pathways, nerve endings, neurotransmitters, hormones, neuro-endocrinology and other areas has transformed his revelation into an effective scientific therapy where the primary focus is on the body and mind; organs, organ systems and their functioning; and restoration of homeostasis – a new paradigm.
Hence, with Dr. Ajrawat's Air-Pulse Autonomic Meditation Therapy and Dr. Ajrawat's Image Therapy, an individual receives new control and vision. In addition incorporating strengthening and stretching exercises, ergonomics, elimination of pain perpetuating factors, good nutrition, walking alternated with jogging and practice of correct principles can help improve mental and physical agility, Dr. Ajrawat, believes essential.
"In this age of technology, humans are likely to be challenged by the very advancement they desire, such as autonomy of computers to achieve certain solutions, which some people will find hard to accept and deal with, which in turn will be detrimental to self-esteem and confidence," Dr. Ajrawat says. "In that situation, it is only the relaxed mind, healthy body, creativity, awareness of self and following correct principles that can compete with the challenge of artificial intelligence and society at large. Cognitive therapies like http://www.painmanagement.com/[Dr. Ajrawat's Air-Pulse Autonomic Meditation Therapy], Air-Pulse Meditation and Dr. Ajrawat's Image Therapy will be the scientific tools to keep modern generations on the cutting edge."
For more information about Dr. Ajrawat and Dr. Ajrawat's Air-Pulse Autonomic Meditation Therapy, visit www.PainManagement.com.
About Dr. Ajrawat:
Dr. Ajrawat is one of the first full-time qualified (fellowship-trained and -certified) pain specialists, who introduced a new field of pain management in the Washington metropolitan area in July 1985. Based on his training, Dr. Ajrawat introduced a new model for pain evaluation and treatment called Bio-psychosocial Model. Over the years, with his efforts, the general frame of reference of the local medical community regarding pain management has changed. One-to-one treatment and conservative quality care has been the mission of Dr. Ajrawat and his wife, Dr. S.K. Ajrawat, a board-certified psychiatrist. The positive treatment outcome for various types of pain and pain-associated stress has been the end result.
Contact: Dr. P.S. Ajrawat
Tel: M- 240-375-1205
Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2008/08/prweb1195574.htm
Copyright©2008 Vocus, Inc.
All rights reserved | <urn:uuid:30776259-72f4-4cc6-bca4-ceebeb1b06b7> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://www.bio-medicine.org/medicine-news-1/Dr--Ajrawats-Air-Pulse-Autonomic-Meditation-Therapy--a-Revolutionary--Scientific--Meditation-Therapy--Receives-Patent-Trademark--25452-1/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988722459.85/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183842-00345-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.905432 | 1,634 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Callirhoe involucrata var. lineariloba "Logan Calhoun" (Prairie Poppy Mallow)
Named for the person who discovered this pure white Prairie Poppy Mallow on the Southern Great Plains, "Logan Calhoun," blooms in summer and grows from 6 to 12 inches high. It is mat forming, making it an ideal ground cover. It also has a long taproot, which makes it ideal for dry conditions, but it also makes it difficult to move, so plant it for keeps. It grows in dry to medium moist soil (avoid poorly draining soil, as crown rot may occur) in full sun. Zones 4-9. Quarts. | <urn:uuid:23880343-b029-4fa5-b913-1b43d66a3794> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://gardensinthewood.com/store/p386/Callirhoe_involucrata_var._lineariloba_%22Logan_Calhoun%22_%28Prairie_Poppy_Mallow%29.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281424.85/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00333-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935443 | 144 | 1.90625 | 2 |
Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS, also written as micro-electro-mechanical, MicroElectroMechanical or microelectronic and microelectromechanical systems and the related micromechatronics) is the technology of microscopic devices, particularly those with moving parts. It merges at the nano-scale into nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS) and nanotechnology. MEMS are also referred to as micromachines in Japan, or micro systems technology (MST) in Europe.
MEMS are separate and distinct from the hypothetical vision of molecular nanotechnology or molecular electronics. MEMS are made up of components between 1 and 100 micrometres in size (i.e. 0.001 to 0.1 mm), and MEMS devices generally range in size from 20 micrometres to a millimetre (i.e. 0.02 to 1.0 mm). They usually consist of a central unit that processes data (the microprocessor) and several components that interact with the surroundings such as microsensors. At these size scales, the standard constructs of classical physics are not always sufficient. Because of the large surface area to volume ratio of MEMS, surface effects such as electrostatics and wetting dominate over volume effects such as inertia or thermal mass.
The potential of very small machines was appreciated before the technology existed that could make them (see, for example, Richard Feynman's famous 1959 lecture There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom). MEMS became practical once they could be fabricated using modified semiconductor device fabrication technologies, normally used to make electronics. These include molding and plating, wet etching (KOH, TMAH) and dry etching (RIE and DRIE), electro discharge machining (EDM), and other technologies capable of manufacturing small devices. An early example of a MEMS device is the resonistor – an electromechanical monolithic resonator.
- 1 Materials for MEMS manufacturing
- 2 MEMS basic processes
- 2.1 Deposition processes
- 2.2 Patterning
- 2.3 Etching processes
- 2.4 Die preparation
- 3 MEMS manufacturing technologies
- 4 Applications
- 5 Industry structure
- 6 See also
- 7 References
- 8 External links
Materials for MEMS manufacturing
The fabrication of MEMS evolved from the process technology in semiconductor device fabrication, i.e. the basic techniques are deposition of material layers, patterning by photolithography and etching to produce the required shapes.
Silicon is the material used to create most integrated circuits used in consumer electronics in the modern industry. The economies of scale, ready availability of inexpensive high-quality materials, and ability to incorporate electronic functionality make silicon attractive for a wide variety of MEMS applications. Silicon also has significant advantages engendered through its material properties. In single crystal form, silicon is an almost perfect Hookean material, meaning that when it is flexed there is virtually no hysteresis and hence almost no energy dissipation. As well as making for highly repeatable motion, this also makes silicon very reliable as it suffers very little fatigue and can have service lifetimes in the range of billions to trillions of cycles without breaking.
Even though the electronics industry provides an economy of scale for the silicon industry, crystalline silicon is still a complex and relatively expensive material to produce. Polymers on the other hand can be produced in huge volumes, with a great variety of material characteristics. MEMS devices can be made from polymers by processes such as injection molding, embossing or stereolithography and are especially well suited to microfluidic applications such as disposable blood testing cartridges.
Metals can also be used to create MEMS elements. While metals do not have some of the advantages displayed by silicon in terms of mechanical properties, when used within their limitations, metals can exhibit very high degrees of reliability. Metals can be deposited by electroplating, evaporation, and sputtering processes. Commonly used metals include gold, nickel, aluminium, copper, chromium, titanium, tungsten, platinum, and silver.
The nitrides of silicon, aluminium and titanium as well as silicon carbide and other ceramics are increasingly applied in MEMS fabrication due to advantageous combinations of material properties. AlN crystallizes in the wurtzite structure and thus shows pyroelectric and piezoelectric properties enabling sensors, for instance, with sensitivity to normal and shear forces. TiN, on the other hand, exhibits a high electrical conductivity and large elastic modulus allowing to realize electrostatic MEMS actuation schemes with ultrathin membranes. Moreover, the high resistance of TiN against biocorrosion qualifies the material for applications in biogenic environments and in biosensors.
MEMS basic processes
One of the basic building blocks in MEMS processing is the ability to deposit thin films of material with a thickness anywhere between a few nanometres to about 100 micrometres. There are two types of deposition processes, as follows.
Physical vapor deposition ("PVD") consists of a process in which a material is removed from a target, and deposited on a surface. Techniques to do this include the process of sputtering, in which an ion beam liberates atoms from a target, allowing them to move through the intervening space and deposit on the desired substrate, and evaporation, in which a material is evaporated from a target using either heat (thermal evaporation) or an electron beam (e-beam evaporation) in a vacuum system.
Chemical deposition techniques include chemical vapor deposition ("CVD"), in which a stream of source gas reacts on the substrate to grow the material desired. This can be further divided into categories depending on the details of the technique, for example, LPCVD (Low Pressure chemical vapor deposition) and PECVD (Plasma Enhanced chemical vapor deposition).
Patterning in MEMS is the transfer of a pattern into a material.
Lithography in MEMS context is typically the transfer of a pattern into a photosensitive material by selective exposure to a radiation source such as light. A photosensitive material is a material that experiences a change in its physical properties when exposed to a radiation source. If a photosensitive material is selectively exposed to radiation (e.g. by masking some of the radiation) the pattern of the radiation on the material is transferred to the material exposed, as the properties of the exposed and unexposed regions differs.
This exposed region can then be removed or treated providing a mask for the underlying substrate. Photolithography is typically used with metal or other thin film deposition, wet and dry etching.
Electron beam lithography
Electron beam lithography (often abbreviated as e-beam lithography) is the practice of scanning a beam of electrons in a patterned fashion across a surface covered with a film (called the resist), ("exposing" the resist) and of selectively removing either exposed or non-exposed regions of the resist ("developing"). The purpose, as with photolithography, is to create very small structures in the resist that can subsequently be transferred to the substrate material, often by etching. It was developed for manufacturing integrated circuits, and is also used for creating nanotechnology architectures.
The primary advantage of electron beam lithography is that it is one of the ways to beat the diffraction limit of light and make features in the nanometer region. This form of maskless lithography has found wide usage in photomask-making used in photolithography, low-volume production of semiconductor components, and research & development.
The key limitation of electron beam lithography is throughput, i.e., the very long time it takes to expose an entire silicon wafer or glass substrate. A long exposure time leaves the user vulnerable to beam drift or instability which may occur during the exposure. Also, the turn-around time for reworking or re-design is lengthened unnecessarily if the pattern is not being changed the second time.
Ion beam lithography
It is known that focused-ion beam lithography has the capability of writing extremely fine lines (less than 50 nm line and space has been achieved) without proximity effect. However, because the writing field in ion-beam lithography is quite small, large area patterns must be created by stitching together the small fields.
Ion track technology
Ion track technology is a deep cutting tool with a resolution limit around 8 nm applicable to radiation resistant minerals, glasses and polymers. It is capable to generate holes in thin films without any development process. Structural depth can be defined either by ion range or by material thickness. Aspect ratios up to several 104 can be reached. The technique can shape and texture materials at a defined inclination angle. Random pattern, single-ion track structures and aimed pattern consisting of individual single tracks can be generated.
X-ray lithography is a process used in electronic industry to selectively remove parts of a thin film. It uses X-rays to transfer a geometric pattern from a mask to a light-sensitive chemical photoresist, or simply "resist," on the substrate. A series of chemical treatments then engraves the produced pattern into the material underneath the photoresist.
A simple way to carve or create patterns on the surface of nanodiamonds without damaging them could lead to a new photonic devices.
Diamond patterning is a method of forming diamond MEMS. It is achieved by the lithographic application of diamond films to a substrate such as silicon. The patterns can be formed by selective deposition through a silicon dioxide mask, or by deposition followed by micromachining or focused ion beam milling.
There are two basic categories of etching processes: wet etching and dry etching. In the former, the material is dissolved when immersed in a chemical solution. In the latter, the material is sputtered or dissolved using reactive ions or a vapor phase etchant.
Wet chemical etching consists in selective removal of material by dipping a substrate into a solution that dissolves it. The chemical nature of this etching process provides a good selectivity, which means the etching rate of the target material is considerably higher than the mask material if selected carefully.
Etching progresses at the same speed in all directions. Long and narrow holes in a mask will produce v-shaped grooves in the silicon. The surface of these grooves can be atomically smooth if the etch is carried out correctly, with dimensions and angles being extremely accurate.
Some single crystal materials, such as silicon, will have different etching rates depending on the crystallographic orientation of the substrate. This is known as anisotropic etching and one of the most common examples is the etching of silicon in KOH (potassium hydroxide), where Si <111> planes etch approximately 100 times slower than other planes (crystallographic orientations). Therefore, etching a rectangular hole in a (100)-Si wafer results in a pyramid shaped etch pit with 54.7° walls, instead of a hole with curved sidewalls as with isotropic etching.
Hydrofluoric acid is commonly used as an aqueous etchant for silicon dioxide (SiO
2, also known as BOX for SOI), usually in 49% concentrated form, 5:1, 10:1 or 20:1 BOE (buffered oxide etchant) or BHF (Buffered HF). They were first used in medieval times for glass etching. It was used in IC fabrication for patterning the gate oxide until the process step was replaced by RIE.
Hydrofluoric acid is considered one of the more dangerous acids in the cleanroom. It penetrates the skin upon contact and it diffuses straight to the bone. Therefore, the damage is not felt until it is too late.
Electrochemical etching (ECE) for dopant-selective removal of silicon is a common method to automate and to selectively control etching. An active p-n diode junction is required, and either type of dopant can be the etch-resistant ("etch-stop") material. Boron is the most common etch-stop dopant. In combination with wet anisotropic etching as described above, ECE has been used successfully for controlling silicon diaphragm thickness in commercial piezoresistive silicon pressure sensors. Selectively doped regions can be created either by implantation, diffusion, or epitaxial deposition of silicon.
Xenon difluoride (XeF
2) is a dry vapor phase isotropic etch for silicon originally applied for MEMS in 1995 at University of California, Los Angeles. Primarily used for releasing metal and dielectric structures by undercutting silicon, XeF
2 has the advantage of a stiction-free release unlike wet etchants. Its etch selectivity to silicon is very high, allowing it to work with photoresist, SiO
2, silicon nitride, and various metals for masking. Its reaction to silicon is "plasmaless", is purely chemical and spontaneous and is often operated in pulsed mode. Models of the etching action are available, and university laboratories and various commercial tools offer solutions using this approach.
Modern VLSI processes avoid wet etching, and use plasma etching instead. Plasma etchers can operate in several modes by adjusting the parameters of the plasma. Ordinary plasma etching operates between 0.1 and 5 Torr. (This unit of pressure, commonly used in vacuum engineering, equals approximately 133.3 pascals.) The plasma produces energetic free radicals, neutrally charged, that react at the surface of the wafer. Since neutral particles attack the wafer from all angles, this process is isotropic.
Plasma etching can be isotropic, i.e., exhibiting a lateral undercut rate on a patterned surface approximately the same as its downward etch rate, or can be anisotropic, i.e., exhibiting a smaller lateral undercut rate than its downward etch rate. Such anisotropy is maximized in deep reactive ion etching. The use of the term anisotropy for plasma etching should not be conflated with the use of the same term when referring to orientation-dependent etching.
The source gas for the plasma usually contains small molecules rich in chlorine or fluorine. For instance, carbon tetrachloride (CCl4) etches silicon and aluminium, and trifluoromethane etches silicon dioxide and silicon nitride. A plasma containing oxygen is used to oxidize ("ash") photoresist and facilitate its removal.
Ion milling, or sputter etching, uses lower pressures, often as low as 10−4 Torr (10 mPa). It bombards the wafer with energetic ions of noble gases, often Ar+, which knock atoms from the substrate by transferring momentum. Because the etching is performed by ions, which approach the wafer approximately from one direction, this process is highly anisotropic. On the other hand, it tends to display poor selectivity. Reactive-ion etching (RIE) operates under conditions intermediate between sputter and plasma etching (between 10–3 and 10−1 Torr). Deep reactive-ion etching (DRIE) modifies the RIE technique to produce deep, narrow features.
Reactive ion etching (RIE)
In reactive-ion etching (RIE), the substrate is placed inside a reactor, and several gases are introduced. A plasma is struck in the gas mixture using an RF power source, which breaks the gas molecules into ions. The ions accelerate towards, and react with, the surface of the material being etched, forming another gaseous material. This is known as the chemical part of reactive ion etching. There is also a physical part, which is similar to the sputtering deposition process. If the ions have high enough energy, they can knock atoms out of the material to be etched without a chemical reaction. It is a very complex task to develop dry etch processes that balance chemical and physical etching, since there are many parameters to adjust. By changing the balance it is possible to influence the anisotropy of the etching, since the chemical part is isotropic and the physical part highly anisotropic the combination can form sidewalls that have shapes from rounded to vertical.
Deep RIE (DRIE) is a special subclass of RIE that is growing in popularity. In this process, etch depths of hundreds of micrometres are achieved with almost vertical sidewalls. The primary technology is based on the so-called "Bosch process", named after the German company Robert Bosch, which filed the original patent, where two different gas compositions alternate in the reactor. Currently there are two variations of the DRIE. The first variation consists of three distinct steps (the original Bosch process) while the second variation only consists of two steps.
In the first variation, the etch cycle is as follows:
6 isotropic etch;
6 anisoptropic etch for floor cleaning.
In the 2nd variation, steps (i) and (iii) are combined.
Both variations operate similarly. The C
8 creates a polymer on the surface of the substrate, and the second gas composition (SF
6 and O
2) etches the substrate. The polymer is immediately sputtered away by the physical part of the etching, but only on the horizontal surfaces and not the sidewalls. Since the polymer only dissolves very slowly in the chemical part of the etching, it builds up on the sidewalls and protects them from etching. As a result, etching aspect ratios of 50 to 1 can be achieved. The process can easily be used to etch completely through a silicon substrate, and etch rates are 3–6 times higher than wet etching.
After preparing a large number of MEMS devices on a silicon wafer, individual dies have to be separated, which is called die preparation in semiconductor technology. For some applications, the separation is preceded by wafer backgrinding in order to reduce the wafer thickness. Wafer dicing may then be performed either by sawing using a cooling liquid or a dry laser process called stealth dicing.
MEMS manufacturing technologies
Bulk micromachining is the oldest paradigm of silicon based MEMS. The whole thickness of a silicon wafer is used for building the micro-mechanical structures. Silicon is machined using various etching processes. Anodic bonding of glass plates or additional silicon wafers is used for adding features in the third dimension and for hermetic encapsulation. Bulk micromachining has been essential in enabling high performance pressure sensors and accelerometers that changed the sensor industry in the 1980s and 90's.
Surface micromachining uses layers deposited on the surface of a substrate as the structural materials, rather than using the substrate itself. Surface micromachining was created in the late 1980s to render micromachining of silicon more compatible with planar integrated circuit technology, with the goal of combining MEMS and integrated circuits on the same silicon wafer. The original surface micromachining concept was based on thin polycrystalline silicon layers patterned as movable mechanical structures and released by sacrificial etching of the underlying oxide layer. Interdigital comb electrodes were used to produce in-plane forces and to detect in-plane movement capacitively. This MEMS paradigm has enabled the manufacturing of low cost accelerometers for e.g. automotive air-bag systems and other applications where low performance and/or high g-ranges are sufficient. Analog Devices has pioneered the industrialization of surface micromachining and has realized the co-integration of MEMS and integrated circuits.
High aspect ratio (HAR) silicon micromachining
Both bulk and surface silicon micromachining are used in the industrial production of sensors, ink-jet nozzles, and other devices. But in many cases the distinction between these two has diminished. A new etching technology, deep reactive-ion etching, has made it possible to combine good performance typical of bulk micromachining with comb structures and in-plane operation typical of surface micromachining. While it is common in surface micromachining to have structural layer thickness in the range of 2 µm, in HAR silicon micromachining the thickness can be from 10 to 100 µm. The materials commonly used in HAR silicon micromachining are thick polycrystalline silicon, known as epi-poly, and bonded silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafers although processes for bulk silicon wafer also have been created (SCREAM). Bonding a second wafer by glass frit bonding, anodic bonding or alloy bonding is used to protect the MEMS structures. Integrated circuits are typically not combined with HAR silicon micromachining.
Some common commercial applications of MEMS include:
- Inkjet printers, which use piezoelectrics or thermal bubble ejection to deposit ink on paper.
- Accelerometers in modern cars for a large number of purposes including airbag deployment and electronic stability control.
- Accelerometers and MEMS gyroscopes in remote controlled, or autonomous, helicopters, planes and multirotors (also known as drones), used for automatically sensing and balancing flying characteristics of roll, pitch and yaw.
- Accelerometers in consumer electronics devices such as game controllers (Nintendo Wii), personal media players / cell phones (Apple iPhone, various Nokia mobile phone models, various HTC PDA models) and a number of Digital Cameras (various Canon Digital IXUS models). Also used in PCs to park the hard disk head when free-fall is detected, to prevent damage and data loss.
- MEMS gyroscopes used in modern cars and other applications to detect yaw; e.g., to deploy a roll over bar or trigger electronic stability control
- MEMS microphones in portable devices, e.g., mobile phones, head sets and laptops. The market for smart microphones includes smartphones, wearable devices, smart home and automotive applications.
- Silicon pressure sensors e.g., car tire pressure sensors, and disposable blood pressure sensors
- Displays e.g., the digital micromirror device (DMD) chip in a projector based on DLP technology, which has a surface with several hundred thousand micromirrors or single micro-scanning-mirrors also called microscanners
- Optical switching technology, which is used for switching technology and alignment for data communications
- Bio-MEMS applications in medical and health related technologies from Lab-On-Chip to MicroTotalAnalysis (biosensor, chemosensor), or embedded in medical devices e.g. stents.
- Interferometric modulator display (IMOD) applications in consumer electronics (primarily displays for mobile devices), used to create interferometric modulation − reflective display technology as found in mirasol displays
- Fluid acceleration such as for micro-cooling
- Micro-scale energy harvesting including piezoelectric, electrostatic and electromagnetic micro harvesters.
- Micromachined ultrasound transducers.
The global market for micro-electromechanical systems, which includes products such as automobile airbag systems, display systems and inkjet cartridges totaled $40 billion in 2006 according to Global MEMS/Microsystems Markets and Opportunities, a research report from SEMI and Yole Developpement and is forecasted to reach $72 billion by 2011.
Companies with strong MEMS programs come in many sizes. Larger firms specialize in manufacturing high volume inexpensive components or packaged solutions for end markets such as automobiles, biomedical, and electronics. Smaller firms provide value in innovative solutions and absorb the expense of custom fabrication with high sales margins. Both large and small companies typically invest in R&D to explore new MEMS technology.
The market for materials and equipment used to manufacture MEMS devices topped $1 billion worldwide in 2006. Materials demand is driven by substrates, making up over 70 percent of the market, packaging coatings and increasing use of chemical mechanical planarization (CMP). While MEMS manufacturing continues to be dominated by used semiconductor equipment, there is a migration to 200 mm lines and select new tools, including etch and bonding for certain MEMS applications.
- Brain–computer interface
- Cantilever - one of the most common forms of MEMS.
- Electrostatic motors used where coils are difficult to fabricate
- Kelvin probe force microscope
- MEMS sensor generations
- MEMS thermal actuator, MEMS actuation created by thermal expansion
- Micro-opto-electromechanical systems (MOEMS), MEMS including optical elements
- Photoelectrowetting, MEMS optical actuation using photo-sensitive wetting
- Micropower, Hydrogen generators, gas turbines, and electrical generators made of etched silicon
- Millipede memory, a MEMS technology for non-volatile data storage of more than a terabit per square inch
- Nanoelectromechanical systems are similar to MEMS but smaller
- Scratch Drive Actuator, MEMS actuation using repeatedly applied voltage differences
- Waldner, Jean-Baptiste (2008). Nanocomputers and Swarm Intelligence. London: ISTE John Wiley & Sons. p. 205. ISBN 1-84821-009-4.
- James B. Angell; Stephen C. Terry; Phillip W. Barth (April 1983). "Silicon Micromechanical Devices". Scientific American. 248 (4): 44–55.
- Electromechanical monolithic resonator, US patent 3614677, Filed April 29, 1966; Issued October 1971
- Wilfinger, R.J.; Bardell, P.H.; Chhabra, D.S. (1968). "The Resonistor: A Frequency Selective Device Utilizing the Mechanical Resonance of a Silicon Substrate". IBM J. 12: 113–8. doi:10.1147/rd.121.0113.
- R. Ghodssi; P. Lin (2011). MEMS Materials and Processes Handbook. Berlin: Springer. ISBN 978-0-387-47316-1.
- T. Polster; M. Hoffmann (2009). "Aluminium nitride based 3D, piezoelectric, tactile sensors". Proc. Chem. 1: 144–7. doi:10.1016/j.proche.2009.07.036.
- M. Birkholz; K.-E. Ehwald; P. Kulse; J. Drews; M. Fröhlich; U. Haak; M. Kaynak; E. Matthus; K. Schulz; D. Wolansky (2011). "Ultrathin TiN membranes as a technology platform for CMOS-integrated MEMS and BioMEMS devices" (PDF). Adv. Func. Mat. 21 (9): 1652–1654. doi:10.1002/adfm.201002062.
- McCord, M. A.; M. J. Rooks (2000). "2". SPIE Handbook of Microlithography, Micromachining and Microfabrication.
- Marc J. Madou, Fundamentals of Microfabrication and Nanotechnology, Volume III: From MEMS to Bio-MEMS and Bio-NEMS: Manufacturing Techniques and Applications, p. 252, CRC Press, 2011 ISBN 1439895244.
- Williams, K.R.; Muller, R.S. (1996). "Etch rates for micromachining processing". Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems. 5 (4): 256. doi:10.1109/84.546406.
- Kovacs, G.T.A.; Maluf, N.I.; Petersen, K.E. (1998). "Bulk micromachining of silicon". Proceedings of the IEEE. 86 (8): 1536. doi:10.1109/5.704259.
- Chang, Floy I. (1995). "Gas-phase silicon micromachining with xenon difluoride". Gas-phase silicon micromachining with xenon difluoride. Microelectronic Structures and Microelectromechanical Devices for Optical Processing and Multimedia Applications. 2641. p. 117. doi:10.1117/12.220933.
- Chang, Floy I-Jung (1995). Xenon difluoride etching of silicon for MEMS (M.S.). Los Angeles: University of California. OCLC 34531873.
- Brazzle, J.D.; Dokmeci, M.R.; Mastrangelo, C.H. (2004). "Modeling and characterization of sacrificial polysilicon etching using vapor-phase xenon difluoride". 17th IEEE International Conference on Micro Electro Mechanical Systems. Maastricht MEMS 2004 Technical Digest. p. 737. doi:10.1109/MEMS.2004.1290690. ISBN 0-7803-8265-X.
- Laermer, F.; Urban, A. (2005). "Milestones in deep reactive ion etching". The 13th International Conference on Solid-State Sensors, Actuators and Microsystems, 2005. Digest of Technical Papers. TRANSDUCERS '05. 2. p. 1118. doi:10.1109/SENSOR.2005.1497272. ISBN 0-7803-8994-8.
- Bustillo, J. M.; Howe, R. T.; Muller, R. S. (August 1998). "Surface Micromachining for Microelectromechanical Systems" (PDF). Proceedings of the IEEE. 86 (8): 1552–1574. CiteSeerX . doi:10.1109/5.704260.
- Hosseinian, Ehsan; Pierron, Olivier N. (2013). "Quantitative in situ TEM tensile fatigue testing on nanocrystalline metallic ultrathin films". Nanoscale. 5 (24): 12532. doi:10.1039/C3NR04035F. PMID 24173603.
- Johnson, R. Collin (2007-07-09). There's more to MEMS than meets the iPhone, EE Times
- Cenk Acar; Andrei M. Shkel (2008). MEMS Vibratory Gyroscopes: Structural Approaches to Improve Robustness. pp. 111 ff. ISBN 0-387-09535-7.
- By Peter Clarke, EE Times Europe. “Smart MEMS microphones market emerges.” May 31, 2016. Retrieved June 1, 2016.
- Louizos, Louizos-Alexandros; Athanasopoulos, Panagiotis G.; Varty, Kevin (2012). "Microelectromechanical Systems and Nanotechnology. A Platform for the Next Stent Technological Era". Vasc Endovascular Surg. 46 (8): 605–609. doi:10.1177/1538574412462637. PMID 23047818.
- Hajati, Arman; Sang-Gook Kim (2011). "Ultra-wide bandwidth piezoelectric energy harvesting". Applied Physics Letters. 99 (8): 083105. doi:10.1063/1.3629551.
- Hajati, Arman (2012). "Three-dimensional micro electromechanical system piezoelectric ultrasound transducer". Applied Physics Letters. 101 (25): 253101. doi:10.1063/1.4772469.
- Hajati, Arman (2013). "Monolithic ultrasonic integrated circuits based on micromachined semi-ellipsoidal piezoelectric domes". Applied Physics Letters. 103 (20): 202906. doi:10.1063/1.4831988.
- Worldwide MEMS Systems Market Forecasted to Reach $72 Billion by 2011. Azonano.com (2007-07-17). Retrieved on 2015-10-05.
|Wikimedia Commons has media related to MEMS.| | <urn:uuid:27685490-baf0-4547-bb0b-cf5633ae906b> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microelectromechanical_systems | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281419.3/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00492-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.867304 | 6,787 | 3.640625 | 4 |
Perovskite Photovoltaics and LEDs
A collection of substrates, materials and processing equipment for the fabrication and measurement of perovskite solar cells and LEDs. Everything you need to get going quickly. For information and support please see our perovskite processing guide and video or please contact us.
Photovoltaic Substrate (8 Pixel) System Components
Substrates and associated deposition masks for fabricating perovskite photovoltaics (also useful for OLEDs and OPV).
Perovskite precursor inks to kick-start your perovskite photovoltaic research
Perovskite Precursor Ink (for Air Processing)
Now selling bulk orders of 30ml with a 25% discount over our standard order sizes. I101 perovskite Ink has been specially formulated in the Ossila laboratories to be deposited by spin-coating. Our I101 perovskite ink is designed for air processing in low humidity environments. Using a mixture of methyl ammonium iodide (MAI) and lead chloride (PbCl) dissolved in dimethyl formamide our I101...
Perovskite Precursor Ink (for Nitrogen Processing)
Now selling bulk orders of 30ml with a 25% discount over our standard order sizes. A formulation of methylammounium iodide (MAI), PbCl2 and PbI2 at a molar ratio of 1:1:4 (PbCl2:PbI2:MAI) in a DMF solvent. On processing, I201 ink can be used to create a CH3NH3PbI3-xClx perovskite film. The process recipe for I201 is optimised for glovebox processing under a...
High Performance Perovskite Precursor Ink (for Nitrogen Processing)
Coming soon, Ossila's newest perovskite ink, I301, is capable of reaching 16.6% power conversion efficiency! Designed to achieve the best performances, our new ink follows the latest work in literature to provide researchers with the materials to reach the highest power conversion efficiencies possible. I301 perovskite ink has been formulated in conjunction with research partners for obtaining the highest possible PCEs. Our I301...
Perovskite Precursor Materials
Precursor materials for forming perovskite thin films for photovoltaic and OLED purposes.
Formamidinium Bromide (FABr)
Formamidinium bromide (FABr), is used mainly as a perovskite precusor material for FAPbBr3 or a range of formamidinium lead bromide-iodide mixed halide perovskites (FAPbIyBr3-y). FAPbBr3 material, having an energy bandgap of 2.23 eV, makes it an ideal candidate for tandem solar cell applications as well. Grade Order Code Quantity Price 98% purity M562 5 g £88 98% purity M562 10...
Formamidinium Iodide (FAI)
Formamidinium lead iodide shows a narrower bandgap than the commonly used methylammonium lead iodide (1.48 eV compared to ~1.57 eV), and hence lies closer to that favourable for optimum solar conversion efficiencies. With an approach of FAPbI3 crystallisation by the direct intramolecular exchange of dimethylsulfoxide (DMSO) molecules intercalated in PbI2 with formamidinium iodide, device with performance over 20% has been fabricated. 98% purity M552...
Ossila has sourced some of the most pure lead (II) chloride (PbCl2) available in order to provide you with confidence in materials used in your research. Lead chloride is used as a precursor material in the fabrication of methyl ammonium lead iodide-chloride (MAPbI3-xClx) perovskites. Using high purity lead chloride eliminates the effects that unknown sources of impurities can have on your experimental results....
MAI (Methylammonium Iodide)
Methylammonium iodide (MAI) is a precursor for the synthesis of organic-inorganic hybrid perovskites for use in FETs, LEDs and PVs. Grade Order Code Quantity Price 98% purity M272 5 g £68 98% purity M272 10 g £113 98% purity M272 25 g £212 >99.9% purity M271 5 g £111 >99.9% purity M271 10 g £179 >99.9% purity M271 25 g...
Methylammonium bromide (MABr)
Methylammonium bromide (MABr) is a precursor for the synthesis of organic-inorganic hybrid perovskites for use in FETs, LEDs and PVs. Grade Order Code Quantity Price 98% purity M572 10 g £106.3 98% purity M572 25 g £202.9 >99.9% purity M571 5 g £85 >99.9% purity M571 10 g £149 >99.9% purity M571 25 g £268 Note: Looking for a bulk...
Perovskite Hole Interface Materials
Hole interface materials for extraction / injection into perovskite photovoltaics and LEDs
Spiro-OMeTAD (also called Spiro-MeOTAD)From £163
PFO (F8)From £125
NPB (NPD)From £69
PTAA (perovskite applications)From £199
CBP - 4,4′-Bis(N-carbazolyl)-1,1′-biphenylFrom £48
TPD - N,N′-Bis(3-methylphenyl)-N,N′-diphenylbenzidineFrom £50
PCE12 (PBDB-T)From £398.20
DPP-DTT (high mobility p-type polymer)From £198.60
Perovskite Electron Interface Materials
Interface materials to maximise electron extraction/injection from perovskite photovoltaics and OLEDs.
bis-PCBM (PC60BM Bisadduct)From £287.80
ICBA (Indene-C60 Bisadduct)From £508.40
PC70BM (also called C70-PCBM)From £109
DPPDPyBT (n-type)From £249
BCP - BathocuproineFrom £48
BPhen - BathophenanthrolineFrom £77
UV Ozone Cleaner
UV Ozone Cleaner Ossila's UV Ozone cleaning system is capable of removing contamination on the surface of samples, providing you with ultraclean surfaces within minutes. By using a high power UV light source ozone is generated which then breaks down surface contaminants into volatile compounds. These volatile compounds evaporate from the surface leaving no trace. This method can produce near-atomically clean...
The spin coater comes with one complimentary spin coater chuck. Please indicate which of our range of stock spin coater chucks you would like when placing your order. We can also provide you with custom-milled chucks to fit your own substrate system (custom chucks are £50 extra with the purchase of a spin coater). Please contact us to discuss options. Spin coating made easy: the Ossila...
X100 Source Measure Unit (Source Meter)
Xtralien X100 Product Description - Source Measure Unit The Xtralien X100 incorporates two source measure units (source-meters) and two precision voltage meters. It is capable of measuring a wide range of research devices including photovoltaics, LEDs and OLEDs, transistors and more.
Smart PV and OLED Board with Easy JV Sweep Software
This measurement system is designed to enable OLED and PV testing and characterisation via intuitive Easy JV Sweep software. Comprised of a main multiplexor board, an interchangeable and customisable substrate board, and control software, the system allows academics and researchers to conduct a number of measurements
Environmental and Encapsulation Chambers
Designed for long-term experiments, our Environmental & Encapsulation Chamber provides a hermetically-sealed environment suitable for outdoor lifetime testing, gas sensing and degradation studies.
Encapsulation Epoxy for Photovoltaics and OLEDs
A light-curable epoxy suitable for solar cell and LED encapsulation which sets at wavelengths of up to 600 nm and is safe for use with most organic materials.
A multi-purpose probe station, to simplify and speed up measurement. By using interchangeable probes, pre-aligned for a variety of substrate architectures, it becomes quicker and easier to measure: OFET & TFT mobility, Chremiresistor & chemiFET sensors, Sheet resistance and four point probe characterisation, Graphene and 2D characterisation (IV curves and field effect measurements).
A range of supplementary substrates for performing activities such as UV Vis absorption and photoluminescance measurements, ellipsometry, mobility and stability measurements and many more...
Ultra-flat Quartz Coated GlassFrom £72
Silicon Oxide Substrates and WafersFrom £349
ITO Glass Substrates (Unpatterned)From £99
Interdigitated ITO Substrates for OFET and SensingFrom £425
FTO Coated Glass (Unpatterned)From £126 | <urn:uuid:a43a3dd7-95c5-4aa2-b9e0-c6b561a293d7> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.ossila.com/pages/perovskite | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560283301.73/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095123-00511-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.833655 | 2,009 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Dynamic GPS tracking systems / 動態GPS跟踪系統
In today’s world, the majority of applications dealing with precision navigation
rely on the use of GPS, a system used for both civilian and military tasks.
However, when it comes to navigating densely-packed urban areas, indoor spaces
or places where satellite signals cannot protrude, GPS alone doesn’t do the
trick. The reason for this is that GPS is prone to errors due to the obstacles
that impair or block satellite reception. There are, of course, alternatives to
the GPS, such as the magnetometer or optical sensors, but each alternative comes
with its own lists of shortcomings.
The magnetometer, for example, requires unobstructed access to our planet’s
magnetic field and various equipment in industrial environments interferes with
it, hindering the reliability of a magnetometer. As for optical sensors, they
can be less reliable when faced with line-of-sight obstructions.
The MEMS accelerometer
MEMS accelerometers allow mobile
platforms to measure parameters that are related to their movement and position
in the real world, these measurements being known as ‘inertial measurements’. As
such, inertial navigation systems (INS) are used to complement radio-navigation
and GPS tools in areas where the latter are less reliable and improve their
accuracy under normal circumstances. By integrating the acceleration data
collected by the MEMS sensors, a GPS tracking system can calculate the position
and moving pattern of the mobile platform with increased precision.
The Colibrys solution
Our MS9000 accelerometer are the ideal choice for navigational applications,
given that they are GPS accelerometers developed for precision inertial systems
for land, sea and air uses. The MS9000 is a single-axis analog accelerometer
based on bulk micro-machined silicon elements and it features high bias
stability over temperature in harsh environments, ensuring long-term stability.
With a dynamic range of ±2g to ±10g, MS9000 accelerometer are part of the
exclusive group of MEMS used in EASA, FAA and DAL A certified systems. | <urn:uuid:5cfe0940-3e6a-4ae6-9987-a96491c3c7de> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | http://colibrys.bentech-taiwan.com/dynamic_gps_tracking_systems.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571056.58/warc/CC-MAIN-20220809155137-20220809185137-00674.warc.gz | en | 0.868728 | 479 | 2.875 | 3 |
Everywhere I go I find a poet has been there before me.
“Education is the passport to the future for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.”
“We read to know that we are not alone.”
You see, libraries is people. It’s not books.
People are waiting in there, thousands of people, who wrote the books. So it’s much more personal than just a book. So when you open a book, the person pops out and becomes you. You look at Charles Dickens, and you are Charles Dickens, and he is you. So you go in the library and you pull a book off the shelf, and you open it, and what are you looking for? A mirror. All of a sudden, a mirror is there and you see yourself, but your name is Charles Dickens. That’s what a library is. Or the book is Shakespeare, and so you become William Shakespeare or you become Emily Dickinson or Robert Frost or all the great poets. So you find the author who can lead you through the dark.
—NEA Big Read
‘Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in.’
“Words add to the senses. The words for the dazzle
Of mica, the dithering of grass,
The Arachne integument of dead trees,
Are the eye grown larger, more intense.”
— from “Variations on a Summer Day” by Wallace Stevens
“Mythmaking is the evolutionary enterprise of translating truths.”
-from When Women Were Birds
“Of course it is impossible to tell the truth. For example, how does one know it? I will not belabor the difficulty by telling you how hard I have tried. And if compulsion forces me to tell the truth, it may also lead me into error, or invention.”
“Important encounters are planned by the souls long before the bodies see each other.”
“The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.”
From The Critic as Artist | <urn:uuid:22a2d9cb-3ecb-4c7b-ba9a-3e1481ae7572> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://drunkenlibrary.com/type/quote/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572127.33/warc/CC-MAIN-20220815024523-20220815054523-00266.warc.gz | en | 0.949774 | 452 | 2.140625 | 2 |
A calcaneal spur or heel spur is a painful condition resulting from a growth of calcium deposits on the bottom of the heel. This pointed spur, in contact with the sensitive tissues of the plantar fascia muscle group, is the cause of heel pain and inflammation. This condition often is found in people with foot disorders who are middle aged or overweight and who also might be suffering from arthritis, neuritis, alkalosis and tendinitis. X rays can reveal the spur and the presence of tiny tumors at the ends of nerves that are causing the pain. Uncomfortable shoes can add to the pain. Heel pads, wraps, heat and especially stretching exercises will provide great relief until the condition, in many cases, subsides by itself. Apply a heating pad to the sole of the injured foot for five to 10 minutes just prior to doing the exercises. This will help soften the tissues and allow for less resistance to the stretching of the contracted muscles. During the seated exercise, if the heel is kept in contact with the floor during the exercise, the heel tendons will be stretched longer and will strengthen the muscle groups that hold the long arch in place. Men Nike Free Run 4.0 V2 Black University Red ,Men Nike Free 3.0 Soar Blue Pure Platinum Reflective Silver Nike Roshe Run Hyp Women Navy Dark Grey Men Nike Free 3.0 Soar Blue Pure Platinum Reflective Silver Women Free Run 3 Prism Blue Reflective Silver Pure Platinum Volt Women Nike Free Run 3 Wolf Grey Prism Blue Volt Men Nike Free Run 3.0 V4 Wolf Grey Reflect Silver Blue Glow Men Nike Free Run 3.0 V4 Black Gym Red Wolf Grey Women Nike Free Run 3 Light Bone Vivid Orange Men Nike Free Run 4.0 V2 Grey Gym Red JIM SLOTEK, QMI Agency I'm going to say it. I love movie trailers and always have. If I attend a screening and there are no Coming Attraction teasers, I'm disappointed. Those three little words of narration, "In a world"., give me goosebumps. I've heard the reasons most people have a mad on for trailers the primary one being the spoiler factor. I am not anal about spoilers, except in the rare Crying Game type situation. I don't consider plot details to be a spoiler. In fact, I'm one of those people who wants to be fairly warned what I'm in for. Methinks they actually want the extra time to sell more ads. If their hearts are pure, and they're really worried about how much time is being taken up on the screen ahead of the actual movie, the theatre owners might consider dropping some of the commercials they inflict on us. Yes, a trailer is an ad too. But in a theatre, I'd rather see an ad for a movie than for Nike or Coke or a cellphone service provider. It happens that I did a feature on trailers a few years ago, and toured some of the top production houses (they even have their own awards). The producers are filmmakers in their own right, talented and ingenious given what little they often have to work with (like, say, a dearth of soundtrack music, which is the last thing that gets added to a movie). But the thing is, I also "got" that their talent includes making bad films look good. The longer the trailer, though, the harder it is to keep up the fa I have saved a lot of money over the years after watching a lengthy trailer, reading between the lines as needed, and deciding, "Well, I've seen enough of that one to make an educated consumer decision." If the movie is ostensibly a comedy, and the trailer can't make you laugh once boom! That's $14 you can put to better use. A public service if ever there was one. The best trailers are fun and fast moving. They skip all the lulls. In Quentin Tarantino/Robert Rodriguez's Grindhouse, the made up trailers were the best part. Indeed, there've been whole movies made up of nothing but including the cheap but funny doc It Came From Hollywood, in which John Candy and Dan Aykroyd dissected the history of '50s B movies through their trailers. In fact, if you're going to complain about some part of the theatregoing experience being "too long," how about the movies themselves? Shaving 20 seconds off a trailer for Transformers 4 wouldn't make a difference in most of our lives. But shaving a half hour off the movie itself would free you up to do something worthwhile with your newfound time. LIZ BRAUN, QMI Agency Is there anyone who doesn't love movie trailers? Well, me, actually. And I suspect I'm not alone. Like Slotek, I used to love the mini movies that played at the beginning of the main attraction, but that romance ended about a decade ago with the trailers for two movies: Enough and What Lies Beneath. One of the best parts of working on the entertainment beat is the chance to see films without any preamble or preconceived notions. The less you know about most movies, the better, but for the majority of viewers that's almost impossible, now that the Internet has made everybody a critic. It has always been a rare privilege to see a movie before anyone has even hinted about what it involves, because then every twist and turn is fresh, new, unanticipated. Plot details are spoilers, to some extent. It's better to know less, not more, up front. Statistically, alas, the majority of people do want to know, and that's why trailers are as detailed as they are. Most people want the known quantity. They won't go to a movie unless it's familiar in some way, which may explain why every putrid romantic comedy is exactly like the last putrid romantic comedy. Trailers and TV ads fill in those elusive consumer gaps. Trailer oversharing is a symptom of the movie times. This is, after all, an industry that will change the ending of a movie if a test screening audience deems it should be so. That a test screening for Gone with the Wind would likely have forced a happy ending on the movie is probably another story. Slotek apparently lives in some parallel universe where bad comedies are easily spotted in advance by their not funny trailer. When did that ever happen? Unless the trailer involves Will Ferrell the only 100% sure sign of non funny you can be fooled by movie trailers over and over again. Those of us willing to take on the willing suspension of disbelief in a heartbeat are constantly having our hopes dashed between the expectations of a dazzling trailer and the reality of the dull film it (mis)represents. You need only revisit the trailer for the new Great Gatsby to be reminded of the heartbreak available in a great trailer " that's shilling for a lacklustre movie. JIM SLOTEK, QMI Agency I'm going to say it. I love movie trailers and always have. If I attend a screening and there are no Coming Attraction teasers, I'm disappointed. Those three little words of narration, "In a world"., give me goosebumps. I've heard the reasons most people have a mad on for trailers the primary one being the spoiler factor. I am not anal about spoilers, except in the rare Crying Game type situation. I don't consider plot details to be a spoiler. In fact, I'm one of those people who wants to be fairly warned what I'm in for. Men Nike Free Run 4.0 V2 Black University Red,Mark Twain once famously said that "A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes." In that spirit, here's another attempt to give the truth a head start by violently tackling the sprinting bullshit smearing your news feed . starting with the fact that Mark Twain never said that quote. And because easily avoidable fake articles never rest (and neither do we), we've opted to supersize your dubious news intake. Enjoy! (Or maybe despair for the state of the media for a while, and then enjoy.) Holy fuck on toast! According to CBS, Gawker, the Wire, Gothamist, the Independent, and the rest of the Internet, a new study of over 16,000 people found that those who took naps would die sooner than those who didn't, because they "can cause an inflammation in the body." All those pro nap studies were actually lies by the corporate pro sleep mask media machine. But buried in all those articles, usually at the bottom, is a mention that maybe the naps aren't the silent killer here, but a symptom of some disease otherwise known as the real point of the study. 6. China Isn't Selling Canned Air Due to Rising Smog Levels Thanks to smog, China is basically a big sauna of farts. And not unlike a putrid hotbox, some outlets have chosen to contain their coverage of it in a ridiculously obtuse shroud: Clearly dick lightsabers can't be far behind. That would be the Daily Mail using their precious Internet space to tell us about China's idea to sell bottled fresh air in order to "address its dangerous smog levels." In fact, such is the demand for that sweet, sweet O2 in China that one businessman already "sold 10 million cans in just 10 days" last year. As the depressingly popular Alex Jones remarked when spreading this story, "You really cannot make this stuff up." Well, yes, you can, because it's mostly crap. The article makes it sound like China's president personally commissioned the bottled air to fight smog. In reality, he was just joking, because of course he was, and he never mentioned China's smog problem; he was talking about ways to promote the clean aired Guizhou Province, the same way New York City once promoted its tap water with the exact same stunt. Guizhou tourism officials did take the joke seriously and announced plans to sell canned air . as novelty souvenirs, not a solution to an environmental crisis. As for the businessman who sold millions of cans of fresh air in 2013, yes, that's accurate if you replace "sold" with "produced," "millions" with "thousands," and "fresh air" with "the fetid air from his soda factory." Basically, it was the equivalent of Mars shipping off a bunch of empty M packets as a publicity stunt. "All cans are just harmless old Chinese lead." 5. No, Ukraine Isn't Ordering Jews to Register Most of what America knows about Ukrainian culture ranges somewhere between a Facebook meme post and that Nicolas Cage film where he snorts gunpowder. That said, we surely know a call to arms when we see one: "Everyone gets a nice gold star sticker for participating!" Fuuuuck that. As reported by the Washington Post, the Daily News, and USA Today, Ukraine has gone so darkly retro that it's akin to a "chilling echo of the Holocaust" did we learn nothing from Holocaust movies like Schindler's List and Toy Story 3? You know how it goes: First they tell Jewish people to register, then they start rounding them up in camps, and the next thing you know, we're knee deep in World War II 2: Putin the Habit. But wait, don't oil up your Anti Mecha Hitler chain guns just yet. What the news so tactfully declares is a forced registration is actually a bunch of leaflets anonymously passed around in eastern Ukraine that have since been declared a hoax a fact that probably should have been caught before, since the "governor's order" was full of errors like using the wrong title for the supposed governor and not including his freaking signature. The Coordination Forum for Countering Antisemitism Pretty sure they got that logo from Pink Floyd's The Wall. It turns out that you just can't trust random pieces of paper handed to you on the street anymore. 4. Pretty Much Every Random Photo the News Reports On Is Fake We're not sure why, but at some point in 2013 society collectively succumbed to the idea that an unsourced Imgur photograph caption was not only newsworthy, but undoubtedly so at that. The fact that some sites are giving a play by play recap of a Reddit post about a fence and marking it as "news" is alarming enough, but it gets worse recently the Independent covered the story of a Reddit user discovering an underground safe in his home and cracking it open to find "someone's ashes" and a dog leash. He was unable to open the Ziploc bag, though. While the Independent was happy to leave this as an open ended mystery, a more serious journalistic institution called "some random dude on the Internet" pointed out that the leash looked suspiciously similar to the one found in an earlier, unrelated photo by the original poster . "Holy shit! He turned his dog into a box!"meaning the whole thing was a hoax, because that's what happens when your news source is listed as "CraigNoList." This is all stupid and harmless until we enter the egregious genre of service workers faking the prejudice of strangers for money and easy media attention the most notorious being the waitress who forged an anti gay note on a customer's receipt, and more recently a college student who reported racist slurs on her dorm door .
Save You Up To 49 Men Nike Free Run 4.0 V2 Black University Red,Women Nike Free Run 3 Total Orange Silver Platinum Volt jump to contentmy subreddits limit my search to /r/explainlikeimfiveuse the following search parameters to narrow your results:see the search faq for details. CSS IN ELI5 ADDS MANY FEATURES! There are many features, both form and function, that are embedded in ELI5 CSS. Disabling CSS will not allow you to circumvent locked threads or enable any hidden functionalities. The CSS implemented exclusively adds functionality and extra features. If there is something wrong with the CSS that you would like us to fix, let us know, please! We may be able to help. Thanks! If you unable to change CSS on your browser, we're sorry for this intrusive message! Read the rules before commenting or submitting. Search before submitting with keywords from your topic. The search box is in the upper right corner of the subreddit. Please be neutral in your explanations, and note your personal bias in controversial topics. Direct replies to the original post (aka "top level comments") are for serious responses only. Jokes, anecdotes, and low effort explanations, are not permitted and subject to removal. Don post just to express an opinion or argue a point of view. After receiving an adequate explanation, OP should mark the post Explained. Explained posts are still open to discussion! ELI5 isn a guessing game; if you aren confident in your explanation, please don speculate. If your running down the street people will notice you if your wearing really bright/weird colored shoes and you b less likely to get hit/ran over/ and utterly demolished by a passing car. And people will also take notice you if on a trail. In the snow he shoes stand out, And in the mud the bright colors stand out. As a runner I can say this comes in very handy as I have come close to being flatted by a car a few times and the only thing they saw was shoes(cuz I thought it was smart to wear all black at night)I typically run at night or early in the morning. Wen it rly rly dark. There not much of a side walk and bike lanes don exist on my side of town(a more run down side, very near the projects) and the cars can c u for shit unless u hav reflective gear on that make u look like a light show. On top of this it lets ppl no ur not running from cops, and that ur safe cuz someone will c U flailing ur arms tryin to fight Somone and will attract much attention. (Remember the project are very close and crime rate is high). Men Nike Free Run 4.0 V2 Black University Red Few births involve as much labour as that of the International Space Station (ISS). After 34 shuttle flights, 24 Soyuz missions, 43 visits by unmanned capsules, and well over US$100 billion invested by the United States, Russia, Japan, Canada and Europe, the station is now nearing completion. The final bits of hardware, including the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, a long delayed cosmic ray experiment, will arrive as early as February 2011, on the last space shuttle flight currently budgeted for. Now, decades after the station was first proposed and more than a dozen years after construction began, NASA must find a way to make its part of the effort by far the largest worthwhile. The International Space Station's three main laboratory modules seen from the space shuttle Atlantis. Congress declared the US share a national laboratory in 2005, thereby opening it up to public and private research. The upcoming meeting is meant to draw in prospective partners for the venture. "The ISS is a completely unique asset," says Jeanne DiFrancesco, a principal at ProOrbis, a management consultancy based in Malvern, Pennsylvania, which was hired by NASA to create a 'reference model' for the administration of the lab. "Managed well, it could facilitate the development of new categories of research." Getting it together For much of its long assembly phase, the ISS has been an active science facility. A 2009 NASA report lists more than 100 experiments on the station between 2000 and 2008, in technology development, physical and materials sciences, biological sciences, Earth observation and human research, including ways to counter the effects of 'low g ' on the body. Today the United States' share of the ISS includes the Destiny pressurized lab as well as access to the Japanese built Kibo and European built Columbus modules. In addition to the microgravity environment, the ISS offers exposure to the vacuum of space, to radiation, atomic oxygen and extremes of temperature. The station's exterior is studded with sites for the attachment of instruments that can observe Earth or space. They provide anywhere from 100 to 300 possible experiment locations, says Mark Uhran, NASA's assistant associate administrator for the ISS. But while interviewing researchers about the potential of the ISS, DiFrancesco says that she encountered some scepticism about whether the station could serve the scientific community in a meaningful way. To counter such criticism, she says, any new organization that manages science on the station must begin with a concentrated outreach campaign that demonstrates a clear commitment to the research community's needs, interests and concerns. According to the reference model, it would smooth the road for scientists and also foster an impartial approach to choosing what science ends up in space. The idea of creating such an organization was floated in the 2009 Augustine report, a critical review of the US human space flight programme commissioned by President Barack Obama. The ProOrbis reference model, which was publicly presented on 16 November at a meeting of the American Astronautical Society in Cape Canaveral, Florida, reaches the same conclusion: an independent entity is needed to act as a buffer between NASA's operations managers and the broader community that could put the ISS to use. Its role might resemble that of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Mary land, which helps to oversee research on Hubble and other space telescopes. Among its responsibilities would be building an awareness of the research possibilities on the station, matching prospective projects with funding and helping primary investigators to navigate the space agency's bureaucracy, says DiFrancesco. But unlike the basic research done on the Hubble telescope, ISS projects could come from many sectors, including other government agencies, public universities, pharmaceutical companies, private labs and chemical and materials manufacturing firms, she adds. "The ultimate hope is that something new will be discovered in the microgravity environment aboard the ISS that can lead to useful insights on the ground," says Uhran. In theory, such a possibility has been open to US researchers for years, but a completed ISS with a six person crew can support longer term studies that require more care and attention than would have been practical in the past. This increased scope is "amazing" says Jeanne Becker, chief science officer at the biotechnology company Astrogenetix in Austin, Texas, and a faculty member at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. Becker has already cultivated tumour cells in rotating bioreactors aboard the ISS to investigate changes in the cells' growth and functioning. If set up properly, management of research on the ISS by a private non profit entity could make the process of selecting experiments more transparently based on genuine applicability to life on Earth, says Jeff Jonas, senior vice president of research and development at Shire Pharmaceuticals in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. "It would open up the station to the marketplace of ideas," he says, adding that having more researchers and companies involved could create competition for better experiments. Bad vibes NASA has started making moves in this direction. Earlier this year, the agency opened the ISS to biological research funded by the National Institutes of Health, which awarded the first round of grants in September. With an independent body overseeing research, the ISS could also host experiments from other agencies, such as the US Forest Service, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the US Geological Survey, says Erika Wagner, an aerospace biomedical engineer and executive director of the X Prize Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. month that the station is not being fully used by researchers, it loses value. Among these are concerns over the quality of the research environment aboard the ISS. For example, vibrations on the station (known as g jitter) caused by machinery and human movement can affect some experiments. NASA has installed a special rack for the most sensitive experiments that actively counteracts vibrations, and provided damping material for other research, says Uhran. A more fundamental obstacle is the question of how to access the ISS in a cost effective way. In November 2009, the US Government Accountability Office released a report identifying the high cost of launching a payload as one of the biggest challenges the lab faces. Although the nascent commercial space flight industry is expected eventually to make the ISS more accessible, it will be years before commercial transport can fully meet researchers' needs (see 'After the shuttle'). Yet, as DiFrancesco's model points out, every month that the station is not being fully used by researchers, it loses value. Once a non profit organization is established, NASA expects to begin research and development, but it will take a few years before the enterprise is running at full throttle, says Uhran. In the meantime, the agency and its international partners are continuing research into human exploration in space. In October, the European Space Agency (ESA) issued a call for proposals in technology and biomedical research that would help to prepare for the next steps of human exploration beyond low Earth orbit, says Martin Zell, ESA's head of research operations in human space flight, microgravity and exploration. Ultimately, to take advantage of what the ISS offers, it will be crucial to get the science management right, says Alan Stern, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas, and NASA's former associate administrator for science. "Like a baby, the ISS has lots of potential," he says. "NASA is working to turn that potential into a great outcome for the ISS."
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Areca leaf plates have other special additional values after being used. The disposable plates act as a great source of organic manure. The plates can also be used as a good fertilizer which also enhances plant growth. Areca rectangle shaped eco palm leaf plates also serve as a very good source of animal fodder.
As per the customer requirements we design and develop the Areca plates in large scale. According to the ideas of the customer our team implements the design ideas that assure total user satisfaction. Our company believes in the policy of ”Customer is the King” by ensuring the finest quality of making and finishing process.
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Robert Noyce Scholarship
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied. -- Robert Noyce
Licensure Majors in Chemistry, Physics, Biology, and Mathematics:
The National Science Foundation has awarded USM a $500,000 grant for scholarships to majors in the licensure programs for future teachers of science and mathematics. This program is in honor of the late Dr. Robert M. Noyce, inventor of the integrated chip. The Robert Noyce Scholarship program at USM seeks to increase the quantity and quality of secondary science and mathematics teachers in "high needs schools" that were affected by Hurricane Katrina. Scholarships of $10,000/year will be divided by academic year.
Every effort will be made to distribute the scholarships equitably among the licensure programs; however, extra attention will be paid to candidates who meet the criteria of underrepresented groups and to licensure areas of low enrollment. For an application form, click below.
Completed applications (pdf) should be mailed to:
Dr. Deborah Booth
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
The University of Southern Mississippi
118 College Drive #5043
Hattiesburg, MS 39406
Applications should include:
- Completed Application Form (pdf)
- Completed Recommender Forms (pdf)(2 are required)
- Philosophy of Education EssayA 400-600 word essay describing your philosophy of teaching and experiences relating to teaching practice.
- List of Community Involvement Activities
- Current Transcripts
- U.S. Citizen or permanent resident
- USM junior or senior enrolled full time in one of the licensure programs in science or mathematics.
- Minimum Grade Point Average of 3.0 with no grades below a C in Math and Science
- Admission to the Professional Education Program at USM which includes
- Completion of the 44 hour general core
- Score of 21 or high on ACT with no sub scale score below 18 (SAT 860 verbal and quantitative)
- Obtain acceptable Praxis I scores (Reading 170, Writing 172, Mathematics 169)
- Demonstrate basic technology literacy by taking the Basic Technology Literacy Test
- Maintain good academic standing in their licensure program
- Additional Criteria are
- Financial need,
- Part of an underrepresented group
- Evidence of prior community service activities.
- As Noyce scholarship recipient you will be required to:
- Be a full time student enrolled in one of the licensure programs for chemistry, biology, physics, or mathematics.
- Participate in a community service activity. This activity is of your choice such as volunteering as a tutor/mentor on campus or in a school district.
- Participate in the New Teacher Support Network. This program will begin as a series of social gatherings with guest speakers. Speakers will include current teachers and administrators addressing topics of interest to beginning teachers.
- Maintain a minimum GPA of 3.0 and remain in good standing in your licensure program.
- Teach for 2 years for each year of scholarship received in a "high needs school"
- Service must be performed within 6 years after graduation from the program for which the scholarship was received.
- A "High Needs School" is defined by the National Science Foundation as a district that meet one or more of the following criteria:
- A school in which 50% or more of the enrolled students are eligible for participation in the free and reduced price lunch program established by the Richard B. Russell National School Lunch Act (42 U.S.C. 1751 et seq).
- A district has at least one school in which:
- More than 34 percent of the academic classroom teachers at the secondary level (across all academic subjects) do not have an undergraduate degree with a major or minor in, or a graduate degree in, the academic field in which they teach the largest percentage of their classes; or
- More than 34 percent of the teachers in two of the academic departments do not have an undergraduate degree with a major or minor in, or a graduate degree in, the academic field in which they teach the largest percentage of their classes.
- At least one school whose teacher attrition rate has been 15 percent or more over the last three school years.
*** Most School Districts in Mississippi fit at least one of these definitions! ***
USM Robert Noyce Scholarship Program | <urn:uuid:a0e7dd28-3804-49a1-ace0-86b82b399811> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.usm.edu/chemistry-biochemistry/robert-noyce-scholarship | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281162.88/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00531-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933819 | 900 | 1.65625 | 2 |
When it comes to a Muslim woman, she covers her body as much as possible and her head that you cannot see her hair and head. They try to cover up the large part of their body. If you see a Muslim woman in U.S or Africa, you may perceive that women there are wearing casual clothing with headscarves. Some women wear more covering and traditional outfits while some prefer casual trousers and full-sleeves top that also cover her body from the top to the toe. In the rural areas of Arab or other Muslim countries, the picture will be different a little bit. The women there wear Abayas-type clothing that is a typical traditional type of Muslim clothing. They wear burqa or hijab to cover their face, head, and chest portion. Some countries have very strict rules about dressing. Especially, women should not wear men’s dresses. They should keep their hair long and they are not allowed to show their hair and other body parts such as legs and hands except the man she has married. Hence, the Muslim fashion or dressing habit depends on the place where she lives and what she feels comfortable with.
Hijab is not only a head covering but it is a pride of a Muslim woman. In the Islamic culture, a hijab is worn to protect a woman from the evil-eye of the society. It is for her safety and respect. You can easily recognize a woman from the Islamic religion when you see she is covered up totally from the head to the toe. Even kids and teenagers are used to wear hijabs that they can hide their beauty from the public. In some places, men also use hijabs.
Usually, a hijab consists of a square piece of cloth that is called the inner scarf. It covers the hair and helps the outer part to stay properly over the head. There is a typical wearing manner to wear hijabs. You have pins to adjust the fitting. There are a variety of types when you choose hijabs. It depends on how comfortable you are with a particular type. From the jersey hijab to the sophisticated Al-Amira hijabs, you have plenty of options to choose from.
When you want to buy hijab you have many options. First, you can choose a store that offers Islamic clothing only. However, it is quite a tough task to find such a shop in your area. You may ask your neighbors or friends.
The next option is you can make a hijab at your own. You have the freedom to choose the color, pattern, and fabric what you like or what you are comfortable with. Also, you can stitch a big-sized hijab if you prefer. But in this busy time, it is quite a tough task to find time for stitching own clothing. Also, stitching error can make the entire look funky.
Finally, you have a great option to purchase Islamic clothing for men, women, and kids online. It’s the easiest, fastest, and most relevant way of purchasing Islamic clothing including hijabs. You have a vast item gallery to choose from. But you must do researches to judge the online store. Check the website carefully and then place your order.
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Join Date: Oct 2011
Location: Magnetic Hill, New-Brunswick
I think you have a lot of borderline problems causing this DTC to set. Idle speed too low, weak or older battery, dirty throttle body,throttle up signal from "BCM" and possibly your ECM control voltage for cylinder 4. Check battery voltage with engine off, a good battery will read between 12.3 and 12.8, then measure voltage at idle speed after warm-up it should read 14.3 approx.
If changing the plugs and coils did nothing then it must be voltage related and the weakess link is first to set a code ( in this case cylinder 4 )
DTC P0304: Cylinder 4 Misfire Detected
The engine control module (ECM) uses information from the crankshaft position (CKP) sensor in order to determine when an engine misfire is occurring and uses information from the camshaft position (CMP) sensor in order to determine which cylinder is misfiring. By monitoring variations in the crankshaft rotation speed for each cylinder, the ECM is able to detect individual misfire events. If the ECM detects a misfire rate sufficient to cause emission levels to exceed mandated standards, DTC P0300 sets. Under certain driving conditions, a misfire rate can be high enough to cause the 3-way catalytic converter (TWC) to overheat, possibly damaging the converter. The malfunction indicator lamp (MIL) will flash ON and OFF when converter overheating, damaging conditions are present and DTC P0300 is set. DTCs P0304 correspond to cylinders 4. If the ECM is able to determine that a specific cylinder is misfiring, the DTC for that cylinder will set.
Conditions for Running the DTC
• DTCs P0121, P0122, P0123, P0221, P0222, P0223, P0335, P0336, or P0338 are not set.
• The engine speed is between 420-7,000 RPM.
• The engine coolant temperature (ECT) is greater than -30°C (-22°F).
• The fuel level is more than 11 percent.
• The ECM is not in fuel shut-off or decel fuel cut-off mode.
• The ECT is less than 47°C (117°F).
• DTCs, P0304 run continuously when the above conditions are met.
Never drive faster than your guardian angel can fly
Last edited by Coby7; 04-05-2013 at 05:42 AM. | <urn:uuid:fc9ac5a5-7a05-45dd-ad0e-8a7f2a3df554> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.yourcobalt.com/forums/problems-service/31884-p0304-misfire-code.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279368.44/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00321-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.868972 | 554 | 1.890625 | 2 |
The Generic House Ballot and Committed Views on Clinton
Several September polls show Republicans with more support than Democrats among likely voters in House races nationwide. But Pew Research Center trend studies find no clear evidence that the White House sex scandal has Democratic voters any more dispirited about voting this fall than they were earlier in the year or in 1994, the last mid-term election.
At a time of low interest in the off-year elections and uncertainty about the consequences of likely impeachment hearings, four of five recent national polls found a GOP lead in voting intentions for the House of Representatives. Only Gallup found more support for Democratic candidates than Republicans in September. In the other national polls, the Republican lead varied from 3 percentage points (Pew Research Center and ABC News/Washington Post) to 12 percentage points (CBS News/New York Times).
Republicans typically turn out to vote at higher rates than do Democrats, and the Republican advantage in each of these polls emerges when the sample is narrowed to a base of likely voters. But there is no evidence to suggest that the GOP has a bigger edge based on turnout than it had in 1994, and no evidence to suggest that Democrats are any less likely to vote than they were before the Starr report was released.
Although Pew’s trend studies suggest that turnout will be relatively low this year,1 the differential between the likelihood of Democrats and Republicans going to the polls is no greater than it was in 1994. In October 1994, Republicans outranked Democrats as likely voters by 10 percentage points. In September of this year, the difference is 8 percentage points.
The polls this year have found some fluctuation in voter preferences. At various times, both the Gallup and Pew surveys have shown larger Democratic leads than the most recent polls in voting intentions among registered voters. The lower numbers now may reflect the softening of President Clinton’s approval ratings, which are closely tied to congressional vote preferences.
Historically, the generic measure of partisan support has proven predictive of the popular vote, even in years like this when the number of open House seats (33) is low. For example, Gallup pre-election generic results in 1990 (29 open seats) and 1966 (24) mirrored the popular vote.2
Certain on Scandal
Americans have shown a great deal of conviction on the bottom line questions about the Clinton-Lewinsky affair. The public’s commitment to its point of view is reflected in three independent patterns in national opinion surveys:
- Various polling organizations use slightly different questions, yet get remarkably similar results.
- Responses to different questions within the same survey show most people are consistent in their thinking about what should happen to Clinton.
- When people are asked if they ever consider changing their views in order to end the controversy, most say no.
Three national surveys conducted the week of September 21, following the release of Clinton’s videotaped testimony, found remarkably similar divisions over whether Clinton should be impeached and removed from office. Although the question wording was slightly different in each poll, the results differed by less than 3 percentage points, showing just less than one third of Americans favoring impeachment and two-thirds opposed.
Questions on whether Clinton should resign also produced similar results across a number of survey organizations, again despite small variations in the way these questions were phrased. As many as seven national polls conducted in September found a majority of Americans saying Clinton should not resign from office. Most surveys found between 61% and 69% against resignation.
A September 17-18 Newsweek poll found the public far more narrowly divided: 46% said yes, 50% said no. However, the question wording differed substantially from other national surveys. The Newsweek question asked if Clinton should “consider” resigning over the Monica Lewinsky scandal, given “what he did to keep it secret.”
Not only is public opinion consistent across polling organizations, but the answers given to different scandal-related questions within the same survey also show that most people are consistently for or against Clinton. Three questions in a September 19-22 Pew Research Center poll asked respondents whether Clinton should resign and whether he should be impeached and removed from office under two possible conditions — if he lied under oath, and if he encouraged Monica Lewinsky to lie in her testimony.
Most respondents took consistent positions on all three questions: 44% of Americans said that Clinton should not resign and that they opposed impeachment under both circumstances; another 24% said Clinton should resign and consistently favored impeachment; just 31% offered mixed views on the questions. Democrats show striking consistency in their support of Clinton, with nearly two-thirds opposing impeachment and resignation. Republicans are divided, with only a slim plurality favoring both impeachment and resignation and an almost equal number holding mixed views.
No After Thoughts
Regardless of whether Americans think Clinton should resign or remain in office, those on both sides of the question have few doubts about their points of view. Among the 69% who think Clinton should stay in office, just 19% say they sometimes think it would be better if he resigned in order to end the controversy, while 80% do not. Similarly, among the 26% who think Clinton should resign, just 26% say they sometimes think it would be better for Congress to drop the whole matter, while the remaining 72% do not. | <urn:uuid:31f2027c-6490-4c41-b2e3-c6145d05aee5> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.people-press.org/1998/10/07/the-generic-house-ballot-and-committed-views-on-clinton/?src=rss_1998-election | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280310.48/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00190-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961661 | 1,077 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Posts Tagged ‘San Diego Gas & Electric Co.’
We are daily growing more and more in need of street lights. We should like very much to see San Diego lighted by electricity, and we believe that the public are quite willing to pay any reasonable expense of that system. But, light of some kind we must have, and very soon . . . –San Diego Union, July 1, 1885.
The solution, San Diegans decided, was the “Arc Lamp,” clusters of arcing electricity in lamps arranged atop 125-foot steel towers that cast a “twilight glow” over downtown streets.
The story of Lighting the City.
There was a time in America when the standard for personal cleanliness was a weekly bath. The “great unwashed” often found that Saturday night soak in commercial bathhouses. During San Diego’s population “boom of the eighties,” nearly a dozen bathhouses dotted the city’s waterfront. A decade later the baths had become elaborate plunges and included an architectural wonder: Los Banos at Broadway and Kettner Blvd.
The story of the San Diego Baths. | <urn:uuid:56343dc9-e8f7-4cd5-9988-d7548d6980f3> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.sandiegoyesterday.com/?tag=san-diego-gas-electric-co | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279224.13/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00484-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959243 | 247 | 2.125 | 2 |
(OPRAH.com) -- Your sweetheart calls you by another's name. His eyes linger too long on your best friend. He talks with excitement about a girl at work. And the fire catches.
Jealousy has a long and sometimes positive history for humankind.
Jealousy -- that sickening combination of possessiveness, suspicion, rage, and humiliation -- can overtake your mind and threaten your very core as you contemplate your rival.
The green-eyed monster, as Shakespeare called it, can camp in your head at any time during a relationship: when you are madly in love, when you are snugly attached, even when you dislike your partner.
Neither gender is routinely more jealous -- although women are more willing to work to win back a lover, while men tend to flaunt their money and status and are more likely to walk out to protect their self-esteem or save face.
Jealousy bedevils other creatures, too.
Primatologist Jane Goodall describes Passion, a female chimp who was tipping her buttocks toward a young male in the classic (for chimps) "come hither" pose when he ignored her and began to court another. Passion slapped him -- hard.
Bluebirds are also jealous. In one experiment involving a breeding pair, evolutionary biologist David Barash waited until the cock was away, and then placed a stuffed male on a branch about three feet from the nest, where the female rested. When the cock returned, he began to squawk, hover, and snap his bill in fury at the dummy. Then he attacked his mate, pulling feathers from her wing. She fled. Oprah.com: Could a man drive you crazy?
Why do we feel jealousy? Therapists often regard the demon as a scar of childhood trauma or a symptom of a psychological problem. And it's true that people who feel inadequate, insecure, or overly dependent tend to be more jealous than others.
But the "monster" actually evolved for positive reasons. Throughout our primordial past it discouraged desertion by a mate, bolstering the family unit and enabling the survival of the young. At the same time, it has pushed us to abandon philanderers -- and many a futile match -- in favor of more stable and rewarding partnerships.
Jealousy can even be good for love. One partner may feel secretly flattered when the other is mildly jealous. And catching someone flirting with your beloved can spark the kind of lust and romance that reignites a relationship.
But jealousy can go seriously awry. Some people, for no apparent reason, become consumed by it, undermining their self-esteem, and even driving their partner into another's arms -- the very outcome they had feared. In the worst cases, they become violent. (Jealousy is indeed a leading cause of spousal homicide worldwide.)
So what can you do if jealousy is making you miserable?
First, figure out whether he's actually cheating. If he is, you have a different problem: what to do about your relationship.
But if you find yourself snooping through your lover's pockets, or reading his e-mails on the sly, stop. This is demeaning to you. Explain that you are working to control your suspicion but would like him to help you by not provoking it.
And if you can't stop spying or obsessing (and many of us can't), it's time to consult a mental health professional. Ultimately, though, you may never feel emotionally secure with a flirtatious mate -- in which case you might consider some wisdom from Zen philosophy: The way out is through the door. Oprah.com: How to find and keep the love of your life
By Helen Fisher, Ph.D. from O, The Oprah Magazine © 2009
Subscribe to O, The Oprah Magazine for up to 75% off the newsstand price. That's like getting 18 issues FREE. Subscribe now!
TM & © 2009 Harpo Productions, Inc. All Rights Reserved. | <urn:uuid:2275e801-5e68-4647-a4ba-dd5e7b14c6d2> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/personal/08/20/o.jealousy.the.monster/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280718.7/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00410-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953067 | 822 | 2.09375 | 2 |
- Calculation Tools
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Pilot a New SWOT Tool for Sustainability
As corporate leaders track and set more ambitious targets for reducing GHG emissions—and take a broader look at Scope 3 emissions—many are looking for a way to find new opportunities to collaborate (internally and externally). Starting this month, WRI is inviting companies to road test a new collaboration tool developed as part of the Next Practice Collaborative.
The tool borrows the familiar framework of a SWOT analysis, but is tailored to help individuals engage colleagues and show decision makers new options for action and innovation. It helps highlight environmental challenges like climate change and GHG emissions in the context of other big changes that create important future risks or business growth areas. The tool is designed to help companies act on other analyses and information (e.g., GHG Protocol Scope 3 assessments) and forward-looking reports (e.g., WBCSD’s Vision 2050).
Road testers from across multiple sectors will be applying the tool to current strategic interest areas, such as new business models, products/services, supplier and customer engagement options, and environmental performance goals. They will get access to a draft guide with nine critical questions and an online toolkit with helpful examples, PowerPoint slides, and other resources. They will also be recognized as contributors to the final WRI guide and have the opportunity to hear insights and experiences from other road testers.
Contact Eliot Metzger (email@example.com) for additional details.
Photo credit: Flickr/okeefew | <urn:uuid:ac0f9d21-6807-4bd4-9bb7-45aeef226ddd> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.ghgprotocol.org/feature/pilot-new-swot-tool-sustainability | 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 | 0.901121 | 323 | 1.71875 | 2 |
Learning Relative Pitch and Perfect Pitch (Sight Singing)
Relative pitch is the ability to identify a note, given a reference. Perfect pitch (also called absolute pitch) is the ability to identify a note without being given a reference note. How good you are is determined by how accurately you can reproduce a pitch, how quickly you can identify a note, and how many notes you can identify when they are played simultaneously. People with good perfect pitch will instantly (within 3 seconds)identify 10 notes played simultaneously as a chord. The standard test for absolute pitch uses 2 pianos; the teacher sits at one and the student at the other, and the student tries to repeat the note played by the teacher. If there is only one piano, the student names the note played by the teacher (do, re, mi . . . . or C, D, E, . . ..). In the following exercises you can use either system; there is no real advantage of using one over the other. However, once you choose one system, don't use the other one until you have acquired a strong perfect pitch because the use of two systems can add unnecessary confusion and slow down your learning. I use the doremi system because the alphabet system is used in so many other places that the doremi system is less confusion. Nobody is born with relative or perfect pitch; these are learned skills. This is because the chromatic scale is a human invention - there is no physical relationship between the pitches of the chromatic scale and nature. The only physical relationship between the chromatic scale and the ear is that both operate on a logarithmic scale in order to accommodate a large frequency range. The effect of the logarithmic human hearing is that the ear hears a large difference in pitch between 40 and 42.4 Hz (a semitone or 100 cents), but hears almost no difference between 2000Hz and 2002.4 Hz (about 2 cents), for the same difference of 2.4 Hz. The human ear responds to all frequencies within its range and is not calibrated on an absolute scale at birth. This is in contrast to the eye, which responds to color on an absolute scale (everyone sees red as red) because color detection is achieved using chemical reactions that respond to specific wavelengths of light. Some people who can identify certain pitches with specific colors can acquire perfect pitch by the color that the sound evokes. They are effectively calibrating the ear to an absolute reference.
Perfect and relative pitch are best learned in very early youth. Babies who cannot understand a single word will respond appropriately to a soothing voice or a lullaby or an angry sound, which demonstrates their readiness for musical training. The best way for toddlers to acquire perfect pitch is to be exposed almost daily to well tuned pianos from birth. Therefore, every parent who has a piano should keep it tuned and play it for the baby from birth. Then they should test the child from time to time for perfect pitch. This test can be performed by playing a note (when the child is not looking) and then asking her/im to find that note on the piano. If the child can find it after several tries, s/he has relative pitch; if s/he can find it the first time every time, s/he has perfect pitch. The particular temperament to which the piano is tuned (equal, Well temperament, etc.) is not important; in fact most people with perfect pitch know nothing about temperaments and when notes on pianos tuned to different temperaments are played, they have no trouble in identifying the notes. Perfect pitch and relative pitch can be acquired later in life but becomes more difficult after age 20 to 30. In fact, even those with perfect pitch will slowly lose it starting around age 20, if it is not maintained. Many piano schools routinely teach perfect pitch to all their students. Although the success rate is not 100%, over 90% of the students succeed. The problem with teaching a group of older students is that there is always a certain percentage of "pitch deprived" students who had never been trained in pitch and who will have difficulty learning even relative pitch.
Babies can hear right after birth. Many hospitals routinely screen babies immediately after birth in order to identify hearing impaired babies who will need special treatments immediately. Because the hearing impaired babies do not receive sound stimuli, their brain development is retarded; this is another evidence that music can help brain development. For babies, the memory of external sound in the brain is initially empty. Thus any sound heard at that stage is special, and all subsequent sounds are referenced to those initial sounds. In addition, babies (of most species, not only humans) use sound to identify and bond to the parents (usually the mother). Of all the sound characteristics that the baby uses for this identification, absolute pitch is probably a major characteristic. These considerations explain why almost every youngster can readily pick up absolute pitch. Some parents expose babies to music before birth to accelerate the babies' development, but I wonder if this will help perfect pitch, because the sound velocity in amniotic fluid is different from that in air with a resultant change in apparent frequency. Therefore, this practice might confuse the perfect pitch, if it works at all. For implanting perfect pitch, the electronic piano is better than an acoustic because it is always in tune.
Having perfect pitch is clearly an advantage. It is a great help for memorizing, sight reading, and recovering from blackouts, and for composing music. You can be the pitch pipe for your choir, and easily tune a violin or wind instrument. It is a lot of fun because you can tell how fast a car is going by just listening to the tires whine, you can tell the differences between different car horns and locomotive whistles, especially by noting whether they use thirds or fifths. You can remember telephone numbers easily by their tones. However, there are disadvantages. Music played off tune does not sound right. Since so much music is played off tune, this can present quite a problem. The person can sometimes react strongly to such music; physical reactions such as teary eyes or clammy skin can occur. Transposed music is OK because every note is still correct. Out-of-tune pianos become difficult to play. Perfect pitch is a mixed blessing.
There is a method that makes learning relative and perfect pitch quick and easy! This method is not generally taught at music schools or in the literature, although it has been used by those with perfect pitch (usually without their explicit knowledge of how they acquired it), since the beginning of music. With the method described here, the pitch skills become simple by-products of the memory process. You expend little extra effort to acquire pitch recognition because memorizing is necessary anyway, as explained in III.6. In that section we saw that the final objective of memorizing is to be able to play the music in your mind (mental playing). It turns out that, by paying attention to relative and perfect pitch during the process of practicing mental playing, you naturally acquire the pitch skills! Thus, you do not only play music in your mind, but you must always play it at the correct pitch. This makes perfect sense because, without playing at the correct pitch, you lose so many of the benefits of mental play. For most, memorizing two significant compositions is sufficient to acquire perfect pitch to within a semi-tone, which is faster than any known method being taught today; for most, this should take a few weeks to a few months. Young children will accomplish this with zero effort, almost automatically; as you grow older, you will need more effort to cultivate perfect pitch because of all the other confusing sounds that are already in memory. In the following paragraphs, I will flesh out the details of how this is done. It may be helpful to read section III.6, and especially III.6j.
Therefore, the fastest way to learn relative/perfect pitch is to practice playing music in your mind at the correct pitch. Most schools teach pitch recognition by training students to sing their solfege lessons at the correct pitch. However, practicing in your mind is a more powerful and useful method than singing out loud because you are not limited by your singing abilities. I am not saying that solfege and singing are useless; they are necessary for learning the basics of music, and every pianist should learn some solfege if at all possible. What I am saying is that mental play is an even more necessary skill, which is often neglected by teachers. One of the reasons why teachers neglect this is that when you are playing music in your mind, the teacher cannot hear it. The assumption in solfege is that when you finish the solfege lessons, you will have learned perfect pitch, etc., and therefore, be able to play in your mind. But that takes too long, and can waste a lot of time because solfege lessons extend over many years. Mental play is such a necessary skill that it should be taught, starting at the first few piano lessons. Teaching early is critical, especially for youngsters, because learning pitch recognition rapidly becomes more difficult with age. The teacher can "hear" the effects of mental play by the benefits it bestows on memory, reduction in flubs, perfect pitch, compositional skills, etc.
Two useful pieces for practicing relative/perfect pitch are, Bach's Invention #1 and Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, 1st Movement. The Moonlight has compelling melodies that make the memorizing process easy and enjoyable. Yet the complex chord transitions provide a variety of notes and intervals and the complexity prevents you from guessing the notes -- you need a considerable amount of practice and repetition before you can play it in your mind perfectly. It is also technically simple enough for everybody. The Bach Invention gives you middle C (its first note) and the C Major scale; these are the most useful note and scale to recognize in perfect pitch. Both compositions should be practiced HS for pitch practice. Later on, you should try HT in your mind, at least for the Moonlight which is easier.
Start with the Bach; the objective here is to master all the white keys first. As you memorize it and practice playing it in your mind, pay attention to each note and every interval: a semi-tone, a full note, a third, fifth, etc. The first 4 RH notes give you doremifa, 2 full tones and a semi-tone. Practice relative and absolute pitch at the same time; therefore, listen to the notes in your mind: the music, the emotions, the visualization of the keyboard, etc., will all help you to place the notes very close to the correct pitches on the piano. Here again, playing musically will be very beneficial. With practice, any error will decrease progressively with time. Therefore, test yourself at the piano frequently at first, and measure your progress.
When creating notes in your mind as you play the music, do not try to hum or sing them using the vocal chords because the dynamic range of the piano is much larger than your singing range and you need to train the mind to deal with these higher and lower notes. Also, the memory of each note for perfect pitch must initially include everything -- the harmonics, timbre, and other characteristics of your piano -- you need as many memory associations as possible in order to hasten the memory process. Therefore, use the same piano until you feel that you have perfect pitch and try to memorize every characteristic of your piano sound. Unless you have an electronic piano, you will need to make sure that the piano is not out of tune. Once you acquire a strong perfect pitch, it will work with any source of sound. Unless you are a trained singer who can sing on pitch (in which case you don't need to practice perfect pitch), you will not be able to accurately reproduce the pitch you hear in the mind. The resultant incorrect sound from the vocal chords will confuse the brain and destroy any absolute pitch that you might have acquired. The perfect pitch you initially acquire is fragile and you will probably gain and lose it several times. Just as playing in the mind frees the pianist from the limitations of the piano, mental play (instead of singing them) frees you from the limitations of the vocal chords. Our brains are incredibly powerful and, as musicians, we must learn to use all its powers, free from any artificial limitations. Too many people make the mistake of thinking that their brains have imaginary limits, thus missing out on many natural capabilities of the brain (such as perfect pitch).
After you have completely memorized the Bach, and can play the entire piece in your mind, start memorizing the C major scale in absolute pitch, the C4-C5 octave. Concentrate on learning C4; every time you walk by the piano, try to guess C4 and test it. You can try to recall just a single C4, but you will have more success if you mentally play the first few bars of the Bach, and concentrate hard on how it sounds on the piano. You can succeed with only the C4, by concentrating on exactly how it sounds at the piano, but it is easier with real music. After a few days of intense practice, start testing your pitch recognition by playing notes randomly all over the piano (without looking at the piano) and trying to guess what they are. At first, you may fail miserably. There are just too many notes on the piano. In order to improve your success rate, guess the notes by referencing to the C4-C5 octave. If you press C2, you should recognize it as C4, two octaves down. When you hear a low note, bring it up in octaves until it is in the C4-C5 range. In this way, you reduce the task of memorizing 88 notes on the keyboard to just 8 notes and one interval (octave). This simplification is possible because of the logarithmic nature of the chromatic scale; further simplification of the octave using smaller intervals is not profitable because of the strange nature of the octave. Acquaint yourself with all the notes on the piano by playing them in octaves and training the mind to recognize all octave notes of the same key; all octave C's, D's, etc. Until you gain some rudimentary absolute pitch, you will need to perform most of your practice at the piano so that you can correct yourself as soon as you wander off key. Do not practice mentally with the wrong pitch for extended periods; always have the piano nearby to correct yourself. You can start practicing more away from the piano as soon as you can keep the pitch as long as you have the first note right.
Then memorize the Moonlight and start work on the black keys. Successful pitch recognition depends strongly on how you test yourself at the piano. You should be able to think of any number of ways to test, but I will describe some so that you get an idea of how to create your own. Let's use the first 3 RH notes of the Moonlight. Memorize the sound of these notes in your mind and try to recall them later. At first, you might be several notes off if you had not touched the piano for a few hours. With practice, this error will decrease. See if you can get the first note (G#) right when you first sit down at the piano. Practice relative pitch by first making sure that one note is correct (say the second note -- C#) by checking it on the piano, then mentally play a half tone down -- middle C, and check it with the piano. Go to the 3rd note -- E, check it, come down a full tone -- D, and check it. Now go back to the first note (G#), come down half a step (G) and then, mentally, go all the way up to C4 and check it. When you test your absolute pitch after not playing the piano for a while, see if you tend to be too high or too low. See if you can compensate for this error the next time. Another way of testing is to make sure that you start on the right note by checking it with the piano, then mentally play the music for while and then check the last note you played mentally. Most people find that they tend to go flat.
Progress may seem slow at first, but your guesses should get closer with practice. Then suddenly, one day, you should experience that magical moment when you are able to identify any note on the piano, without using the center octave as a reference. Until you experience this, you do not really have perfect pitch; your guesses will not always be close, and you can easily lose it. If that magic happens, strengthen your perfect pitch by practicing to identify the notes as rapidly as you can. The strength of your perfect pitch is measured by the speed with which you can identify notes. After that, start practicing with 2-note chords, then 3, etc. Once you have a strong perfect pitch, you can practice humming the notes, and singing on pitch. That's about all the instruction you need! Congratulations, you have done it!
The biological mechanism underlying perfect pitch is not well understood. It appears to be entirely a memory function. Therefore, in order to truly acquire perfect pitch, you will need to change your mental habits, just as you have to, when memorizing. In memorizing, we saw that the change you needed was to develop a mental habit of constantly inventing associations (the more outrageous or shocking, the better!) and repeating them automatically in the brain. For good memorizers, this process occurs naturally, or effortlessly, and that is why they are good. The brains of poor memorizers either become quiescent when not needed, or wander into logical or other interests instead of performing memory work. People with perfect pitch tend to make music mentally; music keeps running around in their heads, whether it is their own compositions or music they had heard. This is why most people with perfect pitch automatically start to compose music. The brain always returns to music when it has nothing else to do. Therefore, once you learn mental playing, you may find yourself playing music in your head a lot more than you used to do. This is probably a helpful prerequisite to acquiring perfect pitch. This explains why you acquire perfect pitch all of a sudden, just as you acquire technique or quiet hands all of a sudden. You reach this point at which there are enough reference melodies in your head so that you can accurately reference your pitch. In that case, there is nothing absolute about absolute pitch -- which seems to be true. Those with perfect pitch are always adjusting their pitch because they tend to be sharp or flat at different times. If they go flat, then, how do they know? The answer is music! They play some critical music mentally, and it will sound wrong unless the pitch is right. That is why the method described here is the "natural" and probably the only way to really learn perfect pitch. That is, you need to be an experienced mental player before you can gain absolute pitch. You can't just go to the piano for a few seconds 10 times a day, practice perfect pitch, and expect to learn it if you don't keep doing it mentally while away from the piano, for a good fraction of your time. Therefore, as with memorization, the hardest part of learning absolute pitch is not the practice, but the changing of your mental habits. In principle, it's easy -- just start mental playing as much as you can.
This easy way to naturally acquire perfect pitch illustrates the importance of mental play. That is how everybody who "was born with perfect pitch" acquired it! Mozart had to play music in his mind because it was so necessary to practically everything he did -- for memorizing, for perfect performances, for composing, for dealing with music all day whether he had access to a piano or not, for saving enormous amounts of time, and a zillion other reasons. What I am saying is that mental play frees the musician from the physical/mechanical limitations of musical instruments and endows her/im with new powers. Now we can understand how youngsters, just by listening to music, can acquire perfect pitch -- they naturally tend to repeat the music in their minds, because there are few other sounds in their heads at this stage.
We saw above that you can start to lose perfect pitch after about age 20, if it is not maintained. Again, the explanation is simple: our lives become more complex as we age, and we have less time to devote to mentally playing music. We also tend to fill our minds with confusing sounds outside the chromatic scale.
Our method of memorizing using mental play needs to be periodically maintained as part of the memory maintenance program. This program automatically performs maintenance on pitch recognition. You only need to check, from time to time, that your mental play is on pitch. This too, should happen automatically because you should always mentally play at least the beginning of every piece just before actually playing it at the piano. By first playing it in your mind, you ensure that the speed, rhythm, and expression are correct. Music sounds more exciting when you mentally lead it, and less exciting if you play it and wait for the piano to make the music.
Note the similarities between "memorizing before you learn" (III. 6) which saves a lot of time and at the same time results in superior memory, and learning pitch by "playing in your mind" which also saves time and results in more powerful perfect pitch. The conventional methods of learning perfect pitch (described below) generally start with learning one note, and expanding the range using relative pitch. In our method, we learn the entire keyboard at once. This makes sense because that is the end product you want. Not only do you learn perfect pitch, but you also learn the location of that note on the keyboard (because it is combined with keyboard memory). Knowing the location of every note on the keyboard will become an indispensable skill when you start composing and improvising. We have come to the realization that, in the past, many students could not advance to concert level pianists because they were never taught mental playing.
This method works because learning pitch is a memory process. Moreover, memory is an associative process (read III.6). By playing and remembering the entire music, you instantly create a huge number of associations (melody, rhythm, emotions, keyboard location, fingering, music structure, etc.) with every note -- this huge number of associations make the exact pitch impossible to forget -- any wrong note is guaranteed to violate some association. Now that we have learned the fastest way, let's examine some conventional methods. These will be useful as supplemental exercises to help you better execute the faster method.
Conventional methods of learning perfect pitch take a long time, typically more than 6 months, and often, much longer. One way to start is by memorizing one note. You might pick A440 because you hear it every time you go to a concert and can perhaps recall it most easily. However, A is not a useful note for getting to the various chords of the C major scale, which is the most useful scale to memorize. Therefore, pick C, E, or G, whichever you tend to remember best; C is probably the best. Your accuracy may be atrocious in the beginning; you might be easily off by 3 or 4 semitones, but it should improve with time. Devise ways to increase your accuracy. One way is to identify the highest and lowest notes you can hum; for me, they are F3 and F5. In that case, F4 may be the best note to memorize. By trying to sing one octave up or down, you can find out if your F4 is too high or too low; if you started with F4 that was too high, you can't hum F5. If you practice that single note every day, at least once a day, you will eventually learn it. Of course, you can try several notes at once.
Then learn the C major scale. Given middle C (C4), can you sing all the other notes in the octave (white keys) up to C5? Given any note, can you sing another note, one full tone or a semitone up or down? Can you start with any note between C4 and C5 and sing up to C5 or down to C4? Check frequently with the piano. Next, learn the chromatic scale. Then learn the intervals: given any note, can you sing a third, fourth, fifth, or octave up or down? Learning relative pitch is fairly easy for most piano students because they have heard the scales and intervals so many times. For non-singers, it may be easier to just imagine the notes instead of actually singing them. Practice these exercises first at the piano and then away from the piano.
You can now graduate to sight singing actual music. Read some easy pieces, without the piano and see if you can play the music correctly in your mind. You might begin using music you already know, to make it easier to start. Then gradually practice on music you never played before. If you do not have absolute pitch yet, always use the piano to help you start at the correct note. Do not practice relative pitch using the wrong absolute pitch. How long it takes to learn relative pitch and sight singing depends greatly on the individual and can vary from weeks to over 6 months. After enough practice, congratulations! You have acquired relative pitch that is not only useful in its own right, but will also be helpful in sight reading.
The standard way to learn absolute pitch in music classes is via the solfege (singing exercises) route. Solfege books are readily available in stores or over the internet. It consists of increasingly complex series of exercises involving different scales, intervals, time signatures, rhythms, accidentals, etc, for voice training. It also covers pitch recognition and dictation. Solfege books are best used in a class environment with a teacher. Absolute pitch is taught as an adjunct to these exercises by learning to sing them at the correct pitch. Therefore, there are no special methods for acquiring absolute pitch -- you just repeat until the correct pitch is implanted in memory.
In summary, every pianist must learn perfect pitch because it is so easy, useful, and even necessary in many situations. Perfect pitch will not only help you to avoid flubs, but also to recover from them. Learning perfect pitch is inseparably associated with playing in your mind. Mental play frees you from having to sit at the piano in order to play your favorite pieces, and you can practice anywhere, at any time. Most importantly, mental playing is what enables you to transition from an amateur pianist to a true musician with the potential to advance to the concert level. | <urn:uuid:7b5aa330-658f-4a90-bfd3-f90f97554774> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://contentspiano.blogspot.com/2006/02/learning-relative-pitch-and-perfect.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560284352.26/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095124-00191-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963285 | 5,513 | 4.3125 | 4 |
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
July 4, 1997
The Santa Monica Fire Department were host to two Parisian firefighters, who compared trans-Atlantic differences in firefighting techniques. Parisian streets are narrower and curve more than those here, said Willy Preto, 37, whose Parisian rank is comparable to battalion chief. Therefore, Parisian firetrucks are substantially smaller than their American counterparts, he said. Each truck, however, holds about half a dozen firefighters--compared with the average of four in the United States. | <urn:uuid:c99eedad-d50d-4068-8dd8-2cc21b227d88> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://articles.latimes.com/keyword/firefighters-france | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560283689.98/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095123-00353-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964629 | 111 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Professional Communication - A Key Element of Success
Listed below are some common pitfalls that you will want to avoid as a professional. In some cases making these errors may not make difference; however, it is almost a certainty that at some point in your career decisions about your promotion, hiring, and other advancement opportunities will rest on having avoided these errors. Peers and supervisors are loathe to offer correction or guidance on these matters.
Making Better Impressions Through Better
(Good grammar is like good manners. It never hurts you.)
Better Thinking Through Better Language
(Is thinking sub-vocal speech?)
Cease saying hopefully, because it almost modifies the wrong noun. Rather, use I hope. After all that is what is meant by those who say hopefully. More
Single most, single biggest, single best, etcetera are redundant since most, biggest, best are superlative meaning single.
Cease using the fact that unless it is truly something generally accepted as true, which is the logic definition of fact. Rather, use a possessive case to avoid feeling the need to use the phase the fact that. A correct example: What do you think about Mary's possibly going to the store? (Avoid: What do you think about the fact that Mary might possibly be going to the store?
Prepositions may appear at the end of a sentence but only if they are needed. Wrong: Where are you at? Where are you going to? What were you thinking about? Acceptable use: He ran after the train and jumped on. He asked her out.
The use of in order to is never needed. Its use almost always signals the start of a very weak sentence. Poor: In order to change the tire,we needed a jack. Acceptable: To change the tire,we needed a jack. Better: We needed a jack to change the tire.
Use great caution when using the words literally and virtually. These words usually either add no meaning or convey the exact opposite of the intended meaning. Wrong: I literally lost my head over him. They virtually saved the man's life by moving the car off him. I could have eaten a horse: virtually! Figuratively, we may literally never know - virtually! Correct: We may never know. | <urn:uuid:96928dfc-313a-4d75-8a4e-aae100adbd22> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | http://showard.sdsmt.edu/Math373/_AppliedNumMethodsText_SMH/Appendix_E_Communications_Tips/BetterThinkingThroughBetterLanguage.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572127.33/warc/CC-MAIN-20220815024523-20220815054523-00277.warc.gz | en | 0.95613 | 477 | 2.3125 | 2 |
We all know that real stuff just tastes better.
The examples are endless in any grocery aisle: butter vs. margarine, real bacon vs. the turkey kind, homemade cookies vs. fat-free “cookies.”
Why should spices be any different? It shouldn’t.
And therein lies the case for the vanilla bean.
“Vanilla bean” is not just something that appears on the carton of higher-end ice creams or in the name of particularly pungent body lotions — it’s a real, bona fide ingredient, and it can add more flavor than your run-of-the-mill imitation extract will ever know.
“Using real vanilla is a unique experience because the bean is the most sophisticated food in the world,” says Brett Beach, Lawrence native and co-owner of Madécasse, a vanilla and chocolate producer. “Natural vanilla has up to 500 natural compounds, many of which science has not been able to identify. The captivating aroma of natural vanilla cannot be replicated by using a synthetic product.”
What do I do with ...
Got a food that intimidates you? We’d love to hear what foods you’d like to know more about. E-mail Sarah Henning at firstname.lastname@example.org.
Next food up? Jicama
Using the real bean can elevate a dish to the next level, says Marcelo Gonzalez, pastry chef SaraBeth’s Bakery in New York City. In fact, Gonzalez can’t think of a dessert he makes without the beans, which he gets from Beach at Madécasse.
“Wow, I make almost everything with it,” he says before launching into a long list of puddings, fillings, cakes, cookies and other desserts. “It looks beautiful and gives more flavor to (the dessert).”
Rick Martin, head chef at Free State Brewing Co., says the restaurant makes its own vanilla extract out of Madécasse’s beans and uses the resulting liquid to enhance its desserts and sometimes even savory dishes.
“Most do not realize that it is much more economical to make your own vanilla extract, and the flavor is far superior,” Martin says. “We use three split vanilla beans and one 750 milliliter bottle of McCormick Rum for our extract.”
Similarly, Sula Teller, director of food services at The Community Mercantile, 901 S. Iowa, says the store’s in-house chefs use beans to make their own extract with Kansas vodka and add the seeds to several of its creations.
“We use the pure vanilla bean pulp where we will make the greatest difference in flavor — shortbread cookies, custards, delicate cakes or perhaps a lemon-vanilla pound cake,” Teller says. “Other times, we make vanilla sugar or we make our own vanilla extract to use in cookies, baked fruit, chocolate cake, carrot cake and in pies or muffins. Our chef might use vanilla beans and a fortified wine or spirit (bourbon) to make a sauce or marinade for a holiday or special event dinner.”
Teller says that by buying raw ingredients, the Merc is able to assure the standard of its bakery products right down to the smallest of additions.
“Buying and using whole vanilla beans allows us to control the quality in every way — we know that we are purchasing fair-traded beans, we know that we are using a quality vodka or brandy to make our own extract, and we can use every bit of the beans when we use the pods to make vanilla sugar,” Teller says.
Home cooks can use the bean just as expertly as any of these professional chefs. Making extract is easy, as is simply splitting a bean, retrieving the seeds, and using them to impart flavor and a real vanilla look — aka visible flecks of seeds — in baked goods, sauces and, of course, homemade ice creams. The resulting pod can also be cut up and used to flavor creme brulee, sauces or shakes.
It may sound like a lot of work, but Teller says it’s completely worth it.
“Vanilla lifts and rounds and mellows the flavors of other ingredients — chocolate seems brighter and richer with vanilla, eggs take on a mellower flavor. Pears roasted with Marsala wine and whole vanilla beans and topped with cream whipped with a little homemade vanilla extract are so delicious and lovely,” Teller says. “Using the whole vanilla bean make me feel like smarter cook as I experiment with different liquors for extract and as I roast the empty pods for sugar.”
— Staff writer Sarah Henning can be reached at 832-7187.
How to Seed a Vanilla Bean:
- Place a bean on a cutting board.
- Using a sharp knife, split the bean lengthwise, but try to leave the underside intact.
- Run a spoon lengthwise down the seam you just created. The seeds will cling to the spoon as you scrape the length of the pod clean.
Vanilla Bean Facts
What it is: Vanilla beans are actually fruits produced by Vanilla planifolia, the only orchid that produces an edible pod. The pods are harvested green and then fermented and cured to develop their vanillin content, which ups the flavor factor. The result is an oily, brown pod.
How to pick: Choose vanilla beans that are supple, oily and dark in color — avoid those that look brittle or overly dried, says Aliza Green in the “Field Guide to Herbs & Spices.” Note that the region where the bean was grown may affect the bean’s taste. Bourbon vanilla pods from Madagascar tend to be full-bodied, as do pods from Indonesia. Meanwhile, Mexican vanilla pods have a muted, woody flavor, and Tahitian vanilla beans are noted for their fruitiness.
How to store: Vanilla beans should be stored in an air-tight container, out of the light and in a cool place. Brett Beach, co-founder of vanilla producer Madecasse, says that when stored properly, beans should not dry out and can last up to five years. Should you come across a dried-out bean, Beach says the pod can be rehydrated by putting it in a bit of rum.
1 cup of 80 Proof vodka
For 1X strength: 6 vanilla beans
For 2X strength: 12 vanilla beans
For 3X strength: 18 vanilla beans
For 4X strength: 24 vanilla beans
1/4 teaspoon corn syrup (optional)
Split the beans with a sharp knife and chop into half-inch pieces. Place vodka, chopped beans and corn syrup in an airtight glass container. Store in an cool place for 3-6 months to allow the extraction to take place. You will have usable extract in about 1 month give or take. Shake the container once a week.
Use the extract in your recipes that call for vanilla but for 2X use 1/2 of the recipe amount, 3X use 1/3 of the recipe amount and for 4X use 1/4 of the recipe the amount.
— Recipe from the Boston Vanilla Bean Company, www.bostonvanillabean.com
1 cup sugar
1-2 vanilla beans
Place the beans in the sugar in a sealed container for 2 weeks or more.
— Recipe from the Boston Vanilla Bean Company, www.bostonvanillabean.com
Shrimp with Coconut Vanilla Sauce
2 pounds of medium to large shrimp
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 cup dark rum
1 cup heavy cream
1 vanilla bean, sliced open lengthways
3/4 cup coconut milk
Salt, to taste
Freshly ground pepper, to taste
Lemon wedges, for garnish
Parsley, for garnish
Peel and clean shrimp, keeping tails on. Heat the olive oil in a frying pan or wok. Saute the shrimp for two to three minutes and or until they have turned pink. Remove them from the pan and set aside. Remove the balance of olive oil from pan.
Add rum and the vanilla bean to the frying pan and reduce the rum until it is nearly evaporated (down to about 2 tablespoons). Add the cream and coconut milk, and reduce the mixture by 50 percent. Scrape seeds out of the vanilla pod and discard pod. Add salt and pepper to taste.
Shrimp can either be mixed into the sauce and served or mounded on a rice pilaf and the sauce poured over all. Garnish with lemon wedges and parsley.
— Recipe from www.vanilla.com.
Fish with Tahitian Vanilla Sauce
4 fillets of seabass (Tuna or Mahi Mahi)
1 cup heavy cream
1 glass of dry white wine
1 teaspoon beef bouillon
2 teaspoons of vanilla extract
In a pan, lightly fry the fish fillets in butter until golden brown. Remove fish from pan and keep warm.
Lightly sauté shallots in pan with butter (without browning). Next, add two teaspoons of vanilla extract. Promptly add one teaspoon of beef bouillon and glass of white wine. Stir until dissolved. Slowly mix in cream, salt and pepper
Finally, add the already fried fish fillets into the cream sauce and sauté on a low flame for 3 to 4 minutes.
Serve with hot (jasmine) rice.
— Recipe from www.vanillafromtahiti.com.
Old Fashioned Vanilla Ice Cream
3/4 cup sugar
4 1/2 teaspoons flour
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 cup milk
1 cup whipping cream
1 beaten egg
1/2 to 1 whole vanilla bean, to taste
Combine sugar flour and salt in sauce pan. Gradually stir in milk.
Split the vanilla bean in half and remove the seeds with the edge of a paring knife. Add seeds and bean to the mixture.
Cook over medium heat approximately 15 minutes or until thickened, stirring constantly. Gradually stir about 1 cup of hot mixture into the beaten egg. Add egg mixture to the remaining hot mixture, stirring constantly. Cook 1 minute, remove from heat.
Refrigerate for 2 hours. Remove bean pod. Combine whipping cream and chilled mixture, stirring with a wire whisk to combine. Freeze as directed in your ice cream maker directions.
— Recipe from the Boston Vanilla Bean Company, www.bostonvanillabean.com.
Mango and Vanilla Bean Jam
3 large mangoes, peeled
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
1-1/4 cups white sugar
2 vanilla beans, split lengthways
Cut mango flesh from stones and roughly chop. Place into a large, heat-proof microwave-safe bowl or jug with lemon juice and sugar. Stir well to combine. Scrape seeds from vanilla beans. Add seeds and pods to mango mixture.
Microwave, uncovered, for 35 to 40 minutes on high power, stirring every 10 minutes.
Remove jam from microwave and stand for 10 minutes. Remove vanilla pods. Ladle hot jam into hot sterilized jars. Seal and turn upside down for 2 minutes. Turn upright and allow to cool.
Label jars and store in a cool, dark place for up to 3 months. Once opened, store in fridge for up to 4 months.
— Recipe by Janelle Bloom for www.vanilla.com. | <urn:uuid:39b47dac-ee20-4e98-9187-fef6cf5075de> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2010/mar/03/what-do-i-do-vanilla-beans/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280763.38/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00514-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.895787 | 2,409 | 1.65625 | 2 |
I invite you to imagine that on the same day in 641AD that St. Kyneburgha was born in Tamworth in her father’s palace, here in Huntingdonshire in the village of Water Newton was born another woman, Godgifu, into very different circumstances. She was the daughter of a miller. There is no definitive list of Anglo Saxon watermills, but we do know that the Romans, who occupied the area, built them. By the time of the 1086 Domesday inventory, there were 5,624 of them; just about one for every village and hamlet in England, many of which would have been around for multiple generations.
Godgifu had eight siblings, one sister did not make it beyond their first year due to a mysterious illness and another, an older brother, died in a milling accident. As the second eldest sibling, even at the age of 9 or 10 she would be expected to assist with all younger siblings. Milling grain would have been a respected trade, and — provided that the crops did not fail — ensured that young Godgifu and her six surviving siblings had something to eat. In return for milling grain, rather than a monetary payment, the miller would receive a percentage of the milled flour.
Unlike St Kyneburgha (in part two of this blog series), Godgifu’s diet would have been predominantly vegetable-based but the family may have kept a pig which would have been slaughtered in winter to provide cured meat for the lean winter months. In the seventh century, Enga-lond did not yet have spinach, broccoli, cauliflower, runner beans, Brussel sprouts, potatoes or tomatoes (let alone tea, coffee, chocolate or sugar), so these would have been completely alien to Godgifu!
Families were dependent upon their own agriculture, unable to pop to the supermarket for out of season foods shipped from hotter climates or grown in greenhouses, what they ate depended on the time of year. July was the toughest month of the whole year, as any reserves had run out and spring crops had not yet matured. This was known as ‘the hungry gap’ – a time when the divide between Kyneburga and Godgifu would have been most apparent: whilst Kyneburgha’s family would have had large stores of food, Godgifu and her family would have been forced to survive on smaller and smaller portions of food until the new crops became edible.
Godgifu’s preparation for adult life would have begun early, helping her parents with household tasks from as soon as she was able. We know from the graves of female Saxons that hand spindles and looms were common and suggest that wool-making would have been a household process; as a young woman, she would have learnt these skills from her mother. In Old English, male persons were described as ‘waepenedmenn’, or ‘weaponed-persons’, whereas the words for women (‘wifmenn’) and ‘wife’ derived from the word for weaving, revealing gender perspectives at the time.
Aged 11, she would have watched her 12 year old brother pledging his oath of allegiance to a local lord and leave home to serve him. A year later, she too would be considered to reach maturity, when she would enter into the care of her future husband, a local ploughman many years her senior. Seventh century laws, which varied across Saxon kingdoms but often had similar values and moral codes, describe how a woman’s duty is ‘to obey her lord’ (from The Laws of King Ine of Wessex). Taken alone this female marital duty may seem to us to be rather sexist, however there is some similarity here in that both sexes would be answerable to their lord.
Marriage contracts concerned allocation of property and negotiation of the price of the ‘morgengifu’, or ‘morning gift’ (much as the name ‘Godgifu’ means ‘God’s gift’), payable by the groom upon the satisfactory completion of the wedding night. Interestingly, this payment was for the woman herself, an endowment to ensure her security in the event of her husband’s death and an incentive to keep her virginity until marriage.
If Athelbert’s laws — operating for around half a century in Kent by the time of Godgifu’s birth — are comparable to what was expected in East Anglia, we know that Godgifu and her husband would have had legally enshrined rights: Godgifu not to be sexually harassed by other men and her husband not to be duped into marrying her without knowing that she was already pregnant with another man’s child. There would have been clauses detailing Godgifu’s property claims if she ever wished to leave her husband.
As a wife, Godgifu would be responsible for household tasks but would be no mere housewife, as she would do her share of whatever work was required. The prevalence of keys in female burials show that being a key keeper and guardian of possessions in a house was a female responsibility, and Godgifu may have been given a key to symbolise her sexual maturity (with its phallic symbolism). She may also have been in charge of the fire steel, tools used to keep a household fire burning, and even today in some societies this is considered a women’s role.
Though Christian religion was becoming increasingly organised, some pagan rituals would still remain – if you weren’t one hundred percent certain which god to follow, you would want to hedge your bets, with some households worshiping both the old gods and the new one. One such ritual she might have observed to guarantee a plentiful harvest would be to bake a cake for her husband to put into the ground speaking the words;
“Earth, Earth, Earth! Oh Earth our Mother! / May the all-wielder, Ever-Lord grant thee / Acres a-waxing, upwards a-growing, Pregnant with corn and plenteous in strength”
Godgifu would have woven cloth for her family’s clothing and was also responsible for curing ailments. Weaving was considered a kind of magic and a potential source of remedy: female graves often have thread boxes with scraps of material and herbs — possibly a kind of miniature first aid kit. The ninth century text, ‘Bald’s Leechbook’ (i.e. medicine book), details common remedies which were likely already in use during Godgifu and Kyneburgha’s lifetimes, including; binding the herb crosswort to the head with a red bandana to cure headache; using eggs, wine and fennel root to treat chilblains; and smouldering goat’s hair to ease back pain.
Godgifu would have prepared these remedies for her husband, herself and their children. She had her first pregnancy at 15, with seven more pregnancies over the course of her life. No doubt she would have known various cures for ailments associated with pregnancy and childbirth, such as tying grains of coriander seed in a clean cloth to her left thigh to aid childbirth.
A document in the library at Canterbury records that by the late Anglo-Saxon times, three centuries after the lives of Godgifu and Kyneburgha, learned people already understood that:
“In the sixth week the brain is covered with a membrane on the outside; in the second month the veins are formed… and the blood then flows into the feet and into the hands, and he is then articulated in limbs and altogether developed; in the third he is man, except for the soul”
Despite this knowledge, even if you were born the privileged daughter of a King, little could be done to help you in childbirth if there were complications – the first successful caesarean in which the mother survived was not reported until the eighteenth century. Godgifu herself is unlikely to have known much about foetal development, except for if she was unfortunate enough to miscarry. The Canterbury text does, however, imply that up to the third month and perhaps beyond there would have been no ethical issues with aborting a child prior to the fourth month, which may be surprising today.
Whilst Kyneburgha lived to the upper end of Saxon life expectancy at around 40, many adults would not live beyond their mid 20s. Godgifu is no exception – she died in childbirth aged 27.
A difficult and dangerous time to be alive regardless of gender, our local Anglo Saxon women would have been required to show real strength and fortitude in the face of daily challenges. It is easy to see why comfort was found in faith and ritual and the promise of an easier life thereafter. Kyneburgha and Godgifu were more fortunate in some ways than those who came after, as one hundred years later the Danish came raiding from over the seas, signalling the start of the Danish wars.
Victoria Calleway is a very amateur historian indeed but learnt to be discerning about her sources through her English Literature and Theatre degree. Incidentally, these are a few of her favourite things, along with board games, cheese, and her cats, Asparagus and Macavity.
Kyneburgha, or Cyneburh in Old English, was born in Tamworth as the oldest daughter of Penda, a seventh-century king of Mercia, and his wife Kynewise. As the child of a king, she would have been called an ‘aetheling’, a term for any royal offspring of either gender. Anglo-Saxon succession was not on the basis of primogeniture – the royal family would select the aetheling who seemed most competent. Whilst this would be a male child, determined royal mothers could gain personal power and authority by operating through their husbands and sons (for those of you have seen or read the popular fantasy series, ‘Game of Thrones’, think Queen Cersei).
Early life would have been slightly more comfortable for our aetheling than for a commoner; the power afforded by such a status meant she was unlikely to starve, however much would have been similar; wooden accommodation, poor medical care and a reasonable chance of not living into adulthood.
Kyneburgha would have enjoyed lavish noble feasts in which meat would have been the principle ingredient. All Anglo Saxon animals were free range – plough land was for humans – so farm animals were leaner and less fatty than those which we consume today. She might have tasted luxury foods such as spit-roast joints of beef and poultry. She would have looked to her mother to learn much about how to compose herself as a woman. For example, it was the ceremonial duty of high-born women to serve drinks at feasts, as is described in Beowulf;
“Wealtheow came forward, Mindful of ceremonial – she was Hrothgar’s Queen. Adorned with gold, that proud woman Greeted the men in the hall, then offered the cup To the Danish king first of all”.
This was a time of increased formal conversion to Christianity through baptism. Mercia was not itself a Christian kingdom and whilst Kyneburgha’s father tolerated the preaching of the gospel, he himself did not become a Christian. Kyneburgha converted to Christianity and married Aldfrith, the son of Oswiu King of Northumberland in around 653. Her brother, Peada, also converted in order to marry Oswiu’s daughter, Ahlflaed. These royal unions were political marriages to promote peace between Northumbria and Mercia, and began the foundation of the Christian church across the centre of England.
Such an advantageous marriage enabled Kyneburgha, like many female aethelings, to maintain her high status. For the competent and devoutly religious, the other way to preserve their social standing (and with it gain a degree of autonomy) was to found a monastery; a ‘double house’, occupied by both monks and nuns. When her husband Aldfrith died in c.660, this is exactly what Kyneburgha did – in Castor, near Peterborough here stands the only church in the UK dedicated to her.
We know that there were around fifty such religious communities founded in the seventh century across England, and the records indicate that all of these double houses were under the direction of a female aetheling, with everyone answering to the Abbess, not the Abbot. Adhelm of Malmesbury (in Wessex) wrote of a double house in Barking, explaining how many of the nuns there were not virgins but widows, choosing to uphold the state of chastity. He compares them to the “highly ingenious bee… roaming widely through the flowering fields of scripture.”
Though key Saxon texts such as Bede’s ‘Ecclesiastical History of the English People’ published in the eighth century are structured around men, it is clear that women played a key role in accelerating the rate of conversion to Christianity throughout England. The Anglo Saxon chronicle records Queen Saexburh of Wessex and her daughter becoming Abbesses in around the same period, indicating an already established tradition of female command and recognised spiritual expertise.
As Abbess, Kyneburgha’s duties would not only have been prayer and worship but also managing an administrative centre for the surrounding countryside, her duties would have been familiar to many noblewomen:
“presiding over the women’s quarters of a secular hall, receiving guests, accepting the responsibility of foster children…[in addition] the abbess of a double monastery was entrusted with the care of a vast number of dependants, with the welfare of her servants and with the education… of postulants and children, as well as with the duties of hospitality and the administration of estates”
In 664, Kyneburgha’s father-in-law and brother, Oswiu and Peada, founded a monastery at Medehamstead, and Kyneburgha was one of the signatories to it’s founding charter – this monastery later became Peterborough Cathedral. Like the famous Abbess Hilda of Whitby in 657, Kyneburgha would have worked with learned religious men from Peterborough who would have instructed her spiritually and practically, whilst respecting her as an authority in her own right.
Unfortunately for Kyneburgha, times were changing. In 669, the newly arrived Archbishop Theodore of Canterbury made public his disapproval of double monasteries and their functions began to be gradually usurped. The alteration in perceptions of women can be seen over a century. When, at the turn of the seventh century, Augustine, the first Archbishop of Canterbury, had written to the Pope to ask whether a menstruating woman could take communion, the Pope had replied that it was a matter of choice. However, one hundred years later, the Penitential of Theodore was advising that “Women shall not in the time of impurity enter a church or communicate”. Following these decrees from church authorities, religious houses became increasingly segregated, and by the tenth century there were no remaining double houses and five times as many monasteries as nunneries.
Abbess Kyneburgha died on 15th September 680 at around 40 years of age (a reasonable age for a Saxon), and was buried in Castor. She had become one of the leading lights of seventh century ecclesiastic life in East Anglia. Following her death, she became revered as a saint – her feast day is the 6th March.
Archaeological digs conducted by Cambridge University at Castor have found an abundance of female Saxon objects from the middle Saxon period (700-849), suggesting a strong female presence in the area for some years after Kyneburgha’s death. The double house was dissolved by the end of the ninth century and the monastery became a minster (a locally important church). In the tenth century, her relics were transferred to the Cathedral in Peterborough and later to Thorney Abbey.
Today, one of the side chapels in the south transept of Peterborough Cathedral is dedicated to St. Kyneburgha. The parish church in Castor is named after her (the only one in the UK). Whilst most of her monastery is now lost, the church retains a small Saxon sculpture in the chancel and the base of a Saxon cross, salvaged from the later Anglo Saxon minster.
— You can find “Women in Anglo-Saxon Huntingdonshire Part Three: Godgifu: Miller’s daughter, Ploughman’s wife, Mother” on our blog next Wednesday —
“The Evidence which has survived from Anglo-Saxon England indicates that women were then more nearly the equal companions of their husbands and brothers than at any time before the modern age” from Doris Stenton’s “The English Woman in History”
An introduction I will be honest about two things. Firstly, I was invited to write a blog – or series of blogs – to coincide with International Women’s day (8th March), but did not manage to complete it in time. Thankfully, women’s history should be celebrated every month, so consider sharing this two months later than intended to be an affirmation of that! Secondly, I am no expert and am therefore indebted to two books which gave me insight into Anglo Saxon life in England, which, along with other local sources, have helped shape my idea of how local women would have lived through this period; ‘The Year 1000: What Life Was Like at the Turn of the First Millennium’ by Robert Lacey and Danny Danziger, and ‘Medieval Women: A Social History of Women in England 450 – 1500’ by Henrietta Leyser.
So, what do we know about life in Anglo Saxon Huntingdonshire? Evidence has shown that Anglo Saxons had already arrived in the Nene and Ouse valleys before the withdrawal of the Roman forces in around 410AD. These settlers came from the harsher climes of northern Europe, to “A green and pleasant England with ample space to breathe, the sound of birdsong… the sharp smell of drifting woodsmoke on an autumn evening”
Over the following five centuries, the population of ‘Enga-lond’ grew to around a million people. They did not have surnames – there was not yet any need for them. All lived in a green and unpolluted countryside on a simple, wholesome diet and wore coarse hand-woven woollen clothing, even down to their underwear. Clothing would have been coloured with natural vegetable dyes and fastened with ties, as buttons had not been invented. Houses were made of sturdy wooden beams held together with wooden pegs. Though this life sounds idyllic, it was far from easy;
“The simplest things were so difficult to accomplish… every basic artefact represented hours of skill and effort and ingenuity, in return for a very meagre material reward”.
Daily life would have been exhausting, with long hours labouring in all weathers. Medical care would have been very basic and people would have relied upon home rituals and remedies in the hope of curing ailments. Based on burials we know that the average life expectancy was no greater than around forty years of age.
External factors controlled much of Anglo Saxons’ lives, and the concern of famine and disease was constant. It is no surprise then, that this was an age of fervent faith, and time was punctuated by high days and holy days. There is no doubt that religion was all encompassing, but whilst organised Christianity continued to grow in strength, it was possible for families to hold onto some pagan beliefs about good and evil alongside their strong Christian convictions.
The official way of subdividing up the population was into ‘hundreds’, each the size of several modern parishes. According to different sources, this term referred either to one hundred houses, hides of land, or men of the militia. Saxon Huntingdonshire had four ‘hundreds’; Hurstingstone, Leightonstone, Norman Cross, and Toseland. These hundreds would have would have made it easier for local lords to administrate, including gathering tax, organising militia service, and maintaining the laws of their kingdom.
Law codes varied from kingdom to kingdom across Enga-lond but were similar in that they all operated using a tariff of compensations for committing certain crimes. Well known examples include Aethelbert of Kent’s at the beginning of the seventh century (one of the very first known documents to be written in the Anglo Saxon language) and King Alfred of Wessex’s laws at the end of the ninth century (known to us as ‘Alfred the Great’).
In Anglo Saxon life, every man and woman had their price, which was known as ‘wergeld’. There were specific fines for everything including violent crime, theft and even sexual harassment. The amount payable depended upon the social class of the victim – the murder of a noble would cost you more than the murder of a slave. The money was payable directly to the victim – for example, if a man attempted to ‘fondle the breasts of a free woman’ uninvited, he would be expected to pay her a fine directly!
Documents indicate that Huntingdonshire was inhabited by two or more small Anglo-Saxon tribes by the eighth century – and named tribes include ‘Gwyras’, ‘Hyrstingas’, ‘Sweordora’ and ‘Spalda’ (the latter being suggested at by the village name of Spaldwick). Evidence of Anglo Saxon occupation has been found across the county – there were substantial Anglo Saxon settlements at Huntingdon, St Neots, St Ives, Ramsey, Woodston, Castor, Orton Longueville and Maxey and other smaller farmsteads.
And what of the Women of Anglo Saxon Huntingdonshire? Little is definite about the lives or status of women in early Anglo Saxon England. Women were, by necessity, a major part of the workforce and it is clear from the legal documents that remain, that they had rights of their own regarding marriage, sexual harassment and property ownership. Of the thirty surviving wills from the late Anglo-Saxon period, ten of these were the wills of women who owned significant property.
One late Saxon charter describes land near Worcester which was being inherited, stating “Elfweard was the first man… Now it is in the hands of his daughter, and she is the second man”. Taking a look at Old English (the language of the period), the word for a human being of either sex was ‘mann’, which may strike us to lack gendered nuance but could be considered to reveal a certain level of male-female equality.
Into this society in the year 641AD two women are born into very different circumstances. The first definitely existed and her story can be drawn from the historic evidence and surviving records – she is known to us St. Kyneburgha. We will meet her in Part 2 of this blog series. The second woman, who we will meet in Part 3, is fictional, based on what is known about the life of a poorer woman at the time from archaeology and documents – we will call her Godgifu.
— You can find “Women in Anglo-Saxon Huntingdonshire Part Two: Kyneburgha: King’s daughter, abbess, saint” on our blog next Wednesday —
“Regular officers and soldiers in a uniform were an everyday sight, prominent even during peacetime, and during the the Napoleonic wars, their ranks swelled by embodied militia, Yeomanry and volunteers, they gave the land a bright frosting of scarlet, blue and gold.”
During the great uncertainty of the Napoleonic Wars the government was obsessed with the fear of a French invasion of England. All along the Kentish and Sussex coastlines fortified Martello towers were built, ditches were dug and flooded and the “wooden wall” of the Royal Navy patrolled. All across England militas drilled and local men formed companies of volunteers under local gentry or nobility. Read on to discover the original Huntingdonshire “Home Guard” of the Napoleonic wars.
Fyrd, Trained Band, Militia The concept of a militia was practically unchanged from the Saxon and early Norman statutes. In 1285, Edward I provided a national force of amateurs for home defence, who would be required to train annually and defend their locality. These groups would be known as trained bands, fencibles, militias and volunteers over their history and would continue unbroken from 1285 up to the 18th century.
The quality of these men was variable —they were provided with little budget, however some counties and cities with richer commanding officers were able to become serious semi-professional units, such as the London trained bands of the English Civil War. Colonel Ward’s observations on a trained band drilling in 1639 could be repeated almost any year thereafter:
“after a little careless hurrying … [they] charge their muskets, and so prepare to give their captain a brave volley of shot at his entrance to the inn; whereafter having solaced themselves for a while after this brave service every man repairs home, and that which is not so-well taught then is easily forgotten”.
Following the upheaval of the Civil Wars and Glorious Revolution, the now United Kingdom moved to keeping a permanent army and the militia became increasingly neglected.
The 1757 Militia Act By the mid eighteenth century, the decline of the militia had led to it becoming utterly untenable as a military force even for basic defence. Training was non-existent, as was rank structure, and there was no equipment beyond mouldering antiques from the last century. The informal arrangements that were in place were swept away and instead formalised militia service was drawn up, whereupon each parish would provide a quota of men paid for by local tax. The legislation was not popular (it was seen to be step towards conscription) and anti-militia riots broke out across England over summer 1757.
This new system was considerably fairer than the old, as the men were drawn by lot from a pool that excluded: those under eighteen or over forty five, clergy, peers, constables, apprentices and men with more than three dependents. They would serve for three years, be equipped with uniform and weapons, and the parish would support their families in their absence. Militia service was not popular with professional men, who would often pay a substitute to serve in their stead. Failure to fill quotas by parishes incurred hefty fines and so generous stipends were offered for volunteers in some areas.
Each county was expected to raise a quota of men based on their relative size or perceived vulnerability – 1,640 men for Devonshire, whilst little Rutland supplied just 120 men. The exact size of the Huntingdonshire militia regiment is unknown, but they fall second only to the West Yorkshire regiment in the militia list, suggesting that they were at least half a battalion which is to say around 250 – 300 men or five to six companies.
These men would be expected to train for 28 days a year, during which time they were billeted in public houses and subject to full military discipline. During times of disquiet or concern, militia regiments could be embodied for full time service and would often be used to garrison key towns and cities, freeing up regular troops. Whilst the men of the militia they could be promoted to non-commissioned ranks, the core of the militia regiment was a small staff of veteran sergeants from the regular army. Their officers were retired officers, landowners, gentry or nobility, often the close friends and family of the local Lord-Lieutenant (who acted as commanding officer). To be allowed to serve at all, officers had to own land or be in line to inherit land in the county.
The 1793 Militia Act In all, some 19,000 men were on active militia service in 1793. These men were a burden on the public finances and whilst they could be said to be a second rate defence force, they were expressly forbidden from joining the regulars or serving overseas. The new 1793 militia act sought to change that.
The new act actively encouraged militia men to join the regular army by offering very generous bounties for those who did – 18 guineas for militiamen upon transfer in 1804 (almost £2,000 by today’s reckoning)! To encourage for officers to transfer, they would be commissioned into their new regular regiment if they took sufficient volunteers with them. This was known as “raising the rank”.
From this point onwards, the militia effectively becomes a recruitment pool for the regular army. Militia regiments would be addressed by different army officers and recruiting parties – all competing to offer the most appealing prospect. Doubtless this is how in 1814, fourteen men of the Huntingdonshire militia (at this point apparently garrisoned in Reading) ended up joining the 14th (Bedfordshire Regiment), later fighting at Waterloo.
For those who could not be convinced by words and generous bounties, there were other inducements. One tactic was to introduce onerous drills and training exercises for the militia, which had the dual purpose of increasing the general preparedness and ability of the recruits and inducing them to sign up with the regulars to escape the harsh regime!
The Volunteers and Army of Reserve In 1798, Britain was facing the full ire of Revolutionary France. With the genuine risk of invasion looming, the “Defence of the Realm Act” (1798) was passed. This was, in effect, a kind of census as it drew up county-by-county the number of men able and willing to fight in case of invasion.
An unexpected side effect of the act was that many of these men took up arms immediately, beginning to form volunteer groups which drilled in towns, villages and hamlets across England. Within a few months there were 116,000 new volunteers under-arms, causing some consternation within Parliament that an armed and organised force on this scale posed dangers in itself!
By 1803, the number of volunteers reached its peak of 176,000 active volunteers with a further 480,000 inactive volunteers, willing only in the event of an invasion. In this year, Parliament also introduced an Army of Reserve. This were distinct from the militia and was effectively reserve battalions for regular army regiments. The idea was that these men would ‘choose’ to join the regular army, however in reality they were forcibly balloted to join what was in effect a regular regiment. This was so close to conscription that it went down very badly and was shelved within a few years.
A huge number of men who were not already serving in a military capacity were enlisted into this confusing and contradictory “defence force” across the United Kingdom. Huntingdonshire was no exception. As well as the existing militia regiment, Huntingdonshire had its own reserve regiment, a volunteer cavalry regiment. There were also innumerable volunteer forces (possibly as many as a company for each town/large village in the county). In the 1801 census, the total male population of Huntingdonshire was approximately 18,000. A conservative estimate would put over 3,000 of these men under arms, serving as volunteers or reserve soldiers in the following units…
The Huntingdonshire Volunteer Cavalry (1794-1815) In 1794, John Richards of Brampton, the High Sheriff of Huntingdonshire, convened a meeting at The Crown Inn where it was agreed to form a volunteer cavalry for the county. This force of horsemen would;
“chearfully obey His Majestys Commands, and subject to military law in all respects, within this Kingdom only, during the continuance of such Invasion, provided that one fourth of the corps shall remain within the County”
To qualify for entry into this prestigious force of volunteers you had to be a Yeoman, which is to say a person with an annual income or assets worth £100 (about £13,000 by our standards), and you had to own or have access to a horse. As with the militia, those eligible to serve could instead pay a substitute to do so for them. Although it may seem obvious, in April 1797 Charles Norman found out the hard way that his paid substitute, George Hitman, also had to have a horse! When this was found to be lacking, his last minute replacement’s replacement cost him a hefty £27 and 6 shillings.
The volunteer cavalry force was drawn up slowly, doubtless impeded by the actual duties of the senior officers and figures in the force, and the difficulties in producing uniforms and weapons during wartime. Finding sufficient horses must also have been troublesome at times, especially for cavalrymen whose horse died, leaving them without. Many local troops began training on their own initiative; the 28 men of Toseland and 35 of Huntingdon were drilling a year before the general muster in Huntingdon in June 1798.
At this event the whole volunteer cavalry corp appeared. Considering that a regular regiment had a theoretical strength of 1,000 men (of whom 600-800 would be on any given campaign), the returns filed by Owsley Rowley, chief tax collector for Huntingdonshire, showed an impressive turnout.
The numbers by hundred were: Huntingdon (Borough of) – 61 Hurstingstone – 329 Toseland – 264 Norman Cross – 228 Leightonstone – 259
Totalling a staggering 1,141 men. This is all the more awe-inspiring when it is remembered that Huntingdonshire is one of the smallest counties in England.
The cost of this cavalry was significant. Huge sums of money were expended on both the volunteer cavalry and the volunteer infantry, and Rowley was responsible for gathering the unpopular land tax that covered those costs. The risk of highway robbery or assault made the job so dangerous that the government issued cutlasses to tax collectors. It is likely that Rowley was escorted by some of these weekend cavalrymen as he went about his duties, which he did in full cavalry uniform with a brace of pistols!
Aside from these duties, the Yeomanry Cavalry seemingly never saw action in either a policing or military capacity. They were kept on the books until 1828, but they seem to have been effectively disbanded by the peace of 1814.
The Huntingdonshire “Army of Reserve” (1803 – 1806) The introduction in 1803 of the “Army of Reserve” was (as already mentioned) rather unpopular. Effectively another chance to be balloted into service if you had been lucky enough to dodge the militia ballot, it caused a good deal of grumbling across the country. Nonetheless, Huntingdonshire raised by public subscription a sufficient sum to raise (another!) regiment of 800 men.
Like the militia, these men were liable to serve only in the United Kingdom, received uniform, weapons, training and only had to serve for a finite period. Similarly, these men could transfer to a regular unit and it would seem plausible that the conditions were such to encourage just this. Certainly by December 1803, sixty men had transferred to regular army units, for which they would have been paid a bounty. With soldiers transferring out, substitutes being found (some from as far afield as Yorkshire!) and soldiers dying or deserting, the administration must have been a nightmare. The more-so as the bounties were paid by our old friend Owsley Rowley who had to reclaim the money from the government.
Despite the relative recruitment success of Huntingdonshire, nationwide, the scheme was deemed a failure. The target of 50,000 reserve men was missed with just 45,000 being signed up of whom over 90% were paid substitutes! By the end of the year, the total numbers were down to 35,000 due to transfer out, death and desertion (although deserters risked being forcibly enlisted if caught). The reserve regiments were reconstituted into militia garrisons and scattered across the country to see out the remainder of their service.
The Huntingdonshire Local Militia (1803-1816) Not content with a senior command role in the Volunteer Cavalry, Lord Sandwich also set about forming a volunteer infantry force. In the summer of 1803, notices appeared in towns and villages across Huntingdonshire calling for volunteers.
One such notice was seen by Litchfield Moseley, a 41 year old farmer. Moseley, “greatly encouraged by his lordship”, set about forming a company of volunteers based in Somersham. An evening meeting at The Rose and Crown (with a free drink to all attendees!) seems to have got the ball rolling and within a few months Captain Moseley had 61 volunteer soldiers, each with his own haversack and canteen – weapons and uniforms would follow later.
Companies like these had sprung up in every town and large village across the county and the administration must have been herculean. This perhaps explains why the Somersham company still did not have sufficient muskets even two years later. No detail is known about their uniforms except the cost (66 suits of clothes had cost £23 2s 0d) which the men would have paid for themselves. Other volunteer companies went in for cutting edge fashion, often not in the traditional red cloth, such as light infantry style cut jackets, frogging, braid and even – in one Sussex volunteer company – green velvet!
The Somersham company were inspected in October 1804 by Brigadier General Stewart, when any able-bodied men were “encouraged” to take the King’s Shilling and enlist into the regulars. Those left tended to be older or infirm, and the steady attrition of dead and discharged members shows their general unsuitability for active service. When they were next inspected in 1805, those men with muskets were issued cartridges for a firing drill. The expected ability of the volunteers is reflected in the fact that they were only given blank cartridges!
The volunteers would drill as often as they could, march for inspections by local dignitaries and take part in wider exercises with other companies. When the unit left Somersham for exercises they would have made a brave sight, uniformed and armed with their wagons declaring “Somersham Volunteer Company”. Doubtless this pomp and the pay offered (the same as regular soldiers during exercises) allowed the company to maintain its numbers over the course of the war – always around sixty men.
Like the Yeomanry Cavalry, the Somersham Volunteer Company were never called upon in a military or policing capacity and in 1816 were officially disbanded.
Unlike the regular soldiers who fought in the Napoleonic Wars, the experience of these volunteers is neglected and practically unknown today. Much like the Home Guard, over a century later, they were often the subject of mockery for their part time amateur service — but these brave men, often at great expense and effort, were willing to do their bit in the event of an invasion and no more could be asked of them.
Matthew Calleway is a reader, writer and all round creative type. He can often be found behind a desk planning things for the Huntingdonshire History Festival or else in the Cambridgeshire countryside walking, cycling and swimming in rivers.
Biography: Baldry, W. Y. “Order of Precedence of Militia Regiments”, Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research, Vol. 15, No. 57 (Spring 1936), Pages 5-16
Bell, J. “The Somersham Volunteers”, Popular Productions, St. Ives, 1997, First Edition
“The only great man the shire has produced, and what he did for England and the world is rightly deemed the grandest of all their local associations, but they have not yet dared to raise a statue in his honour on the soil from which he sprang.” – Lord John Russell speaking of Cromwell.
Whilst we may think that it is only today that the subject of statues has become politically and socially contentious, this has been the case for centuries; especially for that most marmitical of historic figures – Oliver Cromwell. The eventual unveiling of the well loved statue of Cromwell in St. Ives marked the end of a convoluted and seemingly impossible process that begun on the 250th anniversary of Cromwell’s birth in 1849.
The First Attempt In the middle years of the nineteenth century, there was a growing drive to commemorate Cromwell in one of the Huntingdonshire towns which could lay claim to him. On 4th August 1849, the People and Howitts Journal (a liberal weekly periodical) told how “active measures are in preparation for the collection of a sufficient sum … for the proposed monument to Oliver Cromwell in St. Ives”.
The drive to erect a statue was driven by two main factors. The first was the sestercentennial of Cromwell’s birth. The second was that in 1848, Old Slepe Manor, reputedly the residence of Cromwell in St. Ives, was pulled down and rebuilt further away from the railway, leaving the site vacant and no other surviving Cromwell monument in the town. Despite various fundraising attempts, such as selling copies of Rev. Paxton Hood’s poem “The Farmer of St. Ives”, this Victorian ‘GoFundMe’ was not successful, and the idea was shelved for half a century.
The Second Attempt In 1895, as the tricentennial of Cromwell’s birth loomed, the idea of a statue of the Lord Protector was raised again, this time far from the markets and taverns of St. Ives. The Prime Minister, Lord Rosebery, proposed that a statue be erected outside the houses of Parliament. The idea was debated heatedly and when the government was badly defeated (220-83) it proved the end of Lord Rosebery who resigned a few days later.*
The idea was taken up by the Daily Chronicle, who began to publicly canvass and raise funds to raise a statue elsewhere in London. The Hunts County Post seized the idea and argued that the statue should be in Cromwell’s home county, in his birth-town of Huntingdon or else in St. Ives where he “matured his plans”. The day after The Hunts County Post begun their public campaign, the ailing liberal government lost a vote of no-confidence, and the paper announced a suspension of the campaign until after the election. Unfortunately, they seem to have forgotten all about it, and the campaign never resumed.
The Third Attempt The eventual erection of a Huntingdonshire statue had an unlikely beginning. In February 1899, whilst debating how to celebrate three hundred years since Cromwell’s birth, Huntingdon town council received an unusual offer from the Coalbrookdale Company of Shropshire, who happened to have a spare statue of Cromwell available for purchase**.
The town council called a public meeting in early March to discuss the idea, but realised too late that they could not afford to buy the statue outright. The meeting unanimously decided to pay for a new statue by public subscription instead. Incidentally, the original statue that started the process off seems to have been purchased by Warrington Council and erected in Warrington in Cheshire on the Cromwell tricentennial instead.
Despite unanimously deciding to install a statue, Huntingdon town council seems to have been rather lukewarm on actually raising any money. Delays to the start of fundraising (due to wanting to simultaneously launch the campaign in America) meant that by Cromwell’s actual 300th Birthday on 25th April 1899, not a penny had been raised. The day was celebrated with a crowd of thousands, historic pageant, speeches and toasts, with train companies running special excursion trains to Huntingdon for the occasion – an occasion the town council declined to attend!
Two Towns Alike in Dignity In the Huntingdon town council meeting of May 1899, a fierce argument broke out about why so little had been raised. At this point, nobody in Huntingdon had donated to the fund, and not unreasonably, recriminations flew as to whether the fund raising committee was even trying. The following week the St. Ives town council met, and the mayor (Councillor Hankin) suggested they might erect their own statue of Cromwell. A committee was formed to fundraise for the St. Ives statue, and they speculated that the cost would be £4000-£5000 (approximately £550,000 – £650,000 by modern reckoning!).
It seems inconceivable that the St. Ives council did not know about the plan to erect a Cromwell statue in Huntingdon – and they must have known how badly it was going. The St. Ives statue was announced in June and donations began to pour in. By the end of September they had raised £600.
The August town council meeting for Huntingdon was the end of the road for the Huntingdon statue. They had received just thirty donations, only one from America (of $5) and none from a resident of Huntingdon. These donations were returned and the path was clear for St. Ives to proceed.
A Fortuitous Fire By the turn of the century, St. Ives council had not only reduced their statue target to £2000 and fundraised over £900, they had also found a sculptor. Frederick Pomeroy had recently completed a statue of General-at-Sea Robert Blake***, one of the leading naval officers of the Republic for Blake’s hometown of Bridgwater. Pomeroy was one of the most renowned sculptors of his generation. He would later create the statue of Lady Justice which still stands atop the Old Bailey in London. The only question now was where would the new Cromwell statue stand?
Skip forward five months and 7,300 miles south to Mafeking in South Africa, where British forces had entered the town besieged for over half a year, reportedly being greeted by the sentry with “oh yes, I heard you were knocking about”. The Boer War had begun with several disasters, and Britain needed a victory to celebrate – the relief of Mafeking gave them one. Massed riotous crowds gathered in British towns and cities to celebrate; singing, shouting, flag waving and of course drinking. The celebration in St. Ives must have been an especially lively one, as the crowd managed to completely destroy the derelict town pump in the centre by setting it on fire!
This central location, now empty, proved to be perfect for the Cromwell statue, and later that month Pomeroy and the mayor agreed the final design and height of the plinth. The two ideas put forward were Cromwell the military chief and Cromwell “the farmer of St. Ives”; the compromise was a melding of the two ideas, a Cromwell in civilian garb with sword buckled on and bible under his arm.
All that was left was to ensure sufficient donations were taken to cover the cost of the statue, and fundraising continued apace. Donations varied from £200 (made by the Lord Lieutenant of Cambridgeshire and Thomas Coote a prominent non-conformist and corn merchant), down to 6d with every sum in between – in total, £1234 9s 0d was raised.
The total costs were: £850 – Statue £260 – Pedestal and lamps £31 – Lamp posts £60 – Fundraising costs and unveiling ceremony £20 12s – Ongoing maintenance
With the funds raised and the details sorted, a date was set to unveil the new statue. The date chosen was Wednesday 23rd October, 1901 the 259th anniversary of the Battle of Edgehill. There would be speeches, a public lunch, a public tea and disgruntled royalists with a mind to sabotage the event…
The Jacobites of Holywell Following the unsuccessful invasion of England in 1745 by Charles Stuart (the young pretender, or Charles III, depending on whom you ask), Jacobitism in England had been illegal and perhaps inevitably driven underground. Societies and clubs who supported the restoration of the House of Stuart existed across the country, and by the 1880’s had been amalgamated into the White Cockade Club.
One branch of the White Cockade Club was based in Holywell, just up the road from the Puritan heartland of Huntingdonshire. The branch was founded by Anderson Fraser, a well known landscape artist typical of the liberal romantic members that constituted the majority of closet Jacobites in the club. Angered by the statue being erected to this arch-enemy of the Jacobite cause, they decided to take steps to ruin the ceremony.
The national president of the White Cockade Club offered assistance by sending six nooses to an unspecified pub in St. Ives. The plan was that at the statue’s unveiling, the local members would add the nooses to the wreaths at the statue base, with notes attacking Cromwell and the local dignitaries.
Rumours swirled through the town that the Jacobites had dynamite intending to blow up the statue, causing some consternation. The local constabulary investigated, found no explosives, and foiled the actual Jacobite plot by seizing the nooses from the pub before the Jacobites arrived.
The Unveiling The statue was unveiled by Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice, a liberal MP of the day, with a multitude of speeches to a market square packed with thousands of spectators, and not a Jacobite in sight.
Finally, after over fifty years, there was a statue of Cromwell in Huntingdonshire. It seems appropriate to end with the closing stanza of “The Farmer of St. Ives” written by Rev. Hood in 1848;
“Raise up, raise up the pillar! Some grand old granite stone. To the prince without a sceptre, to the king without a throne. To the brave old English hero who broke our feudal gyves To the leader of “the good old cause”; the farmer of St. Ives”
*Of course Lord Rosebery did not give up on his statue and campaigned as a private individual, donating £3000 to the fundraising campaign. Even then the famous Westminster statue was unveiled at 7.30am on Tuesday 14th November 1899 to prevent any hostile demonstrations.
** The Coalbrookdale statue of Cromwell had been cast some thirty years earlier for the International Exhibition of 1862, they evidently decided that the tricentennial of his birth was the ideal time to find a buyer!
*** Col. Robert Blake was made General-at-Sea in 1649 and took to the navy like a duck to water, by the time he died aboard his flagship in 1657 he had built a reputation as an exemplary nail commander. He was one of Lord Nelson’s heroes and Nelson “reckoned himself inferior to Blake”.
Matthew Calleway is a reader, writer and all round creative type. He can often be found behind a desk planning things for the Huntingdonshire History Festival or else in the Cambridgeshire countryside walking, cycling and swimming in rivers.
Bibliography: Akeroyd, A & Clifford, C. “Huntingdon: Eight Centuries of History”, Breedon Books Publishing, 2004, 1st Edition
Burn-Murdoch, B “Some Fit Memorial: The Cromwell Statue at St. Ives”, Records of Huntngdonshire, Vol 3. No. 7, 1999, Pages 43-51 | <urn:uuid:84f4eb73-7c04-4111-8a63-95cf4ac90fdc> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://huntshistoryfest.com/blog/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571246.56/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811073058-20220811103058-00277.warc.gz | en | 0.98111 | 10,874 | 3.171875 | 3 |
This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "The 1-Page Marketing Plan" by Allan Dib. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.
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What is the importance of email marketing? What are some things you should consider when designing a marketing campaign for your business?
In The 1-Page Marketing Plan, marketing expert Allan Dib emphasizes the importance of email marketing, especially for small businesses. Email marketing is an easy and cost-effective way to reach your prospects and existing customers.
Find out the importance of email marketing below.
What Is the Importance of Email Marketing?
Email marketing is important for small businesses because it is cost-effective.
Email is an inexpensive, direct, personal way to reach prospects and customers, which also can be automated. Dib notes that with email, you can:
- Capture the email addresses of website visitors with an email opt-in form; those not ready to buy but interested in more information are future customers you can nurture.
- Develop relationships with your customers (so your email database grows in value).
- Test and launch new products and services.
- Generate instant cash—create a compelling offer with a response mechanism, send an email to your list, and you’ll get an immediate response.
Now you know the importance of email marketing, here’s how you can implement an effective email marketing strategy:
Dib recommends using a commercial email marketing system such as MailChimp, ConvertKit, or ActiveCampaign (rather than trying to send mass emails via Outlook or Google mail). They meet compliance standards and work to improve delivery. Also, they automate sending.
|How to Create an Email Campaign|
According to marketing strategists, key questions to answer when planning an email campaign include:
1. Identify the outcome you want.
2. Identify a niche target.
3. Determine what matters to these prospects and how you’ll address it (what value you provide).
4. Decide on a timeline for the campaign.
5. Plan your emails and follow-ups.
6. Write subject lines that compel clicks (by promising value and personalizing).
7. Include a strong call to action.
8. Provide a way for recipients to opt-out.
9. Test your email on multiple devices to make sure it looks right.
10. Track your metrics.
Here’s a planning template for email marketing plus examples of successful campaigns.
Despite the importance of email marketing, Dib also recommends that regular or snail mail also be a part of your marketing strategy. Direct mail works as a marketing medium because:
- People connect emotionally with physical things. Unlike emails, people save USPS letters and cards.
- Direct mail has a longer shelf life and takes more effort to dispose of than email—which can immediately be deleted and forgotten.
- Postal mailboxes are becoming less cluttered (allowing your message to stand out), while email inboxes overflow despite many sorting methods.
The key to messaging is to use a mix of media appropriate to the prospects you want to reach, avoid relying too much on any one channel like social media to generate leads, and track the ROI.
(Shortform note: Surveys continue to show that direct mail has a higher response rate than email (4.4% versus 1.12%, according to the Direct Marketing Association). A study by The NPD Group Inc. found that 30% of recipients read email and 16% took action, compared with 47% who read direct mail and 27% who bought something as a result. Specifically, 44% of millennials in a Valassis survey said snail mail is their preferred way to receive offers, while slightly fewer—40%—cited mobile; this underscores the value of using a blend of tactics, including direct mail.)
Understanding the importance of email marketing is just one piece of the puzzle—what matters the most is putting it into practice.
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- How to create enthusiastic superfans—and why they're essential | <urn:uuid:e64cbf10-6d93-4344-8d8f-92fa6c8de532> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.shortform.com/blog/importance-of-email-marketing/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572063.65/warc/CC-MAIN-20220814173832-20220814203832-00673.warc.gz | en | 0.917872 | 943 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Those damn Americans will have their way with them, and if they can't get their way they'll pour more money and manpower in until they do. It is imperative that Chavez win the vote on DEC 02.
Pray that they succed and stop the hegemonic march for world $lavery the tyrants want to impose on another poor country, trying to show us American's that there is real democracy at work in this world.
The outcome of the Referendum of December 2 is a major historical event first and foremost for Venezuela but also for the rest of the Americas. A positive vote (Vota 'Sí') will provide the legal framework for the democratization of the political system, the socialization of strategic economic sectors, empower the poor and provide the basis for a self-managed factory system. A negative vote (or a successful US-backed civil-military uprising) would reverse the most promising living experience of popular self-rule, of advanced social welfare and democratically based socialism. A reversal, especially a military dictated outcome, would lead to a blood bath, such as we have not seen since the days of the Indonesian Generals' Coup of 1966, which killed over a million workers and peasants or the Argentine Coup of 1976 in which over 30,000 Argentines were murdered by the US- backed Generals.
A decisive vote for 'Sí' will not end US military and political destabilization campaigns but it will certainly undermine and demoralize their collaborators. On December 2, 2007 the Venezuelans have a rendezvous with history.
A very important election that the people will win, because the real strength of a democracy is its people, not its leaders.
America doesn't want us to see how easy it would be for regime change here and so will do whatever they can to end this before it begins. just imagine the idea of redisribution of not just land but the wealth of America being distributed and shared among the poor and helpless here and the rich becoming the nouveau poor! What a conundrum- what a juxtapposition. New slaves for the salt mines and no blisters- yet!
Thanks nathaniel for following up on this story. | <urn:uuid:0a43a956-e37f-4216-8378-dd8400bfd59f> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://tvnewslies.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=10087&p=54285 | 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 | 0.963556 | 447 | 1.609375 | 2 |
Units is defined as the standard of measurement for a quantity. There are different quantities that are used and measured such as time, length, area, volume, weight and many more. For example the units used for measuring time are, seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years. The units belonging to the same quantity can be further converted into each other. Such as one day has twenty four hours. I hours has sixty minutes and so on. Similarly weight has units such as pounds, kilograms and so on. Volume has units such as gallons, liters and so on. Length has units such as meters, centimeter and so on.
Example 1: Divide 20 pounds and 16 ounces by 4?
Solution: Given (20 pounds and 16 ounces) ÷ 4.
Here divide both the pounds and ounces by 4.
So 20 pounds divided by 4 = (20 ÷ 4) pounds = 5 pounds.
Similarly 16 ounces divided by 4 = (16 ÷ 4) pounds = 4 ounces.
Hence (20 pounds and 16 ounces) ÷ 4 = 5 pounds and 4 ounces.
Answer is 5 pounds and 4 ounces
Question: Multiple choice question (Pick the correct option.)
How many pounds are there in 6 Kilograms? Hint: 1kg = 2.2 lb
a) 6 b) 13.2 c) 12 d) None of these.
Correct answer: option b.
Explanation: Using the given conversion:1 Kg = 2.2 lb.
Converting pounds to kilograms by multiplying.
By multiplication: 6 Kilograms = 6 x 2.2 lb = 13.2 lb.
Hence, this gives 6 kg = 13.2 lb. | <urn:uuid:dac808ac-7393-47e9-99b0-b5a8ea89389a> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.tutorpace.com/common-core/units-online-tutoring | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280761.39/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00097-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935716 | 358 | 4.15625 | 4 |
The Read Write Inc. Non-fiction Phonics books provide structured practice for children in decoding words and reading through phonics. Each set of books is carefully graded so children can read them with confidence. This set is part of a new non-fiction range for Read Write Inc., with child-friendly topics including animals, camping, light and shadow and hobbies. With full colour photographs and interesting but decodable texts, these books will complement your use of the Read Write Inc. programme. Read Write Inc Phonics is a proven synthetic phonics programme that ensures early success in reading, writing and spelling. It includes Speed Sound Cards, Word Cards, Ditty Photocopy Masters, Ditty Books, Storybooks, Non-fiction, Interactive Stories and Writing books. It is supported by teacher resources and a full training package to ensure its easy implementation. | <urn:uuid:e8301b53-52ce-4dd9-8e92-123f8e08e71a> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.booksetc.co.uk/books/view/read-write-inc-phonics-non-fiction-super-school-pack-levels-1-3-9780198468998 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279650.31/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00437-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.92773 | 171 | 2.53125 | 3 |
Places of Interest nearby
Location address: España, Madrid
Number of texts: 1
Puerta de Hierro merely means Iron Gate, In Madrid this is a monument of the second half of the eighteenth century, located in the northwest of the Spanish capital city of Madrid (Spain), in the district of Moncloa near the Monte de El Pardo. It occupies a landscaped traffic island, defined by several branches of the highway A-6 and M-30, an enclave which is difficult to access. It is built in classical baroque style. | <urn:uuid:eff84a35-971e-4209-b9f2-1cb5946a39a6> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.routeyou.com/en-es/location/view/48051145/puerta-de-hierro | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560284352.26/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095124-00188-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930851 | 118 | 1.609375 | 2 |
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Experts tagged 'Islam'
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Raza Ahmad Rumi
Terrorism and extremism, radical Islam, Islamophobia, Pakistan-India-Afghanistan relations, human rights, international development, public policy
Equality of Women in Islam and How Muslims Interpret and Live the Qur'an/Koran
© Copyright Ithaca College. All rights reserved; unauthorized use prohibited. All material on this server is produced by our community but, except for designated pages, is neither approved nor verified by Ithaca College. | <urn:uuid:5259d92c-036d-48a8-8a81-66a9c7baef97> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://www.ithaca.edu/news/experts/?tag=islam | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988719566.74/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183839-00261-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.826298 | 121 | 1.859375 | 2 |
the Parallel Treebank Group at the Institute of Computational Linguistics at the University of Zürich is proud to announce the availability of new releases for SMULTRON, an aligned parallel treebank, and the TreeAligner, a tool for annotating, browsing and querying parallel treebanks.
SMULTRON v1.1 =============
SMULTRON (Stockholm MULtilingual TReebank) is a parallel treebank which contains around 1000 sentences in English, German and Swedish. The sentences have been PoS-tagged and annotated with phrase structure trees. The trees have been aligned across languages on sentence, phrase and word level. Additionally, the German and Swedish monolingual treebanks contain lemma information. The SMULTRON corpus is freely available for research purposes, please see the registration page.
New in version 1.1:
* new German-Swedish alignments
* various annotation errors fixed
* compatibility updates for the new TreeAligner
TreeAligner v1.1 ================
The TreeAligner is a graphical tool for creating aligned parallel treebanks by drawing alignment links between phrases. The monolingual treebanks must currently be encoded in TIGER-XML.
The TreeAligner also allows querying the aligned treebanks, using an extended version of the TIGER corpus query language.
Easy installers for the TreeAligner are available for Windows and Ubuntu. The source code is available as a package or from public repositories.
All code is licensed under the GPLv2.
New in version 1.1:
* improved annotation workflow & tree interactivity
* corpus information display (feature values etc.)
* automatic alignment suggestions (experimental feature)
* monolingual queries for parallel treebanks
* much faster query evaluation engine
* query language extensions for restricted universal quantification
* improved tree layout algorithm
* sampler from the SMULTRON corpus included in the installers
If you are interested, please join us on the TreeAligner mailing list!
With best regards,
http://www.cl.uzh.ch/kitt/smultron/ http://www.cl.uzh.ch/kitt/treealigner/wiki/TreeAlignerDownload http://www.cl.uzh.ch/kitt/hg/sta/branch-1.1/ http://www.ifi.uzh.ch/arvo/cl/volk/papers/Marek_Lundborg_Volk__KONVENS_2008.pdf https://lists.ifi.uzh.ch/listinfo/treealigner -- .: Torsten Marek .: University of Zurich .: Institute of Computational Linguistics .: http://www.cl.uzh.ch/en/tmarek.html | <urn:uuid:a907716b-c2b4-4d6d-8f18-d3fd418ca22a> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://mailman.uib.no/public/corpora/2009-June/008919.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573623.4/warc/CC-MAIN-20220819035957-20220819065957-00667.warc.gz | en | 0.734811 | 638 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Root crops are popular in home gardens because they are easy to grow and produce an abundance of nutritious food in a small space. Iowa State University Extension horticulturists tell when to harvest parsnips, salsify and horseradish – roots that some consider to be winter vegetables because their flavor is not fully developed until the roots have been exposed to near-freezing temperatures. To have additional garden questions answered, contact the ISU Extension Hortline at 515-294-3108 or firstname.lastname@example.org.
Parsnips should be harvested in November after exposure to several light freezes. The low temperatures in fall convert starches to sugars, improving the parsnip’s sweet, nut-like flavor. After harvest, trim off the foliage 1/2 inch above the roots and store the parsnips at a temperature of 32 degrees Fahrenheit and relative humidity of 95 to 98 percent.
Gardeners can also leave a portion of the crop in the ground over winter. After several light freezes, cover the parsnips with several inches of straw. Harvest the remaining crop in early spring before growth resumes.
Harvest salsify in November after several light freezes. The cool fall temperatures enhance the oyster-like flavor of the roots. After harvest, trim off the foliage 1/2 inch above the roots and store the salsify at a temperature of 32 F and a relative humidity of 95 to 98 percent.
Salsify can also be left in the garden over winter and harvested in early spring before growth resumes.
The roots of horseradish make their greatest growth in late summer and early fall. To obtain the best crop, delay harvesting horseradish until late October or November.
Carefully dig the horseradish and cut off the foliage about 1 inch above the crown. Store horseradish in a refrigerator or root cellar at a temperature of 32 to 40 F and a relative humidity of 90 to 95 percent. When storing horseradish, keep the roots out of light. Light will turn the roots green.
Gardeners can also leave some horseradish in the ground over winter. Harvest the remaining crop in early spring before growth resumes.
The asparagus foliage can be cut back to the ground after it has been destroyed by a hard freeze in fall. However, it is generally recommended that the dead foliage be allowed to stand over winter. The dead debris will catch and hold snow. Snow cover helps protect the asparagus crowns from extreme cold. Asparagus foliage allowed to remain in the garden over winter should be removed in late March or early April before the spears begin to emerge. | <urn:uuid:02c8de41-1d57-41ac-85b8-ac67f79f88b3> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.extension.iastate.edu/article/yard-and-garden-harvesting-root-crops | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281162.88/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00537-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.913763 | 545 | 3.109375 | 3 |
Growing flowering plants from seeds is one of the cost-effective ways to fill your gardens with breathtakingly beautifully. In this article, we will talk about “How to Grow Any Flower from Seed in 11 Possible Steps?”
and also, You can read,
- Basics of Grow Any Flower from Seed?
- 11 Steps of Grow Any Flower from Seed
- Most Common FAQ’s Related to How to Grow Any Flower from Seed?
- How to Grow Roses from Seeds? ( Video Guide)
Basics of Grow Any Flower from Seed?
Most people may only focus on planting a vegetable seed, but seeds from either the flowers are just as easy ways to grow pretty flowers in your garden.
Indoor environment, in a flowerpot, outside, your greenhouse, or flower bed, you may begin growing flower seeds. The most critical elements for growing a flower from seed are moisture, sunshine, and the appropriate soil. It will be best to take care of it as you would with any other flower until the seedling becomes a wonderful flower. But, Seeding flowers may be different from one kind of flower to another type.
Annual flowers bloom exactly on schedule. Most of them will also seed itself, so you would only have to plant them once more to benefit from their blooming years. Perennial flowers don’t always bloom in their very first year, and you can create your garden at such a lower cost of paying plants if you have the patience anymore. If you dreamed of the boundless colorful garden with many flowers, pick up some packs of seeds and get started with below ten tips.
11 Steps of Grow Any Flower from Seed
1. Select a container.
Choose the correct container is the first essential step to growing any flower seed. These may be plastic containers, peat containers, plastic flats, cups of yogurt, packs of cells, eggshells, etc. As long as they would be clean, there are many countless solutions for containers. However, Seed starter containers must be clean and reach at least 2-3 inches deep and must have holes in drainage. It’s necessary to have drainage holes in the container because overly saturated soil can inhibit the seeds’ growth.
You can purchase seed-starting kits, but don’t spend a lot of cash until you’re sure I’m ready to start seeds every year. Whenever you start seeds in tiny containers, you’ll have to transplant seedlings into slightly bigger pots after their first set of leaves.
Please be aware that most flats and pots take up little space, so make sure you have sufficient sunny area for all the seedlings you start with. Besides, if you’d like to grow various flowers commercially, it is better to purchase an indoor planting greenhouse with space for more than one flower.
2. Begin with the best soil mix with nutrients.
Prepared Flower seeds, seed-starting mix, or potting soil are widely available in nurseries and garden centers. Do not use typical garden soil, and it would be too thick contains seeds of weeds and likely species from diseases. Until filling the seed-starting containers, wet the soil with warm water.
For example, you can fill each segment with a mixture of peat moss, vermiculite, and perlite. To create a well-drained soil rich in organic nutrients, mix the above three different soil types together in equal sections. With this mixture, pour your flower container 3⁄4 of the way up.
3. Sprinkle or bury the seeds.
Based on their flower species, sprinkle or bury the seeds on top of the soil. You can use Organic material such as vermiculite or sphagnum moss to cover the harder seeds, while softer seeds should lie on the soil’s top. To decide whether you can bury them under the soil or leave them on top of it, read the seed packet that comes with your seeds.
4. Plant seeds at the proper depth.
If your selected flower seed grows plant by the bury, you can find the right planting depth in the packet’s instruction. The standard rule of thumb is to cover soil seeds equal to three times their thickness-but to carefully check the seed packet planting directions.
Some seeds need light to germinate, and they should rest on the surface of the soil but still have good contact with moist soil. After sowing, gentle tamping will help. Some seeds need light to germinate, and they should rest on the surface of the soil but still have good contact with moist soil. After sowing, gentle tamping will help. Using a spray bottle after you have planted your seeds to water the soil again.
5. Water the Seeds.
Always use water at room temperature. Let chlorinated water sit overnight to dissipate chlorine, or use purified water. Stop using water, which is softened. Keeping the soil regularly moist is necessary, but avoiding overwatering encourages diseases that can kill seedlings.
Sprinkle water gently over the soil, but don’t apply too much, or you can wash away smaller seeds. This can be achieved by sprinkling the water with your palm or slowly pouring water from a little saucer into the container. The soil should be moist anyway, so the seeds should still be intact.
Try not to sprinkle the leaves with water. As well as overwatering, a simple way to prevent this is to dip your containers’ base in water and allow the soil to absorb moisture from the bottom until saturated. Some seed starting kits have a wicking mat that carries water from a reservoir to dry soil.
This may be the most suitable way to water seedlings, but you still have to be careful not to remain too damp on the ground. Don’t stop watering whatever you do and let the seeds or seedlings dry out.
6. Keep up constant moisture.
Cover your flower seeds container before germination, to the method is beneficial moisture inside. Usually, seed-starting kits come with a plastic cover. A plastic bag may also be used, but it should be helped to not lie flat on the surface.
Plastic wrap or a sealed lid absorbs moisture and helps germinate the seeds. Put a few holes in the top of the plastic wrap such that the plant will breathe. The planter can also be wrapped in a plastic bag for a similar effect.
As soon as the seeds sprout, remove the cover. Once the seedlings expand, reduce watering to dry the soil partially, but do not allow them to wilt.
7. Focus on keeping the soil with proper warm
Seeds need to germinate in warm soil. They germinate reasonably slowly, or not at all, in too cold soils. At about 78 ° F, most seeds can germinate. Waterproof heating pads, specially built for seed germination, maintain the soil at a steady temperature in most plant nurseries, garden centers, and some supermarkets you can buy them.
Before the seeds sprout, you can put seed trays on top of a refrigerator or other warm appliance. Air temperature should be just under 70 ° F after germination. As long as the soil temperature remains 65-70 ° F, seedlings can tolerate air temperatures as low as 50 ° F.
8. Feeding with some fertilization.
Start feeding your seedlings after growing their second set of real leaves, adding a weekly liquid fertilizer of half power. Gently add it, so that seedlings are not removed from the soil. Apply a full-strength liquid fertilizer every other week after four weeks before transplantation.
9. Provide sufficient sunlight to seedlings.
Such as the plants seeds also love sunlight but for a certain level. You can grow stocky seedlings in a luminescent south-facing window in mild winter areas. Farther north, even a window facing south, cannot offer enough light, particularly in the middle of winter. Ideally, for best healthy growth, seeding require 14-16 hours of direct sunlight per day.
If the seedlings start bending towards the window, that’s a definite sign that they’re not receiving sufficient sunlight. It won’t be enough just turning the pots-you will need to have artificial lighting. Lighting kits may be issued by nurseries and mail-order seed catalogues. Be sure to follow orders carefully with these lightning kits.
10. Don’t forget the air circulation.
Circulating air avoid unnecessary disease and allows strong stems to grow. Run a suitable y fan close to seeds to generate movement in the air. To stop blasting them directly, keep the fan a distance away from the seedlings.
11. Harden the seedlings if they are transplanted outdoors.
If you intend to transplant your seedlings outdoors, harden them by leaving them for 7-10 days outside in a shaded environment. This is going to acclimate them to the temperature shift. They need to be acclimatized to their new, harsher surroundings before moving seedlings outdoors. This operation is known as “hardening off.”
Some flowers are cold-intolerant and should be kept indoors. The seed kit should provide you with a variety of temperatures under which the flower thrives. If a flower is cold-resistant, it should be classified as hardy. Tender flowers may be less cold-resistant and should still be over 40 ° F (4 ° C).
Most Common FAQ’s Related to How to Grow Any Flower from Seed?
- How long does it require for flowers to grow from seeds?
flower seed packets sometimes mention days to maturity estimates, but most annual flowers take about 95 days from seed to crop.
When grown under spring conditions, the ones that made my list start popping blooms in 60 to 70 days, and they also tolerate light frost.
- How to Speeding up Seed Starting?
Not all seed decides that it's time to sprout only because it's planted in the soil. Some seeds need a signal; it is time to germinate.
It may be a temperature rise, a degree of humidity, or an increase in light. These methods, including winter sowing and stratification, are good for germinating seeds earlier than they would require.
- How to Growing Perennial Flowers from Seed?
Until their second year, most perennial plants don't bloom. They spend their first season developing a large root system for photosynthesis and lots of leaves.
Often, by starting your perennial seeds in the fall and fooling the plants into believing that the following spring is year two, you can get around this. You have to be careful, sometimes.
- How to Growing Annual Flower from seeds?
Once you plant annual flowers on your garden, most of the annuals flowers seeding themselves. At the end of the season, all you have to do is leave the trees' flowers.
They're going to drop the seed, and almost magically, the seeds will weave in the greenhouse. Often you get too many seedlings in one place, to the point where they become a nuisance, but the little seedlings are easy to pull or transplant.
- What is the ideal route for start flower seeds?
It would be best if you had a right potting mix and a warm area for germinating the seeds while sowing seeds for perennial flowers.
Sow the seeds by sprinkling over the damp potting mix like you would annual flowers, and cover them quite slightly with more mixture. To keep the soil wet as the seeds germinate, cover the seeds with plastic wrap.
- For flowering plants, why are seeds important?
Seeds are also essential for plants because they ensure that the gene pool continues for the next generation.
In flowering plants or angiosperms, seeds are the outcome of double fertilization that results in an embryonic plant and its food supply (endosperm) within the plant's ovary.
- Why is there no germination of my seed?
The significant reasons for unsuccessful germination are: seeds are eaten by rats, field mice, birds, and wireworms.
But if the seed is still in the soil, search. Seeds rot-Our untreated seeds can rot when planted too deeply, over-watered, or in cold weather.
- How will healthy flower seeds be found?
You can use the water test for most of the flower seeds. Water test: Take your seeds and place them in a water jar.
Let them sit down for some 15 minutes. If the seeds sink, they will still be viable; if they float, they will most certainly not sprout.
- Until planting, do I need to soak the flower seeds?
Until planting, soaking seeds helps you break down the seed's natural defences against what it expects from Mother Nature, which then encourages it to germinate more quickly.
Another explanation is that while Mother Nature actively attacks seeds, she also gave an inner gauge to those seeds to support them know when they should grow.
- What are the Quick Blooming Flowers to Grow from Seeds?
There are several quick blooming flowers to grow from seed.
Some of them are sunflowers, Petunias, Nasturtiums, Annual Phlox, Poppies, Cornflowers, Nigella and Johnny Jump-ups.
- What are the Best Flowers to Grow from Seed?
There are several best flowers to grow from seed. Some of them are, Morning Glories ,Zinnias, Sweet Alyssum, Moss Rose ,Nasturtiums , Sunflowers and Sweet Peas.
How to Grow Roses from Seeds? ( Video Guide)
However, it is not impossible to propagate flowering plants from seed if you choose the correct method and guidelines for the right varieties.
There is also a wider variety of flower seeds available these days than seedlings. And better yet, many can be picked from your plants or friends and neighbours. Our 11-step guide will initiate you into your dream garden with many flowers.
So, I hope you got a clear idea of “How to Grow Any Flower from Seed in 11 Possible Steps?”
Please comment below about your ideas and share this “How to Grow Any Flower from Seed in 11 Possible Steps?” article with your friends.
We will meet in the next article.
Until then, Read about “10 Easy Plants to Grow Fast”
Have a good day! | <urn:uuid:9821b47d-ccfa-46d8-b2e3-80ed08f98092> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://emozzy.com/how-to-grow-any-flower-from-seed/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573908.30/warc/CC-MAIN-20220820043108-20220820073108-00269.warc.gz | en | 0.934994 | 3,015 | 2.890625 | 3 |
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Harper Government provides critical nutritional support in Afghanistan to save the lives of mothers and children
April 9, 2013
Children and their parents are better able to play a healthy and active role in their community and contribute to the long-term economic growth of Afghanistan, thanks to investments in health by the Harper Government. Today, Chris Alexander, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Defence, on behalf of the Honourable Julian Fantino, Minister of International Cooperation, announced a new partnership withSave the Children that will help provide critical nutritional supplements to pregnant and nursing mothers, and children in their first years of life.
"Malnutrition contributes to 190,000 child deaths every year in Afghanistan," said Parliamentary Secretary Alexander following World Health Day on April 7. He highlighted another way Canada is committed to improving the health of those most in need around the world. "Canada's focus on maternal, newborn and child health will ensure that vulnerable mothers and children in Afghanistan receive lifesaving supplements so that they can become healthy and active members of society."
Economic Action Plan 2013 reaffirms Canada's commitment to international development assistance including maternal, newborn and child health. As announced in EAP2013, the Harper Government will enshrine the responsibilities of the Minister and the priority of international development and humanitarian assistance, for the first time ever, into law. The new Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development will enhance coordination of international assistance with broader Canadian values and objectives.
This partnership will help improve the nutrition, health, and survival of pregnant and nursing mothers and children under two. The project will also increase awareness among Afghan families on the importance of nutrition for healthy mothers and children. It will also strengthen the capacity of the Afghanistan government to deliver health programs targeted at maternal, newborn and child health.
"There is international evidence—including soon-to-be-released original research by Save the Children—that demonstrates that a significant number of newborn deaths can be prevented with cost-effective interventions," said Patricia Erb, President and CEO of Save the Children. "This new two-year project comes at a critical moment to accelerate progress for newborn survival in Afghanistan by allowing us to bring crucial lifesaving interventions, in particular nutritional support and education, to many more mothers, newborns and children."
Canada remains committed under the Muskoka Initiative to mobilize global action to reduce maternal and infant mortality and improve the health of mothers and children most in need around the world.
- 30 -
For more information, media should contact:
Daniel Bezalel Richardsen
Press Secretary to the Minister of International Cooperation
- Date Modified: | <urn:uuid:adcd83c5-6497-4681-a511-a8b3ab464e97> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.international.gc.ca/media/dev/news-communiques/2013/04/9a.aspx?lang=eng | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280730.27/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00245-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935894 | 583 | 2.40625 | 2 |
Question: is this using -j4 MAKE="make -j4" so that it will spawn 4
proccesses for every subdir? I have found that doing this yeilds about
60 compile proccesses on average during the build.
On Thu, 1 Jun 2000, Rajagopal Ananthanarayanan wrote:
> Going to -j4, elapsed time went from 808sec -> 254sec (4:14)
> which is a scaling of ~3.2 times ... if -j4 had had an
> elapsed time of 202sec (3:22) then it would have been perfect
> scaling. But add in the fact that -j4 vs. NO-J would introduce
> additional complexity in the make itself, which now spawns
> more processes, etc. ... this shows in the increased system time
> for -j4; of course the extra system time also counts increased
> lock contention. For this particular workload (primarily user-mode,
> little-or-no-shared parallelism), -j4 did pretty good.
> Finally, -j6 & -j8 may not discover any extra parallelism
> in the makes ... one gross way to check this is to watch "top"
> and see how many "cc" processes are running on an average.
> If it stays at 4, then -j4 is all that'll work. | <urn:uuid:cb63592d-9c1c-4412-9e60-4a08d5ab1fee> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://oss.sgi.com/archives/linux-origin/2000-06/msg00052.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988720972.46/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183840-00252-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959922 | 299 | 1.523438 | 2 |
States Use Illusory Approaches to Shift Program Costs to Federal Government
HEHS-94-133: Published: Aug 1, 1994. Publicly Released: Sep 20, 1994.
- Full Report:
Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed certain states' Medicaid program records, focusing on: (1) whether states are using financial arrangements that inflate the federal share of Medicaid program expenditures; (2) various techniques that states use to obtain federal funds for their basic Medicaid and disproportionate share hospital (DSH) programs; and (3) whether states are using their federal matching funds to provide medical services to Medicaid patients.
GAO found that: (1) states have used various financial arrangements to obtain federal Medicaid funds without committing their share of matching funds and to increase the federal share of Medicaid expenditures; (2) some states have used federal funds to finance their Medicaid programs, while other states have redirected their funds into their state treasuries; (3) although recently enacted legislation focuses on limiting states' improper use of federal Medicaid funds, Michigan has taken action to ensure its federal Medicaid funding level in 1995; and (4) the Medicaid program should prohibit states from using illusory financial arrangements so that federal funds can be diverted to those medical facilities providing care.
Matter for Congressional Consideration
Status: Closed - Not Implemented
Comments: Congress is considering major changes to the Medicaid program that would increase states' flexibility in managing their Medicaid programs. The reforms being considered do not directly address this issue.
Matter: Congress should enact legislation to minimize the likelihood that states can develop illusory financing mechanisms whereby providers return Medicaid payments to the states, thus effectively reducing the states' share of Medicaid funding. This legislation should prohibit Medicaid payments that exceed costs to any government-owned facility. | <urn:uuid:1cc4f237-167d-42da-bf61-b08acb2d4e1c> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.gao.gov/products/HEHS-94-133 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280483.83/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00299-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.91329 | 370 | 2.03125 | 2 |
God's declaration of Truth
GOD HAS SHOWN MERCY. FOR THOSE WHO REJECT THAT, THERE IS ONLY THE JUSTICE AND VENGEANCE OF GOD WHICH IS ETERNAL DAMNATION.
Luke Chapter 19
The words of Our Only Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in red. 19:10 "For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost." 19:11 As they were hearing these things, he added and spoke a parable, because he was nigh to Jerusalem and because they thought that the kingdom of God should immediately be manifested. 19:12 He said therefore: "a certain nobleman went into a far country, to receive for himself a kingdom and to return. 19:13 And calling his ten servants, he gave them ten pounds and said to them: Trade till I come.
19:14 But his citizens hated him and they sent an delegation after him, saying: 'We will not have this man to reign over us.'
19:15 And it came to pass that he returned, having received the kingdom: and he commanded his servants to be called, to whom he had given the money, that he might know how much every man had gained by trading, 19:16 And the first came saying: 'Lord, thy pound hath gained ten pounds.'
19:17 And he said to him: 'Well done, thou good servant, because thou hast been faithful in a little, thou shalt have power over ten cities.' 19:18 And the second came, saying: 'Lord, thy pound hath gained five pounds.' 19:19 And he said to him: 'Be thou also over five cities.' 19:20 And another came, saying: ' Lord, behold here is thy pound, which I have kept laid up in a napkin. 19:21 For I feared thee, because thou art an austere man: thou takest up what thou didst not lay down: and thou reapest that which thou didst not sow.' 19:22 He saith to him: 'Out of thy own mouth I judge thee, thou wicked servant. Thou knewest that I was an austere man, taking up what I laid not down and reaping that which I did not sow. 19:23 And why then didst thou not give my money into the bank, that at my coming I might have exacted it with usury?' 19:24 And he said to them that stood by: 'Take the pound away from him and give it to him that hath ten pounds.' 19:25 And they said to him: 'Lord, he hath ten pounds.' 19:26 But I say to you that to every one that hath shall be given, and he shall abound: and from him that hath not, even that which he hath shall be taken from him. 19:27 But as for those my enemies, who would not have me reign over them, bring them hither and slay them in my presence." 19:28 And having said these things, he went before, going up to Jerusalem. 19:29 And it came to pass, when he was come nigh to Bethphage and Bethania, unto the mount called Olivet, he sent two of his disciples, 19:30 Saying: "Go into the town which is over against you, at your entering into which you shall find the colt of an ass tied, on which no man ever hath sitten: loose it and bring it.
19:31 And if any man shall ask you: 'Why are you loosing it?' You shall say thus unto him: Because the Lord hath need of it.' " 19:32 And they that were sent went their way and found the colt standing, as he said unto them. 19:33 And as they were loosing the colt, the owners thereof said to them: "Why are you loosing it? 19:34 But they said: "Because the Lord has need of it." 19:35 And they brought it to Jesus. And casting their cloaks over the colt, they set Jesus on it. 19:36 And as he went, they spread their cloaks upon the road. 19:37 And when he was drawing near, being now at the descent of the Mount of Olives, the whole company of his disciples began to rejoice and to praise God with a loud voice, for all the miracles that they had seen, 19:38 Saying: "Blessed is he who comes as king, in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!" 19:39 And some of the Pharisees, from the crowds, said to him: "Master, rebuke thy disciples." 19:40 He said to them: "I tell you that if these keep silence, the stones will cry out." 19:41 And when he drew near, seeing the city, he wept over it, saying: 19:42 "If thou also hadst known, and that in this thy day, the things that are to thy peace: but now they are hidden from thy eyes. 19:43 For the days shall come upon thee: and thy enemies shall cast a trench about thee and compass thee round and straiten thee on every side, 19:44 And beat thee flat to the ground, and thy children who are in thee. And they shall not leave in thee a stone upon a stone: because thou hast not known the time of thy visitation."
19:45 And entering into the temple, he began to cast out them that sold therein and them that bought. 19:46 Saying to them: "It is written: My house is the house of prayer. But you have made it a den of thieves." 19:47 And he was teaching daily in the temple. And the chief priests and the scribes and the rulers of the people sought to destroy him. 19:48 And they found not what to do to him: for all the people were very attentive to hear him.
The Second Epistle of St. Paul to the Thessalonians
The day of the Lord is not to come till the man of sin be revealed. The apostle's teachings are to be observed.
2:1 And we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and of our gathering together unto him: 2:2 That you be not easily moved from your sense nor be terrified, neither by spirit nor by word nor by epistle. as sent from us, as if the day of the Lord were at hand.
Chap. 2. Ver. 2. Spirit . . . utterance. . . letter indicate three possible sources of their belief that the parousia is imminent. Spirit refers to some falsely claimed revelation, utterance may be a statement of Paul’s which was misunderstood, or wrongly attributed to him, the letter seems to be one forged in Paul’s name.2:3 Let no man deceive you by any means: for unless there come a revolt first, and the man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition
Ver. 3. . . The parousia must be preceded by a great apostasy, i.e., a great religious revolt, and the advent of the man of sin, i.e., Antichrist. Son of perdition, one entirely deserving of eternal punishment.
Ver. 3. The day of the Lord will not come. These words have been inserted to complete the sentence, which in the original is elliptical. The expanded reads "Let no man deceive you by any means: for the day of the Lord will not come unless there come a revolt first, and the man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition"
2:4 Who opposeth and is lifted up above all that is called God or that is worshipped, so that he sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself as if he were God.
Ver. 4. In the temple, that of Apostate Jerusalem which the full consensus of the Church Fathers declare he will rebuild - i.e. the Temple of Remphan; and in the Apostate shell of the former Christian church, which he perverts to his own worship: as the Freemasons have done to the Vatican.
Ver. 4. Antichrist will be characterized by great impiety and pride. He sits in the temple of God, etc. He will aspire to be treated as God and proclaim that he is really God.
2:5 Remember you not that, when I was yet with you, I told you these things? 2:6 And now you know what restrains him, that he may be revealed in his proper time.
Ver. 6. What restrains him. The Thessalonians knew the obstacle. We also know that it is Jesus Christ.
2:7 For the mystery of iniquity is already at work: only that he who is at present restraining it, does still restrain, until he is gotten out of the way.
Ver. 7. Mystery of iniquity, the evil power of Satan’s threefold prevarication and total Apostasy from God, of which Antichrist is to be the public exponent and champion. He who is at present restraining it. The obstacle is now spoken of as a person. Some point out that Michael the archangel and his heavenly army are obstacles, and this is true, which now prevent the appearance of Antichrist – but the primary obstacle is, as St. Justin Martyr teaches: Jesus Christ Himself; when the great Apostasy is complete, then in effect, Christ is “gotten out of the way.”2:8 And then that wicked one shall be revealed: whom the Lord Jesus shall kill with the spirit of his mouth and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming: him
Ver. 8. When Christ appears in glory, He will inflict defeat and death on Antichrist by a mere word of command.2:9 Whose coming is according to the working of Satan, in all power and signs and lying wonders:
Ver. 9 – 10. By the aid of Satan Antichrist will perform prodigies which men will falsely regard as miracles, and by means of which they will be led to adopt sinful practices.2:10 And with all wicked deception to those who are perishing. For they have not received the love of truth that they might be saved. 2:11 Therefore God shall send them the operation of error, to believe lying:
Ver. 11. God shall send. . .That is God shall suffer them to be deceived by lying wonders, and false miracles, in punishment of their not entertaining the love of truth.
Ver. 11. 'God sends.' God will allow their willful rejection of truth to have its natural results of spiritual blindness, impenitence and damnation. A misleading influence, or, “a delusion.” The operation of error - the Greek reads: "energian planes" or literally the energy of delusion, which is exactly and actually the fallen spirits of the devils and demons conjured by pagan religion, especially by idolatry. NOW, currently, the Assisi delusion of the Apostates, Ratzinger and Wojtyla and many others present with them, is a very real and prime example. To give oneself over to this is to invite utter and complete damnation of oneself by God.2:12 That all may be judged who have not believed the truth but have consented to iniquity. 2:13 But we ought to give thanks to God always for you, brethren, beloved of God, for that God hath chosen you firstfruits unto salvation, in sanctification of the spirit and faith of the truth:
Ver. 13. First-fruits, i.e., earliest believers in the gospel. Some manuscripts read: “from the beginning.” That is, God called them from all eternity.2:14 Whereunto also he hath called you by our gospel, unto the purchasing of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. 2:15 Therefore, brethren, stand fast: and hold the teachings, which you have learned, whether by word or by our epistle.
Ver. 15. Teachings, i.e., his teachings whether given orally or in writing. Concerning Apostolic teaching – the oral is included in the written at the point we have the whole New Testament complete, i.e. with the completion of St. John’s Gospel.
2:16 Now our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God and our Father, who hath loved us and hath given us everlasting consolation and good hope in grace,2:17 Exhort your hearts and confirm you in every good work and word.
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A few words
The articles posted in the main here are from a variety of sources and perspectives, but all based on the unchangeable truth that all law comes from God, or if it is something that pretends a legalism but does not agree with God's law, then it is nothing lawful at all; the Noachide nonsense is the prime example of that which is not at all lawful. See the right side pane and below the posts at the bottom of the page for a number of sources that help shed light on this. All copyrighted sources are quoted and used for comment and education in accord with the nonprofit provisions of: Title 17 U.S.C., Section 107.
By Command of God
Eucharist in house churches Commanded by God - HE COMMANDS TO NOT HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH THE VATICAN WHICH HAS ALREADY BECOME TOTALLY APOSTATE AND DIABOLIC AT THIS POINT.
The Justice of God: New Testament Prayer, Psalms Hymns and Canticles, and first century Communion in full
Traditional Catholic Prayers: Office of the Hours for the Week
Go Here: The Return of Christ
And here: Parousia of Jesus Christ Our Lord
The Promise of His coming. His commands to prepare and be worthy.
Statement of what is happening in the world in connection with the Second Coming of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
Nuzul i Isa and Qiyamah, the Parousia of Jesus Christ Our Lord and His judgement of all men that have ever lived.
Rv:22:7 Behold I come quickly. Blessed is he that keepeth the words of the prophecy of this book.
Tuesday, January 14, 2014
The Best and Most Important Online Catholic Books: ST. MATTHEW 12th Chapter
ST. MATTHEW 12:Pg. 22 A man with a withered hand 9. And when he had passed on from that place he entered their synagogue. 10. And m behold, a man with a withered hand was there. And they asked him, saying, “Is it lawful to cure on the Sabbath?” that they might accuse him. 11. But he said to them, n “What man is there among you who, if he has a single sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will not take hold of it and lift it out? 12. How much better is a man than a sheep! Therefore, it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.” 13. Then he said to the man, “Stretch forth thy hand.” And he stretched it forth, and it was restored, as sound as the other. 14. But the Pharisees 2 out and took counsel against him, how they might do away with him. The Mercy of Jesus 15. Then, knowing this, Jesus withdrew 3 from the place; o and many followed him and he cured them all, 16. and warned them not to make him known; 17. that what was spoken through Isaias the prophet might be fulfilled, who said, 18. Behold, p my servant, whom I have chosen, my beloved in whom my soul is well pleased: I will put my Spirit upon him, and he will declare judgment to the Gentiles. 19. He will not wrangle, nor cry aloud, neither will anyone hear his voice in the streets. 20. A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoking wick he will not quench, till he send forth judgment unto victory; 21. and in his name will the Gentiles hope. Blasphemy of the Pharisees 22. Then there was brought to him a possessed man who was blind and dumb; q and he cured him so that he spoke and saw. 23, And all the crowds were amazed, and they said, “Can this be the Son of David?” 24. But the Pharisees, r hearing this, said, 4 “This man does not cast out devils except by Beelzebub, the prince of devils.” 25. And knowing their thoughts Jesus said to them, s “Every kingdom divided, against itself is brought to desolation, and every city or house, divided against itself will not stand. 26. And if Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself; how then shall his kingdom stand? 27. And if I cast out devils by Beelzebub, by whom do your children cast them out? Therefore they shall be your judges. 28. But if I cast out devils by the Spirit of God, then the has come 5 upon you. 29. Or, how can anyone enter the strong man’s house, and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man? Then he will plunder his house. i 1 Kgs. 21, 6.—j Lev. 24, 5-9——k Num. 28, 9.—l Matt. 9, 13; Os. 6, 6.—m 9—14: Mark 3, 1-6; Luke 6, 6-11; 14, 3-5.—n Deut. 22, 4—o Mark 3, 7-12.— p Isa. 42, 1-4.— q 22-24: Luke 11, 14f.—r Matt. 9, 32-34; Mark 3, 22.—s 25-29: Mark 3, 23-27; Luke, 11, 17-22. 1-Ver. 8. Jesus does not make use of His. sovereign power to abrogate the Sabbath Law, but He teaches that it should be interpreted in a reasonable way. Cf. Mark 2, 24- 26 (52) and notes. 2-Ver. 14. Cf. Mark 3, 6 (52). The Pharisees combine with the Herodians to put,’ Jesus to death. 3-Ver. 15-21. Jesus withdrew: He doubtless gave up synagogue preaching for a time. The” prohibition against making known His miracles, usually to be accoulited for by His desire to avoid the over-excitement which kept people from giving proper attention to His preaching, was probably due in this case to the wish of avoiding conflict with the Pharisees. His meekness recalls to St. Matthew the messianic prediction about the Servant of the Lord, in Isa, 42, 1-4 (857). 4-Ver. 24. The Scribes who charged that our Lord’s supernatural works were to be attributed to the devil were from Jerusalem, according to Mark 3, 22 (53). 5-Ver. 28. The has come: the victory of Jesus over the demons indicated that He was the Messias. The king was already gathering His people. Pg. 23 30. He who is not with me is against me, t and he who does not gather with me scatters. 31. “Therefore I say to you, u that every kind of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven to men; but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. 32. And whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit,1 it will not be forgiven him, either in this world or in the world to come. 33. Either make the tree good and its fruit good, v or make the tree bad and its fruit bad; for by the fruit the tree is known. 34. You brood of vipers, how can you speak good things, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. 35. The good man from his good treasure brings forth good things; and the evil man from his evil treasure brings forth evil things. 36. But I tell you, that of every idle word 2 men speak, they shall give account on the day of judgment. 37. For by thy words thou wilt be justified, and by thy words thou wilt be condemned.” The Sign of Jonas 38. Then certain of the Scribes and Pharisees answered him, saying, “Master, we would see a sign from thee.” 39. But he answered and said to them, w “An evil and adulterous generation demands a sign, 3 and no sign shall be given it but the sign of Jonas the prophet. 40, For even as Jonas was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth, 41. The men of x Nineve will rise up in the judgment with this generation and will condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonas, and behold, a greater than Jonas is here. 42. The queen of the South will rise up in the judgment with this generation and will condemn it; Y for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and behold, a greater than Solomon is here. 43. z “But when the unclean spirit has gone out of a man, he roams through dry places in search of rest, and finds none. 44. Then he says, ‘I will return to my house which I left’; and when he has come to it, he finds the place unoccupied, swept and decorated. 45. Then he goes and takes with him seven other spirits more evil than himself, and they enter in and dwell there; a and the last state of that man becomes worse than the first. So shall it be with this evil generation also.” Jesus and His Brethren 46, While he was still speaking b to the crowds, his mother and his brethren were standing outside, seeking to speak to him. 47. And someone said to him, “Behold, thy mother and thy brethren are standing outside, seeking thee.” 48. But he answered and said to him who told him, “Who is my mother and who are my brethren?” 49. And stretching forth his hand towards his disciples, he said, “Behold my mother and my brethren! 50. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven, he is my brother and sister and mother.” t Luke 11, 23.—u 31f: Mark 3, 28-30; Luke 12, 10. —v Luke 6, 43-45.—w 39-42: Mark 5, 116; Luke 11, 29-32; Matt. 16, 4; 1 Cor. 1, 22.—x Jonas 3, 5.—y 3 Kgs. 10, 1-10.—z 43-45: Luke 11, 24-36.—a 2 Pet. 2, 20.—b 46-50: Mark 3, 31-35; Luke 8, 19-21.—c 1- 15: Mark 4, 1-12; Luke 8, 4-10. 1-Ver. 32. The sin against the Holy Spirit is to ascribe to the devil the works of the Holy Spirit. One who thus attacks directly this source of all grace, rejects the source of salvation. It is morally impossible that he should ever meet the conditions for absolution. 2-Ver. 36. An idle word is one which profits neither the speaker nor the hearer. If the word is merely useless, its utterance is not seriously wrong. 3-Var. 39. Jesus refuses a sign asked for by the incredulous, to be given under conditions fixed by themselves. He will, however, when the time has come, give them the sign of Jonas, that is, the Resurrection. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Verse 30. “He who is not with me is against me, t and he who does not gather with me scatters.” Is the complete condemnation of Modernism. t Luke 11, 23. quotes the same. This below is the complete condemnation of the documents and Practices of Vatican II, especially the Blaspheming of the Holy Spirit by Apostate Impostor John Paul II at Assisi where he blamed the entire VIOLATION OF THE FIRST COMMANDMENT THROUGHOUT THE ASSISI ABOMINATION IN 2002 on the Holy Spirit . FOR THE TAPE ON ASSISI SEE: go to http://rhondasnando.blogspot.com/2013/02/assisi-abomination-of-desolation.html then go to part 6 at http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xxe9wx_vts-01-6_news at 19:18-19:54 of 28:25 of part 6 and at 2:23:00-2:23:36 of 2:31:48 of the whole tape which is where John Paul II the Apostate blasphemes the Holy Spirit. His statement transcribed is: “That is what the scripture says, the Spirit is a blowing. May the Holy Spirit today blow – speak to the hearts of all of us here present as the wind symbolizes. Lets listen all of us to the words of the Spirit.” After that go back and see the entire 2 hours and 23 minutes before he says that. If you believe that what is shown has anything to do with the Christian faith or true Catholic religion or the Holy Spirit, then you are not a Christian nor a Catholic. It is sheer Satanic Apostasy. Immediately after this supreme act of Satanic Apostasy, John Paul the Apostate's physical condition got worse and continued to worsen until he died by the Judgment of God and went to the Judgment of the Just Judge, Jesus Christ. Any idea that the heresies of John Paul II the Apostate were only prudential and that somehow juridically he still occupied the throne of Peter was absolutely destroyed by this singular act. The Vatican – Babylon – has fallen, see Apocalypse 18. The Church always knew that one day, in some way, this must absolutely come to pass since it is prophesied by the Risen Christ. This Bible is the late 1940's approved Catholic CCD Critical Greek comparison in the notes with the Vulgate Latin translation. Note the theological note on Ver. 32 – blaspheming the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, just as Jesus Christ said it wouldn't – the definition is given in the note (1. ) of what that is. That definition fits Impostor John Paul II's statement at Assisi blaming the Holy Spirit for their willful and knowing violation of the First Commandment. This whole Assisi Ecumenism is the foreseen on purpose method and goal of Modernism and is the spiritual (preternatural to be exact) Mark of the Beast that will never be forgiven that the Apostates at the Vatican have given themselves over to. HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH IT UPON PAIN OF ETERNAL DAMNATION. 31. “Therefore I say to you, u that every kind of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven to men; but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. 32. And whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, 1 it will not be forgiven him, either in this world or in the world to come. 33. Either make the tree good and its fruit good, v or make the tree bad and its fruit bad; for by the fruit the tree is known. 34. You brood of vipers, how can you speak good things, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. 35. The good man from his good treasure brings forth good things; and the evil man from his evil treasure brings forth evil things. 36. But I tell you, that of every idle word 2 men speak, they shall give account on the day of judgment. 37. For by thy words thou wilt be justified, and by thy words thou wilt be condemned.” note 1-Ver. 32. The sin against the Holy Spirit is to ascribe to the devil the works of the Holy Spirit. One who thus attacks directly this source of all grace, rejects the source of salvation. It is morally impossible that he should ever meet the conditions for absolution. 43. z “But when the unclean spirit has gone out of a man, he roams through dry places in search of rest, and finds none. 44. Then he says, ‘I will return to my house which I left’; and when he has come to it, he finds the place unoccupied, swept and decorated. 45. Then he goes and takes with him seven other spirits more evil than himself, and they enter in and dwell there; a and the last state of that man becomes worse than the first. So shall it be with this evil generation also.” This evil generation, in the Greek generation is 'genea' and in the Latin is 'generationi.' It is not limited to one human generation. In this case it is every Jew, unrepentant of the crimes of Deicide and Perfidy until the Judgement at Christ's Second Coming and forever in eternity after that. For a Jew to repent of Judaism, which is built on Deicide and Perfidy and not at all on the Old Testament, and abjure all connection to Judaism and come to Christ and confess their guilt and be Baptized in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and be forgiven of Deicide and Perfidy is possible and in fact we hope they do, but they are no longer Jews then at all, at that point they have become Christians only. z 43-45: Luke 11, 24-36. Luke repeats the same as Matthew | <urn:uuid:94391854-90ce-48f8-b2b4-2015d5bd95cf> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://1law-order-and-justice.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-best-and-most-important-online_14.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281151.11/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00107-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951219 | 6,930 | 1.539063 | 2 |
NEW YORKERS KEEP
NEW YORK SAFE
Whenever you ride an MTA bus, subway or
railroad, be on the lookout for:
- unattended packages
- suspicious behavior
- people in bulky or inappropriate clothing
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- anyone tampering with surveillance cameras or entering unauthorized areas
If you see something, say something.
As soon as you notice any potential danger, tell a cop or MTA employee,
or call 888-NYC-SAFE (888-692-7233).
Thousands of New Yorkers have already done their part. And you can too.
That’s how New Yorkers keep New York safe.
- Google Translate | <urn:uuid:cc212322-22b7-415c-8f72-18fe14cfa0e4> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://web.mta.info/mta/security/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279224.13/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00478-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.842991 | 144 | 1.5 | 2 |
Drinking cranberry juice was previously estimated to help restrict incidences of urinary tract infection. Well, if this piece of information is to be believed then, this may not true. A recent study asserts that intake of cranberry juice does not alter the occurrence of urinary tract infections.
The study was conducted on college-aged women tested positive for urinary tract infection. While one group was made to drink eight ounces of cranberry juice, others were given a placebo twice a day for either six months or until a recurrence of a urinary tract infection, whichever took place first. Recurrence of urinary tract infection was reported by almost 20 percent cranberry juice drinkers and 14 percent women on the placebo.
Betsy Foxman, PhD, of the University of Michigan School of Public Health in Ann Arbor and study author and colleagues mention that the placebo juice may be inadvertently containing the active ingredients that reduce urinary tract infection risk. Both cranberry juice as well as the placebo has Vitamin C. Another possibility is that the study protocol kept subjects better hydrated so they urinated more frequently. Hence, bacterial growth and urinary tract infection symptoms supposedly declined.
The study appears online and will be published in the January 1 issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases. | <urn:uuid:09c64639-9108-4f51-bab7-6621002bbae6> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.healthjockey.com/2010/12/09/cranberry-juice-probably-fails-in-the-battle-against-urinary-tract-infections/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573399.40/warc/CC-MAIN-20220818185216-20220818215216-00066.warc.gz | en | 0.966166 | 247 | 2.71875 | 3 |
The Coronavirus Omicron’s variant has been put to document in the New York City. Five cases were discovered in the New York according to Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Kathy Hochul.
According to Hochul, two cases were documented in Queens, one in Brooklyn and one in Suffolk county Island.
“Let me made it clear that there’s nothing to be panicked for, we knew the variant was coming and we have all the necessary tools to put an end to it, wear your mask and get vaccinated.” Hochul added.
The news arrived on same day Omicron variant was discovered in Colorado and Minnesota and the person who got affected with the variant in Minnesota travelled to New York for an anime convention in November.
Also, this week case(s) was also discovered in California.
According to the World Health Organisation, Omicron is classified as a variant of concern as scientists work to determine how it will compare to the delta variant in terms of severity.
Omicron variant was first reported by South African scientist but the sample came from other countries in Southern African.
It was affirmed that those who got infected by the new variant have suffered “very mild symptoms” so far | <urn:uuid:76f85938-267e-4ca3-a730-e3bb761d5d1e> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://trendpresswire.com/omicron-variant-cases-rises-in-the-united-state-as-cases-discovered-in-new-york-colorado-minnesota/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571536.89/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811224716-20220812014716-00268.warc.gz | en | 0.972245 | 259 | 2.03125 | 2 |
Tracing single products through manufacturing stages, taking place at different locations under a plethora of institutional, social and legal environments, has proven to be a particularly fruitful way to research the seemingly opaque networks of global capitalism. The ability to mobilize various forms of labour, working under diverse conditions along the commodity chain is the key to successful entrepreneurial strategies for many corporations today. Yet, as many scholars have already noted , the commodity chain research tends to have a narrow focus on firms and governability, offering very little insight on the workers, their conditions and the actual production process. The 52nd ITH Conference aimed to help correct this oversight by calling for papers engaging with commodity chains from the perspective of labour relations and work experience in various locations, as well as the possibility of workers’ agency within these complex spatial arrangements.
In her keynote address, ANDREA KOMLOSY (Vienna) pointed out that global commodity chain model has its origins in the world-systems perspective, where it was used to shed light on the mechanisms of unequal exchange, international division of labour and synchronicity of different work regimes. After Gary Gereffi and Miguel Korzeniewicz reintroduced the concept in the mid-1990s, it was picked up by financial and development institutions as a way of analysing cost reduction business solutions and implementing policies which could upgrade regions/states within the commodity chain. One of the consequences of these specialized applications of the model under the key terms ‘global value chain’ and ‘global production network’ was the loss of critical outlook and detachment of commodity chain model from labour studies. Komlosy argued that global labour history and global labour studies with their emphasis on topics such as unfree labour, subsistence work, precarization and informalization could serve as a source of inspiration for the understanding of commodity chains beyond business strategies or national economic constraint and room for manoeuvre. Furthermore, instead of dealing solely with social actors directly engaged in production, distribution and consumption of commodities inside the chains, she stressed horizontal embeddedness of each chain in particular government legislature, communities, family and household structures as well as the importance of acknowledging hierarchy of different locations along the chain.
Observing in retrospect various sessions and debates which addressed cases located in different time periods and world regions, it can be said that this year’s ITH Conference has foregrounded four distinct clusters of themes: the application of the commodity chain model to preindustrial settings, the role of commodity chains in the formation, reproduction and reversal of core, semi-periphery and periphery relations, overview of various actors involved in the functioning of the chains and the question of workers’ agency.
A number of papers dealing mostly with mining and metal in the early modern Europe challenged the standard view of preindustrial producers as isolated units untouched by global exchange and free from competitive pressures. ERICH LANDSTEINER (Vienna) convincingly applied the commodity chain model to 16th century ironworks in the Innerberg district of Styria and Upper Austria, the most important steel producing centre in Europe at the time. The production mills were organized in the form of early stock companies controlled by the merchants from Steyr who sold finished steel products through the northern trading hubs, such as Nuremberg, Antwerp and Hamburg. MIROSLAV LACKO (Limbach) showed how the copper producers in the Habsburg monarchy between the 17th and 19th century utilized state support for workforce recruitment and transport logistics to export their product as far as Asia and Africa. CHRIS EVANS (Pontypridd), LINN HOLMBERG (Uppsala), MÅNS JANSSON (Uppsala) and GÖRAN RYDÉN (Uppsala) followed the exchange of steel making knowledge among the experts in 18th century Northern Europe, pointing out that people shaping the steel production technology at the time thought in terms of not only commodity, but also “intellectual and discursive chains”.
Another group of speakers focused on the power of the commodity chains to transform local labour relations and inspected lasting effects these business amalgams had on economic differentiation between countries and regions. ZDENĚK NEBŘENSKÝ (Prague) indicated how the import and processing of raw cotton from the United States in the mid-19th century changed the spatial arrangements and the organization of work inside the cotton mills of Skalice, resulting in the upgrading production facilities of this small provincial town of imperial Austria. KLEMENS KAPS (Vienna) followed the succession of various agricultural commodity chains between the late 18th and early 20th century in order to explain the reasons for economic backwardness of Galicia – traditionally one of the poorest regions within the Habsburg Monarchy. By narrating the story of the American late 19th century sugar mogul Claus Spreckels, UWE SPIEKERMANN (Göttingen) charted the transfer of the sugar industry back and forth between Hawaii and California, with production at both sites being highly dependent on the usage of coolie labour. In 1878, Spreckels invested in an ambitious sugar refinery project in Maui, only to relocate the brunt of his business back to California a decade later under the influence of changed political alliances, heightened competition and public outrage over the import of Chinese workers, radically altering landscapes and demographics of both sites in the process. In his overview of global soya production ERNST LANGTHALER (Linz) demonstrated the advantage of long-term and comparative perspective for studying the often-contradictory local consequences of commodity chains. He identified three main global soya production formations in the course of the 20th century located in Northeast China, the American Midwest and Brazil’s Savanna region. The Chinese soya production in the interwar period is usually taken as an ideal type of a primary production chain based on labour-intensive farming of individual peasants, whereas present-day Brazil is the embodiment of industrial plantation farming dependent on cheap wage labour. According to Langthaler, the evolution of American soya production since the 1950s illustrates that small-scale peasant farming can successfully evolve into more capital-intensive model, while the ongoing struggle of landless peasants’ movements in Brazil is exerting pressure in the opposite direction. These examples prove that contrasting dynamics are always present on the ground and that local socio-economic constellations brought about by the global commodity chains are not irreversible.
When it comes to actors shaping the global flow of commodities and relations of production, the conference highlighted two stakeholders whose importance has often been neglected, namely non-governmental organizations and temporary work agencies. FRANZISKA OLLENDORF (Gießen / Toulouse) inspected the role of corporate social responsibility campaigns within the global cocoa production chain. She observed that corporations are increasingly implementing corporate social responsibility programmes not only because of consumer pressure, but also the need to improve the sustainability of their commodity supplies. Looking at the results of one ethical certification project in Ghana, Ollendorf concluded that it had a divisive impact on the local small-scale cocoa farmers. The more productive farmers successfully joined the project and sold higher quality beans with a premium while the less productive producers were left behind, rarely getting the chance to participate, as success of the registered growers’ community depends on the performance of each individual farmer. MAREK ČANÉK (Prague), DEVI SACCHETTO (Padua) and RUTVICA ANDRIJAŠEVIĆ (Bristol) underlined the importance of labour market intermediaries by analysing the growing reliance of the electronics multinational corporation Foxconn on temporary work agencies in the Czech Republic for recruitment and control of workers from other countries. By providing dormitories for migrant workers and employing them under differentiated contracts, the work agencies keep the foreign workforce isolated from their Czech co-workers, thus effectively preventing common ground for trade union activity.
Contributions focusing on labour agency confirmed the difficulty that atomized, place-bound working classes face when attempting to organize against transnational and globalized capital. HEIDE GERSTENBERGER (Bremen) talked about the plight of workers in offshore conditions of law, such as export processing zones or cargo ships sailing under ‘flags of convenience’, where national labour legislation of the host country does not apply. OLIVER PYE (Bonn) described the extreme fragmentation among migrant palm oil workers in Malaysia divided between various ethnicities, formal and informal contracts, legal and illegalized statuses, different labour agencies operating in the same location and “new forms of indentured labour arising from debt bondage scams”. At the same time, Pye argued one should resist the lure of seeing such highly exploited workers simply as passive victims of highly mobile capital. His paper presented these same subjects exercising surprising power on the ground and building solidarities as members of “real and extended social networks [..] used to circumvent and challenge the labour regime imposed upon them by capital and [..] produce a transnational scale of experience”. In a similar manner, MICHAELA DOUTCH (Bonn) displayed the 2013/14 movement of Cambodian garment workers expressing itself in the streets, but also paid attention to “everyday forms of labour agency”, such as gatherings of female workers to watch the news and exchange work-life experiences.
In addition to the academic panel presentations, the conference organized a tour of the highly automated Steyr BMW engine plant with the help of the factory works council, and hosted a workshop with Andreas Brich, chairman of the works council at Steyr BMW, and Peter Schissler, the Federal Secretary for Education and International Affairs of the Austrian Union of Production Workers (PRO-GE). The exchange revolved around the issues of international trade union solidarity, the challenges of industry 4.0 and complexities of organizing within the highly automated, ‘just in time’ factories. The trade unionists presented their efforts to connect and engage in common education projects with the unions in the regions on the receiving end of industrial relocation, such as Eastern Europe, and protect stable work hours and private data under the ‘internet of things’ technology. In the discussion, the point was raised that, contrary to common wisdom, the influence of the workforce in ‘just in time’ manufacturing actually increases, since the management system foresees constant flow of production factors with little or no stocks of materials at the final goods production facilities.
The concluding debate weighed the advantages and limits of global commodity chains approach in the study of labour. Some participants maintained that the application of the commodity chain toolkit could quantify unequal economic exchange, account for parallel existence of apparently conflicting labour relations and map relations of power, thus helping us explain historical change. The long-term and comparative perspective also exposed the continuities of different forms of unfree work, putting into question the assumption about the gradual spread of free wage labour under capitalism. On the other hand, many speakers had reserves about the actual reach and explanatory (rather than purely descriptive) potential of the model. The question was posed, whether the neglect of labour agency in the commodity chain research is simply an omission or an indicator or inherent weakness of the chain as an analytical construct. There was caution about reductionism of the chain model, or the tendency of researchers to recognize straightforward vertical connections when observing the chain dynamics downstream, when, in actuality, each node along the global production chain is a part of much more muddled network of sellers and buyers. Most of the participants agreed that a number of conference papers had a hard time balancing between the explanation of the chain dynamics and the desired focus on labour. Linking the two is potentially rewarding, but also a delicate task, demanding theoretical reflection and sensibility toward less visible actors within and outside of the chains.
Andrea Komlosy (University of Vienna): Chains of Labour: Connecting Labour History and the Commodity Chain Paradigm
Panel I: Primary Production
Rolf Bauer (University of Vienna): The Peasant Production of Opium in 19th Century India
Uwe Spiekermann (University of Göttingen): Labour Shortage as Task and Challenge: The Hawaiian and Californian Sugar Industry in the Late 19th Century
Ernst Langthaler (Johannes Kepler University Linz): Global Soy Commodity Chains and Regional Agricultural Labour Relations in the 20th Century: Northeast China, USA and Brazil in Comparison
Panel II: Metal and Mining
Erich Landsteiner (University of Vienna): The Relations of Production in the Steel Production of the Innerberg District (Upper Austria/Styria) in the 16th Century – an Analysis in the Light of the Commodity Chain Approach
Chris Evans (University of South Wales) / Linn Holmberg (Uppsala University) / Måns Jansson (Uppsala University) / Göran Rydén (Uppsala University): What was Steel in the Eighteenth Century? Commodity Chains and Knowledge Flows in Northern Europe
Miroslav Lacko (Slovak Society of Social and Economic History, Limbach): Problems of Proto-Industrial Logistics in the Distribution of East-Central European Copper Production on the Global Markets of the 18th Century
Panel III: Long-term and Transregional Perspectives
Heide Gerstenberger (University of Bremen): On the Political Economy of Capitalist Labour Relations in the Era of Globalization
Christof Jeggle (Bamberg): Product Lines and Production Markets: Analysing Labour Relations in Pre-Industrial Production and Distribution
Klemens Kaps (University of Vienna): Commodity Chains and Labour Relations in a Peripheral Region: A Longue Durée Perspective on Habsburg Galicia, 1772-1918
Zdeněk Nebřenský (Masaryk Institute and Archive of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague): Commodity Chains and Transformation of Industrial Space: The Case of Cotton Mills in the Bohemian Lands during the Gründerzeit
Panel IV: Flows of Production and Upgrading Strategies
Santosh Hasnu (University of Delhi): Labour Circulation through Transport Systems
Franziska Ollendorf (University of Gießen / Université de Toulouse-Jean Jaurès): Governing through CSR – Linking Institutional Transformation and Private Governance in the Cocoa Value Chain
Christin Bernhold (University of Zurich): Argentinean Agro-Industrial Chains, Upgrading, and Uneven Development: Incorporating Marxian Theory of Value into Chain Research
Johanna Sittel (University of Jena): (Re)Production of Informal Work in the Automotive Value Chain in Argentina
Panel V: Workers’ Agency and Labour Struggles
Marek Čanĕk (Multicultural Centre Prague) / Devi Sacchetto (University of Padua) / Rutvica Andrijasevic (University of Bristol): From Socialist to Multinational Electronics Production: The Case of Foxconn in Eastern Europe
Michaela Doutch (University of Bonn): The Movement of Cambodian Garment Workers: Labour Agency Potential in the Global Garment Production Network
Oliver Pye (Bonn University): Global Production Networks and Transnational Organising in the Palm Oil Industry
Andreas Brich (Chairman of the works council at the BMW Motoren GmbH) and Peter Schissler (Federal Secretary for Education and International Affairs of the trade union PRO-GE and chairman of weltumspannend arbeiten)
ZitierweiseTagungsbericht Commodity Chains and Labour Relations. 15.09.2016–17.09.2016, Steyr, in: H-Soz-Kult, 07.01.2017, <http://www.connections.clio-online.net/tagungsberichte/id=6913>. | <urn:uuid:794c6c07-44ed-44a8-b4cf-176516f5da5b> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://geschichte-transnational.clio-online.net/tagungsberichte/id=6913 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279933.49/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00123-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.903251 | 3,304 | 1.976563 | 2 |
Kolkata, June 12 : With food stalls lining the streets, devotees queuing up outside eateries and plates full of food passed among families and friends, the whole of Kolkata turns into a giant food court during Durga Puja.
While the five-day festivities get over in the wink of an eye, the city now has its maiden Durga Puja-themed restaurant ready to serve gastronomes round the year.
Dashabhuja, near the city police headquarters at Lalbazar, connects Bengal's most delightful celebration with its inhabitants' most delightful indulgence -- Durga Puja and the festive Bengali cuisine.
The elegantly-lit eatery, decorated with colourful overhead canopies and various forms of the goddess Durga, simulates the feeling of sitting in a marquee while pampering the taste buds.
The sound track of rhythmic dhak beats, an inseparable part of the Puja rituals, and several Puja-themed hangings and artefacts add to the festive ambience.
The menu comprising authentic Bengali platters, gives prominence to Puja dishes starting from bhog (community feast of food items offered to the Goddess first) of khichdi, bhuni khichdi and labda (mixed vegetables) to the lavish spread of mutton curry, luchis (a type of puri), chanar paturi, rice, and payesh or the Bengali version of kheer.
Along with the Puja-specific main course, the mouth watering variety of "Pujor Misti" or the sweets offered to the goddess Durga, such as chandrapuli, narkel naru, balushai, etc., are also served in the eatery round the year.
According to the restaurant owner, an artist associated with designing prominent community puja pandals or marquees for the last three years, the eatery is a perfect amalgamation of his dream and the family business.
"My dream is to design the themes for Durga Pujas while we have been running restaurants as part of our family business.
So in my new project, I thought of connecting the two. This is the first of its kind project that would let you soak in the carnival spirit of the puja in Bengal -- throughout the year," said Sayak Raj, the owner, who also designed three prominent community pujas last year.
Raj also revealed he was in conversation with a number of city artisans and sculptors, who would be making the Durga idols for some of the most popular pujas this year, and plans to install artefacts designed by them in his eatery.
"I wish this restaurant to be an archive of the Durga Puja celebrations in Bengal so that visitors from other states and countries can get a glimpse of our heritage and culture surrounding this festival.
We are planning to decorate the interior with the miniatures of Durga idols to be installed in some of the prominent pujas in the city this year," he said.
The restaurant, inaugurated by veteran Bengali actor Barun Chanda and legendary Indian classical dancer Uday Shankar's daughter and actress Mamata Shankar barely a month ago, has created a buzz among food enthusiasts in the city and received significant celebrity presence.
"We have also requested some popular committees to provide us with their Puja theme songs so that we can play them in our restaurant all year long -- along with our signature theme music," the owner added.
* Where: Dashabhuja, 3rd Floor, Old Court House Corner building
* Timings: 12.
p.m. to 10 p.m. (lunch), 7.30 p.m. to 11 p.m. (dinner)
* Price: Meal for two at Rs 800-1000 plus taxes | <urn:uuid:ce45054d-9294-4e3f-bc88-f9242a4492e0> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.india4u.com/flavours-of-festivity-in-first-durga-puja-themed-restaurant-foodie-trail-kolkata-2/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571222.74/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810222056-20220811012056-00671.warc.gz | en | 0.952778 | 821 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Do you know how to play poker? I'm sure you do. I prefer Texas Hold'em. It's simple, yet very interesting to players of all experience levels. I used to play more often when I was younger, but now, with two kids, I'm not keen on investing 2-3 hours of my free time playing poker. One of the best first-hand combinations you can expect is a pair of aces. It takes some skill to hide the excitement when you see such a hand.
Today we will be looking at another set of aces: Alcoa Corporation (NYSE:AA). In fact, I'm talking about two red aces: the ace of hearts, as I generally love this company, and the ace of diamonds, as we're talking about a mining company, and diamonds are some kind of mineral also. Let's see how the world-class poker player, Lumina, will play this hand. Here we go.
A poker player holding a pair of aces can live with a wide range of flops, assuming that she didn't slow play the pre-flop. In our case, Lumina doesn't have the best flop, but still chances are that she's good. How is this translated into Alcoa?
Well, Alcoa is a "nuts" card for several reasons. First of all, the company has a unique advantage against its competitors. They sell the largest part of their mined alumina, but they also keep some for their own uses. This means that they gain on the very sale of the alumina while also their final product, aluminum, is still cheaper than that of their peers.
In addition, the company entered into several agreements regarding the association of power prices with aluminum prices, in order to shield itself from increasing energy costs. In addition, another agreement is going to become effective in September 2022. Last but not least, one-third of the company's power needs is supplied by owned hydro-electric facilities, moving production cost down and participating into the production of "green" aluminum. That last part has a lot more implications than one can imagine. These implications go beyond the reduction of production cost and touch the hot issue of the climate change.
More and more companies are adopting ESG governance standards, which in the future, if not now, they will play a part into corporate valuations. This new, environmentally friendly economy requires economic participants to provide "greener" products and adopt "greener" production policies. Despite the fact that, whether these "green" policies are better than the traditional ones, from a total harm measurement standpoint, remains subject to debate, it is clear that ESG is becoming the new normal. A few days ago, the company reached an agreement with Hellenic Cables, a subsidiary of Cenergy Holdings and one of the largest cable producers in Europe, for the sale of its EcoLum products, the production of which doesn't create more than 4 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide for every one tonne of aluminum. The uptake of such products is so high, that Alcoa expects the orders of its environmentally friendly product series to triple in 2022.
But the board doesn't look too good. The CPI in the U.S. was announced today and hit a record of 8.6%, up 0.4% from consensus. This could lead the FED to proceed to a more drastic increase of its base interest rate. In addition, yesterday it was announced by the ECB that the quantitative easing is over and that it will increase its basic interest rate in July by 25 basis points. All these are measures that will hurt consumption in one way or another. This leads us to the "Turn."
So, with a Jack of hearts, the situation gets a little more complicated. Lumina is frustrated that a straight is forming in the table, but at the same time, she fancies her chances for a flush, with another heart on the river. Except for the 9 of hearts, that is...
In the case of Alcoa, the Jack of Hearts could be the anticipated slowdown in the world economy. It is frustrating for Lumina's aces, but it is what it is. And there's more to that. Not only a decrease in demand will hurt aluminum prices, but also will the subsequent build-up of stock. This, in fact, was the main argument in the recent aluminum conference. It was argued that aluminum will reach $2,300 per tonne in December of this year, meaning a 20% decrease from today's levels.
However, Lumina is not scared. Something is calling her to pursue her chances for that much-wanted flush. Same for Alcoa, aluminum inventories in May reached record low levels. Although this is mainly due to supply chain problems, rather than increased demand, it is still a relatively bullish sign on the metal. Artificial, but bullish.
What the market hasn't accounted for adequately is the global transition to electric vehicles. As with every transition, so with this one, the road isn't always smooth. In our case, as Mr. Ambrose mentioned correctly in his recent article about the company, the issue of the semiconductor scarcity is a real headwind to the e-vehicle transition. However, I wouldn't consider Alcoa to be a short-lived trade vehicle, but rather a long-term investment. After all, the company is standing there since poker was played with a Colt .45 on the table.
The company is currently trading at 4.7 times its forward earnings, which can be regarded as conservative, especially if we account for the Q1 2022 earnings of $2.49 per share. At a share price of $53, even if the next three quarters result in $1 EPS each, we're talking about a P/E multiple of just above 10x. In other words, the current share price has some serious upside. Alcoa will come across the true decline in aluminum and alumina demand sooner or later, which will affect its share price. However, as I wrote above, the company is a long-term holding and the EV transition has the potential to counterbalance some of the negative effects of the decline in the traditional aluminum demand.
Lumina fancied her chances to go for that flush and she got it. It's not a foolproof hand, and that two of hearts in the river may not had gotten out at all. But as the old country song by Kenny Rogers goes:
"You gotta know when to hold'em
know when to fold'em
know when to walk away
and know when to run"
Lumina knows what she's holding - that lucrative AA - and she's not folding.
This article was written by
Disclosure: I/we have no stock, option or similar derivative position in any of the companies mentioned, but may initiate a beneficial Long position through a purchase of the stock, or the purchase of call options or similar derivatives in AA over the next 72 hours. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.
Additional disclosure: This article was written for information purposes only. You should not, in any case, take the contents of this article to be an urge to buy, hold or sell securities. Always perform your own research before investing in the stock market. | <urn:uuid:86176339-8f01-4125-9827-45adf9e7bff1> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://seekingalpha.com/article/4517763-alcoa-you-gotta-know-when-to-holdem-know-when-to-foldem?source=marketwatch | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572908.71/warc/CC-MAIN-20220817122626-20220817152626-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.972586 | 1,535 | 1.578125 | 2 |
You may have seen it come out of your own faucet: an unappetizing stream of brown water. It’s likely manganese that’s ended up in the drinking water supply. Manganese is a naturally occurring element in soil and various foods. When found in drinking water, low levels of manganese have been considered an aesthetic concern. It may discolor water, stain plumbing fixtures and laundry, and cause undesirable taste and odor problems.
In 1987, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) established a secondary maximum contaminant level (SMCL) for manganese of 0.05 milligrams/liter (mg/L). An SMCL is an unregulated standard for public water systems that communities can use to help manage their drinking water for aesthetic consideration. These standards are threshold values. When these values are exceeded, manganese may cause problems in the drinking water and distribution system.
In 2004, the EPA issued a health advisory to guide communities that may be exposed to drinking water contaminated with high manganese concentrations. This advisory does not mandate a standard for action, rather it provides practical guidelines for addressing manganese contamination.
While manganese is an essential nutrient for humans, the EPA has determined that exposure to elevated levels of manganese in drinking water may result in adverse health effects. Adults drinking water with high levels of manganese may develop impacts to the nervous system and behavioral changes. Infants are particularly at risk because exposure to high manganese levels may cause learning and behavioral problems.
The acute advisory level for infants has been established at 0.3 mg/L for no more than a total of 10 days per year. For adults, the advisory level is established at 1.0 mg/L for no more than 10 days per year. An additional chronic advisory level has been set for any age person at 0.3 mg/L for long-term exposure.
Because of these potentially adverse health effects, the EPA is currently working to determine if manganese should be regulated as a primary contaminant and is working with state agencies to sample for manganese.
What You Should Do.
Unlike other drinking water contaminants such as nitrate, manganese in drinking water comes from minerals in the soil where the water is sourced. So, manganese levels remain fairly consistent over time. However, with the changing regulation and sampling programs implemented by the state, communities need to be aware of their manganese levels and implications for their water systems. Communities with manganese at or above healthy advisory levels in their public water supply should contact their state department and work with their consulting engineer to determine a course of action.
Nebraska Manganese Information
(note: hasn’t been updated with EPA health advisory information) | <urn:uuid:eabd134f-6b87-456a-946e-7c76d4f3dba6> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.jeo.com/manganese | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573172.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20220818063910-20220818093910-00270.warc.gz | en | 0.943523 | 581 | 3.546875 | 4 |
Search for a light charged Higgs boson in top quark decays in pp collisions at √s=7 TeV
Results are presented on a search for a light charged Higgs boson that can be produced in the decay of the top quark t → H+b and which, in turn, decays into τ +ν τ . The analysed data correspond to an integrated luminosity of about 2 fb−1 recorded in protonproton collisions at √s=7 TeV by the CMS experiment at the LHC. The search is sensitive to the decays of the top quark pairs tt¯ → H± W ∓ bb¯¯¯ and tt¯ → H±H∓ bb¯¯¯. Various final states have been studied separately, all requiring presence of a τ lepton from H+ decays, missing transverse energy, and multiple jets. Upper limits on the branching fraction B(t → H+b) in the range of 2-4 % are established for charged Higgs boson masses between 80 and 160 GeV, under the assumption that B(H+ → τ +ν τ ) = 1. | <urn:uuid:e676e5e0-a993-431d-8458-025ee984483f> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://scholarship.rice.edu/handle/1911/81009 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280718.7/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00404-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.816796 | 240 | 1.914063 | 2 |
Gamblin Relief Inks are formulated for all relief techniques, including woodblock, linocut, monotype and Solarplate. They contain the right amount of stiffness and tack to hold fine detail yet spread evenly on the block or plate. The palette of colors is designed to give artists intense pure pigmented colors straight from the jar, along with a wide range of color-mixing capabilities. Monotype printmaking, the most painterly of printmaking techniques, is very popular. While most painters and printmakers working in this process learn how to make any kind of ink work, the unique viscosity and tack of Gamblin Relief Inks makes them ideal for monotype printing processes. | <urn:uuid:80fc0b2c-4ba1-44cc-b13b-5368f87e0f19> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.theblokdsm.com/products/relief-inks-gamblin | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572192.79/warc/CC-MAIN-20220815145459-20220815175459-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.925674 | 142 | 1.734375 | 2 |
Allergen avoidance is an essential step in managing allergies.
Allergen avoidance involves taking adequate measures to reduce the allergenic agent from the environment in which we live and limit contact with it. This is the first step towards improving the symptoms of allergy.
Food and medication allergies
Avoiding food or using medication which contain substances responsible for an allergic reaction. This seems obvious, however, identifying the allergens “hidden” in food or medication requires a high level of attention.
Avoidance means abstaining from skin contact with an allergen.
House dust mite allergies
Our home environment must be treated to reduce the development of house dust mites: reduce the room temperature to 18-19° maximum, decrease humidity, air your house regularly, wash linen and duvets at 60°, clean and vacuum upholstery, curtains bedding frequently, dust and vacuum on a regular basis, etc.
Avoiding allergy to pollen is more complicated since pollen is present everywhere in our environment. Some measures can help reduce exposure to pollen: wash your hair and shower after having been outside, prefer air conditioning to open windows during the pollen season, etc.
Allergies to pets
Avoid contact with pets and pet stores, wash your hands after having been in contact with a pet, have your pet brushed and washed regularly by someone who doesn’t have allergies. | <urn:uuid:e5961e43-48c3-48a4-b7e7-af469b7afef1> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.stallergenesgreer.com/allergen-avoidance | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573667.83/warc/CC-MAIN-20220819100644-20220819130644-00070.warc.gz | en | 0.930432 | 305 | 3.296875 | 3 |
It is an honor to join NACLA and Luís Manuel Claps in the Extractives in Latin America blog. With Luís offering insights on mining, I hope to cover the broad terrain of energy resource extraction, and fuels in particular—not only what is extracted from the earth (oil and natural gas), but also fuels produced by the agroindustry, namely ethanol and biodiesel. The politics we explore here may run the gamut from getting access to a canister of propane to cook dinner in Bolivia to the paradoxes linking Argentine nationalism, Chevron, and the U.S.-backed fracking push in the hemisphere.
This blog aspires to draw attention to reality as represented through Latin American eyes and voices. We want to highlight how movements are deepening connections between a progressive politics aimed at attacking inequality and a progressive politics that seeks to reverse our destructive relationship to nature. To this end, fuels are politically complicated. Their use and redistribution bring expectations of equality, even as their extraction and production may intensify social and environmental dislocation. We hope to work through some of these complexities, and we welcome comments. In this first post, I trace some starting points with oil, biofuels, and gas.
Oil: Sovereignty, Privatization, or a Post-Oil World?
Oil, particularly oil in Mexico—the United States’s #3 supplier—is a good place to start. Mexican nationalism runs deep, and students are as apt to march in defense of the national oil company PEMEX as they are to decry global warming.
President Enrique Peña Nieto is pushing a reforma energética (energy reform) that will deepen Mexico’s dependence on oil, foreign demand for oil, and the foreign capital and technology needed for its extraction. The left focuses on the defense of sovereignty and national control, yet few voices talk about Mexico after oil.
Reforma in Latin America, much like “reform” in the United States, usually means the privatization of something. Such reforms demand shifting resources, services, and rights formerly disputed in the public domain into the privatizing hands of the market. In this case, PEMEX will not be sold outright, but privatization here means allowing foreign capital to make more money from Mexican oil. This is good for American service companies like Halliburton and Schlumberger, who have deep water drilling technology that Mexico needs. Reforma also means letting companies like Chevron “book” Mexican oil reserves as their own. We can discuss reserve politics in a future post, but simply put, "booking" means that Chevron can tell the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that it controls Mexican oil reserves to attract investors. Reforma is also likely to undermine pension obligations and labor conditions. Yet whether concerns come from the right or the left, a disturbing reality remains: The voracious United States consumes about 70% of Mexico’s oil. Diversifying exports to India or China would reduce dependence, but mean more drilling, burning, and carbon emissions. This tension between sovereign resource policy and subjugation to foreign demand is recurrent throughout the region. Where might we find the political space to discuss alternatives?
Biofuels: Land and Monocrop Power
Land inequality in Latin America has long been the spark of revolution and protest, met with military and paramilitary terror and violence against the landless poor. These days, amidst incessant chatter about the triumph of market capitalism, land inequality and land grabbing are intensifying amid the new politics of biofuels. Here the tension is between large-scale monocropping agroindustries and visions of alternative agro-ecological orders that make room for smaller farmers. We start by looking at Eastern Bolivia, southern Brazil, and Paraguay, where soy and sugar are kings.
In Brazil, ethanol (álcool) production from sugar fuels domestic consumption (for cars) and export markets, from Sweden to the United States. Despite talk of green and clean fuel, sugar farming unfolds across a monocropped landscape of big business, much of it foreign-owned or controlled. Indigenous Peoples and small-scale farmers bear the brunt, especially in southern Mato Grosso do Sul, where the powerful ruralista elite is particularly violent.
Paraguay, the world’s #4 soy industry, largely controlled by multinationals like ADM and Bunge, exports soybeans to China and the European Union. The cultivation and production of soy needed for such high volumes of export have wraught deforestation and dispossession. Yet soy is a supercommodity—it can be made into both food and, as biodiesel, fuel. (I thank Gustavo Oliveira for drawing my attention to this.) Soy and sugar are thus at the heart of an increasingly global, and increasingly militarized set of calculations about how to control access to land and water with an eye toward coming fuel energy scarcities. We will surely return to Paraguay, where a small guerrilla movement called the Ejército del Pueblo Paraguayo (EPP), is said to be operating. Just this week, the New York Times referred to the group, probably no more than a few dozen combatants—if indeed it is real—as a rising “security threat.” Yet the biofuels economy here and elsewhere displaces small farmers to the margins of urban slums, destroys forests, and concentrates political power into fewer and fewer hands. What then is the real security threat in this landscape of food/fuel politics?
Gas: Redistribution and Social Mobilization
Bolivia’s celebrated president, Evo Morales, emerged out of the so-called ‘Gas War’ of 2003 and won the presidency with overwhelming support in 2005. Now in his second term he oversees a natural gas boom that is deeply transforming the country. Backed by indigenous movements, small farmers, workers, and the progressive middle classes, Evo promised land reform and sovereignty over natural resources. Many hoped that these changes in land owndership would create new economies to address poverty and inequality. Yet as I wrote here in NACLA earlier this year, the talk of revolution that mobilized supporters of change has increasingly given way to deepened dependence on natural gas exports, with all that that entails.
And what does that entail? Well, Bolivia’s national oil company, YPFB, has neither the capital nor the technology to explore for new wells at the scale needed to meet foreign demand. Though Evo and the MAS passed legislation in 2005 that would wrest more in royalties and taxes from foreign firms, ongoing talk of the need to “increase reserves” means that the government is increasingly willing to make conditions more attractive for investors. So, far from nationalization—or sovereignty—Bolivia is seeking new deals with Repsol (Spain), Total (France), Gazprom (Russia), BG (UK), and others. The focus foreign capital has led to a weakening of indigenous rights, the labeling of opponents as traitors, and even talk of water-intensive fracking in the driest corners of Bolivia.
As with Mexico’s role as supplier to the United States, Bolivia is the primary supplier of gas to Brazil, and to a lesser extent, Argentina. Around 60% of Bolivia’s gas goes to Brazil. Most of that is produced by the Brazilian firm Petrobras, in Bolivia, and is exported to fuel São Paulo’s manufacturing and petrochemicals industries. Of course, the money that returns to the Bolivian treasury has generated a fiscal surplus, social investment, and expectations of government investment in human welfare. Indeed Evo Morales spends much of his time highlighting public investments and increasing energy access for urban dwellers. This government spending, arguably, is a good thing.
Yet should Bolivia be exporting all it can, as fast as it can, to Brazil and Argentina? Thirty-five years ago this month, the socialist leader and nationalist intellectual Marcelo Quiroga Santa Cruz addressed, by radio, an assembly of factory workers in La Paz. It was 1978. The country was under the dictatorship of General Hugo Bánzer, who, with Brazil’s military rulers, was working on a scheme to export Bolivian gas to Brazil. The pipeline would only materialize several decades later, but given that Brazilian demand dominates talk about how Bolivia needs to find more gas, Marcelo Quiroga thought exporting most of Bolivia’s gas to the powerful neighbor would bring poverty in the future. “What will be left for Bolivia?” he asked. His answer? Nothing more than “repression, to impose on the people measures that allow for the continued profitability of the businesses that control power...” Marcelo Quiroga Santa Cruz, a hero to many in the struggle for Bolivian resource sovereignty and a rational politics of extraction, was assassinated by the military in 1980.
The legacy of Marcelo Quiroga brings us back to the politics of fuels—namely, the question of democracy, social movements, and political activism. Bolivia under the MAS is certainly not in the same situation it was in under the dictatorships of the past. Despite the pressures of the gas economy, the MAS is more progressive, more democratic, and less violent than all of the countries—Paraguay, Mexico, Colombia, Honduras, Guatemala—that enjoy the militarized patronage of the United States. Unlike those countries, Bolivia’s energy resource politics are still shaped through a broad politics of social mobilization and redistribution.
Yet even in Bolivia, and particularly in countries where conservative rule holds sway, the space of social movement struggle is where we see the only true prospects for restructuring—or dismantling—the fuel economies, ecologies, and politics shaped by the subjugation to foreign demand. These are the topics we will continue to explore in Extractives in Latin America.
Bret Gustafson teaches anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis. Among other concerns, he studies the politics of energy and redistribution in Latin America, with a particular focus on Bolivia, Brazil, and natural gas. | <urn:uuid:794f3793-bb4a-4c31-ab94-b536648282e7> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://nacla.org/blog/2013/11/19/fuel-politics-latin-america-where-begin | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281151.11/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00112-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939173 | 2,078 | 2.1875 | 2 |
BEIJING, Oct. 19 -- Google.com, world's largest Internet search engine, deleted the words "Taiwan, a province of the People's Republic of China" on a map of Taiwan linked to its maps search engine maps.google.com. This has drawn rage from Chinese officials and the people.
The map of Taiwan linked to maps.google.com. The words "Taiwan, a province of the People's Republic of China" have been deleted at the top left corner of the page. Instead, arrows and some other graphics are placed there, through which the map can be moved or enlarged. (sina)
News reports indicate Google made the changes under pressure of extremists in Taiwan's pan-Green camp (a pro-independence alliance between the ruling Democratic Progressive Party and the hard-line Taiwan Solidarity Union party).
The website deleted the words at the top left corner of the web page that noted that Taiwan is a distinct part of China. Instead, arrows and some other graphics were placed there, through which the map can be moved or enlarged.
The original search result (ycwb.com)
Peng Keyu, consul general of the Chinese consulate in San Francisco, voiced objection to the Google decision and urged it to follow the US government's allegiance to the one-China principle, according to the SingTao Daily.
China and the United States long ago reached consensus in the three Sino-U.S. joint communiques and thus officially established diplomatic relations in the late 1970s after decades of isolation from one another. That's when the US government promised to remain committed to a one-China principle and opposition to Taiwan independence.
Li Xinpei, former president of North Californian Council for the Promotion of Peaceful Reunification of China, expressed his disappointment with Google's decision to succumb to the Taiwan independence forces.
However, Google spokesman Debbie Frost claimed that this alteration was just a "regular update" of all of the site's map pages rather than a deliberate effort to specially update the Taiwan page.
In spite of that, Li denounced Google's excuse, saying that whatever its intention was, it must bear the one-China principle in mind.
Zhang Shaofu, a Chinese-American scholar, worried that the updated web page may mislead the American people, Google's largest consumer group, giving the impression of an "independent Taiwan." Worse still, the overseas Chinese may develop wrong concepts as the result of the "updated" map of Taiwan.
Many Chinese online readers expressed rejection and displeasure at the removal by Google, with many writing at the popular sina.com and sohu.com chatrooms suggesting boycotting Google's China service. | <urn:uuid:7e18e109-3cf9-485a-bf34-c80f60f0a59a> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-10/19/content_3647306.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281746.82/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00292-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930273 | 552 | 1.859375 | 2 |
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- A Philadelphia judge ruled the contentious Christopher Columbus statue can stay at Marconi Plaza in South Philadelphia. Common Pleas Court Judge Paula Patrick made the ruling Tuesday.
She said the city's decision to remove the statue last year was not supported by law and was based on insufficient evidence.
The City of Philadelphia says it's disappointed in the decision and will explore all potential options, including an appeal.
The statue remains boxed up out of public view.
Last summer, the statue became a hotspot in the wake of George Floyd's murder as protests against systemic racism and injustice swept the country.
Protesters and supporters of Columbus clashed, sometimes violently, at Marconi Plaza.
Some of those trying to protect the statue were seen holding bats and guns as they stood guard.
for more features. | <urn:uuid:9a8b3750-cd95-426a-b24f-8fb475add0ef> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.cbsnews.com/philadelphia/news/christopher-columbus-statue-remain-south-philly-plaza-judge-rules/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571536.89/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811224716-20220812014716-00267.warc.gz | en | 0.965509 | 171 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Issue No. 02 - February (2007 vol. 18)
DOI Bookmark: http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/TPDS.2007.20
Li Xiao , IEEE
Chen Wang , IEEE
<p><b>Abstract</b>—Although the original intent of the peer-to-peer (P2P) concept is to treat each participant equally, heterogeneity widely exists in deployed P2P networks. Peers are different from each other in many aspects, such as bandwidth, CPU power, and storage capacity. Some approaches have been proposed to take advantage of the <it>query forwarding heterogeneity</it> such that the high bandwidth of powerful nodes can be fully utilized to maximize the system capacity. In this paper, we suggest using the <it>query answering heterogeneity</it> to directly improve the search efficiency of P2P networks. In our proposed Differentiated Search (DiffSearch) algorithm, the peers with high query answering capabilities will have higher priority to be queried. Because the query answering capabilities are extremely unbalanced among peers, a high query success rate can be achieved by querying only a small portion of a network. The search traffic is significantly reduced due to the shrunken search space. Our trace analysis and simulation show that the DiffSearch algorithm can save up to 60 percent of search traffic.</p>
Peer-to-peer, search, efficiency, ultrapeers, heterogeneity.
Li Xiao, Chen Wang, "An Effective P2P Search Scheme to Exploit File Sharing Heterogeneity", IEEE Transactions on Parallel & Distributed Systems, vol. 18, no. , pp. 145-157, February 2007, doi:10.1109/TPDS.2007.20 | <urn:uuid:b28e18a0-d8e8-40ac-8091-f18a1d734091> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.computer.org/csdl/trans/td/2007/02/l0145-abs.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279650.31/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00429-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.859162 | 363 | 1.992188 | 2 |
Learning through observation
Observation is an essential part of science and mātauranga Māori. Through observation we collect data, which enables us to make sense of the natural world. Observation is a skill and with practice and guidance students can learn to observe more scientifically.
Warm-ups for observational skills
Use the following activities to help students ‘warm-up’ and stretch their observation skills. They are also ideal for practising the science capabilities ‘Gather and interpret data’ and ‘Use evidence’.
- Observation: learning to see
- Observation and the mystery box
- What do we see?
- Piecing it all together
Using observation skills in the (school) field
Take advantage of the warmer weather to get outside for meaningful, hands-on learning through observation. Use the related content on each page to learn more about the science concepts that underpin the activities – students observe more scientifically when their observations are connected with increasing background knowledge.
- Te āta tirotiro i ngā hekaheka
- Observing fungi
- Observing harakeke
- Making and using a quadrat
- Observing earthworms
- Visual soil assessment
Citizen science projects
Citizen science projects offer a mix of outdoor and online observation opportunities. Although garden bird and earthworm surveys collect data at specific times of the year, students can learn and practice the methodologies at any time.
Online projects like Skink Spotter NZ and Penguin Watch – Zooniverse use video and satellite imagery for species monitoring. Participants use observation skills to determine if species are present or not – helping scientists with animal behaviour and population dynamics.
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/nzsciencelearn
- Twitter: www.twitter.com/NZScienceLearn
- Pinterest: nz.pinterest.com/nzsciencelearn
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/sciencelearninghubnz
We hope you enjoy using the Science Learning Hub – Pokapū Akoranga Pūtaiao in your teaching and would love to hear from you. Your comments, ideas and feedback can be emailed to firstname.lastname@example.org.
Science Learning Hub – Pokapū Akoranga Pūtaiao
See all news | <urn:uuid:e78bd454-c562-487f-91a8-50dc782b18b6> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.sciencelearn.org.nz/news/7-growing-observational-skills | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572043.2/warc/CC-MAIN-20220814143522-20220814173522-00470.warc.gz | en | 0.833152 | 485 | 4.0625 | 4 |
More changes are afoot in the potting shed than just a remodel and reorganization. We are entering the modern age finally and ordering seeds on line rather than sending them off by mail. But even though we’ve decided to embrace technology for the sake of faster gratification than waiting for checks to be issued and the mail sent both ways, I still think reading a paper catalog is easier and more fun than staring at web pages. –That said, I can understand why some plant and seed companies have gone entirely on line and I applaud them for not wasting trees, ink, and postage on me when clearly the world is moving away from those things. So for however long it takes for the rest of us to prefer the feeling of an e-reader in our paws rather than a bound book, paper catalogs will have a welcome place on my lap.
Last year I placed our first order (in my time) with Chiltern Seeds in England. I searched on line for what we wanted — certain grasses and sweet peas that weren’t available through our usual sources — and was only mildly annoyed when some of their plants were listed without pictures. After all, a google images search is only a tab away. But this year they sent us a paper catalog. At first I was overwhelmed by it because the skinny onion-skin pages hold 4000+ plant descriptions, all but 9 without pictures! But after flicking through quickly, I started reading from the beginning and found the reward: tucked here and there amongst perfectly illustrative descriptions is humor, personality, and interesting information.
I learned that Dispsacus fullonum, which I have been calling Fuller’s teasel (because that’s what its species name implies) is in fact “common teasel”. The teasel actually used by fullers to card wool is Dipsacus sativus, whose dried flower heads “are a miracle of nature” with ” hundreds of tiny, stiff, downward-turned hooks amazingly and geometrically arranged.” The description of Eryngium planum ‘Blue Glitter’ made me nod and snort because “the writer likes this one!” and after calling the flower heads “innumerable,” he actually counted 85 on the stem on his desk. I never noticed before that Silphium lacinatum orients its leaves to the poles. (I also didn’t know it’s called compass plant, pilot weed, and polar plant.) So cool. And I loved that towards the end the writer looked like he was getting a little punchy. The description for Viola ‘Cats’ begins,
“It is no secret that the writer likes his cats: as he pens these words, there’s a white porcelain cat glowering down at him from the mantlepiece warning him against making purrfectly awful puns about purrfect faces or even suggesting having a purr of these lovely Pansies in pots outside your front door. So he won’t!”
Like turning the last page of a good book, I was a little sad to finish that catalog. But we placed a big order and have a whole season of our own opinions about those plants – mostly sweet peas and primroses – to look forward to.
Do you still read plant and seed catalogs cover to cover? Do you have a favorite? | <urn:uuid:8145b6da-3c59-4f80-9d5e-1522a296aa72> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://www.blithewold.org/a-good-read/?month=2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988720845.92/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183840-00087-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960423 | 712 | 1.585938 | 2 |
MURRELLS INLET, S.C. (AP) Officials say a 15-year-old boy is being treated for injuries to his hand and leg after being bitten by a shark on the South Carolina coast near Myrtle Beach.
Assistant Chief J.R. Haney of the Murrells Inlet-Garden City Fire District says the youth was bitten off Garden City Beach on Thursday and taken to a hospital.
In a statement, the hospital says an emergency room physician confirmed that the injuries were shark bites. The boy was expected to be released from the emergency room later Thursday.
At least 11 people have been reported attacked by sharks while swimming on the beaches of the Carolinas this summer. Two of the victims had limbs amputated. | <urn:uuid:65d9e69d-5e41-4525-8ec4-7df84f68ff6c> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.montereyherald.com/2015/08/20/officials-boy-bitten-by-shark-on-south-carolina-coast/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572215.27/warc/CC-MAIN-20220815235954-20220816025954-00675.warc.gz | en | 0.98209 | 155 | 1.757813 | 2 |
Whether determined to live "off the grid," disillusioned with society, or simply out of contact with the outside world, these people all willingly lived in seclusion for decades.
1Vietnamese Father and Son Who Fled War are Discovered 40 Years Later
During the Vietnam War, a man named Ho Van Thanh lived in a village called Tra Kem with his wife and three sons. As the conflict between United States' and Vietnamese soldiers escalated, Thanh became increasingly more afraid for his family's safety. Then, one day he watched in horror as his wife and two of his sons were killed in a mine explosion.
Panicked, the forty-two-year-old man grabbed his one remaining son, two-year-old Ho Van Lang, and fled into the jungle to hide. Never realizing that the war had ended, the two remained in hiding for the next forty years.
In August of 2013, workers from a nearby village spotted the men dressed in loin cloths made from tree bark and alerted authorities. After a five hour search, the now eighty-two-year-old and forty-one-year-old men were found. The older man still remembered some of the local dialect, so he was able to communicate what had happened to their family all those years ago. He also informed them that he and his son had survived by growing corn and foraging for fruit and vegetables. They had built an elaborate tree house to live in, which is pictured above.
Both men were treated by physicians and will attempt to reintegrate into modern society.
2Man Hides in the Maine Woods for 27 Years
For nearly thirty years, residents of North Pond in central Maine told stories about a hermit who lived in the woods and occasionally burglarized nearby homes and camps for food and supplies. The tales became the stuff of legend, a folktale for modern times.
The legend became a reality in April 2013, when a state game warden caught the North Pond Hermit mid-theft. Forty-seven-year-old Christopher Knight was caught stealing food and camping gear from a camp on the lake, ending his twenty-seven year hermitage and confirming the rumors once and for all. Though Knight apologized for stealing, authorities speculate that he could be responsible for as many as a thousand burglaries over the years.
At a court hearing in August 2013, Knight pleaded not guilty to seven burglary and six theft charges. He says he went into the woods at age nineteen, and during that time he spoke to just one other person, a hiker he came across on a trail sometime in the 90's. Knight claims to have kept his mind sharp by reading books that he had swiped from the homes he had burglarized. He is currently awaiting trial.
3Russian Family Hid in the Siberian Woods for 40 Years
In 1978, Russian geologists journeyed to a remote location in the Siberian wilderness, but instead of discovering precious mineral resources, they uncovered a family of six who had been living undetected for forty years.
Karp Lykov and his family were Old Believers, members of a fundamentalist Russian Orthodox sect who had long been persecuted in the Soviet Union. During the Bolshevik Revolution, many Old Believer communities fled to Siberia to escape religious persecution, and the Lykovs were among them. In 1936, a Communist patrol shot Lykov's brother right in front of him, so he gathered up his wife and two young children and fled into the forest.
Taking just their meager possessions and some seeds, they progressively moved further and further from society until they were about one hundred miles from the border of Mongolia. The couple bore two more children, and the family of six lived off of whatever they could grow and forage. They were often hungry, and it wasn't until one of their sons reached adulthood that they were able to start trapping and hunting prey to add protein to their diets. Still, they were severely malnourished, and the family's mother died of starvation in 1961 after giving her share of food to her children.
The family had no idea that things like the moon landing or World War II had even happened. They were fascinated by small things like the cellophane on a package. Over time the younger children had developed a strange dialect that outsiders could barely recognize as Russian. After the geologists made contact, the family slowly began to trust them, but the deeply religious family always refused to leave their isolated home. Eventually, they started to accept small gifts of salt and other precious foods that they had lived without for so many years.
Just a few short years after making contact, three of the four children had died from kidney failure due to complications from their years of malnutrition. One son died from pneumonia, but adamently refused medical attention, saying, "A man lives for howsoever God grants."
The father died in 1988. Agafia Lykova, the last remaining family member, continues to live there alone. She is almost seventy and has never set foot outside of her homestead.
4A Japanese Soldier Refused to Believe that the War was Over
In 1944, the Japanese army sent Lt. Hiroo Onoda and several other units to the sparsely-populated Philippine island of Lubang to conduct guerrilla warfare during World War II. Although the war ended soon afterward, Onoda and his compatriots were never officially told, so they continued to stay and fight with locals for the next thirty years.
Onoda continued to live in the jungle for decades, living off of coconuts and bananas. In October 1945, the Japanese government attempted to notify soldiers who were hiding in remote jungles that the war was over, but Onoda and his compatriots believed the newspapers and flyers that had been dropped by aircraft to be Allied propaganda. The men scrutinized every word of the flyers, but decided that they would not surrender until their commanding officer gave them the word. Search parties were issued, but no one could ever find the men.
Over the years, all of the other men died, and one man decided to surrender and sneaked away from their camp. Onoda lived alone for another twenty years, becoming a legend among Japenese and Filipino nationalists who believed that he had died. In 1974, a backpacker found Onoda and tried to convince him that the war had indeed ended, but Onoda stubbornly refused to believe him.
The backpacker, Norio Suzuki, left the island and arranged a meeting between Onodo and his now-retired commanding officer. When Onodo learned the truth, he was shocked beyond belief. He was hailed as a hero in Japan, and he was pardoned for the Filipino men he had killed and injured while living on the island for all those years. Once reintegrated into society, Onado decided that he preferred a simple, solitary lifestyle. He moved to Brazil and ran a ranch, returning to his island just once more in 1996.
5The Last of His Tribe, a Man Lives Alone in the Brazilian Rainforest
Nearly twenty years ago, Brazilian officials discovered an Indian man, likely the last of an uncontacted tribe, living alone in the Brazilian rainforest. Officials pondered what to do about the man. Their attempts to make peaceful contact had not gone well, with the man firing an arrow into the chest of one of the rescue workers. Previous attempts to bring tribesmen into modern civilization had gone badly as well, with the isolated people generally dying soon after being integrated into society.
With logging and industrialization closing in around the solitary man, government officials declared a thirty mile radius of land surrounding him to be off limits for development or trespassing. The man, who is now in his mid-forties, still lives the loneliest existence ever to this day.
6Man Happily Spends 30 Years Alone in a Remote Alaskan Cabin
After a long career in the Navy and as a diesel mechanic, Richard Proenneke chose a very unique retirement lifestyle. He built a cabin high in the Alaskan mountains in a place called Twin Lakes, where he lived alone off the land for nearly thirty years.
Proenneke would venture to the lower forty-eight states to see family a few times over the course of his reclusive retirement, but largely, he spent his time alone in the remote Alaskan wilderness. He hunted, fished, and studied the natural setting with the keen observational eye of a born scientist.
Proenneke kept a film record of his solitary life, which was later edited and made into a series of PBS documentaries entitled "Alone in the Wilderness." His writings were also adapted into several books, and he made several valuable recordings of both meteorological and natural data.
7The Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island
In 1835, California officials ordered that all Indians be removed from the tiny island of San Nicolas, the most remote of the Channel Islands. Located about fifty-three miles west of the coast of Los Angeles, the island had been plagued by fighting between Indian tribes. During the evacuation, one woman refused to leave because she claimed that her small child was missing. She disappeared from view and wasn't seen again for almost twenty years.
In 1853, a hunting expedition came upon the same woman. She had never found her child and spoke a language no one had ever heard before, but she charmed everyone who met her with her broad smile and happy disposition. The hunters brought her back to the mainland, and she was surprised and delighted by the modern world. Unfortunately, she lived just seven weeks after being reintegrated into society, dying from dysentery.
8Solo Explorer Disappears After Spending Five Years Alone
Everett Ruess was born in 1914, but no one knows when he died because he spent his entire life alone. Ruess was an artist, poet, and writer who explored nature by foot and by horseback for years, spending much of his time in the High Sierra, on the California Coast, and in the deserts of the American southwest. He disappeared in the late 1930s, when he was just twenty years old, while traveling through a remote area of Utah.
Ruess was one of the first Americans to reach out to Native Americans and live among them. During his travels, he explored cliff dwellings and traded his artwork for food and other provisions. He never spent more than a day or two with other humans, choosing instead to remain alone. He kept diaries which were later turned into books, documenting his unusual way of life and lack of desire to be a part of any formal civilization.
His death remains a mystery to this day. Some think he died an accidental death by falling or drowning, others suspect foul play. His strange lifestyle and mysterious disappearance have turned him into a folk hero among naturalists and historians.
9Christopher McCandless Goes Into The Wild
In 1990, after graduating with honors from Emory University, Christopher McCandless donated the remaining $24,000 in his college fund account to charity, unburdened himself of family ties and all of his belongings, and took off on a cross-country adventure. Calling himself "Alexander Supertramp," McCandless traveled with no money and very little contact with the outside world. He arrived at his final destination, Fairbanks, Alaska, on April 28, 1992.
Just four months later, McCandless's frail body was found on a Fairbanks City bus on the Stampede Trail. Weighing just sixty-seven pounds, he died from starvation and from eating poisonous mushrooms. Writer Jon Krakaeur wrote an award-winning book about McCandless's tragic trek away from civilization. The book is called Into The Wild, and it was eventually adapted into a movie starring Emil Hirsch.
Christopher McCandless is a controversial figure. While many people feel sympathetic towards this young man who wished to live a solitary life, others criticize his lack of preparation and basic knowledge of survivalism.
10Woman Committed to Living "Off The Grid" Lives in a “Hobbit House”
In 1995, a small group of people bought a large piece of land in Wales with the intention of making it a commune. They lived peacefully "off the grid" for years, until the government stepped in and questioned their rightful ownership of the land. A legal battle that lasted for a decade ensued, but in the end, it was determined that they did indeed own the land and had every right to live there.
Among these survivalists was Emma Orbach, an Oxford educated woman who now lives in a Hobbit-style hut that she made herself. Orbach divorced her husband, who is also a survivalist, and now lives on her own in a round house that she built herself. She grows her own food, produces her own power, and prides herself on living without the benefit of societal rules. Orbach keeps her own farm animals, fetches her water from a stream, and ventures to nearby shops very rarely for treats like chocolates.
"This is how I want to live," Orbach says, "This lifestyle makes me feel really happy and at peace and this is my ideal home." | <urn:uuid:43e8a9fc-6349-4875-9516-4dd72c245c6d> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.oddee.com/item_98706.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571758.42/warc/CC-MAIN-20220812200804-20220812230804-00674.warc.gz | en | 0.9867 | 2,696 | 2.9375 | 3 |
There are many positive aspects to choosing the right way to trade, and something of these is your capacity to participate in the particular virtual foreign exchange business by using a method called “Bitcoin trading”. Through the use of this type of buying and selling, it is possible to have a better profit levels than if you were to https://bitcoineraerfahrungen.de/ deal with the traditional ways. You can actually increase your earnings significantly, meaning you will be able to buy and sell even more at a lower price.
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Editor's Note: Internet stories have long shelf lives, but free teaching materials do not! Note that the following freebies story is being published on Education World in December, 1998. According to the sources of the materials listed below, all the highlighted freebies are currently available and will be for several months to come. But a word of caution: If you've unearthed this story from an archived Internet source, you shouldn't assume that these materials are still available many months later! [Be sure to see this week's other Education World story, Fabulous Freebies (Part 1) ].
What's even better than excellent educational materials? Excellent educational materials that are free!
But not all free resources are created equal!
In recent months, Education World editors have sent away for dozens of free educator materials. Here's our roundup of some of the most distinguished free resources -- across the grades and the curriculum -- including science experiments, NASA aerospace materials, language arts activities based on the "Arthur" books, and a teen publication distributed by email!
Maps! Maps! Maps!
What better source for maps than the U.S. Geological Survey? The USGS has a Web site, The Learning Web, dedicated to K-12 education. There you'll find many free materials for use. Some are available only on the Web; others are available thorough the mail (many in class sets of 30); some are available either way. Among the best resources are three teaching kits that teach basic map reading skills across the grades:
Map Adventures (for grades K-3) teaches students basic concepts for visualizing objects from different perspectives; and how to understand and use maps. The lessons center on a little girl named Nikki. Nikki goes up on an unplanned balloon ride that gives her, and the students, different views of a park. The illustrations will help your students move from visualizing objects from the most familiar perspective (a ground view) to the overhead view represented on most maps. The Map Adventures kit includes a teaching poster, seven step-by-step lessons, a picture of a hot-air balloon, two reproducible activity sheets, and more. The seven lessons cover the view from the ground, the view from a higher point, the view from overhead, symbols and legends, learning directions on a map, map grids, and map scale.
What Do Maps Show? (for grades 5-8) introduces students to different kinds of maps, because no one map can show everything. The legend, or map key, is the key to unlocking the secrets of each map. Several activities are included to assist in teaching the concepts of map reading. The kit includes teaching maps, four step-by-step lessons (Introduction to Maps, Some Things You Need to Know to Read a Map, What You Can Learn from a Map, and Reading a Topographic Map); reproducible maps so you can create a map packet for each student; and a reproducible activity sheet for each lesson. Concepts taught include reading maps, direction, latitude and longitude, and scale.
Exploring Maps (grades 7-12) is an interdisciplinary set of materials on mapping. Students will learn basic mapmaking and map-reading skills and will see how maps can answer fundamental geographic questions. The map images and activities in this packet can be used in various courses, including geography, history, math, art, English, and the sciences. The packet contains two posters illustrating the development of mapping that includes a segment of the earliest known road map of the Roman empire (ca. 350 A.D.), a 1774 map of France based on land surveys conducted by members of one family over three generations, and a 1989 computer-generated map showing earthquake-prone areas. The kit also includes a teacher's guide, four activity sheets (each with several suggested activities), and an evaluation sheet.
The kits above are all available on the Web; click on the hypertext titles below. Two of the kits are also available by mail, with full-color posters. Send your request to: [Kit Name], USGS Information Services, Box 25286, Denver, CO 80225 or fax your request to (303)202-4693.
"The Best of Edison" Science Teaching Kit Upper elementary and middle school
This teaching kit, produced by the Charles Edison Fund, provides eight how-to units based on the experiments of Thomas Edison and other scientists. The kit comes in a sturdy, attractive 3-ring binder and contains about 250 pages of experiments. Included are experiments from the work of African-American inventor Lewis Howard Latimer. In the kit you'll find experiments and projects related to
The hands-on experiments are designed for the upper elementary and middle school audiences. Directions are simple, the language is straightforward and good-humored, and the materials required for the experiments are inexpensive and easy to come by.
To order "The Best of Edison" teaching kit, write to The Charles Edison Fund, 101 South Harrison St., East Orange, NJ 07018.Please include $1 to offset postage and handling charges.
Story Writing with ARTHUR A teacher's guide with reading comprehension and writing activities Ages 3 to 6
Written for preschool and early primary students, these colorful, lively language arts materials feature the popular children's character from the books by Marc Brown. In the teacher's guide, for example, children use a story map to help them comprehend an Arthur book they have read. Children also have a story-writing checklist to help them plan to write, and then write, their own stories about Arthur.
If you'd like copies of the teacher's guide, write to Story Writing with Arthur, WGBH Educational Print and Outreach, 125 Western Ave., Boston, MA 02134. (NOTE: These materials received corporate sponsorship from Libby's Juicy Juice, babyGap, and Polaroid. Sponsors are discreetly credited in the materials.)
NASA Educational Publications Aerospace Education Services Program "Intricacies of the Spacesuit" Poster High-School Level
A four-color spacesuit poster features an illustration of a spacesuit on one side with information about, for example, "The Outer Space Environment" and "Space Tools" on the other side. Included with the poster is "Suited for Spacewalking," a teacher's guide with activities for technology education, mathematics, and science. The experiments in this guide are geared to high-school students but could be adapted for middle schoolers.
This excerpt from a "Design Brief" demonstrates the kind of approach used in the teacher's guide. Students will use the information they learn from the poster and previous activities, and information they learn about the Martian environment from other sources, to complete the activity:
CHALLENGE: Design and build a protective garment that will permit future space travelers to explore the surface of Mars. The garment must protect the person inside from the hazards of the Martian environment while remaining comfortable to wear....
PROCEDURES: Select subcontractor teams to design and construct each of the garment's components. Test these materials to ensure they will survive the Martian environment. Existing tools can be modified for use on Mars.
To obtain the spacesuit materials, write to: Request Spacesuit, WED-109, NASA Educational Publications, Code FEP, Washington, DC, 20546.
YoungSuccess Middle-school and high-school students
YoungSuccess is a monthly email magazine that is only distributed via e-mail. The magazine is written for teens, but many of its subscribers are teachers, mentors, and counselors who find that the articles make great food-for-thought or class lessons for their students. (Teachers are free to copy and use the materials as they wish.) The magazine features news of contests and competitions; a Question of the Month; news of freebies and samples; and articles with a definite self-help, self-esteem bent.
A recent "Success Tips" article in YoungSuccess encouraged teens to focus on their goals and aspirations. The article suggests creating a journal, with a different question at the top of every other page. A couple dozen possible questions were included, such as:
The article encouraged students to jot a quick response to each question, and to carry the journal with them for the next few weeks. "Whenever an idea or thought comes to mind for any of the topics, add it to your journal" Subsequent steps from this "Success Tips Workshop" involve students in setting realistic goals, and revisiting -- and revising -- those goals from time to time.
In the July issue of Young Success, a story focused on the benefits of volunteering. Among the dozens of benefits:
"Our mission is to help teens become successful students and adults in whatever their chosen endeavors," says Julie Joyce, editor of Young Success. "We believe that we can help by providing aspiring talent with tools, knowledge, and information about available opportunities."
Article by Sharon Cromwell
Copyright © 1998 Education World | <urn:uuid:c3703438-8b2c-4f00-951e-9baad31a092f> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/curr109.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560283008.19/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095123-00089-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.927711 | 1,827 | 3.484375 | 3 |
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — Vulnerable Haiti braced for flash floods and violent winds from the extremely dangerous Hurricane Matthew as the powerful storm approached the hemisphere’s poorest country Monday.
The eye of the Category 4 hurricane, with maximum sustained winds of 130 mph (215 kph), was expected to pass east of Jamaica and then over or close to the southwestern tip of Haiti late Monday or early Tuesday, the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said. It was predicted to hit the lightly populated eastern tip of Cuba on Tuesday afternoon.
- Tracking Matthew: Interactive Hurricane Tracker »
- Weather Blog: Hurricane Matthew Update »
- Local Weather: Detailed 7-Day Futurecast »
Forecasters said as much as 40 inches (100 centimeters) of rain could fall on some isolated areas of Haiti, raising fears of deadly mudslides and floods in the heavily deforested country where many families live in flimsy houses with corrugated metal roofs.
“Some of us will die but I pray it won’t be a lot,” said Serge Barionette in the southern town of Gressier, where a river recurrently bursts its banks during serious storms.
A hurricane warning was in effect for Haiti, Jamaica and parts of Cuba. Rain was already lashing parts of Jamaica and flooding streets and homes, but forecasters said the southern Haitian countryside around Jeremie and Les Cayes could see the worst of the rains and punishing winds.
“Wherever that center passes close to would see the worst winds and that’s what’s projected to happen for the western tip of Haiti,” said John Cangilosi, a hurricane specialist at the U.S. center. “There is a big concern for rains there and also a big concern for storm surge.”
Matthew is one of the most powerful Atlantic hurricanes in recent history and briefly reached the top classification, Category 5, becoming the strongest hurricane in the region since Felix in 2007. The hurricane center said the storm appeared to be on track to pass east of Florida through the Bahamas, but it was too soon to predict with certainty whether it would threaten any spot on the U.S. East Coast.
Officials with Haiti’s civil protection agency said there were roughly 1,300 emergency shelters across the country, enough to hold up to 340,000 people. Authorities broadcast warnings over the radio telling people to swiftly heed evacuation warnings, trying to counter a common tendency for people to try to stay in their homes to protect them during natural disasters.
In a brief address carried on state radio, interim President Jocelerme Privert urged Haitians to listen closely to official warnings and be ready to move. “To those people living in houses that could collapse, it’s necessary that you leave these houses to take refuge in schools and churches,” he said.
Teams of civil protection officials walked the streets of Les Cayes and other areas urging residents to secure their homes, prepare emergency kits and warn their neighbors. They also evacuated people from some outlying islands.
As of 8 a.m. EDT (1200 GMT), the storm was centered about 280 miles (450 kilometers) southwest of Haiti’s capital of Port-au-Prince and 220 miles (355 kilometers) southeast of Kingston. It was moving north at 6 mph (9 kph).
A hurricane warning was posted for the southeastern Bahamas. A hurricane watch was in effect for the Cuban province of Camaguey, the central Bahamas and the Turks and Caico Islands, and a tropical storm warning was issued for parts of the Dominican Republic, where authorities began mandatory evacuations of areas at risk for flooding. A tropical storm watch was in effect for parts of the Dominican Republic.
The hurricane earlier had been projected to be closer to Jamaica, but still was a danger to the island of less than 3 million inhabitants.
“The center of the system is looking more likely that it will pass to the east of Jamaica but it won’t miss it by that much, so they are still going to see impacts,” Cangilosi said. “The impacts are maybe going to be a little lower there than they would be in Haiti and eastern Cuba.”
After passing Jamaica and Haiti, Matthew was projected to reach Cuba. The storm center was expected to pass about 50 miles (80 kilometers) east of the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, where authorities evacuated about 700 spouses and children of service members on military transport planes to Florida.
The U.S. installation has a population of about 5,500, including 61 men held at the detention center for terrorism suspects. Navy Capt. David Culpepper, the base commander, said emergency shelters had been set up and authorities were bracing for 80 mph winds along with storm surge and heavy rain that could threaten some low-lying areas, including around the power plant and water desalination facility.
“We have no choice but to prepare ourselves to take a frontal assault if you will,” Culpepper said.
Know Before You Go: Latest 7 Day Forecast | Pinpoint Weather Blog | Live Pinpoint Doppler 12 Radar | Threat Tracker | JamCam Traffic | WPRI.com Flight Tracker | Closings & Delays | Download: Pinpoint Weather App | Download: Eyewitness News App | Sign Up: Weather Alerts
Associated Press writers Ben Fox in Miami, Evens Sanon in Haiti and Ramon Espinosa in Santiago, Cuba, contributed to this report.
Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. | <urn:uuid:a4782f8d-2dab-4f45-b064-0858804b0bf3> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://wpri.com/2016/10/03/powerful-hurricane-matthew-a-threat-to-haiti-jamaica-cuba/ | 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 | 0.956412 | 1,173 | 1.804688 | 2 |
An ingenious invention created centuries ago was actually a standard winch. People understand that by creating this tool, they could use it to move very heavy items. Even though this was just lateral movement, it worked very well, especially on boats. Today, there are several kinds of winches that you could purchase.
There are actually anchor winches, towing winches, and others. They are meant to work with electric motors, and hydraulic power, causing them to be more robust than ever before. If you are going to get a smaller winch, perhaps to anchor your boat, a winch 5 ton for sale might suffice. After you have it, you will need to learn how to utilize it. It becomes an breakdown of how use a 5 ton winch once it is installed.
Different Reasons To Put In A Winch With A Boat
Unless you possess a winch on your own boat yet, you should consider doing so. An anchor winch is a very important item to get available. Once you come into a harbor, you have to keep the boat in just one location. Additionally, when you have a mooring winch, you can secure yourself to the dock. In some instances, your business may involve towing barges. Use a towing winch for this exact purpose. Whether this is certainly installed in the bow, or with the stern of the boat, it’s good to possess a fully functional winch available.
Using A 5 Ton Winch
Though these are typically not as powerful as much more elaborate winches, it’s sufficient to help keep a boat in position. It can possibly be helpful when towing another boat behind you. However, before you can benefit from having it, you need to know how it works. Most of the modern winches today is going to be powered by electricity. One thing to check is the spool around which the cable or chain is located. It really is advantageous to unroll the fishing line, after which reel it back. This can ensure it does not get tangled up. Checking the cross pin that may be in the hook at risk is the next thing of your process. Before turning it on, you must maintain your hands free through the line itself. These are usually activated by way of a pushbutton control that starts the complete system. You will find levers or buttons that will help you to extend the fishing line, or bring it in, once it really is fully activated. If you come from Vietnam, the 5 ton winch for sale Vietnam can be your choice.
What If You Utilize A More Substantial Winch?
No matter the capacity of a winch, if this originates from the identical company, it can function in the same exact way. In reality, most modern winches have got a similar design. It comes with an activation button to make the system on. There is an emergency stop button. Controls for extending the fishing line, and bringing it back, may also be present. You could have a winch together with the ability of pulling 100 a great deal of weight, and the controls would look virtually identical. By testing it out, and verifying how the lines are not tangled, you can make use of this immediately after it is installed.
Applying this information, you can actually discover why most people are capable to manage a winch. It could take some time to properly install it on the boat, but when this is done, it will be easy to manipulate it. Operating a winch is increasingly simple before. Modern technologies have made that possible. Additionally, it provides us with many more options, including the opportunity to pull enormous amounts of weight using the strength of hydraulics. Begin using these ideas to begin to use your 5 ton winch. Click here to get more winch information. https://aicranemachine.com/ | <urn:uuid:56915ae2-54ec-41e7-aed6-80de2553a2e8> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://liveblogspot.com/business/the-way-you-use-a-5-ton-winch/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572127.33/warc/CC-MAIN-20220815024523-20220815054523-00269.warc.gz | en | 0.962566 | 789 | 2.0625 | 2 |
Arthur Joseph Houtteman
- Bats Right, Throws Right
- Height 6' 2", Weight 188 lb.
- High School Catholic Central High School (Detroit)
- Debut April 29, 1945
- Final Game September 22, 1957
- Born August 7, 1927 in Detroit, MI USA
- Died May 6, 2003 in Rochester Hills, MI USA
When Art Houtteman reported to Camp Pickett, Virginia in World War II, he was declared unfit for combat because the noise of gunfire gave him severe headaches. Doctors said that was likely a lingering effect of his skull fracture. He was put on limited duty pitching for the camp baseball team. After 11 months - when the baseball season was about over - he received a medical discharge. He later missed the 1951 season due to military service.
Pitcher Art Houtteman was known as "Hard Luck" Houtteman - and that was before he was nearly killed in a car wreck and before his baby daughter was killed in another wreck.
- AL All-Star (1950)
- AL Shutouts Leader (1950)
- 15 Wins Seasons: 3 (1949, 1950 & 1954)
- 200 Innings Pitched Seasons: 3 (1949, 1950 & 1952) | <urn:uuid:072b95f9-54db-4f6a-866a-57381e89d01f> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://d3k2oh6evki4b7.cloudfront.net/bullpen/Art_Houtteman | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571950.76/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813111851-20220813141851-00669.warc.gz | en | 0.972872 | 281 | 1.851563 | 2 |
Want to create studio-quality work and get noticed? Just coming off Flash and looking for a Toon Boom intro? Are you a traditional pencil-and-paper animator? From scene setup to the final render, learn how to navigate the Toon Boom interface to create animation that can be published on a variety of platforms and formats.
Animate to Harmony guides you through Toon Boom’s Animate, Animate Pro and Harmony programs, teaching you how to create high-quality 2D animation of all complexities. The main text focuses onfeatures that are common across all three programs while "Advanced Techniques" boxes throughout the book elaborate on Pro and Harmony features, appealing to all levels of experience with any of the three main Toon Boom products. | <urn:uuid:6052b6e5-051b-45de-a5ab-6b4d91fc404f> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.safaribooksonline.com/library/view/animate-to-harmony/9780415705370/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560284352.26/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095124-00198-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.911021 | 153 | 1.6875 | 2 |
Do diasporas develop long-distance nationalism that expresses itself in a very radical way (uncompromising and extremist) and helps strengthen the ethnic identity of the “dispersed”? This is the question explored by Alain Dieckhoff, CNRS research director and head of Sciences Po’s Center for International Research, in his article The Jewish Diaspora and Israel: belonging at distance (Nations and Nationalism, April 2017). Here he presents his approach and findings.
“With this work, I wanted to empirically test the double hypothesis of long-distance nationalism that had been put forward by political scientist Benedict Anderson, a major theoretician of nationalism at the end of the 20th century (with Ernest Gellner and Anthony Smith). I chose to do this by focusing on the case of an archetypal diaspora, that is, the Jewish diaspora in the United States, which includes 5.2 million people representing 70% of the global Jewish diaspora. It was therefore a “significant field of study”. Moreover, the large amount of data gathered by major American-Jewish organizations made the study possible. I was able to create a comprehensive picture of the attitudes of American Jews towards the State of Israel.”
A predominantly “pacifist” diaspora
The first, unsurprising observation is that attachment to Israel is high, experienced by 70% of respondents. However, the second observation is unexpected: this attachment is far from fused with rightwing political positions and support for the uncompromising nationalism pushed by the Likud party that is currently in power in Israel. There are obviously Jews unequivocally toeing this ideological line, but they are a minority. The majority holds a moderate political position and supports a compromise on the Palestinian issue. This situation explains the resonance of the JStreet advocacy group, which lobbies US Congressmen for a two-state solution – a perspective that breaks with irredentist nationalism. While they could theoretically adopt unbridled pro-Israeli nationalism, since such a political position would in no way harm their situation in the United States, most American Jews choose the principle of responsibility by defending the idea of a territorial compromise in Israel/Palestine.
Identity cannot solely be fueled by nationalism
Benedict Anderson’s second hypothesis is that long-distance nationalism is a means of strengthening ethnic identity. What exactly is the situation in the case at hand? First, while attachment to Israel is generally high, it also varies greatly depending on the religiousness of American Jews. Thus, 68% of Orthodox Jews claim to be emotionally attached to the State of Israel, while only 24% of those who define themselves as “just Jewish” (with no religious affiliation) feel that way. All the available data converge: the pro-Israeli engagement of American Jews is more pronounced if they are religiously practicing ones.
The conclusion is obvious: a “pro-Israeli” stance is linked to individuals’ religious affiliation. It does not act as a substitute allowing non-religious Jews to gain a strong ethnic identity. This actually needs to be taken one step further: the more American Jews are secularized the more distant they are towards Israel, making any form of long-distance nationalism impossible over time. When ethnicity becomes too symbolic, it increasingly risks disappearing to the point where long-distance nationalism can no longer help: it cannot reinvigorate already weakened identities.
The need for a comparative approach
The invalidation of the double hypothesis posited by Benedict Anderson – with whom intellectual dialogue is unfortunately no longer possible (he died in December 2015) – on the basis of the Jewish “model example” relativizes the general validity of his intuition. More systematic studies would be needed on other diasporas, be they ones supporting an existing state (Turkey) or ones promoting a nationalist movement aspiring to create a sovereign state (Kurds, Tamils) to better identify the methods, variables and modus operandi of long-distance nationalism. Again, as always, a more comparative approach would enable a better grasp of the sociopolitical complexity.
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One of the key’s to Author Discovery is to build and maintain a website and blog – every author should have one – and NO, Facebook or Twitter presence does not eliminate the need to do this. You need an online home. Real estate that you own and control.
As you build your website, Search Engine Optimization or SEO becomes increasingly important, because it’s all about GETTING FOUND, which is the point of author discovery in the first place.
Search engines are the key to finding specific information on the vast expanse of the world wide web. Without sophisticated search engines, it would be virtually impossible to locate anything on the Web without knowing a specific URL. But do you know how search engines work? And do you know what makes some search engines more effective than others? When people use the term search engine in relation to the Web, they are usually referring to the actual search forms that searches through databases of HTML documents, initially gathered by a robot.
There are basically three types of search engines:
- Those that are powered by robots (called crawlers; ants or spiders)
- Those that are powered by human submissions
- Those that are a hybrid of the two
Here are four things you need to focus on in order to optimize your web content for today’s search engines:
- Find keywords
- On page SEO
- Off page SEO
- Measure, analyze, adapt, and calibrate
Let’s take them one at a time starting with the importance of keywords.
There are 5 secrets to embedding your site with great keywords:
- Think like a reader
How do you find the books you want to read? What search terms do you use? What blogs do you read for info and reviews on these books?
- Narrow down your genre
Example: Google “fiction” and get 219 MM results. Google “supernatural suspense” and get 1.5 MM results
- Play the name game
It’s not enough for people to find you by name, they need to find different combinations of your name, book title, and subject matter (Example: too many Sellouts online, but SELLOUT interracial gets you to James W. Lewis amazon profile on page 1!)
- Create author profiles everywhere
- Diversify your content
The more things you can tag the better. Your site should have tagged blogs, videos, pictures, quotes, links, bios, resources, etc.)
Once you have optimized your keywords, you then need to think about on-page and off page SEO, which are the ways you get the search engines to work in your favor.
- On page: Feed these spiders by dropping specific keywords in the page title, URL, headings, and page text of your site.
- Off page: Get linked back to your site from as many specific sources as possible so that the spiders keep having to crawl back to you. The more trusted the site linking back to you the better.
If you’ve done a good job with your SEO three things will happen:
- You will show up higher and higher in keyword searches that matter to you and you will have more and more results from all the on page and off page links you’ve built. (You can monitor this for free)
- Your website will have a good to great ranking on website graders because of the quality and diversity of the on-page content and the trust worthiness of the off-page links. (Also free)
- Your on-page traffic will continually, if not perpetually, increase. (Guess what, you can analyze this for free too!)
The most important thing to remember about optimizing your website and blog for search engines is that you can do it yourself. There are a zillion company’s online trying to sell you on the need to pay them to do things you can do yourself with a little time, focus, and persistence. Remember, you have all the tools at your disposal to truly DIY when it comes to SEO! You have the time, tenacity, and will to make it happen and you have now been empowered by reading this and other resources guiding you in the right direction!
Here are some other great sites which give away information regularly on this topic:
• www.hubspot.com (the inbound social media marketing experts)
• www.sitemeter.com (provides free website traffic analytics)
• www.googleanalytics.com (a slightly more advanced tool on website traffic and activity)
Now, let’s move on to all the glorious free tools Google offers to help boost Author Discovery! | <urn:uuid:be46c5f6-0fe1-4153-a790-3b89099b5d54> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://authordiscovery.com/search-engine-optimization-made-simple/?shared=email&msg=fail | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570977.50/warc/CC-MAIN-20220809124724-20220809154724-00469.warc.gz | en | 0.924361 | 980 | 1.898438 | 2 |
If you stood the course through my radio burblings the other day, you might have heard me mention the thing that I’d like to contribute to the BBC / British Museum’s History of the World in 100 objects. I thought you might be interested to see it. While I was researching my piece for the current Rowan Magazine, I became very interested in the different tools that enabled women to knit while standing up, outdoors, or on the move. Circular needles now mean that our knitting is easy to carry about, but in earlier centuries, there were many different devices to enhance the craft’s portability. Shetland islanders used wisps:
. . . and later, leather belts . . .
. . . like this one (bought from Jamieson and Smith and demonstrated by Ysolda. ‘Goose-wing’ or ‘Gulls-wing’ knitting sticks, shaped to be tucked easily into skirt or apron top, were common in the Scottish Borders, the Yorkshire Dales, and Wales :
. . . and all over the country, there are examples of straight or slightly curved knitting sticks, hand-carved, machine turned, and sometimes inlaid with shell or bone, dating from the seventeenth- through the early twentieth centuries. Here’s a simple eighteenth-century turned one:
As these photos might suggest, I’ve now amassed a small personal hoard of these things, but they feature in local museum collections all over the country: I’ve seen some great examples in the V&A, and National Museum of Scotland as well as at Dent, Whitby, and Beamish. (If you click on the Beamish link you’ll see a gallery of many interesting examples)
Here’s another view of my favourite knitting stick:
It is a small oak object, less than 15 cm long. The top of the stick has been reinforced with a cage of carefully soldered lead, which provides a secure and durable holder for the knitter’s needles:
Carved into the wood is a name (Jane Brown), and the date:
There are a number of reasons why I like this particular knitting stick. First, of course, it is a personal object — an object with a private connection, a name, and a story to tell. These sticks were frequently given as love tokens, and this one was probably carved for Jane Brown by her feller. This is, then, an object with private and sentimental meanings, and which may carry other intimate connotations too. Jane’s stick is very like a busk — small wooden or whale-bone objects that were worn by Georgian and Victorian women under their clothing to stiffen and enhance the effect of their stays. Wooden busks were similarly formed, similarly carved, and similarly given as love tokens (to be worn next to the heart). Indeed, from its particular tapered shape, and its resemblance to other busks that I have seen, I would speculate that Jane’s knitting stick was first intended as a busk, but then adapted to another purpose by the addition of the soldered top. I like the idea that an object designed to maintain the stasis of a woman’s body might be put to more practical use as a device enabling her to knit-on-the-move. I also like Jane’s knitting stick because it is an ordinary thing. The carving is neatly, but not professionally done, and unlike some sticks of the same era whose condition is pristine, Jane’s shows evident signs of wear. Her stick is a sentimental object, a decorative object, an intimate object, and most importantly, a functional one as well. It is an unpretentious, everyday tool, used by a woman who was clearly practised in her craft.
While the things that Jane Brown knitted are almost certainly long-gone, the object that enabled her to create them has survived. For me, Jane’s knitting stick, — ornament, tool, love token — illustrates how historically rich everyday things can be, how they can tell us so much about the connection of people in the past to the material culture that surrounded them. That, to me, is what is so great about the BBC’s / British Museum new project. I’ve added Jane’s knitting stick to their online gallery, and encourage you to upload a photograph and story of your own object here. (I have a strong desire to fill that gallery with lots of knitting and sewing related things . . . but I shall resist)
ETA: Jane Brown’s knitting stick is here in the BBC’s online gallery. | <urn:uuid:aadcae5b-2d63-4d6e-90cf-96cc84485329> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://kddandco.com/2010/01/21/sticks/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573699.52/warc/CC-MAIN-20220819131019-20220819161019-00268.warc.gz | en | 0.960644 | 971 | 2.390625 | 2 |
The beer culture in Europe dates back to several centuries, and this alcoholic beverage today forms a crucial part of the economy of several countries. It is interesting to note that several global beer brands have their roots in Europe. Thus, the beer market in Europe continues to remain a dynamic space, where innovative products are essential to growth. While Germany and the UK contribute to a large share of the demand for beer in Western Europe, Russia and Ukraine have led to the creation of a burgeoning beer market in Eastern Europe.
Given that in Europe, the market for beer is already well established, it will register a meager CAGR of 2.4%. But even this modest growth rate could translate into massive revenues because of the sheer size of the market. The Europe beer market was estimated at US$ 17.01 billion as of 2014, and will likely be worth US$20.05 billion by the end of 2021.
Browse Full Europe Beer Market Report With Complete TOC @ http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/europe-beer-market.html
Despite Alcoholic and Non-Alcoholic Substitutes, Beer Market in Europe to be Positively Influenced by Market Drivers
Since beer is an inherent part of the culture of several European nations, the consumption of this alcoholic beverage may not see a steep incline, but will certainly continue to grow at a steadfast pace. The three leading types of beers consumed in Europe are: Stout, lager and ale.
There are several market drivers at play in Europe’s beer market. The greatest among these is the perceived health benefits offered by beer (only when consumed in quantities recommended by physicians). As evidenced in studies in the past, beer can help limit the level of cholesterol in blood and can also guard against kidney stone. These benefits, coupled with a general increase in the disposable income of European consumers, after suffering the impact of the economic slowdown, will prove beneficial to the Europe beer market. | <urn:uuid:08d309f4-8f12-471d-b12a-6f07747d70a7> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.brainia.com/essays/Beer-Market-In-Europe-To-Regain/382644.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280872.69/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00313-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954297 | 397 | 2.125 | 2 |
Geological Survey Ireland, Trinity College open Earth Surface Research Laboratory
Geological Survey Ireland and Trinity College Dublin are launching the Earth Surface Research Laboratory (ESRL), a new national facility providing state-of-the-art chemical analyses for the geoscience community on the island of Ireland. The laboratory hosts world-class facilities for the preparation and analysis of geological and environmental samples.
Ireland has a fascinating and diverse geology, formed over millions of years through the eruption of volcanoes, the opening and closing of oceans, the slow erosion of towering mountain ranges and finally, the recent glacial events that shaped our landscape. These geological processes have endowed the country with economically important mineral deposits and fertile soils which support a thriving agricultural industry.
The laboratory will support Geological Survey Ireland’s Tellus geochemical survey – a major national programme to map elemental concentrations in soils, stream sediments and stream waters across Ireland. It will also be open to academic researchers, SMEs and other geological/environmental groups based on the island of Ireland in a non-commercial capacity. The facilities will enhance the world-class geoscience research conducted on the island of Ireland and will assist projects protecting Ireland’s unique natural environment.
“The Earth Surface Research Laboratory is a facility for the whole geoscience community on the island of Ireland, producing high quality data, using the most advanced equipment currently available,” said Dr Michael Stock, director of the Earth Surface Research Laboratory and a professor in Trinity’s School of Natural Sciences. “Our dual aims are to support national efforts to understand Ireland’s natural environment and to continue building Ireland’s international reputation as a centre for world-class geoscience research.”
Koen Verbruggen, director of Geological Survey Ireland, a division of the Dept of Environment, Climate & Communications, said: “I am delighted to announce our new collaboration with Trinity College Dublin and the team at the ESRL. This new facility will ensure analyses of our Tellus samples and represents a significant addition to National Geoscience Research facilities.”
The Earth Surface Research Laboratory launches online on 23 June and will be accepting applications for access from interested researchers. | <urn:uuid:6d2b563f-c9ea-424c-a428-929d3b6e569a> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.techcentral.ie/geological-survey-ireland-trinity-college-open-earth-surface-research-laboratory/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571745.28/warc/CC-MAIN-20220812170436-20220812200436-00471.warc.gz | en | 0.889642 | 455 | 2.53125 | 3 |
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One of the most popular — and useful — sessions at the recent 11th annual National No-Tillage Conference was a 50-minute panel discussion where four no-tillers presented their 40 best tips on how to deal with drought conditions.
Panel members included:
“Most failures of no-till are temperature and moisture related,” Nester says. “Calcium and magnesium have a profound effect on water infiltration rates, and, in turn, soil structure.”
He says it’s easier to heat air than it is water, so it’s imperative that your no-till soils are well balanced with calcium and magnesium.
Davidson suggests letting roots reach deep into your soil profile. On his farm, they don’t cut any no-till plant roots and it’s paid off.
By leaving the stalks standings, your fields will catch more snow and it’s a way to keep the wind from damaging your land, according to Lang.
“Stalks and stubble keep your soil warmer in the winter and cooler in the spring,” Lange says. “You’ve got to keep your soils cooler in the spring. If the… | <urn:uuid:2719183c-aa9e-4891-ab1a-2f18e608c39a> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.no-tillfarmer.com/articles/3148-fast-tips-when-no-tilling-in-drought-conditions?v=preview | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571222.74/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810222056-20220811012056-00667.warc.gz | en | 0.935506 | 262 | 2.078125 | 2 |
Navigating towards a more sustainable future for all
World hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition are on the rise, as well as extreme climate events and the farming sector worldwide is still coping with issues like farmers’ access to resources, gender equality, youth empowerment, access to market among others.
Farmers are the first ones to be impacted by such challenges and those who work to overcome them every day, while at the same time trying to be resilient and produce more and sustainably with less.
Given the central role farmers are called to play for the implementation of the global agenda of sustainable development, they deserve to be at the centre of the decision-making process on agriculture at local, national and international levels.
In May 2019, in Luxembourg, the General Assembly of the World Farmers’ Organisation (WFO), approved the Farmers’ Route Declaration, a statement that looks to promote a real “farmers driven approach” to tackle the global challenges humankind faces, highlighting the path that the farmers of the world are already building and following to achieve a more sustainable future for all humankind.
The “Farmers’ Route Declaration” reaffirms the principle of the “Farmers Driven Climate Change Agenda”, adopted by the WFO General Assembly 2018, in Moscow, Russia, to enhance the position of the farmers in the global political dialogue on agriculture, starting from the climate negotiations. | <urn:uuid:b860dff0-26f6-43cf-9671-3482d7b267a5> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.wfo-oma.org/wfo-strategic-framework/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572161.46/warc/CC-MAIN-20220815054743-20220815084743-00469.warc.gz | en | 0.929228 | 286 | 2.59375 | 3 |
Over the years the real estate schools have been developed in fame. In the real estate schools they taught the real estate courses, real estate pre-licensed classes and the real estate training that helps the student to know about the requirements for becoming a experts in the world of real estate. Further to this, the experts also need the excellent persuasion skills as well as the communication for making a winning career in the field of the real estate. Real Estate Appraisal Schools: The real estate appraisal school is considered as the institution where the experts in the business of the real estate can learn how to be the appraiser of the real estate.
The following are some of the topics that are covered in the real estate appraisal schools:
Using documentation All the top real estate appraisal schools offer the students with the appraisal education.
The Idaho real estate school training and coach the aspiring agents of the real estate and also direct them by the mandatory examination process and the certification. The Idaho real estate school offers many of the online courses with the duration from a month to the 1 year. Normally the study in the 1 year course completes the core- license course. The Idaho real estate school provides the students with the adequate support and knowledge for making the students master in industry of the real estate.
Florida Real Estate School: If the person is looking to have a career in the business of the real estate than the Florida real estate school will do it better for you. If the person did not have any of the experience related to the industry of the real estate than the Florida real estate can provide you with all types of the training that is needed by the expert of the real estate.
Real Estate License School: There are many schools that provide the certain courses related to the license. Getting the license for the business of the real estate for the agents, appraisers and brokers is the basic necessity in this profession. The real estate school provides the various courses for the study related to the business of the real estate. Some of the real estate license school requires that their student at least should get 80% of the marks in the exams before moving to the next course. Online Real Estate Schools: There are many of the options to find out the online real estate schools.
There are many of the online real estate schools that contain the entire information about the courses that the person can easily find on the internet for free.
Texas Real Estate School: Texas is considered as the 2nd largest state in the US in terms of area after the Alaska and also in terms of population it is the second largest state after the California. The Texas real estate school provides its student with all the courses that are required and are very much necessary for making the student expert in the field of the real estate. The Texas real estate schools are termed as the institutions that provide the education to the students of the program leading to the license of the real estate. There are two kinds of the school in Texas of the real estate: The schools which are offered by the universities and the colleges. The schools that are offered by the industries that are specialize in the industry of the real estate.
California Real Estate School: There are number of the schools and colleges that are situated in the California. When the student will go to the California real estate school the individual their will be graduate with the certain knowledge that is needed for having the victorious business of the real estate. The California real estate produces the plenty of the experts in the field of the real estate. If the student wants to go California and wants to have the study regarding the filed of the real estate than the opportunities are waiting for you in every corner of the state. Anthony real estate school is considered as other school that provides its students with all kinds of the courses and the knowledge that is required in the real estate business. The Anthony real estate school will help you in becoming the professional worker in the industry of the real estate. | <urn:uuid:011cc20c-33f1-42af-b501-6d3238d6e6c5> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.altiusdirectory.com/Realestate/real-estate-schools.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560282926.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095122-00398-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967217 | 785 | 1.859375 | 2 |
Artificial Tears for the Reduction of Radioiodine Levels in the Nasolacrimal Duct System of Patients with Thyroid Carcinoma following Radioiodine Therapy
This phase II trial studies how well artificial tears works in reducing radioiodine levels in the nasolacrimal duct system in patients with thyroid carcinoma following radioiodine therapy. Radioactive iodine therapy for thyroid carcinoma has been associated with nasolacrimal duct obstruction. Artificial tears may dilute the amount of radioactive iodine in the tears of the eyes, thus decreasing uptake by the cells lining the nasolacrimal duct system.
Near Infrared Autofluorescence via PTeye for the Detection of Parathyroid Glands during Total Thyroid Surgery
This trial studies how well infrared autofluorescence via PTeye works in detecting parathyroid glands during total thyroid surgery. Located closely to the thyroid gland are the parathyroid glands, which are important organs that regulate calcium levels in the body. Thus, it is essential for a surgeon to correctly identify this structure when performing a thyroid surgery. PTeye may help surgeon to identify and preserve healthy parathyroid glands during surgery. By assisting the surgeon in correctly identifying parathyroid glands, this device may improve the quality of the operation performed on the patient. | <urn:uuid:002be7e8-0f68-48db-90c7-3a5862e21723> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.vicc.org/clinical-trials/patients?keys=&f%5B0%5D=disease_site%3AThyroid | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571097.39/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810010059-20220810040059-00266.warc.gz | en | 0.866692 | 331 | 2.296875 | 2 |
AGU Fall Meeting is virtual (mostly) and remains global (always)
We are excited to announce that #AGU20 will be mostly virtual. “Mostly” because if science and health professionals tell us it is safe for groups to convene, AGU would like to host a regional gathering in San Francisco. If we decide that is feasible, we will let you know by August. In addition, depending on where you’re located (and if it’s safe), you can create your own mini-#AGU20 watch party or hub. We’ll share guidance if you’re interested in being a convener of one of these mini-#AGU20 regional events.
No matter if we are 100% virtual or if regional gatherings are possible, #AGU20 will remain the global convening meeting for the Earth and space sciences community. And this year, we will be able to engage the wider global community.
#AGU20 will offer real-time sessions, networking and poster hall time that work for multiple time zones around the world. We will also offer recorded content so you can enjoy “on demand” or binge watch what others are sharing at any time.
We know that meeting fellow scientists and researchers are a major reason you attended Fall Meeting in the past and we’re going to make sure that remains a key feature this year. In fact, you may be able to meet even more people than you would have ever before by using some new tools that we’re testing out now.
This year’s theme is “Shaping the Future of Science.” We selected this theme in January 2020, but we couldn’t have imagined the events that have transpired over the last six months.
We have seen how the world’s trust and respect in science remains high. But we also know we have more work to do to be more inclusive and diverse.
Fall Meeting will offer sessions on:
- COVID-19, from lessons learned in Earth and space sciences to ideas for what to do to advance research when one can’t be in the field or in the lab.
- actions the Earth and space sciences should take to remove discrimination and eliminate racism to improve diversity and inclusion.
- how to better communicate your science to policymakers, reporters, voters and other key audiences.
Of course, we’ll still have more than 1,000 sessions on everything ranging from Earth’s core to oceans to exoplanets. Convergent themes including global science policy, data, natural hazards and climate science will be prominently featured.
As you know, we’re also excited about our Presidential Forum speaker Leland Melvin, engineer, educator, former NASA astronaut and NFL wide receiver.
Since we’ll have all this content, plus networking and some fun surprises, we will have Fall Meeting concentrated 7-11 December. But we’ll also likely begin earlier in December to extend the time frame and organize programming around our scientific neighborhoods. This design will help reduce overlap while recognizing that you have other priorities that need your attention and can’t spend a full day attending Fall Meeting online.
We are still finalizing many details, but we wanted to let you know as soon as the decision was made. We will be adding additional FAQs to our website later today that will answer many of your questions too. But we ask for your continued support and patience so that we create a flexible, fun, interactive and engaging Fall Meeting 2020.
Starting the week of 22 June, abstracts will be accepted until Wednesday, 29 July. When you submit your abstract, your eLightning fee will be included so there will be no additional poster platform or printing fee. We can’t wait to see what you submit!
With these new and reimagined offerings at Fall Meeting, we will be charging a registration fee. It will be about 50% less than the in-person rate and lower for graduate students and other groups. We assure you that the value that you have always experienced at Fall Meeting in-person will remain in our virtual version.
We are testing a variety of technology now, which will also serve as the foundation for the future of AGU Fall Meetings. We will soon announce those different online tools that will best serve you to learn, share, network and engage. Over the next five months, we will be offering a number of opportunities to ensure you are comfortable with the new technology, including training sessions and open hours for “hands-on” demonstrations. As a reminder to students, if you’d be willing to volunteer, please email us. In return, you’ll receive free registration to #AGU20.
Finally, since we will be mostly virtual, we know our carbon footprint will be less than ever before. We will be placing a calculator to keep track of what we’ve used on our website. It also means we’re as mindful as ever about making sure we’re good stewards of our planet.
We know that Fall Meeting will be offered in a different way than we’ve experienced before, but our team is working to provide the best #AGU20. We are confident that with your continued support, we will make #AGU20 Fall Meeting the best one yet! | <urn:uuid:bc626373-f403-4c37-bbda-c43644844d99> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://fromtheprow.agu.org/agu-fall-meeting-is-virtual-mostly-and-remains-global-always/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572870.85/warc/CC-MAIN-20220817062258-20220817092258-00665.warc.gz | en | 0.941643 | 1,101 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Viking Age Scandinavians almost exclusively made applied art – aesthetically appealing and useful.
By Emma Groeneveld
Art made by Scandinavians during the Viking Age (c. 790-1100 CE) mostly encompassed the decoration of functional objects made of wood, metal, stone, textile and other materials with relief carvings, engravings of animal shapes and abstract patterns. The motif of the stylised animal (‘zoomorphic’ art) – Viking Age art’s most popular motif – stems from a tradition that existed across north-western Europe from as early as the 4th century CE, but which developed in Scandinavia into a confident native style by the end of the 7th century CE. Often, these animals twist and churn across their surface – imagine decorated carts, engraved jewellery and weapons, wall-tapestries and memorial stones – interwoven with other animals and plant ornamentation.
Narrative art of the region that tells an actual story is found in only a few instances before the last stage of the Viking Age, such as on the rare tapestries that have evaded being unravelled by the passage of time, and on the picture stones found on the island of Gotland in present-day Sweden. Besides the many different carved surfaces, some instances of more properly 3D-art are also preserved, mostly in the form of animal heads that were used to adorn posts, carts or caskets.
Several succeeding and sometimes overlapping styles have been identified within Viking Age decorative art, usually named after the finding place of a famous example of that style, such as:
- Style E (late 8th century CE-late 9th century CE). Important finds from Broa (Gotland, Sweden) and the Oseberg ship burial (Norway); long animal bodies; small heads in profile with bulging eyes; ‘gripping-beasts’ with muscular bodies and claws gripping everything nearby.
- The Borre Style (c. 850-late 10th century CE). Ribbon plait (‘ring-chain’, a symmetrical interlaced pattern); a single gripping-beast with triangular head and contorted body; most widespread of all the styles, found throughout Scandinavia and across the Viking colonies.
- The Jelling Style (just before 900-end of the 10th century CE). Beast with a ribbon-like body; head seen in profile; usually double-contoured body which is beaded; closely related to and overlapping with the Borre style.
- The Mammen Style (c. 950-1000 CE). Great, fighting beasts; spiral-shaped shoulders and hips; often asymmetrical; vigorous and dynamic; ribbon- and plant elements.
- The Ringerike Style (c. 990-1050 CE). Large animal in dynamic pose; movement; powerful and elegant; plant ornament; popular in England and especially Ireland.
- The Urnes Style (c. 1040-at least 1100 CE). Also named ‘runestone style’; very elegant; asymmetrical; motif of the great beast; interweaving, looped snakes and tendrils; very popular in Ireland.
It must be said that although wood and textile must have been prime vehicles for Viking Age art, their often more expensive counterparts in metal and stone do better at surviving, causing a bias in our source material.
Rather than creating art specifically for art’s sake, Viking Age Scandinavians almost exclusively made applied art; everyday objects were jazzed up to make them more pleasing to look at. The rarer pictorial art often seems to match known stories about Norse mythology, depicting such scenes as a Valkyrie welcoming a warrior into Valhalla or Sigurd the Dragonslayer’s story. As Anne-Sofie Gräslund explains:
Religion permeated life in the Viking Age and was especially important in Viking art. Artists and craftsmen certainly would have been important people because (…) art was generally created not for its own sake but as a mark of social prestige, often commissioned by the upper levels of society. Even though much of its meaning is lost to us, we can be confident of our interpretations at least in cases where myths known from Old Norse literature can be identified. Elements of Viking mythology are present in artistic ornamentation, and that religious content would have been obvious to contemporary viewers. (Fitzhugh & Ward, 62).
Both Viking art’s link with the higher levels of society and with religion may help explain why the Viking Age art styles were (for the most part) common across Scandinavia throughout all levels of society. Copying was also standard-practice, which is not so odd considering Viking art’s decorative purpose.
Materials and Techniques
Viking Age art’s favoured materials were mostly things that could be carved or engraved: wood, stone, metal, but also such things as bone and amber. Textile, leather or cloth, for instance in the shape of colourful wall tapestries adorned with pictorial scenes, were also commonly used, although along with wood they are rather bad at standing the test of time. The bulk of material we can actually study thus consists mainly of decorated jewellery or metal utility goods such as horse equipment, as well as weapons and the lively, large memorial stones found in abundance across mainly Sweden and the island of Gotland. The carved wood that has survived, however, is spectacular and stems from such finds as the Oseberg ship burial (c. 834 CE) which was richly furnished with among others a beautifully carved wooden cart and three splendid sleighs, as well as five iconic 3D carved animal-head posts. These rare finds vividly demonstrate what we are missing out on.
The techniques that were used in Viking Age art were mainly those of relief carving or engraving and the use of contrasting materials and colours, with filigree and granulation being popular. A piece of jewellery, for instance, could be made of gilded bronze but decorated with silver. Traces of paint have frequently been found on the larger wooden- and stone objects, too, betraying that these once popped with vibrant shades of black, white and red, although yellow, blue, green and brown were also used.
Origins and Early Developments
The roots of Viking Age ornamentation mainly lie in a broader European Germanic tradition which was utterly smitten with animal ornamentation and was popular through much of north-western Europe from the 4th century CE onwards. Beginning with basic animal shapes, through the Migration & Vendel periods (c. 375-800 CE) when – surprisingly – mass migrations took place throughout Europe, Scandinavia gradually embraced full-blown animal ornamentation, being influenced by Scythic, Oriental, Celtic and Roman art along the way.
In the early 20th century CE, Swedish archaeologist Bernhard Salin divided pre-Viking Age Germanic ornamentation into three styles: styles I, II and III. Style I, which flourished in the 6th century CE in north-western Europe, saw metal chip-carving embellish objects with separate animal-body parts mostly along the borders of central, abstract patterns. Style II was popular throughout Germanic cultures during the 7th century CE and focused on non-naturalistic animals (including otherwise rare predatory animals) forming interlacing patterns, and on the aristocratic image of a horse and rider. By contrast, from the 7th century CE into the early Viking Age, Style III developed within Scandinavia itself. Its basic motif often had two band-shaped animals seen in profile, with openwork shoulders and hips and tendril-outgrowths, the bodies arranged in the form of a lyre. Although this style changed over course of the next few centuries, the motif of the stylised animal in profile remained a central motif in Scandinavian art until the Middle Ages (and even beyond, staying alive in folk art genres although otherwise abandoned).
Style E (Oseberg and Broa)
Style E – the first of the properly Viking Age animal ornamentation styles when it comes to dates – is generally seen as a sub-category or offshoot of Style III and was in vogue from the second half of the 8th century CE through to nearly the end of the 9th century CE. Although related to the broader Germanic tradition, this style is very much native Scandinavian. Animals, often set within a framework, became more abstract than before, displaying long, almost ribbon-shaped, curving bodies with intertwining limbs that develop into open loops and tendrils. Their heads are small and are shown in profile but have big, bulging eyes. Specific variants include a double-contoured creature with a nearly triangular body, a beaked head and forked feet; a round-headed, more coherent animal with little claws and a flap; and the standout so-called gripping-beast style. Anne-Sofie Gräslund vividly describes the gripping-beast:
Its thin ribbonlike body is set off by large muscular shoulders and hips, and its legs end in paws, which grip tight to everything—to the edge of the ornamentation border, to neighbouring animals, or to its own body. The tigerlike beast appears filled with energy and seems to cling to the assemblage at all costs. (Fitzhugh & Ward, 63-64).
Famous for high-quality finds from both the Oseberg ship burial and graves found at Broa on Gotland, Style E is sometimes referred to as the ‘Oseberg Style’ or the ‘Broa Style’. At Broa, 22 gilt-bronze bridle-mounts were found in a grave, indicating the clearly wealthy owner’s horse would have been well-kitted out indeed. The decorations show animals with eyes so large not much space remains for the rest of their heads. Of course, these are standout items; more basic items such as the oval brooches used to fasten women’s clothing were widely decorated in this style, too, demonstrating it permeated Scandinavian society at large.
The Borre Style
Around the mid-9th century CE, the Borre style made its grand entrance, succeeding Style E and remaining popular until at the latest the late 10th century CE. Fully on board with the previously introduced gripping-beasts, the Borre style’s main motif put the beast wholly in the limelight: a single, contorted gripping-beast, its body forming a sort of curved ribbon between its two hips, its face triangular – catlike or masked – with its claws gripping either the border or part of its own body, dominates the scene. A second variant depicts a semi-naturalistic animal seen from the side. The Borre style’s real giveaway is the introduction of the ribbon plait, known as the ‘ring-chain’. Imagine two interlaced ribbons, their intersections overlaid with interlacing circles covered with lozenges (diamond shapes) or other geometrical figures. Crossways nicks could be added for extra bling, and filigree and granulation were frequently-used techniques.
The Borre style is named after the location of a ship burial in Borre, Vestfold, Norway, where gilt-bronze harness mounts displaying this style were found. It was hugely popular not just across Scandinavia but throughout the Viking colonies, too. With the Viking expansion at its maximum at this point in time, this means the Borre style appeared – in more or less pure forms – from the British Isles, including Wales and Scotland, to Russia and eastern Europe, and even to Byzantium. As David Wilson concludes, ‘no other style was so widespread’ (Brink & Price, 328). With Scandinavia gradually converting to Christianity in the last stages of the 10th century CE, the Borre style spans the last full period of paganism and its accompanying burial customs, perhaps explaining the large volume of Borre objects that are preserved.
The Jelling Style
Probably first cropping up just before 900 CE, the Jelling (or Jellinge) style flourished during the mid-10th century and then gradually developed into the succeeding Mammen style. Artistically close friends with – and largely contemporary with – the Borre style, the Jelling style is less common and seems to take inspiration from Style III from the pre-Viking Vendel period (c. 550-c. 800 CE) and Style E with its ribbon-shaped animals seen in profile. Its main motif is an s-shaped beast with a beaded or patterned body, which is usually double-contoured, its head appearing in profile and sporting a round eye and tendrils sprouting out from its nose and neck. Intertwining ribbon interlace and foliage often accompany the animals. The Jelling style is rarely directly merged with the Borre style, but objects sometimes feature both styles used side by side.
The Jelling style was named after a small silver cup decorated in this style, found in a royal burial place at Jelling, Denmark, and just like the Borre style, it was popular not just inside Scandinavia but also in Russia and the British Isles. The north of England even became home to a melting-pot Anglo-Scandinavian style which contained both clear Borre and Jelling elements.
The Mammen Style
The Mammen style developed from the Jelling style from c. 950 CE onwards, prevailing for a few decades while gradually merging with the succeeding Ringerike style, its best-before date expired around 1000 CE. Its main motif really stands out: a great four-legged beast – a griffin or a lion – with a double-contoured body and spiral-shaped hips and shoulders, battles with a snake. The Mammen motif is bold and dynamic, laid out in an asymmetrical way, unaligned with the surface’s axis, and embellished with branching plant ornamentation such as acanthus-shaped crests. The acanthus-shapes betray a likely English influence; they greatly resemble the Anglo-Saxon Winchester style and probably crossed over to Danish carvers during the first half of the 10th century CE, when the Danish presence in England was at its height. The lion or griffin, which is not originally a Scandinavian motif either but suggests a Christian influence, might also have reached Scandinavian ears through this route, although this story is harder to trace.
The style’s most famous example is a runestone found at Jelling in Denmark and imaginatively known as the Jelling Stone which depicts the iconic twisting great beast entwined with a snake. Otherwise, although not many Mammen objects are preserved, the style is found throughout Europe from Ukraine through to Spain, the British Isles, and obviously within Scandinavia itself.
The Ringerike Style
The Ringerike style developed from the Mammen style by around 990 CE and remained popular until c. 1050 CE. Named after memorial stones from Ringerike, north of Oslo, Norway, this style strongly resembles its predecessor, especially where it concerns the large animal motifs – curving snakes, lions, or ribbon animals which strike dynamic poses. However, where Mammen is more wavy and chaotic in its embellishment, the Ringerike designs are laid out on an axis and show a more disciplined, basic asymmetry, with taut and evenly curved scrolls of plant motifs, tendrils and loops. These become even more important in the overall design and create a rich impression of elegant movement, even though the animals are beginning to be a cause for worry when looking at the amount of these tendrils and plants that sprout out of their bodies. Luckily, some tendrils also grow by themselves.
The Ringerike style dominates the runestones of south- and middle Sweden as well as on Gotland, while also appearing in Denmark and in modified form in Norway. In metalwork, the style did not lag behind, either, and some splendid examples are preserved, such as two copper-gilt weather vanes found in Sweden (one from Källunge, Gotland, and one from Söderala, Hälsingland). Loops flow from an axis, taking the form of snakes from which symmetrically-placed tendrils sprout. Their heads both have a pear-shaped eye whose tip points towards the snout – a characteristic feature of the Ringerike style. Acanthus-bud motifs – another staple within this style, and quite probably an English influence – fill up two corners. Presumed to have been brought along to England by Cnut the Great (r. 1016-1035 CE), King of Denmark, England and Norway, the Ringerike style was both popular and influential across the British Isles. It was especially enthusiastically adopted in Ireland, where it struck such a chord it developed independently, even appearing on objects originating from native Irish contexts such as the Clonmacnois crozier.
The Urnes Style
The last of the Scandinavian animal ornamentation-based art styles is the Urnes style, which was most prominent between c. 1040 CE and c. 1100 CE. Because of its prevalence on the runestones of Uppland, Sweden, the term ‘runestone style’ is also found there. Sophisticated, elegant and sleek, even decadent, the Urnes designs are often asymmetric and form an interweaving mass of sinuous, gently curving animals and snakes. There are no abrupt transitions or breaks in the lines. Its characteristic motif is that of a great four-legged beast often struggling with surrounding snakes, biting each other. The greyhound- or deer-esque animals have long necks and slim heads, with snake-like creatures (sometimes with one foreleg, sometimes just a tendril ending in a snake’s head) coiling around the design in figure-eight loops. The pointed, almond-shaped eyes fill almost the entire heads, which are usually depicted in profile. Variation existed, too, which is most obviously visible in metalwork of the time.
The style was named after the stave church that stands in Urnes, Sogn, western Norway, which was rebuilt in the 12th century CE and recycled decorated wood of an earlier date which depicts this particular style. The Urnes style is often found in a Christian context, highlighting the idea that Viking Age art styles were not specifically ‘pagan’ per se but part of society at large. Outside of Scandinavia, it is sometimes found in England and, like the Ringerike style, it was especially well-liked in Ireland. Here, the Urnes style flourished from c. 1090 CE onwards to the end of the 12th century CE and even beyond, impacting not just metalwork but also stonework and manuscript decoration.
The End of the Viking Age
Although the use of animal ornamentation petered out around 1100 CE, it did not disappear abruptly and was actually used on some early 12th-century CE ecclesiastical objects (Scandinavia had been Christian since c. 1000 CE). The Lisbjerg altar from Jutland, Denmark, for instance, combines the native Viking style with European Romanesque. Furthermore, animal art remained in use in peasant society for many centuries after the end of the Viking Age – surely a testament to its role and appeal in this culture.
- Ó Cróinín, D. Early Medieval Ireland. 400-1200. (Longman Group Limited, 1995).
- Brink, S. & N. Price (eds.). The Viking World. (Routledge, 2012).
- Fitzhugh, W. W. & E. I. Ward (eds.). Vikings. The North Atlantic Saga. (Smithsonian Books, Washington, 2000).
- Graham-Campbell, J. Viking Art. (Thames & Hudson Ltd, 2013).
- Jesch, J. Women in the Viking Age. (Boydell & Brewer Ltd, 1991).
- Papapetros, S. On the Animation of the Inorganic. Art, Architecture, and the Extension of Life. (University of Chicago Press, 2016).
- Roesdahl, E. The Vikings. (Penguin Books, 2018).
- Sjøvold, T. The Viking Ships in Oslo. (Universitetets Oldsakssamling, 1985).
Originally published by the Ancient History Encyclopedia, 10.23.2018, under a Creative Commons: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license. | <urn:uuid:71d7d0ef-8fe5-4f31-8bd1-053f8ee57b10> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://brewminate.com/the-art-of-the-viking-age/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572833.95/warc/CC-MAIN-20220817032054-20220817062054-00465.warc.gz | en | 0.950584 | 4,280 | 3.515625 | 4 |
Massacres at Chios
Byron nourished Delacroix's passion for Greece. This country suggested all the themes able to heighten a soul wishing to free itself from academicism and ready to conquer freedom. Greece embodied at once the call of the origins of a threatened civilization, the fight for freedom and the attraction for the East. The death of Byron at Missolonghi in 1824 brought the intense excitement to its climax.
The balanced composition of the canvas entitled “Massacres at Chios” is based on two prominent features:
- The arrangements of the characters ordered in two pyramid-shaped groups that contribute to an overall animated effect;
- The harmony of the almost monochrome colours, where light and obscure complement each other, underlining the disastrous aspect of the drama.
These two features undeniably carry the mark of Théodore Géricault in:
They are both innovating while giving a unity to the painting.
Only the mane of the horse and the head of the rider rise above the horizon line; the bulk of the drama is buried in a land of injured or dead bodies that opens onto the free background space occupied by the invader.
An intertwined couple is standing at the canvas centre, at the intersection of the diagonals linking the extremities of the horizon line and lower edge of the painting. Behind the couple, the shadow of an Ottoman soldier stands over them. The man and the woman know their lot. They can only fight or implore the enemy:
- In the fight (on the right), the rider abducts the woman and is ready to kill her lover. The same lot awaits the captive as shown by the lying bodies of the dead woman and child in quest of the breast of his mother.
- In the supplication (on the left), the issue is not at all more favourable in view of an implacable soldier; death's door will be at the final outcome.
Moreover, the common destiny is underlined by the similarity of both the profiles of the lying dead mother and the imploring spouse.
The use of curved lines accentuate a movement bounding from one form to another. The tension of these curves binds together the elements of the composition into a dramatic unity.
Only one character seems to temporarily escape this carnage, this infernal circle: an old woman with an absent look, raising her eyes to heaven. She represents the ancient Greece ready to die. The disaster on earth contrasts with the calm, the peace in heaven, symbol of freedom. The absence of birds in the sky is a sign of the lost freedom.
The connection of complementary colours tends to reinforce the painting unity. The contrast is created by the association of warm and cool tones: red and green of the dress of the dead lying woman; the blue sky and the orange clouds; the cool green strokes alternating with warm ochre and brown of the landscape. The background colours of the canvas is resulting from the complementary blue-greens and brown-reds as well as flashes of white, symbols of light, tinged with flesh tones.
The light brings out the fore and backgrounds, the captive, the undressed dead woman and the child. This light reflected by the bodies symbolizes the will of the people to liberate themselves from the foreign domination, to be free. Nevertheless, this outer light constitutes only a reflection of the true light that illuminates the being's own enemies, his inner enemies. For the being can not liberate himself from the enemy's yoke without killing within himself the servility that counterbalances the freedom will. | <urn:uuid:9d67fc22-7014-4519-b2c9-35e80b7a52fd> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://users.skynet.be/lotus/art/delacroix0-en.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280221.47/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00231-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.926344 | 737 | 3.3125 | 3 |
This summer the Royal Holloway Swimming Club took to the sky, flying all the way out to Africa to take on the challenge of climbing Mount Kilimanjaro.
The dormant volcano in Tanzania reaches a staggering height of 5895m, as the highest mountain in Africa it has become a popular climb since it was first ascended in 1889. Kilimanjaro is the world’s highest free standing mountain, to climb it is physically and mentally gruelling, it really is an incredible feat.
I spoke with Swimming Club President, Isaac Kenyon about their incredible achievement, the journey they made and how it felt to reach the highest peak of Kilimanjaro.
“In September, we just decided off the beat, lets do something as a club. We worked with Challenges Abroad and the FutureSense Foundation. There were 10 of us that did it, we raised £1,350 for the trek and then each of us raised £1,800 for the charity.”
Fundraising is never an easy task, the swimming society gathered their funds through various cake sales, a pub quiz, a car wash, they sold water on SU nights and accepted donations, of which there were around 750 donors.
“We also had sponsorship from family companies, the Monkeys Forehead and I received a travel grant from the city of London and Royal Holloway.”
There was a lot of training involved leading up to the climb however that in itself was an achievement as the climbers completed the 3 Peak Challenge. This challenge involved climbing the three largest mountains in the UK – Snowdon, Scafell Pike and Ben Nevis in 24 hours. The society had undertaken the challenge last year completing it in 22 hours, this year the climb itself was on time, but the driving took the total time up to 25 hours. We’ve all experienced the exhaustion of walking up the Egham hill, particularly when laden with shopping bags, but as part of their training the swimming soc found themselves running up the hill as well as focusing on swimming to increase and maintain good lung capacity.
For the actual climb, “We headed to Moshi in Kilimanjaro, where we stayed for 3 nights. We took some time to rest before the trek, visiting hot springs and waterfalls. Then, the trek. We took the Machame route, which was the fastest and steepest route. It took us 5 days to reach the summit, and we got back down on the 6th day.”
The Nyange Adventures company sent from the FutureSense Foundation was led by Davis Nyange who provided them with 38 porters who would carry tents, duffle bags and equipment allowing our climbers to trek with their day packs. On day 1 the group drove to 1800m elevation and climbed until 2900m, day two they climbed to 3800m and then climbed an extra 500m up and back down to give their bodies a chance to acclimatize. Day 3 saw them reach 4600m, then head back down to 3900m where they baked a cake for climber Jessica McKenna’s birthday.By day 4 altitude sickness was beginning to affect members of the group, they reached 4600m and, on only 4 hours sleep, they left for the summit at 1am.
On the 5th day, the members of the Royal Holloway Swimming Society finally reached the Uhuru Peak, the highest part of the crater. Engulfed by a mixture of exhaustion and adrenaline the team celebrated with champagne and took in the breathtaking view.
“It really pushes your limits, overcoming altitude sickness alone is a huge challenge. The week before our climb somebody actually died with our leaders, we’ve achieved this for all of those who helped to get us there -it was very much a team effort. There was such a build up and then you kind of explode at the top. And coming down, it’s like a comedown.”
The whole team; Clare Mack, Nicholas Day, Ben Ajayi-Obe, Elle Kershaw Jervis, Jessica McKenna, Luke Dunlea, Sophia Monrose, Issac Kenyon, Zak Derler and Callum Holmes who took on one of the biggest challenges of a lifetime and managed to raise a staggering £20,000 for the FutureSense Foundation. | <urn:uuid:850ed0b9-14ee-4787-b783-51c70da2c6db> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://theorbital.co.uk/swimming-soc-conquers-kilimanjaro/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572192.79/warc/CC-MAIN-20220815145459-20220815175459-00068.warc.gz | en | 0.97341 | 894 | 1.585938 | 2 |
THE VICE LORDS:
ASPECTS OF AND FORMAL AND INFORMAL
SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONAL LIFE
IN A GANG
George W. Knox, Ph.D.
© Copyright 2008, Chicago, IL, National Gang Crime Research Center.
WARNING: This document is copyright protected in its entirety. A copyright is on file with the U.S. Copyright Office, Washington, DC, United States Library of Congress. The NGCRC strictly forbids reproducing, copying, distributing, or disseminating its “gang profiles”, also known as gang threat analysis research reports. No portion of the contents of these NGCRC gang profiles may be copied, reproduced, stored, or distributed in any form whatsoever without the prior written permission of the National Gang Crime Research Center.
Books previously published on the Vice Lords provided no clue to the existence of written constitutions and by-laws as evidence of the formal organizational development of the gang. How, then, do we account for the formalization of this kind of organization? There are at least four different rival hypotheses that may account for the formalization of gangs like the Vice Lords. These are examined and appraised below.
However, equally important is that no previous scholarly researchers have focused on the informal social organization (ISO) which operates within any formal social organization (FSO) such as a formalized gang like the Vice Lords. We will be exploring some of these concepts of the function and significance of the ISO within the gang’s FSO below.
These preliminary findings come from a much larger study currently underway on the nature of gang organization in America today. Most of the present discussion is limited to the Vice Lords.
SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONS OF GANGS VERSUS EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF GANG SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONAL INFRASTRUCTURE: ACCOUNTING FOR THE DISCREPANCY IN CRIMINOLOGICAL VIEWPOINTS
Some criminologists have argued that gangs are nothing more than small informal social networks, “near groups”, perhaps no more organizationally sophisticated than a “pick up basketball team”: where whoever has the ball is the leader of the group. This author has advanced the more logical and more reasonable view, elsewhere and for some duration, that gangs can be expected to vary in terms of their social organizational complexity and sophistication. That there exist both informal and formal gangs in America today is a more factual based assertion.
Few criminologists living in the world today have been willing to address the fact that some of the major gangs in America today have formalized written constitutions and by-laws, complete with a rigid organizational hierarchy and an assortment of rules and regulations for members which are enforced vigorously by the gang.
It is, however, easy to reconcile the problem in this context of are gangs formal or informal: there is variation in the level of social organization in gangs in America and anywhere else. Some are informal in nature. Some are formal in nature. One engages in something other than social science to argue any differently.
POLITICAL SOCIALIZATION HYPOTHESIS
The political socialization hypothesis argues that the formalization of gangs began during that time frame in American society when there was a convergence of the Civil Rights Movement and the Anti-Vietnam War Movement. African-American gangs drew heavily on the influence from groups like the Black Panther Party (BPP), and socially imitated the BPP “manifesto” and the BPP paramilitary organizational structure. Thus, emerged gangs like the Black P. Stone Nation (BPSN) through the sequence of Blackstone Rangers, to El Rukns, and back to BPSN. The BPSN has the “Cold Soldier Army” (CSA) constitution and bylaws which depict it as an Islamic-based insurgent group.
The politicization hypothesis has been applied to the development of highly organized drug gangs in Brazil, where today the gangs function as organized crime organizations. The first to be established was the “Red Command”, which emerged from a quid pro quo relationship with communist rebels in Columbia. The leftist rebels provided cocaine, and the gang that would become known as the “Red Command” provided money and arms in return. The “Red Command” socially imitated the elements of structure, hierarchy, and formal organization from the leftist guerilla groups it dealt with during the period of 1964-1985. Once established, the “Red Command” quickly had rival groups being formed by the law of natural group opposition formation. These new drug gangs included: First Capital Command and the Third Command.
These Brazilian drug gangs made international news in the Fall of 2002 when the “Red Command” took over a prison and executed the leader and several henchmen of the “Third Command”. Ernaldo Pinto de Medeiros as the leader of the “Third Command” was brutally tortured and burned alive in Rio de Janeiro’s Bangu I Pentitentiary in Sepember, 2002. The purpose of the execution was to solidify all Brazilian gangs under the command of the “Red Command”. This is sometimes referred to as the “consolidation scenario”.
ARTIFICIALLY INDUCED SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONAL HYPOTHESIS
This is the thesis that via the method of social work and providing resources to the gang which can be exploited, that the gang will gravitate towards a higher level of social organizational sophistication. Sometimes such efforts have induced a corporate-style organizational development for gangs, particularly the Vice Lords who with federal and foundation funding were able to establish several quick-to-fail business enterprises. One early strategy of “gang work” in Chicago was to teach gangs “leadership skills” and to make the gangs “formalize” their clubs, under the ill-conceived belief (e.g., a bad theory) that they could be coopted and converted to pro-social groups and organizations. This was done through the Chicago Park District in the 1950's and 1960's.
More significant as an illustration of artificially inducing a more complex organizational infrastructure to Chicago gangs were the experiments by certain individuals with gangs like the Blackstone Rangers and the Vice Lords. Basically, both gangs were provided with a large sudden influx of money and economic power, making them popular gangs that rapidly expanded their membership base. Once little more than loosely organized neighborhood thugs, with the “mana from heaven” provided to them by individuals operating under the “opportunity provision” theory that if they just had legitimate sources of income they would disappear as a criminal gang, the gangs rapidly expanded their power and influence and would survive for decades.
Thus, there is evidence that informal gangs can be converted into formal gangs by means of social engineering. It may be tantamount to criminal witchcraft to engage in such social experiments is the lesson of history from Chicago gangs.
State-sponsored gang activity would be a variation of the artificially-induced hypothesis; i.e., where a government itself promulgates and gives impetus, direction, and resources to a gang for purposes of covert action or for use in low intensity conflict. Political extremist adults who socially engineer a structure for the performance of crime and delinquency by juveniles would be a similar variation of the artificially-induced hypothesis.
THE CORRECTIONAL EMULATION HYPOTHESIS
Correctional institutions in the United States from the period of 1960-1980 were still operating under a certain degree of “rehabilitation” philosophy. This meant that inside correctional institutions certain “pro-social” organizations were established for American inmates to participate in, which had their equivalent organizations outside of correctional institutions. Inside prisons in Illinois and elsewhere, these included organizations like the “Toastmasters” and “Jaycees”. The inmate organizations had to have a “Sponsor”, someone who would make sure they did not “riot” and plan an insurrection or escape which often meant some social service staff person in the institutional was in attendance. But otherwise the organizations were run by the inmates them selves.
In the correctional emulation hypothesis gangs would use such otherwise legitimate organizations as their own method of maintaining regular group functions within the prison setting.
The inmates had to learn about the constitution and bylaws of the groups they joined. They had to have elections. They learned how to build up a treasury and how to plan various functions and events. The inmates learned the value of formal organization and they learned the power of formal social organizations.
Under the correctional emulation hypothesis, it is assumed that some gangs in America simply emulated what they learned from their socialization and experiences with the formal organizations they were exposed to inside correctional institutions. By developing their own “constitutions and bylaws” for their gangs, gangs in Illinois prisons during the 1980's would be able to recruit other inmates into gang life and dominate prison culture. So-called “inmate” or “prison culture” as it was previously described by criminologists would quickly change with the advent of organized gangs.
THE RELIGIOUS-IDENTITY/INMATE-RIGHTS HYPOTHESIS
In American correctional institutions, inmates have religious rights. All they need to do is to have a codified set of beliefs, however strange, and many prisons in many states would simply let the inmates practice such beliefs. This would mean the right to hold their own religious services, which in reality would become the basis for a “gang meeting”. This would mean the opportunity for the gang to hold celebrations and carry out aggressive recruiting drives as well.
There is substantial evidence, historically, to suggest that inmates have used and abused such religious rights to disrupt correctional institutions. There is substantial evidence to suggest that what we have here is not a serious conversion to a spiritual identity, but rather it is simply a mechanism for antagonistic behavior (e.g., fighting the system, seeking to secure more inmate rights, seeking prison reform, etc).
In countries outside of the United States, like Brazil, it is difficult to argue the merits of the religious-identity/inmate rights hypothesis as having any explanatory power, given the lack of democratic traditions as are enjoyed in the USA.
The religious-identity/inmate-rights hypothesis is therefore a variation of the correctional emulation hypothesis. Basically, inmates see other inmate “religions” and copy or emulate them, developing new formats and twists and themes, but basically emulating existing structures as a vehicle for organizational continuity: i.e., continuing their gang identity and gang operations, even if it means using the camouflage of a quasi-religious identity. In the case of Islamic religious identities, it can be further argued that there is a “goodness of fit” issue in the attraction or lure of figures like Malcolm X. One reliable source traces the first Vice Lord Islamic identity to the year 1988 in Illinois.
WHAT FORCES OR COMBINATION OF FORCES EXPLAINED THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE VICE LORDS INTO A FORMAL SOCIAL ORGANIZATION (FSO)?
This is presented simply as professional opinion because we are, after all, dealing with a historical question less amenable to direct empirical testing. One cannot do a “survey” on this kind of research question. Oral history studies, including interviews with Vice Lord figures described in the work by Knox and Papachristos (2002), are more useful.
If asked to place a “weight” on what percent of the variation in historical development in the Vice Lord gang the four rival hypotheses had in explaining the development of the FSO in this gang, I would conclude as follows:
Artificially induced: 60 percent
Religious-identity/inmate rights: 20 percent
Correctional emulation: 15 percent
Political socialization: 5 percent
Thus, all had some role, but the influx of “easy money” (artificially induced) and being able to carry on gang meetings in the correctional system under the disguise of a “religion” (religious identity/inmate rights) are the two prominent factors having the most logically consistent explanations. Correctional emulation and political socialization have a minimal effect. I offer the caveat that there does exist a fifth hypothesis, “correctional emulation of other gang FSO’s”, which could be a powerful explanatory factor in any gang other than the Vice Lords; as the “contagion effect” or “copycat syndrome” is a factor in gang life in America today.
Please note, however, that these rival hypotheses might be expected to generate totally different results if we used a different type of gang or security threat group (STG). For example, in the case of the Melanic’s gang in Michigan (which is similar to the Black Guerilla Family), political socialization might account for 60 percent of the development cycle of the gang; religious-identity/inmate rights 25 percent; correctional socialization 15 percent; and artificially-induced zero percent. Different gangs have different developmental patterns. The Vice Lords simply enjoyed the benefits of a large influx of federal and foundation funding to get started and get up and running. That makes them, like the BPSN, a unique kind of gang in terms of its developmental sequence and pattern.
How to more effectively “test” this kind of historical gang question is the current focus of the author’s research agenda.
To understand the FSO in gang life, one must also understand the significance of the ISO in gangs.
THE ISO WITHIN THE FSO OF GANG ORGANIZATIONS
The informal social organization (ISO) within the formal social organization (FSO) in the case of the Vice Lord gang, at the leadership level, is often a function of family relationships. This ISO functions within the larger FSO. The ISO is based on family solidarity therefore has pre-existing ties of kinship and family. The ISO has both the solidarity of kinship ties and the solidarity of their relationship to the FSO. The ISO at the leadership level is almost equivalent to a “family royalty”, as they have blood lines and immediate family ties to the top leader of the gang. While ordinary members of the gang may have to be “beat in” and “tested” in someway as a part of their initiation process, someone with direct family lineage to the top gang leader is usually exempt from this kind of initiation involving ritualized group violence. This is seen not just in the Vice Lords, it is a universal phenomenon within gangs, a factor traced to the power and privilege of an antecedent primary relationship to the gang leader.
In the Unknown Vice Lords, for example, Tyrone Williams (“Baby Tye”) is believed to be the top leader while Willie Lloyd avoids the “spot light”. Three of “Baby Tye’s” brothers are “Chief Elites” in the Unknown Vice Lords: (1) Sheldon Williams (“Mayor”), (2) Kenneth Williams (“Big Smooth”), and (3) Cardell Williams. Thus, within the Unknown Vice Lords, the “Williams family” functions as an ISO within the FSO of the Unknown Vice Lord gang. It is, in other words, an “inner circle” of gang leadership.
In the Imperial Insane Vice Lord faction, similarly, the current national leader, John Lofton (“China Joe”), was a brother to one of the gang chapter’s legend’s Willie Hemmingway (“Lil Chief Gouster”), now deceased, while another brother of “China Joe”, Leonard Lofton (“Baby Lord”) is regarded as a “Prince” in this faction of the Vice Lords. The term “Prince” itself is a social construction conferring “royalty status” to “Baby Lord”. Thus, within the Imperial Insane Vice Lord gang the Lofton’s exist as an ISO.
In a large gang faction like the Conservative Vice Lord Nation there may be a number of such ISO’s based on being a brother by family lineage or being a biological son of a current or former leader. For example, in the CVLN there are second generation Vice Lords who are the biological sons of former or current CVLN leaders. Examples, include Tijuan Moore (“Ty-won”) said to be the biological son of Vice Lord founder “Peppilow”; Daniel Cole (“Duke”), the biological son of “Mahdi”; Thurman Frazier (“Qadir Muhammad”), the biological son of “Minister Rico” the current leader of the CVLN.
The ISO based on family ties within the gang’s FSO can exist at both the leadership and general membership level. At the leadership level, however, this kind of ISO has special significance. It is an “inner circle” of the leadership structure of the gang and as such its members are some of the most powerful members of the gang organization. In terms of social status, it carries the symbolic significance of being a kind of “royalty” as well.
THE ISO AS A SOURCE OF ALIENATION
Whether you work in a university environment, a business office, or a criminal gang, you do not like the special treatment accorded to “relatives” of the president, boss, or gang leader: nepotism, as a cultural universal, carries with it a universal repugnance at least at the rank and file level of an organization. As experienced by gang members, alienation here means a sense of estrangement due to the “special favors” bestowed upon relatives of the gang leader, having the effect of a “glass ceiling” on achieving higher status within the gang. And any good gang member wants to “go up the ladder” of the FSO in terms of achieving higher status, perhaps being capable of being the ultimate “top gang leader”.
This is a worthy area of additional intensive research, as there are major cases of defection from the Vice Lord gang factions that are not easy to explain over the years. One of the founders of the Vice Lord Nation was “Baldy” or Maurice Jackson, but perhaps the reason he would eventually “flip” from the Vice Lords, a people gang, to the Black Gangster Disciples (GD’s, a “folks” gang), might have been the kind of nepotism arrangements in the Vice Lords as evident in the family-based ISO’s within the Vice Lord FSO. We just do not know for sure, it remains a plausible rival hypothesis for explaining the defection of this fundamental figure in the founding of the original Vice Lord Nation.
THE ISO AS A SOURCE OF SOLIDARITY FUELING THE CONTINUITY OF THE GANG AS AN FSO
Another way to look at the ISO within a gang FSO is that it may actually be a factor that allows for the continuity of the gang over time. Perhaps those gang factions without an ISO were the same ones to “evaporate” and disappear from existence. This is the issue of natural gang organization dissolution. Of Thrasher’s (1927) N = 1,313 gangs, only one exists today by the same name, and it is an organized crime group. Thus, 99.9 percent of the gangs studied by Thrasher “died off”, they evaporated, they disappeared from existence; due either to good suppression or a natural process of dissolution. But a gang like the Vice Lords has over fourty (40) years of continuity as a gang entity.
It can be argued that an ISO at the leadership level within an FSO is functional for gang continuity over time. This might explain why there are factions of the Vice Lords that has just disappeared and evaporated, forced to merge with other factions, they exist no longer as factions of the Vice Lord Nation: Congress Vice Lords, Kedzie, Albany and Terrible (KAT) Vice Lords, Cermack Vice Lords, Renegade Vice Lords, 7 Crown Syndicate Vice Lords, Independence Vice Lords, Lake Street Vice Lords, Madison Vice Lords, Chocolate Vice Lords, Ambrose Vice Lords, Black Orpheus Vice Lords, Invisible Vice Lords, etc. These factions of the Vice Lords did exist in 1965, but do not exist by that identity today in 2002.
Is it not at least plausible that by having a family-based ISO with the gang FSO, that this allowed for “tighter controls” on the membership, as more effective “eyes and ears” of membership surveillance would exist, it would be possible to “put down” mutiny’s, and ward off attempts to seize power within the gang. A common source of FSO gang dissolution is such a “power struggle”, where it may lead to a “splintering effect”, creating two or more new gangs from the one original FSO. Disenchanted leaders create new identities for new gang FSO’s if they are lucky. But in a gang with a strong ISO based on family ties, such individuals might be easily identified as “subversive” and appropriately “handled”. By controlling attempts to take over the FSO and by controlling dissent within the FSO, the family-based ISO at the leadership level is a factor that could logically be argued as a factor allowing for social organizational continuity over time. Gang tenure, therefore, may be a function, to some extent, of the existence of a strong or effective family-based ISO within the gang’s FSO.
Some could use this argument to explain why the Black P. Stone Nation (e.g., El Rukn’s) continued as a major gang enterprise well after their leader Jeff Fort was tried and convicted of conspiracy to commit terrorism and given a federal life sentence. Jeff’s sons were left behind inside the ISO of the BPSN, ready to take on more formal duties once their father was neutralized by federal prosecution. Thus, today the BPSN remains a powerful force in the Chicago gang scene even though it’s top leader is on 23-hour a day high security “lock down” with limited communications privileges.
THE VULNERABILITY OF CRIMINAL GANG FSO’s WITH A FAMILY-BASED ISO
The vulnerability of criminal gang FSO’s which have a family-based ISO is that, in theory, if they were targetted for prosecution, this would indeed leave a “leadership vacuum” within the FSO. It would allow insurgent forces, including less powerful ISO’s within the gang’s FSO, to finally “step forward” for a take-over. The ensuing internal battle for loyalty and leadership might be an artificially-induced “natural death” for the gang as an FSO. There is no evidence, historically at least, that any gang anywhere in American history has been the target of state or federal prosecution along the lines of such an ISO-FSO analysis. Thus, it remains a theoretical issue as to the potential for inducing a natural history effect of gang dissolution over time.
There exists enormous vulnerability in any criminal gang FSO which has a family-based ISO. When the family-based ISO is locked up en masse and under federal indictment, or in federal prison, what happens to the FSO from a strategic gang prosecution point of view? Some previous American federal gang prosecutions have been heralded as “cutting off the snake’s head” of the gang FSO (e.g., the Gangster Disciple prosecution in Chicago, in which Larry Hoover and 38 other henchmen were indicted and convicted of federal charges, most resulting in federal life prison sentences). But clearly that GD prosecution did not cripple the GD gang, at best it induced a splintering effect and a decentralizing effect in GD leadership.
The prosecution of the GD’s was not based on going after the leadership ISO’s, but rather the very top FSO leaders. It left behind the ISO’s intact with the GD FSO. This explains, in part, why the GD’s continue to exist as a large and formidable gang in Chicago today, more decentralized to be sure, but just as problematic for public safety and just as active in illegal drug distribution.
To truly be able to organizationally disrupt a gang as sophisticated as the GD’s, the BPSN, or the Vice Lords, federal prosecution would have to target not just the top leader, but also the ISO at the leadership level. If brothers and sisters, wives or aunts or uncles, who had been active in the gang’s FSO remain untouched by federal prosecution, they need only visit or communicate with the imprisoned gang leader to spread the new “gospel” to their gang. In other words, the marching orders will still flow from the top gang leader to the rank and file through the ISO of the gang.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
Some gangs in America today are informal in their level of organizational sophistication. And some gangs in America today, particularly the more violent and dangerous ones, are formal organizations: complete with elaborate written constitutions and by-laws, required weekly meetings, required payment of dues, having a “treasury”, written rules and regulations for members, special language systems (e.g., gang argot and codes), disciplinary systems, the elaboration of status roles and a rigid hierarchy of authority. It is this latter or more formalized gang that is the subject of the present analysis.
Special attention has been given to the Vice Lord gang in describing what historical forces might account for its evolution into a formal social organization (FSO). Of equal significance is the role of the informal social organization (ISO) within the FSO of the gang. At the leadership level, the ISO more often than not is familial-based, and functions as a “elite” core of movers and shakers in the gang structure.
We have postulated that the ISO at the leadership level may be a source of alienation for the rank and file gang members in the FSO; but that it definitely is functional for the continuity of the gang over time, and the significance of the ISO at the leadership level has never been addressed in previous “get tough” policies to prosecute gangs. This may explain, we have added, why some gangs have continued over time in spite of aggressive federal prosecution.
There is really only one authoritative or social scientific book out about the Vice Lords that is research-based, it is this: The Vice Lords: A Gang Profile Analysis, by George W. Knox and Andrew V. Papachristos, 2002, New Chicago School Press, ISBN 0-9710539-9-5, paperback, 266 pages.
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We’re so happy to welcome Margie Lawson today to share her writing wonderment with us. Margie will be speaking at the RWA National Conference in Anaheim next month, both at the Women’s Fiction pre-conference event and a session at the conference. Generous as ever, Margie is donating a lecture packet or a free class to one lucky reader who comments today. As if her information about writing fresh character descriptions weren’t enough!
by Margie Lawson
Note: Part of this blog is recycled from one I wrote last year. New material was added!
Writers often miss opportunities to WOW their readers. One way to WOW them is to write character descriptions that are fresh. Not just a fresh word. A fresh style. A fresh delivery.
Most writers describe a character’s physical attributes. Hair color. Hair style, Eye color. Height. Physique. Some authors slip in a personality trait. Always good.
Some character descriptions read like the writer is checking that item off their list. Nothing special. Nothing fresh.
There are a gazillion ways writers can describe characters. They can share several traits or just a few. Some authors weave character descriptions into the scene. They slip in traits across several paragraphs. They may add a few more descriptive details as the scene unfolds. Others prefer a few salient points and they’re done.
Some writers follow Stephen King’s advice. They provide a couple of fresh descriptors and let the reader fill in the rest.
In Stephen King’s words, from ON WRITING:
“Thin description leaves the reader feeling bewildered and nearsighted. Over description buries him or her in details and images. The trick is to find a happy medium. It’s also important to know what to describe and what can be left alone while you get on with your main job, which is telling a story.
I’m not particularly keen on writing which exhaustively describes the physical characteristics of the people in the story and what they’re wearing (I find wardrobe inventory particularly irritating; if I want to read descriptions of clothes, I can always get a J. Crew catalogue). I can’t remember many cases where I felt I had to describe what the people in a story of mine looked like—I’d rather let the reader supply the faces, the builds, and the clothing as well. If I tell you that Carrie White is a high school outcast with a bad complexion and a fashion-victim wardrobe, I think you can do the rest, can’t you? I don’t need to give you a pimple-by-pimple, skirt-by-skirt rundown. We all remember one or more high school losers, after all; if I describe mine, it freezes out yours, and I lose a little of the bond of understanding I want to forge between us. Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.”
Stephen King is a master of writing craft. Consider his suggestions, and write your character descriptions the way that works best for you and your readers.
I’ll share some examples of character descriptions for your reading and analysis pleasure.
Lara Chapman is a 2012 RITA Nominee for her Y.A., Flawless. Lara is a Margie Grad and Immersion Master Class grad too.
“The once-buzzing classroom freezes. Standing in the doorway is the hottest guy I’ve ever laid eyes on. Golden brown hair cut just short enough to be stylish and a body I’ve only seen on television. Honest to God, the room has fallen dead silent while he looks at his schedule and compares it to the number on the door.
You can almost hear every girl’s thoughts.
Please be in this class.
Please take me to the prom.
Please marry me.
And every guy’s thoughts.
I hope he plays football.
I hope he plays baseball.
I hope he’s got a girlfriend and leaves mine alone.
When he looks up and finds everyone staring, he glances behind himself to see what they’re looking at. Realizing he’s the center of attention, he smiles, upping the charm of his rugged good looks when his slightly imperfect teeth are revealed.”
Elizabeth Essex is a 2012 RITA Nominee for her historical, ALMOST A SCANDAL. Elizabeth is a Margie grad and Immersion Master Class grad too.
“He had been eighteen years old and on the verge of taking his lieutenant’s exam the last time she had seen him, the summer her brother Matthew had brought him home to Falmouth. Col, they had called him. Six years ago, he had been long and lean, but by God, clad in the endless fall of his gray sea cloak, he was a leviathan now. A great oaken mast of a man looming up from the waist of the small boat.
A man grown. A man whose jaw looked as sharp as an axe blade and whose piercing eyes, the color of green chalcedony stone, were just as hard and impenetrable.
“Well, Kent?” Col’s voice was low and dangerously soft—disconcerting in such a hard-looking man. “What’s it to be?”
Darynda Jones is a 2012 RITA Nominee for her paranormal, Third Grave Dead Ahead. Darynda is a Margie grad too.
“I turned as Dad walked in. He’d come up from the bar by way of the inside stairs, which was fine, since he owned it and all. His tall, thin frame seemed to sag just a bit. His blond hair looked barely combed, and his bloodshot eyes were lined with a purplish hue. And not a pretty purple either. It was that dark grayish purple that depressed people wear.”
“Well built with shoulder- length brown hair intermingled with a streak or two of gray, a long mustache and goatee, and a strip of leather around his neck with a silver pendant, Farley proved to be one of those men in his late fifties who only looked in his late fifties up close.”
Kristina McMorris, LETTERS FROM HOME, Margie grad
Here are two weave-in-description examples from LETTERS FROM HOME, released March, 2011, a debut novel by award-winning author Kristina McMorris.
Reader’s Digest Select Editions features a condensed, book club version of LETTERS FROM HOME.
“With Morgan’s charcoal black hair and olive complexion, she questioned if he and the fair-skinned knucklehead were actually brothers.
“Evening,” Morgan said, the word barely audible. A fitted service shirt outlined his broad build. His facial features were of the average sort, but he had an allure about him, an unnamable quality Liz couldn’t dismiss.”
Shirley Jump, HOW TO LASSO A COWBOY – Bestseller Shirley Jump has 35 (or more) books published. Knowing Shirley, she probably has ten more novels contracted.
Shirley Jump is a Margie Grad.
“Mr. Jones,” Sophie Watson called to him from two houses down, her blond hair back in a loose ponytail, swinging along her shoulders.
Skipped a few sentences.
In those early morning moments, Harlan hadn’t done much more than say hello as he passed by. Sophie had seemed nice, friendly even, the first few times he’d encountered her. She was a beautiful woman, too, with delicate features and a penchant for skirts.
A few paragraphs later:
She’d kept coming as she’d talked and now she stood at the end of his walkway, that one hand on a hip that was cocked a little to the side, giving her a jaunty air. Coupled with the knee-length flouncy skirt she wore and the low-heels that gave her legs a sweet curve, it made a pretty picture, he had to admit.
Margaret Daley, TRAIL OF LIES. Last year, bestselling author Margaret Daley had 65 books published. She could have hit 70 by now.
Margaret Daley is a Margie Grad.
“He’d seen Melora Hudson, the widow, at her husband’s funeral a couple of days before. A picture of a five-foot, six-inch, willowy woman materialized in his mind. While she’d stood at the gravesite, her red hair with golden highlights had caught the sun’s rays, accentuating the long curls about her beautiful face-a solemn face, appropriate for a funeral. Until he’d locked gazes with her for a few seconds and something akin to fear had flashed into her sea-green eyes.”
Jaye Wells, GREEN-EYED DEMON. This is the third book in the Sabina Kane series. Silver-Eyed Devil will be released January 1st, 2012.
Jaye Wells is a Margie Grad.
“A mop of kinky mahogany curls cleared the top of the door. And below, a foot clad in a low-heeled black pump stepped onto the blacktop, followed by its twin. Next, a slender, milky hand with bloodied cuticles grasped the doorframe.
When the face came into view, my stomach dipped with dread. Persophone’s classically beautiful face didn’t feature a roman nose, two beady black eyes, or a butt-cleft shin. No, only one Domina was cursed with such mannish features.
Tana French, THE LIKENESS.
The last example is from award-winning author and stage actress in Ireland, Tana French. THE LIKENESS is her second novel.
This is one of my top-of-the-list character descriptions
“I’d been expecting someone so nondescript he was practically invisible, maybe the Cancer Man from The X Files, but this guy had rough, blunt features and wide blue eyes, and the kind of presence that leaves heat streaks on the air where he’s been.”
Here’s a Deep Editing Analysis of the example from Tana French in THE LIKENESS.
1. Fresh Writing: “ . . . the kind of presence that leaves heat streaks on the air where he’s been.”
2. Contrasted what she expected with what presented
3. Rhetorical Device, Allusion, twice: Cancer Man and The X Files
4. Rhetorical Device, Parallelism: “. . . rough, blunt features and wide blue eyes . . .”
5. Cadence-driven: Every word drives the reader into the next word. Read it out loud. You’ll train your Cadence Ear.
Six more words from Stephen King, from ON WRITING:
Good description is a learned skill . . .
FYI: My writing craft courses are loaded with material that teaches writers how to write fresh.
Writing fresh description, for characters and setting, gives your readers color and style and interest. Writing fresh description immerses your reader in the sensory elements of your story. Writing fresh description contributes to making your novel a page turner.
BLOG GUESTS: NOW IT’S YOUR TURN!
POST A COMMENT AND YOU MAY WIN a Lecture Packet or one of my online courses from Lawson Writer’s Academy!
I’ll post the name of the LUCKY WINNER on SUNDAY NIGHT, 9PM Mountain Time.
1. Post a comment – or just say “Hi Margie!”
2. Post an example of a fresh character description from your WIP or a fresh character description from one of your favorite authors.
3. Analyze one of the examples from the blog, all but the one I analyzed. 😉
Post anything — and you could win a Lecture Packet or an online course from Lawson Writer’s Academy.
Lawson Writer’s Academy now has 37 courses and 12 instructors. LWA courses are taught in a cyber classroom from my website, http://www.MargieLawson.com.
Margie Lawson —psychotherapist, editor, and international presenter—developed innovative editing systems and deep editing techniques used by writers, from newbies to NYT Bestsellers. She teaches writers how to edit for psychological power, how to hook the reader viscerally, how to create a page-turner.
Thousands of writers have learned Margie’s psychologically-based deep editing material. In the last seven years, she presented over sixty full day Master Classes for writers in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
For more information on Lawson Writer’s Academy, lecture packets, full day master classes, and the 4-day Immersion Master Class sessions offered in Margie’s Colorado mountain-top home, visit: www.MargieLawson.com. | <urn:uuid:f8fcb0bc-24a6-4282-ae20-8ab098254992> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://writersinthestorm.wordpress.com/2012/06/22/fresh-fresh-fresh-character-descriptions/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279189.36/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00061-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948776 | 2,815 | 1.5 | 2 |
This extraordinary article is by Magdi Allam, an Egyptian Muslim (he has since converted to Christianity) and deputy editor of the respected Milan newpaper, Corriere della Sera. Allam wrote it just after seeing Pierre Rehov’s acclaimed documentary about the expulsion of the Jews from Arab countries, The Silent Exodus, in November 2004.
Israel is the keeper of a mutilated Arab identity, the repository for the guilty consciences of the Arab peoples, the living witness to a true history of the Arab countries, continuously denied, falsified and ignored.
Seeing Pierre Rehov’s documentary film “The Silent Exodus,” about the expulsion of a million Sephardi Jews, helped me gain a better understanding of the tragedy of a community that was integral and fundamental to Arab society. Above all it revealed to me the very essence of the catastrophe that befell it, a catastrophe which the mythical Arab nation has never once called into question. I could see the tragedy of the Jews and the catastrophe of the Arabs are two facets of the same coin. By expelling the Jews, who were settled on the southern and eastern shores of the Mediterranean centuries before they were Arabised and Islamised, the Arabs have in fact begun the lethal process of mutilating their own identity and despoiling their own history. By losing their Jews the Arabs have lost their roots and have ended up by losing themselves.
As has often happened in history, the Jews were the first victims of hatred and intolerance. All the “others” had their turn soon enough, specifically the Christians and other religious minorities, heretical and secular Muslims and finally, those Muslims who do not fit exactly into the ideological framework of the extreme nationalists and Islamists. There has not been a single instance in this murky period of our history when the Arab states have been ready to condemn the steady exodus of Christians, ethnic-religious minorities, enlightened and ordinary Muslims, while Muslims plain and simple have become the primary victims of Islamic terror.
Underlying the Arab ‘malaise’ is an identity crisis that neither Nasserist nor Ba’athist pan-Arabism, nor the Islamism of the Saudi Wahabis, the Muslim Brotherhood, Khomeini and Bin Laden has been able to solve. It’s a contagious identity crisis, spreading to and taking hold of the Arab and Muslim communities in the West.
I remember that around the mid-1970s the Arab exam in civic education taken in both state and public schools in Egypt defined Arab identity thus: “the Arabs are a nation united by race, blood, history, geography, religion and destiny.” This was a falsification of an historical truth based on ethno-religious pluralism, an ideological deception aimed at erasing all differences and promoting the theory of one race overlapping with a phantom Arab nation in thrall to unchallengeable leaders. It was directly inspired by Nazi and fascist theories of racial purity and supremacy which appealed to the leadership and ideologues of pan-Arabism and Islamism. It is no wonder that in this context Manichean Israel is perceived as a foreign body to be rejected, a cancer produced by American imperialism to divide and subjugate the Arab world.
The historical truth is that the Middle Eastern peoples, in spite of their arabisation and islamisation from the 7th century onward, continued to maintain a specific identity reflecting their indigenous and millenarian ethnic roots – cultural, linguistic, religious and national. The Berbers, for example, who constitute half the population of Morocco and a third of that of Algeria, have nothing or very little in common with the Bedouin tribes at the heart of Saudi or Jordanian society. When in 1979 Egypt was sidelined from the Arab League for signing a peace treaty with Israel President Sadat restored its Pharaonic Egyptian identity which he proudly contrasted with its Arabness. Here was an isolated but significant attempt to recapture an indigenous identity – advertising historical honesty and political liberation while saying ‘enough is enough’ to rampant lies and demagogy. Before the screening of the ‘Silent Exodus’ in the Congress Hall in Milan, a gentleman in his Seventies came up to me and said, in perfect Egyptian dialect: “I am a Jew from Alexandria. I have recently been in Tunisia and Algeria. I have to say that people there are not like us, they don’t have the sense of irony that distinguishes us Egyptians.” I smiled and replied that indeed, the Egyptians have a reputation as jokers. They are capable of laughing at anything, including themselves.
What struck me was the “us” – “us Egyptians”: even if we were both Italian citizens, he a Jew and I a Muslim. It reminded me that just after the 1967 defeat, I discovered by complete accident that the girl I was in love with – we both were 15 – was Jewish. For me she was a girl like any other. But for the police who submitted me to intensive interrogation she was a ‘spy for Israel’ and I was her accomplice.
In fact ‘the Silent Exodus’ testifies that anti-Semitism and the pogroms against the Jews of the Middle East preceded the birth of the state of Israel and the advent of ideological pan-Arabism and pan-Islamism. It infers that hatred and violence against the Jews could originate in an ideological interpretation of the Koran and the life of the prophet Muhammed taken out of context.
It would be a mistake to generalise and not to take into account that for long periods coexistence was possible between the Muslims, Christians and Jews of the Middle East, at a time when in Europe the Catholic Inquisition was repressing the Jews and when the Nazi Holocaust was trying to exterminate them. In the same way, one cannot ignore Israel’s responsibility together with Arab leaders in the emergence of the drama of millions of Palestinian refugees and the unresolved question of a Palestinian state.
The fact remains that of the million Jews who at the end of 1945 were an integral part of the Arab population, only 5,000 remain. These Arab Jews, expelled or who fled at a moment’s notice, have become an integral part of the Israeli population. They continue to represent a human injustice and an historical tragedy. Above all, they are indicative of an Arab civil and identity catastrophe. That is why to recognise the wrongs committed towards the Arab Jews – as the maverick Libyan leader colonel Gaddafi has recently done – by objectively rediscovering their past and millenarian roots, by finding again their tolerant and plural history and by totally and sincerely reconciling themselves with themselves, the Arabs could free themselves from the ideological obscurantism which has relegated them to the most basic level of human development and has changed the region into the most problematic and confict-ridden on earth. | <urn:uuid:45933a22-0737-49f3-b46c-8f4a1c133ecd> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.jewishrefugees.org.uk/2005/05/arabs-without-jews-roots-of-tragedy.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570921.9/warc/CC-MAIN-20220809094531-20220809124531-00270.warc.gz | en | 0.964443 | 1,415 | 2 | 2 |
While the iPhone has become one of the most iconic products on the market and Apple have redesigned how we view cell phones and technology in general, there has always been a view that it can be improved. When the first generation iPhone hit the market back in 2007 it was a revolutionary product and one that had not been seen before with its innovation and decidedly cool design. While the masses lapped up the iPhone in its default state through the various generations there was an online community that felt things could be improved.
How could you improve a device such as the iPhone?
Well hackers and other technological experts decided that the source code could be edited. While Apple tend to keep these things under wraps and protected many people felt that it could be edited just enough to enhance the device and make it seem like a completely different phone with new features.
Many people have compared jailbreaking an Apple iPhone to the process of rooting an Android device.
While the basic concept may have similarities the process and what it actually does is quite different. For example when you root an Android device it reboots a whole new operating system,= onto the phone whereas this is not possible with the iPhone even given the skills of many modern day jailbreakers and those that take an interesting in hacking.
With a jailboken iPhone users can have a whole new experience with the device. While it serves many practical measures such as extending battery life by cutting down on unnecessary apps it also allows for for customizable features and being able to use the Cydia app store with access to thousands of new apps.
The Early Stages
As opposed to an elite network or group of computer hackers spending weeks on end trying complicated ways and methods to jailbreak the iPhone, the whole concept was first started by George Hotz otherwise known as ‘geohot’, a 17 year old who wanted to change his iPhone network. The New Yorker goes into detail how Hotz used a screwdriver, a guitar pick, and a soldering tool to jailbreak the first iPhone.
Hotz was by no means the only one to break into the source code and gain control of the iPhone OS. A separate group of hackers did so a few days after the first iPhone hit the stores and another team calling themselves the iPhone Dev Team released the first public jailbreak in October of that year. While it wasn’t as sophisticated as the jailbreaks we have at the minute and it did come before Cydia was released, it was a major step on the road to offering a jailbreak for everyone to use.
Birth Of Cydia
In 2008 Cydia was born.
We spoke above about what Cydia can offer and it was the iPhone Dev Team again that pioneered this concept of an alternative app store for Apple iPhone first generation users.
It was developed by Jay Freeman who is more commonly known online by the pseudonym ‘saurik’ and since its inception almost 6 years ago in 2008 the alternative to the Apple App Store has grown and grown. That being said the intention behind Cydia for jailbroken iPhone’s was never just to offer alternative apps. Instead it has also been used for new features and while the Apple app store allows various applications to be installed, Cydia can tweak your whole iPhone and add a new default feature or function via a simple download. For early users of the iPhone circa 2008-2010 this was a major advancement in technology.
Apple Strikes Back
Jailbreaking has never been a true ‘underground’ movement and Apple have always been aware of the existence even right back to its early days. In 2009 when iOS 3.0 was released by Apple, jailbreakers had to rethink their approach. Apple have specifically shut up shop and decided to stop the exploitation of the device via a jailbreaking method however it wasn’t long until this too was breached.
Georghe Hotz was back on the scene with the release of a jailbreak known as purplera1n that worked for all iOS 3.0 models and blackra1n came out to coincide with iOS 3.1.2.
The whole jailbreaking process increasingly became like a cat and mouse affair between the two sides; on the one hand Apple kept releasing security fixes to ensure that it became even more difficult to exploit the device and then jailbreakers such as Hotz and the iPhone Dev Team saw this as a challenge to exploit.
Another group calling themselves the Chronic Dev Team also came onto the scene and started to release jailbreaks of their own and used the base of Hotz’s jailbreak to work on Mac devices.
The whole jailbreaking scene was quickly becoming an Apple vs the hackers scenario. Apple were doing their best to stifle the jailbreakers and keep their iOS and source code as tightly secured as possible however within days of every new release and security update they were finding that their code was being breached.
No matter what Apple tried to do it seemed as though they were always a step behind the jailbreakers.
By 2010 jailbreaking was starting to be seen as a mainstream alternative to simply using the default iPhone device.
By now it was openly being used by hackers, tech geeks, and those interested in exploiting the iPhone in general and while there had been attempts at trying to bring it into the mainstream they so far had remain futile.
In 2010 however Comex released JailbreakMe 2.0, a jailbreak that could be accessed by simply visiting a website, paying a small fee and then having your iPhone jailbroken in a short space of time via the use of a tool. Up until this point jailbreaking required a certain degree of technical know how even for the average user. With this new process of jailbreaking the iPhone a normal user of the iPhone range could simply pay a fee to a website and have their iPhone jailbroken.
Apple wasn’t having any of this however.
Only a few weeks after the release of JailbreakMe 2.0 they brought out a security fix and iOS 4.1 that essentially stopped the tool from working. Like all Apple security fixes it is only a matter of time before they are breached again and rather than holding off jailbreakers and hackers for months at a time this was quickly turning into weeks and even days in some cases. As soon as a new iOS security fix hit the device and new jailbreak was on the scene shortly after.
Jailbreaking Becomes Permanent
The Chronic Dev Team were quickly becoming the most prominent iPhone jailbreaking group around. They came up with an ingenuous permanent jailbreak. Exploiting a bootroom vulnerability they released a permanent fix in 2010 and called it ‘SHAtter’ and it would jailbreak all current iOS models for life and not just until a new security fix came out.
Since then JailbreakME 3.0 has been released and even though Apple have been attempting to cover up their security breaches as BGR has explained. This has become particularly true since iOS 7 has been released however over the past 4 years since jailbreaking became permanent there has been a much more wider acceptance of the process.
For example the first jailbreaking convention was held in London in 2011. Called MyGreatFest the event brought together jailbreakers and hackers from all over the world including the likes of the iPhone Dev Team, Chronic Dev Team and George Hotz.
Is Jailbreaking Here To Stay?
The history of jailbreaking the iPhone devices is an interesting one.
What started with a teenager messing about with the iPhone by using a screwdriver and guitar pic has evolved in a million dollar industry with countless services offering to jailbreak all iPhone’s and base band models. A simple Google search yields thousands of results for iPhone jailbreaking and the process really has become a mainstream attraction for users of the phone.
Apple themselves are struggle to counteract the popularity of jailbreaking. The legal status is a grey area however in most countries including America it is currently legal by definition however unlocking has since been outlawed and the issues of jailbreaking is due to be looked at again next year in 2015.
The creation of a permanent jailbreak has really boosted its appeal as there is no longer the need to have the process done over and over again. Indeed Apple have attempted to match the hackers by incorporating some of the main features of jailbreaking into their default device and this was evident in iOS 7 and the subsequent iOS releases including iOS 7.1.
The fact remains that jailbreaking doesn’t look like going anywhere soon.
It’s history is currently very short in the grand scheme of things. Trends come and go and 6 years is not a long time by any means however with literally millions of people using jailbreaking at the minute then there is no suggestion that it will disappear in the near future. | <urn:uuid:eae83297-5d23-4386-82be-b95fa01d69b8> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://historycooperative.org/2014/10/02/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281162.88/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00532-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977347 | 1,781 | 2.359375 | 2 |
An agreement signed by Canadian and Indian nuclear regulators has brought the nuclear cooperation agreement that will allow Canadian companies to export nuclear items including uranium to India nearer to implementation.
|CNSC president Michael Binder signs the arrangement in the presence of Nirmal Kumar Verma, Commissioner of India to Canada (Image: CNSC)
The 'appropriate arrangement' was signed by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) and India's Department of Atomic Energy on 21 March, Canadian resources minister Joe Oliver announced in a speech delivered at Cameco's Saskatoon headquarters. The agreement follows on from negotiations between the premiers of the two countries, concluded in November 2012, and supports the nuclear cooperation agreement signed by the countries in 2010.
The arrangement establishes the modalities for a joint committee between the two countries mandated by the cooperation agreement to ensure ongoing discussions and information sharing to facilitate nuclear cooperation while maintaining strong non-proliferation standards. The CNSC will oversee the implementation of the agreement. With the appropriate arrangement finalised, the governments of the two countries can now take steps to bring the full nuclear cooperation agreement into force.
Together, the cooperation agreement and appropriate arrangement will allow Canadian firms to export and import controlled nuclear materials, equipment and technology to and from Indian facilities that are subject to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards. India has a flourishing nuclear power program and ambitious nuclear energy plans but has only modest uranium resources, making the country a potentially important market for Canada's uranium producers.
Researched and written
by World Nuclear News | <urn:uuid:69f9ffbc-ecb5-43c1-ab07-0d15d3bbd377> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://world-nuclear-news.org/NP-Milestone_for_Canada-India_nuclear_cooperation-0904137.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560284411.66/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095124-00460-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937812 | 310 | 2.046875 | 2 |
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