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It’s always interesting, unsettling, and difficult to try to figure out if we can ground our moral and political commitments. I read a sentence about James Fitzjames Stephen’s criticism of Mill’s On the Subjection of Women this morning that caught my attention – ‘His [Stephen’s] own position was that equality was like liberty: it was not an absolute good but sometimes good and sometimes not.’ Not that that’s a startling idea, of course. It’s not a news flash that equality has not always been thought an absolute good or even a good at all, and that for instance the famous phrase in the Declaration of Independence struck most contemporary observers as downright absurd rather than self-evident. And Leslie Stephen’s brother was notoriously a hard guy, fond of saying harshly unsentimental things to dewy-eyed Victorians. No, it’s just that for whatever reason it made me ask myself if I thought it was an absolute good, or a quasi-absolute good, or at any rate a general good, and if so, if I could ground the thought, or if I just thought it because I thought it because I thought it.
Well (you won’t be surprised to hear), I do think it’s a general good, though also one that’s often in tension with other goods. (Can I get away with saying general instead of absolute?) But I would think that – I was born into a time and place in which the thought is taken for granted. So why do I think it apart from that.
Because I think it’s not good for people to think they are by birth somehow globally (not in particular attributes but all over and overall) subordinate, inferior, low. Born to obey, born to serve. Why? I find it hard to go farther than that. Because it’s limiting, narrowing, stunting. It closes off hopes, dreams, possibilities, ambitions. It makes people feel bad, i.e. inferior, and that seems to be a bad thing by definition. Not desirable, not what we want, not what we like. Do people say ‘I’m inferior and that makes me happy, I don’t want to be told that I’m not inferior’? Not that I’m aware of. They change it to ‘different,’ as in ‘Women are not inferior but different’ from anti-feminist women.
The subject links with the ‘What’s so great about nature?’ articles by Paula Bourges Waldegg and Edmund Standing we’ve published lately. Subordination is natural enough, certainly. Many animal species have elaborate hierarchies, enforced with sharp teeth and heavy bodies. Bully for them. We don’t like it. Or rather, those of us on the bottom don’t like it, and after of millions of years some of us have come to the conclusion that the bottom view is the better one, that the happiness and well-being and flourishing and ability to carry out life projects of the people on the bottom, should trump the happiness that the people on top derive from having a pool of born subordinates to use as they like. That the first is worth more than the second, and causes things to go better overall. At least we seem to have; and in some places we have, at least formally and legally; hence the arguments. | <urn:uuid:583ce5a7-b00e-48ff-970b-30e264cc79b2> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2005/grounding/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281162.88/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00535-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966946 | 723 | 2.125 | 2 |
The recent mass killings in Tucson, Aurora and Newtown have sparked public conversations about the deficiencies in state-run mental health systems across the United States. But few states are poised to spend their own money to reverse as much as a decade of budget cutbacks in those areas.Louisiana is not presently known for its sterling mental health care system. Nevertheless, our governor, Bobby Jindal, has opted out of the Medicaid expansion which would cover mental health care on conservative principles, but I wonder if he may reconsider. The majority of the citizens of Louisiana are against any sort of regulation of firearms or ammunition, giving as their reason that it's not guns that kill people, but deranged individuals who manage to get their hands on guns who kill people. How about it, members of the NRA in Louisiana? Why not start a campaign to urge the governor to sign on to the expanded Medicaid program that will enable more persons with mental illness to get treatment?
Instead, many of them are counting on an infusion of federal mental-health dollars. Because Medicaid includes mental-health benefits, those states that opt into the Medicaid expansion included in President Obama’s Affordable Care Act will be able to make mental health coverage available to thousands of their citizens who do not now have it.
For the first three years that additional coverage would cost the states nothing: Under terms of the Affordable Care Act, the federal government will cover 100 percent of the costs of new Medicaid enrollees for the first three years and 90 percent after 2020.
The mentally ill deserve the same treatment as those with physical illness, because it's the right thing to do, but whatever your motive behind opting into the Medicaid expansion, just do it, Governor. The Medicaid expansion program would serve a good many people with physical illnesses and offer preventive care. What's not to like? If conservative principles prevent you from giving the citizens of Louisiana services they need, then, in the name of simple compassion for the well-being of the people you serve, you should ditch your principles.
Also, Governor, in the event you hadn't noticed, the line of Republican governors who refuse to participate in the Medicaid expansion program is broken. I expect more Republican governors will decide to adopt the program, so you would not stand alone if you changed your mind. Perhaps you and your good friend Rick Perry (Tweedledum and Tweedledee?) from Texas might have a conversation about a change in policy.
Arizona will participate in the expansion of Medicaid, Gov. Jan Brewer said Monday in her State of the State address, making her the third Republican governor to agree to one of the key components of President Barack Obama's health care reform.
Brewer said that if she did not accept the Medicaid funds for Arizona, other states could claim those federal dollars and create jobs that otherwise would be created in Arizona. Fellow Republican governors Susana Martinez of New Mexico and Brian Sandoval of Nevada also plan to expand Medicaid to anyone who earns up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level, which is currently $14,856 for an individual.
But 10 other Republican governors have already decided not to participate. The Supreme Court's 2012 ruling that affirmed Obama's health care law allows states to refuse to take part in the Medicaid expansion. | <urn:uuid:260b9020-7522-432f-acbd-a58e969189f0> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://thewoundedbird.blogspot.com/2013/01/are-you-paying-attention-bobby.html | 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 | 0.960124 | 656 | 1.757813 | 2 |
Affective Communities in World Politics : Collective Emotions after Trauma
by Emma Hutchison
English | 2016 | ISBN: 1107095018 | 377 Pages | True PDF | 6.76 MB
This book provides one of the first systematic examinations of the role emotions play in world politics. Using extensive conceptual inquiries and empirical case studies, it shows how representations of trauma, from terrorist attacks and humanitarian crises to civil unrest, can generate emotional legacies that shape communities in international relations. | <urn:uuid:077ef190-41be-41d4-9f88-bee89fd96a59> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://soek.site/Trauma/news/ebooks-elearning/245193.jsp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560284352.26/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095124-00193-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.793537 | 98 | 1.71875 | 2 |
The Love Affair With the Public Cloud – Why the Public Cloud Makes Sense
So you’ve decided to move to the cloud. What’s it to be? Public? Private? Hybrid? Multi-cloud? So many questions and so many options. You start studying the pros and cons of various options. You even check out what your competitors are using. It’s not a simple decision, and believe us, we truly understand.
What is Public Cloud?
So, is the cloud just a set of servers running in a data center somewhere? Not quite. There are a few fundamental qualities that clouds are required to have in order to qualify for that tag. Here’s a few that are conventionally considered important:
A pay-as-you-go model
In this model, buyers pay only for what they use and these costs are typically incurred as variable OpEx rather than CapEx as typically happens with hardware infrastructure that a buyer may purchase outright.
A Cloud typically will allow multiple customers (or tenants) to use its resources but will keep their activities and usage completely separate. It gives each customer the impression that they have dedicated infrastructure, even though it may be shared behind the scenes. This is basically how clouds derive economies of scale.
Hardware management is abstracted from the buyer
This is an important and an oft overlooked benefit. There are a number of costs associated with buying your own hardware – well beyond the check you write to initially acquire it. There are costs of power, cooling, software and patch management, systems administration, etc. – which accumulate over time. Not to mention that your hardware will be deemed obsolete in as little as 12-24 months after you purchase it. The cloud takes all that hassle away from you. You get the latest and shiniest hardware, guaranteed to be up and running with most of the routine upkeep handled for you by the cloud provider.
Clouds can scale up or down according to your needs – and this works well with the pay-for-as-you-go model. Elasticity ensures that you pay only for what you use. Need to ratchet up the number of servers temporarily to handle increased customer volume – no problem. The cloud provider can handle it for you and save you what could potentially have been an expensive investment in hardware.
Private Cloud vs Public Cloud
As you’ve probably heard, clouds can be categorized several ways into several types. For instance, you’ve probably heard of Private, Public, and Hybrid Clouds. We won’t go into a lot of detail about each of these in this post – but enterprises have to make decisions around the types of clouds they use and the trade-offs that come with them.
Private clouds tend to be cloud infrastructure built by a company or an enterprise either in its own data centers or in a co-located facility run by an infrastructure provider. Private clouds give enterprises more control over their hardware and software stack, as well as the security stance they desire to take. Public clouds are usually run by third-party infrastructure providers (e.g. Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, Rackspace) from where enterprises rent their computing resources. In many cases, you may use a public cloud without being really aware of it – like when you use a SaaS application – like Salesforce.com or WorkDay. Or even an application like Gmail.
Companies that are highly conservative may choose not to use cloud services at all. Others may choose to only use private clouds. A lot of firms are looking at hybrid cloud options where they get to balance their data and workloads between private and public clouds – a form of having your cake and eating it too. While private clouds and hybrid clouds can give the enterprise more control, they’re more expensive propositions and are clearly out of reach for a number of small and medium businesses.
Disadvantages of Public Cloud
So, if the public cloud is such a great thing, what’s stopping everybody from moving all their data and compute workloads into the cloud? Unfortunately, the public cloud comes with some risks as well. One of the biggest risks that CIOs and CISOs worry about its security and privacy. When enterprises start using the public cloud, they have to trust valuable digital assets to the infrastructure they don’t own and to organizations, they don’t control. Many businesses draw a line in the sand and decide what they feel comfortable keeping in the public cloud and what they don’t. The benefits of the public cloud keep that line moving further out towards more adoption. Each time there is a security hack and some cloud data is compromised, the line moves back again.
Here are a few disadvantages of the Public cloud so that enterprises worry about when putting data in the public cloud:
- The storage of information on servers in countries with fewer legal protections
- A vendor’s failure to back up data adequately, including ensuring redundancy
- The ability to access corporate data using easily accessible software in the event that the corporation terminates its relationship with the cloud computing provider or the provider goes out of business
- The provider’s procedures for responding to (or when appropriate, resisting) government requests for access to information
- Insufficient data encryption
- Unclear policies regarding the corporation’s ability to “control” its own data, which may result in a quandary if served with a request for production of materials under Rule 34 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure
- Policies for data destruction when the corporation no longer wants the relevant data available or transfers it to a different host
- The potential warrantless seizure of corporate electronic mail under the anachronistic Electronic Communications Privacy Act
What can you do about it?
- Take a proactive approach when negotiating Service Level Agreements – especially with public cloud vendors
- Ensure that your online data provider has an enforceable obligation to preserve confidentiality and security and that it will notify you in the event of any security breach
- Investigate the cloud service provider’s security measures, policies, recoverability methods, and other procedures to assess their adequacy
- Ensure that the vendor is using the most appropriate technology to guard against “reasonably foreseeable attempts to infiltrate the data that is stored”
- Ensure that the cloud provider can “purge and wipe” any copies of the data and move it to a different host if necessary
- In any contractual negotiations with cloud vendors, insist upon security provisions based upon the data security requirements specific to your industry.
Given the stupendous rise of big data, the rising popularity of public clouds is simply a no-brainer. Security and Privacy remain definite concerns, though. However, we believe public clouds are here to stay. According to Gartner, “it’s impossible to private-cloud everything.” Check out enterprises that have made the push towards public clouds like Microsoft, Google, and Amazon. Use some of the useful guidelines we’ve given you above. An architecturally robust public cloud system with enhanced security and encryption services is clearly the way forward! | <urn:uuid:2d9bf931-1980-430b-8c62-a17ebb824622> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://parablu.com/the-love-affair-with-the-public-clouds-why-the-public-clouds-make-sense/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571198.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810161541-20220810191541-00268.warc.gz | en | 0.938752 | 1,468 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Facebook wants you to “like” what they’re doing in the battle for free speech; they believe that “likes” should be protected under the 1st Amendment.
The social media networking site, along with the American Civil Liberties Union, filed an amicus brief supporting fired employees of the Hampton Virginia Sheriff’s Office this week with the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia this week. They want to overturn a ruling in May by District Court Judge Raymond A. Jackson, who said in his ruling that “merely ‘liking’ a Facebook page is insufficient speech to merit constitutional protection.”
The controversy stems from the firing of six employees from the Sheriff’s Office allegedly because they liked a Facebook page of a political opponent.
Facebook disagreed with the ruling in its filing, saying in a statement,
“Liking a Facebook Page (or other website) is core speech: it is a statement that will be viewed by a small group of Facebook Friends or by a vast community of online users.”
The ACLU concurred with Facebook, praising them for standing up for 1st Amendment rights. They wrote in their statement: “Facebook has become a means of communication for tens of millions of Americans, and if basic activity on Facebook such as ‘liking’ were denied First Amendment protection, the free expression of ideas that the First Amendment is meant to safeguard would be severely limited.”
Expect this battle for Facebook “likes” to go all the way to the Supreme Court. Should the ruling go against Facebook, the ACLU and the hundreds of millions of Facebook users in the United States, it means that any “like,” whether it’s granted to a politician, your favorite musician or a side on a divisive social issue can and will be used against you by your employer.
Should a Facebook “like” be considered free speech? Tell us below. | <urn:uuid:d38ef5a2-01ef-4d6b-a179-7820d30d6f28> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://newmediarockstars.com/2012/08/facebook-fights-in-court-for-likes-to-be-protected-free-speech/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279169.4/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00221-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964139 | 408 | 1.96875 | 2 |
Pronouns that Ask Questions
Lesson 4 of 12
Objective: SWBAT identify and use correctly pronouns that ask questions.
I begin by asking students 3 questions - Who are you? What is your name? Which school do you attend? I, then, explain that all of these questions begin with interrogative pronouns. A pronoun is a word that takes the place of a person, place, thing, or idea. An interrogative pronoun is a pronoun that is used to a introduce question. "Who" is used to ask questions about people. "What" is used to ask questions about places or ideas. "Which" is used when the answer to the question is a choice between two or more things. I ask students to think-pair-share "who" questions, then "what" questions, then "which" questions. We share some of each of the types of questions whole group. Think-Pair-Share is an effective check for understanding because it provides me the opportunity to give students immediate feedback as I circulate around the room. It also allows students to provide feedback to one another regarding "who," "what," and "which" questions they develop on their own.
I divide my scholars into two differentiated teams. I use the strategy of differentiated groupings because I want to allow my scholars the benefit of learning from one another. I want advanced, on-level, and lower level students to be mixed up on each team. This way, no one or few students provide all of the answers. We, then, play a game in which I display sentences on a Powerpoint and students on each team must create questions related to the information in the sentences that begin with who, what, or which. I model with the first sentence - What do the farm workers do?. Each relevant question earns a team 1 point. I have found that use of collaborative games is an effective engagement strategy for students. The winning team gets small treats. The game is an effective strategy primarily because it involves questioning which prompts the inquisitive nature of my students to come forth.
To close the lesson, I use copies of our local newspaper and Scholastic News magazines in class. Students independently select an article to read and write as many who, what, and which questions as they can create related to the article. This activity is important to the literacy development of my scholars because it provides them choice and autonomy. They get to choose the form of print media from which to read. They get to select a news article of interest to them. And, they get to have the autonomy of developing their own questions that begin with pronouns that ask questions. This culminating reading and writing activity allows the lesson to come full circle as my students used their speaking and listening skills during the earlier game portion of the lesson. | <urn:uuid:c91ac3c3-7746-4c6a-a792-063135e2b241> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://betterlesson.com/lesson/resource/2489720/pronouns-that-ask-questions-powerpoint-pptx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280718.7/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00407-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96319 | 570 | 4.40625 | 4 |
Brian Barkley’s “Warriors of Honor: The Faith and Legacies of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson,” provides a rare glimpse of two “masterful generals, brilliant strategists and, above all, faithful Christians.”
In it, Barkley takes aim at the common view of the war between the North and the South, focusing on two Confederate heroes who boldly gave glory to God as the source of their remarkable accomplishments.
Barkley’s previous documentary, enormously popular with WND readers, is “A Nation Adrift.” Taking viewers on an unforgettable journey “from Christopher Columbus to Jamestown, from Valley Forge to the Constitutional Convention, from the Civil War to the Industrial Revolution, from the First World War to the Stock Market Crash, from FDR to the present,” in 90 minutes Barkley shows evidence of “God’s sovereign hand” behind the history of the nation. This belief held by the Founding Fathers, Barkley shows, has eroded over the decades and is in need of revival “at this critical hour.”
With “Warriors of Honor,” Barkley once again boldly confronts the nation’s textbook makers, seeking this time to “set the record straight” on the War Between the States with a fact-filled visual venture into territory few filmmakers dare to visit.
Barkley says three years ago, while producing a video in Charlotte and Atlanta, many discussions arose that exemplified misconceptions he believes most Americans have about the causes of the war and the lives of Lee and Jackson.
“Many Southerners seemed frustrated that their story, the real story, had not yet been told,” he said.
He acknowledges recent books such as “The South Was Right” and “Southern By The Grace of God,” but saw no videos produced from the Southern viewpoint.
“After much prayer, I knew that this would be my next documentary,” he said.
Barkley contends that while most Americans believe Southerners fought to preserve slavery, the divide between North and South was much deeper.
“Two drastically different cultures had emerged on the American landscape,” the film’s narration says before issuing this warning: “A nation that is ignorant of its past is a nation that is ripe for deception and manipulation.”
Author and historian Steve Wilkins praises “Warriors” as a documentary that finally “is willing to speak plainly about the Christian faith of Jackson and Lee. It is a beautiful and accurate account of two great Southern leaders and of a war that forever changed our country.”
Prayer ‘natural as breathing’
While the first-run Hollywood drama “Gods and Generals” broke ground with its depiction of Lee and Jackson as devout Christians, Barkley sharpens the focus on their faith, depicting vignettes rarely if ever presented in America’s history classes.
We learn that Jackson, who “drew his inspiration from God and his faith in Jesus Christ more than anything else,” worried over the spiritual salvation of his men and welcomed the distribution of Bibles and tracts among them.
“He disliked both war and slavery,” the narrator says, “but he believed that God had ordained the Confederacy and that his duty was simple – to ensure the success of a sacred cause.”
Prayer, for Jackson, was as “natural as breathing,” the film shows.
One Union officer, amazed at the devotion the general cultivated, said, “Stonewall Jackson’s men will follow him to the devil, and he knows it.”
‘Work of grace’
Jackson’s superior officer, Robert E. Lee, was no less a man of God.
When asked at the beginning of the war how he could possibly overcome the North’s vast resources, the general said: “At present, I am not concerned with results. My reliance is in the help of God. God’s will ought to be our aim, and I am contented that his designs should be accomplished, not my own.”
Lee enthusiastically supported a “day of fasting, humiliation and prayer” – called for Aug. 21, 1863, by Confederate President Jefferson Davis – remarking that it resulted in a “work of grace among the troops.”
About 15,000 Southern soldiers made a “profession of faith in Jesus Christ” during that particular period, the film points out, “in a revival among the troops that continued to the end of war.” In all, approximately 150,000 Southern soldiers embraced the Christian faith during the four-year war.
Lee, the father, comes out in several glimpses of his family life, including a letter to comfort his wife upon the death of a grandchild and another to his son, whose wife had just died.
The general wrote of his deep anguish, but in a tenor of hope reminded his son that “link by link is the strong chain broken that binds us to Earth and smoothes our passage to another world.”
After the war, Lee’s legendary stature only grew.
An insurance company offered him its presidency at an annual salary of $10,000 just for the use of his name, assuring him he “need not perform any duties.”
But Lee declared his name was not for sale, declaring, “I cannot consent to receive pay for services I do not render.”
He later accepted $1,500 a year as president of Washington College in Lexington, Va., refusing to take any more than what the school could afford.
Recognizing his solemn responsibility for the lives of his students, he remarked once with deep emotion, “If only I could know that all the men in this college were good Christians, I should have nothing more to desire.”
When he died in 1870, the London Standard newspaper was among the many to lavish him with high praise, stating “truer greatness … the world has rarely, if ever, known.”
Barkley concludes with the remarkable first-hand account of a Union soldier’s encounter with Lee, a story of grace and strength, the filmmaker says, that exemplifies the general’s character better than any other.
The DVD version of “Warriors of Honor” offers three bonus segments: “Slavery,” “Sam Davis” and “The Palmyra Incident.”
In “Slavery,” Barkley, revealing his intent is not to whitewash the sins of either the South or the North, argues slaves were owned by a small fraction of the population and insists saving the institution was not the main reason Southern men fought.
“Sam Davis” tells the story of a young Confederate soldier who was captured by the Union as a spy and offered freedom if he would reveal the source of the information he carried. Davis refused, saying, “If I had a thousand lives I would lose them all here before I would betray a friend or be false to a duty.”
“Palmyra” tells of the 1862 incident in the Missouri town in which 10 prisoners were shot in retaliation for the alleged murder of a Union man. | <urn:uuid:2c916af9-0f99-49e3-97e9-3553433e8cbe> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://www.wnd.com/2005/09/32369/print/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988721405.66/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183841-00313-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971343 | 1,545 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Mi In The Middle - District-Wide License (Unlimited Uses) Phyllis Thomas - Interactive Whiteboard Lessons Heritage Music Press General Music Series
Product Code: 30/3045HL-Z
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In Stock. Grades 5-8 • Designed specifically for developing choirs, this collection of eight interactive units will introduce your singers to the tonic triad and require them to use their knowledge in a variety of sight-singing and aural-identification activities. Activities include note names, solfège, and pitch numbers so that you can tailor them to your preferred system, and lessons are designed for whole-class and student-led instruction. Additional customizable files and printable resources provide even more learning opportunities for you and your students. Here is a listing of related products. | <urn:uuid:184386b4-f70d-47a8-a618-4bdbf2983f3b> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.music44.com/+/Mi+In+The+Middle+District-Wide+License+Unlimited+Uses/30%252F3045HL-Z | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280483.83/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00292-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.878352 | 206 | 2.6875 | 3 |
Cycling gloves or bike gloves aren’t just for looks, they’re a necessary part of almost any ride, and every cyclist needs them. They are gloves that help cushion, protect your hand in a crash, absorb sweat, and improve grip or reduce road vibration. Another obvious benefit of wearing bike gloves as a cyclist is warmth. The right bike gloves provide you with warmth while you ride. Besides, they can dampen road vibration, offer better grip and keep your hands drier as you start to sweat. They can also save you from some painful road abrasions.
There are different types of bike gloves. They all come with different prices and styles, such as long-fingered and fingerless, pull-on or hook, and loop closure with levels of padding. In this article are the best bike gloves you can find on the market. They are suitable for beginners, experts, spin classes, and long rides.
These inexpensive and lightweight but ultra-padded gloves are an excellent choice for all cyclists. They are of high-quality and durable materials. The foam pads on the palm of this glove help soften the impact of the handlebars, therefore, reducing the risk of soreness, pain, and hand numbness. In addition, the GEARONIC Shockproof Short Gloves also have a breathable mesh back, which prevents your hand from getting too sweaty. Its elasticized microfiber adds comfort to your hand. The fingerless open thumb design and lightweight material make it a perfect glove for indoor and warm weather cycling.
These gloves are an excellent option for cycling amateurs or those new to spinning and aren’t quite sure if they’re ready to make a long-term commitment or probably don’t want to spend a lot of money on bike gloves. The soft gel padding all across the glove’s palm provides the comfort and shock absorption that cyclists of all levels need. They come in different sizes and have a low-profile velcro closure at the wrist and breathable lycra and mesh fabric, making them perfect for spring, summer, or fall riding. If you ever decide to give up on cycling, these versatile gloves can also be used for weight lifting and other gym exercises.
These cycling gloves are a perfect option for cyclists (male) who ride lots of miles and need extremely comfortable gloves to avoid fatigue and hand pain during long rides. PEARL IZUMI Men’s Elite Gel Gloves are a perfect fit that minimizes palm bunching and provides superior grip and slip resistance. These gloves ensure a comfortable ride thanks to the gel padding and durable synthetic palm leather. In addition, they also have a soft wiping surface on the thumb and removal tabs that make taking them off a cinch. Although these gloves are quite expensive, they will last longer than some other less expensive ones.
These excellent gloves from Cool Change provide indoor cycling connoisseurs with great comfort and excellent grip. They’re crucial for spin classes as opposed to padded gloves which are only good for long outdoor rides. These gloves are made of breathable synthetic leather, which is soft and durable. The padding is also placed in the right spots to prevent fatigue, hand discomfort, and numbness after a long class. In addition, these versatile gloves are also great for outdoor cycling, mountain biking, and weight-lifting. If your hands sweat frequently, you can easily loosen the gloves with the Velcro strap.
This is another high-performance pair of gloves from Giro. They are perfect for road cyclists of all levels. They have a peculiar ergonomic design plus plush EVA padding. These design features help increase grip and provide a superior level of protection for the whole hand. The AX microfiber suede of these gloves improves protective ability as well as a grip. On the other hand, the absorbent microfiber surface is perfect for wiping sweat off your face. In addition, moisture-wicking and four-way stretch Lycra allow for an excellent range of motion and keeps your hand from getting too sweaty. Giro Jag Road Cycling Gloves are available in different colors and sizes for men and women.
The Ozero Winter Thermal Gloves are made of windproof and water-resistant fabric and are perfect for cycling in unfavorable weather conditions. These gloves feature elastic cuffs that prevent cold, wind, and rain from entering. Their sensitive touchscreen pad on the thumb and index fingers keeps your hands dry while using your devices and other gadgets. In addition, they also have silica gel particles on the palm and fingers to improve grip on the handlebars, even in wet conditions. | <urn:uuid:99d64d6a-60ec-4de3-b520-42810964600d> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.nutritionfitness.org/bike-gloves/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573172.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20220818063910-20220818093910-00267.warc.gz | en | 0.93756 | 941 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Measurement of T1 and T2 relaxation times has been sought as one fundamental way to characterize tissue. Relaxation times can be calculated from routine spin-echo (SE) imaging sequences using two distinct repetition times (TRs), each with two SE samplings of signal intensity. Previous reports have quantified relaxation times without discussing the variation in their measurements. By imaging a phantom containing different samples with known T1 and T2 relaxation times on three separate occasions, the variation in relaxation time measurements inherent in different routine imaging sequences was studied. For the present study a more complete and accurate equation was used to calculate T1 values. The variation in T1 and T2 relaxation times for samples with relaxation times similar to solid tissue was 2%-4%. The amount of variability in calculated relaxation times was found to be dependent on the magnitude of the relaxation times themselves. However, the mean values were independent of the imaging sequences used to calculate the relaxation times. No significant differences were seen between left-to-right or section-to-section position within the same study or between studies performed on different occasions. The variability in the calculated T1 was dependent on the pair of TR sequences used to calculate T1. Samples with long T1 and T2 relaxation times, similar to many body fluids, had much larger variability. A computer simulation of measurement error was created to explain these results. This study indicates that properly performed routine imaging studies do yield reproducible T1 and T2 measurements.
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Radiology Nuclear Medicine and imaging | <urn:uuid:183e12de-a948-4b7e-a591-9d20c923a805> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://mayoclinic.pure.elsevier.com/en/publications/reproducibility-of-t1-and-t2-relaxation-times-calculated-from-rou | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572063.65/warc/CC-MAIN-20220814173832-20220814203832-00678.warc.gz | en | 0.964905 | 313 | 2.328125 | 2 |
Role of active center and lysine binding sites of plasmin in plasmin-induced platelet activation and disaggregation
Lu, H × Soria, C Li, H Soria, J Lijnen, Roger Perrot, J Y Caen, J P #
Thrombosis and haemostasis vol:65 issue:1 pages:67-72
Previous studies have shown that plasmin can activate platelets and can also disperse platelet aggregates by degradation of fibrinogen bound to platelets. In this study, the role of the active center and the lysine binding sites (LBS) of human plasmin in activating platelets and in dispersing platelet aggregates is investigated using aprotinin and the tripeptide Val-Phe-Lys-CH2Cl to inhibit the active center and using epsilon-aminocaproic acid (EACA) to specifically block the LBS. Our results show that the catalytic activity of plasmin is indispensable both for activating platelets and for dispersing platelet aggregates. Binding of plasmin to platelets through the LBS enhances its activating potential, since both EACA (1 mM) and Lys-plasminogen (molar ratio of plasminogen:plasmin at 2:1 to 4:1) inhibit plasmin-induced platelet activation, whereas Glu-plasminogen at a molar ratio of 15:1 had no effect. Furthermore, plasmin which lacks the LBS (miniplasmin), is about 3 fold less effective in activating platelets. However, plasmin binding through the LBS is not absolutely required to disperse platelet aggregates, since EACA at 30 mmol/l was unable to prevent disaggregation by plasmin (half disaggregation time: 40 min in the presence of EACA against 27 min in its absence). It also appeared that fibrinogen receptors on activated platelets are resistant to plasmin degradation, and that disaggregation of plasmin-induced platelet aggregates was much slower than the degradation of fibrinogen by plasmin. | <urn:uuid:e9b4403f-91c7-4349-a5c9-864a4a5e8239> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://lirias.kuleuven.be/handle/123456789/47986 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281574.78/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00024-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.920754 | 453 | 1.796875 | 2 |
An Ohio girl, 10 years old, who was raped and allegedly refused an abortion in Ohio made national headlines when the Indianapolis Star, an Indiana publication, reported she had to travel out of state for one. Dr. Caitlin Bernard, who performed the abortion, alleged an Ohio abuse doctor reached out to her hours after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
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The child was six weeks and three days pregnant at the time of the procedure, so she was ineligible to receive it in her home state by just three days.
In response to an initial report that the girl had to leave the state for a abortion due to trigger laws, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost said that was not true.
‘Ohio’s heartbeat law has a medical exception, which is broader than just the life of the mother,’ he said on Fox News. ‘This young girl, if she exists and if this horrible thing actually happened to her – it breaks my heart to think about it – she did not have to leave Ohio to find treatment.’
There is uncertainty, however, as to whether the girl’s condition met the definition of an emergency, which involves ‘serious risk of the substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function.’
Fox News host Jesse Watters doubted the story’s authenticity on Monday, suggesting it may be a hoax intended to politicize the 10-year-old victim following the overturn of Roe v. Wade.
‘But if this horrific story isn’t accurate and the abortion doctor and the are misleading us?’ Watters asked on his show.
‘And the mainstream media and president of the United States seizing on another hoax? Then this is absolutely shameful. And fits a pretty dangerous pattern of politically timed disinformation.’
He also criticized the media for focusing so heavily on abortion aspects of the highly covered story and bemoaned the fact that a criminal investigation hadn’t been launched yet into the rape.
‘Why isn’t anybody talking about bringing the child rapist to justice,’ Watters complained. ‘If there is a … child abuser out there in the streets of Ohio, he needs to be brought to justice, and if so-called doctors are covering child rape, they need to be prosecuted.’
Then, on Tuesday, police arrested and charged 27-year-old Gerson Fuentes with rape after claiming he confessed to raping the child two times, according to the Columbus Dispatch.
The arraignment of Fuentes came days after some conservatives, including Ohio’s Republican attorney general and governor, raised doubts about the case.
The Daily Mail reported that “According to court records, a report was generated on June 22 with the Columbus Division of Police for rape. And on July 6, the victim identified Fuentes to authorities as the person who raped her.”
A week later, Fuentes was served a search warrant for a saliva sample and was taken into custody where he confessed to raping the victim multiple times.
Fuentes appeared in court Wednesday and was given a $2 million bond. He’s currently in the Franklin County Jail.
Franklin County Municipal Court Judge Cynthia Ebner said the case didn’t warrant Fuentes – who is believed to be undocumented – to be held without bond, the Columbus Dispatch reported.
But Ebner said a higher bond was necessary due to Fuentes being a possible flight risk and for the safety of children involved.
It comes after Yost said his office did not hear a ‘whisper’ about the 10-year-old girl who allegedly escaped to get an abortion, and that no rape kit was performed, so ‘no biological evidence’ exists.
On July 11, Yost, 65, told Fox News’ Watters that there had never been a police report filed about a 10-year-old rape victim and that the office works closely with the police, so he would have known about it.
‘We have regular contact with prosecutors and local police and sheriffs, not a whisper anywhere,’ he said.
“A detective testified Wednesday that Columbus police learned about the girl’s pregnancy through a referral by Franklin County Children Services that was made by her mother on June 22. The Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling that recognized women’s constitutional right to abortion, just two days later, on June 24,” The Mail added.
Those who support abortion rights used the story to emphasize the fallout of the Supreme Court decision.
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Despite suggesting the story might be a hoax just two days earlier, Watters claimed to have put pressure on the investigation.
In a segment on Wednesday, Watters implied that his Monday commentary contributed to the criminal investigation leading to Gerson Fuentes’ arrest.
‘Primetime covered this story heavily on Monday, put on the pressure, and now we’re glad that justice is being served,’ he noted.
Following that, the network played a compilation of short videos that revealed Watters was focusing on discrepancies in the case, such as why Dr. Caitlin Bernard, who provided abortion services in Indiana, had not reported the crime. | <urn:uuid:bec2e051-f31b-4897-be42-3869b9406319> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://conspatriots.com/just-in-jesse-watters-just-singlehandedly-saved-girls-life/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573172.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20220818063910-20220818093910-00268.warc.gz | en | 0.968091 | 1,110 | 1.59375 | 2 |
- 175 pages
Transport your classroom back through the ages to the magnificent heights of ancient Arabia explore the long and storied history, revered holy lands and sacred traditions of the Islamic faith and culture through the Middle Ages and the early Renaissance.
- Visit the Islamic holy land of Mecca, the bustling Muslim metropolis of Cordoba, Baghdad’s enlightened House of Wisdom and the world famous center of Islamic religious studies: Cairo.
- Discover the hallowed teachings of Mohammad, the rituals and practices of the faith, the origins and religious tenets of the Quran and the Five Pillars of Islam.
- Meet powerful Sultans and caliphs, spiritual prophets and mystic Sufis, poets, merchants and warriors of the ancient Islamic world.
- Follow the spread of the world’s fastest growing religion from Muhammad’s teachings in Mecca and Cordoba through the vast proliferation via the Ottoman Empire to the split between Sunni and Shi’ite denominations of Islam.
Come and see how Islam began the world’s second largest religion and its faithful came to break landmark scientific discoveries and shape art and architecture on a scale still evident to this day. Take your students on an epic journey through time to discover the grand history and culture of Islam this year!
Immerse your students in the wonders of ancient Islam with our brand new edition of The Story of Islam featuring an engaging new design, lavishly detailed maps and illustrations and beautiful color photographs on every page!
BE THE FIRST TO KNOW
Sign up to receive our newsletter, information on new products, and more! | <urn:uuid:4ea23948-c765-41e1-a821-703d66940566> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://waysidepublishing.com/titles/history/early-times-the-story-of-islam-from-muhammad-to-suleiman | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560283689.98/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095123-00351-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.860256 | 322 | 3.171875 | 3 |
We all know how easy it is to get wrapped up and tangled in the seemingly endless tasks that need to get done by Friday.
You dive in headfirst with the best intentions and before you know it, you’re slogging through never-ending emails at 11pm and haven’t even thought about dinner yet.
Don’t worry, beautiful. We’ve got your back.
Add these tips and tricks to your toolbox and you’ll make it through the week with energy to spare!
Tip | Eat your greens
As kids, this is something no one wanted to hear.
Kale? No way.
But lets take a minute to hop off the veggies are gross train and hop onto the we love our bodies train instead.
Dark and leafy greens are amazing (just like you) and will be your partner-in-crime when it comes to boosting your energy, making your skin glow, and all the while keeping your insides running like a well oiled machine. These leafy goodies contain powerful antioxidants and are absolutely packed with amazing vitamins and minerals that help keep you feeling your best.
The best part about your greens is that they are versatile. Drop a handful of spinach or kale into your favourite smoothie (berries, yogurt, bananas, apples…) and whiz it up for an amazing breakfast or afternoon snack! Roast some trimmed kale leaves with a little olive oil and salt for a super satisfying crunchy snack. Make a hearty spinach salad with almonds, goat cheese, and strawberries. The options are endless, and your body and mind will thank you endlessly!
Trick | The one hour wind down
There’s nothing quite as frustrating as when you finally manage to drag yourself to bed and can’t get your brain to quiet down enough to sleep. You just end up tossing and turning, constantly checking the clock and counting down the hours you have left to attempt a decent sleep. I say we should skip the whole ordeal and nip it in the bud!
Give yourself an hour before you want to go to bed to wind down. Close your laptop, turn off your TV, dim your lights. Take your time brushing your teeth and flossing, wash your face, and finish up your night time routine. An hour goes by quickly and having some quiet time away from technology, noise, and bright lights will give your brain time to stop spinning its wheels and start to slow down. You might find that by the time you’re done getting ready that your exhaustion catches up with you – this is okay! That means you’re ready to fall into bed, bury yourself in your favourite blankets, and fall asleep. Giving yourself a little time before sleep helps your body take a breather and will benefit you big time in the long run.
Tip | Infused water is your friend (and you feel a little fancy)
Skip the soda and powdered crystals when you’ve got a busy week ahead.
On your next grocery shop, pick up some lemons and lime, your favourite frozen fruit, and if you don’t already have one, a nice big reusable water bottle. The night/morning before you leave for the day, take a slice or two of citrus and a small scoop of fruit and add it to your bottle. Fill it up to the brim with water and take it with you! You’ll find that throughout the day, you get to enjoy a refreshing and yummy drink that will spark your metabolism, give you energy, keep you hydrated and encourage you to drink more water!
Trick | Stretch
This seems pretty simple but it makes a huge difference.
When you’ve been hunched over your computer for hours and hours, it’s important to stand up and give your body a few minutes of TLC. If you work at a desk, stand up and wiggle your hips back and forth, stretch your arms up above your head, and make sure your get that circulation going again! If you stand at work, circle your ankles and wiggle your toes, bend at the hips and stretch your back, and even sneak a few squats in there to loosen up those major muscles.
Sneaking a few minutes of movement in throughout your day will help you keep your energy up and your body happy, which means you’ll feel less sluggish when you’re finished for the day!
Now over to you! Do you have any tips and tricks that you use to get yourself through a busy week? We’d love to know! Comment below. | <urn:uuid:25a74583-e645-4c02-8d15-fdc77606bed5> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://thefreewoman.com/happy-healthy-all-week-long/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572089.53/warc/CC-MAIN-20220814234405-20220815024405-00074.warc.gz | en | 0.935806 | 952 | 1.632813 | 2 |
The History of the Germ Theory of Disease
Man first thought disease to be punishment from God, then brought on by foul vapors (miasma) (malaria for instance)
Aristotle 350 BC Taught Alexander the Great to boil drinking water & bury feces to prevent disease.
Fracastorius 1546 (1478-1553) Theory of contagion: disease infection can be caused by minute bodies (“germs”) capable of self-replication, transmitted from infector to infected. Said to have named syphilis.
Leeuwenhoek 1670s improved microscope, first to observe bacteria.
Agostino Bassi 1834 First to show that a microorganism could cause disease in case of a fungal disease of silkworms: contagious and could be transmitted naturally by direct contact or infected food, or experimentally by means of a pin previously sterilized in a flame
Oliver Wendle Holmes 1843 Noted that it was safer to give birth at home than in hospital, postulated something present in hospital is causing disease (nosocomial disease)
M.J. Berkeley 1845 Showed Irish potato blight caused by a fungus
Ignaz Semmelweis 1848 (1818-1865) In charge of lying-in hospital in Vienna. Childbirth death rate: Ward II midwives = 3%, Ward I, medical faculty: ~10%. Phys. friend died of autopsy wound, S&S same as puerperal fever. Proposed etiology: “cadaveric particles.” Smell not removed by hand washing, but calcium hypochlorite: Ca(OCl)2 did. Chloride of lime washing reduced puerperal fever death rate 12.4% to 1.27%. Iatrogenic disease.
John Snow 1854 (1813-1858) deduced contaminated Broad Street Pump caused cholera epidemic in London
Joseph Lister 1860s (1827-1912) Introduced use of antiseptic during surgery: phenol in surgical dressings and sprayed into the air. Wound infections dropped dramatically, thus due to bacteria.
Louis Pasteur 1865 Demonstrated that spoilage of wine was due to abnormal microorganisms. Then asked by French gov to study PEBRINE: (pa-breen) another disease of silkworms, caused by a protozoan. Could be halted by identifying diseased worms, removing and destroying.
Davaine 1850 observed little thread-like bodies in blood of anthrax-killed animals
Henle proposed that diseases might be directly caused by microorganisms. His student, Robert Koch
Robert Koch 1876 (1843-1910) Rival of Pasteur, raced to find the cause of anthrax (coal, burning coal, from pustules & carbuncles in affected animals) disease of sheep and cattle. First to demonstrate bacillary agent to be pathogen: Used criteria suggested by his teacher, Henle, now called Koch’s postulates: (in study of etiology of anthrax)
KOCH’S POSTULATES are criteria by which a bacterium may be said to cause a disease.
1 microscopic examination found bacillus in blood of all animals with anthrax.
2 single colony-isolated bacillus on solid media. The idea for isolating pure cultures came from his observation of a spoiling cut potato. Also required, as developed in his lab:
Loeffler developed nutrient broth and stains.
Walter Hesse’s wife suggested using agar to solidify.
Petri developed shallow dishes for culture.
3 injected pure culture into healthy animals, they got anthrax.
4 isolated same organism from animals experimentally given anthrax.
Chamberland 1884 Showed that tobacco mosaic disease was caused by “filterable’ agent (i.e., not bacteria) therefore. called virus.
PREVENTION, CURE OF DISEASE: vaccination, therapeutic agents:
Edward Jenner 1798 Saw peasants do this in Turkey. Inoculated susceptible person with pus from cowpox lesion, conferred resistance to Small Pox. Vaccination comes from vache, cow in French.
Pasteur 1880 Cultured chicken cholera repeatedly, it lost its virulence but could still confer immunity when injected. Attenuated [towards thinness] strain = vaccine
Erlich 1910 Searched for “magic bullet” would poison pathogen but not patient. Developed salvarsan, an arsenic compound against syphilis.
Flemming 1928 (1881-1955) Noted inhibition of Staphylococcus growth on plate contaminated with Penicillium notatum. Discovered penicillin. | <urn:uuid:4bff3f4f-8f47-4eb4-b520-79c137363790> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://fankhauserblog.wordpress.com/1992/07/20/the-history-of-the-germ-theory-of-disease/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280310.48/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00182-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.919525 | 993 | 3.25 | 3 |
Moore, David K. " The Brick of Shalmaneser." The Library of Congress Information Bulletin 58, no. 11 (November 1999).
Tyler, Christina. “ Clay Tablets Reveal Accounting Answers.” The Gazette 10, no. 36 (October 1,1999).
External Web Sites
The Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI) Joint project of the University of California at Los Angeles and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. CDLI currently contains approximately 77,000 cuneiform texts, 51,000 images, and 784,000 lines of transliteration.
Write Like a Babylonian Site from the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Create your own monogram in Babylonian cuneiform.
Cuneiform Collection. Project was supported by the University of Minnesota's Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program. Information on Sumer during the Ur III period, how the Science Museum obtained its cuneiform collection, the museum’s latest cuneiform tablet, and complete transliterations and translations of the Science Museum's collection (tablet catalog).
Initiative for Cuneiform Encoding ( ICE) Cuneiform Sign Database. Cuneiform sign database for Unicode. This resource uses XML with XSL style sheets for display. The recommendation from ICE (at Johns Hopkins University) is to use Microsoft Internet Explorer, at least version 5.0 for Macintosh and 5.5 for Windows. | <urn:uuid:9a9a5bb2-af65-45a1-aa4c-0b4a28a5fe27> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://memory.loc.gov/intldl/cuneihtml/rel.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280835.60/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00475-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.816351 | 302 | 2.265625 | 2 |
Flooding caused by failed water heaters, washing machines, frozen leaking pipes and leaking plumbing can be a disaster.
Small leaks can create a flooded basement and home if they go undetected.
HERE IS YOUR SOLUTION!
Introducing the ValveSentry™ - the first and only automatic water shut off device that you install yourself - no plumbing required!
The ValveSentry™ device's water sensor can be placed anywhere in your home to detect unwanted water and promptly turns off water at its source.
The ValveSentry™ device fits over almost any ball or gate valve and shuts off your water main when a leak is detected.
Installation of the ValveSentry™ device is simple and doesn't require cutting into plumbing -- anyone can do it with ordinary hand tools.
If you can turn off your water main valve by hand, you can easily install a ValveSentry™ device over it for automatic shut off.
Place a ValveSentry™ water sensor near water heaters, washing machines, sinks, toilets, and plumbing. If a leak occurs, the sensor sends a signal to the controller, which shuts off the water at its source.
Installation is simple. . . Operation is automatic.
The ValveSentry Kit can be converted to wireless with the purchase of additional equipment (sold by others). See our Wireless Install Instuctions.
Leaks do not give you any warning signs!
Hot water heaters, washing machine hoses, toilet and sink valves and hoses - these all can fail suddenly and leak continuously until you come home and discover a flooded house and $1000's of damage.
Don't let a leak cause a flooded home!
Continuously monitor your plumbing and shut off your water at the earliest sign of a leak.
For peace of mind when away at work or on vacation.
Protect your valuable property and treasured memories.
ValveSentry™ Automatic Water Shut Off Valve Features
Easy To Install in 15-30 minutes!
No plumbing required!
Every home needs one!
Add up to 8 water sensors! The kit includes 1 water sensor, add more as desired.
Powerful electrical motor with battery back-up in case of power failure!
Suggested Water Sensor Locations
Next to hot water heater
Watch it work! Turns off your valve when sensor is actuated.
View the ValveSentry™ Device Installation Video
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Do I need to hire a plumber to install the ValveSentry™ device?
A: No. There is no plumbing needed to install the ValveSentry™ device. The ValveSentry™ device simply attaches to your valve. Anyone can quickly install the ValveSentry™ device using common tools in 15-30 minutes.
Q: Do I need a permit or inspection from my town or city authorities when installing the ValveSentry™ device?
A: No, this is not needed. Because there is no plumbing or electrical work performed, no permit or inspection is required.
Q: How does the ValveSentry™ device work?
A: The ValveSentry™ device is connected to your water main valve. It fits any size (up to 3" diameter) and any type (ball or gate) valve. It uses a small but powerful electric motor to turn off the valve in case of a water leak is detected.
Q: How is the ValveSentry™ device powered? What happens if there is a power failure?
A: The ValveSentry™ device is powered from a normal electrical outlet. Also, 7 AAA batteries may be added into the controller. The batteries will operate the ValveSentry™ device if there is a power failure.
Q: How many water sensors can I connect to a single ValveSentry™ device?
A: The ValveSentry™ device can be connected to up to 8 water sensors. Connect the ValveSentry™ device's electric motor to the home's main water valve and place water sensors next to the water heater, washing machine, dishwasher, etc. If any of thes appliances leak, the sensor will send a signal to the main unit shutting off the main water valve, preventing a flood.
Q: Is the the ValveSentry™ device patented?
A: Yes. Multiple patents have been awarded to the product. It is the only do-it-yourself automatic water shut off valve available.
Q: Where can I purchase the ValveSentry™ device?
A: Battic Door is the Master Distributor of the ValveSentry™ device.
Q: What is included with the ValveSentry™ device kit?
A: The ValveSentry™ kit includes the electric motor and assorted hardware to fit any ball valve or gate valve. Also included is the controller, an electrical power cord to power the controller, and 1 water sensor. Additional water sensors may be purchased seperately.
Q: Where is the ValveSentry™ device manufactured?
A: The ValveSentry™ kit is manufactured in USA.
Q: How do I know what type of valve I have? What does a ball valve and a gate valve look like?
A: See pictures below. These are the 2 most common water valve styles. The ValveSentry™ device includes all brackets needed to fit either style valve.
Kit includes controller, acuator and sensor, power cord, battery backup, all wires. | <urn:uuid:a8956f06-0326-4168-9111-b8788dd3738e> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.batticdoor.com/valvesentry.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560284411.66/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095124-00461-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.882685 | 1,112 | 1.976563 | 2 |
Submitted by Laura Grimm
Dalton Middle School STEAM teacher
Give a gift to the Earth this holiday season: recycle, compost or donate.
The Dalton Middle School sixth grade STEAM class would like to help you with your recycling. If you bring items to be recycled to the Dalton Village Garage Recycling Center, 47 N. Freet St., on Saturday, Jan. 11 between 8 and 11 a.m., we will help you unload your car or truck. We will even give you a gift for your recycling efforts.
Many of the things we use during the holidays can be recycled:
* Plastics – packaging, milk or egg nog containers, 2-liter bottles, other plastic cups, plates, and silverware;
* Glass – beverage bottles and jars;
* Cardboard – gift or delivery boxes, clean pizza boxes, cereal boxes, wrapping paper and paper towel tubes;
* Aluminum – beverage cans, aluminum foil and pans/trays;
* Metal – food cans, ornament hooks, and other metal;
* Paper – non-metallic gift wrap, newspaper, paper bags, envelopes, your completed Christmas list, and Santa’s Nice & Naughty List.
Christmas trees can be composted. If you live in the Dalton City Limits, you can either leave your undecorated Christmas tree at the curb for pick up or take it to the Dalton Village Garage for future composting.
Tired of your lights, wreaths, and other decorations? Take them to MCC Connections.
Recycling, composting and donating items are good ways to help the environment and keep objects out of the landfill. Happy holidays and have an environmentally responsible New Year! | <urn:uuid:4d4f56ad-096c-4a44-9cd7-c0ccfa609db1> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.daltonkidronnews.com/2019/12/29/dalton-6th-graders-offering-recycling-jan-11/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572581.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20220816211628-20220817001628-00070.warc.gz | en | 0.863408 | 356 | 2.3125 | 2 |
QA forms one third of the exam; hence, in trying hard to boost scores in QA at the
expense of other sections, students may end up losing more than what
they try to gain in a single section.
Over the years, CAT LRDI has changed considerably - firstly the question sets have become more logic oriented and secondly the complexity of sets has moved up a few notches. It is this section which can catch even the brightest students off guard. This is because, unlike Quant, there are no clearly demarcated concepts on which LRDI sets are
based. LRDI tests one on sound reasoning skills, ability to assimilate data and do number crunching through complex data sets. The best way to prepare for this section is by practicing a variety of questions and honing your calculation skill. To this end, Topic Tests & Section Tests in your online account are a good source as they contain a wide range of LRDI sets and students are advised to attempt them on a regular basis. Attempt them as test first and later attempt all the questions and take the help of solutions and faculty if required.
Quite often, students make the mistake of underestimating the practice needed to do well in Verbal Ability section which can prove costly in the exam. At this point of preparation, you must ensure that you are reading on a regular basis. You should try to read as much online as possible across genres. Remember that a good reading habit will greatly enhance your prospects in English section. Regular online reading has to be supplemented with online Topic Tests and Section Tests. If these activities are pursued seriously, then one must be able to reach the first milestone of 90%ile in mocks. In mocks, one must first try to
score at least 90 percentile overall. Sectional cut offs will matter only for top B-schools which require in excess of 90 percentile overall. If you see your percentiles exceeding 90 in mocks, then you need to work on any weak areas that you may still have and try to maximize your score in each section.
At this stage, it is a good idea to make a weekly preparation plan and break it down into daily plans. This will help you set the best course of action in response to your performance analysis in mocks and pursue it.Many students work hard without having a clear sight on the direction in which their preparation is going and this often leads to slow progress.
Weekly plans will ensure you are making good utilization of time. At the end of the week, review your implementation and repeat the process. Finally, remember that champions are the ones who keep playing till they win. | <urn:uuid:4d326a5a-3993-454a-a4dc-0f979f3ac26c> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.careerlauncher.com/center-microsite/blog.jsp?id=91kaAuYuxl0%3D | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573760.75/warc/CC-MAIN-20220819191655-20220819221655-00667.warc.gz | en | 0.965522 | 537 | 2.09375 | 2 |
According to details, the couple Shahid and Iqra were asleep at their home along with their two daughters Alishba and Zohra when two unidentified men barged into the home and threw acid on them.
The family members sustained severe acid burns in the attack. The victims were rushed to Tehsil Headquarters Hospital Shujjabad for medical attendance.
Police has registered FIR of the acid attack and investigating the incident.
Acid attacks are common in Pakistan and neighboring India. The majority of acid attack victims are women, which are mostly targeted over domestic or land disputes, a rejected marriage proposal, a research report said. | <urn:uuid:21c617d0-c72b-4943-b495-ffb70fb77c0d> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://arynews.tv/en/family-injured-shujjabad-acid-attack/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280718.7/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00402-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981427 | 129 | 1.5 | 2 |
© 2011 -
Hot tub folliculitis is a bacterial form of the more common folliculitis which people get from a hot tub, swimming pool or water slide.
Some people just call it hot tub rash and say it's simply a part of having a hot tub. However, this isn't true at all because the bacterium involved in hot tub folliculitis are only present in dirty and / or poorly maintained hot tubs.
So, this condition is very preventable and if you get it then this is a strong warning
that your hot tub is in need of some urgent maintenance.
Hot tub rash is the same thing as hot tub folliculitis and is also known as pseudomonas aeruginosa folliculitis. There are two types of folliculitis, bacterial and fungal.
Both have similar symptoms and can be treated the same way initially. However, if
you get medical help you should know that the drugs and creams you'll need to use
differ for the two types. Bacterial folliculitis treatment requires antibiotics and
fungal folliculitis requires an anti fungal cream.
Hot tub folliculitis is caused by a bacterial infection of your hair follicles. When you hair follicles are in warm water or come into direct contact with the bacteria directly under friction (by sitting or rubbing against the side of the pool), they will open themselves up to infection.
Wooden hot tubs are more susceptible to infection because they are more difficult to clean and are made from organic material which provide a better environment for the bacteria. The bacteria in question in hot tub folliculitis is pseudomonas aeruginosa.
This particular bacteria can tolerate low levels of chlorine and acidic conditions,
so if you're hot tub is not in tip top shape you risk exposure to bacteria growth.
Pseudomonas aeruginosa is not to be taken lightly. It is this exact bacteria which
they use in an oil spill to break down the oil so you can understand how effective
this particular type of bacteria is at propagation. On your skin it's relatively
harmless, as long as that's as far as it goes.
Hot tub folliculitis will usually appear in just a few hours after contact with the bacteria, but sometimes the reaction may be delayed.
It will at first appear as a lumpy itchy red rash, hence the name hot tub rash. After
that it will develop into individual red pimples or spots. They will be extremely
itchy and may have white heads or yellow crusts on top. They may also fill with pus
and seep if scratched.
Even in clean hot tubs there may still be trace levels of pseudomonas aeruginosa. Therefore it's always best to limit your time in the hot tub as much as you can. It is for this reason that children are affected more by the problem because they spend longer in the water.
It's also advisable to avoid wearing tight fitting swim wear as the friction and
constant contact with the wet surface can multiply the effects of the hot tub folliculitis
in that area.
The general advice you'll get for hot tub folliculitis is to leave it alone and let it heal naturally. You can do this, however there is a better way, for more info you'd best check out our home page now (click below).
If you do insist on getting medical treatment you'll probably get some topical antibiotic cream to treat the infection directly.
Be aware that if you don't get any treatment and you continue to itch, the rash will persist for a long time and may even scar or cause abscesses.
|Hot Tub Folliculitis|
|Hot Tub Rash| | <urn:uuid:d820c64b-883e-4639-b7f2-298232ebe9bb> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.folliculitis-treatment.net/hot-tub-folliculitis.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281331.15/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00224-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946439 | 786 | 2.78125 | 3 |
Brush fires fueled by dry weather continue to scorch Luzerne County's wooded areas.
Local fire departments received more than a half dozen reports of brush fires Friday afternoon, and the National Weather Service issued a red flag warning until 7 p.m. Friday, prohibiting open burning.
A large brush fire broke out behind 68 Garden Drive in Hunlock Township around 1 p.m. After the fire burned the foliage, small trees and plants in an area about half the size of a football field, the Hunlock Creek Fire Department was able to get the fire under control by 2:30 p.m.
Assistant Fire Chief Chris Wrubeo said firefighters drew a border around the area with water from their fire hoses before the fire spread to nearby homes. They suppressed the fire until there were only hot spots left to extinguish. The cause of the fire was not immediately clear, Wrubeo said.
A peak in wildfires this time of year is normal, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. Spring days often provide the three elements needed to spark a brush fire - an available fuel source (like grass or fields), dry conditions and an igniter.
Local fire companies logged brush fire reports Friday on their Facebook pages in half a dozen other places in Luzerne County, including Kidder Street in Wright Township; state Route 437 in Sugarloaf Township; Suscon Road in Pittston Township; Alden Mountain Road in Newport Township; state Route 437 in Dennison Township and Memorial Highway in Dallas Township.
A brush fire can start numerous ways, but there are preventative measures that can be taken to avoid igniting one:
n Make sure nothing is dragging from your vehicle that can produce sparks.
n Avoid using steel bullets outside because they can spark after hitting rocks or other hard objects.
n Place cigarette butts in metal containers, not on the ground or near vegetation.
n Do not use consumer fireworks.
n Do not use gasoline to burn brush or trash.
n Do not burn outside on windy, dry days, in which conditions make it easy for open burning to spread.
n Comply with any local ordinances pertaining to outdoor burning. | <urn:uuid:ee80bb3a-0c6a-4b74-8c5d-4139f44efe57> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://citizensvoice.com/news/brush-fires-scorch-region-amid-dry-weather-1.1675399 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988718296.19/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183838-00540-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928118 | 450 | 2.25 | 2 |
Three sources of pride for Philadelphia public schools superintendent Constance E. Clayton are the city's high schools for engineering and science, creative and performing arts, and international affairs. Intended to be magnet schools in the district's desegregation program, the different schools do attract a mixed group of students.
The High School for Engineering and Science is 43 percent white, 48 percent black, and about 9 percent Hispanic and Asian. At the High School for the Creative and Performing Arts, the mix is 54 percent black, 38 percent white, and more than 7 percent Hispanic, Asian, and other. The High School for International Affairs has 59 percent black, 25 percent white, 10 percent Asian, 5 percent Hispanic, and about 1 percent native American.
More evident to visitors, however, is the difference in the student bodies of the various schools.
The hallways of the high school for engineering and science, which is located near Temple University and shares some of its facilities, are nearly empty. An occasional student - wearing a tie if it is a boy - scurries along purposefully. Alvin T. Garblik is the principal of the high school, where students can do architectural drafting, work on laser-beam technology, learn Chinese, or study biomedicine. Twelfth graders who are ready can attend college for their last year. There were some 280 applicants for the first class in 1981 (students are admitted only as freshman). There are more than 1,600 for next fall's freshman class.
Students in the first class have been accepted at such schools as Temple, Columbia University in New York, Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Morgan State University in Baltimore, and Villanova University in Villanova, Pa.
''This is a high-level institution,'' says Dr. Garblik proudly. ''Students coming from this school will not have any difficulty going to college or any need for remedial work.''
Every discipline at the high school is linked to computers, whether it be using the computer as a word processor in English classes, or placing 200 windows in the blueprint of a building through computer-assisted design.
The solemn, scientific atmosphere at the engineering and science school contrasts vividly with the happy confusion at the school for creative and performing arts.
In the hallways of CAPA, located in a downtown high-rise, a student attracts an audience with his breakdancing. Upstairs a gospel choir practices a rousing version of ''Amazing Grace.'' Inside an art classroom, a girl works on a silkscreen print while a boy, listening to classical music on headphones, sketches a still life.
Academically, the magnet schools rank high in the district, behind the long-established Central High and the Philadelphia High School for Girls. Some people were surprised that the ''artist kids'' do so well in their studies, says Principal John Vannoni. ''They are very serious and goal-oriented,'' and about 80 percent go on to college, he says. Some, such as ballet dancers, go directly into their field.
Although the magnet schools have achieved desegregation, some observers worry that they will drain the ''cream of the crop'' and leave other high schools with less-interested students and a somewhat demoralized teaching staff. Dr. Clayton has implemented a program to assist low-achieving schools in attaining the elements of the more successful ones. Over $3 million in state and private foundation money was spent this school year at 10 elementary schools. The program will expand to all levels withing three years. | <urn:uuid:64e6316b-a81d-48a1-8e4a-570fe9aa4d7e> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://m.csmonitor.com/1984/0502/050222.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988721141.89/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183841-00417-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957734 | 729 | 2.265625 | 2 |
The airspace users' community calls for action on Single European Sky
Today, airspace users, reliant upon the European Commission’s plans for a fundamental restructuring of Europe’s airspace to eliminate inefficient flight routings (thereby reducing both fuel burn and emissions) and to create additional cost-efficient capacity for future growth, are voicing their strong disappointment at the lack of progress on the Single European Sky at a high-level conference in Limassol.
The airspace users’ community has broadly supported the European Commission’s plans but EU Member States and their air navigation service providers have failed to deliver the intended benefits. None of the restructured airspace blocks (known as Functional Airspace Blocks) will be completed by the early December deadline. Likewise, the original and modest cost-efficiency performance targets were further diluted by EU Member States very few of which have been able to achieve them. Consequently, airspace users and their passengers will be obliged to incur costs that should have been reduced.
Global Business Jet Market - 2016-2020
Faced with such slow progress, airspace users are seriously concerned regarding the necessary parallel investment in, and implementation of, new technical improvements currently estimated to be in the region of €32bn.
All the heads of the associations hereunder* agree that while airspace users have supported the European Commission’s approach, it seems unlikely that the Commission’s objectives will be achieved unless the current consensual approach is backed up by new enforcement measures, necessary to overcome sovereign interests.
The associations’ views seem to be strongly shared by European Transport Commissioner, Siim Kallas and European Transport and Tourism Committee Chair, Brian Simpson MEP, who were outspoken in their addresses to the conference. They both cited a lack of political will rather than technical obstacles as the main reason for the failure to make progress on the Single European Sky and strongly emphasised that the lack of progress is unacceptable and damaging to Europe’s economy.
The Single European Sky is crucial in delivering efficiency in aviation transport within Europe across fuel consumption, socio-economic growth, environmental impact and, crucially, safety and customer value. Airspace users are looking forward to a satisfactory resolution.
Source : European Regions Airline Association (ERA) | <urn:uuid:544e73d9-4bb1-4d00-8cd3-65903efe16e4> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.asdnews.com/news-45476/The_airspace_users__community_calls_for_action_on_Single_European_Sky.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281419.3/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00489-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940245 | 450 | 1.632813 | 2 |
View Gabriella Freda’s profile on LinkedIn, the world's largest professional community. Gabriella has 5 jobs listed on their profile. See the complete profile on LinkedIn and discover Gabriella ... Ethereum 101. Ethereum is a technology that lets you send cryptocurrency to anyone for a small fee. It also powers applications that everyone can use and no one can take down. It's the world's programmable blockchain. Ethereum builds on Bitcoin's innovation, with some big differences. Both let you use digital money without payment providers or ... Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum said: “There are some good ideas, there are a lot of very bad ideas, and there are a lot of very, very bad ideas, and quite a few scams as well” Icon (ICX) Price Prediction 2020 – 2030. As a result, over 95% of successful ICOs and cryptocurrency projects will fail and their investors will lose money. iCohere was founded by Pascal Kaplan, Ph.D. and his son Soren Kaplan, Ph.D. Pascal and Soren were internet pioneers for online collaboration and learning. Pasca Here’s why this Ethereum exchange fork lost $500m in locked value. September 21, 2020 at 6:00 am UTC · 2 min read. Nick Chong Analyst @ CryptoSlate. Info Twitter LinkedIn. Share this article Tweet Post Share Post Email. As much as it may be looked down on in the “real world,” the crypto industry is full of copycats.
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😀 Thank You For Watching! :D 🚩 Remember to subscribe and hit the bell "🔔" icon! Need certified & professional help with your crypto taxes? Taxbit is here to... Icon Korea's answer to blockchain has been busy recently, working with the government of Seoul, and cooking up lots of great tech in the background. Disclosure: This is an unpaid review for a ... This Is How Ethereum's Price Goes Back Over $1,000 - Duration: 16:41. The Crypto Lark 20,043 views. 16:41. HOW TO BUY BITCOIN 2019 - Easy Ways to Invest In Cryptocurrency For Beginners! Best Ethereum ETH Mobile Wallet - Trust Wallet! - Duration: 6:49. HighOnCoins 12,421 views. 6:49. Microsoft Access 2016 Tutorial: A Comprehensive Guide to Access - Part 1 of 2 - Duration: 1:11:43. Icon / ICX . Will Korean Ethereum put S. Korea on the blockchain? Coin Contender $ICX . In this video I will explain why I believe Icon will end up being one... | <urn:uuid:36694c40-73a4-4994-8a8a-382209d07329> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | http://binaryoption-arabic-trade-brocker.forexstrategies.uno/?forex=6777 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572198.93/warc/CC-MAIN-20220815175725-20220815205725-00265.warc.gz | en | 0.916362 | 597 | 1.578125 | 2 |
What is behind Fabrique? Fabrique is a real-time pattern module for creating complex and inspiring musical elements within seconds. Whether you are either searching for the basis for a score cue or for a sophisticated add-on percussions loop or you are just trying to look up organic loops, atmospheric soundscapes or tonal movements or you just wanted to get inspired for a new piece of music, Fabrique provides almost every possibilities according to all these needs. But even if you are not feeling like creating your own pattern, there are available over one 170 presets, ready to be played. Fabrique includes three different kind of modules which varies in genre and amount of sounds: Firstly there is the PRIME, which covers the wide range of cinematic music and song production, secondly there is the URBAN which meets the needs of dub and pop music and finally the maverick one called EERIE which provides pattern and sounds for horror and dramatic purposes.
* How does Fabrique work?
Fabrique is a 32 step sequencer equipped with 3 separate tracks which are playing simultaneously. Track 1 and 2 are midi generators – track 3 is an audio loop player. In order to let Fabrique play notes you just move up and down bars of a table. The table is a perfect tool to set notes because you can clearly see at which positions notes are played or not. Besides that, Fabrique provides a wide assortment of tools for quickly shaping the sound of either the individual track or the whole pattern. There are plenty of easy-to-use options available for each track: pitching notes, either of the whole track or every note or randomly, changing the length of notes, adding reverb or delay, setting a low and high pass filter and putting automatic frequency envelopes over the whole track. Further more there are available 4 master fx switches to modify the entire sound of the pattern.
* Content and Instruments
Fabrique comes along with a huge amount of sounds which can separatly load into each track. You can feed the first two tracks with over 75 instruments (Prime has 48 instruments, the Urban versions contains 24, the Eerie 18). There are instruments both in 5 times round robin variations and single sounds – all in various velocity layer. The instruments are categorized in tonal sounds, deep or high percussion and experimental sounds and noises. Beside several new sounds such as a paper roll, a kalimba, a water drop, bass drums, a mallet drum, a bongo, a darabuka, an electric guitar etc. Fabrique contains some high light sounds of our recent library such as Guitar Harmonics, Kantele, The Bowl and some more. The audio track is equipped with 27 tempo-synced audio loops in the Prime version (the urban version contains 17 loops and the eerie 12 loops). Please download a high-resoluted image of Fabrique Primehere (3MB).
How to play the pattern?
In order to play the entire pattern you just have to press a key on your keyboard (you can define the key by yourself) or click the „start“ button – Fabrique will play the pattern endless in a loop. You can let Fabrique play in sync or off to your host application.
The Multi Mode
In order to produce very complex patterns, please create a multi by dragging several instances of Fabrique into Kontakt. Fabrique provides a special „Multi View“ tab to reduce its GUI size to see all instances at once. By defining an own „run“ key for every instance, you can easily play five, eight or ten Fabriques at the same time just by pressing its own key! By doing this Fabrique lets you easily arrange and improvise lots of instances and presets at the same time. You can arrange and layer all pattern at your own requirements!
Fabrique Overview List:
– 3 kind of Fabrique: Prime, Urban and Eerie
– Over 70 single instruments and 50 audio loops
– 3 tracks per module
– CPU friendly (no additional loading), low memory
– Easy and intuitive use
– Flexible Master Section (bar size, tempo, shuffle)
– Multi Mode-able with free definable ‘run’ key
– Separate solo function
– Enhanced playability and intuitive programming possibilities
– Separate sound shaping options (volume, pitch, length filter, reverb, dealay, envelope)
– Partially Randomization
– over 170 presets
– Fabrique requires the recent version of Kontakt 5 or Free Kontakt 5 Player | <urn:uuid:491e6afd-9d3a-4174-a945-2cf74902f5bb> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.magesy.blog/audio-samples/fabrique-kontakt-0th3rside/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573699.52/warc/CC-MAIN-20220819131019-20220819161019-00273.warc.gz | en | 0.901848 | 943 | 1.976563 | 2 |
First Bird Flu case detected in Odisha
Bhubaneswar: Bird flu was detected for the first time in Odisha as the central laboratory confirmed the virus in two dead fowls in Khurda district, official sources
said on Monday.
"The union government on Sunday communicated to the
state about the detection of H5N1 virus in two dead poultry found in the backyard of a house," Satyabrata Sahu, Secretary of Fisheries and Animal Resource Development department told reporters.
Earlier the state government had sent the two dead
poultry to the High Security Animal Disease Laboratory
(HSADL), Bhopal after suspecting bird flu, he said.
"A central team is likely to arrive here this evening
to guide the personnel engaged in the field," Sahu said
adding that the state government had not yet received any
direction from the Centre on culling of birds in the affected
There were about 40,000 poultry in Keranga area of
Khurda district, he said.
Though the state was hit by bird flu scare earlier in
2005, 2006 and 2008, no H5N1 virus was detected in the state.
However, some birds were culled then, sources said.
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- Zaira Wasim Trolled: Ashamed that she had to apologise, says Gautam Gambhir | <urn:uuid:912113c2-76eb-4936-990c-581793abf66f> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://zeenews.india.com/news/odisha/first-bird-flu-case-detected-in-odisha_751479.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280242.65/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00072-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955028 | 498 | 2.0625 | 2 |
“The Southern Thruway” begins with a traffic jam on the main highway back to Paris from southern France, on a summer Sunday afternoon. It seems to be a perfectly ordinary occurrence as cars slow to a crawl, stop, and start up again. The drivers and passengers look irritably at their watches and begin to exchange comments with those in neighboring cars. As the traffic inches along in increasingly infrequent moves forward, the same group of cars stays together and their occupants gradually become acquainted. Although written in the third person, the story focuses on the experiences and thoughts of an engineer in a Peugeot 404.
Rumors circulate as to the cause of the traffic jam:No one doubted that a serious accident had taken place in the area, which could be the only explanation for such an incredible delay. And with that, the government, taxes, road conditions, one topic after another, three yards, another commonplace, five yards, a sententious phrase or a restrained curse.
The drivers stay in or near their cars, sweltering in the sun, waiting for the police to dissolve the bottleneck, impatient to move along and get to Paris. The cars continue to move ahead as a group, their drivers chatting to pass the time as they suffer “the dejection of again going from first to neutral, brake, hand brake, stop, and the same thing time and time again.”
By the time night falls, the new rumors brought by “strangers” to their group seem remote and unbelievable. The group share food and drink; surreptitiously, they relieve themselves by the roadside. Time begins to blur; “there was so little to do that the hours began to blend together, becoming one in the memory.”
The next day, they advance a few yards and continue to hope that the road will soon be clear. Again a stranger brings them hopeful news, but then they realize the “the stranger had taken advantage of the group’s happiness to ask for and get an orange,” and they become wary and more conscious of their cohesiveness as a group. The cars...
(The entire section is 838 words.) | <urn:uuid:265727e0-7c68-4f50-959b-7d14c91f5d1a> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://www.enotes.com/topics/southern-thruway | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988718866.34/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183838-00003-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974918 | 448 | 2.0625 | 2 |
In this study, IRPP Senior Economist Daniel Schwanen proposes a treaty of North America, the purpose of which would be to enhance existing mutually beneficial linkages between the three countries. This treaty would foster an environment where nationals and companies would feel more secure and comfortable in each other’s countries, despite the likelihood that significant cross-border differences would remain. It would establish a tripartite process that would, over time, deepen and broaden the basis of interaction across national borders in North America, while fully recognizing domestic priorities, unique North American circumstances and an increasingly open and competitive world.
Accordingly, the proposed treaty does not seek to impose a new, onerous political or legal superstructure on relationships that already work well. Rather, it would enhance the development of a community of North Americans, which is already operating or incipient at many levels. It would embed successful modes of cooperation and ongoing initiatives; for example, those in the areas of security or in certain regulatory affairs. The project also recognizes that some measures could be applied asymmetrically between the three countries.
Relative to both the status quo and to many other proposals, the draft treaty contains a number of distinctive features. An independent commission, specifically charged with promoting principles underlying the agreement such as fair and open commercial relations, would be established. It would be empowered to intervene under certain circumstances with governments, agencies, regulators, courts and dispute settlement panels when it considered that the underlying principles were not being applied or specific commitments observed. The commission would not be able to override existing trade-related legislation, but its queries, findings and recommendations would have to be addressed or responded to by governments and other relevant public bodies. The treaty also provides that the commission propose a set of recommendations to the three governments a few years after the treaty becomes effective, to further its objectives. While existing restrictions would not initially be modified, the idea is to make them even less relevant in a context where rules governing cross-border commercial relations explicitly take fairness as well as access into account. The proposed treaty makes extensive allowance for regulatory differences where warranted, although it encourages useful regulatory rationalization between treaty signatories where objectives and circumstances are similar. It also encourages regional regulatory templates where appropriate, for example, in the truck transportation or energy domains.
More than does NAFTA, the draft treaty emphasizes the involvement of individuals and representative groups other than those in the business sector, and more explicitly defines their stake in managing North American integration. For example, the treaty would enhance the ability of nationals to seek work without being discriminated against and to have their legitimate skills recognized, and it adopts the basic principles of a North American guest worker program. It also proposes a cohesion fund to improve the transportation and communications infrastructure; address the environmental, health and security concerns raised by more open borders; and provide workers with the education and training needed to gain basic leverage in the wider market. Legislators and various civil society groups would be represented on separate North American committees, whose primary role would be to advise the commission. Also, the project requires very significant state and provincial government involvement to be effective.
The treaty proposes a precise definition of security that includes protecting a partner’s flank against unintended consequences of changes in some domestic laws or in relations with third parties. This concept would be aided by a permanent trilateral process whereby legislators and independent experts would examine policies that may affect security in a signatory country. The objective in this process would be to ensure a continuing high level of confidence that the deepening of mutually beneficial linkages within North America does not jeopardize the security dimension, while at the same time safeguarding the three countries’ sovereignty.
In Deeper, Broader: A Roadmap for a Treaty of North America, Daniel Schwanen has contributed a concrete proposal to advance the ongoing discussions and debate concerning the future of the relationship between Canada, the United States and Mexico. While ambitious in scope, it realistically portrays what the three countries of North America could do together to enhance their common weal and sketches out a process that could inform current and future administrative and political decisions to that effect.
Thinking North America is based on presentations made at the biennial “Art of the State” conference held in Montebello in October 2003. It provides a comprehensive examination of the multifaceted challenges and opportunities presented by North American Integration. | <urn:uuid:055b3349-67a5-44b3-98a2-f1b115729554> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://irpp.org/research-studies/deeper-broader/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572833.95/warc/CC-MAIN-20220817032054-20220817062054-00474.warc.gz | en | 0.958736 | 878 | 2.21875 | 2 |
Requirements of a good marketing information system:
1. Through there will be a several information component and activity component of a marketing information system yet it should be precieved and managed as one single entity.
2. Marketing information system is not merely a data keeping tool or a record keeping file. These are merely part of it. Its main identity should be that can be used as a decision making aid.
3. The marketing information system should be compatible with the culture of the company. It should reflect the same level of as that of the organizations so that it is operable by the employers of the organizations.
4. The cost benefit situation should be positive in implementing the marketing information system. In other words it should prove economical for the company.
5. The marketing information system must have the operational ability to judge whether a piece of information is required or not.
6. It should be easy for the users to use. It ahould ensure that user is involved when using the system.
7. The involvement should not be limited to users. The suppliers of the information of teh system should also be involved.
8. The system must meet the principle of selectivity.
9. It should be adaptable to changes.
10. It must be fast. | <urn:uuid:b8c9e9cf-ff35-4c8f-99ac-67b63c0fd169> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.expertsmind.com/questions/requirements-of-a-good-marketing-information-system-30113363.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281162.88/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00528-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.910017 | 259 | 1.671875 | 2 |
The financial crisis has undermined our economic security. But it has also taught us that the stability of any one nation depends on its interdependence with others. A functional global marketplace depends on productive workers and healthy consumers in Africa, Asia and Latin America, as much as in the United States and Europe. As we look toward a new year, it is well to remember the importance of keeping the promise to help developing countries fight AIDS and build stronger health systems.
Development assistance is good economic policy. The returns are disproportionately in our favor given that it represents far less than 1 percent of any wealthy nation's budget. Malaria - which still kills more than a million children in Africa annually - was eliminated in the United States in the 1950s, saving more than $2 billion in today's dollars that the disease cost the American economy each year. The cost of wiping smallpox out globally is recouped every month in the economic output gained by freeing the world from its scourge.
These are lessons in what aid can save and a reminder that we should define investments in development assistance by their long-term return, not their short-term cost.
Helping others is good foreign policy. Saving lives is the right thing to do by any moral standard. It is unacceptable that extreme poverty kills 25,000 children daily. Averting this loss of life is a responsibility shared across all faiths and nations.
Aid works. We have made remarkable progress in the 21st century. Better vaccine coverage has averted 3.4 million deaths since 2000. The number of people receiving AIDS medicines has increased tenfold in five years, to 3 million. Among children, we have narrowed the gap in half that time from 1 in 40 in need receiving treatment to 1 in 4. The majority of those children are receiving the commodities they need in part thanks to a partnership between our organizations, which we started together on World AIDS Day in 2006.
Ethiopia vows to protect European companies after farms attacked - Foreign food businesses attacked during recent protests by the Oromo ethnic group in Ethiopia face a tough choice to stay or leave and lose their investm...
48 minutes ago | <urn:uuid:1d9914b3-fd06-4d29-add7-82463a30beed> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://povertynewsblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/commentary-from-former-us-president-and.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988720737.84/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183840-00220-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967649 | 432 | 2.609375 | 3 |
Hey there !
I am working on a project in which I need to implement a “simple” voice chat feature but I’am lost in WebRTC and socket io usage.
I tried to understand how WebRTC works with the @baconcheese113’s minimal react native webrtc project. I got this working locally, I think I understand a bit more the webrtc side, but it’s a whole different thing when it comes to socket io.
I am using the two below links to learn more about how to make it live with socket io, but I think I am missing the big picture.
Finally I am completely lost with this and I am looking for someone who could help me to understand the flows of both WebRTC and socket io working together.
The thing is that I globally understand how the local stream is set, but I do not understand how I can get those stream on the different remote machines to build a live voice chat like discord voice channels.
Thank you for reading me | <urn:uuid:83dfe413-4a80-4799-a67a-8b91f4b1d9ca> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://react-native-webrtc.discourse.group/t/discord-like-voice-chat-with-socket-io/977 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573760.75/warc/CC-MAIN-20220819191655-20220819221655-00673.warc.gz | en | 0.922343 | 285 | 1.804688 | 2 |
Memorandum from Mark Thomas
The Indian company Ashok Leyland Ltd announced
on its company website on 16 February 2005 that it had signed
an agreement four days previously to supply 100 Stallion 4 x 4
army trucks to the Sudan Defence Ministry. The trucks were to
be supplied to GIAD Automotive Industry Co, the Sudan Government's
vehicle assembly unit in kit form. The GIAD factory is situated
near Khartoum. The announcement of the agreement was also made
at IDEX, the arms fair in Abu Dhabi and was reported in Jane's
Defence Weekly, March 23 2005: "Following its successful
introduction into Indian military service, Ashok Leyland commenced
an active export campaign for the Stallion during 2004, announcing
the first export sale of the type at IDEX 2005 in February. The
week prior to the show, Sudan had signed a contract for an initial
100 Mk III vehicles. These will be supplied from Ashok Leyland's
Hosur facility (near Bangalore) in complete knock-down form for
local assembly plus insertion of some local content."
It was reported by a number of newspaper and
journals in India, Asia and UK including the Economist Intelligence
The UK military list of controlled goods includes
military vehicles under category ML6, being "Ground "vehicles"
and components , as follows: a. Ground "vehicles" and
components therefore, specially designed or modified for military
Figure 1. Ashok Leyland Stallion 4x4 Mk
III truck.
Ashok list the Stallion 4 x 4 under its defence
vehicle section of its company website and describes the Stallion
as "the workhorse of the army." Though the agreement
appears to be legal under Indian law, under
UK law, to quote the Defence Manufacturers Association website,
"if the deal had involved the potential supply of the same
vehicles from the UK to Sudan then it would have been highly problematic
for a British export licence to have been issued to cover the
deal." The EU arms embargo on Sudan (introduced in 1994)
is covered under The Trade in Controlled Goods (Embargoed Destinations)
Order 2004 which states:
"No person shall directly or indirectly
a) supply or deliver; b) agree to supply or deliver; or c) do
any act calculated to promote the supply or delivery of any controlled
goods to any person or place in an embargoed destination."
The Ashok Leyland 1999-2000 Annual Report stated
"The Company has been supplying Stallion
4x4 vehicles to the Indian Army. These vehicles performed creditably
during the recent Kargil conflict and the army has placed further
orders for these vehicles."
Ashok is part of the Hinduja Group, who list
the company as a "flagship company." The UK company
LRLIH (also part of the Hinduja Group) owns a controlling interest
The Ashok Leyland website lists the following
UK residents and nationals as being on their board of directors;
Dheeraj HindujaVice chairman, Mr Hinduja is a UK citizen;
Mr Herbert Klingele a UK resident, also a director of LRLIH and
Machen Holdings Ltd; Mr Firoz Shamia UK citizen, and Mr
Anders Spare, an alternate director and UK resident. It would
be illegal for UK citizens and residents to have any involvement
in the agreement between Ashok and GIAD for the intended supply
of Stallion 4 x 4 army trucks without a Trade and Brokerage Licence
from HM Government UK.
I brought this story to BBC2 Newsnight and was
hired to investigate and report on any potential UK involvement
in the Ashok/GIAD agreement.
Posing as potential clients the Newsnight team
made contact with Mr Anders Spare and Mr Dheeraj Hinduja. Comments
made to the reporting team during the Newnight investigation by
Mr Anders Spare and Mr Dheeraj Hinduja indicated that both men
were aware of the Ashok deal with Sudan and that both men had
some involvement in that deal.
Mr Spare said "We've been, let's say, involved
behind the scenes." He also said "I have also personally
been involved to some degree in supporting this [Ashok/Sudan deal]
from here [UK]." And added that Mr Dheeraj Hinduja "knew
everything" about the deal and was involved in it. Mr Dheeraj
Hinduja stated, "initially whenever we develop new markets
and new customers we try and identify those for Ashok Leyland
and we were very closely involved in how that deal [Sudan] was
Transcripts of these recordings are listed as
When approached formally by Newsnight Mr Spare
denied any knowledge of the Sudan deal other than what he had
seen in the press release, contradicting his statements and actions
during the secret filming. A copy of the transcript of this conversation
is included at the end of the reportas item 5.
Initially LRLIH responded on behalf of the directors,
and was signed amongst others by Mr Dheeraj Hinduja, "We
were not aware of "the deal" you refer to . . . ".
However, the letter went on to say " Now
that we are aware that there is at least the possibility of a
transaction that might require a licence under the trade(sic)
in Controlled Goods (Embargoed Destinations) Order 2004, we have
asked Ashok Leyland's management that the right course of action
should be followed and the Board be kept informed of all developments,
and if necessary the Cooperation Agreement be terminated."
The letter also stated that no transaction had
taken place between Ashok and GIAD. In an attached letter from
Ashok, the company stated "The Cooperation Agreement with
GIAD does not refer to any supplies to be made to the Army/Defence
Ministry of Sudan. On the contrary, the Agreement refers to GIAD
assembling the vehicles in the public and private sectors and
neighbouring countries." Though the letter also states, "[the
Stallion] 4 x 4 trucks: these are logistics/transport vehicles
suitable for commercial/civil and also defence applications."
However, in a reply to a Parliamentary Question
the Minister Malcolm Wicks issued a statement regarding the Stallion
4 x 4 trucks, on the 14 July 2005:
"From the information available on the company
website, it appears these vehicles are specially designed for
military use and therefore potentially require an export or trade
licence under ML6a of the UK's Military Control list. An export
licence would only be required if the goods were exported from
the UK, and a trade licence would only be required for the transfer
of the goods between third countries if there were some UK involvement,
as defined in the relevant legislation."
A lengthy exchange of legal letters took place
between the BBC and Dean and Dean, the solicitors acting for Mr
Anders Spare and Mr Dheeraj Hinduja. Dean and Dean stated that
the Stallion 4 x 4 trucks in kit form intended for Sudan were
not military trucks and not designated for the Sudan Defence Ministry.
Dean and Dean explained that the company was supplying "trucks
and buses for the public and private sector in Sudan. The BBC's
error is in supposing that the trucks are "military specification"
vehicles. They are not."
However, the company's own press release on
the company website stated the trucks were "army trucks"
and the supply was for the "Sudan Defence Ministry."
Dean and Dean stated that the press release was "wholly inaccurate."
Yet, in the company's own listing for the IDEX
arms fair catalogue in 2005 the company says: "A pioneer
in the design, development and manufacture of special vehicles
for the Armed Forces, the Company supports the modernisation of
the Indian Armed Forces by developing a host of modern special
application vehicles to address their special needs. These vehicles
include Stallion (4x4),"
Ashok's own promotional literature "What
Drives the Armed Forces" lists the Stallion 4 x 4, it "plays
the role of the workhorse of the army."
At the Dubai show, IDEX in 2005. the marketing
manager of Ashok said: "We are now aggressively looking at
marketing our defence vehicles in the overseas markets, particularly
Middle East and North Africa." And in a press statement dated
28 April 2005 from Ashok Leyland/Hinduja Group announcing their
annual report and share dividend, the statement reads, "Following
the order received from Sudan for its Stallion 4x4 army vehicles,
the company is actively pursuing sales prospects in several African
and Asian countries."
Photograph [not printed] with caption: RIDING
HIGH: The Managing Director of Ashok Leyland, R Seshasayee, and
the Executive Director (Finance), K Sridharan, at a press conference
in Chennai on Thursday.
Dean and Dean replied to the BBC: "You
say our clients market these Stallion trucks as a military vehicle.
So they do. That is not the point. It is simply a commercial truck
which can well be used for military use."
When the BBC solicitor further enquired into
this Dean and Dean stated, "If a vehicle designed for military
use is adapted or fitted out for civilian use, it is not controlled
goods. Note the comparison with the Stallion truck, which was
put into production for use by the Indian army, but which has
been stripped of all of its military features in the form in which
it was destined for Sudan."
The BBC then asked to see the specifications
for the Stallion 4 x 4 intended for GIAD. Dean and Dean stated,
"No specifications were attached to the co-operation agreement
nor were any specifications prepared or exchanged with GIAD in
connection with the proposed agreement."
On 3 July Dean and Dean issued the first, of
numerous, statements indicating they would seek an injunction
on the broadcast of the investigation. No injunction was ever
sought though Dean and Dean did negotiate an agreement with the
BBC whereby the BBC would give the solicitors 48 hours notice
of any intention to broadcast the report and that the solicitors
would get to see the report before it was broadcast.
Dean and Dean wrote "If the BBC chooses
to ignore the truth of this matter, it could very well end as
the BBC's most expensive mistake ever." The threat of legal
action was made on several occasions including a letter to Mark
Thompson and Michael Grade from Lord Temple Morris who wrote in
his capacity as an advisor to the Hinduja Group.
After several provisional broadcast dates Newsnight
decided to broadcast the report on 20 October, listing the story
as appearing in that night's edition in its pre broadcast email
to viewers. The story was pulled two hours from broadcast after
a meeting with legal representatives of the Hinduja group.
The editor of Newsnight Mr Peter Barron explained
his reason on the Newsnight website, after an article appeared
in the Spectator magazine by Andrew Gilligan detailing the decision
to not show the report. Mr Peter Barron said the decision not
to broadcast the report was an editorial one, "The story
we'd ended up with would, I think, have been so complicated and
qualified as to be impossible to tell meaningfully." It is
hard to reconcile the truth of this statement with the fact that
the BBC was hours away from broadcasting the report and was not
concerned with any editorial problems then. It is my belief that
the BBC was intimidated into cancelling the broadcast.
Regardless of the Hinduja's legal response to
the issues, the publicly available information (the initial Ashok
Leyland press release, report in Jane's Defence Weekly and a simple
cross check of the Ashok Leyland website list of directors and
UK Companies House) would indicate that the matter should have
been investigated by HMRC. To the author's knowledge HMRC were
not aware of the issue until Newsnight approached them. It
is important to assess HMRC's operational capacity in identifying
potential breeches and enforcing the law in this area. It
is my understanding that the investigation team for the "prohibitions
and restrictions" unit at HMRC, whose remit covers child
pornography to embargoed destinations, has a full time staff of
six. Given the complexity and apparent lack of investigations
in this area it would seem that the staffing levels in HMRC are
simply insufficient to do the job required.
The initial press announcement of the deal took
place at IDEX arms fair in Dubai 2005, attended by UK government
representatives, including DESO for example. The QSC should
establish what formal remit exists for reporting potential breeches
of legislation by government representatives at these types of
events and how they can be made more effective. If none exist
the government agencies involved should review this as a matter
LRLIH and Mr Spare indicated that they were
not aware of the law's requirements. While the QSC has considered
in the past the need for outreach programmes by the DTI there
are questions as to whether HMRC should take a role in running
information outreach programmes. The presence of HMRC at the
various international defence/police and security trade fairs
might be an appropriate place to contact those directly involved
in the industry and raising awareness of the law.
If the original website press release is correct,
in that the deal was for "army trucks" to the "Sudan
Defence Ministry" as Mr Anders Spare and Mr Dheeraj Hinduja
have clearly stated an involvement then there is a clear need
for the HMRC to investigate. As although Mr Dheeraj Hinduja and
Mr Anders Spare denied any involvement or knowledge of the Sudan
deal when formally approached by Newsnight, these denials are
hard to reconcile with their previous statements, like, "we
were very closely involved in how that deal was structured".
The DTI issued the following statement to Newsnight:
"All applications for trade licences are considered on a
case-by-case basis against the Consolidated EU and National Arms
Export Licensing criteria, taking into consideration the circumstances
prevailing at the time and other announced Government policies.
Among the factors taken into account in assessing applications
will be the destinations and parties involved, the nature of the
goods concerned, the risk of diversion, and the uses to which
the goods could be put (as well as the stated end use), and any
other relevant information.
The UK enforces rigorously the EU arms embargo
against Sudan. This is done by the scrupulous consideration of
export licence applications, the investigation of alleged breaches
and through dialogue with other states. The Government would only
issue a licence for the supply of or trade in military equipment
to Sudan in line with the exemptions to the embargo, for example
for humanitarian end-use."
The destination and the factory's links to
the Sudanese government would present significant difficulties
in granting a licence, as even a humanitarian purpose for "army
trucks" would demand a licence. The decision as to whether
or not the kit for Sudan would need a licence cannot be made solely
on the basis of the type of equipment being exported.
The contradictory statements made by Mr Dheeraj
Hinduja and Mr Anders Spare relating to the Ashok/Sudan deal raise
significant doubts on the accuracy of their later statements,
and indeed on the accuracy of statements made by Dean and Dean
on their behalf.
The Ashok website clearly says the Stallions
are "army trucks" for the "Sudan Defence Ministry."
Mr Anders Spare also indicates this is the case
(Section 2, item 3, extract 2).
The MD of Ashok Mr Seshasayee, at a press conference
to announce the company's annual share dividend, on 28 April 2005,
was quoted as saying "Following the order received from Sudan
for its Stallion 4x4 army vehicles, the company was actively pursuing
sales prospects in several African and Asian countries."
This also quoted on the company's website press
release of the same day and appeared in the SSKI India Research
(stock market analysis of the firm also dated 28 April 2005).
The claims that the Stallion 4 x 4 kits were
not military vehicles were elaborated upon in a letter from Dean
and Dean (dated 22 July 2005) "This truck [Stallion 4 x 4]
was subsequently specified for the Indian Army and incorporated
a significant number of features to meet the specific requirements
of the Army. Our clients have listed these features in the document
attached to this letter. These features are not present in the
trucks destined for Sudan, which were not designed for any military
purpose, but which were just a basic set of truck components and
aggregates, without the rear body, for local assembly." The
attached document lists items that the Stallion 4 x 4 kits did
not include:- black out lights, special cab storage requirements
eg rifle clips, roof hatch, radio Page suppression, twin fuel
tanks, pintel type tow hook, palm couplings. However, when Newsnight
asked to see the specifications for the trucks attached to the
GIAD agreement they were told on the 26 August 2005 , that "no
specifications were attached to the Co-operation Agreement nor
were any specifications prepared or exchanged with GIAD in connection
with the proposed agreement." It is hard to reconcile the
two statements, if there is no specifications how can the company
know what is and is not included?
The contradictions in the statements coming
from Mr Anders Spare, Mr Dheeraj Hinduja, the companies involved
and Dean And Dean provide good reason for HMRC to investigate
the deal. HMRC should conduct a full investigation into the exact
nature of the equipment being offered to Sudan and the role played
by Mr Anders Spare and Mr Dheeraj Hinduja in any deal.
Newsnight phoned Mr Cowsik in India, the export
manager of Ashok and the signatory on the Ashok/GIAD agreement.
Posing as a potential client Newsnight asked if there was anyone
in London who he could talk to regarding the Sudan deal. Mr Cowsik
named Mr Anders Spare who works for Sangam (a Hinduja Group company
based at New Zealand House, London). Newsnight phoned Mr Anders
Spare on the same day 25 May 2005 and asked him what he knew of
the deal in Sudan, Anders Spare said:
AS : . . . all the negotiations have taken place,
and there is an order signed. We're just waiting for the letter
of credit to arrive which is not a small issue in a country like
Sudan. But all the technical negotiations, there is nothing left,
it's just the money.
MT: Has Sangam been involved or just Ashok?
AS: No, this has been done directly by Ashok
MT: But you know about the deal.
AS: We've been, let's say, involved behind the
MT: So you're completely across it?
AS: We are up to speed yes
Later in the same conversation:
MT: I saw that the Hinduja Brothers are involved
and this is the Hinduja company. Are they across the deal as well,
would they be able to meet the client because that would be quite
an impressive thing for the client?
AS: Well, erm, there are two . . . the Hinduja
family consists of four brothers which is of a generation . .
. let's say . . . between 60 and 65. And then they have four cousins
of next generation which is the third generation. In this case
the people involved in the transportation business, which is Ashok
Leyland, that's father and son, and they're both located in London,
so if they are available of course we can arrange a meeting.
MT: Fantastic, what are their names, which are
AS: The name of the father is GP and the name
of the son is Dheeraj.
MT: Ok, that's great, and they're aware of the
AS: Yes, well at least Dheeraj is well aware,
err yes, both are well aware of the project.
MT: So they're involved . . . that's great.
MT: And obviously if the client could meet them
that would be great.
AS: Yes we're totally committed to Sudan, no
Following the first conversation Newsnight spoke
to Mr Spare on a number of occasions, to further clarify what
Mr Spare meant by "involved behind the scenes" and to
what extent others might be involved in the Sudan deal. In the
conversation of 2 June 2005 Mr Spare said:
AS: Er as it happens so that I have also personally
been involved to some degree in supporting this from here. But
basically my function is to er . . . from a board level is to
strategise with the company. Er, normally we are not involved
in the operation of the company. So it is the company Ashok Leyland
itself that will make the quotes, that will negotiate the prices
and all that.
MT: OK great. So you are the person who knows
everything at this end of it.
MT: That's fantastic, so you are the person who
got the strategy together at this end of it?
AS: Yes, I can take let's say the political call
for the company and er I can also have a decisive influence on
the company, how they behave.
Following these conversations BBC Newsnight
(posing again as potential clients, representing a charity that
needed Stallion 4 x 4 trucks for potential relief work in Sudan)
then arranged to meet Mr Spare. The meeting took place in a London
Hotel on 8 June 2005 and was secretly filmed. The following are
extracts from the conversations that occurred in the hotel room.
MT: I know that Landrover Leyland, when we talked
on the phone, you said you had been involved, sort of behind the
scenes on this dealing of . . . near Khartoum and I wonder if
you might just talk us through that.
AS: Yeah, well this was . . . we had been looking
at Sudan for quite some time and this came in connection with
an exhibition in Delhi a couple of years ago, when we were approached
by a Sudanese party. As a matter of fact they were representatives
of this company, GIAD, visiting India because there were government
discussions between Sudan and India about financial assistance.
AS: And from there it went on and I remember
very well a visit made by the transport minister to our plant
in (INDISTINCT) just outside Bangalore, it was a Sunday, because
I was there the day after, I didn't meet him, but I was there
the day after because they were all charmed by him. And we established
a very good contact between the company and this transport minister,
also the management, the President of the company . . . is run
like an ordinary company.
AS: . . . President and managing director. Also
the Sudanese ambassador in Delhi was involved actively. We had
some competitors involved also, but for some reason, they picked
us. I think the reason was they had a close look at the vehicle
and found that this is the right vehicle, it's not too high and
not too low, it's right . . . well they can afford it . . . it's
a useful vehicle and it would serve their purpose.
MT: Landrover Leyland were involved across that
deal with Ashok?
AS: Well, we were . . . fundamentally this company
Ashok Leyland is operating on its own. I mean this is . . . err
. . . fully fledged company, they have an export department as
they call it, doing all this. But we are always trying to help
out from my side, I am on the board of Ashok Leyland and . . .
especially when it comes to creating relations and maintaining
relations, sometimes London is a very good place to be.
When asked if it was possible to order trucks
from the GIAD factory in Sudan Mr Anders Spare replied:
AS: I suppose so, I suppose so. This is for the
army [the current Sudan deal] and I'm absolutely convinced that
this is not one for true army purposes, this is more for civilian
purposes [the Newsnight proposed deal].
MT: And . . . how involved was Dheeraj in this?
AS: Oh he is very much involved, I mean we .
. . we're dealing with the company everyday.
MT: So he knows the factory, he knows the deals
. . .
MT: Have yourself and the UK end, do you need
licences to be doing this?
RN:(one of the Newsnight team) Yeah, I suppose
. . .
AS: We are not the seller, the seller would be
Ashok Leyland . . .
RN: So that's India, right.
AS: So, basically maybe this is not needed. That
is my guess . . . If it's not us . . . a UK company sending them,
there's no requirement for a licence, I would guess, I don't know.
The following is an extract from a phone call
with Dheeraj Hinduja from 9 June 2005.
MT: Have you been actively involved in that North
MT: Right OK but you know the deal though
DH: Yes of course but our management really deals
with this and from our family side we don't really get involved
on the day to day affairs. But where there is an intervention
needed we're always there.
MT: OK so it would be fair to say that you have
an overview to it.
MT: I suppose that that would mean, basically
what the client wants to know is can we come to you if something
goes wrong, that is what it is all about.
DH: Of course, you have my number, I'm always
available, never a problem. You contact me directly. From our
family side we look after the activities of Ashok Leyland and
are very much approachable.
MT: OK that is great. Were you involved in the
strategy end of it, of how Ashok became involved in it, not the
day to day running?
DH: Oh of course of course, initially whenever
we develop new markets and new customers we try and identify those
for Ashok Leyland and we were very closely involved in how that
deal was structured.
The following extracts are from that conversation
on the 23 June 2005after formally contacting Mr Spare as
MT: So no one from the British end of the Hinduja
Group has been involved in this Sudanese deal at all.
AS: As a matter of fact, I am not aware of the
deal at all except from press information. But I haven't verified
whether that was true or not.
AS: Ashok Leyland is a perfectly autonomous company.
Quoted on the . . . A quoted company in India and has a complete
set of management to run the operations and the business. If you
want some information about their business, that's where you should.
. . then you should talk to them.
MT: So you are not a director, you have not had
any dealings with the deal for Sudan . . .
MT: You only know about it through the press.
MT: You have had no involvement through it what
AS: Well, involvement? Well as far as I know
from the press releases I have seen it is not a done deal. But
I am just guessing.
MT: So you don't know for sure whether it is
a done deal or not.
AS: From the press release it seems to be a negotiation
that has been going on, but I would . . . I mean Sudan how many
deals are being done in Sudan? I don't know of any.
MT: But you do know Ashok Leyland are doing a
45 Jane's Defence Weekly March 23, 2005. Ashok
Leyland expands its markets further. Back
Economist Intelligence Unit: Country ViewsWire, March 1, 2005.
India industry: Ashok Leyland to supply trucks to Sudan. Ashok
Leyland has signed an agreement to supply army trucks and buses
to the Sudan Defence Ministry in a deal worth US$10 million. The
company will initially supply 100 Stallion trucks and 100 Falcon
buses. The deal could develop into an annual supply of 500 trucks
and 500 buses. Ashok Leyland recently clinched a deal to supply
3,322 trucks to Iraq, the largest ever order for commercial vehicles
from India. The Hinduja group and Iveco, who together own 51%
of Ashok Leyland, recently signed a new shareholder agreement.
The new agreement is expected to significantly enhance cooperation
between ALL and Iveco, both in terms of exploring new markets
and sharing technology. Back
Ashok Leyland is registered under the Indian Companies Act, 1956
and is governed by Indian Laws. We have been legally advised that
the said agreement is not in violation of any Indian law. Back
28 April 2005 [link originally supplied by Mark Thomas]. Back
Export growth could be a driver of volumes: ALL's export performance
has been quite strong in FY05. This included the Iraq order of
approx. 3,200 CVs in FYOS. The company has signed a US$10 million
agreeement with GIAD Auto, to supply 100 Stallion 4x4 army trucks
and 100 Falcon buses to the Sudan defence ministry. Back | <urn:uuid:76c97512-ae6e-499a-8dfa-cebf35a8d851> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmselect/cmquad/873/873we12.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988720972.46/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183840-00251-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958456 | 6,412 | 1.554688 | 2 |
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Upgrade to a Modern Browser | <urn:uuid:7376a9b1-fc3b-4b71-b76f-770a1dce120f> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.childrenscabinet.org/who-we-serve/i-am-a-youth/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571502.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811194507-20220811224507-00067.warc.gz | en | 0.957198 | 275 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Our Deafening Silence on the Coast of Africa: Cote D’Ivoire and our Myth of Continents
“A deafening silence, while the television world have turned to Japan and Libya.” “The world continues to focus on events in the Maghreb and beyond. The international community’s attention is far from Cote d’Ivoire, which nevertheless continues its downward spiral.” “While the world’s attention is focused on North Africa — Egypt and Libya — the power struggle in Ivory Coast is escalating.” “International media is following protests across the ‘Arab world’ but ignoring those in Africa.” “a forgotten disaster in the making.” “Ivory Coast already a disaster and no one cares bc it doesn’t fit prevailing narrative.” “All I want is for the international community to take notice of what is happening here. They’re not only killing people in Arab world.” “The Story No One is Talking About” ”The US media continues to neglect the country and we are heading towards more violence.” “Why are the media ignoring what’s happening in Ivory Coast?”
Those quotes all link to the writers that used them. But I offer this less as an invitation to click through — some of the articles are good, some of them are less so — than as a demonstration of the broad meme that “the world” and “the media” are not paying attention to what is happening in Côte d’Ivoire. This is, of course, more or less true: the international media is not paying much attention to Côte d’Ivoire (with a few exceptions). But why?
This meme got a kick start from an Al Jazeera English article from Feb 21st; Ory Okolloh tweeted a link to it and complained that global media was uninterested in Côte d’Ivoire, which prompted Anna Gueye to start a twitter campaign to get the likes of Nick Kristof and Anderson Cooper to pay attention. Nothing really came of that. Anderson Cooper tweeted on Feb 25th that “I have been following #ivorycoast closely and it deserves far more coverage,” but his promise to do something about it “on Monday” did not materialize. There is too much other shit going on in the world, it seems. But we did get out of it — at least in some circles — an increased awareness that something — vaguely — is happening in Côte d’Ivoire, along with a sort of sense that it should be covered, but isn’t.
(If you follow Cooper’s twitter feed back to that point, by the way, you can see exactly what it was that he covered instead: Libya until March 7th — with a brief stop-over in New Orleans for Mardi Gras — when he switched over to Egypt for a day, then back to Libya until the Japanese earthquake changed his plans (“I had my back packed for #Libya today, but will be going to #Japan instead. We’ll cover both on #ac360 10p”), with a return to Libya, now with Bahrain, about two days ago.)
Anderson Cooper’s barely used twitter feed does not really signify all that much, I’ll grant you, and while the fact that Cooper’s blog features more information on Charlie Sheen than on Côte d’Ivoire is, as Phil notes, a kind of bitter pill, you probably didn’t need Al Jazeera to tell you what you already knew: Africa is not something we need to bother knowing too much about. And there are many other extremely compelling stories: nuclear power is scarier, earthquakes are pathos-ier, Arab revolutions are sexier and oilier (and hit closer to home), while Charlie Sheen is whatever he is. It’s not that anyone denies that crises in Africa are important — it’s telling, after all, that Cooper will acknowledge the inattention as a problem while not redressing it — but no one, somehow, is telling the story in a way that makes it comprehensible.
For what it’s worth, I actually think this is the main problem. Sven Lindqvist’s stirring and horrifying Exterminate All the Brutes makes its moral center this declaration:
“You already know enough. So do I. It is not knowledge that we lack. What is missing is the courage to understand what we know and to draw conclusions.”
It’s always worth thinking hard about the difference between what we could know and what we allow ourselves to know. But in this case, I suspect it’s less that we lack courage than that a contextual framework which would allow us to understand what is happening in Côte d’Ivoire is unavailable to us. We might know that there has been a “disputed” election — to use the parlance of neutral media non-speak — or that some “violence” is happening in some kind of passive-voiced way. We might even know that there is a refugee crisis that threatens to “spill over” into a “regional conflict” or some other stock “describing-turmoil-in-Africa” set of phrases. But the dots will not connect in our minds, nor will they particularly resolve into a reason to read more, learn more, or resolve. It isn’t that “we” don’t want to understand; it’s that we don’t know how to see beyond the initial same-old-story-ness of this story, when we hear it. Which is why, I would suggest, we end up where we started: a sense that, because there is violence, we should pay attention to what is happening, followed by the discovery that there is no news there; just the same “turmoil in Africa” narratives we sort of quietly presume to be going on across the continent all the time, and nothing we can think anything new about.
In that last paragraph, I went pretty deep into a very particular kind of “we,” so let me back up and clarify what I mean. Part of the problem is that there is too much garbage in our brains. So when I teach African literature, for example, I always begin the class by making a list of all the words that “we” might use to describe Africa (“dark continent,” “refugee,” “civil war,” “tribal,” and “AIDS” are common ones), but I do this only after instructing the class that what I mean is, of course, not what you or I think about Africa, but what “people” think about Africa, what the “media” thinks about the dark continent, what those less knowledgeable, cosmopolitan, and sensitive that us might think, in their sad and tragic ignorance. This gives us permission to think more clearly about how stupid we are, deep down, where we don’t like to go. I could also just give them Binyavaga Wainaina’s “How to Write About Africa,” and I usually do, but it works better if it comes organically from us first, because it allows us, as a class, to access what we might call that “collectively conscious unconsciousness” about Africa that we all share, albeit in differing ways. We might be more or less aware of it, and we might have differing levels of actual knowledge about Africa, but we are all, still, bombarded and saturated with so much “Africa nonformation” that we can’t help but let it infect our thinking. None of us are pure, here. And the first step towards knowing better has to be taking account of all the ignorance you already “know,” often without consciously knowing you know it. These are our “unknown knowns,” to use Zizek’s Lacanian Rumsfeldianism. And we only defuse them by bracketing them off from ourselves, naming them, and thinking carefully about them.
So what really is happening in Côte d’Ivoire? To answer that question, the historian in me wants to take the long view and frame what is happening now through the lens of Côte d’Ivoire in the sixties, the nineties, and the civil war that blew up in 2002 (starting here, if you want to do that). In other words, to place what is happening now in the continuous history out of which it emerges, as a way of differentiating the evolving situation there from the surface images of it that we are otherwise limited to. After all, most of the pictures, stories, and narratives that are available to us are accurate, more or less: there really is a humanitarian catastrophe, a disputed election, a refugee crisis, and the specter of full-blown civil war. But the question of why is impossible even to address if we don’t go beneath the apparent self-sufficiency of the images, the answers that seem to close down discussion rather than open it up. Just as Egypt’s protests didn’t come out of a vacuum, the crisis in Côte d’Ivoire has deep roots.
But shallow historiography is not the only problem. Take a look at this video from CCTV, which reports on how, on March 3rd, an all-women protest was set upon by government tanks and soldiers, killing seven women. I’ve cued that video to a particularly poignant section from about 0:40 to 0:53 where you can see a crowd of Ivoirians desperately trying to get a visual message through the camera person to whoever is watching. CCTV does not interview any of them; we do not hear their voices or stories. Instead, we get this bizarre game of “international affairs” charades: first, the crowd is seen gesturing wildly at an enormous pile of sandals on the ground, then they’re lifting and brandishing piles of clothing (all the while shouting illegibly), and then you see someone enter the frame holding a sign with the caption: “GBAGBO — LE PHARAON DE TEMPS MODERNES” (Gbagbo – the pharaoh of modern times).
What are the sandals for? What are these clothes to represent? Apparently the sandals are the footwear which were discarded when the women started running from the soldiers, though we don‘t get that explanation in the story itself; the amount indicates, therefore, the number of women who fled. Perhaps the clothing represents something similar? I’m not sure. But the sign is the key, as is the fact that it‘s only by happenstance that it happened to wander across the camera-man‘s gaze. Those Ivoirians were trying to play the internationally understood game of spectacle politics, trying to link what is happening in Côte d’Ivoire to what is happening in the Middle East and North Africa. They were trying to make us see the murder of peacefully protesting civilians by army weapons not simply as an atrocity, but as a particular kind of atrocity, the kind which requires intervention, attention, action. They were trying to take what is happening out of the narrative frame of “another African civil war” and place it in the frame of “dictator clinging to power by violently suppressing popular protest.” Like Ben Ali. Like Mubarak.
In other words, the problem is more than just that we “know” too much garbage about “Africa.” The problem is that we will find it difficult to see what is happening in a place like Côte d’Ivoire as part of the same macro-narrative that we have — slowly — learned to apply to the Middle East and North Africa, precisely to the extent that we place the latter phenomenon in a specifically limiting geographical context. If applying the frame of “Africa” to Côte d’Ivoire gets in the way, in other words, so can unconsciously limiting the geographical scope of “Protests in the Middle East” to the Middle East. Is what is happening in Gabon (here and here) not similar? Or Senegal? Angola? Gambia? Cameroon? And, of course, if what you want is protests for democracy in an oil producing region, let me introduce you to the Niger Delta.
Dibussi Tande has some thoughts on why the Revolution 2.0 hasn’t spread to sub-Saharan Africa, so far. Though it went almost totally unreported in the West, there were demonstrations in Cameroon on Feb 23rd demanding that Paul Biya step down — very much hoping to pull an Egypt on him — and the fact that they were easily quashed has to be dealt with. And, after all, I don’t want to suggest that we are seeing the same thing working itself out in sub-Saharan Africa. Because there is no same thing: while the protests in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, Yemen, Palestine, etc, are all related and connected — and have increasingly converged on a singular language of protest — the political dynamics in each site have proven to be very different. Cameroon or Côte d’Ivoire are certainly no exception to that rule.
But this thing we are watching still might spread beyond North Africa; there’s a reason why so many sub-Saharan African governments are censoring the news out of Egypt. A lot of people outside of the Middle East are trying to figure out a local means of getting to a similar endpoint, and if that guy holding the “GBAGBO — LE PHARAON DE TEMPS MODERNES” was able to see a connection, then it’s there. But to take that into account, we need to loosen our grip on entire categorical sub-Saharan Africa vs. North Africa distinction. As Callie Maidhof pointed out:
…terms such as “Africa” and “the Middle East” function not only on the basis of geography or actual political ties, but as stand-ins for racial signifiers. Despite a shared history of European colonialism in its different manifestations, Africa and the Middle East nonetheless bear extremely different histories of representation or historical imaginaries within the European continent…these deeply rooted histories have frankly hindered our understanding of the recent revolutions—especially that of Libya—and even more so of their effect on politics on the African continent.
It’s not just race, though; it is easier, in some ways, to realize that Libya is part of “Africa” than to accept that Côte d’Ivoire could be part of “Middle-East-North-Africa.” The myth of continents tells us that the former is true, while that the latter is, by that standard, obviously false. And another part of what makes Middle East-North Africa seem to be distinct from either Europe or Africa is the fact that it was — as part of the Ottoman empire — historically distinct both from the “Dark Continent” Africa that was imagined through European penetration and interpellation and also from the “Europe” which imagined by reference to its Ottoman and Orientalist other.
But race does shed some light on one of the most tellingly overlooked facts about what’s happening in Côte d’Ivoire, the fact that the entire conflict — for the past decade — has hinged on the question of whether Muslim immigrants to Côte d’Ivoire are really Ivoirian, which is to say, whether Muslims from the North African edge of West Africa are really African enough to be part of Côte d’Ivoire. You see where I’m going with this?
I don’t want to simplify it more than I can avoid, but putting it as simply as possible is a way of noting the this fact which has programmatically figured in almost no mainstream Western accounts of the violence: since the 1990’s, but with a major spike in the 2000’s, Ivoirian nativists have been working to place “Northern,” “Muslim,” and “Burkinabé” people outside the definition of Côte d’Ivoire’s political community, a way of denying full citizenship to those who lack full “Ivorité,” as it first began being called in the 90‘s. Moreover, these three categories are not quite coextensive, but the crisis quite clearly began ten years ago, and continues now, when former Prime Minister Alassane Ouattara — who is Muslim, Northern, and Burkinabé — was then and is now being prevented from assuming the presidency on the basis of a very strategically limited notion of who is truly Ivoirian.
This is, in other words, about the political power structure working to limit who gets to politically represent and be represented in this “African” nation, precisely by drawing a line to separating “North Africa” from “West Africa,” in politically interested ways, to maintain political control for the real Ivoirians in the south. Without denying that there might be other bad guys in this story, the fact remains — virtually unspoken — that ten years ago, Ouattara’s ethnic origin as Burkinabé — his parents were from Burkina Faso — was used by politicians from the predominantly Christian southern part of the country to disqualify him from running for the presidency; a political campaign of “Ivorité” worked to distinguish between “indigenous Ivorians” and “Ivorians of immigrant ancestry,” as a thoroughly programmatic effort to dis-enfranchise the (largely Muslim) north by lumping them all together with the (many) immigrants in the north who originated Burkina Faso. The current violence started with a disturbingly analogous move: after Ouattara was declared to have won the presidential election — by the UN, ECOWAS, the AU, and all international observers — the Gbagbo controlled Constitutional Council threw out 660,000 votes from the north and gave the election to Gbagbo.
It’s all very complicated. But for now, my point is simply to note that these geographical categories are not only part of the problem in Côte d’Ivoire itself. In this case, they are part of the reason why we find it so difficult to even talk coherently about the problem. This is a point which Mahmood Mamdani has made at great length (and shorter length) with respect to Darfur and “Africans” and “Arabs” there, but the general point he’s been making for years, about the political production of ethnicity, is just as necessary here. Take this BBC account of the violence, for example, which tells the story as the emergence of underlying ethnic, religious and economic divisions after an influx of foreign immigrants (drawn by Côte d’Ivoire’s economic success) stirred up resentment in the south:
…under the surface, the country has long been deeply divided along ethnic, religious and economic lines. Its thriving cocoa industry meant living standards in Ivory Coast were far higher than its neighbours, so people from some of the world’s poorest countries, such as Mali and Burkina Faso, moved there to earn their living. Some of these people shared ethnic ties to those living in northern Ivory Coast and, like them, were mostly Muslim. Some southerners, egged on by populist politicians, started to resent the influx and demanded action to protect the country’s “Ivoirite (Ivorian-ness)”. They portrayed northerners as not being real Ivorians.
None of this is untrue, exactly, but one important fact is missing: that the meaning of ethnicity is not given, natural, but made, by conscious political actors, for conscious political gain. Nothing in the BBC story will tell you how this uptick in nativism really began; instead, you are allowed to assume that it is natural to hate “others,” that distrusting immigrants is just something that people do (or, if not everyone, at least “tribal” Africans). They might have been “egged on by populist politicians,” but the real problem is populism itself. And no specifics are given about what the particular divisions were that were targeted, certainly not in ways that might lead us to wonder how a global war on Muslims (and the mainstreaming of anti-immigrant nativism in the US and EU) might provide cover for disenfranchising Muslims/immigrants in a place like Côte d’Ivoire. But while I’m wondering about that, I’m much more certain that precisely to the extent that we take the line separating North Africa from sub-Saharan Africa seriously — naturalizing it as a real thing, in the way that “long been deeply divided” does — the more difficult it becomes to see how that line is being manipulated and used for political gain, and by who. Pre-existing ethnic divisions do not, in any simple way, cause the political violence: political actors are always using (by transforming) ethnicity through violence to acquire and keep wealth and power. And without that insight, we will understand very little about the temporality of this conflict, neither its history nor its future. | <urn:uuid:fa886e9a-b683-4fa9-b6ac-826a03e98072> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2011/03/18/our-deafening-silence-on-the-coast-of-africa-cote-divoire-and-our-myth-of-continents/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560282926.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095122-00390-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962775 | 4,585 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Auto repair technicians don't necessary need postsecondary education; however, this training is becoming preferred. Most programs that prepare individuals for first-time employment in the auto repair field lead to a diploma, certificate or associate's degree in automotive technology or automotive repair. Non-degree programs can take between six months and a year, while associate's degree programs take around two years. Bachelor's programs are available but are typically designed for those who already have an associate's degree and want to pursue advanced study in automotive repair.
Students in these programs may complete some of their coursework online; however, courses usually have a hands-on component that teaches auto repair skills. Some schools have an on-site repair shop where students gain experience, while other schools require internships or cooperative education at a local shop. Graduates of auto repair programs may be prepared to take the Automotive Service Excellence (ASE) auto tech certification exams, as well as pursue continuing education in specialties like high performance auto repair and hybrid engine repair.
Here are some common concepts taught in auto repair classes:
- Professional service writing
- Emissions repair
- Differences between manual and power steering
- Technical calculations
- Appropriate shop procedures
List of Classes
Engine Repair Course
In this first required auto repair class, students attend classroom lectures and participate in hands-on shop classes where they focus on internal combustion engines, shop protocol and safety precautions.
Students learn the theory of engine operation. They identify engine parts and how they work individually and as a whole. Lessons include the radiator, cooling system, belts, carburetor, pistons and piston rings. Students make visual assessments, take measurements using appropriate diagnostic instruments and perform inspections, tune ups and general repairs.
Steering, Suspension and Alignment Course
This course covers components of manual and power steering systems, including the steering wheel, steering column and steering shaft. Students identify needed repairs based on visual inspection and listening for particular noises.
Shop practice covers wheel alignment and adjustment and suspension system operation and repairs. Students learn how to repair and replace tires and related parts like wheel bearings and rims. In addition to gaining experience with tools used for diagnostics and repairs, students learn how to dispose of hazardous fluids.
Electrical Systems and Repair Course
Students in this required class get classroom and lab experience working on batteries, starters and ignition systems, with an emphasis on safe practices. They learn basic car wiring and how to work from wiring diagrams. Instructors teach troubleshooting using diagnostic tools like an oscilloscope and digital volt ohm meter. Most courses include peripheral electrical components like turn signals, windshield wipers and navigation systems.
Manual and Automatic Transmissions Course
Auto techs practice working on manual and automatic transmissions, drive shafts and drive trains in the classroom and in the auto shop. Coursework in this required class generally covers pneumatic, hydraulic, mechanical and 4-wheel drive systems, along with applicable electronic components. Students practice using system-specific diagnostic tools. They learn shop safety and the right way to use shop equipment and how to handle toxic transmission fluids.
Brake Systems Course
Braking systems are a required component of an auto repair program. Drum and disc, anti-lock and parking brake systems are studied in classroom settings and in auto labs. Students work on visual and mechanical inspection for preventive maintenance and repair activities. Auto repair health and safety standards specific to brake work are included in brake systems coursework. | <urn:uuid:cae9b6f7-a24a-4de5-9296-5be9f9cee0d4> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://study.com/auto_repair_classes.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279189.36/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00057-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.927552 | 700 | 2.71875 | 3 |
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What do you get when you cross entrepreneurial spirit with a love for animals? Pet business ideas.
For those who love to work with animals and also want to start a business, there’s nothing better than combining a passion with a way to make a lucrative—and fulfilling—career.
Of course, launching a business and making it profitable takes a lot of hard work. But when you get to work on something you love, the process goes a lot more smoothly. Consider these pet business ideas to find the one that best speaks to your interests.
1. Pet sitting
While pet sitting was once an after school job for teens, it’s grown into much more. Many pet owners want a customized, boutique experience for their animals while they’re away. Not only is pet-sitting a fun business to operate because you get to interact with animals daily, but it’s also a low-cost business to start and operate.
One of the first things you should do when learning how to start a pet sitting business is to refine your offerings. You might specialize in pet sitting for animals that need extensive care or carve out a niche where you only take care of cats.
2. Animal boarding
Many people choose to board their animals while they travel so they get to interact with other animals and people while they’re away. Boarding facilities have started extending their services and offerings, creating luxury pet hotels instead of bare-bones boarding centers.
By offering more and better services, boarding facilities are also charging higher prices. Some animal boarding businesses have extended their offering to not just full-day services while people are out of town, but to also include doggy daycare services for those who work long hours.
3. Dog training
Many people love their animals but work long hours which makes it difficult to provide education and training. That’s where a dog training service comes in.
With a low-cost startup and minimal tools needed, you can start a dog training business with very little cash on hand. While not required, it can help to build your credibility with customers by having a professional dog training certification.
One of the benefits of this type of business is that you don’t need office space. You can train dogs at your home, at your clients’ homes, or by partnering with a pet store or boarding facility. There’s also a lot of flexibility in what services you can offer as a dog trainer. You might offer group lessons, private lessons, or to train dog owners on how to train their own dogs.
4. Dog walker
One of the many reasons that people love dogs is the pure joy in which they celebrate life. While most everything makes dogs happy, there are few things they like better than taking a walk.
When you start a dog walking business, you get paid to make dogs happy, get exercise, and spend time outside. While rainy days make the job a little bit harder, in general starting a dog walking business is mostly enjoyable.
5. Doggy daycare
For dog parents who work long hours but still want to provide their dogs with an enriching, fulfilled life, there’s doggy daycare. Doggy daycare centers let dog owners drop off their furry friends in the morning and then pick them back up in the evening. During the day while the owners are working, the doggy daycare center provides fun, games, walks, feeding, and outside time for the dogs.
If you’re looking for just the right pet business idea, it’s important to note that this is one idea that will require some startup funding. A doggy daycare requires land, a building, and equipment to outfit the facility. Many doggy daycare facilities offer a premium experience with outdoor space, health check-ups, toys, and cameras so owners can see what their dogs are doing while they’re away.
6. Poop scooping
While this is a job that no one really wants to do, it is a pet business idea. Getting this business started is pretty simple; you’ll need shovels, waste containers, a vehicle for transporting, and an approved disposal site.
If you choose this type of business as your pet business idea, don’t limit yourself to just working with residential customers. Make sure to explore all the options by offering your services to dog parks, boarding facilities, doggy daycare centers, and vet clinics.
7. Social media pet personality
From Grumpy Cat to Lil Bub to Marnie to Jiffpom—there are numerous social media accounts dedicated to animals that have become famous. Many of these accounts are written as if the animal in question is speaking to the reader. With enough followers, you can start monetizing your account through sponsored content, ads, and more.
So, if you have the social media skills and think you can turn your pet’s inner monologue into a business, then this could be a creative and fun business idea.
8. Grooming services
One of the many aspects of pet ownership is ensuring that pets are well-groomed. Grooming services can include bathing, hair trims, breed-specific styling, and nail trims. One of the benefits of grooming services as a pet business idea is that there are a number of ways to start this type of business.
You can start your grooming business as an independent contractor who works with established salons and builds experience. You could then invest in your own salon space or a customized truck which would then become your mobile grooming business.
9. Pet toy designer
If there’s one thing pet owners love to do, it’s spoil their pets. If you’re creative and have a love for crafting, you could start a business creating toys for animals. While most people jump to dogs and cats when they think of toys, there’s a wide range of animals that interact with toys. In addition to making toys, you could consider making habitats.
10. Animal blogger and expert
For those with a knack for writing and some knowledge about animals, the pet business idea for you may be blogging. One of the best parts about starting a blogging business is that you can do it from anywhere.
By writing great articles, you can gain followers and become an affiliate marketer. Bloggers generally make money by endorsing products and providing readers with a link to purchase. Once people make a purchase, the blogger gets a small percentage of the money. Ads and sponsored content are other ways you can monetize your blog.
11. Pet photographer
Pets aren’t just cohabitants in our homes. Many people consider their pets family, like small furry children. As family, pets’ lives are often documented through photoshoots. By combining a love of animals with a skill for photography, you’ve got another pet business idea. Being a pet photographer is a low-cost business to start, but it will require patience if you want to capture the unique personality of each pet you work with.
12. Pet transportation
While many of the pet business ideas on this list are new developments in recent years, this one is still on the cutting edge. All you need to start a pet transportation business is a reliable vehicle, various sizes of pet crates, and the drive to find customers.
13. Pet travel agent
This might sound like a crazy pet business idea, but you might just be surprised how often this type of service is needed.
A pet travel agent can help people who travel a lot or are moving to take their pets with them and make it a peaceful, seamless experience. A pet travel agent could make recommendations on how to make the trip easier for animals, care items you’ll need for long journeys, pet-friendly recommendations, rules for crossing borders, and handle documentation to allow your pet to legally travel with you and enter foreign countries.
14. Pet treats bakery
Dogs and cats love treats as much as any human. If you have a skill for baking, the right pet business idea for you just might be to learn how to start a bakery and sell treats for pets. Your bakery can be run out of a storefront or from your home kitchen, depending on what’s right for you.
15. Online pet expert
If you’re knowledgeable about pet health, maintenance, training, happiness, or any other aspect of raising an animal, you could become an online pet expert. You have several platform options for this business idea, including blogging, a podcast, or YouTube channel.
16. Boutique pet toy store
If you have previous experience in retail and are looking for a pet business idea, you might be interested in opening a boutique pet store. Your pet store can source the best items for animal lovers from toys, to accessories, to food. You can operate your business out of a brick-and-mortar store or entirely online.
17. Pet accessories designer
Pet owners want to bedeck their pets in unique accessories that fit their style and personality. If you’ve got an eye for fashion, you may choose to become a pet accessory designer. If you’re crafting, you can hand-make and sew your designs or you can source items pre-made and customize them for each order.
18. Animal trainer
While most people think only of dogs when they hear animal trainer, most animals can be trained. If you work well with a number of animals, you can offer your services as a trainer. Many people with pets want to be able to take their pets to different places and to ensure they’ll behave appropriately. Becoming an animal trainer is a great business idea for animal lovers.
19. Cat cafe operator
The only thing that can make a local cafe better is cats. Grab a cup of coffee and snuggle a cat at the same time. Recently, cat cafes have been popping up around the country. Some of these cafes are independent operators, while others work with local humane societies to get cats adopted.
20. Pet finder
Pets are family. When they go missing, it’s distressing for the entire family. If you’re good at finding lost things, you could specialize in helping people to find their lost pets. As a pet finder, you’ll not only work to find missing pets, but you’ll help families to become whole again.
21. Pet funeral provider
Just as people spoil their pets in life, they spoil them in death. Many people are now opting to provide their pets with funerals. Don’t believe it? The industry made $100 million in 2016. Providers offer cremation or burial for pets, depending on what the owner wants.
22. Pet masseuse
While many of these pet business ideas focus on meeting the basic needs of animals, there’s also those that go above and beyond. Some animal lovers are now investing in massages for their pets. If you want to start a business that offers pet massages or any other type of spa-like treatment, you’ll likely need special training and a certification, so keep these things in mind.
23. Pet supply store
While there are many specialty stores out there for pet accessories or baked goods, there’s also the traditional pet supply store. If you’re looking for a pet business idea, opening a pet supply store allows you to become a one-stop-shop for pet owners. Anything they might need, you carry and sell.
24. Animal whisperer
Some pet owners notice behavior changes in their animals after a move or a traumatic incident. Getting to the bottom of the behavior change can be difficult, especially if the animal has become destructive. If you’re good at understanding animals, becoming a pet whisperer could be just the right pet business idea for you.
25. Pet marketing
Combine a knowledge for marketing with a business idea for animal lovers and you’ve got pet marketing. A pet marketing business is simply a niche of marketing. You can start a marketing business that works only with brands that make products for pets. Before you open your business, be sure you know everything you can about social media marketing for small business.
This article originally appeared on JustBusiness, a subsidiary of NerdWallet. | <urn:uuid:a49762e3-9cff-4242-a695-58743fd70259> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/small-business/pet-business-ideas | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573104.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20220817183340-20220817213340-00474.warc.gz | en | 0.950547 | 2,616 | 1.625 | 2 |
Alma Mater Under Construction (Headless) with Crane and Workers | University of Illinois Archives
image (JPEG Image, 238.26 KB)
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Workers use a crane to move the Alma Mater statue during the construction of it, before its placement at the University of Illinois.
Geographic Coverage: Chicago
Found in RS: 26/20/16, Box: 15, Folder: Alma Mater, 1922-29
Original images measures 221.6 cm W X 5.5 cm H
Copyright Alfred Berchen/American Art Bronze Fdy..
Copyright of this image is NOT owned by the University of Illinois. Please contact us for more information about this image. | <urn:uuid:a7012d6c-235d-492a-9191-a6d2234ca662> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://archon.library.illinois.edu/archives/index.php?p=digitallibrary/digitalcontent&id=499&q=-1%25252527 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572198.93/warc/CC-MAIN-20220815175725-20220815205725-00278.warc.gz | en | 0.834564 | 155 | 1.875 | 2 |
This comment by Eric MacDonald deserves to be spread around.
One of the things that bothers me more than anything in the absurd assumption that is being made when people talk about the compatibility of religion and science is the sheer diversity, and, so often, perversity, of religious belief. Religions come in so many different shapes and sizes, that the claim that religion is consistent with science is almost certainly false for most religions and for most religious beliefs. If the claim is being made that practicing a kind of cumulus shaped spirituality, without any clear ontological commitments, is consistent with doing science, then, of course the answer is, yes, there is no problem. You can even do it and take an interest in collecting match boxes. But if the religious belief happens to be that someone, somewhere, has authority to speak in the name of a transcendent being for which there is no evidence, that this transcendent being speaks to and communes with, human beings, that it has made an appearance in various guises in the world, that it causes miracles to happen and bodies to rise, or brings luck and good fortune to the favoured, punishes the wicked (for any given religious definition of what that word mean ins its various religious iterations) and authorises outrageous immoralities and injustices in its name, then it is not compatible, and it fatuous to suggest otherwise.
Yes, a cumulus-shaped spirituality with no clear ontology to be seen is consistent with science, or it can be. But of course, that's not something the anti-accommodationist crew have ever denied. Eric makes the point well.
We're not saying that there can never be any logical consistency between science and a sufficiently thinned out (or amorphously shaped) sort of religion. As we've explained so often, that was never the point.
But most real-world religion has plenty of ontology in its diet, and a lot more substance than a cloud. You can't move from the sort-of acceptability of certain kinds of ontologically starved or fuzzy or nice religion (or the kindness and niceness of your local Anglican or Lutheran minister) to a stark claim that: "Religion and science are compatible." That's a pious hope or a marketing slogan. It's the fairyhouse of wishes, baby, not a truth about the world. | <urn:uuid:50bf5fa3-ccc0-4315-af02-9a1d5f9c7855> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://metamagician3000.blogspot.com/2010/06/cumulus-shaped-spirituality.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281331.15/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00220-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955501 | 484 | 1.679688 | 2 |
Using the analgesic at least once in the previous year was tied to a 43% greater likelihood of current wheezing symptoms (OR 1.43, 95% CI 1.33 to 1.53), according to Richard Beasley, MBChB, of the Medical Research Institute of New Zealand, in Wellington, and colleagues.
Taking acetaminophen more often -- at least once a month -- was associated with more than a doubling of the chances of having current wheezing symptoms (OR 2.51, 95% CI 2.33 to 2.70), the researchers reported online in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.
Beasley and his colleagues had previously found that the use of acetaminophen both early in life and currently was associated with elevated odds of asthma in 6- and 7-year-olds using data from Phase Three of the International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood (ISAAC).
They set out to see whether the findings extended to 13- and 14-year-olds in the same study. The current analysis included 322,959 teens from 113 centers in 50 countries.
The participants completed written and video questionnaires about acetaminophen use and asthma symptoms. The videos contained five scenes of clinical asthma and asked the participants whether they had had similar symptoms.
Most of the teens (73%) reported using acetaminophen at least once in the previous year (medium use), and 30% said they had used it at least once a month (high use).
In addition to current wheeze, any acetaminophen use was associated with increased odds of having severe asthma and of ever having asthma (odds ratios ranging from 1.24 to 2.75). The findings were adjusted for maternal education and smoking, current diet, and siblings.
Any acetaminophen use was also associated with higher odds of both rhinoconjunctivitis and eczema (odds ratios ranging from 1.31 to 2.39).
The associations were relatively consistent in all major regions of the world.
The population attributable risk for asthma symptoms that was associated with current acetaminophen use was 41%, "suggesting that if the associations were causal, they would be of major public health significance," Beasley and his colleagues wrote.
They noted that potential mechanisms linking acetaminophen and asthma might include oxidant-induced airway inflammation and enhanced Th2 allergic immune responses.
According to the researchers, the study could not rule out the possibility of confounding by indication -- that the associations were explained by the close link between acetaminophen use and respiratory morbidity in early childhood.
Confounding by reverse causality -- that asthmatics need more acetaminophen because of increased rates of febrile illness and pain -- could also explain the findings, they noted.
Because of the cross-sectional nature of the study, it was not possible to determine whether the relationships were causal, although a second, longitudinal study in that journal suggested that they were.
Alemayehu Amberbir, MPH, of Addis Ababa University School of Public Health in Ethiopia, and colleagues followed 1,006 children born to women living near Butajira, Ethiopia.
The use of acetaminophen in the first year of life was associated with incident asthma between the ages of 1 and 3 for one to three tablets in the previous month (OR 1.88, 95% CI 1.03 to 3.44) and also for four or more tablets (OR 7.25, 95% CI 2.02 to 25.95).
"As the use of acetaminophen preceded the outcomes, a causal explanation is increasingly likely," Amberbir and colleagues wrote.
Researchers from both studies called for randomized trials to explore the issue.
The individual centers and collaborators that undertook ISAAC Phase Three were funded by numerous sources throughout the world. The main source of funding for the ISAAC International Data Center (IIDC) is the BUPA Foundation. Many New Zealand government and private funding bodies have contributed support for the IIDC during the periods of field work and data compilation. Glaxo Wellcome International Medical Affairs supported the regional coordination for Phase Three and the IIDC.
The Ethiopian study was funded by an Asthma U.K. grant and the Wellcome Trust.
Zalman S. Agus, MD Emeritus Professor
University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and Dorothy Caputo, MA, RN, BC-ADM, CDE, Nurse Planner
American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care MedicineSource Reference: Beasley R, et al "Acetaminophen use and risk of asthma, rhinoconjunctivitis, and eczema in adolescents: ISAAC Phase Three" Am J Respir Crit Care Med 2010; DOI: 10.1164/rccm.201005-0757OC.
American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care MedicineSource Reference: Amberbir A, et al "The role of acetaminophen and geohelminth infection on that incidence of wheeze and eczema: A longitudinal birth-cohort study" Am J Respir Crit Care Med 2010. | <urn:uuid:6a4312d0-7149-4aa9-b739-abf958fd3b14> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.medpagetoday.com/pediatrics/asthma/21656 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560284352.26/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095124-00200-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948705 | 1,071 | 2.75 | 3 |
How to be Popular
The desire for popularity
Most people would agree that they would rather be popular. What does that mean exactly? For some it means having as many people like or approve of them as possible. For some it means "fitting in". For others it could mean having millions of screaming fans who can't get enough of them. Popularity is different for everyone, as are the reasons for wanting it.
Some may feel this desire because they are insecure within themselves and crave the approval of others for validation. Some may be social butterflies and simply enjoy the company and experiences that come with having a wide range of "friends". Still others may feel that they are entitled and deserving of a fan base, seeing as how they are so super special, who wouldn't want to love and adore them?
Whatever the reason and whomever the person, popularity is.... popular.
Checklist for Awesomeness
There are certain trait and characteristics that go along with being popular. While it isn't necessary to have all of them, the more you posses the higher the likelihood of you being popular.
- Charm/wit/grace ~ Charisma!
- Sense of humor
- Good (or great looks)
- Respect for others
Confidence is key!
When you are confident you emit a certain radiance that can be felt by others. You have a manner of speaking, walking, and holding yourself that tells others that you respect yourself, you respect them, and you are comfortable in your own skin.
Confidence is attractive. People are instantly drawn to it like a magnet! They want to be by you, talk to you, learn from you... and maybe some of them are hoping that a little bit of it will rub off on them too.
Over confidence or arrogance will have the opposite affect. It works as a repellent as does lack of confidence.
When you love yourself you are able to love and be loved by others.
When you respect yourself you are able to respect and be respected by others.
The one thing that every popular person has is confidence; in themselves, in their knowledge, in their abilities, and/or in their hearts.
A little bit of me and a whole lot of you
Another nifty thing about popular people is where they place their focus. While they may be in the spotlight, they aren't the ones controlling that light. They place their spotlight on you, rather than themselves!
Everyone wants to feel accepted, appreciated, noticed, and valid. People who have true popularity have obtained this by caring for and giving those things to others. You want to be around them because they aren't self-focused, rather they are interested in you!
If you want to be popular and have others think you're awesome, you've got to start showing more interest in them than you do in yourself. When you do, people will see you as:
- A good listener
You'll have more compliments than you know what to do with, all because you took the focus off of yourself and placed it on them instead. Making them feel special, appreciated, understood, and accepted lifts you up higher than all of the self-glorifying talk in the world.
Funny & Popular
Sad & lacking respect
It's what is on the inside that counts
If you look at some of the famous people around today, they aren't all dashing and perfect. Some of them are downright goofy looking! So how did they get to be so popular? Why do so many people love them?
It's because they have it where it counts! They have the charm, the wit, the humor, the charisma... they have the ability to take your focus off of what they look like and put it somewhere else. They have confidence and typically a unique style they have accepted and are proud of. They are comfortable in their own skin!
Now, not every celebrity is like this. Some do rely on their looks, their voices, or some other talent or ability that sets them apart from the rest. Just because you're rich & famous, doesn't automatically give you "true" popularity. The ones who are fake either end up dropping off the face of the planet, or they are the ones in and out of rehab more times than you can count. They lack that all important self-respect and respect for others.
Be who you are!
The qualities that you look for in others, the ones you wish you were like... stop wishing! Create those traits within yourself. Be comfortable with who YOU are instead of wanting to be like someone else.
There isn't anyone else in the world just like you (not even if you have an identical twin)! When you love yourself, respect yourself, and are proud of who you are just as you are... then it won't even be a matter of "trying" to be popular. People will just gravitate toward you!
The best way to be awesome is to know that you already are awesome. | <urn:uuid:49e50d5e-25da-4c7e-b150-8b65f97d7b90> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://hubpages.com/relationships/Popularity-The-Art-of-Being-Awesome | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573172.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20220818063910-20220818093910-00268.warc.gz | en | 0.977986 | 1,064 | 1.6875 | 2 |
Dollis Hill House to be commemorated later this month
- Credit: Archant
A community trust will erect information boards to commemorate the history of a beloved mansion, visited by 19th century prime minister William Gladstone, which was demolished two years ago.
A new memento will be raised on the footprints of Dollis Hill House, once a holiday retreat for Mr Gladstone, and a hotspot for American author Mark Twain, which was destroyed in 2012.
The boards, funded by the Dollis Hill House Trust, are aimed at delivering a slice of history, exploring how the felled mansion was used and enjoyed by famous faces and residents in the past, before it was reduced to rubble.
Gill Close, the chair of the Trust, said: “It was very sad to lose the house but we want local people to be able to find out about their community’s heritage.”
She continued: “We also celebrate the centenary of the house being a hospital during the First World War.”
Brent council appealed to Eric Pickles Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government to give the go-ahead for the destruction of the grade-II listed building,
They claimed there was no “viable” option for the future of the building, which had become depilated and subject to four arson attacks.
- 1 Brent tenant 'distressed' at housing waiting list change
- 2 Polio virus detected in sewage in Brent
- 3 New Kilburn mural to highlight borough's cultural heritage
- 4 Man shot in his heart outside Queen's Park flats named
- 5 Harlesden bar's licence suspended following fights and noise
- 6 Man due in court over Wembley murder
- 7 Unarmed boy stabbed to death in his home by group ‘out for blood’, court told
- 8 Hundreds of children strip searched by Met Police
- 9 Polio: Symptoms, vaccines and what you need to know
- 10 Party patrols return as barber’s rave shut down
Mr Pickles gave the green light, despite fierce opposition by campaigners, who claimed there was a long standing agreement preventing the house from being knocked down including a conveyance which was agreed upon on February 19, 1900.
The unveiling ceremony will take place in Gladstone Park by Dollis Hill Lane on June 19 at 10.45am. | <urn:uuid:e7cde976-dc43-45c7-bd3e-ce5f23d05063> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.kilburntimes.co.uk/news/dollis-hill-house-to-be-commemorated-later-this-month-3719762 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571536.89/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811224716-20220812014716-00272.warc.gz | en | 0.966308 | 493 | 2.109375 | 2 |
Gold Imports by India Seen Falling as Central Bank Widens Curbs
India, the world’s biggest consumer of gold, widened curbs on imports to narrow a record current-account deficit after shipments surged in the past two months. The rupee climbed.
The restrictions on overseas purchases by banks on a consignment basis will be expanded to include state-run trading companies and others authorized to directly import gold, the Reserve Bank of India said in a notification on its website. The central bank also tightened financing norms for inbound shipments. The restrictions come after Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram yesterday said the country can’t afford high levels of imports and policies will be reviewed if needed.
Bullion slumped the most in three decades in April, sparking a buying frenzy for coins and jewelry in India and prompting the government to take steps to reduce demand. Imports will decline in the short term, Haresh Soni, chairman of the All India Gems & Jewellery Trade Federation, said by phone from New Delhi.
“This will affect the supply chain and the domestic cost of gold will go up as bankers will charge extra for buying gold,” he said. Premiums paid by jewelers to banks may rise to $6 per ounce to $8 an ounce over the London cash price from $3-$3.5 a week earlier, he said.
The central bank on May 13 limited imports by banks on a consignment basis to only those required to meet the genuine needs of exporters in an attempt to rein in the current-account deficit, the broadest measure of trade. The bulk of the imports by the banks before the curbs were on a consignment basis, according to the central bank.
India imported 117 metric tons of gold in April after prices entered a bear market, according to Soni. Purchases were estimated at 162 tons in May, according to the Finance Ministry.
Gold has fallen 16 percent this year on speculation the U.S. Federal Reserve may roll back stimulus. The precious metal plunged 14 percent in the two days through April 15, the biggest such drop since 1983.
“Supply will be more channelized and normalized now,” said Rajesh Mehta, chairman of Rajesh Exports Ltd. (RJEX), India’s biggest gold jewelry exporter. “An unnecessary glut was created in the market because of higher imports, that will ease now.”
The rupee rose 0.6 percent to 56.4525 per dollar in Mumbai today. The shortfall in the current account, the broadest measure of trade, was $32.6 billion in the last quarter of 2012 and is the biggest risk to the $1.9 trillion economy, according to the central bank.
The government today sold inflation-linked bonds for the first time in 15 years, aiming to provide investors with an alternative to gold as a buffer against price gains.
Linkers for 10 billion rupees ($177 million) were auctioned at a real yield of 1.44 percent, the central bank said in a statement.
To contact the reporter on this story: Swansy Afonso in Mumbai at firstname.lastname@example.org
To contact the editor responsible for this story: James Poole at email@example.com | <urn:uuid:e0573692-7621-4ac3-9d40-d92ab50b0f78> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://www.bloomberg.com/news/print/2013-06-04/gold-imports-by-india-seen-falling-as-central-bank-widens-curbs.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988719041.14/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183839-00168-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943357 | 686 | 1.570313 | 2 |
You’ve been noticing unhealthy alterations in your teen’s weight and also you want to have a heart-to-heart about this. But speaking with teenagers is tricky. How will you be certain they’ll hear everything you state?
Be confident: they are really paying attention to you personally, claims Sara Forman, MD, medical chief of adolescent medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital. “They may well not acknowledge it, nevertheless they hear the message.”
There’s no one-size-fits-all way for tackling fat difficulties with teens. Your work is always to begin the discussion, and keep consitently the lines of interaction open along with your kid.
And sooner is preferable to later on.
“The more you avoid one thing, the more taboo it becomes,” claims Dyan Hes, MD, medical manager of Gramercy Pediatrics in new york. “The problem can not stay static in the shadows. You need to speak about it.”
Conversations get more efficiently whenever you prepare out what you’ll say just before state it, claims Michaela M. Bucchianeri, PhD, visiting assistant teacher of therapy at Gustavus Adolphus College. She’s learned moms and dad conversations on healthy eating and fat.
Talk someplace basic, she indicates. Avoid places just like the dinning table. And not take it up in the front of other individuals.
“Specific statements in what you’ve got noticed perform best,” Bucchianeri claims. “Try in order to prevent basic statements that might trigger defensiveness in your son or daughter.”
Think Outside the Scale
Your focus — along with your teen’s — must be on the health that is overall human anatomy size, Forman claims. “Talk about healthful eating, and exactly how to balance that with workout, rest, and health that is mental,” she claims. “Those are typical key pieces to leading a healthy lifestyle.”
In reality, a well-meaning discussion that’s nearly fat or clothes size can backfire, Bucchianeri says. “Research highly shows that parents’ feedback that encourage dieting or convey stress to lose excess weight are related to emotions of pity and human body dissatisfaction within the youngster,” she states.
Once you give attention to health over pounds, your child is much more likely to make food that is good and stay actually active.
Function as noticeable Change You Need To See
If you talk the talk, make certain you’re additionally walking the stroll.
“One the best way moms and dads might help set their kiddies up for healthier practices would be to model those habits that are same,” Bucchianeri says. Tidy up your diet plan, decrease your stress, and stay active, both along with your children as well as on your personal.
And when you’re wrestling with your own personal human anatomy issues, utilize that as a training device, claims Hes, that is additionally a manager for the American Board of Obesity Medicine. “as a parent you canвЂListen say, i have struggled with my weight all my entire life. I do not would like you to truly have the exact same dilemmas We do. I must say I need to get healthy. Why don’t we take action together.’”
Nurture Their Nutrition Knowledge
Review the fundamentals along with your teenager to be certain they know what “eating healthy” really means. “So many teens breakfast that is skip” Hes says. “Or they do not understand that eating late at evening makes you placed on weight.”
Make sure to mention stability, too, Forman claims. “They should comprehend that there surely is no body food that is bad,” she claims. “Fruits and veggies should always be area of the dish. Fats can be a essential area of the diet, since are proteins and carbs. But having a cookie on event is okay, too.”
Turn to experts
When you yourself have severe issues regarding the teen’s health, a healthcare professional may bring satisfaction for you personally as well as your son or daughter. You can easily talk to a health care provider, therapist, or dietitian to obtain professional advice.
“Sometimes moms and dads perceive the youngster’s fat become way too much, or sufficient, and that is maybe perhaps maybe not proper,” Forman says. “So checking in because of the pediatrician, ensuring that your suspicion should indeed be a thing that requires to checked, are a good idea.”
Concentrate on the Good
The essential thing that is important can perform for your teen is always to verify they understand you’re on the part, Bucchianeri claims.
“Knowing them regardless of their body size can be a powerful encouragement, and the support they need to adopt healthier habits,” she says that you love.
Sara Forman, MD, medical chief, unit of adolescent medication and manager, Outpatient Eating Disorders Program, Boston Children’s Hospital, Boston; associate professor of pediatrics, Harvard Medical class, Cambridge, MA.
Dyan Hes, MD, medical manager, Gramercy Pediatrics, ny, ny; manager, United states Board of Obesity Medicine; medical associate professor of pediatrics, Weill healthcare university of Cornell University, nyc, ny.
Michaela M. Bucchianeri, PhD. Visiting associate professor, psychology, Gustavus Adolphus university, St. Peter, Minnesota. | <urn:uuid:85d156bd-ef4a-4297-ad25-54ed14a7fae1> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | http://promarkfilters.com/let-me-make-it-clear-more-info-on-how-exactly-to-117/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573623.4/warc/CC-MAIN-20220819035957-20220819065957-00673.warc.gz | en | 0.939381 | 1,350 | 1.914063 | 2 |
What tugs at your heart-strings? For me, my heart hurts deeply for children who are growing up in unstable environments. Domestic violence, emotional distress, poverty or adversity tend to create chaos for these tender and impressionable hearts. Several years ago, I decided to reach into the lives of parents in at-risk communities and offer parenting discussion groups to encourage parents to create positive interaction with their kids.
I called the program ENGAGE Positive Parenting Initiative. ENGAGE stands for Equipping the Next Generation to Advance and Grow through Education, Encouragement and Example (our three core values). We are expanding and growing and now have classes in five locations. My vision for ENGAGE is to expand across the nation using our powerful and unique discussion-style format to reach parents.
As the author of over twenty parenting books, I have designed this program to reach parents where they are at and empower them to rise up to their own responsibility in the home. My desire is for parents to encourage and equip their kids to use their God-given gifts to make a difference in this world. If you share my desire to make a difference in society by strengthening parent’s responsibility in the home, I invite you to join me on this journey. There are three ways to connect:
- Join us as a volunteer to lead a parenting class.*
- Connect us with community outreaches in your city.*
- Donate to help provide materials for parents and expand our reach.
North Texas Giving day is a one-day opportunity to expand your giving. On Thursday, Sept 17 please consider giving to your favorite organizations – and my hope is that ENGAGE will be one of them.
Here’s the link that will be live at 6:00 am to midnight on Thursday Sept 17. Important note: You must put ENGAGE in the notes so that the donation will go to ENGAGE.
To learn more about ENGAGE go to: www.engageparenting.com
*To volunteer or connect us with an organization in your area please contact us at firstname.lastname@example.org | <urn:uuid:a8ce8404-8af8-41ef-96b7-5dfe526ae2af> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://positivewomanconnection.com/category/relationships/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571222.74/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810222056-20220811012056-00672.warc.gz | en | 0.935403 | 427 | 1.742188 | 2 |
I am in touch with a 52-year-old woman who is suffering panic attacks after a visit from a council enforcement officer. He knocked on the door, asked her name, was let in. Once in her sitting room he set upon her in a manner that she describes as suitable for a mass murderer or hardened criminal. He said she had committed an offence and could spend six months in prison. Partway through the tirade it transpired that he was filming her: he was filming her in own front room, without her consent.
Her offence was a pallet left over from flooring, which the lady couldn’t carry and her builder was due to come and remove a few hours later. A perfectly ordinary, understandable situation. She had moved the pallet to the least obstructive position, and called her builder to remind him to come. The Enforcement Officer was deaf to her explanations and left a £300 fine for fly-tipping before he would leave her alone.
The threshold of a home was traditionally seen as a serious, even a sacred line. When classical states developed public forces who had certain powers over private citizens, these forces generally could not enter the home. Roman soldiers were barred from crossing the threshold of a private home.
In more recent times, law made a distinction between actions inside and outside the home. The Public Order Act 1986, which creates very questionable and broad offences of ‘harassment, alarm and distress’, nonetheless did not cover any speech or writing delivered within a private dwelling.
This respect for the home has gone. Now, in officials’ minds, there is no line there. When they cross the threshold, are invited into someone’s hallway or front room, they do not see this as imposing different conditions upon them. If they can film someone in a street, they think, they can film them in their home. If they would harangue them in the street, they harangue them in their home.
The line of a person’s dwelling is seen as blurry and beside the point. People have been fined for public offences committed while standing on their own land. One lady was fined for litter after she put a cigarette out on her doorstep; another was fined for a dog offence while she was standing on her own front lawn. One man was told that he couldn’t smoke for half an hour before council officers visited his flat, since his flat would count as a ‘place of work’ for the officers. The presence of a state officer means that your flat is transformed into the state’s domain, subject to its specifications and conditions.
Indeed, if anything, coercive powers are particularly targeted on the home, with more strenuous conditions imposed inside than outside our private walls. For example, the government scrapped a planned offence of causing ‘nuisance and annoyance’ in public, because it was too broad, but kept the offence in relation to housing. People are pursued for actions in their home that would not be an offence in the street. One woman is currently fighting a Community Protection Order which prohibits her from causing harassment, alarm and distress to her neighbours. Evidence cited included the fact that her front door slammed loudly and she liked to sing in her flat. A loundly slamming office door would not be targeted for criminal sanction, nor would singing in the street.
Social housing residents are perhaps particularly targeted: for example, Scottish councils and housing associations are apparently looking at banning smoking in local authority homes. But the fact that your home is your own doesn’t seem to make a great deal of difference, either. Councils have issued ‘Community Protection Notices’ ordering people to cut their grass, trim their bushes, clean their windows, or even to not cry within their home. These powers also allow councils to carry out works on the outside of your property without your consent, then bill you for the cost.
Such measures fly in the face of the reality of the home: what it is, what is means to us. This is why a drubbing from a council official in your front room can have such an effect. When an officer harangues and films you in your sitting room this can transform your relation to your home, and therefore to something even more fundamental. The home is our domain, it is the space protected from the demands, pressures and judgements of the outside world. We set forth from the home to do battle, to take the hits, and retire back to it at the end of the day. Our home grounds us. A violation of this space can unseat the very basis of our personhood.
So there is still a line at the threshold and it still matters. When people are being hassled by state authorities for petty matters, we must defend them, defend the line with them. Our doorsteps are the barricades upon which personhood depends. | <urn:uuid:25b56d5e-7123-4d59-ba0e-1fea94ec6fed> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://notesonfreedom.com/page/4/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571758.42/warc/CC-MAIN-20220812200804-20220812230804-00677.warc.gz | en | 0.984675 | 998 | 1.921875 | 2 |
This is the first known Batsuit created by Bruce Wayne. Next to nothing is known about the materials used or how it was made. It was created in the Batcave facility after studying many different types of battle armor and weaponry from cultures all over the world from different eras.
Throttling Nick and Eddie
At first Wayne only appeared as Batman to assault and frighten common street criminals, never being seen by pedestrians. He began to build up himself as a myth or urban legend. Later Bruce used this suit to frighten two muggers named Nick and Eddie after he witnessed them robbing a family in an alley near the cathedral. After the starting the pair he landed near and began to slowly approach. Bruce allowed himself to be shot by Nick's revolver, knocking him off his feet so he could rise up unharmed to baffle them moments later. The chest plate proved near invulnerable to bullets fired mid-range with no visible damage. Bruce drew a Batarang and line from the brass utility belt and hurled at Nick's leg.
Raid on Axis Chemicals
The suit was used again when Batman arrived at Axis Chemicals to apprehend Jack Napier. Bruce got wind of Napier's raid at Axis by renewing security recordings of the party at Wayne Manor. Before donning the costume Bruce removed his glasses and leaned back in his chair, appearing to almost go into a trance-like to transition into the desired mindset while within the costume. The Commissioner also wanted Napier to be taken alive instead of being killed. Grissom's men had the upper hand against the police before Batman arrived. By this time Batman had abandoned using wired Batarangs and drew a hi-tech spring-action reel with a special speargun attachment. He fired this weapon to shoot a wire on a thug and pull him down off the catwalk to be hanged from his coat. This not only instilled fear in the mobster but the image Batman looming over it made Gordon's jaw drop. When Napier was about to shoot Gordon, Batman quickly interned - appearing to glide with the cape, with a line from the reel hooked to his belt to an overhead pipe. He quickly kicked the revolver from Napier's hand, lifting him off his feat to intimidate him but was forced to let him go when the goon Bob held Gordon at gunpoint. Napier shot and killed Eckhart during a brief time where Batman appeared to have vanished. When Napier peripherally spotted him, Batman was able to the gauntlet on this suit quickly enough to deflect his oncoming gunshot. The gauntlet deflection caused the bullet to ricochet back to Napier's face. Napier then fell over and into a vat of chemicals despite Batman's attempts to save him. The police then moved in on Batman on Gordon's orders. Finding himself surrounded he drew a smoke capsule from his belt and escaped with a grappling hook fired from the reel. The police were imtemidated by Bruce's theatricality and tactics while wearing this costume. Batman's errors during this encounter would cause Napier's transformation into the Joker.
Saving Vicki Vale
The suit was used again when Bruce realized that he wasn't meeting Vicki Vale at The Flugelheim Museum and that it was trap set for her by The Joker. Batman crashed through the skylight and rescued Vicki using his zip line gauntlet and escaped out the doors. He then used the Batmobile in a car chase through Gotham but was forced to stop the car at an under construction area. He then ran through the alleyways with Vicki until he used his spring-action reel to have her hide on a bridge off of two buildings while he confronted Joker's thugs. Just like how it deflects bullets the suit also is impervious to swords and knifes. Batman also has a voice remote that controls the Batmobile.
Return to the Batcave
Batman after escaping Joker's thugs drove back to the Batcave with Vicki in the Batmobile. He then gave her information on hygiene products that Joker had laced with Smylex. The suit was later stored in a vault in the Batcave.
Suiting up and Destroying Axis Chemicals
The suit was used again when Bruce suited up into Batman and drove the Batmobile to Axis Chemicals in an attempt to destroy Joker's production of Smylex. While the entire facility was destroyed, Joker was not in the building at the time and he escaped on a helicopter taunting Batman as he left.
Piloting the Batwing
Batman was still wearing the suit when he flew the Batwing into downtown Gotham towards the 200th Anniversary Parade that Joker was having. He used it to save the Gotham citizens from the balloons that was filled with Smilex gas. He then flew the Batwing at Joker until the Clown Prince Of Crime used a long barreled gun to shoot down the Batwing causing it to crash into the steps of the Gotham Cathedral.
The suit was shown to be heavily damaged after the crash of the Batwing into the Cathedral. A badly injured Batman followed Joker and Vicki up to the top of the belfry where he battled Joker's remaining thugs. Using his extendable gauntlet he knocked down a thug that attempted to double stab him. Batman then confronted the Joker and repeatedly punched him. Joker attempted to punch Batman but his body armor prevented him from being harmed. When he and Vicki were left dangling from the roof Joker attempted to escape on a helicopter ladder but Batman fires his bolo at Joker which wraps itself around Joker's leg and to a stone gargoyle. This caused Joker to fall to his death.
Looking up at the Bat-Signal
Batman later sent a letter to the police promising to defend Gotham whenever crime strikes again. Gordon then reveals that he gave them a signal which is a searchlight logo with a bright light in the background if he is needed. The suit was shown to be repaired at the end when Batman is seen looking up at the signal while standing on a pillar.
Behind the Scenes
The cowls and bodysuits were sculpted by Vin Burnham.
The capes were made by "rubber specialist" Paul Barrett-Brown.
Nike made the boots based on Air Trainer III. The boots they sent featured a bright yellow swoosh logo which was painted over in black.
- The manniqeuin of Michael Keaton in the 1st Generation Batsuit is currently on display in the Batman exhibit at the Warner Bros. VIP Studio Tour in Burbank Califiornia.
- A glass vault containing the 1st Generation Batsuit was on display in a makeshift Batcave near the Batman: The Escape ride at the now closed Six Flags Astroworld in Houston, Texas.
- Jody Duncan Shannon (February 1990). "Building the Bat-suit". Cinefex. pp. 16–24.
- Batman-On-Film - INTERVIEW: Vin Burnham November 27, 2009 by Paul Wares - "The emblem and belt buckles were being machined in aluminum before being molded in silicone and cast in epoxy resin."
- Creative Spotlights VIN BURNHAM - INTERNATIONAL AWARD-WINNING COSTUME AND CREATURE DESIGNER - "The belt was made out of a material used to mend carousels at airports. [...] Tony Dunsterville who machined the belt buckles and emblems in aluminium before casting them in resins." | <urn:uuid:7663b047-c887-44ee-ad94-8927ca3794a0> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://batmananthology.fandom.com/wiki/1st_Generation_Batsuit | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570879.37/warc/CC-MAIN-20220809003642-20220809033642-00666.warc.gz | en | 0.972743 | 1,565 | 1.984375 | 2 |
ESL 1 - Reading & Vocabulary
This course for English-language learners is the first in a guided series of ESL reading and vocabulary skills classes. Taught in group and language lab settings, you will concentrate on reading and vocabulary development to foster adaptation to a new culture for personal, academic, and professional purposes. Develop fundamental reading and vocabulary building strategies to build basic comprehension, efficiency, and fluency. Prerequisites: placement score of 25 to 40 on the ESL Reading Skills Test, using the computerized English as a Second Language Accuplacer Test.**
Currently no sections of this class are being offered.
** book required
* book and usb required | <urn:uuid:4e70e008-9fe9-44ef-8773-1384fbe90582> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://schoolcraft.edu/cepdcoursedescription/CES2-0060 | 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 | 0.881664 | 135 | 3.3125 | 3 |
11/12/2012 9:39:34 AM
CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Foundation Medicine, Inc. announced today a multi-year collaboration with AstraZeneca to identify alterations found in cancer-related tumor genes that may predict a person’s response or resistance to targeted medicines. Working with Foundation Medicine to reveal these genomic alterations may help AstraZeneca to research new medicines for people with cancer. Under the terms of the collaboration, Foundation Medicine was also granted right of first negotiation for the development of potential diagnostic products.
comments powered by | <urn:uuid:a5b52902-a912-4597-b936-f148d189dd47> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://www.biospace.com/news_story.aspx?StoryID=279407 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988719273.38/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183839-00066-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.924768 | 121 | 1.523438 | 2 |
The No Nuts Moms Group website lists some of the young people who have died from food allergies — many from peanut allergy — going back to 1986. The lengthy list is a sad reminder that a peanut allergy can cause a severe and sometimes deadly allergic reaction. Parents who have a child who is allergic to peanuts do many things to keep him or her out of harm’s way.
A study published online today in The New England Journal of Medicine offers some hope for parents of infants who may be headed toward a peanut allergy. That hope is peanuts.
For the study, an international team of researchers recruited infants who had an egg allergy or eczema, an allergic disorder that affects the skin. Both are indicators that a child is prone to a peanut allergy. The children were randomly divided into two groups. The parents in one group were asked to make sure their children didn’t eat any peanuts, peanut butter, or other peanut-based products until age five. Parents in the other group were asked to give their children a peanut-based snack called Bamba or peanut butter three times a week until age five.
The results were surprising and dramatic. A peanut allergy developed in 1.9% of children who ate Bamba or peanut butter, compared with 13.7% of those who didn’t eat peanuts. One explanation for this difference is that the children who ate peanuts early developed what is called immune tolerance to them. Their young immune systems adapted to the proteins in peanuts so that they did not react to them.
The researchers got the idea for this trial from a previous study of theirs. They knew that Israeli children are typically fed peanuts much earlier in life than British children. So they compared peanut allergies in Jewish children living in Israel with those in Jewish children living in London. Peanut allergies were 10 times higher in the British children than in the Israeli children.
In an unrelated study, a team from the Jaffe Food Allergy Institute at Kravis Children’s Hospital at Mount Sinai in New York City presented similar findings on Sunday at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Allergy Asthma and Immunology in Houston. They showed that a wearable patch that gradually exposes the body to small amounts of peanut protein may be effective in easing the allergy. After wearing the patch for a year, people with peanut allergies could tolerate the equivalent of four peanuts at a time. The patch, called Viaskin, is made by DBV Technologies, which funded the study.
What does this new work mean for parents? If an infant is allergy-prone, it may be a good idea to ask his or her pediatrician about skin-prick testing for peanut allergy. If adding peanuts to the child’s diet early is feasible, the New England Journal of Medicine study suggests that such a strategy may prevent a peanut allergy down the line. And while the Viaskin results are still preliminary, if further research bears out these results, this approach could be a lifesaver. | <urn:uuid:7cd264fd-5bca-4763-974d-a104064611f3> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/children-eat-peanuts-early-age-may-prevent-peanut-allergies-201502237751 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281151.11/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00117-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969205 | 607 | 3.078125 | 3 |
The Australian Department of Health’s 2019 Influenza Season summary affirmed what most people already knew: last year we endured very high levels of activity compared to previous seasons1 and those levels were high from earlier in the year – even during the summer months.
This culminated in a total of 310,011 laboratory-confirmed flu notifications by the beginning of December1. On a more serious note, by October 6 more than 800 influenza-associated deaths had been officially recorded, the majority of these were due to influenza A (96%, n=782) and the ages ranged from under 12 months of age to 102 years. Where sub-typing information was available, 128 were associated with influenza A (H3N2), 29 with influenza A(H1N1)pdm09, and 30 with influenza B. The median age of deaths notified was 86 years (but ranged from under 12 months of age to 102 years)1.
The flu vaccines used in workplace programs contain antigens for 4 strains of the influenza virus – 2 of Influenza A and 2 of Influenza B2. The WHO convenes a meeting of experts each year to determine the best formulations of the vaccine for the following winter season so they will be most effective in protecting as many people as possible against this potentially serious, or even fatal, illness2.
The Sonic HealthPlus workplace flu program will be in high demand following such an extreme flu season in 2019. Vaccinations for influenza are recommended annually before the flu season starts. Southern Hemisphere peak flu activity can vary from season to season but generally occurs between June and September, however infections can occur all year round, particularly in the tropical areas of Australia, as was the case in 20193. The best protection against the flu is vaccination and most people develop immunity within two weeks of vaccination4. Recent evidence suggests optimal protection occurs in the 3–4 months following vaccination, with experts recommending vaccinations from mid-April /May 2020. Please remember, it is however never too late to be vaccinated3.
You can minimise the risk of flu this winter by avoiding close contact with people who are sick, staying home when you are sick, covering your mouth and nose with a tissue or sneezing into the inner elbow, avoid shaking people’s hands and regularly cleaning your hands with soap and water, or using alcohol-based hand sanitisers that contain at least 60% alcohol. You should also avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth. These health etiquettes will help reduce your chances of picking up or passing on flu, as well as other viruses and bacteria4.
To find out more about Workplace Flu Vaccinations or to obtain a quote, click here. | <urn:uuid:d628dcdc-abcb-4e50-ba7e-03edef562659> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.sonichealthplus.com.au/health-hub/flu/2019-flu-season-2nd-worst-on-record | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571198.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810161541-20220810191541-00275.warc.gz | en | 0.962972 | 547 | 3.21875 | 3 |
HONOLULU — America’s farmers are more productive than ever and are providing a solid economic foundation for the U.S., according to head of the nation’s largest farm organization.
“We are the 1 percent that is producing food and fiber for the other 99 percent,” declared Bob Stallman, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, Jan. 8 in his annual address to the approximately 7,000 Farm Bureau members gathered for AFBF’s 93rd annual meeting.
“Over a 20-year period, corn yields are up 41 percent. Per bushel soil loss has fallen by 70 percent. Water use per bushel of corn is down 27 percent. All major crops show similar trends,” said Stallman.
He also touted the record-breaking growth in U.S. agricultural exports over the past year.
“We sold $42.5 billion more in agricultural products than we imported in 2011,” he added.
Stallman discussed Farm Bureau’s Systemic Risk Reduction Program proposal, which he said would help protect farmers from catastrophic losses while recognizing today’s budget realities.
Farm Bureau delegates debated the risk management program and other farm policies Jan. 10.
Talk to consumers
Just as important as these policy concerns is the conversation with consumers, he said.
“We must engage directly with the consumer as an industry in ways we haven’t before,” Stallman said. “And … we must also never, ever forget to listen.”
He said the U.S. Farmers and Ranchers Alliance, a group of 77 agricultural organizations and companies including Farm Bureau, is doing that by listening to and answering Americans’ questions, as well as giving farmers and ranchers an opportunity to raise their voices.
“From the environment to the economy, trade and jobs, we have a great story to tell,” Stallman proclaimed.
State Farm Bureaus were recognized for excellence in membership achievement and for implementing outstanding programs.
Winners of the Pinnacle Award, for overall outstanding program achievement combined with membership growth, included Farm Bureaus is Idaho, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, Tennessee and Virginia.
The Awards for Excellence and the President’s Awards were presented in five program areas: agriculture education and promotion, leadership development, member services, policy implementation, and public relations and information.
The winning states and the number of Awards for Excellence categories won by each include:
Alabama (5); Arizona (5); Arkansas (5); California (4); Colorado (1); Florida (4); Georgia (4); Idaho (5); Illinois (5); Indiana (5); Iowa (5);
Kansas (4); Kentucky (5); Louisiana (4); Maryland (4); Massachusetts (1); Michigan (5); Minnesota (4); Mississippi (3); Missouri (5); Montana (5);
Nebraska (4); Nevada (3); New York (4); North Carolina (3); Ohio (5); Oklahoma (2); Oregon (5); Pennsylvania (5); Rhode Island (1);
South Carolina (4); Tennessee (5); Texas (5); Utah (4); Virginia (4); Washington (4); Wisconsin (5); and Wyoming (2).
The winning states and the number of President’s Awards won include:
Arizona (1); Idaho (3); Indiana (1); Kansas (1); Massachusetts (1); Michigan (2); Missouri (1); Montana (3); Nevada (1); Ohio (2); Tennessee (3); Texas (2); Utah (1); Virginia (3); and Wisconsin (1). | <urn:uuid:b1cbdca8-8086-4d0f-9c37-88ab378b25c2> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.farmanddairy.com/news/american-farm-bureau-leader-we-are-the-1-percent/33231.html | 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 | 0.910263 | 757 | 1.648438 | 2 |
Miracles of the Qur’an
Truly it (the Qur’an) is revelation sent down by the Lord of all the worlds.
Mohamad Mostafa Nassar
(The Qur’an, 26:192)
TO THE READER
The reason why a special chapter is assigned to the collapse of the theory of evolution is that this theory constitutes the basis of all anti-spiritual philosophies. Since Darwinism rejects the fact of creation, and therefore the existence of Allah, during the last 140 years it has caused many people to abandon their faith or fall into doubt.
Therefore, showing that this theory is a deception is a very important duty, which is strongly related to the religion. It is imperative that this important service be rendered to everyone. Some of our readers may find the chance to read only one of our books. Therefore, we think it appropriate to spare a chapter for a summary of this subject.
In all the books by the author, faith-related issues are explained in the light of the Qur’anic verses and people are invited to learn Allah’s words and to live by them. All the subjects that concern Allah’s verses are explained in such a way as to leave no room for doubt or question marks in the reader’s mind. The sincere, plain and fluent style employed ensures that everyone of every age and from every social group can easily understand the books.
This effective and lucid narrative makes it possible to read them in a single sitting. Even those who rigorously reject spirituality are influenced by the facts recounted in these books and cannot refute the truthfulness of their contents.
This book and all the other works of the author can be read individually or discussed in a group at a time of conversation. Those readers who are willing to profit from the books will find discussion very useful in the sense that they will be able to relate their own reflections and experiences to one another.
In addition, it will be a great service to the religion to contribute to the presentation and reading of these books, which are written solely for the good pleasure of Allah. All the books of the author are extremely convincing. For this reason, for those who want to communicate the religion to other people, one of the most effective methods is to encourage them to read these books.
It is hoped that the reader will take time to look through the review of other books on the final pages of the book, and appreciate the rich source of material on faith-related issues, which are very useful and a pleasure to read.
In these books, you will not find, as in some other books, the personal views of the author, explanations based on dubious sources, styles that are unobservant of the respect and reverence due to sacred subjects, nor hopeless, doubt-creating, and pessimistic accounts that create deviations in the heart.
The Arabic word for God is Allah, and Muslims prefer to call Allah by this name. However, since this book is aimed at Muslims and non-Muslims alike, we have used the word God throughout.
PART ONE: THE SCIENTIFIC MIRACLES OF THE QUR’AN
THE COMING OF THE UNIVERSE INTO EXISTENCE
THE EXPANSION OF THE UNIVERSE
THE SPLITTING ASUNDER OF “THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH”
THE ROUNDNESS OF THE EARTH
THE PROTECTED ROOF
THE RETURNING SKY
THE LAYERS OF THE ATMOSPHERE
THE FUNCTION OF MOUNTAINS
THE MOVEMENT OF MOUNTAINS
THE MIRACLE IN THE IRON
THE PAIRS IN CREATION
THE RELATIVITY OF TIME
THE PROPORTION OF RAIN
THE FORMATION OF RAIN
THE FECUNDATING WINDS
THE SEAS’ NOT MINGLING WITH ONE ANOTHER
DARKNESS IN THE SEAS, AND INTERNAL WAVES
THE REGION THAT CONTROLS OUR MOVEMENTS
THE BIRTH OF A HUMAN BEING
THE IDENTITY IN THE FINGERPRINT
PART TWO: THE INFORMATION GIVEN ABOUT THE FUTURE IN THE QUR’AN
THE VICTORY OF BYZANTIUM
PART THREE: THE HISTORICAL MIRACLES OF THE QUR’AN
THE WORD “HAMAN” IN THE QUR’AN
TITLES OF EGYPTIAN RULERS IN THE QUR’AN
CONCLUSION: THE QUR’AN IS THE WORD OF GOD
PART FOUR:THE EVOLUTION MISCONCEPTION
THE SCIENTIFIC MIRACLES OF THE QUR’AN
Fourteen centuries ago, God sent down the Qur’an to mankind as a book of guidance. He called upon people to be guided to the truth by adhering to this book. From the day of its revelation to the day of judgement, this last divine book will remain the sole guide for humanity.
The matchless style of the Qur’an and the superior wisdom in it are definite evidence that it is the word of God. In addition, the Qur’an has many miraculous attributes proving that it is a revelation from God. One of these attributes is the fact that a number of scientific truths that we have only been able to uncover by the technology of the 20th century were stated in the Qur’an 1,400 years ago.
Of course the Qur’an is not a book of science. However, many scientific facts that are expressed in an extremely concise and profound manner in its verses have only been discovered with the technology of the 20th century. These facts could not have been known at the time of the Qur’an’s revelation, and this is still more proof that the Qur’an is the word of God.
In order to understand the scientific miracle of the Qur’an, we must first take a look at the level of science at the time when this holy book was revealed.
In the 7th century, when the Qur’an was revealed, Arab society had many superstitious and groundless beliefs where scientific issues were concerned. Lacking the technology to examine the universe and nature, these early Arabs believed in legends inherited from past generations. They supposed, for example, that mountains supported the sky above. They believed that the earth was flat and that there were high mountains at its both ends. It was thought that these mountains were pillars that kept the vault of heaven high above.
However all these superstitious beliefs of Arab society were eliminated with the Qur’an. In Sura Sad, verse 2, it was said: “God is He who raised up the heavens without any support…” (The Qur’an, 38:2). This verse invalidated the belief that the sky remains above because of the mountains. In many other subjects, important facts were revealed at a time when no one could have known them.
The Qur’an, which was revealed at a time when people knew very little about astronomy, physics, or biology, contains key facts on a variety of subjects such as the creation of the universe, the creation of the human being, the structure of the atmosphere, and the delicate balances that make life on earth possible.
Now, let us look at some of these scientific miracles revealed in the Qur’an together.
THE COMING OF THE UNIVERSE INTO EXISTENCE
The origin of the universe is described in the Qur’an in the following verse:
He is the Originator of the heavens and the earth. (The Qur’an, 6:101)
This information given in the Qur’an is in full agreement with the findings of contemporary science. The conclusion that astrophysics has reached today is that the entire universe, together with the dimensions of matter and time, came into existence as a result of a great explosion that occurred in no time.
This event, known as “The Big Bang” proved that the universe was created from nothingness as the result of the explosion of a single point. Modern scientific circles are in agreement that the Big Bang is the only rational and provable explanation of the beginning of the universe and of how the universe came into being.
Before the Big Bang, there was no such thing as matter. From a condition of non-existence in which neither matter, nor energy, nor even time existed, and which can only be described metaphysically, matter, energy, and time were all created. This fact, only recently discovered by modern physics, was announced to us in the Qur’an 1,400 years ago.
THE EXPANSION OF THE UNIVERSE
In the Qur’an, which was revealed 14 centuries ago at a time when the science of astronomy was still primitive, the expansion of the universe was described like this:
And it is We who have constructed the heaven with might, and verily, it is We who are steadily expanding it. (The Qur’an, 51:47)
The word “heaven”, as stated in this verse, is used in various places in the Qur’an with the meaning of space and universe. Here again, the word is used with this meaning. In other words, in the Qur’an it is revealed that the universe “expands”. And this is the very conclusion that science has reached today.
Until the dawn of the 20th century, the only view prevailing in the world of science was that “the universe has a constant nature and it has existed since infinite time”. The research, observations, and calculations carried out by means of modern technology, however, have revealed that the universe in fact had a beginning, and that it constantly “expands”.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the Russian physicist Alexander Friedmann and the Belgian cosmologist Georges Lemaitre theoretically calculated that the universe is in constant motion and that it is expanding.
This fact was proved also by observational data in 1929. While observing the sky with a telescope, Edwin Hubble, the American astronomer, discovered that the stars and galaxies were constantly moving away from each other. A universe where everything constantly moves away from everything else implied a constantly expanding universe.
The observations carried out in the following years verified that the universe is constantly expanding. This fact was explained in the Qur’an when that was still unknown to anyone. This is because the Qur’an is the word of God, the Creator, and the Ruler of the entire universe.
THE SPLITTING ASUNDER OF “THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH”
Another verse about the creation of the heavens is as follows:
Do not the Unbelievers see that the heavens and the earth were joined together (as one unit of creation), before We clove them asunder, and We made from water every living thing. Will they not then believe? (The Qur’an, 21:30)
The word ratq translated as “sewn to” means “mixed in each, blended” in Arabic dictionaries. It is used to refer to two different substances that make up a whole. The phrase “we unstitched” is the verb fataqa in Arabic and implies that something comes into being by tearing apart or destroying the structure of ratq. The sprouting of a seed from the soil is one of the actions to which this verb is applied.
Let us take a look at the verse again with this knowledge in mind. In the verse, sky and earth are at first subject to the status of ratq. They are separated (fataqa) with one coming out of the other. Intriguingly, when we remember the first moments of the Big Bang, we see that a single point included all the matter in the universe. In other words, everything, including “the heavens and earth” which were not created yet, were included in this point in a condition of ratq. This point exploded violently, causing its matter to fataqa and in the process created the structure of the whole universe.
When we compare the expressions in the verse with scientific findings, we see that they are in perfect agreement with each other. Interestingly enough, these findings were not arrived at until the 20th century.
While referring to the Sun and the Moon in the Qur’an, it is emphasized that each moves in a definite orbit.
It is He Who created the night and the day, and the sun and the moon. They swim along, each in an orbit. (The Qur’an, 21:33)
It is mentioned in another verse, too, that the Sun is not static but moves in a definite orbit:
And the sun runs to its resting place. That is the decree of the Almighty, the All-Knowing. (The Qur’an, 37:38)
These facts communicated in the Qur’an have been discovered by astronomical observations in our age. According to the calculations of experts on astronomy, the Sun is traveling at the enormous speed of 720,000 kilometers an hour in the direction of the star Vega in a particular orbit called the Solar Apex. This means that the sun travels roughly 17,280,000 kilometers a day. Along with the Sun, and all planets and satellites within the gravitational system of the Sun also travel the same distance. In addition, all the stars in the universe are in a similar planned motion.
That the entire universe is full of paths and orbits such as this one, is written in the Qur’an as follows:
By the sky full of paths and orbits. (The Qur’an, 51:7)
There are about 200 billion galaxies in the universe, consisting of nearly 200 billion stars in each. Most of these stars have planets, and most of those planets have satellites. All of these heavenly bodies move in very precisely computed orbits. For millions of years, each has been “swimming” along in its own orbit in perfect harmony and order with all the others. Moreover, many comets also move along in the orbits determined for them.
The orbits in the universe do not only belong to celestial bodies. The galaxies also travel at enormous speeds in computed, planned orbits. During these movements, none of these celestial bodies cuts across another’s path, or collides with another.
Surely at the time the Qur’an was revealed, mankind did not possess today’s telescopes or advanced observation technologies to observe millions of kilometres of space, nor the modern knowledge of physics or astronomy. Therefore, at that time, it was not possible to determine scientifically that space is “full of paths and orbits” as stated in the verse. However, this was openly declared to us in the Qur’an that was revealed at that time:–because the Qur’an is the word of God.
THE ROUNDNESS OF THE EARTH
He has created the Heavens and the Earth for Truth. He wraps the night up in the day, and wraps the day up in the night. (The Qur’an, 39:5)
In the Qur’an, the words used for describing the universe are quite remarkable. The Arabic word that is translated as “to wrap” in the above verse is “takwir”. In English, it means “to make one thing lap over another, folded up as a garment that is laid away”. (For instance, in Arabic dictionaries this word is used for the action of wrapping one thing around another, in the way that a turban is put on.)
The information given in the verse about the day and the night wrapping each other up includes accurate information about the shape of the world. This can be true only if the earth is round. This means that in the Qur’an, which was revealed in the 7th century, the roundness of the world was hinted at.
It should be remembered, however, that the understanding of astronomy of the time perceived the world differently. It was then thought that the world was a flat plane and all scientific calculations and explanations were based on this belief. The verses of the Qur’an, however, include information that we have learned only in the past century. Since the Qur’an is God’s word, the most correct words were used in it when it comes to describing the universe.
THE PROTECTED ROOF
In the Qur’an, God calls our attention to a very interesting attribute of the sky:
We made the sky a preserved and protected roof yet still they turn away from Our Signs.. (The Qur’an, 21:32)
This attribute of the sky has been proved by scientific research carried out in the 20th century.
The atmosphere surrounding the earth serves crucial functions for the continuity of life. While destroying many meteors big and small as they approach the earth, it prevents them from falling to earth and harming living things.
In addition, the atmosphere filters the light rays coming from space that are harmful to living things. Interestingly, the atmosphere lets only harmless and useful rays– visible light, near ultraviolet light, and radio waves pass through. All of this radiation is vital for life.
Near ultraviolet rays, which are only partially let in by the atmosphere, are very important for the photosynthesis of plants and for the survival of all living beings. The majority of the intense ultraviolet rays emitted from the sun are filtered out by the ozone layer of the atmosphere and only a limited–and essential–part of the ultraviolet spectrum reaches the Earth.
The protective function of the atmosphere does not end here. The atmosphere also protects the earth from the freezing cold of the space, which is about minus 270oC.
It is not only the atmosphere that protects the Earth from harmful effects. In addition to the atmosphere, the Van Allen Belt, a layer caused by the magnetic field of the Earth, also serves as a shield against the harmful radiation that threatens our planet. This radiation, which is constantly emitted by the Sun and other stars, is deadly to living things. If the Van Allen belt did not exist, the massive outbursts of energy called solar flares that frequently occur in the Sun would destroy all life on Earth.
Dr. Hugh Ross has this to say on the importance of Van Allen Belts to our lives:
In fact, the Earth has the highest density of any of the planets in our Solar System. This large nickel-iron core is responsible for our large magnetic field. This magnetic field produces the Van-Allen radiation shield, which protects the Earth from radiation bombardment. If this shield were not present, life would not be possible on the Earth.
The only other rocky planet to have any magnetic field is Mercury – but its field strength is 100 times less than the Earth’s. Even Venus, our sister planet, has no magnetic field. The Van-Allen radiation shield is a design unique to the Earth.1
The energy transmitted in just one of these bursts detected in recent years was calculated to be equivalent to 100 billion atomic bombs similar to the one dropped on Hiroshima. Fifty-eight hours after the burst, it was observed that the magnetic needles of compasses displayed unusual movement and 250 kilometers above the earth’s atmosphere, the temperature suddenly increased to 2,500o C.
In short, a perfect system is at work high above the Earth. It surrounds our world and protects it against external threats. Scientists only learned about it recently, yet centuries ago, God informed us in the Qur’an of the world’s atmosphere functioning as a protective shield.
THE RETURNING SKY
The verse 11 of Sura Tarik in the Qur’an, refers to the “returning” function of the sky.
By Heaven with its cyclical systems. (The Qur’an, 86:11)
This word interpreted as “cyclical” in Qur’an translations also has meanings of “sending back” or “returning”.
As known, the atmosphere surrounding the Earth consists of many layers. Each layer serves an important purpose for the benefit of life. Research has revealed that these layers have the function of turning the materials or rays they are exposed to back into space or back down to the Earth. Now let us examine with a few examples of this “recycling” function of the layers encircling the Earth.
The troposphere, 13 to 15 kilometers above the Earth, enables water vapor rising from the surface of the Earth to be condensed and turn back as rain.
The ozone layer, at an altitude of 25 kilometers, reflects harmful radiation and ultraviolet light coming from space and turns both back into space.
The ionosphere, reflects radio waves broadcast from the Earth back down to different parts of the world, just like a passive communications satellite, and thus makes wireless communication, radio, and television broadcasting possible over long distances.
The magnetosphere layer turns the harmful radioactive particles emitted by the Sun and other stars back into space before they reach the Earth.
The fact that this property of the atmosphere’s layers, that was onlt demonstrated in the recent past was announced centuries ago in the Qur’an, once again demonstrates that the Qur’an is the word of God.
THE LAYERS OF THE ATMOSPHERE
One fact about the universe revealed in the verses of the Qur’an is that the sky is made up of seven layers.
It is He Who created everything on the earth for you and then directed His attention up to heaven and arranged it into seven regular heavens. He has knowledge of all things. (The Qur’an, 2:29)
Then He turned to heaven when it was smoke. In two days He determined them as seven heavens and revealed, in every heaven, its own mandate. (The Qur’an, 41:12)
The word “heavens”, which appears in many verses in the Qur’an, is used to refer to the sky above the Earth, as well as the entire universe. Given this meaning of the word, it is seen that the Earth’s sky, or the atmosphere, is made up of seven layers.
Indeed, today it is known that the world’s atmosphere consists of different layers that lie on top of each other. Furthermore, it consists, just as is described in the Qur’an, of exactly seven layers. In a scientific source, the subject is described as follows:
Scientists have found that the atmosphere consists of several layers. The layers differ in such physical properties as pressure and the types of gasses. The layer of the atmosphere closest to Earth is called the TROPOSPHERE. It contains about 90% of the total mass of the atmosphere. The layer above the troposphere is called the STRATOSPHERE. The OZONE LAYER is the part of the stratosphere where absorption of ultraviolet rays occurs.
The layer above the stratosphere is called the MESOSPHERE. The THERMOSPHERE lies above the mesosphere. The ionized gases form a layer within the thermosphere called the IONOSPHERE. The outermost part of Earth’s atmosphere extends from about 480 km out to 960 km. This part is called the EXOSPHERE.2
If we count the number of layers cited in this source, we see that the atmosphere consists of exactly seven layers, just as stated in the verse.
Another important miracle on this subject is mentioned in the statement “(He) revealed, in every heaven, its own mandate.”, in verse 12 of Sura Fussilet. In other words, in the verse, God states that He assigned each heaven its own duty. Truly, as seen in previous chapters, each one of these layers has vital duties for the benefit of human kind and all other living things on the Earth. Each layer has a particular function, ranging from forming rain to preventing harmful rays, from reflecting radio waves, to averting the harmful effects of meteors.
One of these functions, for example, is stated in a scientific source as follows:
Earth’s atmosphere has 7 layers. The lowest layer is called troposphere. Rain, snow and wind only take place in the troposphere.3
It is a great miracle that these facts, which could not possibly be discovered without the technology of the 20th century, were explicitly stated by the Qur’an 1,400 years ago.
THE FUNCTION OF MOUNTAINS
The Qur’an draws attention to a very important geological function of mountains.
We placed firmly embedded mountains on the earth, so it would not move under them… (The Qur’an, 21:31)
As we have noticed, it is stated in the verse that mountains have the function of preventing shocks in the Earth.
This fact was not known by anyone at the time the Qur’an was revealed. It was in fact brought to light only recently as a result of the findings of modern geology.
According to these findings, mountains emerge as a result of the movements and collisions of massive plates forming the Earth’s crust. When two plates collide, the stronger one slides under the other, the one on the top bends and forms heights and mountains. The layer beneath proceeds under the ground and makes a deep extension downward. That means that mountains have a portion stretching downwards, as large as their visible parts on the Earth.
In a scientific text, the structure of mountains is described as follows:
Where continents are thicker, as in mountain ranges, the crust sinks deeper into the mantle.4
In a verse, this role of the mountains is pointed out by a comparison with “pegs”:
Have We not made the earth as a bed and the mountains its pegs? (The Qur’an, 78:6-7)
Mountains, in other words, clench the plates in the Earth’s crust together by extending above and beneath the Earth’s surface at the conjunction points of these plates. In this way, they fix the Earth’s crust, and prevent it from drifting over the magma stratum or among its plates. Briefly, we may liken mountains to nails that keep pieces of wood together.
This fixing function of the mountains is described in scientific literature by the term “isostasy”. Isostasy means the following:
Isostasy: general equilibrium in the Earth’s crust maintained by a yielding flow of rock material beneath the surface under gravitational stress.5
This vital role of mountains, that was discovered by modern geology and seismic research, was revealed in the Qur’an centuries ago as an example of the supreme wisdom in God’s creation.
We placed firmly embedded mountains on the earth, so it would not move under them… (The Qur’an, 21:31)
THE MOVEMENT OF MOUNTAINS
In one verse, we are informed that mountains are not motionless as they seem, but are in constant motion.
You will see the mountains you reckoned to be solid going past like clouds. (The Qur’an, 27:88)
This motion of the mountains is caused by the movement of the Earth’s crust that they are located on. The Earth’s crust ‘floats’ over the mantle layer, which is denser. It was at the beginning of the 20th century when, for the first time in history, a German scientist by the name of Alfred Wegener proposed that the continents of the earth had been attached together when it first formed, but then drifted in different directions, and thus separated as they moved away from each other.
Geologists understood that that Wegener was right only in the 1980s, 50 years after his death. As Wegener pointed out in an article published in 1915, the land masses on the earth were joined together about 500 million years ago. As Wegener pointed out in a 1915 article, the land masses of the earth were joined together some 500 million years ago, and this large mass, called Pangaea, was located in the South Pole.
Approximately 180 million years ago, Pangaea divided into two parts, which drifted in different directions. One of these giant continents was Gondwana, which included Africa, Australia, Antarctica and India. The second one was Laurasia, which included Europe, North America and Asia, except for India. Over the next 150 million years following this separation, Gondwana and Laurasia divided into smaller parts.
These continents that emerged after the split of Pangaea have been constantly moving on the Earth’s surface at several centimetres per year, in the meantime changing the sea and land ratios of the Earth.
Discovered as a result of the geological research carried out at the beginning of the 20th century, this movement of the Earth’s crust is explained by scientists as follows:
The crust and the uppermost part of the mantle, with a thickness of about 100 kms., are divided into segments called plates. There are six major plates, and several small ones. According to the theory called plate tectonics, these plates move about on Earth, carrying continents and ocean floor with them. Continental motion has been measured at from 1-5 cm per year. As the plates continue to move about, this will produce a slow change in Earth’s geography. Each year, for instance, the Atlantic Ocean becomes slightly wider.6
There is a very important point to be stated here: God has referred to the motion of mountains as a drifting action in the verse. Today, modern scientists also use the term “Continental Drift” for this motion. 7
Unquestionably, it is one of the miracles of the Qur’an that this scientific fact, which has recently been discovered by science, was announced in the Qur’an.
THE MIRACLE IN THE IRON
Iron is one of the elements highlighted in the Qur’an. In Sura Hadid, meaning Iron, we are informed:
…And We sent down iron in which there lies great force and which has many uses for mankind…. (The Qur’an, 57:25)
The word “sent down,” particularly used for iron in the verse, could be thought of having a metaphorical meaning to explain that iron has been given to benefit people. But when we take into consideration the literal meaning of the word, which is, “being physically sent down from the sky”, we realize that this verse implies a very significant scientific miracle.
This is because modern astronomical findings have disclosed that the iron found in our world has come from the giant stars in outer space.
The heavy metals in the universe are produced in the nuclei of big stars. Our solar system, however, does not possess a suitable structure for producing iron on its own. Iron can only be produced in much bigger stars than the Sun, where the temperature reaches a few hundred million degrees.
When the amount of iron exceeds a certain level in a star, the star can no longer accommodate it, and eventually it explodes in what is called a “nova” or a “supernova”. As a result of this explosion, meteors containing iron are scattered around the universe, and they move through the void until attracted by the gravitational force of a celestial body.
All this shows that iron did not form on the Earth, but was carried from exploding stars in space via meteors, and was “sent down to earth”, in exactly the same way as stated in the verse: It is clear that this fact could not have been scientifically known in the 7th century, when the Qur’an was revealed.
THE PAIRS IN CREATION
Glory be to Him Who created all the pairs: from what the earth produces and from themselves and from things unknown to them. (The Qur’an, 37:36)
Although the concept of ”pair” or “couple” commonly stands for male and female, the statement of ”from things unknown to them”has wider implications. Today, one of the implications of the verse has been revealed. The British scientist Paul Dirac, who proposed that matter is created in pairs, was awarded the Nobel Prize for physics in 1933.
This discovery, called ”parité”, maintains that matter is paired with its opposite: anti-matter. Anti-matter carries the opposite properties to matter. For instance, as opposed to matter, the electron of anti-matter is positively charged and its protons are negatively charged. This fact is stated in a scientific source in this way:
…every particle has its antiparticle of opposite charge… …and the uncertainty relation tells us that pair creation and pair annihilation happen in the vacuum at all times, in all places.8
THE RELATIVITY OF TIME
Today, the relativity of time is a proven scientific fact. This was revealed by Einstein’s theory of relativity at the early years of the 20th century. Until then, people did not know that time was a relative concept, and that it could change according to the environment. Yet, the great scientist Albert Einstein openly proved this fact with the theory of relativity. He showed that time is dependent on mass and velocity. In the history of humanity, no one had expressed this fact clearly before.
With one exception though; the Qur’an included information about time’s being relative! Some verses about the subject read:
They ask you to hasten the punishment. God will not break His promise. A day with your Lord is equivalent to a thousand years in the way you count. (The Qur’an, 22:47)
He directs the whole affair from heaven to earth. Then it will again ascend to Him on a Day whose length is a thousand years by the way you measure. (The Qur’an, 32:5)
The angels and the Spirit ascend to Him in a day whose length is fifty thousand years. (The Qur’an, 70:4)
In some verses, it is indicated that people perceive time differently and that sometimes people can perceive a very short period of time as a very lengthy one. The following conversation of people held during their judgement in the Hereafter is a good example of this:
He will say, ‘How many years did you tarry on the earth?’ They will say, ‘We tarried there for a day or part of a day. Ask those able to count!’ He will say, ‘You only tarried there for a little while if you did but know! (The Qur’an, 23:12)
The fact that the relativity of time is so clearly mentioned in the Qur’an, which started to be revealed in 610, is another evidence that it is a holy book.
THE PROPORTION OF RAIN
One of the items of information given in the Qur’an about rain is that it is sent down to Earth in due measure. This is mentioned in Sura Zukhruf as follows;
It is He who sends down water in due measure from the sky by which We bring a dead land back to life. That is how you too will be raised (from the dead). (The Qur’an, 43:11)
This measured quantity in rain has again been discovered by modern research. It is estimated that in one second, approximately 16 million tons of water evaporates from the Earth. This figure amounts to 513 trillion tons of water in one year. This number is equal to the amount of rain that falls on the Earth in a year.
This means that water continuously circulates in a balanced cycle, in a “measure”. Life on Earth depends on this water cycle. Even if people used all the available technology in the world, they would not be able to reproduce this cycle artificially.
Even a minor deviation in this equilibrium would very soon give rise to a major ecological imbalance that would bring about the end of life on Earth. Yet, this never happens, and rain keeps falling every year in exactly the same quantity just as revealed in the Qur’an.
THE FORMATION OF RAIN
How rain forms remained a great mystery for a long time. Only after weather radar was invented was it possible to discover the stages by which rain is formed.
According to this, the formation of rain takes place in three stages. First, the “raw material” of rain rises up into the air with the wind. Later, clouds are formed, and finally raindrops appear.
The Qur’an’s account of the formation of rain refers exactly to this process. In one verse, this formation is described in this way:
It is God Who sends the winds which stir up clouds which He spreads about the sky however He wills. He forms them into dark clumps and you see the rain come pouring out from the middle of them. When He makes it fall on those of His slaves He wills, they rejoice. (The Qur’an, 30:48)
Now, let us examine these three stages outlined in the verse more technically.
FIRST STAGE: ” It is God Who sends the winds…”
Countless air bubbles formed by the foaming of the oceans continuously burst and cause water particles to be ejected towards the sky. These particles, which are rich in salt, are then carried away by winds and rise upward in the atmosphere. These particles, which are called aerosols, function as water traps, and form cloud drops by collecting around the water vapour themselves, which rises from the seas as tiny droplets.
SECOND STAGE: “…. which stir up clouds which He spreads about the sky however He wills. He forms them into dark clumps…”
The clouds are formed from water vapour that condenses around the salt crystals or dust particles in the air. Because the water droplets in these clouds are very small (with a diameter between 0.01 and 0.02 mm), the clouds are suspended in the air, and spread across the sky. Thus, the sky is covered in clouds.
THIRD STAGE: “…and you see the rain come pouring our from the middle of them”
The water particles that surround salt crystals and dust particles thicken and form raindrops, so, drops that become heavier than the air leave the clouds and start to fall to the ground as rain.
As we have seen, every stage in the formation of rain is related in the verses of the Qur’an. Furthermore, these stages are explained in exactly the right sequence. Just as with many other natural phenomena on the Earth, God gives the most correct explanation of this phenomenon as well, and made it known to people in the Qur’an centuries before it was discovered.
In another verse, the following information is given about the formation of rain:
Have you not seen how God drives along the clouds, then joins them together, then makes them into a stack, and then you see the rain come out of it? And He sends down from the sky mountain masses (of clouds) with cold hail in them, striking with it anyone He wills and averting it from anyone He wills. The brightness of His lightning almost blinds the sight. (The Qur’an, 24:43)
Scientists studying cloud types came across surprising results regarding the formation of rain clouds. Rain clouds are formed and shaped according to definite systems and stages. The formation stages of cumulonimbus, one kind of rain cloud, are these:
1.STAGE, Being driven along: Clouds are carried along, that is, they are driven along, by the wind.
2.STAGE, Joining: Then, small clouds (cumulus clouds) driven along by the wind join together, forming a larger cloud.9
3.STAGE, Stacking: When the small clouds join together, updrafts within the larger cloud increase. The updrafts near the centre of the cloud are stronger than those near the edges. These updrafts cause the cloud body to grow vertically, so the cloud is stacked up.
This vertical growth causes the cloud body to stretch into cooler regions of the atmosphere, where drops of water and hail formulate and begin to grow larger and larger. When these drops of water and hail become too heavy for the updrafts to support them, they begin to fall from the cloud as rain, hail, etc.10
We must remember that meteorologists have only recently come to know these details of cloud formation, structure and function, by using advanced equipment like planes, satellites, computers etc. It is evident that God has given us a piece of information that could not have been known 1,400 years ago.
THE FECUNDATING WINDS
In one verse of the Qur’an, the “fecundating” characteristic of the winds, and the formation of rain as a result are mentioned.
And We send the fecundating winds, then cause water to descend from the sky, therewith providing you with water in abundance. (The Qur’an, 15:22)
In this verse, it is pointed out that the first stage in the formation of rain is wind. Until the beginning of the 20th century, the only relationship between the wind and the rain that was known, was that the wind drove the clouds. However, modern meteorological findings have demonstrated the “fecundating” role of the wind in the formation of rain.
This fecundating function of the wind works in the following way:
On the surface of oceans and seas, countless air bubbles form because of the water’s foaming action. The moment these bubbles burst, thousands of tiny particles, with a diameter of just one hundredth of a millimeter, are thrown up into the air. These particles, known as “aerosols”, mix with dust carried from the land by the wind, and are carried to the upper layers of the atmosphere.
These particles carried to higher altitudes by winds come into contact with water vapour up there. Water vapour condenses around these particles and turns into water droplets. These water droplets first come together and form clouds, and then fall to the Earth in the form of rain.
As seen, winds “fecundate” the water vapour floating in the air with the particles they carry from the sea, and eventually help the formation of rain clouds.
If winds did not possess this property, water droplets in the upper atmosphere would never form, and there would be no such thing as rain.
The most important point here is that this critical role of the wind in the formation of rain was stated centuries ago in a verse of the Qur’an, at a time when people knew very little about natural phenomena…
THE SEAS’ NOT MINGLING WITH ONE ANOTHER
One of the properties of seas that has only recently been discovered is related in a verse of the Qur’an as follows:
He has let loose the two seas, converging together, with a barrier between them they do not break through. (The Qur’an, 55:19-20)
This property of the seas, that they come together yet do not mingle with one another at all, has only very recently been discovered by oceanographers. Because of the physical force called “surface tension”, the waters of neighboring seas do not mix. Caused by the difference in the density of their waters, surface tension prevents them from mingling with one another, just as if a thin wall were between them.11
The interesting side to this is that during a period when people had no knowledge of physics, surface tension, or oceanography; this was revealed in the Qur’an.
DARKNESS IN THE SEAS, AND INTERNAL WAVES
Or (the unbelievers’ state) are like the darkness of a fathomless sea which is covered by waves above which are waves above which are clouds, layers of darkness, one upon the other. If he puts out his hand, he can scarcely see it. Those God gives no light to, they have no light. (The Qur’an, 24:40)
The general environment in deep seas is described in the book named Oceans:
The darkness in deep seas and oceans is found around a depth of 200 meters and below. At this depth, there is almost no light. Below a depth of 1000 meters there is no light at all.12
Today, we know about the general structure of the sea, the characteristics of the living things in it, its salinity, as well as the amount of water it contains, its surface area and depth. Submarines and special equipment, developed with modern technology, enable scientists to obtain this information.
Human beings are not able to dive more than 40 meters down without the aid of special equipment. They cannot survive unaided in the deep, dark parts of the oceans, such as at a depth of 200 meters. For these reasons, scientists have only recently been able to discover these detailed pieces of information about seas. However, the statement of “darkness in a deep sea” was used in Sura Nur 1,400 years ago. It is certainly one of the miracles of the Qur’an that such information was given at a time where no equipment to enable man to dive into the depths of the oceans was available.
In addition, the statement in verse 40 of Sura Nur “…like the darkness of a fathomless sea which is covered by waves above which are waves above which are clouds…” draws our attention to another miracle of the Qur’an.
Scientists have recently discovered that there are internal waves, which “occur on density interfaces between layers of different densities.” These internal waves cover the deep waters of seas and oceans because deep water has a higher density than the water above it. Internal waves act like surface waves. They can break, just like surface waves. Internal waves cannot be seen by the human eye, but they can be detected by studying temperature or salinity changes at a given location.13
The statements in the Qur’an run absolutely parallel to the above explanation. Without research, one can only see the waves on the surface of the sea. It is impossible for one to know about the internal waves beneath the sea. Yet, in Sura Nur, God draws our attention to another type of wave that occurs in the depths of the oceans. Certainly, this fact, which scientists has discovered very recently, shows once again that the Qur’an is the word of God.
THE REGION THAT CONTROLS OUR MOVEMENTS
No indeed! If he does not stop, We will grab him by the forelock, a lying, sinful forelock. (The Qur’an, 96:15-16)
The expression “the lying, sinful forelock” in the above verse is most interesting. Research carried out in recent years revealed that the prefrontal area, which is responsible for the management of particular functions of the brain, lies in the frontal part of the skull.
Scientists only discovered the functions of this area, which the Qur’an pointed out 1,400 years ago, in the last 60 years. If we look inside the skull at the front of the head, we will find the frontal area of the cerebrum. A book entitled Essentials of Anatomy and Physiology, which includes the results of the latest research on the functions of this area, says:
The motivation and the foresight to plan and initiate movements occur in the anterior portion of the frontal lobes, the prefrontal area. This is a region of association cortex…14
The book also says:
In relation to its involvement in motivation, the prefrontal area is also thought to be the functional center for aggression…15
So, this area of the cerebrum is responsible for planning, motivation, and initiating good and sinful behaviour, and is responsible for telling lies and the truth.
It is clear that the statement “the lying, sinful forelock” corresponds completely to the above explanations. This fact, which scientists have only discovered in the last 60 years, was stated by God in the Qur’an long years ago.
THE BIRTH OF A HUMAN BEING
Many diverse subjects are mentioned in the Qur’an in the course of inviting people to believe. Sometimes the heavens, sometimes animals, and sometimes plants are shown as evidence to man by God. In many of the verses, people are called upon to turn their attention to their own creation. They are often reminded how man came into the world, which stages he has passed through, and what his essence is:
It is We Who have created you. Why, then, do you not accept the truth? Have you ever considered that (seed) which you emit? Is it you who create it? Or are We the Creator? (The Qur’an, 56:57-59)
The creation of man, and the miraculous aspect of this, is stressed in many other verses. Some items of information within these verses are so detailed that it is impossible for anyone living in the 7th century to have known them. Some of these are as follows:
1. Man is not created from the entire semen, but only a very small portion of it (sperm).
2. It is the male that determines the sex of the baby.
3. The human embryo adheres to the mother’s uterus like a leech.
4. The embryo develops in three dark regions in the uterus.
People living when the Qur’an was revealed, to be sure, knew that the basic substance of birth was related to the semen of the male emitted during sexual intercourse. And the fact that the baby was born after a nine-month period was obviously an observable event not calling for any further investigation. However, the items of information just quoted were far above the level of learning of the people living at that time. These were verified by 20th century science.
Now, let us go over them one by one.
A Drop of Semen
During sexual intercourse, 250 million sperms are emitted from the male at a time. The sperms undertake an arduous journey in the mother’s body until they make it to the ovum. Only a thousand out of 250 million sperms succeed in reaching the ovum. At the end of this five-minute race, the ovum, half the size of a grain of salt, will let only one of the sperms in. That is, the essence of man is not the whole semen, but only a small part of it. This is explained in the Qur’an:
Does man reckon he will be left uncontrolled (without purpose)? Was he not once a drop of ejected semen? (The Qur’an, 75:36-37)
As we have seen, the Qur’an informs us that man is made not from the entire semen, but only a small part of it. That the particular emphasis in this statement announces a fact only discovered by modern science is evidence that the statement is divine in origin.
The Mixture in the Semen
The fluid called semen, which contains the sperms, does not consist of sperms alone. On the contrary, it is made up of a mixture of different fluids. These fluids have different functions, such as containing the sugar necessary for providing energy for the sperms, neutralising the acids at the entrance of the uterus, and creating a slippery environment for the easy movement of the sperms.
Interestingly enough, when semen is mentioned in the Qur’an, this fact, which was discovered by modern science, is also referred to, and semen is defined as a mixed fluid:
We created man from a mingled drop to test him, and We made him hearing and seeing. (The Qur’an, 76:2)
In another verse, semen is again referred to as a mixture, and it is stressed that man is created from the “extract” of this mixture:
He who has created all things in the best possible way. He commenced the creation of man from clay; then He made his progeny from an extract of discarded fluid. (The Qur’an, 32:7-8)
The Arabic word “sulala”, translated as “extract”, means the essential or best part of something. By either implication, it means “part of a whole”. This shows that the Qur’an is the word of a Will that knows the creation of man down to its slightest detail. This Will is God, the Creator of man.
The Sex of the Baby
Until fairly recently, it was thought that a baby’s sex was determined by the mother’s cells. Or at least, it was believed that the sex was determined by the male and female cells together. But we are given different information in the Qur’an, where it is stated that masculinity or femininity is created out of “a drop of sperm which has been ejected”.
He has created both sexes, male and female from a drop of semen which has been ejected. (The Qur’an, 53:45-46)
The developing disciplines of genetics and molecular biology have scientifically validated the accuracy of this information given by the Qur’an. It is now understood that sex is determined by the sperm cells from the male, and that the female has no role in this process.
Chromosomes are the main elements in determining sex. Two of the 46 chromosomes that determine the structure of a human being are identified as the sex chromosomes. These two chromosomes are called “XY” in males, and “XX” in females, because the shapes of the chromosomes resemble these letters. The Y chromosome carries the genes that code for masculinity, while the X chromosome carries the genes that code for femininity.
The formation of a new human being begins with the cross combination of one of these chromosomes, which exist in males and females in pairs. In females, both components of the sex cell, which divides into two during ovulation, carry X chromosomes.
The sex cell of a male, on the other hand, produces two different kinds of sperm, one that contains X chromosomes and the other Y chromosomes. If an X chromosome from the female unites with a sperm that contains an X chromosome, then the baby is female. If it unites with the sperm that contains a Y chromosome, the baby is male.
In other words, a baby’s sex is determined by which chromosome from the male unites with the female’s ovum.
None of this was known until the discovery of genetics in the 20th century. Indeed, in many cultures, it was believed that a baby’s sex was determined by the female’s body. That was why women were blamed when they gave birth to girls.
Thirteen centuries before human genes were discovered, however, the Qur’an revealed information that denies this superstition, and referred to the origin of sex lying not with women, but with the semen coming from men.
The Clot Clinging to the Uterus
If we keep on examining the facts announced to us in the Qur’an about the formation of human beings, we again encounter some very important scientific miracles.
When the sperm of the male unites with the ovum of the female, the essence of the baby to be born is formed. This single cell, known as a “zygote” in biology, will instantly start to reproduce by dividing, and eventually become a “piece of flesh” called an embryo. This of course can only be seen by human beings with the aid of a microscope.
The embryo, however, does not spend its developmental period in a void. It clings to the uterus just like roots that are firmly fixed to the earth by their tendrils. Through this bond, the embryo can obtain the substances essential to its development from the mother’s body.16
Here, at this point, a very significant miracle of the Qur’an is revealed. While referring to the embryo developing in the mother’s womb, God uses the word “alaq” in the Qur’an:
Recite: In the name of your Lord Who created man from alaq. Recite: And your Lord is the Most Generous. (The Qur’an, 96:1-3)
The meaning of the word “alaq” in Arabic is “a thing that clings to some place”. The word is literally used to describe leeches that cling to a body to suck blood.
Certainly, the use of such an appropriate word for the embryo developing in the mother’s womb, proves once again that the Qur’an is a revelation from God, the Lord of all the Worlds.
The wrapping of muscles over the bones
Another important aspect of the information given in the verses of the Qur’an is the developmental stages of a human being in the mother’s womb. It is stated in the verses that in the mother’s womb, the bones develop first, and then the muscles form which wrap around them.
(We) then formed the drop into a clot and formed the clot into a lump and formed the lump into bones and clothed the bones in flesh; and then brought him into being as another creature. Blessed be God, the Best of Creators! (The Qur’an, 23:14)
Embryology is the branch of science that studies the development of the embryo in the mother’s womb. Until very recently, embryologists assumed that the bones and muscles in an embryo developed at the same time. For this reason, for a long time, some people claimed that these verses conflicted with science. Yet, advanced microscopic research conducted by virtue of new technological developments has revealed that the revelation of the Qur’an is word for word correct.
These observations at the microscopic level showed that the development inside the mother’s womb takes place in just the way it is described in the verses. First, the cartilage tissue of the embryo ossifies. Then muscular cells that are selected from amongst the tissue around the bones come together and wrap around the bones.
This event is described in a scientific publication titled Developing Human in the following words:
During the seventh week, the skeleton begins to spread throughout the body and the bones take their familiar shapes. At the end of the seventh week and during the eighth week the muscles take their positions around the bone forms.17
In short, man’s developmental stages as described in the Qur’an are in perfect harmony with the findings of modern embryology.
Three Stages of the Baby in the Womb
In the Qur’an, it is related that man is created in a three-stage process in the mother’s womb.
… He creates you stage by stage in your mothers’ wombs in a threefold darkness. That is God, your Lord. Sovereignty is His. There is no god but Him. So what has made you deviate? (The Qur’an, 39:6)
As will be understood, it is pointed out in this verse that a human being is created in the mother’s womb in three distinct stages. Indeed, modern biology has revealed that the baby’s embryological development takes place in three distinct regions in the mother’s womb.
Today, in all the embryology textbooks studied in faculties of medicine, this subject is taken as an element of basic knowledge. For instance in Basic Human Embryology, a fundamental reference text in the field of embryology, this fact is stated as follows: “The life in the uterus has three stages: pre-embryonic; first two and a half weeks, embryonic; until the end of the eight week, and fetal; from the eight week to labor.”18
These phases refer to the different developmental stages of a baby. In brief, the main characteristics of these developmental stages are as follows:
– Pre-embryonic stage
In this first phase, the zygote grows by division, and when it becomes a cell cluster, it buries itself in the wall of the uterus. While they continue growing, the cells organise themselves in three layers.
– Embryonic Stage
The second phase lasts for five and a half weeks, during which the baby is called an “embryo”. In this stage, the basic organs and systems of the body start to appear from the cell layers.
– Fetal stage
From this stage on, the embryo is called a “foetus”. This phase begins at the eighth week of gestation and lasts until the moment of birth. The distinctive characteristic of this stage is that the foetus looks just like a human being, with its face, hands and feet. Although it is only 3 cm. long initially, all of its organs have become apparent. This phase lasts for about 30 weeks, and development continues until the week of delivery.
Information on the development in the mother’s womb became available only after observations with modern devices. Yet, just like many other scientific facts, these pieces of information are imparted in the verses of the Qur’an in a miraculous way. The fact that such detailed and accurate information was given in the Qur’an at a time when people had scarce information on medical matters is clear evidence that the Qur’an is not the word of man, but the word of God.
Mother’s milk is an unmatched mixture that is created by God as both an excellent food-source for the newborn baby, and a substance that increases its resistance to diseases. Even artificial baby food produced by today’s technology cannot substitute for this miraculous source of nutrition.
Every day, a new benefit of mother’s milk to the baby is discovered. One of the facts that science has discovered about mother’s milk is that suckling up to two years after birth is very beneficial.19 God gives us this important information, which was discovered by science only very recently, with the verse “…his weaning was in two years..” 14 centuries ago.
And We have enjoined upon man goodness towards his parents: his mother bore him by bearing strain upon strain, and his weaning was in two years: (hence, O man,) be grateful to Me and to your parents; to Me is the eventual coming. (The Qur’an, 31:14)
THE IDENTITY IN THE FINGERPRINT
While it is stated in the Qur’an that it is easy for God to bring man back to life after death, peoples’ fingerprints are particularly emphasized:
Yes, We are able to put together in perfect order the very tips of his fingers. (The Qur’an, 75:3-4)
The emphasis on fingerprints has a very special meaning. This is because everyone’s fingerprint is unique to himself. Every person who is alive or who has ever lived in this world has a set of unique fingerprints.
That is why fingerprints are accepted as a very important proof of identity, exclusive to their owner, and are used for this purpose around the world.
But what is important is that this feature of fingerprints was only discovered in the late 19th century. Before then, people regarded fingerprints as ordinary curves without any specific importance or meaning. However in the Qur’an, God points to the fingertips, which did not attract anyone’s attention at that time, and calls our attention to their importance–an importance that was only finally understood in our day.
PART TWO: THE INFORMATION GIVEN ABOUT THE FUTURE IN THE QUR’AN
Another miraculous aspect of the Qur’an is that it revealed beforehand a number important events that would occur in the future. Verse 27 of Sura Fath, for example, gave the believers the glad tidings that they would conquer Mecca, which was then under pagan occupation:
God has confirmed His Messenger’s vision with truth: ‘You will enter the Masjid al-Haram in safety, God willing, shaving your heads and cutting your hair without any fear.’ He knew what you did not know and ordained, in place of this, an imminent victory. (The Qur’an, 48:27)
On close consideration, the verse can be seen to announce yet another victory that will take place before the victory of Mecca. Indeed, as stated in the verse, the believers first conquered the Khyber Fortress, which was under the control of the Jews, and then entered Mecca.
The announcement of the events that will take place in the future is only one of the pieces of wisdom in the Qur’an. This is also evidence to the fact that the Qur’an is the word of God, Who has infinite knowledge. The defeat of Byzantium is one of the pieces of news given about the future, accompanied by other information that could not have been known by the people of that time.
The most interesting point about this historical event, which will be examined in detail in the following pages, is that the Romans were defeated in the lowest region in the world. This is interesting because “the lowest point” is particularly stressed in the relevant verse. With the technology of that time, it was obviously impossible to make such a measurement and to determine the lowest point in the world. This is a revelation to people from God, the All-Knowing.
THE VICTORY OF BYZANTIUM
Another astonishing piece of revelation that the Qur’an gives about the future is to be found in the first verses of Sura Rum, which refers to the Byzantine Empire, the eastern part of the later Roman Empire. In these verses, it is stated that the Byzantine Empire had met with a great defeat, but that it would soon gain victory.
Elif, Lam, Mim. The Romans have been defeated in the lowest land, but after their defeat they will themselves be victorious in a few years’ time. The affair is God’s from beginning to end. (The Qur’an, 30:1-4)
These verses were revealed around 620 AD, almost seven years after the severe defeat of Christian Byzantium at the hands of the idolater Persians. Yet it was related in the verses that Byzantium would shortly be victorious. In fact, Byzantium had then suffered such heavy losses that it seemed impossible for it even to survive, let alone be victorious again. Not only the Persians, but also Avars, Slavs and Lombards posed serious threats to the Byzantine Empire. The Avars had reached as far as the walls of Constantinople.
The Byzantine Emperor Heraclius had ordered the gold and silver in churches to be melted and turned into money in order to meet the expenses of the army. When these proved insufficient, even bronze statues were melted down to be turned into money.
Many governors had revolted against Emperor Heraclius, and the empire was on the point of collapse. Mesopotamia, Cilicia, Syria, Palestine, Egypt and Armenia, which had earlier belonged to Byzantium, were invaded by the idolater Persians.20
In short, everyone was expecting the Byzantine Empire to be destroyed. But right at that moment, the first verses of Sura Rum were revealed, announcing that Byzantium would triumph in a few years’ time. This victory seemed so impossible that Arab polytheists had gone so far as to make fun of these verses. They thought that the victory announced in the Qur’an would never come true.
Around seven years after the revelation of the first verses of Sura Rum, in December 627 AD, a decisive battle between Byzantium and the Persian Empire was fought at Nineveh. And this time the Byzantine army unexpectedly defeated the Persians. A few months later, the Persians had to make an agreement with Byzantium, which obliged them to return the territories they had taken from it.21
At the end, “the victory of the Romans,” proclaimed by God in the Qur’an, miraculously came true.
Another miracle revealed in these verses is the announcement of a geographical fact that could not have been known by anyone at that time.
In the third verse of Sura Rum, we are informed that the Romans had been defeated in the lowest region of the Earth. This expression, “Adna al Ard” in Arabic, is interpreted as “a nearby place” in many translations. Yet this is not the literal meaning of the original statement, but rather a figurative interpretation of it. The word “Adna” in Arabic is derived from the word “deni”, which means “low” and “ard”, which means “world”. Therefore the expression “Adna al Ard” means “the lowest place on the Earth”.
Most interestingly, the crucial stages of the war fought between the Byzantine Empire and the Persians, when the Byzantines were defeated and lost Jerusalem, had really taken place at the lowest point on earth. This specified region is the Dead Sea basin, which is situated at the intersection point of the lands belonging to Syria, Palestine, and Jordan. The “Dead Sea”, lying 395 meters below sea level, really is the lowest region on Earth.
This means that the Byzantines were defeated at the lowest part of the world, just as stated in the verse.
The most interesting point lies in the fact that the altitude of the Dead Sea could only be measured with modern measurement techniques. Before that, it was impossible for anyone to know that it was the lowest region on the surface of the Earth. Yet, this region was stated to be the lowest point on the Earth in the Qur’an. Hence, this provides further evidence that the Qur’an is divine revelation.
PART THREE: THE HISTORICAL MIRACLES OF THE QUR’AN
THE WORD “HAMAN” IN THE QUR’AN
The information given in the Qur’an about ancient Egypt reveals many historical facts that had remained undisclosed until recent times. These facts also indicate to us that every word in the Qur’an has been revealed by sure wisdom.
Haman is a character whose name is mentioned in the Qur’an, along with the Pharaoh. He is recorded in six different places of the Qur’an as one of the closest men to the Pharaoh.
Surprisingly the name of Haman is never mentioned in those sections of the Torah pertaining to the life of Moses. However, the mention of Haman can be found in the last chapters of the Old Testament as the helper of a Babylonian king who inflicted many cruelties on the Israelites approximately 1,100 years after Moses.
Some non-Muslims, who claim that the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) wrote the Qur’an by copying from the Torah and the Bible, also assert that during the process, he transferred some of the subjects related in these books into the Qur’an incorrectly.
The absurdity of these claims was demonstrated only after the Egyptian hieroglyphic alphabet had been deciphered, approximately 200 years ago, and the name “Haman” discovered in the ancient scripts.
Before these discoveries, the writings and inscriptions of ancient Egypt could not be understood. The language of ancient Egypt was hieroglyphic, which survived through the ages. However, with the spread of Christianity and other cultural influences in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD, Egypt forsook its ancient beliefs as well as hieroglyphic writing.
The last known example of the use of hieroglyphic writing was an inscription dated 394 AD. Then that language was forgotten, leaving nobody who could read and understand it. And that was the situation until some 200 years ago…
The mystery of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics was solved in 1799 by the discovery of a tablet called the “Rosetta Stone” dating back to 196 B.C. The importance of this inscription was that it was written in three different forms of writing: Hieroglyphics, demotic (a simplified form of ancient Egyptian hieratic writing) and Greek.
With the help of the Greek script, the ancient Egyptian writings were decoded. The translation of the inscription was completed by a Frenchman named Jean-Françoise Champollion. Hence a forgotten language and the events related in it were brought to light. In this way, a great deal of knowledge about the civilization, religion and social life of ancient Egypt became available.
Through the decoding of hieroglyph, an important piece of knowledge was revealed: the name “Haman” was indeed mentioned in Egyptian inscriptions. This name was referred to in a monument in the Hof Museum in Vienna.22
In the dictionary of People in the New Kingdom, that was prepared based on the entire collection of inscriptions, Haman is said to be “the head of stone quarry workers”.23
The result revealed a very important truth. Unlike the false assertion of the opponents of the Qur’an, Haman was a person who lived in Egypt at the time of Moses, who had been close to the Pharaoh, and had been involved in construction work, just as imparted in the Qur’an.
Furthermore, the verse in the Qur’an describing the event where the Pharaoh asked Haman to build a tower is in perfect agreement with this archaeological finding:
Pharaoh said, ‘Council, I do not know of any other god for you apart from Me. Haman, kindle a fire for me over the clay and build me a lofty tower so that perhaps I may be able to climb up to Moses’ god! I consider him a blatant liar.’ (The Qur’an, 28:38)
In conclusion, the existence of the name Haman in the ancient Egyptian inscriptions not only rendered the fabricated claims of the opponents of the Qur’an worthless, but also confirmed one more time the fact that the Qur’an comes from God. In a miraculous way, the Qur’an conveys to us historical information that could not have been possessed or understood at the time of the Prophet.
TITLES OF EGYPTIAN RULERS IN THE QUR’AN
Moses was not the only prophet who lived in the lands of Egypt in the history of ancient Egypt. The Prophet Joseph had lived in Egypt long before the time of Moses.
We encounter a certain parallel while reading about the stories of Moses and Joseph. While addressing the Egyptian ruler at the time of Joseph, the work “malik” (the King) is used in the Qur’an:
The King (malik) said, ‘Bring him (Joseph) to me straight away! so I may draw him very close to me.’ When he had spoken with him, he declared, ‘Today you are trusted, established in our sight.’ (The Qur’an, 12:54)
In contrast, the ruler at Moses’ time is referred to as the “Pharaoh”:
We gave Moses nine Clear Signs. Ask the tribe of Israel about when he came to them and Pharaoh said to him, ‘Moses, I think you are bewitched.’ (The Qur’an, 17:101)
Historical records available today show us the reason for the different nomenclature of these rulers. The word “pharaoh” was originally the name given to the royal palace in ancient Egypt. The rulers of the old dynasty did not use the title. The use of the word pharaoh as the title of the ruler did not start until the “New Kingdom” era of Egyptian history. This period started with the 18th dynasty (1539-1292 BC), and by the 20th dynasty (945-730 BC) the word “pharaoh” was adopted as title of respect.
Therefore the miraculous nature of the Qur’an is manifested here once again: Joseph lived at the time of the Old Kingdom, and hence the word “malik” was used for the Egyptian ruler rather than “pharaoh”. On the contrary, since Moses lived at the time of the New Kingdom, the ruler of Egypt is addressed as “pharaoh”.
There is no doubt that one has to have a knowledge of the history of Egypt in order to make such a distinction. However, the history of Ancient Egypt was completely forgotten by the 4th century, as hieroglyphics could no longer be understood, and was not rediscovered until the 19th century. Therefore, there was no in-depth knowledge of Egyptian history available when the Qur’an was revealed. This fact is yet another one of countless pieces of evidence proving that the Qur’an is the word of God.
CONCLUSION: THE QUR’AN IS THE WORD OF GOD
All that we have seen so far shows us one clear fact: the Qur’an is such a book that all the news related in it has proved to be true. Facts about scientific subjects and the news given about the future, facts that no one could have known at the time, were announced in its verses.
It is impossible for this information to have been known with the level of knowledge and technology of the day. It is clear that this provides clear evidence that the Qur’an is not the word of man. The Qur’an is the word of the Almighty God, the Originator of everything and the One Who encompasses everything with His knowledge.
In one verse, God says on the Qur’an “If it had been from other than God, they would have found many inconsistencies in it.” (The Qur’an, 4:82) Not only are there no inconsistencies in the Qur’an, but every piece of information it contains reveals the miracle of this divine book more and more each day.
What falls to man is to hold fast to this divine book revealed by God, and receive it as his one and only guide. In one of the verses, God calls out to us:
And this is a Book We have sent down and blessed, so follow it and have fear of God so that hopefully you will gain mercy. (The Qur’an, 6:155)
In His other verses, God remarks:
Say: ‘It is the truth from your Lord. Let anyone who wishes to, believe, and let anyone who wishes to, disbelieve.’ (The Qur’an, 18:29)
No indeed! Truly it (the Qur’an) is a reminder, and whoever wills pays heed to it. (The Qur’an, 80:11-12)
PART FOUR: THE EVOLUTION MISCONCEPTION
We have discussed some miracles of God’s Book, which He sent to mankind as a guide and warning. With these miracles, God has given us many signs that the Qur’an is the Book of Truth, and invited people to reflect upon it. One of the most important subjects God points to in the Qur’an is man’s recognition of the flawless signs of creation on the Earth and appreciation of His might through remembering them. Today, however, there are various ideologies which want to make people oblivious of the Fact of Creation and try to divorce them from religion with baseless ideas.
The most significant of these is materialism.
Darwinism, i.e., the theory of evolution, is the main theory that materialism adopts as a so-called scientific basis for its own ends. This theory, which claims that life originated from inanimate matter by chance, has actually collapsed with the confirmation of the fact that the universe was created by God.
It is God Who created the universe and Who designed it down to its smallest detail. Therefore, it is impossible for the theory of evolution, which holds that living beings are not created by God, but are products of coincidences, to be true.
Unsurprisingly, when we look at the theory of evolution, we see that this theory is denounced by scientific findings. The design in life is extremely complex and striking. In the inanimate world, for instance, we can explore how sensitive are the balances which atoms rest upon, and further, in the animate world, we can observe in what complex designs these atoms were brought together, and how extraordinary are the mechanisms and structures such as proteins, enzymes, and cells, which are manufactured with them.
This extraordinary design in life invalidated Darwinism at the end of the 20th century.
We have dealt with this subject in great detail in some of our other studies, and shall continue to do so. However, we think that, considering its importance, it will be helpful to make a short summary here as well.
The Scientific Collapse of Darwinism
Although a doctrine going back as far as ancient Greece, the theory of evolution was advanced extensively in the 19th century. The most important development that made the theory the top topic of the world of science was the book by Charles Darwin titled “The Origin of Species” published in 1859. In this book, Darwin denied that different living species on the earth were created separately by God. According to Darwin, all living beings had a common ancestor and they diversified over time through small changes.
Darwin’s theory was not based on any concrete scientific finding; as he also accepted, it was just an “assumption.” Moreover, as Darwin confessed in the long chapter of his book titled “Difficulties of the Theory,” the theory was failing in the face of many critical questions.
Darwin invested all his hopes in new scientific discoveries, which he expected to solve the “Difficulties of the Theory.” However, contrary to his expectations, scientific findings expanded the dimensions of these difficulties.
The defeat of Darwinism against science can be reviewed under three basic topics:
1) The theory can by no means explain how life originated on the earth.
2) There is no scientific finding showing that the “evolutionary mechanisms” proposed by the theory have any power to evolve at all.
3) The fossil record proves completely the contrary of the suggestions of the theory of evolution.
In this section, we will examine these three basic points in general outlines:
The First Insurmountable Step: The Origin of Life
The theory of evolution posits that all living species evolved from a single living cell that emerged on the primitive earth 3.8 billion years ago. How a single cell could generate millions of complex living species and, if such an evolution really occurred, why traces of it cannot be observed in the fossil record are some of the questions the theory cannot answer. However, first and foremost, of the first step of the alleged evolutionary process it has to be inquired: How did this “first cell” originate?
Since the theory of evolution denies creation and does not accept any kind of supernatural intervention, it maintains that the “first cell” originated coincidentally within the laws of nature, without any design, plan, or arrangement. According to the theory, inanimate matter must have produced a living cell as a result of coincidences. This, however, is a claim inconsistent with even the most unassailable rules of biology.
“Life Comes from Life”
In his book, Darwin never referred to the origin of life. The primitive understanding of science in his time rested on the assumption that living beings had a very simple structure. Since medieval times, spontaneous generation, the theory asserting that non-living materials came together to form living organisms, had been widely accepted. It was commonly believed that insects came into being from food leftovers, and mice from wheat. Interesting experiments were conducted to prove this theory.
Some wheat was placed on a dirty piece of cloth, and it was believed that mice would originate from it after a while. Similarly, worms developing in meat was assumed to be evidence of spontaneous generation. However, only some time later was it understood that worms did not appear on meat spontaneously, but were carried there by flies in the form of larvae, invisible to the naked eye.
Even in the period when Darwin wrote The Origin of Species, the belief that bacteria could come into existence from non-living matter was widely accepted in the world of science.
However, five years after Darwin’s book was published, the discovery of Louis Pasteur disproved this belief, which constituted the groundwork of evolution. Pasteur summarized the conclusion he reached after time-consuming studies and experiments: “The claim that inanimate matter can originate life is buried in history for good.”24
Advocates of the theory of evolution resisted the findings of Pasteur for a long time. However, as the development of science unraveled the complex structure of the cell of a living being, the idea that life could come into being coincidentally faced an even greater impasse.
Inconclusive Efforts in the 20th Century
The first evolutionist who took up the subject of the origin of life in the 20th century was the renowned Russian biologist Alexander Oparin. With various theses he advanced in the 1930’s, he tried to prove that the cell of a living being could originate by coincidence. These studies, however, were doomed to failure, and Oparin had to make the following confession: “Unfortunately, the origin of the cell remains a question which is actually the darkest point of the entire evolution theory.” 25
Evolutionist followers of Oparin tried to carry out experiments to solve the problem of the origin of life. The best known of these experiments was carried out by American chemist Stanley Miller in 1953. Combining the gases he alleged to have existed in the primordial earth’s atmosphere in an experiment set-up, and adding energy to the mixture, Miller synthesized several organic molecules (amino acids) present in the structure of proteins.
Barely a few years had passed before it was revealed that this experiment, which was then presented as an important step in the name of evolution, was invalid, the atmosphere used in the experiment having been very different from real earth conditions. 26
After a long silence, Miller confessed that the atmosphere medium he used was unrealistic. 27
All the evolutionist efforts put forth throughout the 20th century to explain the origin of life ended with failure. The geochemist Jeffrey Bada from San Diego Scripps Institute accepts this fact in an article published in Earth Magazine in 1998:
Today as we leave the twentieth century, we still face the biggest unsolved problem that we had when we entered the twentieth century: How did life originate on Earth? 28
The Complex Structure of Life
The primary reason why the theory of evolution ended up in such a big impasse about the origin of life is that even the living organisms deemed the simplest have incredibly complex structures. The cell of a living being is more complex than all of the technological products produced by man. Today, even in the most developed laboratories of the world, a living cell cannot be produced by bringing inorganic materials together.
The conditions required for the formation of a cell are too great in quantity to be explained away by coincidences. The probability of proteins, the building blocks of cell, being synthesized coincidentally, is 1 in 10950 for an average protein made up of 500 amino acids. In mathematics, a probability smaller than 1 over 1050 is practically considered to be impossible.
The DNA molecule, which is located in the nucleus of the cell and which stores genetic information, is an incredible databank. It is calculated that if the information coded in DNA were written down, this would make a giant library consisting of 900 volumes of encyclopaedias of 500 pages each.
A very interesting dilemma emerges at this point: the DNA can only replicate with the help of some specialized proteins (enzymes). However, the synthesis of these enzymes can only be realized by the information coded in DNA. As they both depend on each other, they have to exist at the same time for replication. This brings the scenario that life originated by itself to a deadlock. Prof. Leslie Orgel, an evolutionist of repute from the University of San Diego, California, confesses this fact in the September 1994 issue of the Scientific American magazine:
It is extremely improbable that proteins and nucleic acids, both of which are structurally complex, arose spontaneously in the same place at the same time. Yet it also seems impossible to have one without the other. And so, at first glance, one might have to conclude that life could never, in fact, have originated by chemical means. 29
No doubt, if it is impossible for life to have originated from natural causes, then it has to be accepted that life was “created” in a supernatural way. This fact explicitly invalidates the theory of evolution, whose main purpose is to deny creation.
Imaginary Mechanisms of Evolution
The second important point that negates Darwin’s theory is that both concepts put forward by the theory as “evolutionary mechanisms” were understood to have, in reality, no evolutionary power.
Darwin based his evolution allegation entirely on the mechanism of “natural selection”. The importance he placed on this mechanism was evident in the name of his book: The Origin of Species, By Means Of Natural Selection…
Natural selection holds that those living things that are stronger and more suited to the natural conditions of their habitats will survive in the struggle for life. For example, in a deer herd under the threat of attack by wild animals, those that can run faster will survive. Therefore, the deer herd will be comprised of faster and stronger individuals. However, unquestionably, this mechanism will not cause deer to evolve and transform themselves into another living species, for instance, horses.
Therefore, the mechanism of natural selection has no evolutionary power. Darwin was also aware of this fact and had to state this in his book The Origin of Species:
Natural selection can do nothing until favourable variations chance to occur.30
So, how could these “favourable variations” occur? Darwin tried to answer this question from the standpoint of the primitive understanding of science in his age. According to the French biologist Lamarck, who lived before Darwin, living creatures passed on the traits they acquired during their lifetime to the next generation and these traits, accumulating from one generation to another, caused new species to be formed. For instance, according to Lamarck, giraffes evolved from antelopes; as they struggled to eat the leaves of high trees, their necks were extended from generation to generation.
Darwin also gave similar examples, and in his book The Origin of Species, for instance, said that some bears going into water to find food transformed themselves into whales over time.31
However, the laws of inheritance discovered by Mendel and verified by the science of genetics that flourished in the 20th century, utterly demolished the legend that acquired traits were passed on to subsequent generations. Thus, natural selection fell out of favour as an evolutionary mechanism.
Neo-Darwinism and Mutations
In order to find a solution, Darwinists advanced the “Modern Synthetic Theory”, or as it is more commonly known, Neo-Darwinism, at the end of the 1930’s. Neo-Darwinism added mutations, which are distortions formed in the genes of living beings because of external factors such as radiation or replication errors, as the “cause of favourable variations” in addition to natural mutation.
Today, the model that stands for evolution in the world is Neo-Darwinism. The theory maintains that millions of living beings present on the earth formed as a result of a process whereby numerous complex organs of these organisms such as the ears, eyes, lungs, and wings, underwent “mutations,” that is, genetic disorders. Yet, there is an outright scientific fact that totally undermines this theory: Mutations do not cause living beings to develop; on the contrary, they always cause harm to them.
The reason for this is very simple: the DNA has a very complex structure and random effects can only cause harm to it. American geneticist B.G. Ranganathan explains this as follows:
Mutations are small, random, and harmful. They rarely occur and the best possibility is that they will be ineffectual. These four characteristics of mutations imply that mutations cannot lead to an evolutionary development. A random change in a highly specialised organism is either ineffectual or harmful. A random change in a watch cannot improve the watch. It will most probably harm it or at best be ineffectual. An earthquake does not improve the city, it brings destruction.32
Not surprisingly, no mutation example, which is useful, that is, which is observed to develop the genetic code, has been observed so far. All mutations have proved to be harmful. It was understood that mutation, which is presented as an “evolutionary mechanism,” is actually a genetic occurrence that harms living beings, and leaves them disabled. (The most common effect of mutation on human beings is cancer).
No doubt, a destructive mechanism cannot be an “evolutionary mechanism.” Natural selection, on the other hand, “can do nothing by itself” as Darwin also accepted. This fact shows us that there is no “evolutionary mechanism” in nature. Since no evolutionary mechanism exists, neither could any imaginary process called evolution have taken place.
The Fossil Record: No Sign of Intermediate Forms
The clearest evidence that the scenario suggested by the theory of evolution did not take place is the fossil record.
According to the theory of evolution, every living species has sprung from a predecessor. A previously existing species turned into something else in time and all species have come into being in this way. According to the theory, this transformation proceeds gradually over millions of years.
Had this been the case, then numerous intermediary species should have existed and lived within this long transformation period.
For instance, some half-fish/half-reptiles should have lived in the past which had acquired some reptilian traits in addition to the fish traits they already had. Or there should have existed some reptile-birds, which acquired some bird traits in addition to the reptilian traits they already had. Since these would be in a transitional phase, they should be disabled, defective, crippled living beings. Evolutionists refer to these imaginary creatures, which they believe to have lived in the past, as “transitional forms.”
If such animals had really existed, there should be millions and even billions of them in number and variety. More importantly, the remains of these strange creatures should be present in the fossil record. In The Origin of Species, Darwin explained:
If my theory were true, numberless intermediate varieties, linking most closely all of the species of the same group together must assuredly have existed… Consequently, evidence of their former existence could be found only amongst fossil remains.33
Darwin’s Hopes Shattered
However, although evolutionists have been making strenuous efforts to find fossils since the middle of the 19th century all over the world, no transitional forms have yet been uncovered. All the fossils unearthed in excavations showed that, contrary to the expectations of evolutionists, life appeared on earth all of a sudden and fully-formed.
A famous British paleontologist, Derek V. Ager, admits this fact, even though he is an evolutionist:
The point emerges that if we examine the fossil rec,ord in detail, whether at the level of orders or of species, we find — over and over again — not gradual evolution, but the sudden explosion of one group at the expense of another.34
This means that in the fossil record, all living species suddenly emerge as fully formed, without any intermediate forms in between. This is just the opposite of Darwin’s assumptions. Also, it is very strong evidence that living beings are created. The only explanation of a living species emerging suddenly and complete in every detail without any evolutionary ancestor can be that this species was created. This fact is admitted also by the widely known evolutionist biologist Douglas Futuyma:
Creation and evolution, between them, exhaust the possible explanations for the origin of living things. Organisms either appeared on the earth fully developed or they did not. If they did not, they must have developed from pre-existing species by some process of modification. If they did appear in a fully developed state, they must indeed have been created by some omnipotent intelligence. 35
Fossils show that living beings emerged fully developed and in a perfect state on the earth. That means that “the origin of species” is, contrary to Darwin’s supposition, not evolution but creation.
The Tale of Human Evolution
The subject most often brought up by the advocates of the theory of evolution is the subject of the origin of man. The Darwinist claim holds that the modern men of today evolved from some kind of ape-like creatures. During this alleged evolutionary process, which is supposed to have started 4-5 million years ago, it is claimed that there existed some “transitional forms” between modern man and his ancestors. According to this completely imaginary scenario, four basic “categories” are listed:
2. Homo habilis
3. Homo erectus
4. Homo sapiens
Evolutionists call the so-called first ape-like ancestors of men “Australopithecus” which means “South African ape.” These living beings are actually nothing but an old ape species that has become extinct. Extensive research done on various Australopithecus specimens by two world famous anatomists from England and the USA, namely, Lord Solly Zuckerman and Prof. Charles Oxnard, has shown that these belonged to an ordinary ape species that became extinct and bore no resemblance to humans.36
Evolutionists classify the next stage of human evolution as “homo,” that is “man.” According to the evolutionist claim, the living beings in the Homo series are more developed than Australopithecus. Evolutionists devise a fanciful evolution scheme by arranging different fossils of these creatures in a particular order.
This scheme is imaginary because it has never been proved that there is an evolutionary relation between these different classes. Ernst Mayr, one of the foremost defenders of the theory of evolution in the 20th century, admits this fact by saying that “the chain reaching as far as Homo sapiens is actually lost.” 37
By outlining the link chain as “Australopithecus > Homo habilis > Homo erectus > Homo sapiens,” evolutionists imply that each of these species is one another’s ancestor. However, recent findings of paleoanthropologists have revealed that Australopithecus, Homo habilis and Homo erectus lived at different parts of the world at the same time.38
Moreover, a certain segment of humans classified as Homo erectus have lived up until very modern times. Homo sapiens neandarthalensis and Homo sapiens sapiens (modern man) co-existed in the same region.39
This situation apparently indicates the invalidity of the claim that they are ancestors of one another. A paleontologist from Harvard University, Stephen Jay Gould, explains this deadlock of the theory of evolution although he is an evolutionist himself:
What has become of our ladder if there are three coexisting lineages of hominids (A. africanus, the robust australopithecines, and H. habilis), none clearly derived from another? Moreover, none of the three display any evolutionary trends during their tenure on earth.40
Put briefly, the scenario of human evolution, which is sought to be upheld with the help of various drawings of some “half ape, half human” creatures appearing in the media and course books, that is, frankly, by means of propaganda, is nothing but a tale with no scientific ground.
Lord Solly Zuckerman, one of the most famous and respected scientists in the U.K., who carried out research on this subject for years, and particularly studied Australopithecus fossils for 15 years, finally concluded, despite being an evolutionist himself, that there is, in fact, no such family tree branching out from ape-like creatures to man.
Zuckerman also made an interesting “spectrum of science.” He formed a spectrum of sciences ranging from those he considered scientific to those he considered unscientific. According to Zuckerman’s spectrum, the most “scientific”–that is, depending on concrete data–fields of science are chemistry and physics.
After them come the biological sciences and then the social sciences. At the far end of the spectrum, which is the part considered to be most “unscientific,” are “extra-sensory perception”–concepts such as telepathy and sixth sense–and finally “human evolution.” Zuckerman explains his reasoning:
We then move right off the register of objective truth into those fields of presumed biological science, like extrasensory perception or the interpretation of man’s fossil history, where to the faithful (evolutionist) anything is possible – and where the ardent believer (in evolution) is sometimes able to believe several contradictory things at the same time.41
The tale of human evolution boils down to nothing but the prejudiced interpretations of some fossils unearthed by certain people, who blindly adhere to their theory.
Technology In The Eye and The Ear
Another subject that remains unanswered by evolutionary theory is the excellent quality of perception in the eye and the ear.
Before passing on to the subject of the eye, let us briefly answer the question of “how we see”. Light rays coming from an object fall oppositely on the retina of the eye. Here, these light rays are transmitted into electric signals by cells and they reach a tiny spot at the back of the brain called the centre of vision. These electric signals are perceived in this centre of the brain as an image after a series of processes. With this technical background, let us do some thinking.
The brain is insulated from light. That means that the inside of the brain is solid dark, and light does not reach the location where the brain is situated. The place called the centre of vision is a solid dark place where no light ever reaches; it may even be the darkest place you have ever known. However, you observe a luminous, bright world in this pitch darkness.
The image formed in the eye is so sharp and distinct that even the technology of the 20th century has not been able to attain it. For instance, look at the book you read, your hands with which you hold it, then lift your head and look around you.
Have you ever seen such a sharp and distinct image as this one at any other place? Even the most developed television screen produced by the greatest television producer in the world cannot provide such a sharp image for you. This is a three-dimensional, coloured, and extremely sharp image.
For more than 100 years, thousands of engineers have been trying to achieve this sharpness. Factories, huge premises were established, much research has been done, plans and designs have been made for this purpose. Again, look at a TV screen and the book you hold in your hands. You will see that there is a big difference in sharpness and distinction. Moreover, the TV screen shows you a two-dimensional image, whereas with your eyes, you watch a three-dimensional perspective having depth.
For many years, ten of thousands of engineers have tried to make a three-dimensional TV, and reach the vision quality of the eye. Yes, they have made a three-dimensional television system but it is not possible to watch it without putting on glasses; moreover, it is only an artificial three-dimension. The background is more blurred, the foreground appears like a paper setting. Never has it been possible to produce a sharp and distinct vision like that of the eye. In both the camera and the television, there is a loss of image quality.
Evolutionists claim that the mechanism producing this sharp and distinct image has been formed by chance. Now, if somebody told you that the television in your room was formed as a result of chance, that all its atoms just happened to come together and make up this device that produces an image, what would you think? How can atoms do what thousands of people cannot?
If a device producing a more primitive image than the eye could not have been formed by chance, then it is very evident that the eye and the image seen by the eye could not have been formed by chance. The same situation applies to the ear. The outer ear picks up the available sounds by the auricle and directs them to the middle ear; the middle ear transmits the sound vibrations by intensifying them; the inner ear sends these vibrations to the brain by translating them into electric signals. Just as with the eye, the act of hearing finalises in the centre of hearing in the brain.
The situation in the eye is also true for the ear. That is, the brain is insulated from sound just like it is from light: it does not let any sound in. Therefore, no matter how noisy is the outside, the inside of the brain is completely silent. Nevertheless, the sharpest sounds are perceived in the brain.
In your brain, which is insulated from sound, you listen to the symphonies of an orchestra, and hear all the noises in a crowded place. However, if the sound level in your brain was measured by a precise device at that moment, it would be seen that a complete silence is prevailing there.
As is the case with imagery, decades of effort have been spent in trying to generate and reproduce sound that is faithful to the original. The results of these efforts are sound recorders, high-fidelity systems, and systems for sensing sound. Despite all this technology and the thousands of engineers and experts who have been working on this endeavour, no sound has yet been obtained that has the same sharpness and clarity as the sound perceived by the ear. Think of the highest-quality HI-FI systems produced by the biggest company in the music industry.
Even in these devices, when sound is recorded some of it is lost; or when you turn on a HI-FI you always hear a hissing sound before the music starts. However, the sounds that are the products of the technology of the human body are extremely sharp and clear. A human ear never perceives a sound accompanied by a hissing sound or with atmospherics as does HI-FI; it perceives sound exactly as it is, sharp and clear. This is the way it has been since the creation of man.
So far, no visual or recording apparatus produced by man has been as sensitive and successful in perceiving sensory data as are the eye and the ear.
However, as far as seeing and hearing are concerned, a far greater fact lies beyond all this.
To Whom Does the Consciousness that Sees and Hears Within the Brain Belong?
Who is it that watches an alluring world in its brain, listens to symphonies and the twittering of birds, and smells the rose?
The stimulations coming from the eyes, ears, and nose of a human being travel to the brain as electro-chemical nervous impulses. In biology, physiology, and biochemistry books, you can find many details about how this image forms in the brain. However, you will never come across the most important fact about this subject: Who is it that perceives these electro-chemical nervous impulses as images, sounds, odours and sensory events in the brain?
There is a consciousness in the brain that perceives all this without feeling any need for eye, ear, and nose. To whom does this consciousness belong? There is no doubt that this consciousness does not belong to the nerves, the fat layer and neurons comprising the brain. This is why Darwinist-materialists, who believe that everything is comprised of matter, cannot give any answer to these questions.
For this consciousness is the spirit created by God. The spirit needs neither the eye to watch the images, nor the ear to hear the sounds. Furthermore, nor does it need the brain to think.
Everyone who reads this explicit and scientific fact should ponder on Almighty God, should fear Him and seek refuge in Him, He Who squeezes the entire universe in a pitch-dark place of a few cubic centimeters in a three-dimensional, coloured, shadowy, and luminous form.
A Materialist Faith
The information we have presented so far shows us that the theory of evolution is a claim evidently at variance with scientific findings. The theory’s claim on the origin of life is inconsistent with science, the evolutionary mechanisms it proposes have no evolutionary power, and fossils demonstrate that the intermediate forms required by the theory never existed.
So, it certainly follows that the theory of evolution should be pushed aside as an unscientific idea. This is how many ideas such as the earth-centered universe model have been taken out of the agenda of science throughout history.
However, the theory of evolution is pressingly kept on the agenda of science. Some people even try to represent criticisms directed against the theory as an “attack on science.” Why?
The reason is that the theory of evolution is an indispensable dogmatic belief for some circles. These circles are blindly devoted to materialist philosophy and adopt Darwinism because it is the only materialist explanation that can be put forward for the workings of nature.
Interestingly enough, they also confess this fact from time to time. A well known geneticist and an outspoken evolutionist, Richard C. Lewontin from Harvard University, confesses that he is “first and foremost a materialist and then a scientist”:
It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, so we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. 42
These are explicit statements that Darwinism is a dogma kept alive just for the sake of adherence to the materialist philosophy. This dogma maintains that there is no being save matter. Therefore, it argues that inanimate, unconscious matter created life. It insists that millions of different living species;
for instance, birds, fish, giraffes, tigers, insects, trees, flowers, whales and human beings originated as a result of the interactions between matter such as the pouring rain, the lightning flash, etc., out of inanimate matter. This is a precept contrary both to reason and science. Yet Darwinists continue to defend it just so as “not to allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Anyone who does not look at the origin of living beings with a materialist prejudice will see this evident truth: All living beings are works of a Creator, Who is All-Powerful, All-Wise and All-Knowing. This Creator is God, Who created the whole universe from non-existence, designed it in the most perfect form, and fashioned all living beings.
They said ‘Glory be to You!
We have no knowledge except what You have taught us.
You are the All-Knowing, the All-Wise.’
(The Qur’an, 2:32)
1- http://www.jps.net/bygrace/index. html Taken from Big Bang Refined by Fire by Dr. Hugh Ross, 1998. Reasons To Believe, Pasadena, CA.
2- Carolyn Sheets, Robert Gardner, Samuel F. Howe; General Science, Allyn and Bacon Inc. Newton, Massachusetts, 1985, p. 319-322
4- Carolyn Sheets, Robert Gardner, Samuel F. Howe, General Science, Allyn and Bacon Inc. Newton, Massachusetts, 1985, p. 305
6- Carolyn Sheets, Robert Gardner, Samuel F. Howe; General Science, Allyn and Bacon Inc. Newton, Massachusetts, 1985, p. 305
7- National Geographic Society, Powers of Nature, Washington D.C., 1978, p.12-13
8- http://www.2think.org/nothingness. html, Henning Genz – Nothingness: The Science of Empty Space, p. 205
9- Anthes, Richard A., John J. Cahir, Alistair B. Fraser, and Hans A. Panofsky, 1981, The Atmosphere, 3. edition, Columbus, Charles E. Merrill Publishing Company, p. 268-269; Millers, Albert; and Jack C. Thompson, 1975, Elements of Meteorology, 2. edition, Columbus, Charles E. Merrill Publishing Company, p. 141
10- Anthes, Richard A.; John J. Cahir; Alistair B. Fraser; and Hans A. Panofsky, 1981, The Atmosphere, p. 269; Millers, Albert; and Jack C. Thompson, 1975, Elements of Meteorology, p. 141-142
11- Davis, Richard A., Jr. 1972, Principles of Oceanography, Don Mills, Ontario, Addison-Wesley Publishing, p. 92-93
12- Elder, Danny; and John Pernetta, 1991, Oceans, London, Mitchell Beazley Publishers, p. 27
13- Gross, M. Grant; 1993, Oceanography, a View of Earth, 6. edition, Englewood Cliffs, Prentice-Hall Inc., p. 205
14- Seeley, Rod R.; Trent D. Stephens; and Philip Tate, 1996, Essentials of Anatomy & Physiology, 2. edition, St. Louis, Mosby-Year Book Inc., p. 211; Noback, Charles R.; N. L. Strominger; and R. J. Demarest, 1991, The Human Nervous System, Introduction and Review, 4. edition, Philadelphia, Lea & Febiger , p. 410-411
15- Seeley, Rod R.; Trent D. Stephens; and Philip Tate, 1996, Essentials of Anatomy & Physiology, 2. edition, St. Louis, Mosby-Year Book Inc., p. 211
16- Moore, Keith L., E. Marshall Johnson, T. V. N. Persaud, Gerald C. Goeringer, Abdul-Majeed A. Zindani, and Mustafa A. Ahmed, 1992, Human Development as Described in the Qur’an and Sunnah, Makkah, Commission on Scientific Signs of the Qur’an and Sunnah, p. 36
17- Moore, Developing Human, 6. edition,1998.
18- Williams P., Basic Human Embryology, 3. edition, 1984, p. 64.
19- Rex D. Russell, Design in Infant Nutrition, http:// www. icr.org/pubs/imp-259.htm
20- Warren Treadgold, A History of the Byzantine State and Society, Stanford University Press, 1997, p. 287-299.
21- Warren Treadgold, A History of the Byzantine State and Society, Stanford University Press, 1997, p. 287-299.
22- Walter Wreszinski, Aegyptische Inschriften aus dem K.K. Hof Museum in Wien, 1906, J. C. Hinrichs’ sche Buchhandlung
23- Hermann Ranke, Die Ägyptischen Personennamen, Verzeichnis der Namen, Verlag Von J. J. Augustin in Glückstadt, Band I, 1935, Band II, 1952
24- Sidney Fox, Klaus Dose, Molecular Evolution and The Origin of Life, New York: Marcel Dekker, 1977. p. 2
25- Alexander I. Oparin, Origin of Life, (1936) New York, Dover Publications, 1953 (Reprint), p. 196
26- “New Evidence on Evolution of Early Atmosphere and Life”, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Vol 63, November 1982, p. 1328-1330
27- Stanley Miller, Molecular Evolution of Life: Current Status of the Prebiotic Synthesis of Small Molecules, 1986, p. 7
28- Jeffrey Bada, Earth, February 1998, p. 40
29- Leslie E. Orgel, “The Origin of Life on Earth”, Scientific American, Vol 271, October 1994, p. 78
30- Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species: A Facsimile of the First Edition, Harvard University Press, 1964, p. 189
31- Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species: A Facsimile of the First Edition, Harvard University Press, 1964, p. 184.
32- B. G. Ranganathan, Origins?, Pennsylvania: The Banner Of Truth Trust, 1988.
33- Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species: A Facsimile of the First Edition, Harvard University Press, 1964, p. 179
34- Derek A. Ager, “The Nature of the Fossil Record”, Proceedings of the British Geological Association, vol 87, 1976, p. 133
35- Douglas J. Futuyma, Science on Trial, New York: Pantheon Books, 1983. p. 197
36- Solly Zuckerman, Beyond The Ivory Tower, New York: Toplinger Publications, 1970, p. 75-94; Charles E. Oxnard, “The Place of Australopithecines in Human Evolution: Grounds for Doubt”, Nature, Cilt 258, p. 389
37- J. Rennie, “Darwin’s Current Bulldog: Ernst Mayr”, Scientific American, December 1992
38- Alan Walker, Science, vol. 207, 1980, p. 1103; A. J. Kelso, Physical Antropology, 1st ed., New York: J. B. Lipincott Co., 1970, p. 221; M. D. Leakey, Olduvai Gorge, vol. 3, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971, p. 272
39- Time, November 1996
40- S. J. Gould, Natural History, vol. 85, 1976, p. 30
41- Solly Zuckerman, Beyond The Ivory Tower, New York: Toplinger Publications, 1970, p. 19
42- Richard Lewontin, “The Demon-Haunted World”, The New York Review of Books, 9 January, 1997, p. 28 | <urn:uuid:14f7beff-ac87-4cec-a5f0-ea67ed92983b> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://islamcompass.com/miracles-of-the-quran/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573623.4/warc/CC-MAIN-20220819035957-20220819065957-00675.warc.gz | en | 0.957931 | 25,021 | 2.484375 | 2 |
back to Experimental Homepage
Recall that when you are writing up a results section you
want to cover three things:
Below you will find descriptive information and an analysis of variance summary table. This table is from an experiment that investigated whether physically attractive vs. unattractive defendants in a criminal case would be rated differently on amount of guilt (GUILTY) and length of prison sentence (PRISON). Because there is only one independent variable (attractiveness of the defendant), this analysis is referred to as a one-way analysis of variance. If there were two independent variables, then the analysis would be referred to as two-way analysis of variance.
A good results section for the analysis on guilt ratings would be:
size r was calculated for all appropriate analyses
Guilt Ratings (Margin headings are useful to tell the reader what the paragraph will be about. Format it correctly).
analysis of variance (ANOVA) was calculated on
participants' ratings of defendant guilt. The analysis was
not significant, F(1, 37) = 1.20,
p = .281 (r = .18).
If the "Guilty" analysis had been significant, then it would be correct to describe the mean differences in the following manner:
who read about an unattractive defendant rated the
defendant more guilty (M = 6.50, SD = 1.85)
than participants who read about an
attractive defendant (M = 5.79, SD = 2.20).
Try writing the results for the analysis on length of prison sentence ratings...I'll get you started.
Length of Prison Sentence Ratings (Margin headings are useful to tell the reader what the paragraph will be about. Format it correctly).
ANOVA was calculated on participants' ratings of length of
prison sentence for the defendant. The analysis was
significant, F( , )
p = .xxx (r = ).
Once you understand the results from a one-way ANOVA, try to figure out a more sophisticated ANOVA by clicking here.
What goes in the "F ( , )"?
The information contained in the "F( , )" can be most easily found in the analysis of variance summary table under the "df" column. This information is the degrees of freedom (df) for your experiment. Specifically, the degrees of freedom in the numerator (between groups) and the degrees of freedom in the denominator (within groups or error). The first number is your between groups degrees of freedom followed by your within groups degrees of freedom. Because your degrees of freedom are dependent on the number of participants you have in each of your conditions, your degrees of freedom may change from analysis to analysis.
What comes after the "="?
The information that comes after the "=" is the actual value of that F. This value can be found in the analysis of variance summary table under the "F" column.
How Do I Know if the Analysis is Significant?
Simple. All you need to do to determine whether that particular analysis is significant is to, again, look at the analysis of variance summary table under the "Sig." column. The "Sig." column is your probability level for that particular analysis. Remember, any value in this column that is LESS than .05 is significant. All other values in that column that are greater than .05 are NOT significant. But, I KNOW you remember all of this from your statistics class...right?
What is "r"?
"r" is an effect size. There is a very simple formula for calculating r. You can find the formula for r and more information on effect sizes by following this link or the "(r = .18)" link above under the "Guilt Ratings" heading.
One-Way Analysis of Variance with Three Groups
Below you will find descriptive information and an
analysis of variance summary table. This table is from an
experiment that investigated whether the type of music
that song lyrics were attributed to would differently
impact whether participants thought the lyrics were
objectionable (OBJECT) and whether they thought the lyrics
should have a mandatory warning label (WARN). This
analysis differs from the one above, because the
independent variable (type of music) has three levels.
When you have an independent variable that has three or
more levels, then you must run comparisons among the
levels (e.g., country vs. rap, country vs. heavy metal,
rap vs. heavy metal) for each of the dependent variables.
The write-up for the lyric objection results could be as follows:
The effect size r was calculated for all appropriate analyses (Rosenthal, 1991).
Objection to the Lyrics
analysis of variance (ANOVA) was calculated on
participants' ratings of objection to the lyrics.
The analysis was significant, F(2, 61) = 5.33,
p = .007. Participants found the lyrics more
objectionable when they were attributed to rap music (M
= 6.25, SD = 2.71) than when the lyrics were
heavy metal (M = 5.10, SD = 0.63) or
country music (M = 3.91, SD = 2.92).
Comparisons indicated that the rap music condition was
significantly different from
the country music condition, t(61) = -3.26, p
= .002, r = .39. The rap music condition was not
significantly different from the heavy metal condition, t(61)
1.58, p = .120, r = .20. The country music condition was not significantly different from the heavy metal music condition, t(61) = -1.67, p = .100, r = .21.
To make sure you understand, you should write up the
results for whether the lyrics should have a mandatory
warning label (WARN).
Suppose we wanted to examine
the relationship between self-esteem and negative
mood. First, we should remember that scores on the
Rosenberg self-esteem scale range from 10 to 50 with
higher scores indicating higher self-esteem. The
measure of negative mood ranges from 12 to 60 with
higher scores indicating more negative mood. We
get 122 undergraduates to complete both measures, enter
the data, run the analysis, and get the following:
How do we write this up in a results section?
A correlational analysis was conducted to examine the relationship between negative mood and self-esteem. The analysis was significant, r(120) = -.49,
p < .001. Participants with higher self-esteem scores reported less negative mood.
Correlation Statement Spacing
Same spacing applies for F statements. | <urn:uuid:f7707c8a-1069-4c41-923a-a93b595c7ac1> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://mypages.valdosta.edu/mwhatley/3600/oneway.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279169.4/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00216-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.925508 | 1,404 | 3.328125 | 3 |
It is very important to follow your health care professional’s directions when you take SEROQUEL XR. In addition to the Important Safety Information below, here are some things you should know when starting SEROQUEL XR.
SEROQUEL XR is an extended-release tablet, which means medication is delivered around the clock
TAKE SEROQUEL XR in the evening
ANTICIPATE possible drowsiness
TELL your health care professional how you’re feeling
It is important to talk to your doctor about how and when to take SEROQUEL XR in order to help manage your unresolved symptoms. It is also important to talk to your doctor about all available options that may help you get closer to your treatment plan goals, including talk therapy.
You are encouraged to report negative side effects of prescription drugs to the FDA.
Visit www.FDA.gov/medwatch or call 1-800-FDA-1088.
This site is intended for US customers only.
The information on this Web site should not take the place of talking with your doctor or health care professional. If you have any questions about SEROQUEL XR, talk to your doctor or pharmacist. Only you and your health care professional can decide if SEROQUEL XR is right for you. | <urn:uuid:2deb2572-2a4f-4e6f-8338-4b8ddf6e1033> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | https://www.seroquelxr.com/get-the-right-start.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988720153.61/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183840-00323-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.918548 | 277 | 1.554688 | 2 |
David Nolan and Helen Searls are a professional couple in the District, active in their children’s school and local civic associations. As taxpayers and longtime residents, they feel they have a duty to be involved in public life. But as legal immigrants who have not become U.S. citizens, they have no right to vote — even in local elections.
“It’s frustrating at election time to have no say in what’s happening,” said the British-born Searls, 54, who works at a media company. “Washington has people from all over the world. If they are engaged and participating in public issues, it benefits the city.”
Searls and Nolan are among 54,000 immigrants in the District — and about 12 million nationwide — who have been granted green cards that allow them to remain in the United States permanently. Most are sponsored by relatives or employers. They pay taxes and serve in the armed forces. Yet in all but a handful of localities, they have no voting rights.
Last month, for the third time in a decade, a bill was introduced in the D.C. Council to allow legal immigrants to vote locally. The measure has little chance of passage, but it is illustrative of a growing movement to expand local voting rights to noncitizens that has spawned similar proposals in several dozen communities across the country.
Most immigrant groups focus on promoting citizenship as the path to political influence, and the effort to enfranchise noncitizens remains controversial. It has succeeded in only a handful of places, including Chicago and Takoma Park, Md., but has been gaining traction recently in others, including New York City and Burlington, Vt., as the population of settled legal immigrants grows.
Proponents point out that noncitizen voting was the norm early in American history, when new regions needed people to populate them. It was abandoned only after spates of anti-foreign sentiment in the 1860s and 1920s. Proponents have not urged that immigrants be allowed to vote for president, which is against federal law; they want them to be permitted a political role in their communities.
But opponents assert that the right to vote at any level is a defining quality of citizenship. They say it should not be easily granted to the foreign-born, who might have divided loyalties and insufficient knowledge of American democracy. And they point out that any legal permanent resident can apply to become a U.S. citizen with full voting rights after a five-year wait.
“To be a voter is to signify that you have cleared hurdles and that you understand what it means to be an American, with responsibilities as well as rights,” said Carl Horowitz, president of the National Legal and Policy Center, a conservative think tank in Falls Church, Va. Allowing noncitizens to vote, he said, “renders the idea of citizenship meaningless.”
Some opponents also think the campaign is part of a political scheme to create more Latino voters, who polls show tend to prefer Democrats — a concern that has spread with the protracted debate over illegal immigration. The largest numbers of green-card holders are from Mexico, followed by China, India and the Philippines.
D.C. Council member David Grosso (I-At Large), who introduced the immigrant voting bill last month, said his attempt in 2013 met with a “huge backlash,” and he acknowledged that the new proposal is unlikely to go far. A similar bill in 2004 also died.
“This is the right thing to do, but a lot of people still have a misguided understanding of what it’s about,” Grosso said. “I get e-mails and tweets from around the country saying I want to give the vote to people who snuck over the border.”
Despite such fears, advocates said the political impact of the noncitizen vote has often been marginal. In many cases, the impetus has come from liberal or civic groups, while the beneficiaries may be less enthusiastic or aware of the benefits.
The pioneering community was Takoma Park, which gave legal immigrants voting rights in a 1991 referendum. Sean Whittaker, 46, a Canadian-born engineer who lives there, said that being able to vote made him feel as if he truly belonged in the community. In the town’s most recent election, the district candidate he supported won by six votes. “Maybe I made a difference,” Whittaker said.
Since then, four other Maryland towns have approved similar policies, although noncitizens cannot vote in state elections. In 2012, Del. Patrick L. McDonough (R-Baltimore County) sponsored a bill to ban noncitizens from voting in any Maryland locality, warning hyperbolically that even Osama bin Laden would have been allowed to vote in Takoma Park.
But the repercussions from Maryland’s experiment have been far from dire. Takoma Park officials say no more than a handful of immigrants have voted in any local election, where turnout is also generally low among citizens, too.
“This has not fulfilled either the worst predictions of critics nor the great hopes of supporters,” said state Sen. Jamin Raskin (D-Montgomery), a law professor who helped pave the legal path for the initiative. Still, he said, “it has remained an important statement of welcome, a way to give people a taste for the democratic process.”
Elsewhere in the United States, efforts to enfranchise foreign-born residents have spread to scattered municipalities, including liberal college towns such as Madison, Wis., and Amherst, Mass., and cities with large immigrant populations.
But such proposals have also encountered an array of hurdles, including conflicts with state laws, public antipathy and lack of awareness among immigrant groups. In 2010, voters in Portland, Maine, narrowly rejected a proposal for noncitizen voting in local elections, and a ballot measure in San Francisco to allow noncitizen parents to vote for school board members lost by 55 to 45 percent.
In Amherst, activist Vladimir Morales, who has spent a decade promoting the cause, said the idea has wide local support but continues to meet resistance from state legislators, who would have to amend home-rule laws to allow it.
“There is fear. The subject is immigration, and the representatives don’t want to touch it. It just keeps dying in committee,” said Morales, a U.S. citizen from Puerto Rico and a retired Amherst school board member.
In New York, home to about 1.3 million legal permanent residents, noncitizens were allowed to vote in school board elections from 1969 to 2003, when the board system was abolished. In recent years, a coalition of academic, political and immigrant groups has been trying to revive noncitizen voting rights and expand them to all local offices. Advocates said they are close to securing enough city council support to pass legislation this spring, but they lamented that the area’s major immigrant groups have not gotten involved.
“It’s hard to sell,” said David Andersson, the coalition coordinator. “Most voters don’t understand what legal immigrants are, and a lot of immigrant groups are focused on issues like deportation and wages. Sadly, voting is just not a priority.”
In the Washington area, few people know about Grosso’s proposal and few groups have expressed support, except the Service Employees International Union. But many of its members are not legal residents, and the union is strongly identified with illegal-immigrant causes.
Still, a variety of legal immigrants in the District said they would welcome being able to vote for city council and Board of Education members. Some said they wanted to become citizens but had difficulty passing the required tests in English.
At the Central American Resource Center in Northwest Washington, a half-dozen middle-aged Latinos bent over citizenship test workbooks one night last week, struggling with questions that ranged from “What is your current occupation?” to “Why did the colonists come to America?” and “What rights are in the Declaration of Independence?”
Maria Carpio, 57, a retired office cleaner from El Salvador, has been a legal resident since 1987. She said she had failed the citizenship test because of her limited eyesight and poor English, but that she volunteered to pass out fliers for a Latino school board candidate in November.
“I have worked hard here all my life,” Carpio said. “I should have the right to express my opinion.” | <urn:uuid:eab46ec4-a862-488b-9d35-6b4e7bc6c476> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/should-legal-immigrants-have-voting-rightscontentious-issue-comes-to-dc-other-cities/2015/02/09/85072440-ab0f-11e4-ad71-7b9eba0f87d6_story.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571869.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813021048-20220813051048-00069.warc.gz | en | 0.973391 | 1,776 | 2.4375 | 2 |
Notated Music I remember the hour when sadly we parted
About this Item
- I remember the hour when sadly we parted
- Contributor Names
- Walters, B. Frank (composer)
- Rossiter, E. (lyricist)
- Created / Published
- Lee & Walker, Philadelphia, 1863.
- Subject Headings
- - United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Songs and music
- - Songs with piano
- - Choruses (Mixed voices, 4 parts) with piano
- - Sheet music -- Catalogs
- - United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Social aspects -- Songs and music
- - Popular Songs of the Day
- - Songs and Music
- - War and Conflict
- - Civil War and Reconstruction (1861-1877)
- - Music associated with the Union side
- sheet music
- LC Classification
- Online Format
- Additional Metadata Formats
- METSXML Record
ContributorsLee & Walker
SubjectsChoruses (Mixed Voices, 4 Parts) With Piano
Civil War and Reconstruction
Popular Songs of the Day
Songs and Music
Songs With Piano
War and Conflict
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More about Copyright and other Restrictions
For guidance about compiling full citations consult Citing Primary Sources.
Citations are generated automatically from bibliographic data as a convenience, and may not be complete or accurate.
Chicago citation style:
Walters, B. Frank, and E Rossiter. I Remember the Hour When Sadly We Parted. Lee & Walker, Philadelphia, 1863. Notated Music. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200002170/. (Accessed January 20, 2017.)
APA citation style:
Walters, B. F. & Rossiter, E. (1863) I Remember the Hour When Sadly We Parted. Lee & Walker, Philadelphia. [Notated Music] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200002170/.
MLA citation style:
Walters, B. Frank, and E Rossiter. I Remember the Hour When Sadly We Parted. Lee & Walker, Philadelphia, 1863. Notated Music. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200002170/>. | <urn:uuid:e454bf2c-1270-4ad8-96a7-81d0fed1c00d> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200002170/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280891.90/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00160-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.856608 | 819 | 2.265625 | 2 |
Role Of Internet In Our Daily Lives Essay.
In our present time, many of us are already using internet for our daily lives. The Internet is the mechanism or matrix that connects networks around the world to each other and is generally referred to as the World Wide Web. Internet has been the most useful technology of the modern times which helps us not only in our daily lives, but also our personal and professional lives developments. The internet helps us achieve this in several different ways. For the students and educational purposes the internet is widely used to gather information so as to do the research or add to the knowledge of any sort of subject they have.
Even the business personals and the professions like doctors, access the internet to filter the necessary information for their use. The internet is therefore the largest encyclopedia for everyone, in all age categories.The internet has served to be more useful in maintaining contacts with friends and relatives who live abroad permanently.
The easiest communication means like the internet chatting systems and the emails are the best and the most common for the maintaining contacts with the people around the world.Not to forget internet is useful in providing with most of the fun these days.
May it be all the games, and networking conferences or the online movies, songs, dramas and quizzes, internet has provided the users with a great opportunity to eradicate the boredom from their lives. Internet is also used to upgrade the internet and use special software to work on the projects and documentation works as the internet enables the user to download a myriad of different software for a variety of different purposes, making it much easier than buying the costly software cds.
There are millions of applications of internet. We are in fact as dependent on internet as we are on other utility things like electricity, water etc. In fact many people would think that a part of their life is missing if they are not able to log on for even one day. Before a few years, people used to get up in the morning and read the newspaper or watch television. Now most people log onto the internet first thing in the morning. | <urn:uuid:0947e76f-9b2a-4f4d-8b15-be56fd92fbab> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://customuniversitypapers.com/2020/02/22/role-of-internet-in-our-daily-lives-essay/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573104.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20220817183340-20220817213340-00471.warc.gz | en | 0.95061 | 418 | 2.484375 | 2 |
A cervical cancer screening test is available to women between the ages of 25 and 64. Instead of detecting cervical cancer directly, it looks for harmful alterations in the cells lining your cervix as well as the presence of the human papillomavirus, or HPV, which typically goes unnoticed and presents no symptoms. Although there is no cure for HPV, your body will generally get rid of it in two years. But in certain people, it can result in genital warts and aberrant cells that occasionally turn cancerous.
Cervical screening is a procedure used to assess the health of your cervix as well as look for precancerous and cancerous alterations like HPV.
The importance of cervical screening…
Cervical cancer is preventable. By making sure that you regularly attend your cervical screening, precancerous cells can be detected and removed before they develop into cancer. This test saves 2,000 lives annually in the UK alone!!
When to have a smear test:
Women between the ages of 25 and 64 should routinely have a cervical screening, whether or not they are sexually active. A cervical screening should be performed every three years for women ages 25 to 49 and every five years for those ages 50 to 64.
What happens at your smear test:
It's ideal to dress comfortably the day of your appointment so you can undress quickly. A female nurse or doctor often conducts the screening, which lasts only a few minutes. You will be escorted to an examination bed where you must lie on your back with a paper sheet covering yourself after you are given privacy to undress.
The smear test consists of five steps:
The nurse or doctor will ask you to bend your legs, and they will then carefully insert a lubricated plastic speculum into your vagina. Although it might feel a little uneasy, you can really benefit if you calm down by taking deep, even breaths in and out. To clearly observe your cervix, the nurse will delicately open the speculum and enlarge your vagina. The nurse or doctor will extract a tiny sample of cells from the neck of your cervix using a soft, long, thin brush. Once the sample has been collected, the nurse will gently close the speculum and remove it, the test is then complete and you can get dressed and leave.
Your results explained:
It can take up to two weeks for your cervical screening results to arrive by mail. Four outcomes are typically possible.
Negative outcome: You tested negative for HPV and no abnormal alterations were discovered in the cells of your cervix. In three years, you'll be invited back for another routine cervical screening (unless you are aged over 50, then it will be five years).
Uncertain outcome - This outcome is noted for a number of reasons. During the screening, not enough cells were occasionally collected. It's possible that the results were murky because you were on your period or sick. To have the test redone, you will be required to schedule an appointment.
Mixed result - No abnormal changes were found in the cells of your cervix and you tested positive for HPV. You will be invited to have another cervical screening in one year.
Positive result - Abnormal changes were found in the cells of your cervix and you tested positive for HPV. This does not definitively mean that you have cancer but you will need further tests and/or treatment.
How to proceed if your outcomes are unusual:
The discovery of certain abnormal cells during your cervical screening can be shocking. But it's crucial to keep in mind that this does not necessarily indicate that you have cancer. If you are experiencing worry or anxiety, speak with your doctor or the practice nurse. You may have anxiety while awaiting additional tests if you need to get them. It's crucial to keep in mind that most women whose test results are followed up on do not go on to acquire cervical cancer. If further tests confirm the presence of precancerous cells, you will have a colposcopy — a procedure that takes a closer look at your cervix and may involve a biopsy or treatment to remove precancerous cells.
While the majority of women would tell you that getting a cervical screening is not the most pleasant experience ever, keep in mind that in exchange for a few minutes of discomfort every few years, you are given the assurance that your risk of ever developing cervical cancer has been significantly reduced.
With an EK health kiosk in the waiting area of a GP practice, female patients can be given a reminder that their cervical smear test is due and offered an appointment or advised to speak with practice staff to arrange it.
If you’d like to book a demo with us, call 01223 812737 or email email@example.com | <urn:uuid:dad4e710-ff3c-4d3f-be16-ca1bc8a65248> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.ekinteractive.co.uk/post/women-s-health-the-importance-of-cervical-screening | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572212.96/warc/CC-MAIN-20220815205848-20220815235848-00470.warc.gz | en | 0.963368 | 970 | 2.5625 | 3 |
Israel’s Ormat Technologies has brokered a deal with eBay to power the online auction giant’s new data center in Utah using Recovered Energy Generation (REG) – a groundbreaking project made possible by new energy legislation.
Data centers are enormously energy intensive. You can get a sense of just how much how our tweets and shares harm the environment by reading an earlier post about the subject.
Because of this (but more likely because of costs), large companies like eBay are beginning to scout out cleaner energy sources to power their data centers. And a new law passed in Utah, called SB12, allows them to directly source their own power from independent generators – such as Ormat, which won a bid to do just that.
“SB12 was a critical component to identifying Ormat as a solution to our greener energy needs,” said Dean Nelson, vice president of global foundation services at eBay Inc. “This milestone points to our belief that commerce can be fundamentally more sustainable than it is today – and that eBay Inc. can be a leader in that transition.”
No strangers to REG, which converts waste heat that occurs as a byproduct of industrial processes into usable electricity, Ormat Technologies already boasts 160MW of installed REG capacity in North America alone, according to Jerusalem Post.
And now they’re going to apply their longstanding renewable energy expertise to a new 5MW plant in Salt Lake City.
“REG offers a proven solution for clean energy to significantly improve energy efficiency to an existing facility,” said Yoram Bronicki, president and chief operating officer for Ormat.
“These benefits directly contribute to President Obama’s national goal, set forth by Executive Order, to coordinate and strongly encourage efforts to deploy 40 gigawatts of energy efficiency in the US by the end of 2020.”
eBay plans to source at least 8 percent of their energy from cleaner sources by 2015, according to Jerusalem Post, and this new facility from the firm behind the world’s largest geothermal plant puts them one step closer to that goal. | <urn:uuid:5d8c50cc-9644-4afc-b99a-a41d0719a3f9> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.greenprophet.com/2013/10/ebay-and-israels-ormat-team-up-for-clean-power-in-utah/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573118.26/warc/CC-MAIN-20220817213446-20220818003446-00678.warc.gz | en | 0.943529 | 429 | 2.359375 | 2 |
As a full-time international student, you’re allowed to work 20 hours/week and during vacations, you can work full time around 40hrs/week.
The National Minimum Wage set by the UK Government
Age: 21 -24 -> minimum £8.20 per hour
Age: 24+ minimum £8.72 per hour
(the minimum wage increases every year)
I would say an average full-time student salary is £9 (but there can be exceptions and I know students making up to £15 per hour), so your salary can be calculated as 20hrs/week * 4 = 80hrs per month 80 * 9 = £720 per month
40 hours/week*4 = 160hrs per month 160*9= £1440 per month
As an international student, you will be able to work for 8 months on a part-time basis during term-time and 4 months working full-time during holidays £720 * 8 = £5760 £1440 * 4 = £5760
You can earn at least £11,520 per year working legally in the UK as a full-time student.
Now the question will be whether you can live comfortably with this earning? The answer is YES and NO. Will discuss this further in another post where I’ll share a breakdown of all the basic expenses. | <urn:uuid:0ac09954-9406-48f5-af60-6ac6216ca7f5> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://ukstudy.guide/start/student-working-in-uk/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572192.79/warc/CC-MAIN-20220815145459-20220815175459-00074.warc.gz | en | 0.945939 | 284 | 1.90625 | 2 |
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — West Virginia is so far behind in developing assets — both in technology and workforce — for information technology based “knowledge-sector” jobs that there’s no easy solution to help the state catch up, the president and CEO of the West Virginia High Technology Foundation told legislators Sunday.
“Our state has fallen so far behind in the accumulation of the needed assets to participate, it’s hard to think of competing,” Jeff Estep told the interim Joint Commission on Economic Development.
Estep said West Virginia is caught in a “chicken or the egg” dilemma: High tech knowledge sector businesses seek locations where highly educated workforces are readily available, but the state can’t retain those well-educated workers when the knowledge sector jobs are unavailable here.
He said West Virginia has the lowest educational achievement rates, lowest adult workforce participation rates, and the highest percentage of residents receiving disability benefits in the country.
“These are the loudest of alarm bells and reddest of red flags,” he said, calling it a workforce crisis.
“West Virginia is hemorrhaging its youngest residents at an alarming rate… | <urn:uuid:9a0a10fd-fe85-4aa7-bcab-f3a4719440e1> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://wvpress.org/copydesk/insight/wv-far-behind-in-technology-workforce-assets/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570977.50/warc/CC-MAIN-20220809124724-20220809154724-00478.warc.gz | en | 0.930573 | 247 | 1.5625 | 2 |
"Mad, bad and dangerous to know," Lady Caroline Lamb's famous diary description of Lord Byron, is amply justified by this vivid biography of his half-sister. His adulterous, incestuous affair with Augusta Leigh ruined her life. The poet was so promiscuously seductive that romantic Georgian ladies found it difficult to remain upright in his company. Augusta, five years his senior, evidently did not even try to. Her biographers call her "warm-hearted, easygoing, generous," gay, impulsive, lacking judgment and stubborn, with a "genius for doing the wrong thing at the wrong time".
English high society late in the 18th century was extravagantly prolific, yet exclusively introverted. Families habitually intermarried, cousins often married cousins, to retain and augment inherited wealth. Many married women were expected to give birth annually as long as possible and managed to take lovers in between confinements.
Michael and Melissa Bakewell provide three relevant family trees, the Byron Descent, the Holdernesse Descent and the Trevanion/Byron Connection, which are so widely extensive and intricately self-referential that even the people dependent from the intertwining branches must have been perplexed occasionally by their genealogical status. One can imagine rakish house-parties in which absent-minded relations cavorted in shared gene-pools.
The adultery and incest in which Byron and Augusta often indulged over a period of several years were not accidental. They knew that they had the same father (the well-named "Mad Jack" Byron), that the poet had a wife called Annabella and that Augusta was married to one Colonel George Leigh of the 10th Hussars, who was complaisant when Byron helped him with his gambling debts.
Leigh was an equerry to the Prince of Wales and a popular member of the royal horsey set until he was caught cheating on livestock sales. While in favour and afterwards, Leigh spent a lot of time away from home, attending race meetings and carousing on the estates of aristocratic fellow gamblers. He was one of society's most convenient cuckolds.
Gambling, the Bakewells write, "had become a national mania. Fortunes were won and lost overnight, sometimes in a matter of minutes, and betting was by no means confined to the turf . . . Lord Barrymore, who managed to run through £300,000 in four years, once bet the Duke of Bedford that he could produce a man who could eat a cat alive - and won!"
As an inveterate loser, Leigh was an erratic and inadequate provider of his family's domestic support. Augusta often depended on royal patronage and the charity of friends. She was fortunate enough to be granted a grace-and-favour apartment in St James's Palace for many years, but was always vulnerable to the vengeful machinations of Annabella. Lady Byron blamed Augusta for Byron's deserting her and then leaving the country.
When it was suggested that he liked children, Byron wrote: "I abominate the sight of them so much that I have always had the greatest respect for the character of Herod." Even so, according to Annabella, he fathered one of Augusta's daughters, Medora, who became another cause of Annabella's hatred.
The biography presents the correspondence between hypocritical Annabella and naive Augusta in exhaustive and exhausting detail, serving more thoroughly than necessary to show one woman's implacability, the other's decline. The story is a false tragedy, having at its centre a villainess but no admirable heroine or hero. However, it helps to explain why Byron chose to go into exile in Italy and Greece. And perhaps the book's most valuable function is that it adds understandable poignance to some of Byron's poetry, especially Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, and, most obviously, the Epistle to Augusta. Byron's madness and badness were fatally dangerous to himself.
Patrick Skene Catling is an author and critic | <urn:uuid:82d53333-e6e4-41d1-bffd-199edd1e4823> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.irishtimes.com/news/sister-in-arms-1.1261144 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571989.67/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813232744-20220814022744-00473.warc.gz | en | 0.98191 | 826 | 2.421875 | 2 |
When it comes to choosing an anti-virus, there are many aspects to consider before you buy it. Anti virus software also comes in a variety of different packages, each with its own different features. Many are better to get Mac pcs than others, and some support only specific platforms like Windows or perhaps iOS. Many are lighter in system means, while others give more features and they are user-friendly. Eventually, the best antivirus will depend on your requirements and budget. This article will offer you an overview of some of the best ant-virus software readily available home to your computer.
Bitdefender has received great ratings via independent antivirus tests. Its anti-malware engine detects and removes malicious software, ensuring a protect web browsing experience and preventing banking scams. This software even alerts you when your program requires repairing. Bitdefender has several functions, including a secure web browser, anti-keylogging proper protection, parental regulators, and a powerful dual end firewall. Even though this isn’t the most user-friendly anti-virus, it is a wise decision for many users.
Malwarebytes is a superb choice for all those on a budget. It provides excellent trojans scanning and web rights, as well as a reasonable VPN. However, it doesn’t have many of the high quality features that are offered by additional antivirus courses, but it’s a solid option for those who only need simple protection. Malwarebytes comes with a good 60-day money-back guarantee. MacKeeper is one of the few antiviruses designed especially for the Apple pc OS. It gives a good malware protection program with a quantity of security features and a luxurious, well-designed application. | <urn:uuid:aa083c43-d099-4a64-9dcd-9fb6a54ac5f9> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://eklavyabiotech.com/2022/06/14/greatest-antivirus-assessment/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572908.71/warc/CC-MAIN-20220817122626-20220817152626-00074.warc.gz | en | 0.949358 | 354 | 1.703125 | 2 |
As I was researching my maternal Johnson family ancestors this weekend, I decided to focus on what I don’t know about my 2nd great-grandfather’s siblings. As I came to Jacob M. Johnson, I saw that I didn’t have very many documented sources – only information from other family members (who said they found the information at such and such). I had a wife’s name – Nancy Kirkpatrick – and a birth year for Jacob. He was the 2nd youngest child of Jacob Johnson and Ann Shields. Searching FamilySearch, I located a marriage record for Jacob M Johnson to Nancy J Kirkpatrick in Rush county, Indiana on January 21, 1858. I found the couple in the 1860 Census living in Union township of Howard county, Indiana along with their one year old daughter, Mary. After that – nada! There is nothing on Find a Grave for Jacob, but there is an entry for Nancy J Kirkpatrick Cook. The information shows that Nancy J Kirkpatrick had married Allison Cook in 1865 in Howard county, had three children, and died on September 23, 1914. On her memorial is a picture. She is buried in Center Cemetery in Mays, Rush county. Her birth date is listed as July 10, 1844, which would have meant she was 13 years 6 months and 5 days old when she married Jacob M Johnson. So . . . is that the same Nancy Kirkpatrick? What happened to Jacob? In the 1900 Census the Nancy married to Allison Cook lists that she is a mother of 5 with three living. Not being able to find a Mary Johnson in her household leads me to believe that IF this is the same Nancy, then Mary was deceased. I could not find Nancy J Kirkpatrick/Johnson/Cook in the 1870 census so I don’t know if Mary was still alive, if that would be the census to show that this is the same woman, or anything else. On the Find a Grave memorial, there isn’t anything that lists Nancy being married to Jacob. If it is the same woman, did she marry Allison Cook after Jacob died? Did the couple divorce? There is a Jacob Johnson purchasing a scoop shovel, 3 barrels, one doubletree and two single trees, 1 hoe, 1 harrow, 1 wheat fan, 1 fork, 1 barrel, one wagon, at the estate sale of Jonathan Gordon, in Rush county. Jacob M Johnson’s sister-in-law (my 2nd great-grandfather’s second wife), was Margaret Gordon, daughter of a Jonathan Gordon (not sure if this is one and the same either). If it is the same Jacob M Johnson and that is the same Nancy J Kirkpatrick, then the couple had split up prior to her marriage to Allison Cook. Or this could be neither of them. Questions and more mystery until I find more conclusive evidence!
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What is it ?
Fabry disease is a hereditary disorder characterized by the accumulation of a particular form of fat called globotriaosylceramide. This fat can accumulate in the cells of the body from childhood, causing atypical symptoms throughout the body.
This is a progressive and multisystemic lysosomal pathology, a pathology that affects structural elements involved in cellular metabolism. The associated clinical lesions are renal, cardiovascular, cerebrovascular or vestibular (associated with hearing).
The characteristic signs of the disease are episodes of pain in the hands and feet (acroparesthesia), small red spots in the skin (angiokeratomas), a decrease in the ability to sweat (hypohidrosis), visual disturbances (opacity of the cornea), gastro-intestinal symptoms, ringing in the ears (tinnitus) or loss of hearing.
Fabry disease usually results in lifelong treatment that can damage kidney function, cause heart attacks or ischemia.
Some affected people have an intermediate form of the disease developing a little later in the life of the subject. This pathological form reaches only the heart and the kidneys.
The prevalence at birth for this disease is 1 / 80,000 (number of cases in a given population at a given time). Moreover, it would appear that this figure is underestimated by scientists.
When the disease develops later, this prevalence increases to 1/3000.
Symptoms of Fabry’s disease
Fabry disease is determined by a broad spectrum of characteristic symptoms ranging from benign cases for heterozygous women (with two different alleles for the gene of interest) to more severe cases for homozygous boys (with two identical alleles for the disease). gene of interest). Nevertheless, patients suffering from this pathology may all have neurological, cutaneous (angiokeratomas), renal (proteinuria, renal anomalies, etc.), cardiovascular (cardiomyopathies, arhytmia, etc.), cochleobuccal (auditory deficiencies), and / or cerebrovascular (ischemia, heart attack, etc.).
The symptoms of Fabry disease can range from mild to severe severity. Pain is the most important clinical manifestation in this pathology. It is a chronic pain characterized by burning sensations, tingling, or by episodic attacks of intense burns. These pains can decrease towards the adulthood.
In addition, anhidrosis or hypohidrosis (absence or weakening of perspiration) may appear causing intolerance to heat and exercise.
Other signs are also typical of the disease, such as:
– angiokeratoma: reddish skin lesions;
– changes in the cornea of the eye;
– persistent fatigue;
– cardiac and cardiovascular abnormalities;
– dyspnea: respiratory gene resulting in shortness of breath;
– nephropathy: a disease that affects the renal system.
The symptoms of the disease can be divided into two categories: mild symptoms and more severe symptoms. The first form affects more generally patients with this pathology and develops in childhood or adolescence. The second is less common and appears more generally in adulthood or old age (between 50 and 80 years).
Les manifestations cliniques relatives à la forme bénigne sont des atteintes visuelles (développement d’une opacité au niveau de la cornée de l’œil), des lésions cutanées, des douleurs au niveau des membres extrêmes et une diminution de la capacité de transpirer (hypohidrose). Ajouté à cela, des douleurs abdominales chroniques et des diarrhées peuvent s’apparenter à cette forme de la maladie. A un âge avancé, le patient atteint de ce type pathologique peut voir se développer d’autres symptômes tels que des atteintes cardiaques.
With regard to the more serious form of the disease, the associated symptoms are, this time, heart attacks (ventricular hypertrophy, cardiomegaly, ischemia, arrhythmia, etc.). In addition, kidney damage is often associated, resulting in almost 10% of cases, kidney dialysis or transplantation.
The origins of the disease
Fabry disease is an inherited genetic disease caused by mutations in the GLA gene. This gene of interest allows the production of an enzyme: alpha-galactosidase A. The latter has an important role within lysosomes, internal structures allowing, among other things, to ensure cellular metabolism.
In a healthy organism, the correct functioning of the alpha-galactosidase An enzyme allows the body to cope with the fatty substances characteristic of Fabry’s disease: globotriaosylceramides.
Mutations in the GLA gene therefore alter the structure and function of this enzyme. As a result, the body is no longer required to fight effectively against globotriaosylceramides. Either these fatty substances accumulate in the constituent cells of the body, particularly in cells lining the wall of blood vessels, skin cells, kidney cells, heart or the nervous system.
The gradual accumulation of these substances within the different cells leads to the development of certain clinical signs.
The abnormal accumulation of this type of fat in the blood vessels causes occlusions to form at the level of the blood vessels and reduces the vascular diameter. This leads to the reduction of blood flow and thus to a deficiency in the feeding of different parts of the body (tissues and organs) to blood. All of the blood vessels in the body are usually affected, however small vessels in the skin, heart or nervous system may be more affected.
Certain mutations in the GLA gene may result in the complete absence of alpha-galactosidase A production and thus result in a severe form of Fabry disease. Other mutations can, in turn, lead to a decrease in the biological activity of the enzyme. In the latter case, the development of the disease will be characterized by an intermediate form of Fabry disease, affecting only the heart and kidneys of the individual.
This pathology is the consequence of a genetic anomaly within a gene carried by the X chromosome, sex chromosome determining the sex of the individual. Transmission of the disease is of the “X-linked recessive” type. This sex chromosome is worn in one copy by boys (XY) and in two copies in girls (XX). In addition, the recessive nature of this mode of transmission of the disease reflects the fact that the presence of the two copies of the mutated allele for the gene of interest is necessary for the development of the associated phenotype.
Risk factors for Fabry’s disease
The risk factors associated with the disease are genetic. Indeed, the transmission of the disease is by recessively linked to the X chromosome (sex chromosome).
In this sense, the individual must present the two mutated alleles for the gene of interest on his X chromosome to see develop the phenotype associated with the disease.
Prevention and treatment of Fabry’s disease
The differential diagnosis of Fabry disease is based on the development of characteristic symptoms in the patient. In addition, a blood test allows the analysis of the enzymatic activity of the enzyme alpha-galactosidase A.
The diagnosis of Fabry disease is also based on:
- a screening test at birth;
- genetic analysis to highlight the presence of the mutated gene
Laboratory diagnostic tests involve enzymatic labeling. The enzymatic analysis then makes it possible to demonstrate the deficient operation or the absence of functioning of the enzyme alpha-galactosidase A.
The usual treatments for Fabry disease are based on the use of pain relievers (analgesics), drugs to treat kidney damage (angiotensin, etc.), antiarrhythmics, pace-makers, and implantation. cardiac defibrillators, on dialysis or kidney transplantation.
Patients with a severe form of the disease may benefit from drugs such as carbamazepines or diphenylhydantoins. These types of treatments are often taken daily to prevent and reduce pain and reduce the risk of developing more severe symptoms (heart and / or kidney)
Specific treatment of the disease on enzymatic replacement is currently relevant in research related to the disease. Indeed, the in vitro synthesis of the enzyme alpha-galactosidase A allows the replacement of the enzyme deficient or absent in the patient. This treatment is not yet established for the sick individuals but the research is promising.
The risk that the disease affects vital organs increases with the age of the individual. The final stage of the disease with respect to renal and cardiovascular involvement restricts the life expectancy of the person.
There is also a need for prevention in people with Fabry disease. Indeed, it is advised to the affected people to avoid the situations of stress, the prolonged and repeated exposures to the sun or to the heat, to the changes of temperatures or to avoid the intense physical exercises. | <urn:uuid:5d4315fe-c906-4929-bf64-6d943ff34d62> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | http://www.mediologiest.com/fabrys-disease/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571097.39/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810010059-20220810040059-00278.warc.gz | en | 0.866709 | 1,904 | 3.765625 | 4 |
Mexico City is the centre of Mexican culture, with a rich and vibrant culture that gathers all the best heritage, spirit and life that the country has to offer. With an ancient, aboriginal history, there is plenty to learn about the past of Mexico City, told by engaging museums throughout the city.
Things to do in Mexico City
Mexico City is scattered in landmarks, titled the “City of Palaces” because of its magnificent architecture, a lot of which is clustered in the Historic Downtown. Head to the Plaza de la Constitucion to witness the grand City Hall, giant national flag and Metropolitan Cathedral, the largest church in North and South America, with an altar made of pure gold.
The National Museum of Anthropology is world famous for its grand collection spread over 23 different halls, including ancient Aztec artefacts like the mysterious Sun Stone. Go off the beaten track by visiting Arena Mexico the home of free wrestling, a wild and unforgettable experience frequently enjoyed by locals.
Exploring the second largest city in the world is tiring work, so take some time to relax in the local atmosphere by visiting La Merced, the central market surrounded by restaurants selling enchiladas, quesadillas and tacos. The nightlife has something for everyone, just to be sure to try some of the local moves in the famous salsa, rumba and mambo dances at least once.
Getting around Mexico City
The metro has various lines throughout the city and is the busiest but most authentic way to see the city. Other transportation options include buses, which are quieter but less predictable, while bikes are good for avoiding the chaotic traffic. | <urn:uuid:e9f618ef-988a-452e-a266-bc25ad5b99cd> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.hotelscombined.ie/Place/Mexico_City.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571536.89/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811224716-20220812014716-00272.warc.gz | en | 0.947087 | 333 | 1.695313 | 2 |
4283rd Meeting (AM)
THIRTY SPEAKERS ADDRESS SECURITY COUNCIL ON ANGOLA SANCTIONS VIOLATIONS;
CONFLICT DIAMONDS, PENALTIES FOR VIOLATORS AMONG ISSUES RAISED
Sanctions Committee Chair Introduces Monitoring Mechanism Report
The role of diamonds in fueling conflict, penalties for sanctions violators (“secondary sanctions”) and a possible permanent monitoring mechanism for United Nations sanctions were among the issues raised this afternoon, as the Security Council took up the report of the Monitoring Mechanism on Angola Sanctions and heard 30 speakers.
The Mechanism was established last April to investigate violations of the sanctions imposed by the Council against the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) for its failure to cooperate in the Angola peace process. A follow-up to a Panel of Experts established by the Council in May 1999 to investigate sanctions violations, the Mechanism issued its report on
21 December 2000. On 23 January this year the Council extended its mandate for three months, requesting that it submit a written addendum to its report by
“The United Nations sanctions regime against UNITA is working”, the Chairman of the Committee established by the Council in 1993 to monitor sanctions in Angola, Richard, Ryan (Ireland), told the Council. He said the Monitoring Mechanism, which consisted of five experts, had two points of departure -- the report of the Panel of Experts and the current situation on the ground in Angola
-- and had focused on four main areas: arms and military equipment; UNITA representation and travel; the role of transport in violating sanctions; and sanctions and the diamond trade.
He added that persistence and financial resources would be required to implement the recommendations contained in the report. The Angola case history, and the work of the Monitoring Mechanism, had directed a sharp, investigative beam into a hitherto largely uninspected network, driven by greed for profit regardless of the cost in human lives and misery. The United Nations presently lacked the necessary permanent capacity for following up on the findings. The challenges they posed, however, and their cost, did not diminish their absolute necessity. An effectively monitored sanctions regime would, over time, remove any international support for the politically motivated violence in Angola.
Joao Bernardo de Miranda, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Angola, said that despite violations of the sanctions, they had proved to be a fundamental tool in persuading UNITA to abandon the path of war and embrace the peace accords. The
sanctions' primary impact was clearly reflected in the significant reduction of the rebels' military capacity. Accordingly, Angola was experiencing a climate of greater "politico-military" and economic stability.
Despite the diminishing systematic sanctions violations, some countries and entities continued to challenge those sanctions, he added. Of particular concern was the involvement of networks of organized crime operating in direct support of the rebels. Given that situation, it was imperative that the Council reinforce the monitoring mechanism and adopt concrete measures to combat the scourge of transnational organized crime networks in Africa. Imposing measures against countries that continued to facilitate propaganda activities in favour of the armed wing of UNITA should also be considered. He hoped that the Council would consider secondary sanctions against countries that violated the sanctions regime.
The representatives of Mauritius and Mozambique also supported the concept of secondary sanctions, as they would enhance the credibility of the Council and the effectiveness of the sanctions.
The representative of France said, however, that to stop sanctions violations, States, regional organizations and other actors should be assisted, rather than punished. Secondary sanctions were a false response to a real problem. To be credible and effective, the use of sanctions must be limited. He also recommended the creation of a permanent monitoring mechanism to gather in one location the necessary expertise to monitor sanction violators and to cross-reference situations.
Speaking on behalf of the three observer States to the Lusaka Protocol (Portugal, Russian Federation and United States), Portugal’s representative said the three observer States would continue to support the only principle by which the people of Angola could be delivered from the scourge of war: the demilitarization of political parties in return for their full freedom to compete for the people's support. They welcomed the intent of the Government of Angola and the parliamentary opposition to hold elections in 2002.
Regarding sanctions, he emphasized the need to focus on outcomes rather than process -- the outcome of peace through improved implementation of sanctions, among other measures. However, neither sanctions nor military action could bring Angola a just and lasting peace. Only good governance, respect for human and civil rights, and better social and economic conditions could bring the Angolan conflict to a lasting conclusion.
Several other countries, among them Burkina Faso, Togo and Rwanda, responded to allegations in the report, and reiterated their commitment to cooperate with the Monitoring Mechanism.
The Minister for Foreign Affairs of Zimbabwe, I.S.G. Mudenge, also spoke, as did the representatives of the United States, Singapore, Jamaica, United Kingdom, Colombia, Russian Federation, China, Mali, Norway, Ukraine, Bangladesh, Tunisia, Canada, Swaziland, Sweden (on behalf of the European Union and associated States), Argentina, Bulgaria, Brazil, Romania and Namibia.
The meeting, which began at 3:25 p.m., was adjourned at 8 p.m.
When the Security Council met this afternoon, it had before it a
21 December 2000 note from the Secretary-General (document S/2000/1225) transmitting the final report of the Monitoring Mechanism on Angola Sanctions, which was established by the Security Council in resolution 1295 (2000) of
18 April 2000 for a six-month period. On 23 January of this year, the Council extended the mandate for 3 months and requested a written addendum to the report by 19 April. The report provides an extensive overview of the Mechanism's activities since its establishment, as well as conclusions and recommendations.
The Mechanism had two points of departure: the report of the Panel of Experts established in May 1999, and the current situation on the ground in Angola. The Panel of Experts delivered its report to the Council on 10 March 2000 (document S/2000/203). That report revealed how the sanctions against National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), put in place by three Security Council resolutions, were being violated and made extensive recommendations on how the sanctions regime could be further strengthened. The Mechanism was charged with collecting additional information and investigating relevant leads initiated by the Panel.
The report of the Mechanism covers a wide range of issues, among them sanctions-busting on arms and equipment, findings on arms and equipment in specific countries, UNITA representation and travel, the role of transport in the violation of sanctions, and sanctions on diamond trading and financial assets.
The report states that it decided to give priority to investigating violations of Council measures in the area of arms and equipment, as well as following up on new and old leads. To that end, the Mechanism undertook extensive visits to the countries cited in the report of the Panel of Experts.
There is no doubt, the report goes on to say, that the sanctions, together with the military operations carried out by the Angolan armed forces and the vigilance of the international community, are hurting UNITA’s ability to wage war. Nevertheless, it is difficult to assess with a degree of certainty the scope of this judgement. However, since peace has not yet been achieved, the international community cannot leave the Angolan situation unattended. Only strict compliance with the sanctions will assist in forcing UNITA, at some time, to fully comply with the peace process it has betrayed.
Peace in Angola will also have an important impact in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and in Sierra Leone, where so many efforts are being deployed to stop the conflicts that have ravaged those countries, the report adds.
The Mechanism recommends that, in order for the measures against UNITA to be taken seriously, the Security Council should consider applying sanctions against any government found to be intentionally violating them. Arms-exporting countries, it further recommends, should strengthen their systems pertaining to arms exports, in particular verifying the authenticity and country of issuance of the relevant documents.
The Mechanism also recommends that the importation of arms should be subject to adequate legislation and should be managed through a mechanism that can define clearly the responsibilities of all agencies and officials involved. Such a system should include provisions designating in person the officials authorized to sign end-user certificates.
The Mechanism also recommends that governments consider putting in place systems to allow for the speedy exchange of information and verification of the validity of end-user certificates, through the designation of a contact authority in the arms exporting and importing side, or by any other way deemed appropriate. The international community should give full support to the implementation of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) moratorium and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) action plan for the control of light weapons, the report states.
In the area of travel and representation, the Mechanism recommends that the United Nations list of senior UNITA officials and their adult family members, which is a major tool for the implementation of the sanctions, be continually updated by the Sanctions Committee. To that effect, the Secretariat has, in accordance with the guidelines issued by the Committee, an essential role to play, providing the Committee with the information necessary for the updating process.
Among the Panel's recommendations on diamonds and finance is that Member States consider implementing the certificate-of-origins scheme with the minimum of delay. Those countries that lack the technical resources to implement the system should be aided in setting it in place. This will both protect the legitimate industry and begin to clarify the problem of illicit diamonds.
On transport, the Mechanism recommends that Member States consider putting in place tighter controls on operators using “flags of convenience”. Thus, if an aircraft operator wishes to use a certain country as a base, that country would become the designated country of registration.
Sanctions busters should have their aircraft de-registered, the Mechanism recommends. An international list of companies, individuals and aircraft breaking sanctions should be maintained by the United Nations on a permanent basis and provided to those countries that export arms.
Aware that any vacuum or discontinuity in the exercise of vigilance by the international community will affect the aims of the Security Council sanctions against UNITA, the Mechanism recommends that the Chairman of the Sanctions Committee be asked to report to the Security Council on actions taken to follow up on the conclusions and the recommendations contained in the present report. The Mechanism further recommends that the Council consider ensuring that a system allowing for the continuity of the monitoring of the implementation of sanctions is put in place.
The five members of the Mechanism are: Juan Larain (Chile), Chairman; Lena Sundh (Sweden); Christine Gordon (United Kingdom); James Manzou (Zimbabwe); and Ismaila Seck (Senegal).
RICHARD RYAN (Ireland) spoke in his capacity as Chairman of the Security Council Committee established pursuant to resolution 864 (1993). He said his country would not make a national statement today, but would associate itself fully with the statement by Sweden on behalf of the European Union.
He said following the adoption last April of resolution 1295 (2000), the Secretary-General, in consultation with the Committee, established a Monitoring Mechanism consisting of five experts. In conducting its work, the Mechanism employed only the strictest evidentiary standards in its investigations. It also allowed the right of reply to all those against whom allegations concerning sanctions violations had been made.
He said the work of the Mechanism had two points of departure: first, the report of the Panel of Experts and, second, the current situation on the ground in Angola. Regarding the report of the Panel of Experts, the Mechanism focused its efforts on four main areas that had been exposed as being susceptible to sanctions-busting. The first area was arms and military equipment. The second was UNITA representation, travel and residence outside Angola of that organization's senior officials and their families. The third was the role of transport in violation of sanctions. The final area was sanctions and diamond trading.
He went on to say that the Mechanism had made a number of specific recommendations in all four areas. While those recommendations ranged from the general to the highly specific, what was clear about all of them was that they required action by the United Nations, individual States and the international community. It was also clear that effective responses to and action on those recommendations would require committed and sustained engagement, not only by the Council and the United Nations system, but certain organizations outside of that framework.
He said that for the international community to effectively implement the recommendations contained in the report would require persistence and financial resources. The Council had recently done innovative work on sanctions issues. The new thinking had breathed a renewed sense of capacity into some intractable cases, which had hitherto been regarded as close to the outer edge of that body's collective capacity -- if not beyond it. Real progress, however, on the most difficult cases required not only new thinking. It also required good old-fashioned ingredients, including political will and determination, preparedness to stay the course for as long as it took, and direct engagement with all involved States, international organizations, agencies and individuals.
He said the Angola case history, and the work of the Monitoring Mechanism, had directed a sharp, investigative beam into a hitherto largely uninspected, but highly organized and active network, driven by greed for profit regardless of the cost in human lives and misery. The monitoring work would, "if we reiterate our determination and match it with sustained cooperative action", encourage careful reflection by any actors who considered it safe to derive financial gain from conflicts. That included governments that might turn a blind eye towards the now largely identified profiteers.
He said that the United Nations presently lacked the necessary permanent capacity for following up on the findings of the reports of the Panel of Experts and the Monitoring Mechanism. Determination and financial resources would be required to implement the Mechanism's essential recommendations. The challenges they posed, however, and their cost, did not diminish their absolute necessity. An effectively monitored sanctions regime, would, over time, remove any international support for the politically motivated violence in Angola.
CAMERON HUME (United States) said the United States subscribed fully to the statement Ambassador Antonio Monteiro (Portugal) would make.
JEAN-DAVID LEVITTE (France) aligned his country with the statement to be made by Sweden on behalf of the European Union. There was no doubt, he said, that the Sanctions Monitoring Mechanism had helped strengthen the pressure on Jonas Savimbi and his movement. It was necessary to continue to find concrete ways to strengthen the effectiveness of measures against UNITA and to stop the traffic in diamonds, fuel and arms, as well as networks for transportation and falsification of documents -- such as the false end-user certificates.
In that context, he said, most important was that a list of the UNITA leaders and their family members be kept current. In that regard, he welcomed the imminent publication of such a list by the Sanctions Committee. Also, a global regime of diamond certification must be put into place. He welcomed the encouraging results, in that effort, of the international conference which had taken place in Windhoek last week. The goal should be to submit a draft convention to the fifty-sixth General Assembly next fall.
In other areas, most of the other recommendations of the report, he said, were highly relevant. However, he reiterated the position of France on secondary sanctions. To stop sanctions violations, States, regional organizations and other actors should be assisted, rather than punished. Secondary sanctions were a false response to a real problem. To be credible and effective, the use of sanctions must be limited. Finally, noting similarities between the problem at hand and that of Sierra Leone, he emphasized the attention that must be paid to organized crime and merchants of war, such as Victor Bout and his company. He recommended the creation of a permanent monitoring mechanism to gather in one location the necessary expertise to monitor sanction violators and to cross-reference situations. In addition, it was essential that States be requested to undertake inquiries and take measures against such merchants of war.
CHRISTINE LEE (Singapore) said the findings of the report were sobering. The illicit trade in diamonds was the cornerstone which fueled conflict, as was the case in Sierra Leone. The network used for trafficking in arms and diamonds could almost be admired for its success, if were not for the fact that the people of Angola had paid for it with their blood. People and companies involved were instrumental in facilitating war and armed conflict. There was, however, some good news: inroads made into areas previously held by UNITA, together with the effects of the sanctions, had shown a diminishment of UNITA’s capacities.
She said the report also focused on circumvention of restrictions on travel by UNITA’s officers. A number of States had been involved, but the circumvention had been attributed more to front organizations. As to diamond sanctions, she said loopholes had been used to veil the true source of diamonds. The report had also pointed out that well-known clients of De Beers were knowingly buying rough diamonds from UNITA.
She said countries of origin of arms to UNITA should address the issues brought forth in the report. The common criminals named in the report were the same who were active in Sierra Leone. If sanctions busters continued to be rewarded and not punished, the damage would not be limited to Angola. It would also undermine the credibility of the Council and threaten stability in neighbouring countries, such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It was time to work for a comprehensive peace in Angola.
M. PATRICIA DURRANT (Jamaica) said that the work of the Sanctions Committee and the Mechanism had broken new ground in the fight against sanctions violations. “Naming and shaming” had, in particular, proven effective. She called for serious consideration, therefore, for an ongoing capacity to monitor the implementation of sanctions. Sanctions regimes could then be more incisive and targeted.
She supported the broad thrust of the recommendations in the report. In particular, she supported a certificate-of-origins scheme for diamonds, complemented by a licensing system for diamond buyers. The efficiency of the technology involved, however, needed to be assured before such systems were put into place, so as not to create too onerous a burden on certain countries.
In addition, she said, arms-exporting countries should strengthen their regulatory systems pertaining to arms exports, verifying documents and establishing an accurate database for the export of their weapons. She commended regional arms-control measures and urged that the international community give full support to the implementation of the ECOWAS moratorium and the SADC action plan for the control of light weapons. She urged that full support also be given to recovery and relief operations for Angola, with emphasis on long-term programmes encouraging greater self-reliance.
STEWART ELDON (United Kingdom) said there was a growing interest in the situation in Angola. More effective sanctions must be an important element of the solution to the conflict there.
The Monitoring Mechanism had produced a detailed report, he continued, and its findings were disturbing. He endorsed a global rough-diamond identification scheme: a simple, workable international framework protecting the legitimate diamond trade, while dealing a death blow to the illicit trade. He also supported a dedicated capacity within the United Nations Secretariat to assist the Monitoring Mechanism. If there was to be a permanent Monitoring Mechanism, it should receive adequate resources and staff. His delegation had proposed the creation of a database of experts, who could advise the Secretary-General on all aspects of sanctions.
He supported the continual update of the list of UNITA officials. In order to be effective, the Government of Angola should provide regular information, to add and remove names. The report had identified a number of individuals and companies who violated the sanctions, and a number of countries from which they operated. The United Kingdom would fully investigate those facts, when necessary, and he urged other States to do the same. He was alarmed by the role of individuals, such as Victor Bout, whose name cropped up again and again, and called on all Member States to assure that their territory was not used for such activities. There should be no sanctuary for such criminals, he said.
ALFONSO VALDIVIESO (Colombia) said that the sanctions regime against UNITA had some unique aspects. The eight-year duration was a telling sign of the rebel regime’s ability to survive. That was partially a result of the porous borders, which were a legacy of the cold war and the fact that a regional economy in illicit trade had prospered in the area of the conflict. He supported the request that arms-exporting countries regulate their exports and establish an international certificate-of-origins system for conflict diamonds, along with a system of trafficker injunctions.
The fact that sanctions were against a non-State agent presented, he said, special problems requiring well-directed measures, such as the “name and shame” method. Sanctions on sanctions violators held risks, but he wanted to hear what other delegations had to say about the issue.
The formation, he said, of the 1999 Panel of Experts was commendable. That kind of attention was needed, in addition, to investigate the financial assets of UNITA. With such a study, it was essential, however, not to reduce the role of States in conducting their own investigations of financial improprieties. He supported the proposal to create a permanent monitoring mechanism. It was crucial that States firmly took responsibility for the effectiveness of the sanctions.
SERGEY V. LAVROV (Russian Federation) aligned himself with the statement to be made by the permanent representative of Portugal. He believed that sanctions against UNITA were the most effective instrument against that organization’s ability to wage war. He reiterated that peace in Angola could only be restored on the basis of the Lusaka Protocol. The report would help to increase the effectiveness of the sanctions. His country would promote steps to see to it that all Member States would observe the sanctions, in particular Angola’s neighboring countries.
SHEN GUOFANG (China) said that China supported sanctions against UNITA for the purpose of making that organization return to the peace process as soon as possible. So far, those sanctions had produced marked results. But, UNITA was still engaged in the trade of diamonds and weapons and continued other activities in violation of the sanctions. The effectiveness of the sanctions should, thus, be strengthened. The recommendations of the Monitoring Mechanism’s report, he said, should be implemented to enhance that effectiveness. All countries should cooperate in making those measures effective.
SEKOU KASSÉ (Mali) said the Monitoring Mechanism was very useful and the sanctions imposed had undermined UNITA’s ability to wage war. That should encourage a willingness to strengthen sanctions. Arms-exporting countries should strengthen their verification processes for the authenticity of documents, and he supported improvement of end-user certificates for arms. An exhaustive inventory of intermediaries in arms imports and exports would be helpful, and improvement of air surveillance should also be taken into account.
He said he was in favour of extending the diamond verification system. Countries that did not have the capacity to carry out such verification should get assistance. He also supported the Kimberly process.
He said secondary sanctions against States violating sanctions should only be imposed after all other means had been exhausted. He stressed, in that regard, cooperation with regional and subregional organizations. He also welcomed the cooperation between the Monitoring Mechanism and the Executive Secretary of ECOWAS. The financial network of UNITA was the weak link in the mechanism.
OLE PETER KOLBY (Norway) said that every effort must be made to put the Angolan peace process back on track. He supported recent peace initiatives and the implementation of previous agreements. The need for continued sanctions, however, was also obvious. Norway also encouraged the Government of Angola to play a constructive role in the revitalized peace process in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
It was unfortunate, he said, that the United Nations sanctions regime was not fully complied with. The Monitoring Mechanism’s report provided useful suggestions on how each State could help strengthen that sanctions regime. More efforts were needed in transparency and accountability in the trade of diamonds. Norway supported the establishment of an international diamond-certification system as soon as possible.
In the control of arms, he said, control of the validity of documents was particularly important. He also welcomed the suggestions on controlling the trade in petroleum and controlling travel and representation by UNITA members. He said caution should be taken before secondary sanctions were applied, though, and then they should only be applied pursuant to Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter; that is, where such violations represented a threat to international peace and security. A permanent monitoring mechanism also merited serious consideration.
VOLODYMYR G. KROKHMAL (Ukraine) expressed satisfaction with the transparent and effective working methods of the Monitoring Mechanism. Following a visit to Kiev by officials from the monitoring body last June, his Government had pledged its willingness to conduct thorough investigations into alleged violations of sanctions against UNITA. He believed that the Mechanism’s principle of conveying any information regarding possible violations to the relevant States for prompt investigation should become basic procedure for any monitoring bodies established in the future.
He said the report, coupled with the investigation of UNITA’s financial assets, constituted an important step towards identifying the sources fueling the conflicts in Africa. Turning to specific aspects of the report, particularly those concerning Eastern European arms-producing countries, he said all deliveries of weapons and dual-use goods could be undertaken from Ukraine only after the authenticity of end-user certificates had been determined. For deliveries to regions of special concern, Ukraine also received approval from relevant export control bodies. He recognized, however, that it was important to strengthen existing mechanisms and to create ways to enhance information exchanges and document verifications between countries and regions. To that end, the Council should support the report’s recommendation of the development of a registry of arms import and export brokers.
He considered the recommendations on diamonds useful frames of reference. While recognizing the need to improve diamond-certification procedures to meet international minimum standards, the Council should also recognize that such issues were being discussed in other forums. Any decisions must be taken in light of the Kimberly process. He stressed, however, that preventing UNITA’s access to world diamond markets must remain a priority. He also agreed with the report that the travel restrictions on UNITA representatives under resolution 1127 should be fully implemented. There should also be tighter controls on aircraft operators to ensure they did not find ways to circumvent sanctions. While adoption of such measures remained the sovereign prerogative of each Member State, the Council played an important role in encouraging States to take strong action with respect to sanctions violations.
SHAMEEM AHSAN (Bangladesh) expressed appreciation for the work done in reviewing arms export and import procedures, the issuance of end-user certificates and uncovering of forged ones, and profiling firms or brokers involved in the export and import of arms. However, the last remained unfinished and should be a key task for the Mechanism in the future. There was a need to make the issuance of end-user certificates more secure and to facilitate verification of their authenticity by authorities in arms-exporting countries.
He expressed support for recommendations relating to tighter controls on aircraft registration procedures and agreed that aircraft used in sanctions-busting should be deregistered and their pilots stripped of their licences. In addition, a regularly updated United Nations list of senior UNITA officials and their adult family members formed the basis for action by governments to effectively implement sanctions relating to the travel ban and UNITA representation abroad.
Regarding diamond smuggling, he said that such measures as licensing miners and buyers, profiling production from mines and recording characteristics of diamonds from each mine would be required to settle disputes relating to the origin of diamonds. The Angolan single channel buying system was a laudable effort to that end. On the other hand, standardization of statistics and custom codes by diamond centres would be useful in monitoring the movement of diamonds.
ANUND PRIYAY NEEWOOR (Mauritius) said the nefarious trade in conflict diamonds involved not only sellers, but also buyers and those who supplied weapons to rebel forces paid for with the sale of conflict diamonds. Not only private business people were involved in this, but also political leaders who allowed their territories to be used as transit points for movement of illegal arms and fuel for personal gain. That was done with impunity, in violation of sanction regimes established by the Council. The Council must go beyond “naming and shaming” and impose appropriate sanctions against those found guilty of complicity in sanctions-busting.
He strongly supported the report’s recommendations for setting up a global certification scheme for the diamond trade. Weapons-exporting countries should further strengthen their controls in order to prevent their arms from reaching the forces of rebellion against legitimate governments. He also supported strong action against aircraft, ships and persons in the transportation industry involved in busting embargoes on arms shipments. He called upon the international community to provide the necessary financial and technical support to the SADC, so that it could assume responsibility for air surveillance in the southern African region.
He supported France’s proposal for the establishment of a permanent monitoring mechanism and in the meantime supported extension of the existing Mechanism for another three months.
The Council President, SAID BEN MUSTAPHA (Tunisia), speaking in his national capacity, said the responsibility for the continuation of the conflict in Angola lay squarely on UNITA and its leader, Mr. Savimbi. Sanctions were an important means to force UNITA back to the peace process. The compelling evidence of sanctions violations, in turn, made necessary the comprehensive efforts to stop the resupply of UNITA and the travel of its representatives. He welcomed suggestions on strengthening the system of certifying diamonds.
He said the sensitive nature of the subject made it essential to completely investigate the nature of certain sanctions violations, namely the trade of diamonds and arms through countries in the region. Many countries might not have the capabilities to stop that trade. They must be assisted and it must be a collective responsibility. Information in the report should help them, and all States, to close the remaining loopholes.
JOAO BERNARDO DE MIRANDA, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Angola, said that despite violations of the sanctions, they had proved to be a fundamental tool to persuade UNITA to abandon the path of war and embrace the peace accords. The sanctions' primary impact was clearly reflected in the significant reduction of the military capacity of the rebels. Combined with internal measures undertaken by the Angolan Government, in particular political and military measures aimed at restoring order and State authority, the sanctions had left no other way out for the military wing led by Mr. Savimbi than to embrace the path of reason.
He said that the number of former rebels joining the efforts for national reconciliation and reconstruction was increasing daily. They were adhering to the recent amnesty law. Accordingly, the country was experiencing a climate of greater "politico-military" and economic stability. The gradual evolution of that stability was enabling Angolans to face the future with confidence and optimism. The Government was pursing political and economic reform. It was currently creating conditions to permit the next general elections to be held in the second half of the year 2002.
The present report of the Sanctions Committee brought to light clear evidence of the statements made in the so-called Fowler report and in the Council Chamber itself, he said. Investigative work must continue and, for that reason, he supported the Council's decision to extend the mandate of the Mechanism established under resolution 1295 (2000). Despite the diminishing systematic sanctions violations, some countries and entities continued to challenge these sanctions that had been imposed in the interest of peace in Angola and the entire southern and central African region.
Of particular concern was the involvement of networks of organized crime operating in direct support of the rebels, he said. Given that situation, it was imperative that the Council reinforce the Monitoring Mechanism and adopt concrete measures to combat the scourge of transnational organized crime networks in Africa. Pressure on the rebels to follow the path of peace should also encompass the strengthening of sanctions as provided for in resolution 1295 (2000). Imposing measures against countries that continued to facilitate propaganda activities in favour of the armed wing of UNITA should also be considered.
MICHEL KAFANDO (Burkina Faso) said certain conclusions of the report concerned Burkina Faso. He did not want to indulge in any kind of polemics, but simply took note of it. He wished to stress, however, that his country had cooperated in perfect harmony with the Panel of Experts. During its stay in Burkina Faso, that group had conducted its activities in full independence without any hindrance.
After the first report on Angola had been published, a presidential decree had established an inter-ministerial committee for implementing the sanctions against UNITA. That decree, among other things, had denied entry to Burkina Faso of 83 officials of UNITA. That, and other measures, contradicted the affirmations of the report. As for insinuations that certain UNITA officials were still in his country, he said those allegations belonged in the realm of hypothesis. Other steps taken by Burkina Faso were the condemnation of UNITA, the interdiction of trafficking in precious stones and metals coming from conflict zones and the creation of a “High Authority” to control the import of weapons, which had been placed under the supervision of the United Nations.
He said there were about 40 countries mentioned in the report as clearly implicated in sanctions-busting or as sensitive. It was therefore easy to incriminate any country. The Panel of Experts had stated that throughout its investigations, the Panel was struck by the scope of the violations. Consequently, instead of continuing to accuse certain Member States, the Council should, with the cooperation of regional and sub-regional organizations, organize better monitoring of diamonds and arms trafficking. The Council had, in resolution 1336 (2001), decided to extend the Monitoring Mechanism mandate. He was convinced of the pointlessness of further investigations as long as a permanent mechanism did not exist.
PAUL HEINBECKER (Canada) said that the report of the Monitoring Mechanism demonstrated that progress was being made and that some Member States –- Belgium and Bulgaria, for example -– had taken serious steps to correct the deficiencies identified by the Panel of Experts. Also welcome was the conclusion that the sanctions were hurting UNITA's ability to wage war. It was distressing, however, that a small number of Member States had not been respecting the decisions of the Council regarding UNITA.
In its resolution 1295 (2000) the Council had expressed its readiness to consider appropriate action in relation to States that had violated the measures against UNITA, he continued. An initial decision in that regard, which was to have been taken by 18 November of last year, was missed because of the delays in the appointment of the Monitoring Mechanism. Now it was crucial to take that difficult decision soon. In cases where the Council's decisions were deliberately flouted, the Council must not shrink from making an appropriately vigorous response. Imposition of secondary sanctions targeting the sanctions busters was an entirely appropriate option.
Other options for Council action might include a requirement for States deemed to be in violation of the sanctions to report regularly to the Council, he said. That could be supplemented by periodic visits to those States by delegations of Council members. Violators should be censured by the international community until they complied with the standards of behaviour imposed by the Security Council. Resolution 1295 (2000) provided a blueprint for further action in each of the areas covered by the sanctions regime. When fully acted upon, it stood to further degrade UNITA's capacity to wage war by reducing its revenues, increasing its costs and choking off its supply.
Significant progress had been made in some of those areas, he said, and action in other areas was under way. More remained to be done, however -- by no means in Africa alone. While full implementation of resolution 1295 should be a priority for the Council, so should be the implementation of additional recommendations contained in the report of the Monitoring Mechanism.
He went on to say that in the course of Canada's work as Chair of the Angola Sanctions Committee in 1999-2000, his Government had become convinced that enforcement monitoring was necessary if targeted sanctions were to work. Quite simply, if the Council was not willing to enforce its sanctions, there was no point in pretending to impose such measures or retaining them. While welcoming the extension of the Monitoring Mechanism's mandate for three months, he said that the existing ad hoc monitoring arrangements were not sustainable over the medium or long term. The draft resolution before the Council would allow for "regularization" of the Council's monitoring arrangements.
The monitoring office proposed in the draft would not constitute a supra-national entity, untethered to the Council and its Sanctions Committees. Nor would it evolve into a large and costly bureaucracy -– a small, dedicated office with ongoing contacts with other organizations would suffice. It would enable the monitoring of targeted sanctions to be made more effective and efficient. Until a monitoring office was put in place, the Secretariat should continue to improve its ability to interact with other relevant bodies and to facilitate cooperation between them.
In conclusion, he said that it was essential that sanctions were preserved, and enhanced as an effective, precise and credible diplomatic tool. Effectiveness depended on monitoring. He was not talking about unwarranted interference, but about enhancing the United Nations effectiveness. With respect to Angola, the sanctions' objective was to foster a durable political settlement to the war by curtailing UNITA's ability to pursue its objectives through military means.
JOEL NHLEKO (Swaziland) said the violation of sanctions against UNITA was a matter of critical importance to his country and to the entire subregion of the SADC. UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi had refused to abide by the peace agreements he had concluded with the Angolan Government. He had resorted instead to the use of armed force, and the conflict remained an obstacle to peace, reconciliation and reconstruction in Angola.
He expressed gratitude to those countries that had adopted new measures against UNITA. The SADC was considering the deployment of mobile radar systems in the subregion to detect illegal flights across national borders. Strengthening sanctions was not an end in itself, but a tool to create the necessary conditions for a final political solution to the Angola question.
ANTONIO MONTEIRO (Portugal), on behalf of the three observer States to the Lusaka Protocol (Portugal, Russian Federation and United States), said that while Lusaka may not be completed as originally envisioned, it contained fundamental principles that offered the only viable solution for peace. Key principles had already been translated into reality: Angola's multi-party National Assembly; a government of national unity and reconciliation; and an integrated armed forces. It had the beginnings of an independent media and an increasingly vibrant civil society movement.
He said the three observer States would continue to support the only principle by which the people of Angola could be delivered from the scourge of war: the demilitarization of political parties in return for their full freedom to compete for the people's support. They welcomed the intent of the Government of Angola and the parliamentary opposition to hold elections in 2002, which would be an opportunity for all parties to seek a popular mandate through a peaceful and democratic political process.
Regarding sanctions, he emphasized the need to focus on outcomes rather than process -- the outcome of peace through improved implementation of sanctions, among other measures. However, neither sanctions nor military action could bring Angola a just and lasting peace. Only good governance, respect for human and civil rights, and better social and economic conditions could bring the Angolan conflict to a lasting conclusion. The support for sanctions by the three observer States was part of a broader policy to engage the Angolan Government in good governance as its best counter-insurgency tactic.
PIERRE SCHORI (Sweden) spoke on behalf of the European Union and the associated States of Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Cyprus, Malta, Turkey, Iceland and Liechtenstein.
He called upon the Angolan Government to extend State administration to areas previously controlled by UNITA, in a manner consistent with the principles of democracy, good governance and human rights. The United Nations, particularly through its Office in Angola, could also help that Government to achieve those objectives.
He said UNITA had continued to seek alternative methods to evade United Nations sanctions, thereby allowing it to pursue military activities and further hinder implementation of the Lusaka Protocol. The report of the Monitoring Mechanism, while confirming that significant and systematic violations had continued both from within and beyond the region, also indicated that sanctions were restricting the supply routes to UNITA and making imports more costly for the rebel movement.
He said the international community could not disregard the fact that the actors violating the sanctions in both Angola and Sierra Leone were, to a large extent, the same. Those situations must not be seen in isolation, and measures must, therefore, be taken in a coordinated manner. There was clearly a need to give urgent consideration to the establishment of a global certification scheme on diamonds and the harmonization of trade practices, such as statistics and custom codes.
He said the Monitoring Mechanism had made a wide range of important recommendations aimed at addressing violations of sanctions. The proposal that the Council should consider applying sanctions against any government that was an intentional and systematic violator merited further discussion. The effective implementation and monitoring of sanctions against UNITA could reduce its capacity to prolong the conflict in Angola. Member States should, therefore, be ready to make available adequate resources for effective monitoring. Wholehearted support should be given to the Monitoring Mechanisms, expert panels, the Sanctions Committee and any future United Nations initiatives in that regard. Attention must also be paid to avoiding the duplication caused by the simultaneous existence of different panels of experts.
ARNOLDO LISTRE (Argentina) said that among the most important recommendations made by the Monitoring Mechanism was the need for weapons-exporting countries to strengthen their monitoring systems, including more effective control of end-user certificates. To that end, the Wassenaar arrangement might prove useful. In the area of diamonds, the report clearly showed that there were loopholes that needed to be closed in even the most recently established controls.
He agreed with the importance of international certification regimes, serious campaigns of awareness and the cooperation of all sectors in the areas of diamonds and arms. In addition, violations of sanctions should not be left unpunished and monitoring mechanisms were essential. For those reasons, he said, the Security Council should take the next step, establishing a comprehensive and semi-permanent monitoring mechanism for all sanctions regimes.
In the Angolan situation, he said, long-term monitoring measures had to be taken to avoid a relapse. The international community must avoid asking itself, a few years from now, about the message that was sent by a sanctions regime without effective controls and the consequences stricter controls might have had on the peace process.
ROLAND Y. KPOTSRA (Togo) said his Government cooperated with the Monitoring Mechanism, despite the fact that certain allegations had been brought to its attention. It had implemented measures aimed at ensuring strict compliance of national legislation with standards of the Council. In that context, it had set up an inter-ministerial commission.
By a ministerial decree of 15 May 2000, it had expelled from its territory 56 Angolans, even though they were not mentioned in the list of UNITA leaders and their adult family members. By a directive of the Ministry of Defence, entry to Togo was prohibited for all persons mentioned in resolution 1127 (1997). In another directive, transit of all military materiél for UNITA through Togo had been prohibited.
The Monitoring Mechanism had established that the 18 end-user certificates for military materiél from Togo had been false documents. He deplored that arms had been sold on the basis of those certificates. It was important that the exports regime should be strengthened. In particular, the form used to deliver the end-user certificate should be drawn up in a standardized format, in order to prevent falsification. The report had mentioned that South African records of rough diamonds had revealed an import of diamonds emanating from the presidency of Togo. He had difficulty in admitting that such transactions had taken place, if the identity of the seller was not revealed.
He said that last Tuesday he and the Defence Minister of Togo had a working meeting with members of the Monitoring Mechanism, in which they were provided with explanations about the military materiél in transit in 1997. The discussion had also touched upon the matter of expelled Angolan nationals. Any more detailed information from the Angolan Government about Angolan nationals would be helpful. Togo would institute procedures against individuals and companies that through their actions might tarnish its image.
VLADIMIR SOTIROV (Bulgaria) said he aligned himself with the statement made on behalf of the European Union. He welcomed the final report of the Monitoring Mechanism as a further step towards ensuring the effective implementation of the Council's sanctions against UNITA. He assured Council members that if any Bulgarian national was found guilty of violating those sanctions, as a result of investigations currently under way by the competent authorities, the person would be prosecuted in accordance with his country's established criminal law.
He said that measures recently undertaken or currently designed by his Government to address some of the Panel's recommendations included a July 2000 decree providing for strict implementation of Angola-related resolutions by the respective Bulgarian authorities, nationals and corporate entities. A comprehensive regulatory mechanism was under consideration to impose strict control of arms-export operations in potentially risky markets. In addition, submission of a delivery verification certificate by the importing party was now mandatory for each arms transaction to non-embargoed countries in Africa and Asia that were situated close to risky or embargo-subjected areas.
Also, a stringent verification regime had been applied to ensure the end use of the imported equipment and to prevent the possibility of unauthorized re-export, he said. The registration of companies acting as brokers was being put in place to improve control on transnational channels of arms supplies, with the aim of preventing illegal diversions of arms from their intended destinations. Those measures sought to reinforce and complement the existing two-tier system of control over the foreign arms transactions in Bulgaria, including the provision of more safeguards to prevent diversion of weapons to embargoed countries. All States should strive to avoid inconsistencies and gaps in national approaches. Identifying good practices could provide additional incentives.
He said he strongly believed in the need to establish internationally recognized norms in the field of arms transfers, but that appeared to be a challenging goal for the international community. Despite the considerable progress made in recent years to increase awareness about the need to prevent illegal arms flows to conflict areas, much remained to be done. Full implementation of the Council's sanctions, including those against UNITA, could only be achieved through a synergy of actions at national, regional and global levels. Improved international cooperation and the coordination of national policies were indispensable for the attainment of that goal.
ENIO CORDEIRO (Brazil) said the strict observance of the sanctions regime contributed to outlawing any support for UNITA and showing that the international community did not accept its leader as a credible interlocutor in the Angola peace process. The Council must be firm in conveying an unequivocal message to those who persisted in violating the sanctions --- they were prolonging the instability in Angola, and also risking public exposure by their actions.
He said the implementation of sanctions was also no special favour to the Angolan Government. The international community must not fall short in its responsibilities towards the people of Angola. Cooperation meant taking the allegations and recommendations put forward by the Mechanism seriously and acting upon them. Member States could also cooperate by assisting other States in setting up an appropriate air-traffic control system and taking action to disrupt or destroy the sanctions violators network through concerted law enforcement.
Sanctions alone could not, however, resolve the instability in Angola, he went on to say. The serious humanitarian situation should be addressed on a priority basis. United Nations bodies could help the Government of Angola to generate the necessary environment for humanitarian assistance in the field. A comprehensive and long-standing solution for the humanitarian question, however, depended on a political process that would lead to the transformation of UNITA into a political party committed to democracy, tolerance and pluralism.
SORIN DUMITRI DUCARU (Romania) stressed his Government’s determination to contribute to solving the problems raised by the report of the Monitoring Mechanism. His country was a committed participant in the discussions, processes and developments regarding the illicit trafficking in small arms within the framework of the Wassenaar arrangement of the European Union and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
His country was also actively improving the internal mechanisms aimed at controlling the export of arms. Institutional change would improve the coherence, the efficiency and the effectiveness in controlling arms exports. The report’s recommendations on arms and military equipment should be implemented by the Council, especially those mentioned in paragraphs 228, 229 and 231. It was important for every Member State to benefit from additional information about third parties involved.
CARLOS DOS SANTOS (Mozambique) said that UNITA, led by Jonas Savimbi, was responsible for the continuing devastation of Angola, through its persistent refusal to comply with the Lusaka Protocol. The sanctions against UNITA were the most appropriate way to force Mr. Savimbi to abide by the peace process. The reports of the Monitoring Mechanism showed the necessity to maintain the pressure of those sanctions.
He welcomed the recommendations contained in the report, particularly those which asked the Security Council to consider applying sanctions against governments that violated the sanctions against UNITA. That measure would certainly enhance the credibility of the Council and the effectiveness of the sanctions. He called upon all countries to promptly comply with those sanctions, remaining vigilant and exercising tight control.
He welcomed the initiative by Angola’s President Eduardo dos Santos of offering amnesty as a measure to encourage the rebels to abandon the war, and also welcomed the Angolan Government’s reaffirmation of the validity of the Bicesse Accords and the Lusaka Protocol. He also commended Angola’s participation in recent regional efforts towards peace, stability and prosperity. It was now time to unite in the fight against organized crime, and the traffic in blood diamonds and small arms, which were fueling conflicts in many parts of the world.
GERHARD THERON (Namibia) said the report of the Monitoring Mechanism had sketched a detailed picture of the complex strategies UNITA employed in its war against the Angolan people. It was of deep concern that some countries still provided assistance to UNITA. He was pleased to hear that UNITA had been hampered in the production of diamonds. The international community should make every effort to prevent further sale of those diamonds. The report had highlighted that monitoring UNITA’s financial dealings, especially electronic transfers, had been difficult. That area should, however, not be neglected.
He supported all efforts aimed at improving the sanctions and supported implementation of the recommendations of the Monitoring Mechanism as soon as possible. The report had mentioned that Namibia, in its capacity as Chair of the SADC, had held discussions with the Monitoring Mechanism concerning possible controls of the movements of petroleum in the subregion. He stressed that the report’s recommendation that the international community should consider assisting Member States, where necessary, in acquiring equipment for control of national and regional air spaces was pertinent. Any vacuum in the exercise of vigilance would enhance UNITA’s capacities to wage war. He welcomed extending the mechanism’s mandate for three months.
I.S.G. MUDENGE, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Zimbabwe, said the report confirmed that “the true cause of UNITA’s war against the Angolan people is not so much the loud discourse of grievance we hear from Savimbi’s spin doctors, but the silent force of greed”. In the case of Angola, Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the abundance of a natural resources, such as diamonds, had become a curse. He urged Member States to implement the certificate of origin scheme with a minimum of delay and called upon the international community to provide technical assistance to those countries that lacked the resources to implement such a certification regime.
Certain countries had established structures and mechanisms for the formulation of a proper policy to enforce implementation of sanctions, he said. Some of the structures identified included the establishment of task forces. The SADC had always recognized that the successful implementation of Council sanctions against UNITA depended on the capacity and commitment of the Member States to deny UNITA the use of the subregion’s land routes, airports and airspace. In recognition of that fact, an Ad Hoc Committee on Cross-Border Crime was set up under the chairmanship of Zimbabwe. That Committee had set up a task force to ensure that sanctions imposed on UNITA by the United Nations were not violated by Member States, he said.
The task force had recommended the establishment of national information centres that would coordinate the collection of data, and a regional information centre, which would process information received from the national centres. The experience in the SADC had shown that the sharing among Member States of both strategic and tactical information was an effective method of reducing UNITA’s war-making capacity, he said.
JOSEPH MUTABOBA (Rwanda) supported, in general, the Monitoring Mechanism and its report. However, he noted that Rwanda was mentioned in various paragraphs of the report and that only paragraph 213 consisted of tangible and verifiable fact. The other paragraphs contained speculative material. In paragraph 58, for example, there was a reference to contradictions that was not clear. It was true that Rwanda had breached Angolan territory -- with the permission of its Government -- but there was no question of contacts with Mr. Savimbi and Rwanda did not envisage any such contacts in the near future.
He hoped that other paragraphs, such as number 191, could be reviewed and made factual. Rwanda was not promoting the kind of projects mentioned there. Also Victor Bout was never based in Kigali, as maintained in the report, and authorities have made sure he would be arrested if he passed through Rwanda.
War diamonds, he affirmed, would not be processed or exchanged in Rwanda. He also confirmed that Rwanda had taken the decision not to cooperate with anyone found to be friends of UNITA. On that note, he hoped for success in the monitoring effort, and said that Rwanda remained willing to work together with the Monitoring Mechanism to make sure its reports were accurate, so that it could effectively complete its task.
Mr. MIRANDA, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Angola, taking the floor a second time, thanked all members who had taken the floor and expressed his gratitude for the manifestations of solidarity. He hoped that the Council would consider secondary sanctions against countries that violated sanctions.
Regarding the statement of the representative of Rwanda, he said that three years ago Rwandan troops were in the North of Angola in territory under UNITA control. There never had been any contact between Rwanda and the Government of Angola concerning the transit of any troops.
Mr. RYAN (Ireland), Chairman of the Security Council Committee established pursuant to resolution 864, said, in responding to the debate, that it was clear that the issue of sanctions on UNITA continued to be of great concern to Member States.
As the members of the Mechanism prepared to depart on missions to continue their work, he said they would take with them the firm conclusion that the United Nations and the international community had reiterated its support for continuing the sanctions regime. The message was that the Monitoring Mechanism was on the right track and should continue with diligence, and that the international community should do its part with vigilance and determination. There was clear agreement that support for UNITA’s violent agenda must be ended definitively.
* *** * | <urn:uuid:6a25486c-b2c0-49eb-b678-050f62e0f5d3> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.un.org/press/en/2001/sc7018.doc.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281450.93/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00181-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966746 | 11,761 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Vatican City, May 20, 2020 / 08:00 am
Pope Francis Wednesday moved the office of the Vatican's financial records database under the management of the Secretariat for the Economy -- reversing a decision he made in 2016.
According to a rescript May 20, starting June 1 the Data Processing Center (CED) will no longer be run by the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See (APSA) -- the Vatican's sovereign asset management body -- as was first defined in the apostolic constitution Pastor bonus in 1988.
Instead, the Secretariat for the Economy, under the leadership of prefect Fr. Juan Antonio Guerrero, S.J., will oversee the work of the office and its employees.
Pope Francis first moved the financial records office from the competency of APSA to the Secretariat for the Economy in July 2014, a few months after he created the secretariat as part of his financial reform of the Curia. | <urn:uuid:b63dd2c2-8506-4542-90d2-872fccd15670> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/44583/pope-francis-moves-financial-records-office-under-secretariat-for-economy | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572021.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20220814083156-20220814113156-00071.warc.gz | en | 0.923976 | 195 | 1.609375 | 2 |
Walaupun Dr Razman kata takkan masuk kalau da ada yang salin, aku nak gak post kat sini.. kot2 la admin nak bg aku emel gak.. haha.. anyway ni post first aku..
Food Quality Control
To protect the public against health hazards and fraud in the preparation, sale and use of foods
1. Ensure that all food preparation, sale and storage is safe and hygienic.
2. Ensure that all food materials sold are:
(i) free from contamination and food additives which is not required or fraudulent.
(ii) compliance with the established legislation and regulations.
(iii) labeled and advertised in a clear and not misleading manner.
3. ensure that all food imported into the country is safe and in compliance with Food Act 1983 and Food Regulations 1985.
4. Ensure that food consignments exported by the country is in compliance with the regulations imposed by the importing countries.
5. Ensure that the public receives sufficient information on food safety aspect.
courtesy: mezro's N97
Biostatistics Workshop No 2/2016
3 months ago | <urn:uuid:c9ad0827-8408-430b-bb4e-7308d5680685> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://mbbs0611.blogspot.com/2010/02/fqc.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280065.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00539-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.852531 | 248 | 2.4375 | 2 |
Upon successful completion of this course, the student will be able to:
1. Identify legal issues in the context of a business decision, and prioritize the necessity of seeking competent legal advice in response to the issue.
2. Evaluate the basic principles of the United States’ legal system, from the U.S. Constitution through statutes and regulation, including dispute resolution options and processes, and the ethical and legal environment in which business transactions are completed. Discuss the court system, the legal process, and how legal sources affect regulation.
3. Evaluate how substantive law and the public interest in ethical practices are linked to regulations and ethical expectations. Distinguish and contrast the concepts and procedures between criminal sanctions and civil liability.
4. Explain the contract formation process (i.e., offer, agreement, and consideration), as well as issues of contract performance and remedies.
5. Describe available business structure options, such as partnerships and corporations, and the various aspects of agency.
6. Discuss major federal laws regulating employee rights and treatment/welfare, including discrimination, environmental matters, and workplace safety and security.
7. Explain key labor relations issues such as at-will employment, union organizing, unfair labor practices, and the collective bargaining process.
8. Articulate an understanding of the function of statutes and regulations as accountability structures and constraints upon management with a view to implementing policies compatible with those structures and constraints.
9. Evaluate the ethical and legal rights and duties of present or future business owners, consumers and workers.
10. Analyze the performance of the regulatory apparatus surrounding business.11. Assess how government policy towards business is formulated and influenced by economic, social, and political considerations.
12. Analyze how ethical viewpoints and legal environments vary across different cultures and countries, and how they evolve chronologically. | <urn:uuid:e96a1425-9616-4269-a23f-9fbc1529de84> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://catalog.erau.edu/guideadmin/311/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279933.49/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00120-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.929125 | 376 | 2.59375 | 3 |
The program offers up to $ 100,000 in forgivable loans to cover a portion of down payments or closing costs. On October 4, 2021, the Ministry of Housing Preservation and Development announced the first expansion of its âHomeFirstâ down payment assistance program. The HomeFirst program provides financial assistance in the form of a forgivable loan to first-time homebuyers to purchase a New York home by helping to cover a portion of down payments or closing costs.
The objective of the program is to increase the number of affordable housing for low-income first-time buyers, the price of which is too often set in many neighborhoods. The program will now offer forgivable loans of up to $ 100,000 to support eligible homebuyers. Eligible applicants can earn up to 80% of the region’s median income, or $ 86,000 for a family of three. Participants must complete a training course for homebuyers, save on the purchase price, and live in their home for up to 15 years to receive full loan forgiveness under the program. The program also provides first-time home buyers with advice on how to navigate the home buying process.
The program was launched in 2004 and has helped more than 3,000 homeownership households across the city. The program is administered by the Neighborhood Housing Services of New York City, and the program is funded by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. To learn more about the program and how to apply, click here.
HPD Commissioner Louise Carroll said: âThis major expansion in fundraising support is a great victory for equity and diversity as it addresses one of the biggest barriers to home ownership for low income families and families of color. Enabling more families to own homes, build wealth for their children, and take ownership of their communities is a key strategy in realizing our vision of a more equitable New York City.
Neighborhood Housing Services of NYC, Inc. CEO Derrick Griggs said: âOver 80% of NHSNYC clients represent BIPOC communities. The increase in available funds addresses the biggest barrier our clients face when looking to become homeowners. The NHSNYC is delighted to continue to administer this program with HPD.
Through: Veronique Rose (Veronica is the CityLaw Scholar and New York Law School Graduate, Class of 2018.) | <urn:uuid:8435d5ac-52a0-41ee-9a36-bdf53583b9fd> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.raforum.info/hpd-expands-homefirst-down-payment-assistance-program/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571198.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810161541-20220810191541-00269.warc.gz | en | 0.962317 | 474 | 1.59375 | 2 |
82 Tiger Moth
(Variants/Other Names: Thruxton Jackaroo)
(Photo source unknown. Please contact us if you
History: The deHavilland D.H. 82 Tiger Moth
was developed from the D.H. 60M Gipsy Moth. First flown in October of 1931, the D.H. 82
faced stiff competition to become the basic trainer for Britain's Royal Air Force (RAF).
However, after the trials were held, the Tiger Moth emerged the clear winner, with 35 of
the craft being ordered.
Given that the Tiger Moth had not been the easiest to fly among the competitors,
with a degree of sloppiness and slowness in response to control inputs, one wonders
whether the design succeeded despite or because of those factors. Some have argued that
those factors highlight poor piloting technique without seriously endangering the student
pilot, a process that would enable instructors to identify and correct the fledgling
pilot's deficiencies early in a training program. In any case, the Tiger Moth to this day
exhibits the same flight characteristics of its early period.
The first model, the D.H.82, was powered by a 120hp Gipsy
III inverted inline engine, and was also sold to the air forces of Brazil, Denmark,
Persia, Portugal and Sweden. An improved model, the D.H. 82A
Tiger Moth II, was equipped with a Gipsy Major engine rated at 130hp, as well as
structural changes that included the replacement of fabric with plywood for the rear
fuselage decking, and the ability to shroud the rear cockpit for instrument flight
Prior to the outbreak of WWII, Tiger Moths were manufactured by deHavilland
Aircraft of Canada, and under license in Norway, Portugal and Sweden. During the war,
Tiger Moths were manufactured by deHavilland affiliates in Australia and New Zealand,
while a winterized version, the D.H.82C was manufactured in
Canada, with a 145hp Gipsy Major engine, revised cowling, enclosed, heated cockpits, wheel
brakes and a tail wheel instead of a skid. Another interesting variant was the four-seat Thruxton
Jackaroo, with two pairs of side-by-side seats in an enclosed cabin.
More than 8,700 Tiger Moths were eventually manufactured, with approximately 4200
going to the Royal Air Force, where it trained thousands of pilots for World War II
service, and continued to serve the post-war RAF until 1951.
Now, long after its retirement from active service, the Tiger Moth is still
actively delighting aircraft devotees in the UK, Canada, Australia and the US. Not very
long ago, as D.H. 82 time is measured, one United States aviation magazine featured two
articles, one about the Tiger Moth and its worldwide clubs, the other about an 80% scale
reproduction version of the Tiger Moth in one issue. Whatever magic there is in having the
wind whip by one's ears in an open cockpit, the deHavilland D.H. 82 Tiger Moth must have
it in abundance, if one judges by the many aviation clubs around the world still dedicated
to the aircraft.
Specifications (D.H. 82C):
Engine: One 145-hp deHavilland Gipsy Major 1C inline piston engine
Weight: Empty 1,115 lbs., Max
Takeoff 1,825 lbs.
Wing Span: 29ft. 4in.
Length: 23ft. 11in.
Height: 8ft. 10in.
Range: 275 miles
Number Built: 8,700+
Number Still Airworthy: 250+
[ Tiger Moth Photos ]
(Click for Larger)
Aviation -- Tiger Moth flight training, and scenic / aerobatic /
formation flights in Sydney, Australia.
CNAPG Tiger Moth History page
deHavilland Aircraft Association of South Africa
deHavilland Moth Club, UK
deHavilland Support Ltd.,
Duxford, UK -- Type design organization for vintage and classic
DH 82 at Colonial Flying Corps Museum,
DH Chipmunk.com --
Bob Morcom's great enthusiast's site.
Wires," Seppe Airfield, Netherlands
Lockinvar, NSW, Australia
McLean Air Scoops -- Engine air scoops
for Tiger Moth and Gypsy Major engines.
Old Mandeville Airfield, Gore, New Zealand
"On Yellow Wings: A Tiger Moth and a Summer's Day": Essay and pilot
report by Rob Kostecka.
Tiger Moth Discussion
Tiger Moth Enterprises, Ontario,
Moth Flight" -- Photo essay by Brett Green
USAF Museum DH 82
Tiger Moth Page
Virtual Aviation Museum:
DH-82 Tiger Moth illustration by Lyle Brown
[Back to Warbird Alley's Main
All text and photos Copyright 2016 The
Doublestar Group, unless otherwise noted.
You may use this page for your own, non-commercial reference purposes only. | <urn:uuid:e0294c35-bd0f-49c6-b481-e7451b1965a5> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | http://www.warbirdalley.com/tiger.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571745.28/warc/CC-MAIN-20220812170436-20220812200436-00466.warc.gz | en | 0.901027 | 1,247 | 2.5 | 2 |
dnaseq – Format DNA base sequences
Defines a means of specifying sequences of bases. The bases may be numbered (per line) and you may specify that subsequences be coloured.
For a more ‘vanilla-flavoured’ way of typesetting base sequences, the user might consider the seqsplit package.
|License||The LaTeX Project Public License|
|Contained in||TeX Live as dnaseq|
|MiKTeX as dnaseq|
support for typesetting molecular biology
Download the contents of this package in one zip archive (206.5k).
Maybe you are interested in the following packages as well.
- jmb: BibTeX style for the Journal of Theoretical Biology
- gensymb: Generic symbols for both text and math mode
- was: A collection of small packages by Walter Schmidt
- maple: Styles and examples for the MAPLE newsletter | <urn:uuid:6b616092-2a8a-4bf4-b76b-1aa8799001db> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://ctan.org/pkg/dnaseq | 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 | 0.752374 | 195 | 2.40625 | 2 |
« AnteriorContinuar »
See pages 22–23 for reference to the survey of the northern boundary, page 238 for survey of the eastern boundary, and page 242 for the survey of the boundary on the 46th parallel.
The Oregon region in early days was a source of many disputes 89 between the United States and Great Britain, which nearly led to war. It was claimed by the United States at different times as a part of the Louisiana Purchase, by right of discovery (see pl. 4), and as a part of the Spanish cession." In the convention of 1818 with Great Britain joint occupancy for 10 years was provided for. This status continued until 1846, when Congress by resolution authorized the President to give notice of its discontinuance. The United States at that time claimed the area as far north as latitude 54° 40', but by the treaty with Great Britain of 1846 (see p. 21 the disputes regarding title were forever settled and the 49th parallel was made the northern boundary.
The Territory of Oregon was organized August 14, 1848, with boundaries described as follows 91 (see fig. 26): all that part of the Territory of the United States which lies west of the summit of the Rocky Mountains, north of the forty-second degree of north latitude, known as the Territory of Oregon, shall be organized into and constitute a temporary government by the name of the Territory of Oregon.
In 1853 the Territory was reduced by the formation of Washington Territory, and on February 14, 1859,92 it was admitted as a State with its present limits. The boundaries were described in the State constitution of 1857 as follows: 98
Beginning one marine league at sea due west from the point where the fortysecond parallel of north latitude intersects the same; thence northerly, at the same distance from the line of the coast lying west and opposite the State, including all islands within the jurisdiction of the United States, to a point due west and opposite the middle of the north ship channel of the Columbia River; thence easterly to and up the middle channel of said river, and, where it is divided by islands, up the middle of the widest channel thereof, and in like manner up the middle of the main channel of Snake River to the mouth of the Owybee River; thence due south to the parallel of latitude forty-two degrees north; thence west along said parallel to the place of beginning, including jurisdiction in civil and criminal cases upon the Columbia River and Snake River concurrently with States and Territories of which those rivers form a boundary in common with this State. But the Congress of the United States, in providing for the admission of this State into the Union, may make the said northern boundary conform to the act creating the Territory of Washington.
80 See Mowry, W. A., The territorial growth of the United States, ch. 7, New York, Silver, Burdett & Co., 1902, for an excellent review of these disputes.
30 For a brief outline of the principles governing acquisition of territory by discovery and occupation see Queensland Geog. Jour., vol. 38, p. 61, Brisbane, Australia, 1923. This article contains a reference to the Oregon dispute. See also Schafer, Joseph, The British attitude toward the Oregon question, 1815–1846; Am. Hist. Rev., January, 1911, pp. 273–299; and Moore, J. B., History of international arbitration : 53d Cong., 2d sess., H. Doc. 212, vol. 1, chs. 7 and 8, 1895.
91 9 Stat. L. 323.
The United States act of February 14, 1859, concludes the description as follows: 94 to a point near Fort Walla-Walla, where the forty-sixth parallel of north latitude crosses said river; thence east on said parallel to the middle of the main channel of the Shoshonnes or Snake River; thence up the middle of main channel of said river, to the mouth of the Owyhee River; thence due south, to the parallel of latitude forty-two degrees north; thence west, along said parallel, to the place of beginning.
The Oregon-Washington boundary on the 46th parallel, between the Snake and Columbia Rivers, was surveyed and marked in 1863-64 under the direction of the General Land Office. The latitude used was derived from more than 500 observations with the sextant. Two observation stations were occupied, one near the foot of Cathedral Rock on the Columbia, the other near Cottonwood Creek on the west side of the Blue Mountains. A random line was run between them, which showed an apparent difference of latitude of 4". The final line was run on the mean latitude. Marks were set at mile intervals for 42 miles east from the Columbia, then at irregular intervals over the Blue Mountains. The measured length of the line was 96 miles 57 chains. The easternmost mark, which was placed 3 chains from the west bank of the Snake River, was a 71/2-foot post 12 inches in diameter, marked “W” on the north, “O” on the south, and “ 46 L 1868 ” on the east side, and set in a 6-foot pile of stones.
By a joint resolution approved June 10, 1910,95 Congress gave its consent to the States of Oregon and Washington to fix their common boundary in the Columbia River and to cede the one to the other islands the title to which had been in dispute, but up to the present time no action appears to have been taken by either State to make use of the authority thus granted.
The area included in the present State of California is part of that acquired from Mexico by the treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo in 1848. (See fig. 2.) From July 4, 1848, until December 20, 1849, it was under military control, the commanding officer of the military force stationed there acting as provisional governor. From the latter date until Congress passed the act for the admission of California to the Union, approved September 9, 1850,98 a form of local government was in effect.
94 11 Stat. L. 383. 35 36 Stat. L. 881. 06 9 Stat. L. 452.
See also 211 U. S. 127 and 214 U. S. 217.
The boundaries of the State, as described in the constitution of 1849, are as follows: 97
Commencing at the point of intersection of forty-second degree of north latitude with the one hundred and twentieth degree of longitude west from Greenwich, and running south on the line of said one hundred and twentieth degree of west longitude until it intersects the thirty-ninth degree of north latitude; thence running in a straight line in a southeasterly direction to the river Colorado, at a point where it intersects the thirty-fifth degree of north latitude; thence down the middle of the channel of said river to the boundary line between the United States and Mexico as established by the treaty of May 30, 1848; thence running west and along said boundary line to the Pacific Ocean, and extending therein three English miles; thence running in a northwesterly direction and following the direction of the Pacific coast to the forty-second degree of north latitude; thence on the line of said forty-second degree of north latitude to the place of beginning. Also all the islands, harbors, and bayg along and adjacent to the Pacific coast.
For reference to surveys of the eastern boundary see pages 236–237.
The principal islands claimed as part of the State of California are:
Santa Catalina and San Clemente, 20 to 50 miles off the coast, included in Los Angeles County.
San Nicolas, 60 miles from the coast, included in Ventura County.
Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa, and San Miguel, 20 to 25 miles from the coast, included in Santa Barbara County.
These and many smaller islands passed under the control of the United States in consequence of the treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo. The question of sovereignty over these islands has been raised several times, the claim being made that as they were not mentioned in the treaty of 1848, Mexico had not given up its title to them, but it is evident from the following references that it was generally understood after the treaty was signed that the islands were a part of the territory ceded to the United States.
A general assertion of jurisdiction over the “islands adjacent to the Pacific coast” was made in the State constitution of 1849, which was formally approved by Congress in 1850.
In an act of Congress approved August 31, 1852,98 an appropriation was made for subdividing these islands, several of which were mentioned by name, “ so that said islands may be readily disposed of under the laws of the United States."
The United States Supreme Court at its December term, 1859, decided a case relating to a land grant on the island of Santa Cruz,99 in which the claim was based on a Mexican grant of 1839. The ques
97 Thorpe, F. N., op. cit., vol. 1, p. 405. For a brief review of the events that resulted in the adoption of the boundaries of California as at present fixed and of attempts to change them see Guinn, J. M., How California escaped State division : Hist. Soc. Southern California Pub., vol. 6, 1905.
98 10 Stat. L. 91. 90 23 Howard 465.
tion of jurisdiction of the United States over the island was not brought up, although it must have been considered.
Patents have been issued from time to time by the General Land Office for land on the several islands, and reservations have been made on behalf of the United States for lighthouses.
So far as can be ascertained no formal adverse claim to these islands has ever been presented by Mexico, and in view of the foregoing facts it is certain that none can now be made with a hope for favorable consideration.1
To determine the proper position for the northeast corner of California (latitude 42°, longitude 120°) an astronomic station was established at Camp Bidwell, where more than 3,000 measurements of lunar distances were said to have been made for longitude in 1868–69. The position for the corner was computed to be 9 miles 56 chains north and 4 miles 78 chains east from the observatory. From the corner thus found the line was run west a distance of 212 miles 28 chains to a terminal mark 12 chains from the shore of the Pacific Ocean. The geographic position of this post is latitude 41° 59' 55.7", longitude 124° 12' 29.5".2
The marks consisted of wooden posts or small stones with “O” cut on the north side, “C” on the south, and the mile number and date on the other sides.
GENERAL STATISTICS RELATING TO THE UNITED
Nearly all boundaries of States west of the Mississippi, as well as those of many central and southern States, have been surveyed under the direction of the General Land Office. Notes of all such surveys and plats for most of them are on file in the General Land Office, Department of the Interior, in Washington, D. C. Many of the field notes are in excellent form, in books especially prepared for them, and are illustrated by photographs or sketches. Other notes are in books of field notes with the regular township surveys. Many resurveys or retracements of short parts of boundary lines have been made, and numerous corners have been reestablished in connection with the regular surveys of the public lands, which are not mentioned in the foregoing pages but are noted in the records of the General Land Office.
1 See Land Dec., vol. 20, p. 106, Washington, 1895. 2 U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey Special Pub. 31, p. 73, 1915.
The notes and plats are open to public inspection and are indexed so that reference to them is easy; or copies will be supplied to anyone on payment of nominal fees.
Historical diagrams showing changes in State or national boundaries are to be found in many publications, a few of which are listed below:
Faris, J. T., The romance of the boundaries, New York, Harper & Brothers, 1926. This book contains a bibliography of boundary references with 138 entries. Lamberton, R. H., An historical atlas
from the dawn of history to the present time, 7th ed., New York, Townsend Mac Coun, 1884.
MacCoun, Townsend, An historical geography of the United States, rev. ed., New York, Silver, Burdett & Co., 1901.
Mowry, W. A., The territorial growth of the United States, New York, Silver, Burdett & Co., 1902.
U. S. Bureau of Statistics, Monthly Summary of Commerce and Finance of the United States for August, 1902.
Stocking, S. W., Areas and political divisions of the United States, with map: Statistical atlas of the United States Bureau of the Census, Washington, 1874.
ORGANIZATION OF THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT
The name united States of America was used in the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776, and the use of the name “ United States” for all State papers was ordered by the Continental Congress on September 9, 1776. The first of the "Articles of Confederation and perpetual Union,” etc., of 1777, is “ The stile of this Confederacy shall be The United States of America."
The Articles of Confederation, agreed to by delegates from the thirteen original colonies on November 15, 1777, were ratified by them on the dates given below. The defects in the form of government thereby instituted were so many that steps were soon taken to change it. A convention called in 1787 to draft a constitution for the United States completed its labors on September 17 of the same year. The Constitution of the United States of America was ratified and the States became members of the Union on various dates between 1787 and 1790.
8 See Meginness, J. F., Otzinachson; or, a history of the West Branch Valley of the Susquehanna, pp. 192–193, Philadelphia, 1857, and Report of the commission to locate the sites of frontier forts of Pennsylvania, vol. 1, pp. 407-409, for references to the Declaration of Independence, which by a strange coincidence was adopted on the same day at Pine Creek, Lycoming County, 150 miles from Philadelphia. | <urn:uuid:04ad0d44-b814-414f-aa07-f74e973f8dee> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://books.google.com.pe/books?id=USlUAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA242&focus=viewport&vq=%22line+drawn+from+the+said+southerly+bend+through+the+middle+of+said+lake+to+its+northern+extremity,+and+thence+due%22&dq=editions:ISBN0060937165&lr=&output=html_text | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571502.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811194507-20220811224507-00070.warc.gz | en | 0.956024 | 3,059 | 3.140625 | 3 |
Agustín Vitórica '99
Founder and Co-CEO, Ambers&Co Capital Microfinanzas
Luca and I are founders and co-CEOs of Ambers&Co Capital Microfinanzas, a Madrid-based impact investment fund advisory and management company. Our mission is to promote social and economic development in developing countries by leveraging private capital. We co-manage a $30 million fund, investing in microfinance institutions and other companies that promote financial inclusion.
Microfinance is microcredit given to poor people in order to run sustainable micro-enterprises and improve their livelihoods. We partnered with Ambers&Co, an independent financial advisory firm based in Spain. They were looking to set up a new part of the business dedicated to investment, but they didn't want to do a venture capital or private equity fund.
So we proposed an asset management company that could produce not only financial returns but also social good. They supported our initiative and helped in fundraising — because, in this business, the toughest thing is fundraising. They also helped us assemble a strong board of directors made up of very important names in Spain's financial world who backed what we were doing and demonstrated that our initiative was solid.
Our company is focused on the bottom of the pyramid: the people in the world with the lowest incomes. We have several projects in developing regions, including Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. One of our largest areas of focus is on poor farmers, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. The farmers there are really suffering now due to drought and high food prices.
We carry out all the due diligence and research ourselves, identifying territories that are more or less stable, then visiting them and investigating the institutions we invest in to make sure they are doing what they say they're doing. We speak with the beneficiaries to see what's really happening and if the institution is behaving well. I don't think this is a business you can carry on from your base country in the first world. You really have to go there and familiarize yourself with the way things work in order to understand these countries properly.
The good thing about impact investing is that the money, if set up properly, goes directly to the beneficiaries. All the incentives of capitalism work in the sense that the beneficiaries are pressed to work hard in order to sustain themselves out of poverty by learning how to do things, not just receive a donation every day. Kellogg taught me to push boundaries. I want to use that education and my business experience to do something that has an impact in the world. | <urn:uuid:6ae80bc1-96fe-4022-be0c-930183727597> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/kwo/win11/features/vitorica.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988717954.1/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183837-00508-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970334 | 526 | 1.78125 | 2 |
Q. I do not believe in Dual Covenant Theology. Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” John 14:6. Messianic Jews are part of the church, so they are saved. The scriptures also say that God has a covenant with the Jews and Israel. Although the church age Jews have not acknowledged Jesus as their Savior and therefore are not saved, God has brought them back to the land of Israel. Is it because, although they have not accepted Jesus, God will always keep his covenant with them as His people, whether they believe in Jesus or not?
A. Basically, Dual Covenant Theology holds that Jews don’t have to accept Jesus as their Savior under the New Covenant, because they’ve already been saved under the Old Covenant. This view can not be supported by Scripture and in fact contradicts the words of the Lord in John 14:6.
In his prophecy of Israel’s latter day regathering, Ezekiel indicated that at first they would not be a nation of believers. Their official “awakening” will not be complete until after the Battle of Ezekiel 38-39 but even that will only bring them back to their Old Covenant relationship with God. The realization that Jesus is their Messiah will happen toward the end of the Great Tribulation and is described in Zechariah 12:10. When the Lord returns to establish His Millennial Kingdom on earth, all the inhabitants of Israel will have come to the realization that Jesus is their Messiah and will worship Him as their Lord. | <urn:uuid:dfffa036-933a-4e63-a35f-4710dd7a9bf7> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://gracethrufaith.com/ask-a-bible-teacher/dual-covenant-theology-2/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280242.65/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00082-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973974 | 329 | 1.570313 | 2 |
“We are at a key moment in history when we must challenge our president to take real leadership. The steps taken so far have been frankly inadequate. If President Obama wants to take his place among the great leaders of history, he must take aggressive measures to combat climate change and prioritize a strong deal in Copenhagen,” said Carroll Muffet, Deputy Campaign Director for Greenpeace. "We're here at Mount Rushmore to inspire Americans to take action, and remind the world that heroism and leadership are part of our nation’s history — and must be a part of our future.”
from the GreenPeace staff blog:
We just posted this amazing new video – shot by our team in the field at yesterday’s banner hang on Mount Rushmore – to YouTube. Check it out, there’s some cool behind-the-scenes footage, and then you can see just how windy it was. Our climbers get tossed around pretty good. Just goes to show how incredible of a job they really did.permalink GreenPeace staff blog
In addition to heaps of praise and words of encouragement, we’ve been getting a lot of flak from people who were upset that we would deface a national monument. My response to them is twofold: First, there are already climbing leads established on the rock, which the park employees use to clean the monument. Our climbers used those leads and were extremely cautious not to do any harm to the monument, and in the end they did not do any damage.
Second, all of the sanctimonious claims about our disrespect for what Mount Rushmore represents are completely baseless. We have utmost respect for the accomplishments of the great leaders who built this country, that’s why we chose it as the site for issuing our challenge to President Obama to be a leader on global warming. But Mount Rushmore was built on a mountain stolen from Native Americans. Adding insult to injury, we then carved a bunch of white people’s faces into it. So you gotta ask yourself: What does Mount Rushmore really represent?
For the record, a member of the local Oglala Sioux tribe has published an op-ed praising our action.
And our larger point still stands: If President Obama wants to be considered equal to the pantheon of great American leaders depicted on Mount Rushmore, he needs to start providing real leadership on global warming, the greatest challenge of our time.
The pesident is currently meeting with the rest of the G8 leaders in L’Aquila, Italy. Yesterday they held a press conference to announce that they were setting a target of limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius. But that is not what real leadership looks like – that target had already been endorsed by 109 nations even before the G8 announcement.
Plus, as worthy as this long-term goal is, the truly critical issue is that President Obama and the rest of the world’s leaders still have not laid out an adequate roadmap for how we’re going to get there. In other words, they haven’t set short-term goals that are ambitious enough to get us to the long term goal of keeping global temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius. Scientists have clearly stated that the United States and other industrialized countries must cut their emissions by 25-40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. But the Obama Administration, like Congress, continues to promote short-term emissions reductions targets that fall far short of what science demands.
We can’t continue to put off for tomorrow what science tells us we need to do today. While the 2 degree commitment would appear to recognize the severity of the crisis we're facing, the Obama Administration and the G8 have failed to provide any plan for staying below this critical threshold. Sign our petition now and ask Obama to be a leader on global warming, not just here in America but for the world as well. | <urn:uuid:be41c90f-3fb6-49da-8937-fd955acdc202> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://idealistpropaganda.blogspot.com/2009/07/greenpeace-behind-scenes-video-of-mount.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279410.32/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00168-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958375 | 798 | 2.0625 | 2 |
When is Women’s Day in 2017?
Looking for when is Women’s Day in 2017?
If yes, you have come to the right place. Women’s Day in 2017 will be observed on Wednesday, 8th March.
Women’s Day also know as Internation Women’s Day is a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. The day also marks a call to action for accelerating gender parity.
It is celebrated in many countries around the world. Women’s Day has been observed since in the early 1900’s – a time of great expansion and turbulence in the industrialized world that saw booming population growth and the rise of radical ideologies.
However, Women’s Day in 2017 will be observed on Wednesday, 8th March. Women’s Day is a collective day of global celebration and a call for gender parity. No one government, NGO, charity, corporation, academic institution, women’s network or media hub is solely responsible for Women’s Day.
Many organizations declare an annual Women’s Day theme that supports their specific agenda or cause, and some of these are adopted more widely with relevance than others. | <urn:uuid:911e9498-5a5f-484f-a12b-7d5db5c5469c> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.indiamarks.com/when-is-womens-day-in-2017/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281746.82/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00285-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948886 | 252 | 2.59375 | 3 |
Biddle Hall was built in 1954 and used as a residence hall for students.
Thomas R. Biddle
Biddle Hall was named in honor of Thomas R. Biddle. A native of St. Mary, WV, he was educated at Ohio University and the Cincinnati Medical College. He practiced general medicine for 10 years. He was an Ohio University Trustee from 1900 through 1951. He became president of the Morris-Poston Coal Company, Millfield Coal and Mining Company and general manager of the Poston Consolidated Coal Company. In 1912, he became director of the Athens National Bank and in 1930 became the bank president. He was an Ohio delegate to the Republican National Convention in 1928 when Herbert Hoover was nominated for President of the United States. | <urn:uuid:9a8249f3-6fd8-452a-b475-17f578e64805> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | https://www.ohio.edu/athens/bldgs/biddle.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988719273.38/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183839-00066-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.985795 | 152 | 2.28125 | 2 |
Germans Cross Meuse River into France at Sedan
At Sedan the Meuse Line consisted of a strong defensive belt, six kilometres deep according to the modern principles of zone defence on slopes overlooking the Meuse valley and strengthened by 103 pillboxes, manned by the 147th Fortress Infantry Regiment. The deeper positions were held by the 55th Infantry Division (55e DI). This was only a grade “B” reserve division, but already reinforcements were arriving. On the morning of 13 May, 71e DI was inserted to the east of Sedan, allowing 55e DI to narrow its front by a third and deepen its position to over ten kilometres. Furthermore, it had a superiority in artillery to the German units present. The French command fully expected that the Germans would only attack such formidable defences when a large infantry and artillery force had been built up, a concentration that apparently could not be completed before 20 May, given the traffic congestion; a date very similar to Halder's original projection. It thus came as a complete surprise when crossing attempts were made as early as the fourth day of the invasion.
The success of this plan depended on concentration and coordination. The French had more tanks than the Germans did, but most were dispersed along the front in support of infantry, and they had few reliable radios. By contrast, the Germans placed seven of their 10 armored divisions at the forefront of Army Group A, which would make the big push across the Meuse while Army Group B preoccupied the Allies to the north and Army Group C kept French forces pinned down behind the Maginot Line to the south. Guderian, whose corps now boasted three panzer divisions, would cross the Meuse at Sedan—the site of a crushing German victory over France in 1870—while other panzer leaders, including the hard-driving Maj. Gen. Erwin Rommel, would cross nearby. | <urn:uuid:38880dd0-d371-401a-b0bc-24a057e05f90> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://worldhistoryproject.org/1940/5/13/germans-cross-meuse-river-into-france-at-sedan | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570871.10/warc/CC-MAIN-20220808183040-20220808213040-00272.warc.gz | en | 0.98025 | 384 | 3.265625 | 3 |
|Songs from||Sesame Street|
|Cat no.||C 30387|
The Year of Roosevelt Franklin (Gordon's Friend from Sesame Street) is the first Sesame Street album to focus on one character. The songs deal with many different subjects, from learning letters and numbers, to traffic safety, sharing, and getting along with other people. It was subsequently reissued as My Name is Roosevelt Franklin in 1974.
- Roosevelt Franklin Counts - Roosevelt Franklin and Roosevelt Franklin's Mother
- Days of the Week - Roosevelt Franklin and The Kids
- Mobity Mosely's Months - Mobity Mosely
- Keep on Trying - Baby Ray Franklin and Mary Frances Franklin
- The Safety Boy Blues - Roosevelt Franklin
- Just Because - Roosevelt Franklin
- The Skin I'm In - Baby Ray Franklin
- A Bear Eats Bear Food - Roosevelt Franklin and Mary Frances Franklin
- Halfies - A.B. Cito
- Me and You - Roosevelt Franklin and Mary Frances Franklin
- Old King Midas - Roosevelt Franklin
- Roosevelt Franklin's Alphabet- Roosevelt Franklin and Roosevelt Franklin's Mother
- Album produced by Thomas Z. Shepard
- Lyrics by Matt Robinson
- Music by Matt Robinson and Joe Raposo
- Published by Pickled Pig Feet Music Inc. (ASCAP)
- Music director: Joe Raposo
- Art work directed by Brian Cranner
- Album edited by James Timmens
- Engineering by Frank Laico, John Guerriere and Ed Michalski
- Project Director: Arthur Shimkin
- Matt Robinson as Roosevelt Franklin, Baby Ray Franklin, Mobity Mosely and A.B. Cito
- Rosalind Cash as Roosevelt Franklin's Mother and Mary Frances Franklin
The back of the album includes quotes from well-wishers:
- John V. Lindsay, Mayor - City of New York: "Children are not born with racial prejudice - they learn it. From Roosevelt Franklin they can learn other things instead - tolerance and understanding and friendship for each other. This album is a delightful, constructive contribution to the struggle from understanding and equality."
- Barbara Walters, Today Show - NBC-TV: "Roosevelt Franklin not only delighted my two-and-one-half year old, but more important, it should help her, and all of us, live in a happier, more understanding world."
- Ed Sullivan: "As a grandfather of five I recommend it! Not only to the nation's youngsters, but to their parents as well. It offers something to people of all races and all creeds."
- B.B. King, ABC Records Recording Artist: "I really enjoyed this LP when I heard it. I wish albums like this would have been available when I was a kid in Mississippi."
- U.S. Congressman Shirley Chisholm: "Roosevelt Franklin brings together children, black and white, fat and thin, shy and bold. They are natural children untouched by the polluted minds of adults. It is beautiful."
- Ed McMahon: "This recording is vibrant... it is with it... it is educational but above all it teaches tolerance for others and love for all. That's a big order beautifully fulfilled."
- Mrs. Minerva Rosario, Kindergarten Teacher - PS 115: "Very lovely, modern, exciting beat throughout the record. The children love the rhythm of it. It made them feel like dancing."
- Maratia Cantarella (Age - 3 years) Brooklyn, N.Y.: "I want to hear. You know, Mama, I want to hear the Roosevelt Franklin record. Do it again, Mama, please. Make it some more."
The back covers and inside gatefold of this album in both releases contain a variety of artwork and commentary on the album. | <urn:uuid:05d3c9ce-a8f5-48da-ad6b-33dc250ab61c> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/My_Name_is_Roosevelt_Franklin | 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 | 0.902627 | 784 | 2.078125 | 2 |
*Editor’s Note: This piece is part of a series—lucky you. Head to the author’s profile to continue reading.
Life in a rural mid-western town—population 2,333 during a high-yield year—thrives on routine.
When you’re completely surrounded by fields of corn and soybeans and dairy cows, change first comes to the rows of tilled soil, and the amount of daylight you see is the best way to mark time passing.
From dawn to dusk, day in, day out, the weeks and months saunter around the seasons, adding on years like an afterthought. For those who make their homes here, life is predictable as clockwork. Maybe, a tad too comfortable.
The mile-long town set squarely between two county roads on the patchwork farmland that is eastern Indiana hasn’t grown beyond those asphalt borders in 150 years.
Residents prefer it that way. There’s an ironclad commitment to the status quo that lets you know where you stand at all times. An agreement with this order of life is expected of everyone. Folks are informal and unpretentious, with a staunch work ethic. They still hold fond memories of their glory days, and are wary of anything from “outside” the county that might bring change or cause disruption to The Way Things Are Around Here.
It’s best not to rock the boat. There might be some sort of upset, and no one wants to put up with that kind of nonsense.
I didn’t get the memo.
I arrived on this planet in the middle of a sh*t-show.
1968 was one of the “single most tumultuous years in history…as a spirit of rebellion swept through countries all over the world,” according to the history books: When soaring casualties after the Tet Offensive and My Lai Massacre led students to protest worldwide over the war in Vietnam. The year that Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated. Followed by the civil unrest and political drama at the DNC in Chicago. Rounded out by the fiercely raised fists of Tommie Smith and John Carlos calling out ugly racial discrimination at the Summer Olympics. And then, Nixon was elected.
Mothers in active labor were still served a cocktail of morphine and scopolamine—twilight sleep—to ensure amnesia and relief from the discomfort of the blessed event. For my petite mom, who doesn’t even tolerate Tylenol, this had the effect of pulling the emergency brake, full-stop. An overly-helpful nurse decided she should climb up onto the delivery table with her.
The only thing Mom remembers about my birth are thick, white pantyhose-clad legs and a giant butt in her face while the crazy lady straddled her stomach and pushed me out into the world.
It explains a lot.
To this day, I prefer to go at my own pace, in my own time. I hate being pushed into decisions or actions or feelings. I was forced into this world that seemed to be falling apart before I was ready, colicky and uncomfortable in my own skin. And during the light of a full moon, which is my saving grace. What the hell am I even doing here?
When I was three years old, life got more interesting—I discovered that I am a separate person from everyone else and my thoughts are different things than others’ thoughts.
If I thought about scissors, for instance, and visualized the adulty black-handled shears in my Mom’s sewing box, because I wanted to cut the wavy strands that were always in my face, she might be thinking of those annoyingly dull rounded-tip scissors that preschoolers are forced to use. Or, she might not be thinking about scissors at all, rather, whether we were having mashed potatoes or nasty boiled brussels sprouts for supper.
It was a strange awareness, to discover that what I was thinking didn’t immediately form an accurate picture of understanding in someone else’s head. I used to believe we all had some kind of telepathy. That if I thought about something, someone else could pick up my exact thought, see the same mental picture that I saw, and give me an answer.
Because that’s how it seemed to work on my end.
I began to see and hear and feel things that others couldn’t relate to. Which was too bad because I saw a lot of interesting things and had a lot of questions that everyone tried to avoid. Like, what were the sparkly balls of color that floated around my bedroom at night? Or the wispy white ribbons of fog dancing up the wall, even when no one in the room was smoking? Who was the young man standing in the living room who turned and walked through the wall?
Sometimes, I knew things that I hadn’t been taught and that others didn’t know. That always prompted a look of alarm, which the adults hurried to conceal. I always noticed, anyway. It was easier for them to tell me that I had a good imagination before they changed the subject. Without meaning to, their microexpressions gave it away, and I learned that I made people uncomfortable. And they didn’t have answers for me about what I was experiencing. They wouldn’t even try.
I felt confused. And lonely.
One evening, I sat with my parents and grandparents in my grandma’s kitchen, looking at the door at the end of the long hallway, mesmerized by an orange-red flame that wasn’t burning anything. It filled the space from floor to ceiling, some nine feet tall, and kept me rooted to my chair, terrified.
Eyes wide open, I stared.
The flame-entity undulated slowly toward me. It was powerful.
Closer—it made its way forward to the living room.
Closer, still—to the threshold of the kitchen.
If I could just hold still, it would come close enough for the adults to notice. Finally, they would see with their own eyes and understand me. I didn’t breathe.
And it disappeared.
They didn’t see.
The adults kept talking, and nothing changed. Except, me. I changed. I became quiet. Unobtrusive. Observant. I learned to keep my mouth shut so I wouldn’t rock the boat.
Some time later, I found a little black pleather datebook with “1970” stamped in thin, gold numbers on the cover. It was an ordinary thing that you might receive for being a regular customer at the First State Bank on Main Street. Each creamy page had enough space for a week’s worth of notes. There was an address section, and a table of measurements, and a list of United States telephone area codes. But the most remarkable part was at the back of the book: 10 vibrantly colored map pages of the world, divided by continent, and illustrating all the countries, capitals, cities, and oceans.
The orange of Turkey captivated me. Bluebell Scotland. Salmon-pink Egypt. Dusty yellow Australia. Crimson Peru. Lime-green Hawai’i. Violet Tibet.
I was completely riveted. “Where are these places?” I thought. “How do I get there?” They seemed impossibly far away. I felt a decisive knowing settled deep into my bones. Oh, I’m going. Someday.’
The inconvenient seeing and feeling and hearing and knowing continued as I got older.
Shadow people often stood in the corner of my darkened bedroom, and occasionally, I would dream about random people just before they died. I’d hear tinkling bells and someone calling my name.
Nobody I knew would admit to having these experiences and nobody wanted me to talk about it.
I could often sense clearly what others were thinking, and they didn’t like that they could never hide their truth or their fear from me. I started thinking there was something wrong with me, or maybe I was crazy. It wasn’t something I felt safe to discuss with anyone, anywhere.
I did my best to ignore it all and appear normal.
My parents told me to just go to church and pray about it. Being in a sacred space was comforting, and yet it made things more intense. Seeing the minister’s blue-green aura while he spoke. Hearing music that wasn’t there. Feeling gusts of cool air as if something large brushed quickly past me. It was not my imagination.
I didn’t choose any of this. No one wanted to believe me.
I was rocking the boat.
By the time I was 15, I was exhausted from trying to compartmentalize all that was happening with what was expected and projected upon me as a young lady. I read through everything of interest in my local library, both as a means to escape and as a way to learn about experiences like mine. I needed to find myself a broader collection. I needed so much more than was available to me in this quiet little town. I couldn’t wait to take myself off to college.
“A fresh start,” I thought, “and I’m never coming back here!”
As George Bailey said in “It’s A Wonderful Life,”
“I’m shakin’ the dust of this crummy little town off my feet and I’m gonna see the world!”
I, too, wanted to see and experience it all. To move away from my little community and explore new locations and new ideas. To communicate and travel, and develop relationships, and build a future. To create my life.
And I did. Florida. Boyfriend. California. Husband. Idaho. Children. North Carolina. Divorce. D.C. Freedom. Istanbul. Crete. Edinburgh. London. Paris. Rome. Tulum. Efes. Patmos. Iona.
In my pilgrimage, I’ve found many sacred spaces to nurture my soul. To teach me what I needed to know. To remember my authentic self. And bring her forward.
But here’s the thing: never tell the universe that you are never going to do something.
The universe will laugh at you.
She’ll start with a husky, sultry, chuckle deep in the back of her throat, imperceptible, until it catches momentum and ripples through your life in a way that you didn’t see coming. She’ll make you catch your breath and shock the wind out of you.
She’ll awaken you at 4:00 a.m., distract you with discomfort and disorientation, weaving fragments of a dream that won’t let you go back to sleep. Something just out of reach, that you’ve tried to avoid is lying dormant right under the surface of your subconscious. Waiting for you to let down your guard.
Then, she will conspire to orchestrate events to make sure that you do exactly what you swore you would never do.
And when, gobsmacked, you realize that you created conditions to manifest the one thing that you were certain to never, ever repeat: her glee erupts in volume—This is all a great cosmic joke!—and transforms into the manic cackle of Vincent Price.
I have to go home. | <urn:uuid:50d564ee-173c-499a-af54-5e8a89cbda76> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.elephantjournal.com/2019/10/mulligan-chapter-1/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573744.90/warc/CC-MAIN-20220819161440-20220819191440-00468.warc.gz | en | 0.969282 | 2,426 | 1.507813 | 2 |
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Download Online Examination System in PHP CodeIgniter with sourcecode
How to Download Online Examination System In PHP With Source Code.
How to Download Online Examination System on your computer. At First Click Download Button below. Captcha Will arrive in front of you. You have to solve That Captcha. After You solve the captcha Download will automatically Start below. If you Fail Captcha YOU have to try it again.
firms now use an online examination method to conduct objective exams, which saves students time in exams. Organizations can also simply assess a student's performance in an examination they administer. As a result, businesses are releasing outcomes in a shorter period of time. It also benefits the environment by reducing the amount of paper used. Online examination project in PHP is extremely useful to understand it according to today's needs.
A completely functional project based on an Online Examination System that makes use of the PHP programming language and the CodeIgniter Web Framework. The PHP CodeIgniter project below has all of the necessary capabilities for final-year IT students to employ in their college projects. It has a number of tools that allow users to manage and participate in online exams. The principle of this system, as well as the online application, is quite obvious. It's similar to real-life scenarios and has been well-implement. Please scroll down to the bottom of this post for the Download button to get a free online exam system project in PHP MySQL CodeIgniter Framework with source code files.
This PHP CodeIgniter project for an Online Exam System is focused on keeping track of questionnaires and exam data in particular. In addition, the system displays all of the categories, as well as the information related with them. Students, professors, and test schedules can all be managed through the system. There is an admin panel, as well as a student and teacher panel, in this project. An administrator has complete control over the system in this web application's overview. He or she can manage users, classes, departments, courses, and question sets, as well as the links between them. Each part has its own set of information, such as a name and other important details. The administrator, on the other hand, has the power to create a student or instructor account. | <urn:uuid:76434cc1-e578-4b21-baca-ad5da5224112> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://freeprojectscodes.com/download/download-online-examination-system/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572833.78/warc/CC-MAIN-20220817001643-20220817031643-00276.warc.gz | en | 0.938008 | 508 | 1.867188 | 2 |
… apply to law school the same way. They have very similar backgrounds, few years of work experience, focus way more on the LSAT than anything else, and end up choosing the highest ranked school that lets them in. Most of these applicants are smart, no doubt about it. But here is the problem.
Most law school applicants get low LSAT scores at least once, and then become afraid to take the test again. Many never take it a second time.
Most law school applicants spend so much time on the LSAT that they forget about the importance of having a good story.
Most law school applicants write lofty essays about making a difference in the world, but nearly every single one wants to work at a big law firm by the end of their first year.
Most law school applicants are hyper-competitive and don’t do a good a job working together.
Most law school applicants apply to law school with very little ‘real’ work experience but don’t realize this is the case.
Most law school applicants are more argumentative than collaborative.
Most law school applicants are caught off guard during 1L.
Most law school applicants haven’t developed certain professional leadership skills.
Most law school applicants get rejected from more schools than they get in to.
Here’s good news is that if you are reading this post on my blog RIGHT NOW, then you do not have to be like most law school applicants. | <urn:uuid:3a3429c5-36d5-492b-8622-d7349da9bee6> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2012/09/07/most-law-school-applicants | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280825.87/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00200-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965111 | 299 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Helix Therapeutics, a NewHaven, Connecticut-based biopharmaceutical company pursuing therapies for genetic disorders such as sickle cell anemia, B-Thalassemia and lysosomal storage disorders, has raised a $2.5m in financing.
The company intends to use the new capital, which add to previously raised seed-stage funds, to further advance its proprietary targeted gene modification (TGM) technology platform.
The company’s technology, which was developed at the Yale University School of Medicine and licensed exclusively on a worldwide basis to Helix, is designed to correct certain genetic mutations in blood stem cells of patients with the above mentioned rare genetic diseases.
In conjunction with the funding, Timothy Shannon, M.D., a venture partner at Canaan, will join Helix’ Board, which also includes Russell Tweeddale, CI Managing Director of Investments, Peter Glazer, M.D., Ph.D., a founder of Helix, and inventor of the company’s technology platform, and Kevin Rakin, a Helix founder and Chairman and CEO of Advanced BioHealing.
Other founders of the company are Gerald F. Vovis, Ph.D., and Ranjit Bindra, M.D., Ph.D. | <urn:uuid:1b3dba6e-2e08-4aab-958e-830472e1a273> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://www.finsmes.com/2010/11/helix-therapeutics-raises-2-5m.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988720000.45/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183840-00024-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.922606 | 264 | 1.507813 | 2 |
From D&D Wiki
|This material is published under the OGL|
Mithral is a very rare silvery, glistening metal that is lighter than iron but just as hard. When worked like steel, it becomes a wonderful material from which to create armor and is occasionally used for other items as well. Most mithral armors are one category lighter than normal for purposes of movement and other limitations. Heavy armors are treated as medium, and medium armors are treated as light, but light armors are still treated as light. Spell failure chances for armors and shields made from mithral are decreased by 10%, maximum Dexterity bonus is increased by 2, and armor check penalties are lessened by 3 (to a minimum of 0).
An item made from mithral weighs half as much as the same item made from other metals. In the case of weapons, this lighter weight does not change a weapon’s size category or the ease with which it can be wielded (whether it is light, one-handed, or two-handed). Items not primarily of metal are not meaningfully affected by being partially made of mithral. (A longsword can be a mithral weapon, while a scythe cannot be.)
Weapons or armors fashioned from mithral are always masterwork items as well; the masterwork cost is included in the prices given below.
Mithral has 30 hit points per inch of thickness and hardness 15.
|Type of Mithral Item||Item Cost Modifier|
|Light armor||+1,000 gp|
|Medium armor||+4,000 gp|
|Heavy armor||+9,000 gp|
|Other items||+500 gp/lb.| | <urn:uuid:153f4b80-f639-459d-ab8a-7a028588ce8c> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Mithral | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988721008.78/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183841-00118-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947848 | 362 | 2.46875 | 2 |
52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy and History
52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy & History by Amy Coffin is a series of weekly blogging prompts (one for each week of 2011) that invite genealogists and others to record memories and insights about their own lives for future descendants. You do not have to be a blogger to participate. If you do not have a genealogy blog, write down your memories on your computer, or simply record them on paper and keep them with your files.
•Week 23. Books. What was your favorite book, or who was your favorite author from your childhood? What do you like to read now? Books or other formats?
I was an avid reader when I was young, that much hasn't changed. I loved mysteries and historical fiction. Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden were my favorites. Stories of teenage girls and their friends solving mysteries-it was a huge adventure for me.
I also loved the Little House on the Prairie series. I read each book again and again and again. I ached to live like Laura did-although I do have to mention that I finally read Farmer Boy last year. I didn't have any interest in Almanzo's life when he was a boy. Last year, my son and I read through it and I really enjoyed it. I also really enjoyed comparing Laura's hard poor life to Almanzo's-his family was definitely not easier but they certainly were better off financially.
Another favorite was Caddie Woodlawn. Again, another girl living in the 19th century. I really love that era.
My love of mysteries and historical fiction hasn't wavered as an adult. I love mysteries, although now I generally read genealogical mysteries. And I absolutely love historical fiction. That's my favorite genre to read from. My favorite time is 19th century American, although I do love British and Scottish fiction. One of my favorites is the Outlander series.
I'm also starting to read more classics. I homeschool my children and realize how many classics I missed out on when I was little. My kids read classics, lots of them. I read all of their reading list and then I work on adult classics. I have Lord of the Rings, Last of the Mohicans, and Sense and Sensibility as some of my must reads this year.
I look forward to seeing everyone else's reads! | <urn:uuid:1cb0ddc0-f2fe-49fb-947d-2ee37e23974b> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://myfamilystangledroots.blogspot.com/2011/06/52-weeks-of-personal-genealogy-and.html?showComment=1307243570751 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560282202.61/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095122-00558-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980428 | 491 | 1.617188 | 2 |
A LABOUR Government would have far fewer ministers because power would be handed down to local areas instead, under surprise plans floated today.
Chuka Umunna, Labour’s business spokesman, pledged to reverse decades of “centralising” by putting towns and cities in control of their economies.
And he pointed to the far-smaller Government in France – long thought of as a centralised state as well – as evidence of the need for change.
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Mr Umunna said: “They have about 40 ministers – we have over 80 in this country - and that’s partly because there’s a lot more power for their mayors and local elected representatives “Therefore, there isn’t the need for so many ministers at the centre. That illustrates just how centralised we are as a country.”
Asked if Labour could similarly slash the number of Whitehall ministers, Mr Umunna replied: “I think that’s certainly something I can envisage – yes “If you end up with a smaller number of ministers, because you have pushed power out, then I’m fine with that.”
The Blair and Brown-led Labour governments had been “quite centralising and statist in our approach”, Mr Umunna admitted.
And he added: “How can I be dictating to people in Manchester, Sunderland, Newcastle, Birmingham - wherever it is - what is best for their regional economy?
“They know what’s best for their regional economy, they know how they can be world-beating - and we’ve got to give them the tools to do that.”
However, the shadow business secretary, speaking at Westminster, gave few clues as to how power would be devolved, with the general election just 15 months away.
Mr Umunna said he was “awaiting eagerly” the recommendations of a ‘growth review’ being carried out for Ed Miliband by former Transport Secretary Lord Adonis.
He also declared himself a “big fan” of both Lord Heseltine’s blueprint for handing billions of pounds to local enterprise partnerships (LEPs) and of the Coalition’s ‘City Deals’.
As The Northern Echo revealed last week, Labour plans to give local areas some powers over back-to-work schemes, taking contracts off multinational firms.
Mr Umunna suggested similar arrangements could follow in other areas, including skills budgets, adding: “That will give you a sense of our direction of travel here.”
Labour has accepted the status quo of LEPs – rather than arguing for the rebirth of regional development agencies (RDAs) – but wants them to be strengthened.
Ministers are currently considering bids from every LEP for a slice of devolution cash to be handed down in local “growth deals”, from next year.
But the amount being released from Whitehall is only around £2bn a year – a fraction of the £12bn-plus recommended by Lord Heseltine.
Meanwhile, there are also huge doubts about the performance and accountability of many LEPs, although those in the North-East have been praised. | <urn:uuid:09b86e03-4026-4f4b-90a5-a939e24bc52a> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/10976593.Future_Labour_government_would_hand_power_down_to_local_areas/?ref=nt | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279933.49/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00124-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962866 | 676 | 1.515625 | 2 |
A Search For Cervantes That Don Quixote Could Embrace
Nearly 400 years since the death of Spain's most famous writer, scientists are using ground-penetrating radar to search for Miguel de Cervantes' body.
It's believed to be buried in the foundation or walls of a 17th century convent in downtown Madrid — the Convent of the Barefoot Trinitarians — built in 1612 and now surrounded by 21st century tapas bars and traffic.
On Monday, NPR got a sneak peak inside the convent, where a dozen cloistered Catholic nuns, ages 23 to 92, live. They sing at Mass each morning, hidden behind a second-floor screen, out of public view. And they are the keepers of the legend of Cervantes' final resting place.
"For 400 years, we have kept Cervantes' last dying wish, to be buried here," says Maria Jose, the nuns' secretary and the only one allowed to speak to visitors. "We have passed down the memory of the documents that registered his burial here, even though the documents themselves have all since been lost."
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was born near Madrid around the year 1547 and went on to pen the Spanish language's most famous book, officially titled The Adventures of the Ingenious Nobleman Don Quixote of La Mancha, in two volumes, published in 1605 and 1615. It's considered history's first modern novel, and its author the Shakespeare of the Spanish-speaking world.
But money didn't come as quickly as fame for Cervantes.
"This novel, everybody immediately recognized as a masterpiece, and a new turning point," says Fernando de Prado, a historian who has devoted most of his own life to studying that of Cervantes. "But Miguel de Cervantes was a soldier without luck — a man without fortune. He was an extremely nice person, but he was a poor, handicapped man."
Cervantes served in the Spanish navy and survived gunshot wounds to his chest and arm — which left his left hand crippled. He was kidnapped by pirates and held captive for five years. The ransom required for his release bankrupted him and his relatives. He died penniless, a year after the final volume of Don Quixote was published.
But Cervantes is believed to have had one stroke of good luck, with his last dying wish to be buried inside the Madrid convent of the nuns who helped negotiate his freedom from pirates.
Four centuries later, a small plaque outside the convent notes that Cervantes is believed to be buried there. But no one knows precisely where — or even if the legend is true. The convent has undergone renovations several times since 1616, when Cervantes died.
Compare this to the Holy Trinity church in Stratford-Upon-Avon, England, where Shakespeare is buried. It gets thousands of tourists each year. Spain wants to do something similar for its own bard and wouldn't mind cashing in on the tourist revenue that could come from it.
So it's hired geophysicists to find Cervantes' body once and for all. Technicians began work on Monday, using ground-penetrating radar and infrared scans to probe the convent's foundation and walls. Local officials say they've wanted to launch such a search for decades, but that the technology to do so didn't exist until now.
"It's magnetic impulse machinery, like an X-ray. We put this strong signal into the ground, and X-ray the shape of the cavities, structures and graves," says Luis Avial, technical director of Falcon High Tech, a geophysics company hired to do radar scans of the convent. "It's like you go to hospital with a broken leg. The doctor, the first thing he/she makes is an X-ray to see the information of your leg. This is the same."
Excavations could follow. The whole project, including scans, excavations and analysis could take up to a year, and cost $138,000. The first phase has been paid for by Madrid's town hall.
The injuries Cervantes sustained in life could help scientists identify him now.
"Cervantes was nearly 70 when he died, and he'd described himself physically in his own writings," notes Francisco Etxeberría, a forensic anthropologist who helped exhume the body of the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda last year. "Cervantes had a curved nose, a hunchback — and only six teeth! Not to mention his injuries: gunshot wounds to his chest, and a crippled left hand. Whatever's left of his bones should show some signs of these injuries."
If they find him, the plan is to keep Cervantes' remains inside the convent — respecting his dying wish.
Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | <urn:uuid:b91e74fe-f807-4d35-bcb3-cd291420157c> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.hawaiipublicradio.org/2014-04-28/a-search-for-cervantes-that-don-quixote-could-embrace | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572127.33/warc/CC-MAIN-20220815024523-20220815054523-00271.warc.gz | en | 0.975119 | 1,020 | 2.8125 | 3 |
401002: Bioscience 1
Assignment 2: Part A - Short answer questions
Word limit: 400 words
Due date: Spm AEDT Monday 12 October 2020 (Week 4)
This assignment is a mandatory submission, which means that in order to pass this unit of study, you must submit this assignment.
After you have read this information, head over to the Assignment 2A Q&A discussion board to ask any questions and see what your peers are saying about this assignment.
This assignment will develop your knowledge of the function and importance of healthy body systems in an adult. It focuses on homeostasis and the importance of nutrition in maintaining a healthy body. Skills being developed in this assignment include researching, writing, referencing, and presenting information in a clear and concise written format.
This assignment supports unit learning outcomes 1. 3 and 5-
Question 1: An important aspect of homeostasis is maintaining a normal body temperature. Briefly state what homeostasis is. and its importance in body temperature maintenance. Describe the series of steps in the homeostatic feedback system (i.e. stimulusreceptors- control centre- effectors- response) that would be activated in a healthy person, in response to a decreased external temperature.
Note: The reference list is not included in the word count.
Important note: No internet sources are to be used in Part A of this assignment.
View the marking guide under Assignment criteria' to see a detailed breakdown of how your work will be assessed. This is an excellent place to start your preparations for this assignment
Refer back to the marking guide frequently to make sure you are meeting the requirements. | <urn:uuid:120f3f27-74d2-40bc-a416-11a5d7397731> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.australiabesttutors.com/recent_question/60657/401002-bioscience-1assignment-2-part-a--short-answer | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571989.67/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813232744-20220814022744-00473.warc.gz | en | 0.916499 | 369 | 2.84375 | 3 |
(Reuters) – Britain is considering approving limited government attendance at the Beijing Olympics that would stop short of a full diplomatic boycott, The Telegraph reported on Wednesday.
An outright ban on ministerial and diplomatic representation at the Winter Games remains a possibility, the report said
A spokesperson for Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Tuesday that Britain had not yet decided on whether government representatives would attend the Beijing Winter Olympics.
An outright diplomatic boycott is supported in other quarters of government and is heavily backed by China hawks in Parliament, the report added.
On Tuesday, Australia announced a diplomatic boycott of 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, joining the United States with a similar boycott this week.
(Reporting by Akriti Sharma in Bengaluru; Editing by Jacqueline Wong and Gerry Doyle) | <urn:uuid:9a91f699-69b8-4ce5-ab80-9b2978429169> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.centralasiapost.com/britain-considers-ministerial-boycott-2022-beijing-olympics/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571234.82/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811042804-20220811072804-00067.warc.gz | en | 0.946148 | 154 | 1.734375 | 2 |
Chamberlain School Nurse
Jen Pellegrini BSN, RN
email: [email protected]
The nurse's office hours are as follows:
8:00 am until 2:45 pm.
Phone number is 508-821- 4050 then press 4
Fax number is 508-821-1294
Covid Hotline- Information for Staff and FamiliesTaunton Public Schools has set up COVID-19 Response Hotlines.
Family Hotline: 774-226-1072
Staff Hotline: 774-504-9352
Please be prepared to leave your contact information in the message.
Additional COVID -19 related information can be found at: https://www.doe.mass.edu/covid19/
COVID-19 Symptoms letter when to keep your child home
The single most important thing to do if your child has the following symptoms is to keep your child HOME. Some symptoms of COVID-19 are the same as the flu or a bad cold; please do not assume it is another condition. When in doubt, please keep your child home and contact their primary care provider for further guidance.
Below is a list of symptoms for which caregivers should monitor their children every morning before sending them to school or to the bus stop.
Keep your child HOME if they have any of these symptoms.
- Fever (100° Fahrenheit or higher),
- Repeated shaking with chills
- Cough (not due to other known cause, such as chronic cough)
- Difficulty breathing or shortness of breath
- New loss of taste or smell
- Sore throat
- Headache when in combination with other symptoms
- Muscle aches or body aches
- Nausea, vomiting, or diarrhea
- Fatigue, when in combination with other symptoms
- Nasal congestion or runny nose (not due to other known causes, such as allergies) when in combination with other symptoms
The above list is not all-inclusive. Please contact your child’s primary care provider to obtain further guidance. Your child may return to school if they meet one of the requirements below. (If they have not been identified as a close contact).
- Have received a negative PCR or antigen test result for COVID-19. An antigen test may be self-administered and does not need to be proctored or performed by a healthcare professional, OR a medical professional makes an alternative diagnosis for the COVID-19-like symptoms, the individual may use this recommendation (e.g., for influenza or strep pharyngitis) in lieu of a PCR test or antigen test, if their symptoms have improved, and they have been without fever for at least 24 hours prior to return to school without the use of fever-reducing medication.
- If they have COVID- like symptoms and are not tested, they may return to school after 5 days from the start of their symptoms (returning on day six)if their symptoms have improved, and they have been without fever for at least 24 hours prior to their return to school without the use of fever reducing medication.
If your child tests positive for COVID-19:
- The Board of Health exclusion guidelines must be followed prior to returning to school.
Please contact your child’s school nurse with any questions.
Fourth Grade Physical Exam Requirement | <urn:uuid:684e92d9-ac7d-4106-b666-8f96e3b7af81> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://chamberlain.tauntonschools.org/apps/pages/index.jsp?uREC_ID=1752222&type=d&pREC_ID=2251700 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572581.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20220816211628-20220817001628-00067.warc.gz | en | 0.920308 | 712 | 1.570313 | 2 |
The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Federal Energy Management Program (FEMP) has created a new resource that provides best practices and other guidance for federal agencies developing large-scale renewable energy projects.
The resource, called ‘The Large-Scale Renewable Energy Guide: Developing Renewable Energy Projects Larger than 10 MW at Federal Facilities,’ provides a comprehensive framework, including active project management strategies, common terms, and principles that reduce project uncertainties and promote partnerships among the federal government, private developers and financiers.
The guide describes the fundamentals of deploying financially attractive, large-scale renewable energy projects, and provides recommendations for how to improve communication between government agencies and private developers as they navigate the project development and execution process. It also offers best practices to help federal agencies mitigate risks and demonstrate strong project characteristics for large-scale renewable energy installations.
The guide provides federal project managers with best practices for obtaining private-sector financing across a variety of funding options and competitive acquisition processes.
The guide will also help commercial developers better understand the federal energy planning and acquisition processes. Built on lessons learned from both the private sector and federal agencies, the guide shows how federal agencies can help attract project developers and private capital investment while ensuring federal energy goals and requirements are met.
The guide was developed by FEMP and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, with assistance provided by the U.S. Army Energy Initiatives Task Force (EITF). It was developed in concert with the EITF's process for large-scale renewable energy project development.
The guide can be viewed here. | <urn:uuid:905d6df8-8ea4-4e7d-8557-ed13f181a433> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://nawindpower.com/doe-releases-guide-for-developing-financially-attractive-renewable-energy-projects | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988718423.28/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183838-00271-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.913071 | 326 | 2.578125 | 3 |
I’m 60kg and 17-years-old and I’ve only been boxing for a year. Over that time I’ve been trying hard to increase my hand speed and it’s just not improving much. I’ve been doing dumbbell punches with 1-2kg weights and have noticed a little change, but not much.
What exercises can I do to improve my speed, and how often should I do the exercises?
GB Podium Coach Dave Alloway answers:
“You can continue with the dumbbell punches, but to increase your hand speed and reactions you should also try some simple speed and reaction exercises.
“We have devised a set of easy speed and reaction drills that you can do as often as you like to improve your hand speed without the use of weights. The more you do these exercises, the faster your speed and reactions will improve.”
Drill 1 – Using a wall
1) On a wall opposite you, mark out two rows of three spots, evenly spaced.
2) Number the spots from one to six.
3) Ask a friend or your coach to shout out the six numbers at random and, using your jabbing hand, touch the numbers as they are shouted.
Gradually increase the speed at which the numbers are shouted to improve your punching speed and reactions.
Drill 2 – Using a skipping rope
1) Stand facing a wall pad or punch bag.
2) Ask your coach or a friend to hold a skipping rope in one hand and turn it by the handles in front of the the bag or wall pad.
3) In between rotations punch through the skipping rope at the bag or wall pad, without letting the skipping rope touch your glove.
Your coach can vary the speed that he or she spins the rope as you get used to punching through the rotations.
Drill 3 – Using a glove or ruler
1) Ask someone to stand in front of you and hold out an object at arms length (Use something that can be easily grabbed, such as a boxing glove. A ruler is another good instrument to use for this task – you can measure how much your reactions have improved each time you catch it!)
2) When the object is released try to catch it with your punching hand as it falls.
You’ll find this difficult at first, but gradually your reaction time will improve with practice. | <urn:uuid:b6e506bf-0914-48ee-b09d-f5f840fa9862> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.gbboxing.org.uk/resources-for-boxers/improving-hand-speed/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572408.31/warc/CC-MAIN-20220816151008-20220816181008-00672.warc.gz | en | 0.945345 | 505 | 2.140625 | 2 |
Eighteen months ago we watched President Kibaki launch the Kenya Open Data Initiative (KODI) to broad acclaim and fanfare. All our initial expectations were very high. Some expected that Kenya’s vibrant ICT community would rapidly embrace open data, that there would be a rapid outpouring of open data sets from government agencies, and that open data would drive more informed development decision making.
However, although Kenya has a strong ICT sector, skilled development professionals, high cell phone penetration, a relatively open media and active CSOs, open data uptake has not been as rapid as some expected. Traffic to Kenya’s open data portal has been consistent, with the Government’s portal generating around 100,000 page views a month, mostly from Kenya. The number of datasets on the portal has doubled from the initial 200 to more than 400 today, but still represents a tiny fraction of the data in Kenya.
So even in a country like Kenya with a dynamic ICT sector, simply making data available is only one step in a longer process.
What can be done to stimulate the demand-side to accelerate uptake and creation of open data-driven development solutions? How can citizen feedback be improved, sustained and scaled to impact on development outcomes? Short term solutions such as hackathons create some momentum but are difficult to sustain. I think some answers may lie in an alternative approach – Code4Kenya—just launched in Kenya and supported by the Bank’s Innovation Fund and the Governance Partnership Facility (GPF).
Designed and implemented by the African Media Initiative and Open Institute, Code4Kenya is one of the first sustained attempts in Africa focused on making open data relevant to and used by citizens.
Fellows are recruited on a competitive basis from Kenya’s vibrant technology and civil societies. They are then “embedded” in media and civil society organizations, who agreed to host a Fellow for a period of 5 months to help them make use of data and technology. During this period, the Fellows and a team of supporting technologists help each organization develop applications, to build data desks, strengthen staff capacity to use data and related analysis in their reporting and core work.
Some immediate results include the Star media group’s new health portal that citizens can use to check the credentials of health professionals, and find which hospitals provide which special services. Using exam and school location data, the CSO Twaweza has developed an education application “Find My School” that citizens can use to check relative performance of primary schools in the country. The Kenya Nation Media group has developed an election mapping platform that enables the public to look at look at patterns of voting, as well as some development indicators, across Kenya’s constituencies in past elections.
So while it is too early to call Code4Kenya a major success, here are some of my takeaways from this innovative attempt to expand demand for open data?
1. New models are needed to increase sustainability. Rather than bringing staff or technologists OUT of host organizations, the Code4Kenya program selects ICT-savvy fellows and embeds them IN host organizations, to help them make use of open data and technology in ways that suit their needs. And that have resources and incentives to sustain and scale the applications and uses of data introduced with help from the fellows.
2. Open data is not just government data—it can come from many sources. Several host organizations have begun to set up their own data desks, to convert and re-organize hard copy data into digital, downloadable formats that can inform and deepen their reporting and analysis. This has also prompted hosts to make some of their own data available for public dissemination.
3. Partnerships with media and infomediaries can help make open data benefit citizens. Translating data into action requires many steps, with “info-mediaries” playing a key role – to analyze and turn data into visualizations and applications that citizens use and want. Working with media can amplify the work that technologists are doing to empower citizens, while also strengthening the media’s own ability to embrace the fast changing ways that citizens access and use information. Partnership with Kenya’s iHub, whose network of technologists and innovators provided the pool of applicants for the fellows program, and introduced fellows to demand-driven design thinking, was also important. iHub is also documenting the Kenya open data outreach and lessons learned.
4. Making open data work depends on culture change. And this takes time and a lot of work. The quality and scale of each application is not the main measure of whether the Code4Kenya program has been successful. The real measure is how much the fellows program has helped each organization make better use of data and technology in its reporting or core work, to reach larger groups of citizens. The fellows and their host organizations are modest when they describe the five-month process, but it was a huge amount of work--countless meetings, requests, back-and-forths, between fellows, editors, technologists, and data holders to get as far as they have.
The best news is the African Media Initiative and others want to continue and expand the Code4Kenya experience in Kenya and beyond. Continued success will depend on how the host organizations further embed open data and technology in their operations, and, even more importantly, how the applications and stories they have created have broader impact.
And Kenya’s experience will also be showcased to the wider development community at an international conference on citizen engagement organized by the World Bank, CIVICUS and InterAction in Washington D.C. on March 18 – for more information: http://wbi.worldbank.org/wbi/event/citizen-voices
But in the meantime, I want to congratulate our partner organizations, the fellows, and the host organizations on the progress they have made, and look forward to seeing the next steps as the seeds they have planted grow.
THANKS to those who made it possible:
Design and Management: The African Media Initiative, The Open Institute
Host organizations include: The Standard, The Nation, Star media houses and the CSO Twaweza
Supporters: Code4Kenya fellows and developers
Partner organizations: iHub and @iLab Strathmore
Special Thanks to PS Ndemo, the Ministry of ICT, the ICT Board, and the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics and other government agencies that have made Kenya’s open data initiative possible. The fellow program also builds on past support from the World Bank Institute’ media and innovation programs, and also the WB’s own open data initiative.
Learn more about citizen engagement initiatives at an citizen engagement conference. | <urn:uuid:8c4e8be2-6738-4fc5-b680-cdf39333811a> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://blogs.worldbank.org/voices/making-open-data-work-for-citizens-four-lessons-from-code4kenya?cid=EXT_WBBlogSocialShare_D_EXT | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988719468.5/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183839-00528-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952063 | 1,389 | 1.976563 | 2 |
People who are so busy doing kindnesses seldom consult the invalid’s preferences at all. They are too full of their own selfish kindliness and self-importance.
I remember a woman who was suffering intensely from neuralgia in her face. A friend, proud of the idea of caring for her and giving up her own pleasure to stay in the darkened room and keep the sufferer’s face bathed in hot water, made such a rustling back and forth with her skirts in getting the water that the strain of the constant noise and movement not only counteracted any relief that might have come from the heat, but it increased the pain and made the nervous condition of the patient much worse.
So it is with a hundred and one little “kindnesses” that people try to do for others when they are ill.
They talk to amuse them when the invalids would give all in their power to have a little quiet.
They sit like lumps and say nothing when a little light, easy chatting might divert the invalid’s attention and so start up a gentle circulation which would tend directly toward health.
Or, they talk and are entertaining for a while in a very helpful way, but not knowing when to stop, finally make the patient so tired that they undo all the good of the first fifteen minutes.
They flood the room with light, “to make it look pleasant,” when the invalid longs for the rest of a darkened room; or they draw the shades when the patient longs for the cheerfulness of sunlight.
They fuss and move about to do this or that and the other “kindness” when the sick person longs for absolute quiet.
They shower attentions when the first thing that is desired is to be let alone. One secret of the whole trouble in this oppressive care of the sick is that this sort of caretaker is interested more to please herself and feel the satisfaction of her own benefactions than she is to really please the friend for whom she is caring. Another trouble is common ignorance. Some women would gladly sacrifice anything to help a friend to get well; they would give their time and their strength gladly and count it as nothing, but they do not know how to care for the sick. Often such people are sadly discouraged because they see that they are only bringing discomfort where, with all their hearts, they desire to bring comfort. The first necessity in the right care for the sick is to be quiet and cheerful. The next is to aim, without disturbing the invalid, to get as true an idea as possible of the condition necessary to help the patient to get well. The third is to bring about those conditions with the least possible amount of friction.
Find out what the invalid likes and how she likes it by observation and not by questions.
Sometimes, of course, a question must be asked. If we receive a snappish answer, let us not resent it, but blame the illness and be grateful if, along with the snappishness, we find out what suits our patient best. | <urn:uuid:a26b9bd2-460f-4f9d-8ce7-b22af6b79f8c> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.bookrags.com/ebooks/4339/71.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280504.74/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00135-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968213 | 630 | 2.21875 | 2 |
Which Joe gave his name to ‘sloppy joes’? We look at five interesting sandwiches and their lexical origins.
- ‘The whole point is to disorient - that's how you get consumers to consume, put them in a milieu of bedazzlement and wonder.’
- ‘But it gave me this feeling, this sort of bedazzlement, that I've yet to shake.’
- ‘Scattered glitter at the sides adds a touch of exuberance and bedazzlement.’
- ‘Beau stared at her in bedazzlement, he knew she'd gone through the hardest decision of her life, but it seemed like she'd had a personality change along with an operation.’
- ‘I don't know why I fell for Eve - why do you fall in love with anyone? - but after the initial bedazzlement of her humour and intelligence and beauty, there was always the mystery.’
We take a look at several popular, though confusing, punctuation marks.
From Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, discover surprising and intriguing language facts from around the globe.
The definitions of ‘buddy’ and ‘bro’ in the OED have recently been revised. We explore their history and increase in popularity. | <urn:uuid:9cc8618d-49e3-4228-87e9-cee559adfb44> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/bedazzlement | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280891.90/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00154-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969002 | 273 | 1.835938 | 2 |
The Giant Redwood
is a fast-growing tree that can reach heights of 170ft in 50 years in its native California.
Though other San Francisco photographers also went east into the hills to capture the giant redwoods
, Watkins was notable not only for his artistry, but also for his access to the East.
Spending time among giant redwoods
is strangely calming.
It's a snapshot of California history, from the giant redwoods
to the Golden Gate Bridge, from the missions to the wine country, from the fictional jumping frog of Calaveras County to the Conestoga wagons that brought many settlers here in the mid-1840s.
Though California's giant redwoods
are a major carbon repository, they are almost useless in sopping up newly generated CO.
The woods include giant redwoods
, white oak, pine and many other hardwoods that carry a wholesale value of well over $1 billion USD.
Flanking the memorial are two giant redwoods
which are expected to eventually look like wooded versions of the two lost skyscrapers.
are the world''s largest trees in terms of total volume.
When I was a child, my parents took me to see the giant redwoods
But it is the giant redwoods
in Bute Park which remain Malcolm's favourite along with the spring flowering cherry and apple trees.
Combine the two and you have one of nature's singularities: a place where you can stroll through giant redwoods
and a pygmy forest all in one 45-minute walk.
The residents of the four luxury apartments share a spacious garden to the front of Leazes House which is surrounded by a superb variety of mature trees, including giant redwoods
which were originally imported by the Bainbridge family, creating a wonderful arboreal walkway in fitting with grandeur of the apartments.
There, in 3-D, appeared Yosemite's granite slopes, giant redwoods
, and the progress of the Central Pacific Railroad.
Everyone has their own favourite corner of the garden, whether it be the giant redwoods
or the collection of Scottish heathers in the heath garden.
The California-theme park will include a simulated hang glider flight over Yosemite, giant redwoods
and San Francisco Bay. | <urn:uuid:4164c06e-4c52-45c7-aa41-0c9b32f0db3c> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.freethesaurus.com/giant+redwoods | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560285001.96/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095125-00307-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945712 | 471 | 2.359375 | 2 |
Sydney's biggest private dog-rescue group, which saves more than a thousand animals from being destroyed each year, may be forced to close within weeks.
Monika's Doggie Rescue takes dogs on death row from council and RSPCA shelters and has a "no-kill" policy, looking after them for as long as it takes to find a permanent home.
But after operating for 17 years and saving nearly 8500 dogs, founder Monika Biernacki says the registered charity is at breaking point due to the global financial crisis.
"We have seen a huge drying-up of donations," she said. "We don't have any other source of income.
"We have done a lot of belt-tightening over recent months, but I am now at the point where I cannot see a way out and am left with no choice but to close our shelter."
And while donations have fallen, the number of dogs being abandoned has shot up, as people struggle to cope with veterinary bills or the cost of feeding their animals.
"We are getting this huge increase in demand for our services while at the same time the number of adoptions has reduced because people are more cautious about the cost," said Ms Biernacki.
She has launched a last-ditch appeal to supporters through her website - www.doggierescue.com.
Renbury Farm Animal Shelter, a large shelter at Austral that services four councils in the south and west of the city, says it is experiencing the same upsurge in demand for its services.
"People are having to watch every penny and say they are giving up their animals because they can't afford to look after them," said a spokeswoman, Lorraine Barnes.
"It's also the same for reclaiming them once they come into the pound. Because there are fees to get them out they are often left with us by owners who can't afford to get them out. Then they head off to Monika."
Ms Biernacki's shelter at Ingleside is home to more than 100 dogs. She specialises in rehoming smaller dogs - known colloquially as "small, white fluffies" - many of them the so-called designer breeds that have become popular in recent years.
All her dogs come from RSPCA and council pounds, but unlike them, Ms Biernacki never allows a dog to be put down.
If she is forced to close she is adamant all her current dogs will be given new homes - somehow.
But she says it will mean many more dogs being put down in future.
"The thought of closing breaks my heart," she wrote in a recent letter to supporters.
"There goes almost two decades of my life's work and I just can't bear to think what will happen to our little doggies and the fate of those in the pound just waiting to come here." | <urn:uuid:7b24d21a-6bfc-4f37-9ade-f061b96a71ea> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.smh.com.au/environment/monikas-doggie-rescue--on-borrowed-time-20090407-9w9c.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279169.4/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00221-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979987 | 602 | 1.84375 | 2 |
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