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are helping others. December 25, 2011 Teacher John Hunter invented the World Peace Game to get his elementary students to think about major world issues. He also wanted to teach them compassion and kindness. At least two of his former |
students are on the path he helped to pave. October 30, 2011 Ayodeji Ogunniyi's family came to the U.S. from Nigeria in 1990. His father worked as a cab driver in Chicago, and he always wanted his son to become |
a doctor. But while Ogunniyi was studying pre-med in college, his father was murdered on the job. At that point, he says, his life changed course. September 25, 2011 As a middle-school student in the '80s, Lee Buono stayed after |
school one day to remove the brain and spinal cord from a frog. He did such a good job that his science teacher told him he might be a neurosurgeon someday. That's exactly what Buono did. September 25, 2011 StoryCorps |
is honing in on lessons about learning with a new project for the academic year called the National Teachers Initiative. It'll feature conversations with teachers across the country — teachers talking to each other, students interviewing the teachers who changed |
Why separation of powers matters: Is freedom inevitable? The answer to that question is obvious but essential. Freedom is not inevitable. Historically, freedom is a temporary condition enjoyed by only a fraction of the earth's population. Since freedom is not inevitable - indeed, the opposite is true; freedom is rare -... |
or not?" As a nation (and state) of immigrants, we can't claim we are free because of our genetics. Our nation (and state) is blessed with natural resources, but so is Russia. Wealth does not produce freedom. In America (and in Nevada), we are free, because our founders recognized that, as Lord Acton stated, "Power ten... |
power corrupts absolutely" and designed a government with three branches of government. While these branches of government each have different functions, they also have the ability to check the power exercised by another branch. To ensure that no person or group would amass too much power, the founders established a go... |
laws were separated. Each branch of government is balanced by powers in the other two coequal branches: The President can veto the laws of the Congress; the Congress confirms or rejects the President's appointments and can remove the President from office in exceptional circumstances; and the justices of the Supreme Co... |
President and confirmed by the Senate.Because we're so used to this system of government, it's easy to forget how important this system is to ensuring freedom. Government is needed to secure an individual's right to life, liberty and property. But those wielding governmental power tend to corruption, which harms the ve... |
checks and balances contained within three separate branches of government, you have a system where the tendency of government officials to amass power is checked by other government officials who usually aren't interested in giving up their power. And it's also why it's so dangerous for one individual to work in two b... |
the separation of powers and the checks and balances in the system go out the window if one person has authority in two branches of government. Instead of separating power, power is consolidated. Instead of one branch checking another, it could collude with it. The idea of separating powers is so important that it's ex... |
Article 3, Section 1. The powers of the Government of the State of Nevada shall be divided into three separate departments,-the Legislative,-the Executive and the Judicial; and no persons charged with the exercise of powers properly belonging to one of these departments shall exercise any functions, appertaining to eit... |
Constitutional Litigation has sued Mo Denis, the Public Utilities Commission, and the State of Nevada for violating the separation-of-powers clause in Nevada's constitution. Even the smallest encroachment in the separation-of-powers clause opens the door for larger and larger encroachments. Hello, Wendell Williams, Chr... |
incremental "exceptions" render the provision meaningless. And once you've removed the structural protections against, what James Madison called, "tyranny," you're left with a system of government dependent entirely on the character of its elected officials to keep it free from corruption and abuse of power. As "power ... |
isn't inevitable. Freedom is rare, and we should do everything in our power to protect the form and structure of our government - including a clear separation-of-powers provision - which provided us with freedom. |
How to Use Reading 1: Three Days of Carnage at Gettysburg (Refer to Map 2 as you read the description of the battle.) Units of the Union and the Confederate armies met near Gettysburg on June 30, 1863, and each quickly requested reinforcements. The main battle opened on July 1, |
with early morning attacks by the Confederates on Union troops on McPherson Ridge, west of the town. Though outnumbered, the Union forces held their position. The fighting escalated throughout the day as more soldiers from each army reached the battle area. By 4 p.m., the Union troops were overpowered, and |
they retreated through the town, where many were quickly captured. The remnants of the Union force fell back to Cemetery Hill and Culp's Hill, south of town. The Southerners failed to pursue their advantage, however, and the Northerners labored long into the night regrouping their men. Throughout the night, both |
armies moved their men to Gettysburg and took up positions in preparation for the next day. By the morning of July 2, the main strength of both armies had arrived on the field. Battle lines were drawn up in sweeping arcs similar to a "J," or fishhook shape. The main |
portions of both armies were nearly a mile apart on parallel ridges: Union forces on Cemetery Ridge, Confederate forces on Seminary Ridge, to the west. General Robert E. Lee, commanding the Confederate troops, ordered attacks against the Union left and right flanks (ends of the lines). Starting in late afternoon, |
Confederate General James Longstreet's attacks on the Union left made progress, but they were checked by Union reinforcements brought to the fighting from the Culp's Hill area and other uncontested parts of the Union battle line. To the north, at the bend and barb of the fishhook (the other flank), |
Confederate General Richard Ewell launched his attack in the evening as the fighting at the other end of the fishhook was subsiding. Ewell's men seized part of Culp's Hill, but elsewhere they were repulsed. The day's results were indecisive for both armies. In the very early morning of July 3, |
the Union army forced out the Confederates who had successfully taken Culp's Hill the previous evening. Then General Lee, having attacked the ends of the Union line the previous day, decided to assail the Union. The attack was preceded by a two hour artillery bombardment of Cemetery Hill and Ridge. |
For a time, the massed guns of both armies were engaged in a thunderous duel for supremacy. The Union defensive position held. In a final attempt to gain the initiative and win the battle, Lee sent approximately 12,000 soldiers across the one mile of open fields that separated the two |
armies near the Union center. General George Meade, commander of the Union forces, anticipated such a move and had readied his army. The Union lines did not break. Only every other Southerner who participated in this action retired to safety. Despite great courage, the attack (sometimes called Pickett's Charge or |
Longstreet's assault) was repulsed with heavy losses. Crippled by extremely heavy casualties in the three days at Gettysburg, the Confederates could no longer continue the battle, and on July 4 they began to withdraw from Gettysburg. 1. Which army had the advantage after the first day of fighting? What were |
some reasons for their success? Could they have been even more successful? 2. What was the situation by the evening of July 2? 3. What evidence from the previous day's fighting brought General Lee to decide on the strategy for Pickett's Charge on July 3? What was the result of |
Biomass Technology Analysis Conducting full life-cycle assessments for biomass products, including electricity, biodiesel, and ethanol, is important for determining environmental benefits. NREL analysts use a life-cycle inventory modeling package and supporting databases to conduct life-cycle assessments. These tools c... |
applied on a global, regional, local, or project basis. Integrated system analyses, technoeconomic analyses, life-cycle assessments (LCAs), and other analysis tools are essential to our research and development efforts. They provide an understanding of the economic, technical, and even global |
impacts of renewable technologies. These analyses also provide direction, focus, and support to the development and commercialization of various biomass conversion technologies. The economic feasibility and environmental benefits of biomass technologies revealed by these analyses are useful for the government, |
regulators, and the private sector. Technoeconomic analyses (TEAs) are performed to determine the potential economic viability of a research process. Evaluating the costs of a given process compared to the current technology can assess the economic feasibility of a project. |
These analyses can be useful in determining which emerging technologies have the highest potential for near-, mid-, and long-term success. The results of a TEA are also useful in directing research toward areas in which improvements will result in the |
greatest cost reductions. As the economics of a process are evaluated throughout the life of the project, advancement toward the final goal of commercialization can be measured. TEAs performed in previous years have determined the technical and economic feasibility of |
minimizing the environmental impacts of emissions and resource depletion associated with a specific process. When such an assessment is performed in conjunction with a technoeconomic feasibility study, the total economic and environmental benefits and drawbacks of a process can be |
quantified. Material and energy balances are used to quantify the emissions, resource depletion, and energy consumption of all processes, including raw material extraction, processing, and final disposal of products and by-products, required to make the process of interest operate. The |
results of this inventory are then used to evaluate the environmental impacts of the process so efforts can focus on mitigation. LCA studies have been conducted on the following systems: - Biomass-fired integrated gasification combined-cycle system using a biomass energy |
crop - Pulverized coal boiler representing an average U.S. coal-fired power plant - Cofiring biomass residue with coal - Natural gas combined-cycle power plant - Direct-fired biomass power plant using biomass residue - Anaerobic digestion of animal waste Biofuels Production |
Technologies: - Ethanol from corn stover - Comparison of biodiesel and petroleum diesel used in an urban bus Hydrogen production technologies: - Natural gas-hydrogen production For these analyses, the software package used to track the material and energy flows between |
the process blocks in each system was Tools for Environmental Analysis and Management (TEAM®). Learn more about our Biomass capabilities and current projects in this area. Access more information on all of our Staff Analysts |
Algorithm Positions Solar Trackers, Movie Stars March 30, 2011 Math and programming experts at a federal laboratory took an algorithm used to track the stars and rewrote its code to |
precisely follow the sun, even taking into consideration the vagaries of the occasional leap second. Now, the algorithm and its software are helping solar power manufacturers build more precise trackers, |
orchards to keep their apples spotless and movie makers to keep the shadows off movie stars. The Solar Position Algorithm (SPA) was developed at the U.S. Department of Energy's National |
Renewable Energy Laboratory to calculate the sun's position with unmatched low uncertainty of +/- 0.0003 degrees at vertex, in the period of years from -2000 to 6000 (or 2001 B.C. |
until just short of 4,000 years from now). That's more than 30 times more precise than the uncertainty levels for all other algorithms used in solar energy applications, which claim |
no better than +/- 0.01 degrees, and are only valid for a maximum of 50 years. And those uncertainty claims cannot be validated because of the need to add an |
occasional leap second because of the randomly increasing length of the mean solar day. The SPA does account for the leap second. That difference in uncertainty levels is no small |
change, because an error of .01 degrees at noon can throw calculations off by 2 or 3 percent at sunrise or sunset, said NREL Senior Scientist Ibrahim Reda, the leader |
on the project. "Every uncertainty of 1 percent in the energy budget is millions of dollars uncertainty for utility companies and bankers," Reda said. "Accuracy is translated into dollars. When |
you can be more accurate, you save a lot of money." "Siemens Industry Inc. uses NREL's SPA in its newest and smallest S7-1200 compact controller," says Paul Ruland of Siemens |
Industry, Inc. "Siemens took that very complex calculation, systemized it into our code and made a usable function block that its customers can use with their particular technologies to track |
the sun in the most efficient way. The end result is a 30 percent increase in accuracy compared to other technologies." Science, Engineering and Math All Add to Breakthroughs An |
algorithm is a set of rules for solving a mathematical problem in a finite number of steps, even though those steps can number in the hundreds or thousands. NREL is |
known more for its solar, wind, and biofuel researchers than for its work in advanced math. But algorithms are key to so many scientific and technological breakthroughs today that a |
scientist well-versed in the math of algorithms is behind many of NREL's big innovations. Since SPA was published on NREL's website, more than 4,000 users from around the world have |
downloaded it. In the European Union, for the past three years, it has been the reference algorithm to calculate the sun's position both for solar energy and atmospheric science applications. |
It has been licensed to, and downloaded by, major U.S. manufacturers of sun trackers, military equipment and cell phones. It has been used to boost agriculture and to help forecast |
the weather. Archaeologists, universities and religious organizations have employed SPA, as have other national laboratories. Fewer Dropped Cell-Phone Calls Billions of cell-phone calls are made each day, and they stay |
connected only because algorithms help determine exactly when to switch signals from one satellite to another. Cell-phone companies can use the SPA to know exactly the moments when the phone, |
satellite, and the bothersome sun are in the same alignment, vulnerable to disconnections or lost calls. "The cell phone guys use SPA to know the specific moment to switch to |
another satellite so you're not disconnected," said Reda, who has a master's degree in electrical engineering/measurement from the University of Colorado. "Think of how many millions of people would be |
disconnected if there's too much uncertainty about the sun's position." From a Tool for Solar Scientists to Widespread Uses SPA sprang from NREL's need to calibrate solar measuring instruments at |
its Solar Radiation Research Laboratory. "We characterize the instruments based on the solar angle," Reda said. "It's vital that instruments get a precise read on the amount of energy they |
are getting from the sun at precise solar angle." That will become even more critical in the future when utilities add more energy garnered from the sun to the smart |
grid. "The smart grid has to know precisely what your budget is for each resource you are using — oil, coal, solar, wind," Reda said. Making an Astronomy Algorithm One |
for the Sun Reda borrowed from the "Astronomical Algorithms," which is based on the Variations Sèculaires des Orbites Planètaires Theory (VSOP87) developed in 1982 then modified in 1987. Astronomers trust |
it to let them know exactly where to point their telescopes to get the best views of Jupiter, Alpha Centauri, the Magellan galaxy or whatever celestial bodies they are studying. |
"We were able to separate and modify that global astronomical algorithm and apply it just to solar energy, while making it less complex and easy to implement," said Reda, highlighting |
the role of his colleague, Afshin Andreas, who has a degree in engineering physics from the Colorado School of Mines, as well as expertise in computer programming. They spent an |
intense three or four weeks of programming to make sure the equations were accurate before distributing the 1,100 lines of code, Andreas said. They used almanacs and historical data to |
ensure that what the algorithm was calculating agreed with what observers from previous generations said about the sun's position on a particular day. "We did spot checks so we would |
have a good comfort level that the future projections are accurate," Reda said. "We used our independent math and programming skills to make sure that our results agreed, Reda said. |
Available for Licensing, Free Public Use The new SPA algorithm simply served the needs of NREL scientists, until the day it was put on NREL's public website. "A lot of |
people started downloading it," so NREL established some rules of use, Reda said. Individuals and universities could use SPA free of charge, but companies with commercial interests would have to |
pay for the software. Factoring in Leap Seconds Improves Accuracy NREL's SPA knows the position of the sun in the sky over an 8,000 year period partly because it has |
learned when to add those confounding leap seconds. Solar positioners that don't factor in the leap second only can calculate a few years or a few decades. The length of |
an Earth day isn't determined by an expensive watch, but by the actual rotation of the Earth. Almost immeasurably, the Earth's rotation is slowing down, meaning the solar day is |
getting just a tiny bit longer. But it's not doing so at a constant rate. "It happens in unpredictable ways," Reda said. Sometimes a leap second is added every year; |
sometimes there isn't a need for another leap second for three or four years. For example, the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (IERS) added six leap seconds over |
the course of seven years between 1992 and 1998, but has added just one extra second since 2006. The algorithm calculates exactly when to add a leap second because included |
in its equations are rapid, monthly, and long-term data on the solar day provided by IERS, Reda and Andreas said. "IERS receives the data from many observatories around the world," |
Reda added. "Each observatory has its own measuring instruments to measure the Earth's rotation. A consensus correction is then calculated for the fraction of second. As long as we know |
the time, and how much the Earth's rotation has slowed, we know the sun's position precisely." That precision has proved useful in unexpected fields. Practical Uses in Agriculture, Movie Making |
One person who bought a license for the SPA software has an apple orchard, and wanted to keep the black spots off the apples that turn off finicky consumers, thus |
making wholesale buyers hesitate, Reda said. The black spots appear when too much sun hits a particular apple, a particular tree or a particular row of trees in an orchard. |
The spots can be prevented by showering the apples with water, but growers don't want to use more water than necessary. SPA's precise tracking of the sun tells the grower |
exactly when the automatic sprinkler should spray for a few moments on a particular set of trees, and when it's OK to shut off that sprayer and turn on the |
next one. SPA communicates with the sprinkler system so, "instead of spraying the whole orchard, the spray moves minute by minute," Reda said. "He takes our tool and plugs it |
into the software that controls the sprinkler system. And he saves a lot of water." Religious groups with traditions of praying at a particular time of day even have turned |
to SPA to help with precision. A movie-camera manufacturer has purchased the SPA software to help cinematographers combat the precious waste of money when shadows disrupt outdoor shooting. "They have |
cameras on those big cranes and booms, and typically they'd have to manually change them based on the shadows," Reda said. "This company that bought it has an automatic camera |
positioner." Combining the positioner with the SPA's calculations, the camera can tell the precise moment when the sun will, say, peak above the tall buildings of an outdoor set. "They |
don't have to make so many judgments on their own about where the camera should be positioned," Reda said. "It gives them a clearer picture." Learn more about NREL's solar |
NEW ULM A historical impersonator of St. Paul's very first public school teacher provided a snapshot of a time and place in history Saturday during the Junior Pioneers Winter Social. Suzanne de la Houssaye, of the Minnesota Historical Society, performed as Harriet Bishop, who was instrumental in making St. Paul's schoo... |
Minnesota and pushing the temperance movement. She was also part of the initial rush of writers and intellectuals to write about the U.S. Dakota Conflict, writing her own record named "Dakota War Whoop." Bishop was an intensely religious Baptist woman who believed in the imminent coming of the Rapture and the need to e... |
could hear it. She was also considered an intellectual in the Twin Cities at that time and was instrumental in helping to build the major cities up. She started the St. Paul school in 1847, starting in essentially a log cabin and rapidly growing the number of students until her successful efforts to make it the town's ... |
She even raised Minnesota's profile as a healthy destination to settle due to its "sturdy weather," erroneously claiming certain diseases of the time simply did not exist in Minnesota. Staff photo by Josh Moniz Suzanne de la Houssaye, of the Minnesota Historical Society, performed as Harriet Bishop, St. Paul's first pu... |
Social. She had several forms of compassion for the Dakota people, but was equally a product of her time in believing the only right way forward was for them to wholly adopt European culture and traditions. She wrote her book from a very emotional standpoint, aimed at drawing up the image of women and children hiding i... |
New Ulm. Her book also carried many inaccuracies believed at the time and tried to paint Charles Flandreau as the sole savior of the battle at New Ulm at the start of the Conflict. Her spin on the Conflict is largely believed to be due to its elements making a serious impact on her. But, she still fell in the |
middle of the white settler's beliefs after the Conflict, neither advocating for the extermination of the Dakota people nor being among those who fully accepted the Dakota's right to an independent heritage. Interestingly, she had an almost comically stern view of New Ulm citizens at the time, believing the myths that ... |
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