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average sea-level rise (3.4 mm/yr over the past 15 years) to be ~80% above past IPCC predictions. This acceleration in sea-level rise is consistent with a doubling in contribution from melting of glaciers, ice caps, and the Greenland and West-Antarctic |
ice-sheets. Sea-level predictions revised: By 2100, global sea-level is likely to rise at least twice as much as projected by Working Group 1 of the IPCC AR4; for unmitigated emissions it may well exceed 1 meter. The upper limit has |
been estimated as ~ 2 meters sea level rise by 2100. Sea level will continue to rise for centuries after global temperatures have been stabilized, and several meters of sea level rise must be expected over the next few centuries. |
Delay in action risks irreversible damage: Several vulnerable elements in the climate system (e.g. continental ice-sheets, Amazon rainforest, West African monsoon and others) could be pushed towards abrupt or irreversible change if warming continues in a business-as-usual way throughout this |
century. The risk of transgressing critical thresholds (’tipping points’) increases strongly with ongoing climate change. Thus waiting for higher levels of scientific certainty could mean that some tipping points will be crossed before they are recognized. The turning point must |
come soon: If global warming is to be limited to a maximum of 2 °C above pre-industrial values, global emissions need to peak between 2015 and 2020 and then decline rapidly. To stabilize climate, a decarbonized global society — with |
near-zero emissions of CO2 and other long-lived greenhouse gases — needs to be reached well within this century. More specifically, the average annual per-capita emissions will have to shrink to well under 1 metric ton CO2 by 2050. This is |
A federal program designed to help metropolitan public health agencies prepare to deliver essential medicines to the public after a large-scale bioterror attack or natural disease outbreak has succeeded in improving the level of readiness, according to a new RAND Corporation study. Researchers found that the federal Ci... |
rapidly and widely dispense life-saving medications and other medical supplies in the event of a large-scale bioterror attack or a naturally occurring infectious disease outbreak. The study from RAND Health concludes there is merit in extending the program so the impact can be further monitored, although the analysis d... |
“The Cities Readiness Initiative has helped agencies in the nation’s most-populous regions become better able to dispense life-saving medication following a bioterrorism event or after an infectious disease outbreak,” said Henry Willis, the study’s lead author and a policy researcher at RAND, a nonprofit research organ... |
on a single scenario with a well-defined numeric goal and the technical assistance it has provided to public health officials. Researchers say the initiative has helped increase the number of local public health staff members working on medication dispensing planning, strengthened partnerships between public health off... |
health improvements fostered by the Cities Readiness Initiative are the development of more-detailed plans for medication dispensing, including creation of new strategies that rely less on medically trained staff and take greater advantage of nontraditional venues such as hotels, resorts, churches as well as drive-thro... |
the nation’s largest metropolitan regions to provide life-saving medications in the event of a large-scale bioterror attack or naturally occurring disease outbreak. The program has spent about $300 million on efforts thus far. Administered by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the program helps jur... |
within 48 hours of a large-scale anthrax attack or large-scale infectious disease emergency. The 72 regions that have received funding account for about 57 percent of the nation’s population. RAND researchers conducted their study by reviewing plans and technical surveys completed by agencies that assessed capabilities... |
officials from nine regions. Researchers say that the program should be evaluated again after two to three years to see whether jurisdictions continue to make progress and to examine whether the program should be revised. Future evaluations could be extended to include an assessment of public health risks and the cost-... |
A Queen’s University study of fruit flies that may revolutionize the way birth defects are studied has identified the genes affected by a widely prescribed drug known to cause birth defects. Methotrexate (MTX), a popular cancer-fighting drug also used to treat psoriasis, ectopic pregnancies, rheumatoid arthritis, and l... |
long time in the body and causes birth defects in children from women who have it in their systems. The study of the drug’s effect on fruit flies has allowed Queen’s researchers including graduate student Joslynn Affleck to identify the genes on which the drug acts. “We hope that through |
this model system we can provide insight into mammalian birth defects, which may be expected to increase in frequency in the future, due to the recent elevated use of MTX,” says Affleck. Many of the genes found to be affected by MTX are involved in cell cycle regulation, signal transduction, |
transport, defense response, transcription, or various aspects of metabolism. “This study shows that MTX treatment has multiple targets,” says Affleck. “And this provides us with a novel invertebrate model for the study of drugs that cause birth defects.” The findings are set to be published by Toxicological Sciences i... |
New Year. “This is not a journal in the habit of publishing insect studies,” notes biologist Dr. Virginia Walker, who co-authored the study. “The neat thing about this work is that fruit flies treated with this drug show ‘birth defects’ that are hauntingly similar to birth defects in human babies. |
Babies have bent limbs, tufts of hair and bulging eyes and the fruit flies have bent legs (and wings), tufts of bristles and rough eyes.” While identifying this gene array is significant in its own right, the successful use of fruit flies in this kind of study is a revelation |
to the researchers who view it as an efficient model for the initial testing of “rescue” therapies to try to prevent birth defects. Scientists can study the effect of the drug on the genes of as many as three generations of fruit flies in a month using readily available scientific |
tools, speeding up study times while keeping costs low. “It also adds to the growing list of roles fruit flies can take,” says Walker. Fruit flies are already used as models for aging, neural disease and cancer. From Queens University |
Student Learning Outcomes Students who complete the French Program will be able to: - Communicate in a meaningful context in French. - Analyze the nature of language through comparisons of the French language and their own. - Demonstrate knowledge of and sensitivity to aspects of behavior, attitudes, and customs of |
Four years ago, LAMP (Linux OS, Apache Web server, MySQL database and Perl, Python and PHP languages) was the open stack of choice, especially for Web servers. In the early part of the decade, when MySQL started promoting LAMP to boost its own visibility as the M in the stack, the acronym grew in popularity. Today, how... |
only the A still visible. While the existence of an all-open source application stack remains helpful, there are so many choices beyond the original group that the LAMP acronym has fallen into disuse, analysts say. Even Linux is not sacrosanct, with companies occasionally substituting Windows in an otherwise all-open s... |
observers say. "It's never been a specific acronym," said Mark Driver, at research vice president at Stamford, Conn.-based Gartner Inc.. "LAMP always represented the idea of an open stack. It shouldn't be taken too literally." Anne Thomas Manes, vice president and research director of Midvale, Utah-based Burton Group, ... |
or .NET, and it's nice for Web sites." Indeed, with the P, LAMP's clarity began eroding. Initially, the P stood for Perl, the most popular language for creating Web pages. But it was later joined by PHP, which is easier to write because the program runs inside Web pages rather than on a server. Though PHP has in turn h... |
security issues," according to Ed Sawicki, a veteran IT consultant based in Portland, Ore. Now Python is more popular, but programmers use Ruby and LISP, he said. As for databases, MySQL may be the most popular open source choice, with simplicity and speed in its favor, Sawicki said. Still, Postgres is better at more c... |
The Ruby language on the Rails framework is generally safer than PHP and Python, whereas Python is more complex, and typically used by programmers who are aware of potential security pitfalls, she said. "The beauty of LAMP is that it's an a la carte technology," added Driver. "And it's light years ahead of where it was... |
In information technology, a repository (pronounced ree-PAHZ-ih-tor-i) is a central place in which an aggregation of data is kept and maintained in an organized way, usually in computer storage. The term is from the Latin repositorium, a vessel or chamber in which things can be placed, and it can mean a place where thi... |
term is used, a repository may be directly accessible to users or may be a place from which specific databases, files, or documents are obtained for further relocation or distribution in a network. A repository may be just the aggregation of data itself into some accessible place of storage or it may also imply some ab... |
- Why are these threats possible? Because computers are little more than tools. The term "computer" is very descriptive despite all of the abstraction that we attempt to layer on top of them; it is a device that "computes", plain and simple. Whether, at any given nanosecond, it is computing the color of a pixel in a UI... |
memory, etc, it is no more or less than an incredibly fast binary calculator hooked up to a lot of peripheral components that provide inputs to and outputs from the basic programming the CPU is currently churning its way through. Given that, the question of "why" has a simple answer; tools can be used for good or ill. ... |
Saws can cut wood or flesh. And computers can sequence DNA to find the cure for cancer, or steal your bank account information. - Why doesn't the computer just do the things it is supposed to? It does. It does exactly what it is told to do by the program that it is currently executing. The problem is that the program t... |
currently executing isn't necessarily something you told it to execute explicitly by the stroke of a key or the click of a mouse. For a very long time now, we've used multiple layers of software (and hardware) to allow for modularity; any computer can have any hardware plugged into it, and run any program to work with ... |
recently we have invented layers to allow a computer to juggle many programs at once. These layers of abstraction such as the OS, virtual machines, daemons (services), etc, which hide what the computer is really doing on any given clock, can be manipulated by an attacker to run software without your conscious knowledge... |
a constructive purpose beyond doing damage and violating the law? ...some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn. - Alfred Pennyworth, The Dark Knight For most "black hats", the mayhem they cause is fun... |
video game in a completely sandboxed environment. They, however, are doing things in the real world. Same layer of digital separation between you and the consequences of your actions, with the added thrill of knowing it's real. - Does computer insecurity exist because of the nature of computers? To a point, yes. Comput... |
do their thinking for them, to design them in a way that is difficult to subvert, to program them in a way that is difficult to subvert, and to use them in a way that is difficult to subvert. The inherent difficulty of this is similar to the inherent difficulty (maybe the impossibility) of designing a "completely foolp... |
make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools. - Douglas Adams In both cases, you're very simply trying to pre-emptively outsmart someone willing to spend a lot of time and effort finding a way to misuse what you're designing once the finished product has ... |
ideas that the other person would have, and incorporate mechanisms to defeat that line of thinking. The more complex the system is internally, the more of those ideas become possible, and the less likely you are to have thought of everything. The more you put in place to prevent misuse, the more complexity you add. It'... |
Saturday, February 2, 2013 Tuesday, January 29, 2013 A story plan is the first step in writing fiction. A story plan will be a sketch and is for planning purposes. One way to get started is to think of a |
real incident that you or someone you know has experienced. Base your story plan on that incident, but change anything you wish if it makes your story more interesting or exciting. Consider the following elements when you begin your story |
plan. You can skip around if you wish, but be sure to complete all the steps below. Decide on the characters. Name the characters and describe their role in the story and their relationship to one another. For example: Marie |
Martin, heroine, secretary to the president of the bank. (If you are not ready to use names, just use descriptions: librarian, doctor, etc.) Choose a setting. Decide when and where the events will take place. Be as specific as you |
can because that will help you when you begin your research. (For example: the South in the 60’s vs. Birmingham, Alabama in 1965.) Decide on the main conflict in the story. What is the problem that your main character faces |
when the story begins? (For example: Marie Martin has been accused of stealing money from the bank?) Decide on a series of events in the plot. Briefly describe what happens in a few sentences. (You can add to these, subtract |
from these, and rearrange these later.) Determine the climax of the story. Describe the moment in the story after which nothing will be the same. Determine the resolution of the story. What happens at the very end when the loose |
Before people learned to make glass, they had found two forms of natural glass. When lightning strikes sand, the heat sometimes fuses the sand into long, slender glass tubes called fulgurites, which are commonly called petrified lightning. The terrific heat of a volcanic eruption also sometimes fuses rocks and sand int... |
knives, arrowheads, jewelry, and money. We do not know exactly when, where, or how people first learned to make glass. It is generally believed that the first manufactured glass was in the form of a glaze on ceramic vessels, about 3000 B.C. The first glass vessels were produced about 1500 B.C. in Egypt and Mesopotamia.... |
300 years, and then declined. It was revived in Mesopotamia in the 700′s B.C. and in Egypt in the 500′s B.C. For the next 500 years, Egypt, Syria, and the other countries along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea were glassmaking centers. Early glassmaking was slow and costly, and it required hard work. Glass bl... |
the clay pots were of poor quality, and the heat was hardly sufficient for melting. But glassmakers eventually learned how to make colored glass jewelry, cosmetics cases, and tiny jugs and jars. People who could afford them—the priests and the ruling classes—considered glass objects as valuable as jewels. Soon merchant... |
glass than in wood or clay containers. The blowpipe was invented about 30 B.C., probably along the eastern Mediterranean coast. This invention made glass production easier, faster, and cheaper. As a result, glass became available to the common people for the first time. Glass manufacture became important in all countri... |
justly be called the First Golden Age of Glass. The glassmakers of this time knew how to make a transparent glass, and they did offhand glass blowing, painting, and gilding (application of gold leaf). They knew how to build up layers of glass of different colors and then cut out designs in high relief. The celebrated P... |
about the beginning of the Christian Era, is an excellent example of this art. This vase is considered one of the most valuable glass art objects in the world. In the 1500′s, the Dutch developed ways to make custom eyeglasses as well as lenses which led to the first microscopes and telescopes. The first glass factory i... |
Virginia, in 1608. The venture failed within a year because of a famine that took the lives of many colonists. The Jamestown colonists tried glassmaking again in 1621, but an Indian attack in 1622 and the scarcity of workers ended this attempt in 1624. The industry was reestablished in America in 1739, when Caspar Wist... |
County, New Jersey. This plant operated until 1780. In 1903, the first fully automated glass bottle making machine was used in Toledo, Ohio. Glass has been a major part in many revolutionary inventions. Had it not been for glass, we could be living in a World with no thermometers, televisions or light bulbs. Cool Info ... |
waste into Hard glass blocks for long-term storage. Glass takes 1,000,000 years to decompose. Glass never wears out-it can be recycled forever. Glass recycling saves resources-each ton of recycled glass replaces 1.2 tons of raw material (sand, limestone and soda ash). Glass: a transparent inorganic material produced by... |
of silicon dioxide that is the most common ingredient in glass manufacturing. Soda ash: also known as sodium oxide, this is an ingredient in glass manufacturing. It helps sand melt at a lower temperature. Glasphalt: similar to asphalt, but it contains ground glass instead of gravel. Limestone: a type of rock that is bl... |
so it will not dissolve in water. When the Model T Ford car was first introduced, the glass windscreen was an optional extra. Bulletproof glass is made of several layers called laminating. In between the glass is a polycarbonate material that absorbs the energy of what has been fired at it. The thicker the glass, the h... |
one-way bulletproof glass enabling the target victim to shoot back. If glass had not been invented, windows would not have come about so what would your PC operating system be called? What is Glass? Glass is not a crystalline solid, but a random jumble of molecules. Because of its random structure it does not have a cl... |
where it can be said to be definitely solid. Instead, it gradually becomes harder as it cools. Historians have pointed out that the glass in some centuries-old windows is thicker at the bottom, as if the glass had slumped over the years. Scientists still debate whether room-temperature glass is a solid or some other st... |
the flow of cool glass we would have to wait ten billion times the age of the universe. So those ancient windows are thicker at the bottom because they were made that way, not because of any later flowing of the glass. |
Hugh Pickens writes writes "Until recently, geothermal power systems have exploited only resources where naturally occurring heat, water, and rock permeability are sufficient to allow energy extraction but now geothermal energy developers plan use a new technology called Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) to pump 24 mil... |
Oregon in an effort to use the earth's heat to generate power. "We know the heat is there," says Susan Petty, president of AltaRock Energy, Inc. of Seattle. "The big issue is can we circulate enough water through the system to make it economic." Since natural cracks and pores do not allow economic flow rates, the perme... |
with EGS by pumping high-pressure cold water down an injection well into the rock, creating tiny fractures in the rock, a process known as hydroshearing. Then cold water is pumped down production wells into the reservoir, and the steam is drawn out. Natural geothermal resources only account for about 0.3 percent of U.S... |
EGS could bump that to 10 percent within 50 years, at prices competitive with fossil-fuels. "The important question we need to answer now," says USGS geophysicist Colin Williams, "is how geothermal fits into the renewable energy picture, and how EGS fits. How much it is going to cost, and how much is available."" |
Daily Planner for Your Preschooler - Friday, 22 April 2011 - How to Start Planning - Teaching Kids to Organize - Organizing Familiy Activities - Organizational Charts Magnetic Photo Calendar - This is a planner for pre-readers. - Take pictures of places you go on a regular basis and pictures of activities you do around... |
Cut out the pages of a brag book. - Insert one picture into each page and glue a magnet on the back. - Each day, place the pictures of the day's activities in order on your refrigerator for your child to refer to throughout the day. |
Here are the penultimate penguins: Jackass penguin (Spheniscus demersus) and Galapagos penguin (S. mendiculus). The Jackass penguin is also known as the black-footed penguin, or the African penguin. Penguins, in Africa? Are you bonkers? What’s next, polar bears in the |
Sahara? No, don’t be silly. There is a cold-water current responsible for this bird’s distribution, the Benguela Current, bringing nutrient-rich cold water from the Southern Ocean to the south-west Atlantic via South Africa and Namibia. The Galapagos penguin is the |
most northerly species of penguin, it is even found at the Equator! This is even more crazy than the idea of an African penguin. Why would a classically cold-climate bird be found in the Tropics? The answer also lies in |
the ocean currents: cold waters from the Antarctic flow up the Pacific coast of South America towards the Galapagos Islands, bringing nutrients. This current, the so-called Humboldt Current, also gives its name to another species of penguin from the coast |
of South America, covered in the next post. As a result of warmer air temperatures, the penguins of Galapagos, south Africa and other places are smaller. Other than the little blue penguin of Australia and New Zealand, the four penguins |
of the genus Spheniscus are the smallest. Spheniscus demersus (Linnaeus, 1758) Adult Jackass penguin (Spheniscus demersus) Distribution: southern Africa from 24o38’S to 33o50’S; vagrant to other parts of Africa. Size: 70 cm (27½”); males and females weigh 2.4-4.2 kg (5 |
lb 5 oz – 9 lb 9 oz), with males larger than females. Habitat: breeds on Benguela Current influenced coasts, in burrows with suitable substrate or using bushes and boulders as shelter. Diet: small fish, cephalopods (such as squid), crustaceans |
and maybe on Bartholomew and Santiago Islands; non-breeding range extends to other islands of the archipelago. Size: 53 cm (21”); the smallest Spheniscus penguin; males weigh 1.7-2.6 kg (3 lb 11 oz – 5 lb 11 oz); females weigh 1.7-2.5 |
kg (3 lb 11 oz – 5½ lb). Habitat: low-lying volcanic coastal desert. Diet: fish (such as mullet and sardine) and crustaceans (such as krill). Etymology: Spheniscus = as S. demersus; mendiculus = “little beggar” in Latin. Immature Galapagos penguin |
(Spheniscus mendiculus) Oh, and while we're on the topic of Galapagos... if you're in London for the next few months, make sure you visit the new exhibition at the Natural History Museum, Darwin: The Big Idea. There is a stuffed |
Galapagos penguin there, as well as numerous other animals and plants from the archipelago, and two live animals: Charlie the green iguana (Iguana iguana) and Sumo the Argentine horned frog (Ceratophrys ornata). Not to mention a lot of original material |
- Дигар роҳҳоимаврди истифода Вашингтон Ҳавзаи Колумбия, Шаблон:Иёлоти Мутаҳида Washington is a state in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. The state is named after George Washington, the first President of the United States. As of the 2000 census, the state population was approximately 5.9 million and the sta... |
syllable, pronounced as tone). It should not be confused with Washington, D.C., the nation's capital city. To avoid confusion, the city is often called simply D.C. and the state is often called Washington state. Washington is bounded by the Pacific Ocean to the west; Oregon to the south (the Columbia River forming most... |
to the north. It is famous for scenery of breathtaking beauty and sharp contrasts. High mountains rise above evergreen forests and sparkling coastal waters. Its coastal location and Puget Sound harbors give it a leading role in trade with Alaska, Canada, and the Pacific Rim. Puget Sound's many islands are served by the... |
of contrasts. The deep forests of the Olympic Peninsula are among the rainiest places in the world and the only rainforests (such as the Hoh Rain Forest) in the continental United States, but the flat semi-desert that lies east of the Cascade Range stretches for long distances without a single tree. Snow-covered peaks ... |
highest mountain in the state, appears to "float" on the horizon southeast of Seattle and Tacoma on clear days. The eastern side of the state can be divided into two regions: the Okanogan Highlands and the Columbia River Basin. Areas under the management of the National Park Service include: - Ebey's Landing National H... |
Vancouver - Klondike Gold Rush Seattle Unit National Historical Park in Seattle - Lake Chelan National Recreation Area near Stehekin - Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area along the Columbia River - Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail - Mount Rainier National Park - Nez Perce National Historical Park - North Cas... |
Lake National Recreation Area at Newhalem - San Juan Island National Historical Park in Friday Harbor - Whitman Mission National Historic Site at Walla Walla Geographical features [вироиш] - Puget Sound - San Juan Islands - Columbia River - Snake River - Yakima River - Cascade Range - Olympic Mountains Шаблон:Details P... |
Coast had many established tribes of Native Americans, each with its own unique culture. Today, they are most notable for their totem poles and their ornately carved canoes and masks. Prominent among their industries were salmon fishing and whale hunting. In the east, nomadic tribes traveled the land and missionaries s... |
the Washington coast was by Spanish Captain Don Bruno de Heceta in 1775, on board the Santiago, part of a two-ship flotilla with the Sonora. They claimed all the coastal lands up to the Russian possessions in the north for Spain. In 1778, British explorer Captain James Cook sighted Cape Flattery, at the entrance to the... |
would not be explored until 1789, by Captain Charles W. Barkley. Further explorations of the straits were performed by Spanish explorers Manuel Quimper in 1790 and Francisco de Eliza in 1791, then by British Captain George Vancouver in 1792. The Spanish Nootka Convention of 1790 opened the northwest territory to explor... |
Captain Robert Gray (for whom Grays Harbor county is named) then discovered the mouth of the Columbia River. He named the river after his ship, the Columbia. Beginning in 1792, Gray established trade in sea otter pelts. The Lewis and Clark expedition entered the state on October 10, 1805. In 1819, Spain ceded their ori... |
began a period of disputed joint-occupancy by Britain and the U.S. that lasted until June 15, 1846, when Britain ceded their claims to this land with the Treaty of Oregon. Because of the overland migration along the Oregon Trail, many settlers wandered north to what is now Washington and settled the Puget Sound area. T... |
in 1846. In 1853, Washington Territory was formed from part of Oregon Territory. Early prominent industries in the state included agriculture and lumber. In eastern Washington, the Yakima Valley became known for its apple orchards, while the growth of wheat using dry-farming techniques became particularly productive. T... |
Sound prospered from the manufacturing and shipping of lumber products, particularly the Douglas fir. Other industries that developed in the state include fishing, salmon canning and mining. By the turn of the 20th century, Washington was of dangerous repute in the minds of many Americans. Indisputably as "wild" as the... |
with lumberjacks, and desert with forestland. One city in particular, Aberdeen, had the distinction of being "the roughest town west of the Mississippi" because of excessive gambling, violence, extreme drug use and prostitution (the city itself changed very little over the years and remained off-limits to military pers... |
where gold, silver, copper and lead ores were treated. Seattle was the primary port for trade with Alaska and the rest of the country, and for a time it possessed a large ship-building industry. The region around eastern Puget Sound developed heavy industry during the period including World War I and World War II, and ... |
area. During the Great Depression, a series of hydroelectric dams were constructed along the Columbia river as part of a project to increase the production of electricity. This culminated in 1941 with the completion of the Grand Coulee Dam, the largest dam in the United States. During World War II, the Puget Sound area... |
producing many of the nation's heavy bombers and ports in Seattle, Bremerton, and Tacoma were available for the manufacture of warships. Seattle was the point of departure for many soldiers in the Pacific, a number of which were quartered at Golden Gardens Park. In eastern Washington, the Hanford Works atomic energy pl... |
of the nation's atomic bombs. On May 18, 1980, following a period of heavy tremors and eruptions, the northeast face of Mount St. Helens exploded outward, destroying a large part of the top of the volcano. This eruption flattened the forests, killed 57 people, flooded the Columbia River and its tributaries with ash and... |
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