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consultation and research. Much of it dates from the classical Genizah period (10-13th centuries) but there appears to be a greater preponderance of 16th century items and of less “standard” material with magical and mystical content. The current plan is that, as soon as the first batch of 1,000 fragments |
is received, work will commence on its conservation. The cost of this part of the work is not included in this project. Once each item has been conserved, a digital image of it will be prepared, accompanied by the necessary metadata. A special area within a new wing of the |
Library currently being prepared will be assigned to the Mosseri Collection. An efficient and expeditious treatment of these items, and an arrangement to make them widely available to scholars, will demonstrate just how important this collection and this project are to the world of scholarship. If the pilot project to |
deal with 1,000 fragments is successfully completed, it is hoped then to proceed with the treatment of the remaining 4,000 items. 1000 separate fully-conserved fragments have been identified against existing records with their correct classmark, recto and verso have been assigned, and full and detailed physical and con... |
been produced. These descriptions are kept on a UNIX system as a text-only file to facilitate long-term availability of the information. Formatted catalogue entries will be placed online as the images are mounted on Cambridge University Library’s website. All 1000 fragments have been digitally photographed, recto and v... |
life-size TIFFs. Lower-quality JPEGs have been prepared of most of the files for mounting online. The 1000 fragments come mainly from the first half of the Collection, Mosseri “boxes” I–VII, with the whole of boxes I and Ia completed (halakhic and documentary material, mostly). Very few fragments come from the |
end of the Collection VIII–Xa, due to the particular conservation problems that they will pose. The first of the fragments are already available to readers through the University Library’s Manuscripts Reading Room, with all 1000 to follow as they are bound into hardcover volumes. Initial estimates of the Collection sug... |
The white, mottled area in the right-center of this image from NASA’s Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) is Madrid, the capital of Spain. Located on the Meseta Central, a vast plateau covering about 40 percent of the country, this city of 3 million is very near the exact geographic center |
of the Iberian Peninsula. The Meseta is rimmed by mountains and slopes gently to the west and to the series of rivers that form the boundary with Portugal. The plateau is mostly covered with dry grasslands, olive groves and forested hills. Madrid is situated in the middle of the Meseta, |
and at an elevation of 646 meters (2,119 feet) above sea level is the highest capital city in Europe. To the northwest of Madrid, and visible in the upper left of the image, is the Sistema Central mountain chain that forms the “dorsal spine” of the Meseta and divides it |
into northern and southern subregions. Rising to about 2,500 meters (8,200 feet), these mountains display some glacial features and are snow-capped for most of the year. Offering almost year-round winter sports, the mountains are also important to the climate of Madrid. Three visualization methods were combined to prod... |
shading and color coding of topographic height and radar image intensity. The shade image was derived by computing topographic slope in the northwest-southeast direction. North-facing slopes appear bright and south-facing slopes appear dark. Color coding is directly related to topographic height, with green at the lowe... |
and brown to white at the highest elevations. The shade image was combined with the radar intensity image in the flat areas. Size: 172 by 138 kilometers (107 by 86 miles) Location: 40.43 degrees North latitude, 3.70 degrees West longitude Orientation: North toward the top Image Data: shaded and colored |
A crocodile large enough to swallow humans once lived in East Africa, according to a May 2012 paper in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. Paper author Christopher Brochu is an associate professor of geoscience at University of Iowa. He said: It’s the largest known true crocodile. It may have exceeded |
27 feet in length. By comparison, the largest recorded Nile crocodile was less than 21 feet, and most are much smaller. The newly-discovered species lived between two and four million years ago in Kenya. It resembled its living cousin, the Nile crocodile, but was more massive. Brochu recognized the new |
species from fossils that he examined three years ago at the National Museum of Kenya in Nairobi. Some were found at sites known for important human fossil discoveries. Brochu said: It lived alongside our ancestors, and it probably ate them. He explains that although the fossils contain no evidence of |
human/reptile encounters, crocodiles generally eat whatever they can swallow, and humans of that time period would have stood no more than four feet tall. We don’t actually have fossil human remains with croc bites, but the crocs were bigger than today’s crocodiles, and we were smaller, so there probably wasn’t |
much biting involved. Brochu added that there likely would have been ample opportunity for humans to encounter crocs. That’s because early man, along with other animals, would have had to seek water at rivers and lakes where crocodiles lie in wait. The crocodile Crocodylus thorbjarnarsoni is named after John Thorbjarna... |
famed crocodile expert and Brochu’s colleague who died of malaria while in the field several years ago. Brochu says Crocodylus thorbjarnarsoni is not directly related to the present-day Nile crocodile. This suggests that the Nile crocodile is a fairly young species and not an ancient “living fossil,” as many people |
believe. Borchu said: We really don’t know where the Nile crocodile came from. But it only appears after some of these prehistoric giants died out. Bottom line: A paper in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology in May, 2012 reports the discovery of an ancient crocodile large enough to swallow humans |
Activity Plan for Respect Wildlife Exploring Respect for Wildlife This activity should take about 70 minutes. What Your Group Will Learn After participating in this activity plan, which calls for participants to observe impacts on wildlife, participants will be able to - Describe what activities cause impacts to wildli... |
are going on an imaginary hike to a marshland area where they will encounter a flock of ducks, a doe, and a fawn. This activity will help them think about their potential impacts to wildlife and how these impacts can Materials and Preparation - A garden hose or some other means of marking the marshland - Duck decoys, s... |
Pictures or silhouettes of a doe and fawn deer - Read the entire lesson plan and the Background on the Principles of Leave No Trace thoroughly. - Lay out the garden hose or some other means or marking the - Place the duck, doe, and fawn pictures or silhouettes in the Grabbing Your Group's Attention (20 minutes) Explain... |
hiking along a trail and will come to a marsh area with ducks, a doe, and a fawn. Ask them to explain the actions they will take so they do not disturb the ducks and deer. Steps for Teaching the Activity (30 minutes) How Wild Is Wildlife? The participants will demonstrate the techniques they feel will help minimize imp... |
area. After demonstrating these techniques, group members will move past the marshland. The activity will help them become more aware of their potential effects on wildlife and how they can avoid As they approach the marked marshland, ask group members to demonstrate how they will avoid disturbing the wildlife and how ... |
passed the marshland, ask them why they used the techniques they did to minimize their impacts to the ducks and deer in the marsh. Ask them if there are any other techniques they could use. Emphasize that the best means of determining their success is the degree to which the wildlife may have altered their normal behav... |
the deer run away quickly, you know you have gotten too close. Quick movement and loud noises are stressful to animals. Considerate campers should - Observe wildlife from afar to avoid - Give animals a wide berth, especially during breeding, nesting, and birthing seasons. - Store food securely so wildlife will not be a... |
so they will not acquire bad Remember, you are too close to an animal if it alters its normal activities. Wrapping Up the Activity (15 minutes) Your group is considerate of wildlife needs and knows how to respect wildlife. Group members also know the techniques for minimizing their impact on wildlife and means of deter... |
some of the local areas participants might visit that have wildlife. What additional techniques or specific precautions should they use to avoid disturbing the wildlife species in these areas? - Talk about the behavior of some group members or the behavior observed of others on previous outdoor activities that may have... |
How can the group help encourage others to keep Congratulations on conducting a well-prepared meeting for your group! Visit a local wildlife refuge and have the wildlife managers explain how they recommend viewing wildlife species at the refuge without disturbing them in the wild. Take a walk with the wildlife manager ... |
Imagine today's world without electricity. Hard to fathom, isn't it? Just as hard to comprehend is today's electrical industry without the people who built it — the workers who designed the structures, strung the wires, laid the conduit, energized systems, |
and currently maintain and improve the complex electrical systems we all take for granted. EC&M sought out industry leaders — Voices of the Industry, we call them — to talk about how the electrical design, construction, and maintenance fields have |
changed through the years. In the profiles that follow, you'll read about electrical workers who got their start during or after World War II and worked through good times and bad, laying the groundwork for today's electrical industry. They saw |
major changes and improvements not only in the systems they designed and built, but also in the tools and processes they worked with. Many talked about changes in electrical training, work processes, and the National Electrical Code. Others commented on |
the way economic conditions affected their workload, and several noted the growth of specific subsets of the industry such as voice-data-video or the emergence of high technology. Their voices represent all segments of the industry, including electric linemen, designers, journeyman |
electricians, electrical engineers, plant maintenance personnel, and owners of electrical design or construction shops. All were — and definitely still are — dedicated to making the field of electrical construction and maintenance one of the country's leading industries. None, it |
would seem, would have chosen anything other than the challenging, exciting, and rewarding careers they have had in this dynamic field. We also asked our experts to make a few predictions for the future. While none were bold enough to |
predict what the industry would look like 100 years from now, many had interesting comments about developments to watch over the next five to 10 years. Whether they're looking back on the great industry they helped build or looking forward |
to what might be around the next corner, we think you will enjoy hearing what our Voices of the Industry have to say. Founder, Curator and Volunteer — Ken Mullen Started in Industry: 1934 Ken Mullen did not come to |
the U.S. electrical industry via the most traditional route. Born in Germany in 1919, Mullen worked as an electrical apprentice in Hamburg, Germany, from 1934 to 1938. In 1938, Mullen, who is Jewish, fled Nazi Germany and ended up in |
India, where he found work as an electrician and later as a supervisor in a foundry that made ammunition used against the Germans. After WWII, he moved to San Francisco and found a city bursting at the seams and in |
dire need of electricians. “I walked into the local union office, and they said they could use electricians very badly,” Mullen recalls. Despite not knowing much about U.S. electrical work, he landed his first job doing motor repair in 1947. |
“In the time since, I have had only five jobs in almost 45 years, all in the electrical field and with some of the finest electrical shops in the San Francisco area,” he says. Mullen's early jobs were with very |
only motor work. When work slowed at one place, I could simply go to another, because there was so much work to be had. I could go where I wanted and never had to leave San Francisco or the surrounding |
area to find work.” They had very little machinery, so most work was done by hand. “We had to bend pipe over tires with 2×4s,” he says. “It was unbelievable, we had 2- or 3-in. pipe, and it was bent |
without any mechanical device. We heated it to bend it. It is so much different today, when the computer figures out the bends in the building, and then you get your pipes already bent. When we had to dig a |
ditch, it was with a shovel and a wheelbarrow. We had no machinery. We had battery-operated things but no way of doing things when the battery was dead.” Health and safety issues have also changed over the years, Mullen notes. |
“In India, I had to figure it out myself,” he says of safety and health practices. “The last two years there I got lead poisoning and stopped working in factories. Most of my experience, though, has been in America, and |
I have never had any bad accidents here. We are much more careful. OSHA is preventing a lot of bad things from happening, and everyone is more oriented to safety. I have gotten two shocks in my life, and they |
were both 200V. I was very fortunate and have never been in a hospital in my life except for hip replacement.” That's not exactly true — Mullen did visit hospitals as part of his electrical construction work. In the 1950s, |
he says the city was teaming with new construction for hospitals, breweries, and apartment buildings. “I worked in many breweries in the 1950s,” he recalls. “Hospitals and apartment buildings were very big, too. We always put in pipe and then |
pulled wire through. It was much slower but did a very good job of protecting the wires. Air conditioning started coming about then, too. All of a sudden, everybody started putting in furnaces and air conditioning after 1960.” Mullen says |
he has always been a strong supporter of electricians' unions, particularly the IBEW. “I was very strong in the union,” he says. “I was never a business representative, as I had too many other things to do, but I found |
that without the unions, there was no life here in this country. Many said why don't you go into business on your own, but the unions in my opinion offered a great advantage.” In his post-retirement life, Mullen has partnered |
with IBEW Local 6 in San Francisco to found the Ken Mullen Electrical Museum of San Francisco in 1991, where many of the tools he used in his life's work are on display. Mullen says he sees good times ahead |
for the electric industry. “It is still booming, but we still have problems finding people to work,” he says. “There is a lot of work building hotels and high-rise office buildings, not as much industrial any more. We don't know |
what will happen in the future, but I am one of those persons who does not bother with politics. I am happy to have had a great life doing electrical work.” Retired Lineman and Electrician Crown Point, Ind. Started in |
Industry: 1946 Glenn Zieseniss got his start in the electrical industry courtesy of a milkman. “I lived on a farm, and the milkman quit his job and went to work for the electric line company,” Zieseniss recalls of his start |
it and never looked back. Zieseniss started out as a groundman, or “grunt,” on utility line crews, but says circumstances soon led him to work as a lineman. “We were short of workmen then, and there were several of us |
that started out as apprentice linemen stringing wires,” he recalls. “I started doing mostly 7.2kV line extensions to homes and/or farms in rural areas, and by 1948 was promoted to journeyman lineman, in part because of the shortage of qualified |
linemen. For the next four years, I worked on increasingly higher voltage lines, and in 1951 and 1952 I worked in an ordnance plant in Illinois that produced ammunition for the Korean War, where I started in the inside wiring |
field.” From 1952 to 1989, Zieseniss worked as a journeyman lineman and electrician in the Chicago area. Zieseniss says he saw major changes in equipment and safety materials. “I would say the biggest changes in line work were the use |
of bucket trucks and improvements in safety equipment,” he says. “When we worked in the ordnance plants, it was all either rubber gloves or maybe some hot-stick work. I've been bitten by 2300V a couple of times, but never got |
burned, just got bit heavily.” From 1947 through 49, Zieseniss did a lot of conversion work in Hammond and smaller cities. For the most part, the work consisted of burying conduit in concrete. He also worked with 17 different contractors |
on schools, hospitals, and the occasional odd job. “In one case an airplane hit a smokestack and that was a specialty job, reconstructing that,” he says. Zieseniss also served as an electrical inspector for the city of Crown Point, Ind., |
from April 1984 to March 1998. “On the inspection side, I saw that many contractors were not really keeping abreast of what the Code says for safety,” Zieseniss says. “They seemed to be fighting that all the way.” He says |
safety is a big thing today for most contractors and utilities, and he points to the increased use of flash hazards and low-impedance transformers as steps in the right direction. Zieseniss says today's emphasis on design-build may be an example |
of electrical work going in the wrong direction. “When I was working in the mills, the working prints were excellent,” Zieseniss recalls. “Now you don't know what is going on. The engineers have been priced out of the job for |
detail work. They leave it up to the guy in the field to figure things out. The prints are just not complete when I see them. In the early years, they had a detail for every column for all the |
electrical. Nowadays, you have to fight for your spot on that column or figure out what should go on the column.” In his long electrical career, Zieseniss always enjoyed the freshness of new challenges. “I was never in the same |
place for very long,” Zieseniss says. “I never was much of one for the maintenance jobs, and preferred building new things and moving on. I was a free electrician to go wherever I was sent. I never drove more than |
50 miles for day-in and day-out work, and could always find plenty of work in the Chicago area.” Zieseniss, who says he has been a faithful reader of EC&M for decades, says something he read in a 1970 editorial has |
stuck with him through the years. “It was in a ‘Thoughts From Our Shop’ article on page seven of that issue,” Zieseniss recalls. “It said that the inspector must enforce the letter and spirit of the Code that is written, |
not as the designer or installer would like to see it written. We need to live by laws or else we will have electrical anarchy.” Retired Electrical Engineer Started in Industry: 1948 Dick Porcaro's interest in the electrical trades started |
as a young boy. “I always had a fascination for electrical things as a kid, starting with radios and crystal sets,” Porcaro says. “I went to a technical high school and had an electrical course there. Then, I was doing |
part-time electric work and went to City College of New York at night. All that time I was working during the day full-time with engineering and construction companies. I spent some time with Mobil, and then wound up with Bechtel.” |
Porcaro says most of his work focused on electrical engineering for chemical and petrochemical plants and notes that one thing he always liked about the electrical industry is that it is constantly changing. “Code changes were always interesting things to |
keep on top of,” Porcaro says. “If you look at the way the Code looked in the early ’40s or ’50s, it was a 5×7 brown soft-cover thing a half-inch thick. Now it is a heck of a lot bigger, |
and the changes are mostly around different materials — how you can use new things without compromising safety.” Cabling and installation materials, he says, have changed a lot. “Leaded cables used to be popular. They were always interesting in that |
they required high-caliber mechanical help to make the splices. New methods have come along to simplify the splices, and no one uses lead anymore due to environmental concerns.” “Lighting has also changed quite a bit,” Porcaro adds. “It seemed that |
equipment was generally a lot more robust in the old days, while today the tendency has been to make things less expensive and still get an adequate amount of light in the facilities. The robust equipment seems to be gone, |
and everything has been made simpler and lighter.” In the engineering offices, the major activity used to be making drawings, Porcaro adds. “You made them as clear and simple as possible and error-free. Some were so darn good you knew |
exactly what you had to do. In those days, once the drawing left the designer you could be sure it was right. We have more of a challenge with some drawings today. Drawings made by some computer designers are a |
heck of a lot different. Some still are making them clear, but there is so much pressure to get the work done as quickly as possible today. I think people sometimes lose sight of the fact that you can build |
something cheaper by spending more time on engineering and not as much on construction.” Another major change Porcaro saw through the years was the increasing use of trays instead of conduit. “Most installations were wiring conduit. Then, in the 1950s, |
people were realizing you could get a pretty good installation by installing cable trays and laying cable in the trays rather than pulling conduit,” he says. “That was a major change in terms of wiring technique.” System grounding changes have |
also been significant, he says. “Everything used to be either solidly grounded or completely ungrounded,” Porcaro says. “One thing companies learned really early was the damage that could happen if things were not grounded properly. You started seeing more medium- |
and low-resistance grounding systems, rather than having things solidly grounded.” Porcaro also has observed changes in the way electricity is used, citing energy conservation as an example. “We never even thought about it much before — the whole idea of |
energy conservation using adjustable-speed drives,” he says. “That has been a big change, trying to reduce energy requirements.” Concerning the future of the industry, Porcaro says he sees the U.S. electric industry getting less and less involved with heavy manufacturing |
and more involved with power generation. “We haven't necessarily created a lot more generating capacity in the last few years,” Porcaro says. “I see a continued emphasis in power plant construction.” Rosendin Electrical Inc., San Jose, Calif. Started in Industry: |
1950 Ray Rosendin calls his entry into the electrical-contracting business a “baptism by fire.” Rosendin's father started Rosendin Electrical in 1919, and by the time Ray was 13 he was already working in his father's shop, running errands in the |
summers. When Ray graduated from college and came on full-time in 1950, the firm had grown to around 30 employees. “My father brought me up around electrical work, so by that time I had a fair knowledge of what was |
integrity, you just didn't do business with them. Then when I got out of school and into the business you saw more paperwork.” Rosendin says in the 1950s schools and residential work made up the bulk of his business, followed |
a bit later by industrial growth in and around the San Francisco Bay area. “Industry started coming into the Bay Area in the middle 1950s,” Rosendin says. “That was when Lockheed and IBM came here.” Next, Rosendin says, came the |
electronics boom of the mid-1960s, spearheaded by companies like Fairchild Industries and Hewlett-Packard. That boom, he says, was nothing like the Silicon Valley explosion that took place a few decades later, but the big electronics companies formed the base from |
which the area's current “dot-com” economy could mushroom, he says. Rosendin says one major change in the way the electrical industry has developed is that more contractors are now including designers and engineers on their staffs. “We have a complete |
engineering department,” he says. “We have seen that evolve into pretty much of a science and seen the inherent benefit in having our own engineers.” Another way the industry has changed, he says, is that training and staff development is |
more crucial than ever. “We have always wanted to maintain as strong and knowledgeable a work force as we could,” Rosendin says. “We started attending trade shows in the 1950s. We attend all the new shows, and we demo new |
tools here whenever we can. We have always had good apprenticeship programs, but in addition to that, contractors now supplement apprenticeship with their own programs to bring additional knowledge to employees. People in the field need to know a lot |
more now to solve some of the complex problems that come up. We also have our regular meetings with our people to talk about safety and new procedures.” Rosendin says Silicon Valley itself has changed a great deal over the |
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