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Labrador duck facts for kids
|The Labrador duck|
The Labrador duck lived along the sandy coasts and bays of New Jersey and New England. Audubon's son reported seeing a nest belonging to the species. Some believe that it may have laid its eggs on the islands in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. It was a rare bird before European settlement, and the increase in humans probably finished it off.
The duck became extinct after settlers became common along the eastern coast of North America. The reasons are not clear. The duck was eaten, although its flesh tasted bad. its eggs were probably harvested. It depended considerably on shellfish, which humans may have eaten in large quantities.
Images for kids
Illustration by John James Audubon
Labrador duck Facts for Kids. Kiddle Encyclopedia. | <urn:uuid:6d952454-6dbf-4bc7-aaf3-f0ede3f8652b> | CC-MAIN-2020-10 | https://kids.kiddle.co/Labrador_duck | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-10/segments/1581875144979.91/warc/CC-MAIN-20200220131529-20200220161529-00224.warc.gz | en | 0.91008 | 164 | 2.859375 | 3 |
To improve your memory you need to dig deeper on how your brain functions. The ability to remember is important in any kind of work you do. When you do something it leaves a psychological change in the brain structure, this phenomenon is called memory trace.
Delaying the process
One cause of forgetting is due to a decrease in memory traces with the passage of time. And to delay this process one must revise what he has learned.
Why do we forget in spite of our wanting to remember?
This is often due to mental conflict. For instance, we may easily forget a memory which conflicts with our self-esteem. We normally like to push aside experiences of humiliation but would like to remember our successes.
Another source of mental conflict is the fear of failure. It makes the person who doubts his ability to work against himself producing his failure.
Memory is largely a matter of attention and concentration. If an impression is clearly made by careful observation, it will not be so easily erased.
The depth of the impression
In order to impress anything upon the mind, it is necessary to observe closely. The depth of impression depends upon the interest evinced in and degree of understanding.
How to improve your learning?
You can improve your learning by observing the following methods of learning.
1 Revise what you learn as soon as possible.
2 Observe closely and accurately.
3 Be interested in what you are trying to learn.
4 Make sure that you understand it properly.
5 Spread your learning over shorter periods rather than learning it in a single go.
6 Lastly, have confidence in your ability to remember what you want to learn.
Mapaguru is India’s largest coaching institute aggregator. We provide every student with the information collected from hundreds of coaching centers, training institutes, and tuition classes.
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Students can compare, review and make informed decisions about the institutes.
More blogs to read
Also, read our other blogs on | <urn:uuid:c90bcf8d-1202-4a5d-a859-24e2bcbd0b03> | CC-MAIN-2021-21 | https://blog.mapaguru.com/how-to-improve-your-memory/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-21/segments/1620243991378.48/warc/CC-MAIN-20210515070344-20210515100344-00180.warc.gz | en | 0.95829 | 428 | 2.78125 | 3 |
Images (R)-Evolution: Media Arts Complex Imagery Challenging Humanities and Our Institutions of Cultural Memory
AbstractConsidering its technological and thematical contexts, digital art conveys different – even more complex – potentials of expression than traditional art forms (such as sculptures, paintings, etc.), what makes digital art a paradigmatic expression of its time? This article emphasizes the variety of (complex) topics that are expressed within digital art, ranging from globalization, ecological and economic crises (virtual economy), media and image revolution to questions of the body and its societal norms. Due to the imminent problems of archiving, the digital arts are threatened by its loss – a problem that is reinforced by the insufficient practices of cultural institutions to display, collect and research digital art. Post-industrial societies require digital arts based on contemporary media dispositive to reflect upon current and future challenges, just like art history was always informed by its contemporary media technologies. By establishing concerted international strategies and new scientific tools it is the aim of this essay to provide a framework to enable media art histories and image science as well as the digital humanities to engage more fully with current digital developments in order to enable the humanities to meet with its (current) responsibilities. By discussing examples from a variety of projects from the natural sciences and the humanities, this article tries to demonstrate the strategic importance of these collective projects, especially in their growing importance for the humanities. | <urn:uuid:28d711ab-9ab3-4b44-9886-e60d87f6b38c> | CC-MAIN-2020-05 | http://journals.gold.ac.uk/index.php/lea/article/view/377 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-05/segments/1579251779833.86/warc/CC-MAIN-20200128153713-20200128183713-00038.warc.gz | en | 0.929587 | 284 | 2.5625 | 3 |
“This bird’s-eye view, with its three-dimensional depiction of the city, gives us a different kind of information on the buildings and topography of Toronto. Obvious here are the varying densities of development and the varied sizes and shapes of buildings. Building projects in Toronto, as in other North American cities, tended to be small so that there were no large expanses of consistent residential architecture, as there were in Britain at the time.
The harbour, the trains, and the factory smoke, together with the types of buildings shown in the margin, testify to the growing commercial and industrial interests of the city in the 1870s.
Peter Alfred Gross (1849-1914) was an American artist and lithographer established in Toronto between 1874 and 1878. He first produced illustrations for the Wentworth County atlas and then prepared and published this bird’s-eye view of Toronto in 1876. The view is as if seen from a point 5000 feet above the southeastern part of the island. A year later he published J. Timperlake’s Illustrated Toronto which was to accompany the view and which included a key to major buildings.”
– Isobel Ganton & Joan Winearls, MAPPING TORONTO’S FIRST CENTURY 1787-1884 | <urn:uuid:a1ebc25c-47f3-43d8-aa23-e91bf6762531> | CC-MAIN-2020-24 | https://www.alternativearts.ca/product/birds-eye-view-map-of-toronto-1876/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-24/segments/1590347432521.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20200603081823-20200603111823-00032.warc.gz | en | 0.969106 | 273 | 3.1875 | 3 |
There are a lot of reasons why people study martial arts. This includes spiritual and mental development, competition and self-defense, and physical and mental fitness. While the term martial arts is mainly linked with fighting in Asian cultures, it was mainly utilized in the combat systems of Europe.
Aside from being an excellent activity that offers a sense of self-defense, it can also keep you active physically. It can also boost your emotional and mental health as well. The physical and health fitness of an individual can be improved with the efficient and regular practice of martial arts.
If you are planning to enroll in Washington DC Ving Tsun or karate martial arts class, here are a couple of things you should know:
Martial Arts Utilizing Technical Concentration
- By Intent or Application
- Health-Oriented – Martial arts in Asia are common in teaching side disciplines that relate to medicinal practices. This might include teaching bone-setting, herbalism, and other features of old-school medicine.
- Combat-Oriented – You can use martial arts as self-defense. This included defending the well-being of yourself or another person from harm.
- Modern martial arts in the west has sports and weapons that include stick-fighting systems (such as a single stick or cane de combat), modern competitive archery, and modern fencing.
- Old-school weapons include Eskrima, Kalarippayattu, Kobudo, and Silat.
- Pinning methods such as Judo, Sambo, and Wrestling.
- Chokes, submission holds, and joint locks such as submission wrestling, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, and Aikido.
- Throwing such as Sambo, Hapkido, Judo, and Glima
There are a couple of classifications when it comes to unarmed martial arts. This includes those that focus on grappling, those that utilize striking, and those that include both methods and is sometimes known as the hybrid martial arts.
- Strikes such as Vale Tudo, Wushu, Muay Thai, Karate, and Sanshou.
- Kicking such as Tang Soo Do, Savate, Kickboxing, Capoeira, and Taekwondo.
- Punching such as western boxing.
Scope and Variation of Martial Arts
There are a lot of various schools and forms of martial arts. An instructor of martial arts is also known as a martial artist. The scope and variation of martial arts greatly differ. Also, it might focus on a mixture of aspects or a single particular aspect. However, they can be categorized broadly into:
- Variation in forms within the Asian tradition, such as internal vs. external forms.
- By intent or application such as meditation, combat sport, physical fitness, self-defense, and much more.
- Methods taught, such as unarmed vs. armed, aside from the weapons that were utilized (for instance swordsmanship, stick fighting, and much more). It also includes the form of combat, such as grappling vs. striking.
- Regional origin. This is particularly true for western martial arts vs. eastern martial arts.
- Modern forms of martial arts vs. traditional or historical arts
You should try martial arts if you want to stay fit and improve your self-confidence while also having fun. Martial arts provide an environment that is fun, challenging, and safe. | <urn:uuid:9995e18d-220f-47d8-9dcb-79a2d5421d37> | CC-MAIN-2020-29 | http://www.gifthorsebasketco.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-29/segments/1593655911896.73/warc/CC-MAIN-20200710175432-20200710205432-00453.warc.gz | en | 0.962021 | 698 | 2.828125 | 3 |
NIST Releases Federal Risk Assessment GuideFederal technology standards body issues new guidelines for evaluating cyber security vulnerabilities.
(click image for larger view)
Slideshow: Inside DHS' Classified Cyber-Coordination Headquarters
The federal organization for creating technology standards has released new guidance to help agencies assess risk within their IT systems as part of an overall strategy to instill more prevention in federal cybersecurity.
The National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) is currently seeking comments through Nov. 4 on its Guide for Conducting Risk Assessments, which updates an original version published nine years ago.
The guide is aimed at helping agencies evaluate the current threat landscape as well as identify potential vulnerabilities and the adverse impacts they may have on agency business operations and missions, according to NIST.
[Pacific Northwest National Laboratory CIO Jerry Johnson takes you inside the cyber attack that he faced down--and shares his security lessons learned, in Anatomy of a Zero-Day Attack.]
Risk assessment is one of four steps in agencies' general security risk-management strategy, according to NIST. Assessment helps agencies determine the appropriate response to cyberattacks or threats before they happen and guides their IT investment decisions for cyber-defense solutions, according to the organization.
It also helps agencies maintain ongoing situational awareness of the security of their IT systems, something that is becoming more important to the federal government as it moves from a mere reactionary or compulsory security approach to one that proactively addresses risks and takes more consistent, preventative measures.
Indeed, in testimony Wednesday before Congress, a federal IT official noted the government's new focus on risk mitigation as key to its future security measures, particularly as they pertain to cloud computing and its security risks.
The government is "shifting the risk from annual reporting under FISMA to robust monitoring and more mitigation" in an attempt to strengthen the security of federal networks, said David McClure, associate administrator for the General Services Administration's office of citizen services and innovative technologies during a House subcommittee on technology and innovation hearing.
To this end, NIST has been working to provide cybersecurity guidelines and standards to agencies as they work to better lock down federal IT systems.
Changes also have been made to how agencies report their security compliance. Agencies recently were required to report security data to an online compliance tool called CyberScope as part of fiscal year 2011 requirements for the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA), a standard for federal IT security created and maintained by NIST.
In the new, all-digital issue of InformationWeek Government: As federal agencies close data centers, they must drive up utilization of their remaining systems. That requires a well-conceived virtualization strategy. Download the issue now. (Free registration required.) | <urn:uuid:626684ee-53a5-4727-8a0a-0e273269576e> | CC-MAIN-2018-26 | http://www.darkreading.com/risk-management/nist-releases-federal-risk-assessment-guide/d/d-id/1100284?piddl_msgorder=asc | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-26/segments/1529267863206.9/warc/CC-MAIN-20180619212507-20180619232507-00162.warc.gz | en | 0.947227 | 557 | 2.546875 | 3 |
There has been extensive speculation among government analysts and academics over the role and relevance of tribalism in modern Iraqi politics and decision-making. Little information is available on who the prominent tribal leaders are and how they view Saddam and prospects for political succession in Iraq. Many Iraqi military officers and intelligence and security service officials are recruited from prominent tribes because of their links to President Saddam Hussein's family, clan and tribe. Their selection also presumes their adherence to traditional values of loyalty, honor and courage - characteristics of the "tribe" historically and of high value to Saddam personally. This essay does not predict whether an opponent to Saddam will emerge from the shadows of the "tribe." It raises the questions: Can an opponent rise from its ranks, and what kind of factors might shape his thinking?
As in most Arab countries of the Middle East created by the mandates of World War I, Iraq's people have long been defined by their asabiya, their loyalties to tribe, clan and family.1 These loyalties continue, in many instances, to supersede those created by the nationalisms of the twentieth century, even those created by Saddam Hussein. Saddam tried to erase tribal culture and influence and bind all of Iraq's diverse groups into one new culture by creating a new Iraqi identity- an identity shaped by Iraq's 6,000-year-old culture and traditions, a loyalty that owes all status, benefits and achievement to Saddam alone.2 Tribal ties, however, brought Saddam to power: he was a cousin of President Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr as well as the chief enforcer of the Baath party's security force. For Saddam, tribal values and loyalties as well as Baathist ideology and Arab nationalism were intended to enforce pride in his and the country's uniqueness. More important, they gave the Iraqi leader tools to reinforce his own power and control.
IN THE BEGINNING
Iraq has long been controlled by powerful tribal confederations. In the early twentieth century, when the Turks ruled the three provinces that became modern Iraq (Mosul, Baghdad and Basra), large confederations and extended families dominated the region. Unlike Palestinian and Lebanese Arabs when dispossessed of their patriarchal homes, Iraq's tribes lacked links to the land and settled villages until modern times. More important than fealty to land and village were loyalties to family, clan and tribe. Devotion to personal honor, factionalism and intense individualism - characteristics of the tribe and of those who resist central authority - are described by one prominent historian of ancient and modern Iraq as legacies of tribalism.3
Ibn Khaldun, the thirteenth-century Arab historian, defined a tribe as a self-contained and autonomous organization having social, economic, cultural, protective and political functions. Tribes existed separate from cities and civilization, while cities absorbed and conquered the tribes. Through the long period of Turkish rule, tribes in Iraq were mobile mini-states, headed by a patriarch, with their own military force and codes of justice and retribution. The tribe derived its livelihood from herding animals, trade, raiding and collecting tribute. The tribe's existence depended on intertribal wars, government campaigns to control them, and the mercy of nature. The Ottomans (who ruled Iraq's three provinces from the fifteenth century to 1914) and the British (who ruled Iraq as a colonial power 1914-20, then as a mandate power until World War II and as a colonial influence until the 1958 revolution) tried to break the power of the tribal warlords but failed.
• The Ottoman Turks and the British tried to introduce central administration and communications, as well as land-tenure reform. Tribes were encouraged to settle in towns, and the large confederations lost some of their identity as military alliances. They became involved in squabbles over land and water rights. Tribal chiefs became tax farmers and agents of the state, not the tribe.
• Tribes as self-contained social units disappeared except at the local or community level, where tribalism survived, based on intermarriage, common lineage, collective economic interests, social support structures and/or common residence. While most tribal units claim to trace their roots to a common ancestor or family, a modern Iraqi sociologist and specialist on Iraqi tribalism, Faleh Abu Jabar, claims that tribes in contemporary Iraq are also formed by disparate urban groups of individuals sharing common needs.4 Abu Jabar defines three types of modern tribes:
• Statist tribes: Tribal lineages, symbols and culture are integrated into the state to enhance the status, legitimacy and power of the ruling elite. In Iraq, this has focused on prehistoric myths and on the Arab and Sunni clans and tribes related to Saddam.
• Social tribes: The state, which has lost power to govern a modern urban society, gives over a degree of power and authority to local tribes. The tribes resume their tribute collecting and judicial powers. The tribes become an extension of the state itself. Saddam's tribal policy of the 1990s fits this category.
• Military-ideological tribalism: Kurdish and Shia tribal groups mobilized in the 1990s to confront an external threat, in this case Baghdad. Before that, ethnic and tribal loyalties were important to Iraq's Shia Arab tribes; they fought fierce battles against the Iranians in Qurna and the marshes 1982-85. The Kurds have long honored tribal and family ties. Military tribalism pervades their sense of loyalty, in particular the Barzani Kurds, and Baghdad has for many years hired the services of mercenary Kurds (the }ash or donkeys) as border guards in the north against Iran and occasionally against other Kurdish factions. According to interviews by Abu Jabar, Baghdad valued these ethnic and tribal ties, which separated Persian Shia from Iraqi Arab Shia and Kurd from Kurd. Party circulars during the Iran-Iraq War praised the tribes for their cultural values, stressing valor, honor, manhood, courage and military prowess.5
SADDAM: REPUBLICAN SHAYKH AND TRIBAL GODFATHER
Saddam, the product of a dysfunctional family in a small village and society dominated by tribalism and a patriarchal culture, has always reflected tribal loyalty to family, clan and tribe. He used these qualities to build loyalty to himself as the republican shaykh, the father of his people, the essential Iraqi. But he also uses these tribal characteristics to rule as tribal godfather, the dispenser of wisdom, justice, wealth and punishment.
• Saddam's own history is tied up in tribal values. He was born in a small village near Tikrit. Some Iraqi scholars speculate that the story of his father's dying before he was born was intended to protect his unmarried mother from family retribution. In some ways a social outcast as a young child, Saddam was first reared by his mother and a stepfather who refused to send him to school. In a culture strictly ruled by patriarchy and ancient codes of honor and justice, an uncle, Khairallah Talfah, then raised the fatherless Saddam. Talfah was a staunch anti-British Arab nationalist whose singular contributions to Iraq's history were his role in a 1941 coup attempt; a book entitled Three Things God Should Not Have Made: Persians, Flies and Jews; and a venality so excessive that Saddam had to remove him as mayor of Baghdad.
• Saddam invented the institution of the Baath party and reinstated kinship networks to rule Iraq. He oversaw the expansion of the party from a membership of several hundred in the 1960s to nearly two million within eight years of his rule. At the same time, he mobilized clan and family networks into the military and security services, giving them control of the institutions of coercion, violence and terror. Members of Saddam's local clan and tribe, the Bayjat, were given preference in joining the sensitive security units - as bodyguards to the inner circle of the regime and to Saddam, his family and protectors of special sites and programs (such as those for development of weapons of mass destruction). These units include the Republican Guards, the Special Republican Guards, the bodyguard units, intelligence and security units in the military and the party, the Baghdad Garrison, and the Defense Ministry on occasion. His half-brother Barzan was intelligence minister and chief security thug for several years after the revolution, a position later held by his other half-brothers Sibawi and Watban; cousins Adnan Khayrallah Talfah and Ali Hassan al-Majid both served as defense minister. Saddam's second son, Qusay, now controls the intelligence and security forces, including the Special Republican Guards.
In the decade between the 1958 revolution, which ended the monarchy, and the July 30, 1968, coup, which brought the Baath party to power, Iraq experienced four successful coups and a dozen abortive ones. To Saddam and others in the new regime, the lessons of the previous ten years showed that power based solely on the military, party bureaucrats or government civil servants would not succeed. In the 1960s the party represented, in theory, the new Iraq. It was supposed to appeal to all Iraqis - Sunni, Shia and Christian; Arab and Kurd. The party was to provide all with special and equal status; membership brought privileges not available to non-party members and accorded Arab and Kurd, Sunni, Christian and Shia in the party with the same access to position, education and whatever else determined status in the new society. In the early years, party functionaries held high positions in the government and security services.
Bakr, Saddam and the new Baathist elite that controlled the party after the 1963 coup came almost entirely from provincial, semi-bedouin small towns and villages, where tribal and family loyalties were and still are strongest. They would soon replace the non-Tikritis, the non-Baathist military leaders and party ideologues with tribal loyalists, including Saddam's Ibrahim half-brothers- Barzan, Sibawi and Watban - in the 1970s and his Talfah and al-Majid cousins in the early 1980s. By the mid to late 1980s, members of Saddam's family and tribe would dominate all areas critical to Saddam's power. His family- especially cousins Hussein and Saddam Kamil and Ali Hassan al-Majid - would run the first circle of protection around Saddam, including intelligence, security and the all-important Ministry of Industry and Military Industrialization (MIMI), which was responsible for developing programs for weapons of mass destruction.
- Bakr, Saddam and their close allies, including Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri and Taha Yasin Ramadhan, oversaw the military bureau of the party, which was in charge of selecting and indoctrinating military cadets. Ramadhan, a Mosuli, was later removed because of his appointment of Mosuli friends and kin to the military academy.6 Saddam also oversaw selection of the members of the security bureau (Maktabat al-Alaqat al-Amm or Bureau of Public Relations) and established a Committee of the Tribes to work in the Sunni Arab region. He is thus the patriarch, the dispenser of power and the source of all influence in the party, the tribe and the state.
- In 1976, the government ordered Iraqis to drop their tribal/family names. No longer would they be identified as at-Tikriti, al-Mosuli or ad-Duri. The change was intended primarily to mask how many Tikritis, Dulaymis and others close to Saddam's clan were in key positions. Israeli scholar Amatzia Baram believes this "loss" of identity succeeded to the extent that many Iraqis, especially those who were urbanized and in the military or government, did not know their tribal roots.7 While this may be true of a small group of urbanized, well-educated Sunni Arabs, it is not true of the majority of Iraqis, for whom family, clan and tribal identification has always remained strong.
- By the early 1990s, Saddam's family policy had brought in sons Qusay and Uday. The reports of coup plotting after the war, however, revealed to outsiders the extent to which certain powerful tribal federations and extended families had been recruited into the security and intelligence services as well as key military units in the Republican Guard and the Special Republican Guard. These included the Jabburi, the Dulaymi and the Ubaydi.
SADDAM AS SHAYKH MASHAYIKH
The totalitarian nature of Baathist rule, the war against Iran, and the impact of sanctions after the occupation of Kuwait had unintended consequences for official tribal policy in Iraq. The one-party state destroyed or absorbed virtually all aspects of civil society: unions, professional organizations, the press, chambers of commerce and any other independent forms of association. The state had tried to weaken and displace traditional patterns of community leadership such as the sayyids (learned men) and the shaykhs (tribal notables). Religious institutions, both Sunni and Shia, were controlled by the state as well. Beginning in the early 1980s, war and sanctions weakened the economy and severely reduced the ability of the state to provide for or shelter many of those who depended on its safety net. The toll was especially heavy on rural Iraqi society, according to Abu Jabar. Economic hardships coupled with heavy combat losses reinforced traditional patterns of leadership, and tribalism enjoyed a revival. The state controlled media reinforced this trend by playing popular forms of tribal war poetry and stressing tribal concepts of manly valor, military prowess, courage, revenge and hon or.8
The sanctions imposed on Iraq after its invasion of Kuwait in 1990 strengthened this trend toward a resurgent tribalism. The state lost many of its economic and military capabilities. With no oil revenues, the state withdrew social services and was no longer able or willing to provide the subsidies and salaries the middle and lower classes depended on. Government policies fed inflation, which, coupled with low salaries, the downsizing of the military and the disintegration of the party, virtually eliminated a large percentage of Iraq's middle class in both city and countryside. In this vacuum, tribalism, based on cultural need as well as family lineage and connections, grew.
After the war, when Saddam felt threatened by the weakening of law and order and the potential threat to his regime, he resurrected tribal rule. He rewarded the loyalty of tribal leaders by allowing tribal law to prevail in many areas and bestowing on them guns, cars and privileges. In return, they acknowledged his leadership. On March 29, 1991, at the end of the Gulf War and after the suppression of the rebellions, Saddam received a major delegation of tribal chiefs. It was not the first time he had done so, but it was a significant meeting. The chiefs vowed allegiance (bayaa, an Islamic oath of loyalty to the ruler) or a covenant (ahd, signifying tribal honor) to support and obey the ruler, Saddam. Saddam had become shaykh mashayikh or chief of chiefs.
Abu Jabar describes the significance of the ceremony:
The symbolic action in this ceremony is of paramount importance. . . . It was performed by the shaykhs and their entourage at the presidential palace. The performance symbolized a hierarchy in which the shaykhs placed themselves at a lower position by elevating the president to the highest - shaykh mashayikh or the chief of chieftains. Another aspect is the lowering of the Igal. This tribal headwear is a thick, black cord woven in the shape of two rings and fixed overhead. When one's Igal is forcibly removed, it is an act of dishonor and one has to shed blood in order to remove shame. If it is done voluntarily, the situation implies a challenge to humiliation, and, again, blood is to be shed to retrieve honor. By this act, they signified their readiness to shed their honor before the president and for his own sake. This is to signify that while lowering their headwear, they gained rather than lost greater honor.9
Baghdad through the 1990s encouraged the reconstruction of clans and tribal extended families where they existed. In other areas, the government allowed the manufacture of new "tribal" groups based on economic ties or greed. Where the initiative was weak, Baghdad apparently encouraged prominent citizens to take the initiative or permitted non-leading families to manufacture an entity in order to gain power and wealth. These artificially constructed tribes are referred to scornfully in Iraq as "chieftains made in Taiwan," apparently a reference to the fact that wealthy, favored chiefs receive Japanese cars and electronics while the rest have to be satisfied with cheaper products made in Taiwan. Fake or real, the newly reconstructed and empowered tribes have little in common with the traditional tribe. Instead of common lineage, territory and a more agrarian livelihood and a rural guesthouse (mudhij), the new tribes are led by educated, middle-class professionals and civil servants who rent apartments in the city. The new tribe maintains local law and order, provides protection, settles disputes and imposes penalties or determines the settlement of blood money. In May 1996, state-tribe relations were codified in a draft law that created a high council of tribal chiefs with direct access to the president. The shaykhs were obliged to give absolute allegiance to the president, ensure security and stability in their districts (50 were designated), settle disputes and collect taxes and penalties on behalf of the government. In return, the shaykhs were to receive light arms and ammunition, electronic communication devices, vehicles, tracts of land, special government rations, diplomatic passports and exemption from military service.
Some of the new tribal shaykhs were also given national security responsibilities. For example, during Operation Desert Fox in November-December 1998, armed tribal units in civilian clothes were deployed in Baghdad and other cities to assist special security forces. These kinds of duties were once the preserve of the Baath party Popular Army. Tribal elements were assigned to the Ministry of interior, the presidential palace and the national security bureau headed by Qusay.
The renewed alliances between state and tribe have strengthened the state, but they have also created new tensions in Iraqi society and polity. Reconstructed tribes are now as much an urban as a provincial and rural phenomenon. They encroach on the preserve of the nontribalized, especially in the cities, and exacerbate tensions between tribes. Some operate as bandits, raiding truck and car convoys crossing the western desert to Jordan or smuggling narcotics across the Saudi border, according to press sources. Lest the tribes think they were the equal of Baghdad in authority, the Revolutionary Command Council in 1997 issued a new law prohibiting the tribes from challenging, suing or taking any action against central authority; state law took precedence over tribal authority. The normal frictions and jealousies between larger, wealthier, more powerful tribal groups and those lacking in size, patronage, status, wealth and influence are probably held in check to some extent by fear of Baghdad and of plunging Iraq into chaos in the face of external threat.
The extent and success of Saddam's new tribalism policies are uncertain. No one knows the size of the tribalized or nontribalized segments or who leads them. To all appearances, Saddam has continued his policy of wooing support from tribal leaders, and they, in turn, send him public telegrams of support and fealty on important occasions. This has created a new symbiosis: the state advances the favored tribes and the favored tribes protect the state. The state benefits from its absorption of the tribes and the tribes use the state to enrich themselves. These networks extend the narrow base of the ruling elite, provide manpower to help it control the state and society, and bring a semblance of stability to the power structure. Tribal solidarity and values are a source of cohesion, loyalty and discipline. Most important, they provide Saddam with a sense of trust in a normally conspiratorial environment where power struggles are the norm.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR U.S. ASPIRATIONS AND ACTIVITIES?
Tribes and tribalism were important factors in Iraqi history, culture and politics long before Saddam came to power and will be long after he is gone. A successor regime will probably have to make similar accommodations to prominent tribal leaders in order to gain powerful allies, consolidate its rule and stabilize large parts of Iraq. Its leader will have to accommodate their anachronistic demands and visions of power sharing with the needs of a modern and potentially wealthy state. He will have to ensure they do not challenge the growth of civil society and associational politics for those Iraqis not tribal, not rural, not dependent on these extra-legal groupings for their well-being and survival.
All of this poses a dilemma for those outside Iraq looking for those inside Iraq willing to try to overthrow Saddam. Any Iraqi willing to try to unseat Saddam would demand proof of support and loyalty if he succeeds. The risk is great; the reward should be unquestioned. Backing elements as roguish as Saddam will make no difference to neighbors and governments looking for anyone but Saddam to rule Iraq. If tribalism remains a factor defining Iraqi political and social behavior, then a successful challenger should bring with him, at a minimum, the loyalties of the Sunni Arab center and possibly Shia elements as well. Many families, including Saddam's, have Sunni and Shia branches in their extended family tree. To successfully challenge Saddam, an Iraqi would need to have popular recognition, supporters in military and/or party bureaucracy, and a network of family and tribal supporters. Saddam has let few Iraqis with these qualifications survive. But if one were to succeed, few would question his legitimacy. The United States will not have much time to consider its options. If the new leader had promises or had received assistance beforehand, then he would assume continued support. If not, Iraq's neighbors as well as most European and Asian governments will not hesitate to recognize the new leader.
Quick recognition might help assure regime stability and limit post-regime blood feuds. It should also accord corresponding influence to those governments quick to respond favorably and willing to live with the consequences of their decision.
1 The word connotes tribal solidarity, clannishness, tribalism and race as well as national consciousness.
2 The creation of a new nationalism, which harks back to ancient and historical glories from the mists of time, is similar to Mussolini's glorification of ancient Rome, Hitler's pride in the folk culture of pre-Christian Germanic tribes, Ataturk's vision of Hittite culture, and Reza Shah's vision of the new Aryan nation at Persepolis. Saddam frequently invokes Hammurabi, Salah al-Din, Abraham of Ur and other hoary figures as well as Islam's pantheon of Muhammad, Hussein and other saints to embellish his own persona as well as Iraq's pride in its history and culture.
3 See Phebe Marr. The Modern History of Iraq (Westview, 1985).
4 See Fahh Abu Jabar, "The Reconstruction and Deconstruction of Iraq's Tribes: Tribalism under Patrimonial Totalitarianism, 1968-1998," unpublished paper, October 14, 1999.
5 Ibid., p. 17.
6 Ibid., p. 9.
7 Amatzia Baram, "Neo-Tribalism in Iraq: Saddam Hussein's Tribal Policies 1991-96," International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 29, No. I. February 1997, pp. 1-31.
8 Ibid., p. 15.
9 Ibid., p. 18. | <urn:uuid:dc5b5c81-1ffd-442d-bd3f-6340f0c9c890> | CC-MAIN-2018-43 | http://www.mepc.org/journal/tribalism-iraq-old-and-new-0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-43/segments/1539583511744.53/warc/CC-MAIN-20181018063902-20181018085402-00413.warc.gz | en | 0.965044 | 4,868 | 2.671875 | 3 |
Why Rabies Pet Vaccinations Are Vital for Every Pet
Our Canton veterinarian would like to stress the importance of getting rabies pet vaccinations for your cats, dogs and ferrets. Even though rabies might seem as commonly discussed as years prior, this deadly viral disease is still prevalent in wild animals. If your pet contracts rabies, there is nothing our animal hospital can do to save him.
Rabies Pet Vaccinations Are a Crucial Part of Public Health
Rabies pet vaccinations are required by law in Georgia because this disease is contagious to humans. Rabies kills 55,000 people around the world every year. Every ten minutes, someone in the world dies of rabies.
Although we now have medical care that can prevent rabies transmission in people who are exposed, death will still occur if a person is exposed to rabies and does not seek treatment right away. You can be exposed to rabies if you are bitten by a rabid animal or have any other contact with the saliva of an animal with the disease.
Thanks to rabies pet vaccinations, rabies is now much more common in wild animals in this country than in pets. Prior to 1960, most humans who were exposed to rabies were exposed through a domestic animal. Now, most human exposure to rabies occurs due to exposure to wild animals with the disease.
However, our Canton veterinarian would like you to know that you can still be exposed to rabies if your pet becomes infected. You may think that your pet does not need a rabies vaccination because you keep him inside. Your indoor pet could still slip out and become infected with rabies. The law says that even indoor pets must be vaccinated against rabies.
Getting your pet vaccinated against rabies at our animal hospital protects him from contracting this disease. By extension, getting your pet vaccinated protects you, your family and your community from this deadly viral illness.
Rabies vaccinations are given in a single dose, at three months of age for dogs, and at two months of age for cats. There are two types of rabies vaccines used in animals; one is administered every year, while the other is administered every three years. You can discuss which type of vaccine is best for your pet when you bring him into our animal hospital at Acres Mill Veterinary Clinic for his rabies vaccination.
When our Canton veterinarian gives your pet his rabies shot, you will be provided with a rabies tag and proof of vaccination. If your pet is a dog, put the rabies tag on his collar with his other identification. If your pet is a cat, you may opt not to put the tag on his collar, especially if he is an indoor pet. Cats tend to lose (or remove) their collars and you may lose the rabies tag. Keep it in a safe place. Remember to keep your pet's rabies vaccination up-to-date. The health of our community and your pet depends on it. | <urn:uuid:3885824a-635c-4f30-80a5-c2a6233c333b> | CC-MAIN-2020-40 | https://www.acresmillvet.com/about-us/services/pet-vaccinations/rabies.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-40/segments/1600400198868.29/warc/CC-MAIN-20200920223634-20200921013634-00268.warc.gz | en | 0.968645 | 601 | 3 | 3 |
Most of us know that we have lots of organisms in our guts to help us digest food (and if we forget it, Jaime Lee Curtis is willing to tell us in her Activia commercials!) The microorganisms are so important that termites cannot digest wood without their gut bacteria and we cannot break down all our food without the human kind. What you might not know is that we have hundreds of trillions of organisms especially along our GI tract, respiratory system and skin. And they do a lot more than digest. They fight infections, create certain vitamins, form a living wallpaper on the intestinal wall to protect our bloodstreams from debris. Some help make us fat or thin. But did you know that our bacteria might affect our sex drive? At least they do for white fruit flies, known as Drosophilia. If you kill off their gut bacteria, they won’t mate the same way.
In the February 2011 issue of Surgery News, Lazar Greenfield wrote:
It has long been known that Drosophila raised on starch media are more likely to mate with other starch-raised flies, whereas those fed maltose have similar preferences. In a study published online in the November issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, investigators explored the mechanism for this preference by treating flies with antibiotics to sterilize the gut and saw the preferences disappear (Proc. Nad. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 2010 Nov. 1).
In cultures of untreated flies, the bacterium L. plantarum was more common in those on starch, and sure enough, when L. plantarum was returned to the sterile groups, the mating preference returned. The best explanation for this is revealed in the significant differences in their sex pheromones. These experiments also support the hologenome theory of evolution wherein the unit of natural selection is the “holobiont,” or combination of organism and its microorganisms, that determines mating preferences.
- Commensal bacteria play a role in mating preference of Drosophila melanogaster (pubmed.com)
- Rapid spread of a bacterial symbiont in an invasive whitefly is driven by fitness benefits and female bias. (pubmed.com)
- The Microbiology of the Human Axilla and Its Relationship to Axillary Odor (pubmed.com)
- MHC-correlated odour preferences in humans and the use of oral contraceptives. (pubmed.com)
- Our Symbionts Ourselves (acupuncturebrooklyn.com)
- Microbes for the Lovelorn (syaffolee.wordpress,com)
- Bacteria determining our love life? (bio230fall2010.wordpress.com)
- Bacterium and Whiteflies: New Best Frenemies? (livescience.com) | <urn:uuid:869124ad-9059-4fbe-a3af-84cd5dd89861> | CC-MAIN-2021-04 | http://www.acupuncturebrooklyn.com/alternative-health/bacteria-and-sexual-desire | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-04/segments/1610703499999.6/warc/CC-MAIN-20210116014637-20210116044637-00101.warc.gz | en | 0.893942 | 582 | 3.265625 | 3 |
Exercise and Fitness Tips to Improve Your Health
Get answers to your questions about exercise, and tips for getting the most from your workouts.
Q. What should my heart rate be during exercise?
Richard Weil, MEd, CDE, recommends calculating your target heart rate with a
formula called the “heart rate reserve” method. Use a watch with a second hand
to keep track of how many times your heart beats per minute. You can feel your
heartbeat at the underside of your wrist or along the side of your neck.
Here's how to use the formula:
- Determine your Maximum Heart Rate (MHR) by subtracting your age from
- Then, subtract your resting heart rate (it's best to take this when you
first wake up in the morning) from your Maximum Heart Rate to find your Heart
Rate Reserve (HRR).
- Multiply your HRR by the percentage of your MHR at which you wish to train
(60% to 85% is the usual range for people looking to increase fitness and
- Add your resting heart rate back to that result to get your target
So, assuming an age of 27, a resting heart rate of 70 beats per minute, and
a desired training range of 70%, the calculation would look like this:
220 - 27 = 193
193 - 70 = 123
123 x .70% = 86
86 + 70 = 156
Remember, this is an estimate, not an absolute. Also keep in mind that
athletes may exceed the training zone, and even the maximum heart rate, during
Q. My weight has hit a plateau. What do I do?
There are several reasons why your weight can hit a plateau, including:
- Losing weight too quickly. When this happens, your metabolism (the rate at
which your body burns calories) can slow down because your body senses it is
starving. Rapid or large amounts of weight loss can slow your metabolism by as
much as 40% in six months.
- Losing muscle. When you lose weight, up to 25% can come from muscle tissue.
And since muscle is the engine in your body that burns calories and helps
maintain your metabolism, losing it can hinder weight loss. Weightlifting can
help preserve and build muscle.
- Reaching your body's particular set point -- the weight and metabolic rate
your body is genetically programmed to be. Once you reach that point, it's much
harder to lose weight and even if you do, you're likely to regain it. If you're
at a weight at which you've hit a plateau in the past, if your body generally
seems to gravitate toward that weight, and you're within a BMI (body-mass
index) range of 20 to 25, then you may be at your set point.
- Decreasing your physical activity and/or increasing your caloric intake.
People lose weight all the time by reducing their caloric intake without doing
any exercise, but it's almost impossible to keep weight off without exercising.
Many scientists agree that physical activity is the single best predictor of
whether a person will maintain a weight loss.
- Other health factors, including thyroid or adrenal gland problems;
medications like antidepressants; quitting smoking; menopause; and | <urn:uuid:9a611c3d-6aea-449d-b8a5-5b33e9903ff6> | CC-MAIN-2014-52 | http://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/features/exercise-fitness-tips-improve-your-health?page=5 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-52/segments/1419447548035.129/warc/CC-MAIN-20141224185908-00001-ip-10-231-17-201.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.91684 | 691 | 2.796875 | 3 |
The height measurement on a dog is done from the ground to its withers. The withers is the highest point of a dog’s shoulder blades. Measuring from the withers to the ground is standard for all dogs, and allows you to get an accurate measurement every time.
- The height of a German Shepherd is always measured at what is known as the withers, which is the part of their back right above their shoulders at the base of the neck. This is the tallest point on the dog’s body when they’re standing.
- 1 How do you measure a German Shepherd?
- 2 How is the height of a dog measured?
- 3 How tall is a German Shepherd standing up?
- 4 How high can a German Shepherd jump?
- 5 How tall are female German shepherds?
- 6 What is the tallest breed dog?
- 7 How Tall Can German Shepherds get in feet?
- 8 Do German Shepherds have wolf in them?
- 9 What age does a German shepherd become aggressive?
- 10 How long do German shepherd live?
How do you measure a German Shepherd?
Lay the measuring tape straight across your dog’s back, following its spine, until you reach the point where its tail meets its body. Read the measurement on the tape where your dog’s tail begins. This measurement — which is significantly less than the nose-to-tail-tip measurement would be — is your dog’s length.
How is the height of a dog measured?
To measure your dog’s height, make sure that he is standing straight against a wall. This is the highest point of your dog’s shoulder blades and where the shoulder blades and neck meet. It is the tallest point on your dog’s body (excluding his head). Run the measuring tape from the floor to your dog’s withers.
How tall is a German Shepherd standing up?
How big is a German Shepherd? German Shepherds stand roughly 29” | 74 cm tall with males having a withers (shoulder) height of 24″-26″ | 61-66 cm and females with a height of 22”-24” | 56-61 cm.
How high can a German Shepherd jump?
The average German Shepherd can easily jump as high as 4 to 6 feet. Given a long enough run-up, they’re able to reach much greater heights. Additionally, GSDs can be trained for high jumps given their build and athleticism, not to mention their drive.
How tall are female German shepherds?
German Shepherds are medium to large-sized dogs. The breed standard height at the withers is 60–65 cm (24–26 in) for males, and 55–60 cm (22–24 in) for females.
What is the tallest breed dog?
Large and majestic, the Irish Wolfhound is the tallest breed of dog recognized by the AKC and was originally bred as a big-game hunter.
How Tall Can German Shepherds get in feet?
Males stand 24 to 26 inches; females stand 22 to 24 inches. Weight ranges from 75 to 95 pounds.
Do German Shepherds have wolf in them?
What is this? German Shepherds are not part wolf but descended from the gray wolf. Despite sharing 99.9% of their DNA with wolves and being genetically very close, they are not wolves. All domesticated dogs are members of the Canidae family – 34 species, including wolves, coyotes, jackals, dingoes, and foxes.
What age does a German shepherd become aggressive?
What Age Does a German Shepherd Become Aggressive? A German Shepherd becomes aggressive at around 3 to 6 months old. This escalates during the adolescent stage from 6 months to two years old as sexual maturity arises and hormones fluctuate.
How long do German shepherd live?
Adolescence in most dogs starts around 6 months of age and typically goes until around 2 years of age. If your dog is protective in any of the 3 ways mentioned above, you will start to see their puppy behavior change sometime between 6-12 months of age. | <urn:uuid:47581809-7549-48bc-b0f0-356d98ed1ae7> | CC-MAIN-2022-05 | https://vbocaucasian.com/german-shepherd/how-to-measure-the-height-of-a-german-shepherd-solution.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-05/segments/1642320303779.65/warc/CC-MAIN-20220122073422-20220122103422-00509.warc.gz | en | 0.961596 | 886 | 2.828125 | 3 |
There are two forces required for an air-craft to fly; lift and thrust. Lift is the electro-magnetic force which directly opposes the weight of an air-craft and holds the body of an air-craft up in the air. Thrust is the force that pushes or drives an air-craft with forward momentum through the air. Winged planes and helicopters are air-craft that use the surrounding air as their only source of fuel for sustained periods of flight. Keep in mind a glider can stay up in the air for over 12 hours and a boat with a sail can sail upwind; both those examples have no engine but helicopters and winged planes do have engines and can fly for much longer and further than a glider.
Lift is generated by the electric charge at rest on the insulated body of the air-craft and it’s (copper/aluminium alloy) wings that establish an adjacent electrostatic field to the ground and surrounding air. Electrostatic discharges are attached to the wings and tail of air-craft to prevent build-up of electro-static charge that could potentially interfere with the air-craft onboard electrical system. The Rolls Royce, General Electric, Pratt & Whitney, CMF, Boeing, Airbus etc patented air/gas turbine turbo-fan engines are in common use on commercial passenger airline winged-aircraft to power onboard electrical systems and provide thrust, in large ships to produce electricity for onboard electrical systems and propel propellers or in ‘power stations’ to provide electricity for industrial or residential areas.
Air is naturally a combination of gasses and is the natural gas that a gas-turbine or turbo-fan engine uses. When you look inside the turbo-fan air/gas turbine engine you will see multiple rows of fans attached to the turbine shaft. On each side of the spinning fans is a high to low pressure exchange of air. The fans once spinning are exchanging the air pressure increases and reductions through a tapered chamber (providing compression) whilst turning (creating a vortex). The end result is that the air drawn into the engine is moving more easily and quickly out of the back of the engine generating thrust for flight. Once the engine’s fans are spinning sufficiently (to overunity, meaning producing more energy then consumed), defeating the frictions involved in turning initially a runaway condition of drawing in more air that leaves much faster out the back than when it arrives in the front is created.
The design of a gas-turbine or turbo-fan engine is to brake/slow the process so that it is not simply a runaway condition at the mercy of the engine components that would put great stress on the engine possibly breaking it. When a pilot puts forward the thrust the controls loosen up the breaking systems within the turbine-engine fans that slow down the otherwise runaway process. The electrical charge generated by the fan-blades driven turbine is used to charge batteries and provide power for the air-craft onboard electrical system. The various engines in use are quite simple and similar in design having three main components. A large rotating fan at the front of the engine to draw in and compress air that drives a series of smaller fans on the same turbine shaft compressing the air in high to low pressure exchanges inside the tapered chamber into the final compression chamber that provides the outlet for the now heated, compressed and charged air/gasses. Air/gas turbine engines simply form a spiral of highly pressurised and heated air. This spiral is super-charged and full of static-electricity as a result and is the true cause of so-called “condensation trails” or “chemtrails”.
Helicopters and hovercraft use air/gas turbines to produce thrust and lift with an air/gas powered turbine with fixed fan blades attached that when rotating attached act as a ‘levitation’ device meaning the spinning blades generate an electromagnetic field that interacts with the adjacent electro-magnetic field all things great and small are contained within. The electrical activity created by the spinning blades of the helicopter or hovercraft induces a magnetic field that draws the air-craft upwards away from the ground, bodies of water and surrounding air. The very same world wide electro-magnetic field that sky-scrapers and high-tension power lines harvest “atmospheric” electricity from. The air-craft fuel is the same air you breath in and compress in your lung compression chambers then exhale.
Are people really supposed to believe that in the entire history of aviation that no one ever thought to use the air as the only source of fuel was a good idea? It’s so obvious that ‘jet fuel’ is the Catch 22 of the airline industry because you’d have to be crazy to believe the ‘jet fuel’ lies but you are contractually bound to say you believe in the ‘jet fuel’ lies in order to work in the airline industry under non-disclosure agreements without permission to photograph the equipment or share patented blueprints. Anytime you see an “afterburner” on an air-craft at an air show remember it is there for show and is no evidence of “jet fuel”. Anytime you smell diesel on the runway it’s from the diesel refilling truck for the baggage carts that use diesel or from their exhaust. When the crew say they will be “refuelling” they mean they are going to the airport bar.
Call it the “air-craft fuel hoax” or “airline industry fraud” or “jet fuel conspiracy” or simply “trade secret legalised legal lies”. Legal lies like “over the course of a ten-hour flight the air-craft “might” burn 36,000 gallons (150,000 litres) of super-refined kerosene “jet fuel” stored in the very thin wings that contain hydraulics for both flaps and landing gear but also structural framework to support the weight of the engine” and you “might” believe that. In truth air/gas turbines have already been adapted and used to provide power to industries, residences, ships, cars, motorbikes and all manner of air-craft from planes, to helicopters to hovercraft any beyond. 3D Printed Air(Gas) Turbine Model displays how the air(gas) is compressed by the fan blades that drive the central turbine producing thrust and electro-motive force. It’s pretty simple once you understand how it works. | <urn:uuid:eb0b1625-4e7a-46e4-86eb-9b229bd11355> | CC-MAIN-2018-51 | http://www.timetounite.com/jet-fuel-hoax-planes-run-on-air-not-fuel-part-2/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-51/segments/1544376825495.60/warc/CC-MAIN-20181214070839-20181214092339-00330.warc.gz | en | 0.923112 | 1,353 | 4.03125 | 4 |
SOS Children's Village Gabú
In one of the world's poorest countries, extreme poverty continues to take its toll: child mortality rates are skyrocketing and many children suffer from undernourishment and preventable diseases. Although the government has taken important steps to protect its children, many are still deprived of a secure childhood.
The situation in Gabú has been referred to as a “silent emergency
Gabú, capital of the homonymous region, has a population of roughly 38,000 and is located in easternmost Guinea-Bissau. The city is an important centre for commerce as well as for trade with neighbouring Senegal and Guinea. Gabú is one of the poorest regions in the country, and thus in West Africa. Poverty levels are extremely high in this sparsely populated agricultural region, and thousands of young people leave their villages behind each year to migrate south to the bigger cities in search of a better life.
Healthy, safe and happy at the children’s village (photo: C. Ladavicius)
The lack of educational institutions in the region is another huge problem that severely affects the population, in particular the younger generation who have little hope of improving their living conditions in the future if they do not receive the educational foundation to do so. But illiteracy remains shockingly prominent – up to 70 per cent of the local population cannot read or write at all, and almost 60 per cent of the adult population never attended school. These figures are gradually improving for the current generation of students, but progress is slow. Teachers receive very low wages and do not have sufficient teaching materials at their disposal; hence, motivation is often very low, which in turn leads to high levels of absenteeism amongst students.
Gabú Region also faces a number of serious health issues. Maternal mortality is high in the whole country, but here in the north it is even higher. In part, this is due to the fact that hospitals are far away and the journey there is expensive. Many women therefore do not receive antenatal care and births often aren’t attended by a medical professional. HIV has also been spreading and information is not sufficiently available to the population. Malaria, too, is still a major threat, there are frequent cholera outbreaks during the rainy seasons, and tuberculosis and other infectious diseases are common.
Children are the most vulnerable and urgently need protection
Child trafficking remains a problem that severely affects the region: UNICEF estimates that each and every month 200 children are trafficked from Guinea Bissau to other West African countries. Sometimes parents entrust their young boys to a Koranic teacher, or “marabout”, who deceives them into believing their sons will receive a religious education but then forces the boys to beg in the streets. Others are forced to work in cotton fields in Senegal, and girls often perform domestic work in conditions akin to slavery. If these children manage to escape, they often have no one to turn to and could end up in even more precarious a situation.
What we do in Gabú
SOS Children’s Villages began its work in Gabú in 2001. For children from the region who can no longer live with their parents, twelve SOS families can provide a loving home for up to 120 children. In each family, the children live with their brothers and sisters, affectionately cared for by their SOS mother.
Sisters doing each other’s hair (photo: C. Lesske)
The children attend the SOS Kindergarten together with children from the neighbourhood. This ensures that they make friends and are integrated into the local community from a young age. The kindergarten is very important to the local population as it allows single mothers and working parents to leave their children in safe hands while they are out making a living.
The children then continue their education at the SOS Hermann Gmeiner primary school, which is attended by up to 340 pupils. Due to the scarcity of schools in the region, the presence of the SOS school is very important here. | <urn:uuid:f51486f8-b667-4a64-81bc-5735e89a5a06> | CC-MAIN-2020-16 | https://www.sos-usa.org/where-we-are/africa/guinea-bissau/gabu | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-16/segments/1585371700247.99/warc/CC-MAIN-20200407085717-20200407120217-00471.warc.gz | en | 0.969057 | 823 | 3.03125 | 3 |
The area of the Gulf of Roses and the Bay of Pals is one of the most fragile in the Mediterranean from an ecological point of view. It constitutes, according to scientists, the largest marine natural heritage in Catalonia. We find it geographically close to areas that have a dozen environmental protection figures, as well as close to two marine reserves, it’s surrounded by three natural parks (the NP of Cabo de Creus, the NP of Montgrí-Les Medes-El Baix Ter and the Aiguamolls del Empordà NP) and it is affected by Natura 2000 Network areas. These arguments are included in a manifesto published a few months ago by a group of scientists, which has been supported by more than 100 researchers belonging to more than 20 research centres, universities and other institutions where scientists are represented:(https://drive.google.com/file/d/19ivxq-o5Hlx4gwrBw9jHxumVvPgdMwqd/view?usp=sharing)
In addition, a recent scientific study published in the journal Science of the Total Environment warned of the serious impacts that offshore wind farms can cause on marine biodiversity, the landscape, fisheries and tourism. This study recommended moving these facilities away from protected areas in the Mediterranean such as the one in question (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969722008956?via%3Dihub).
The introduction of renewable energy is necessary, but we consider that it is a serious mistake to carry out construction at the expense of biodiversity and nature, especially when there are alternatives that are less harmful to the territory and the people who inhabit it.
The wind turbines, which are planned to be constructed a few kilometers from the coast and are still in the design phase, would not only have an impact on biodiversity but also on fishing activity, which is key to the economy of the area along with tourism. The emblematic coast of the Costa Brava, with beaches and landscapes of great interest, will also be affected, as well as the territory through which the connection of the electric line is planned to run from the sea infrastructure to the distribution centre (Aiguamolls del Empordà, among other areas of high natural interest).
We also want to highlight the surprising change in the wording of the Maritime Space Management Plan (POEM) which, if we do not prevent it, will soon give the green light to the development of offshore wind power in this area. Up to now, six projects have been presented. The Spanish Government has recently published the POEM strategic environmental declaration document that maintains the Gulf of Roses as an area with high potential for offshore wind power. It should be noted that this document has not taken into account arguments that have been valid to rule out the projects proposed in Cabo de Gata, Andalusia, and the Balearic Islands. However, the previous 2007 regulations excluded the same area for this type of energy project.
Sign and help us stop the irreversible consequences of this construction!
Image: simulation of the Cadaqués beach with the macro wind farm, carried out by the biologist and landscape designer Anna Zahonero. | <urn:uuid:4876f8f3-7cba-40de-b9d5-39f55deb324b> | CC-MAIN-2024-10 | https://action.wemove.eu/sign/202302-ayudanos-a-detener-la-construccion-de-macro-parques-eolicos-en-el-golfo-de-roses-petition-EN | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2024-10/segments/1707947475897.53/warc/CC-MAIN-20240302184020-20240302214020-00019.warc.gz | en | 0.936948 | 667 | 2.671875 | 3 |
Some of the highest peaks in the world, including K2, may be found in Gilgit Baltistan, a mountainous region in northern Pakistan. Over two million people live in the region, representing a variety of ethnic groups such the Baltis, Shinaks, Burushos, and others.
Gilgit Baltistan is hampered by a multitude of issues, such as subpar government, limited infrastructure, and pervasive poverty, despite its stunning natural surroundings and vibrant culture. The region has also experienced a protracted conflict between India and Pakistan, which has made its issues worse.
One of the biggest challenges facing Gilgit Baltistan is poor governance. The region is governed under the Gilgit Baltistan Order of 2018, which gives the federal government in Islamabad a wide range of powers over the region. This includes the power to appoint and dismiss the region’s chief minister and cabinet, as well as to control its budget and security.
A dream not fulfilled. A girl sitting in far fetched village of Baltistan, not connected by road.
The Gilgit Baltistan Order of 2018 has been criticized by many for being undemocratic and for undermining the region’s autonomy. The region’s elected representatives have little real power, and the federal government has been accused of interfering in the region’s internal affairs.
The healthcare sector in Gilgit Baltistan is also in a state of crisis. The region has a shortage of doctors, nurses, and other healthcare professionals. Medical facilities are also inadequate, and many people in the region have to travel long distances to access basic healthcare services.
The lack of adequate healthcare has led to high rates of preventable diseases in Gilgit Baltistan. For example, the infant mortality rate in the region is one of the highest in Pakistan.
The education sector in Gilgit Baltistan is also facing a number of challenges. The literacy rate in the region is lower than the national average, and many children, especially girls, do not attend school. The quality of education in the region is also poor, and many schools lack basic facilities such as textbooks and desks.
The lack of quality education is a major obstacle to development in Gilgit Baltistan. It denies young people the opportunity to acquire the skills and knowledge they need to succeed in the modern world.
Road and Transport Sector
The road and transport sector in Gilgit Baltistan is also inadequate. The region has a limited network of roads, and many of them are in poor condition. This makes it difficult and expensive for people and goods to move around the region.
The poor road network also makes it difficult for people to access essential services such as healthcare and education. It also discourages investment and tourism in the region.
Poor Living Conditions
Many people in Gilgit Baltistan live in poverty and have poor living conditions. The region has a high rate of unemployment, and many people struggle to meet their basic needs such as food and shelter. The lack of basic infrastructure such as clean water, sanitation, and electricity also makes life difficult for many people in Gilgit Baltistan.
With deteriorating economic conditions, rising inflation and skyrocketing fuel prices, it had become nearly impossible for common people to sustain living.
Corruption is another major problem in Gilgit Baltistan. The region is plagued by nepotism, favoritism, and other forms of corruption. This has led to a decline in public trust in the government and has undermined the region’s development. Pakistan Military involvement in land grabbing incidents has led to mass protest and seen as a unethical intervention in public affairs.
Military Autocracy in Federal Govt
The federal government in Islamabad is dominated by the military. This has led to a number of problems and protests for Gilgit Baltistan, including the militarization of the region and the suppression of dissent. The military’s involvement in the region has also been linked to human rights abuses, including torture, land grabbing and extrajudicial killings.
Comparison with Developed Provinces of Pakistan
Gilgit Baltistan is significantly less developed than other provinces of Pakistan such as Sindh and Punjab. This is evident in a number of indicators, including poverty rates, literacy rates, and access to basic infrastructure. For example, the poverty rate in Gilgit Baltistan is estimated to be around 40%, while the poverty rate in Sindh and Punjab is around 25%. The literacy rate in Gilgit Baltistan is also lower than the national average, while the literacy rates in Sindh and Punjab are much higher.
Gilgit Baltistan also lags behind other provinces of Pakistan in terms of access to basic infrastructure such as clean water, sanitation, and electricity.
The people of Gilgit Baltistan face a number of challenges, including poor governance, inadequate infrastructure, and widespread poverty. The region has also been the site of a long-running conflict between India and Pakistan, which has further exacerbated its problems. The federal government in Islamabad has a responsibility to address the challenges facing Gilgit Baltistan | <urn:uuid:376f7b8d-cd01-42b9-8103-0059ebe3a52b> | CC-MAIN-2023-50 | https://theasianobserver.com/a-dream-that-wasnt-made-for-gilgit-baltistan-good-governance/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-50/segments/1700679515260.97/warc/CC-MAIN-20231211143258-20231211173258-00846.warc.gz | en | 0.966342 | 1,015 | 2.953125 | 3 |
Three Dimensional Sound
Professor, MAE and Director
Electric Propulsion & Plasma Dynamics Lab
About the Lecture
This lecture will discuss a process known as “3D Audio.” 3D Audio is sound reproduction that allows a listener to (1) hear sounds in a three-dimensional manner, as if the listener is in the original recorded sound field, and (2) precisely locate sound sources in that 3D space. For example, assume during a recording session that an insect flies in a circle around the recording microphones. A listener of the recording, played back through the loudspeakers of the 3D Audio system, would hear the same insect as if it were circling his or her own head. 3D Audio over loudspeakers has obvious applications for 3D cinema, 3D TV, pro audio, computer gaming, teleconferencing, medical aid for hearing-impaired patients, military training, virtual reality systems, and the multi-billion-dollar home entertainment industry. The lecturer will present the pros and cons of the three most promising methods for 3D sound reproduction: (1) Wavefield Synthesis, (2) Ambisonics, and (3) Binaural audio through loudspeakers. He will then discuss several recent advances covering the third “binaural method,” which have led to the development of the BACCH 3D sound technology at Princeton University. The lecturer will also discuss how the “binaural method” is capable of delivering the necessary cues for 3-D Audio to the ear-brain system using only two transducers (if the “crosstalk” between the left (right) transducer and the right (left) ear is canceled). However, one problem is that this crosstalk cancellation (XTC) inherently imposes a strong spectral coloration on the sound that is intolerable by audio engineering standards. But the team at Princeton has had a recent breakthrough which makes it possible to produce optimized XTC filters (called BACCH filters) that impose no spectral coloration to the sound. The design of these BACCH filters and their uses in various 3D Audio applications will be discussed. The talk will conclude with a demonstration of a BACCH 3D sound system.
About the Speaker
EDGAR CHOUEIRI is a professor of applied physics at the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department of Princeton University and Associated Faculty at the Department of Astrophysical Sciences, Program in Plasma Physics. He is also Director of Princeton University’s Engineering Physics Program and Chief Scientist at the university’s Electric Propulsion and Plasma Dynamics Lab, a recognized center of excellence in research in the field of advanced spacecraft propulsion. He is also the director of Princeton’s 3D Audio and Applied Acoustics (3D3A) Lab. Professor Choueiri is a world-renown leader in the field of plasma physics and plasma propulsion for spacecraft. He is the author of more than 145 scientific publications, and encyclopedia articles on plasma rockets, plasma physics, instabilities and turbulence in collisional plasmas, plasma accelerator modeling, space physics and applied mathematics. An avid audiophile, acoustician and classical music recordist, his decades-long passion for perfecting the realism of music reproduction has led him to work on the difficult fundamental problem of designing advanced digital filters that allow the natural 3D audio to be extracted from stereo sound played through two loudspeakers, without adding any spectral coloration to the sound (i.e. without changing its tonal character). He was able to solve this problem mathematically by applying the analytical and mathematical tools he uses in his plasma physics research.
President John Ingersoll called the 2,296th meeting to order at 8:18 pm February 3, 2012 in the Powell Auditorium of the Cosmos Club. Mr. Ingersoll announced the order of business and introduced eight new members of the Society, including the speaker of the evening.
The minutes of the 2,295th meeting were read and approved.
Mr. Ingersoll then introduced the speaker, Mr. Edgar Choueiri of Princeton University. Mr. Choueiri spoke on "Three Dimensional Sound."
Mr. Choueiri began by explaining that a bird chirping in the sky creates successive propagating density disturbances in the shape of concentric spheres, similar to how a pebble thrown in a still pond creates ripples of concentric circles. Three dimensional sound describes the ability to record the bird's chirping and then play that recording back in such a way that the listener perceives the bird to be in its original location. Modern sound systems can provide some directional information using multiple speakers surrounding the listener but the sound still seems to come from the speakers instead of the sound's original position at the time of recording, he said.
Mr. Choueiri then described two techniques for creating three dimensional sound. Wave field synthesis uses many microphones on a closed contour like a circle, then reconstructs the sound field using many speakers. While simple in theory, this approach requires many microphones, significant audio processing power, and is incompatible with existing recordings, he said. Ambisonics is similar to wave field synthesis but positions many microphones on a sphere and then reconstructs the sound field using spherical harmonics, also with similar disadvantages.
Mr. Choueiri explained that the human brain can determine a sound's position in space very accurately using several cues. The interaural temporal difference is the time difference between the arrival of sounds at the left and right ear, on the order of tens of microseconds. The interaural level difference is the loudness difference observed between the left and right ear, due to both the extra distance traveled to the far ear and the shielding role of the head. The brain also recognizes spectral cues when sound waves interact with the external part of the ear, the pinna, causing different attenuation depending on incoming direction.
Mr. Choueiri then discussed a third method for three dimensional audio involving binaural recording and crosstalk cancellation. Binaural recording uses two microphones in the ear canals of a dummy head of average proportions. If the left recording is heard only by the listener's left ear and the right recording by the listener's right ear, the sound is faithfully recreated. Crosstalk occurs when each ear hears the opposite channel, which corrupts the three dimensional cues and must be eliminated for the brain to receive the cues correctly, he said. Therefore, the audio emitted from the speakers must be modified to stop the left ear from hearing the right channel and vice versa.
Mr. Choueiri continued to explain how an audio filter could use negative sound pressure to create a signal separation barrier in space by modeling and inverting the sound mixing that occurs between the left and right signals in air. This technique has traditionally caused unacceptable coloration of the audio, affecting the tonal quality such that instruments and voices no longer sound correct. The main breakthrough in Mr. Choueiri's work is finding a way to create a crosstalk cancellation filter that does not impose a spectral coloration of the sound and instead has an effectively flat frequency response.
Mr. Choueiri then described the Band-Assembled Crosstalk Cancellation Hierarchy (BACCH) filter, which causes stereo speakers to alternately emit positive and negative images of the same sound, faster than the brain can resolve, to cancel the signal at the appropriate ear. By mathematically optimizing the filter's characteristics, it is possible to perform this cancellation with the minimum amount of spectral coloration penalty. Mr. Choueiri concluded by giving a demonstration of three dimensional audio using a portable stereo speaker prototype equipped with the BACCH filter.
After the question and answer period, Mr. Ingersoll thanked the speaker, made the usual housekeeping announcements, and invited guests to apply for membership. At 10:06 pm, President John Ingersoll adjourned the 2,296th meeting to the social hour.
The weather: Partly Cloudy
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A number of years ago I heard the prominent lecturer and author Ron Carlson speak on the value of human life. He spoke of visiting the Cambodian border back in the 1970s when over 300,000 refugees were looking for a place to settle. They had escaped the Cambodian massacre but had no place to go.
Carlson was stunned that all these Buddhist refugees were coming from Cambodia and Laos, yet there were no Buddhist’s lending a hand or taking care of them. Nor were there any Hindus or Muslims. The only people taking care of all these refugees were Christians from Christian mission and relief organizations.
Carlson approached a man who had lived in this area for twenty years and asked him “Why in a Buddhist country, with Buddhist refugees, are there no Buddhists here caring for their brothers?” The reason he received:
“Ron, have you ever seen what Buddhism does to a nation or a people? Buddha taught that each man is an island unto himself. Buddha said, ‘If someone is suffering, that is his karma.’ You are not to interfere with another person’s karma because he is purging himself through suffering and reincarnation! Buddha said, ‘You are to be an island unto yourself.’”
This leader of the relief effort continued, “Ron, the only people that have a reason to be here today taking care of these 300,000 refugees are Christians. It is only in Christianity that people have a basis for human value; that people are important enough to educate and care for.”
The Christian view of life is that people are of such great value because they are created in the image of God.
In his well-documented book, How Christianity Changed the World, Alvin Schmidt shows how the moral, biblical worldview of Christianity has had such a powerful and positive influence on the world. Through the historical record, he demonstrates the following,
The idea of human rights came straight from the Bible, as God places a high view of human life and its sanctity.
Christianity greatly elevated and exalted the value of women. Christ raised the dignity, freedom, and rights of women to a level previously unknown in all other cultures in history.
Where did the idea of philanthropy come from? European historian Carlton Hayes said, “From the wellsprings of Christian compassion our Western civilization has drawn its inspiration and its sense of duty for feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, looking after the homeless, clothing the naked, tending the sick, and visiting the prisoner.
Biblical teaching was behind establishing hospitals, creating mental institutions, professionalizing medical nursing, and founding the Red Cross.
Slavery was accepted by virtually every culture in history, as far back as anyone can remember.
It never occurred to anyone that it is wrong. But the abolition of slavery and the rejection of racial segregation go back to the earliest teachings of Christianity. The great historian Will Durant made it clear that Christianity was not a segregated religion, “It offered itself without restriction to all individuals, classes, and nations; it was not limited to one people . . .”
Mathew Parris is a well-known South African-British journalist and broadcaster who served a number of years in the British Parliament.
Parris spent his childhood in the African country of Malawi and forty-five years after leaving, returned to help rural African communities install water pumps, giving them access to clean water.
Parris was an atheist. His visit renewed his faith in the development of charities. However, it caused a crisis of faith for him as an atheist. He was shocked at the enormous contribution to the good of Africa as a result of Christian evangelism. It was not at all compatible with his atheistic worldview and he finally had to admit how transformative Christianity was in his native country. It was unlike any other form of aid or charity being carried out in all of Africa.
As author Paul Chamberlain described it, Parris found the evangelism of Christians to be distinctly different from the work of secular non-governmental organizations and government endeavors. As good as the work done by these secular organizations is, he declares, it will never be sufficient, nor will education and training. The difference Christianity offers, he says, is a change of people’s hearts. “It brings a spiritual transformation. The rebirth is real. The change is good.”
The world is looking for a hope that will alter people’s behavior, but what we desperately need is a transformation of the human heart. This is what Christ offers a broken and hurting world.
Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you, and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and will give you a heart of flesh. (Ezekiel 36:26-27)
To read more by Richard and learn about The Center for Executive Leadership, visit our website at www.thecenterbham.org. | <urn:uuid:98926729-80f6-4035-a141-e1ed6748b9c6> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://richardesimmons3.com/hope-for-a-broken-world/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337595.1/warc/CC-MAIN-20221005073953-20221005103953-00381.warc.gz | en | 0.975752 | 1,019 | 2.5625 | 3 |
Learn how to mix coloured clays to roll designs into slabs of clay. From these, create vessels, bowls and jugs for firing.
Enjoy learning to mix coloured clay to create designs and painterly effects imbedded into rolled slabs of clay. From these slabs you will build a selection of forms and vessels including tiles, plaques, bowls, and jugs, as well as trying out ideas of your own.
The aim is for you to become confident about your choice of surface decoration after experimenting with different media to inspire you. Having rolled out the clay you will see how easy the process is and how individual you can be with the techniques you choose to adopt. Ultimately you should feel pleased to have successfully produced a selection of finished pieces ready for firing.
You will learn a little about the origins of clay and how stains and oxides are produced for our use as well as some basic ceramic terminology. Mixing your own coloured clays will give you an understanding of the simplicity of the task.
The broad range of reference material provided to inspire and experiment on paper with paints and pastel will give you the confidence to make decorative patterns and designs before inlaying coloured clays within the clay.
Preparing your decorated clay ready to cut at the leather hard stage will lead you to the enjoyable task of making the three-dimensional shapes of your choice. You will be taught the tricks of joining your slabs so that it will enable the form to survive through its drying and firing stages.
We will even learn from each other as we experiment and change the rules.
You will leave the course knowing how to colour clay using body stains, how to roll out slabs of clay and confidently imbed them with your own designs and how to make vessels and forms from your decorated slabs leaving them to dry ready to fire in the kiln.
Arrival Day - this is the first date listed above
Courses start early evening. Residential students to arrive from 4pm, non-residential students to arrive by 6.45pm.
6.45pm: Welcome, followed by dinner (included).
8 - 9pm: First teaching session, attendance is essential.
Classes 9.15 - 5pm, lunch is included.
From 6.30pm: Dinner (included for residential students).
Evening working - students may have access to workshops, but only with their tutor's permission and provided any health and safety guidelines are observed.
Classes 9.15am - 3pm, lunch is included.
Residential students are to vacate their rooms by 10am please.
(This timetable is for courses of more than one day in length. The tutor may make slight variations)
Firing and glazing of raw, finished pieces: You have three options: 1. Leave any raw, finished pieces that you wish to keep, for biscuit firing, basic glazing and re-firing by the College, for collection within six months. 2. Leave raw, finished pieces for biscuit firing at the College. You can then book a place on a Glazing Day and glaze your own work (allowing 4 weeks for your work to be biscuit fired). This work will be re-fired after glazing and available for collection within six months 3. You take away your unfired pots for firing and glazing elsewhere.
Jane Trained at Brighton and Goldsmiths in the 70s. She has been making and teaching ever since. Ceramic Review commented on her dedication to teaching. Her work is mostly shown at Rye Gallery, in Suffolk and in Brighton; in November 2015 she will be at 'MADE' in Brighton. Her recent residency at Portsmouth Grammar School prepared the teachers to deliver Ceramics within the curriculum. | <urn:uuid:26321d5f-189b-4c12-9940-626d3bc642c4> | CC-MAIN-2019-39 | https://www.westdean.org.uk/study/short-courses/courses/swe09202-hand-built-ceramics-with-inlaid-coloured-clay | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-39/segments/1568514570740.10/warc/CC-MAIN-20190915052433-20190915074433-00294.warc.gz | en | 0.960885 | 773 | 2.734375 | 3 |
- Experts continue to study the coronavirus as the number of people it infects and kills rises each day.
- Scientists are increasingly certain the coronavirus came from bats but aren’t sure exactly how it hopped over to humans.
- Researchers also don’t yet know why the virus doesn’t cause symptoms in most children or how long people with antibodies might be immune.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
In the realm of medicine, what you don’t know can indeed kill you.
Six months have passed since China reported the first coronavirus cases to the World Health Organization. But evn now, what experts are still trying to understand sometimes seems to outweigh what they can say for certain.
That is little surprise to any infectious-disease researcher: Highly contagious diseases can move through communities much more quickly than the methodical pace of science can produce vital answers.
What we do know is that the coronavirus seems to have emerged in China as early as mid-November and has now reached 188 countries, infected more than 10.4 million people, and killed around 510,000. Population-level studies using new testing could boost case numbers about 10-fold in the US and perhaps elsewhere as well.
As hospitals around the world care for COVID-19 patients with blood clots, strokes, and long-lasting respiratory failure, scientists are racing to study the coronavirus, spread life-saving information, and combat dangerous misunderstandings.
Here are 11 of the biggest questions surrounding the coronavirus and COVID-19, and why answering each one is critically important.
Saved Stories – None | <urn:uuid:4ec133cb-4b2d-40de-adcc-01d385f0ac03> | CC-MAIN-2021-31 | https://covid-19-review.org/2020/07/23/coronavirus-covid-19-questions-mortality-origins-cause-unknowns-2020-3/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-31/segments/1627046154805.72/warc/CC-MAIN-20210804111738-20210804141738-00519.warc.gz | en | 0.94566 | 346 | 2.78125 | 3 |
Spring is a busy time in the garden. As soon as it hits, a keen gardener will get caught up in sowing and nurturing their plants in no time.
Winter, on the other hand, is pretty quiet. However, there are plenty of things you can do during the colder months to get ready for the warm weather and all the jobs that come along with it.
To help get you and your garden ready and organised, we’ve come up with 9 tips to help you prepare your garden for spring.
1. Buy summer-flowering bulbs and seeds
Not all gardening jobs have to be outside. When the weather’s hostile and you can’t face being outside, head to the garden centre or go online and order your bulbs and seeds. Summer-flowering bulbs that need to be planted in early spring include freesias, lilies and begonias.
2. Maintain your gardening tools
Another job to do in late winter or early spring is to clean and sharpen your tools. This will help to protect your plants from bacteria and fungi and improve your tool performance. Maintaining your tools may seem like a faff but it’ll make your tools last for longer and save you money.
3. Tidy up flower beds and borders
Have a general tidy up to get your garden ready for spring. Remove leaves and other debris from borders, lawns and ponds and cut back any dead growth. If you want to give the soil some TLC, dig a 5cm layer of manure, compost or green waste into your garden borders.
4. Fix fences and trellises
Take advantage of your lack of gardening jobs to take care of any broken structures. You should be able to access fences and trellises easily at this time of year without worrying about squashing any shoots or flowers. To help your wooden garden structures last longer, treat them with a wood preservative when you have a bit of dry weather.
5. Set up water butts
Early spring is a good time to set up water butts ready to catch the season’s rainfall. Using rainwater helps the environment and is good for plants like Rhododendrons that don’t like the slightly alkaline pH of tap water. Make sure that any water butts you set up are under a downpipe to maximise the amount of water they collect.
6. Clean your greenhouse
Another job for late winter or early spring is cleaning your greenhouse. If you wait until later on in the year the chances are you’ll have quite a few plants in there, which will make it considerably more difficult. Clear any debris off the shelves and disinfect them and the inside of the glass with garden disinfectant. You should also wash out any plant pots in there and leave the whole thing open to dry. This should keep your greenhouse clean and tidy and keep pests and diseases out.
7. Get rid of garden pests
Take advantage of the lingering cold weather to hunt down any garden pests. If you catch them while they’re still hibernating, they’re a lot easier to get rid of. Have a look at the crowns of your perennial plants and see if you find any slugs or snails hiding there. If you’re clearing out any plant pots, keep an eye out for any white vine weevil larvae. They tend to live in compost and feed on plant roots.
8. Move deciduous shrubs
If you need to move any deciduous shrubs, now is the time to do it. Choose a still day to avoid the roots drying out and dig widely around the shrub to transfer as many of the roots as possible. When putting it in a new place, plant it at the same level that is was before and water it generously.
9. Make a composting area
If you haven’t got one already, consider making a compost area in your garden. Not only is it a handy place to put your garden waste, it’ll also save you money on plant fertiliser. You can choose to buy a compost bin or make an area yourself, whichever you prefer. Just make sure you have a good mix of grass, vegetable and wood matter in there. You should also turn your compost every month or so to keep it aerated.
So while you might think that winter is a great time to put your feet up, there are still plenty of things you can do in the run-up to spring. Hopefully, our list will help you get organised and produce a beautiful garden in the months ahead.
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Tell us how we can improve this post? | <urn:uuid:88631ee8-f36e-4dbd-8f70-72a29349f093> | CC-MAIN-2020-10 | https://garden.quotatis.co.uk/9-tips-help-prepare-garden-spring/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-10/segments/1581875146186.62/warc/CC-MAIN-20200226023658-20200226053658-00337.warc.gz | en | 0.940582 | 978 | 2.515625 | 3 |
A Physicist Exploring the Borders
By trade, William F. Barrett (1844-1925) was a physicist. He taught the subject at Ireland’s Royal College of Science, and his professional accomplishments earned him places in organizations ranging from the Royal Society and the Institute of Electrical Engineers to the Philosophical Society and the Royal Society of Literature. If you wish to get a sense of the state of physics at the close of the 1800s, you might take a look at Practical Physics: An Introductory Handbook for the Physical Laboratory (1898), which Barrett co-wrote.
However, Barrett is probably better remembered today for his explorations on the borders of the physical realm: telepathy, Spiritualism, even dowsing. In addition, he was a key figure in the founding of the Society for Psychical Research in both the UK and the U.S. Like his fellow scientists on both sides of the psychical pond, he was accused of gullibility — of being too eager to believe in the phenomena he was investigating. Nonetheless, such accusations seemed not to deter his desire to extend scientific study into these fringe subjects.
Barrett’s 1877 Ghost Hunt
To this end, his chronicle of a ghost hunt he conducted concludes with a bit of a homily about how, despite living in an age of skepticism, reports of ghosts persist and how we should, at least, entertain the idea that such hauntings might be evidence of human spirit existing beyond the body. Published in the Dublin University Magazine, this chronicle is titled “The Demons of Derrygonelly” (1877). Despite the rather dramatic and alliterative title, Barrett describes ghostly manifestations that seem more like the work of a poltergeist than a demon. Still, it’s a nicely written article, one that illustrates well the operations of a Victorian ghost hunter.
Barrett opens the article by describing how the ghost hunt was almost a secondary consideration of a man who invited him to explore the caves near Enniskillen, Ireland. From there, he and his host journey to a purportedly haunted cottage in Derrygonnelly. The two spend the night and are witness to a series of rappings and scratchings. Despite their best efforts, they are unable to trace the source of these noises.
The Knocking Phantom Complied
Barrett maintains a skeptical — or, at least, cautious — attitude as he scouts around for evidence of trickery or some other physical explanation for the noises. The most inexplicable experience of the evening is when he invites the phantom to knock a specific number of times. And it does so correctly! Even when the physicist spoke the number more quietly and more quietly, the phantom is able to show it understands. Barrett goes on:
At last, I mentally asked for a certain number of knocks: they were slowly and correctly given! To check any tendency to bias or delusion on my part, I thrust my hands in my coat pockets, and said, 'Knock the number of fingers I have open.' The response was at first merely a loud scratching, but I insisted on my request being answered, and to my amazement three slow, loud knocks were given, — this was perfectly correct.
Barrett says he was able to repeat the test a few more times, and each time, the ghost discerned and communicated the correct number of fingers.
The Loss of a Wife and Mother
Perhaps more compelling is the story of the peasant farmer in whose cottage these noises had been heard for weeks. The manifestations, he explains, began after his wife died, leaving him with four daughters and one son. The ghostly activity seems not to be the dead woman’s spirit, though. Grieving, one senses, is a better explanation for the phenomena. Specifically the eldest daughter, Maggie, seems to be the catalyst for the poltergeist, particularly when she sleeps. “One morning,” the farmer explains, “we found fifteen or sixteen small stones had been dropped on her bed.” Meanwhile, the phantom also plays pranks on the family, such as playing hide-and-go-seek with their boots.
Barrett ends his narrative with neither a solution to the ghostly mystery nor a resolution to the poor cottager’s predicament. Instead, he ends with that plea for further exploration of such hauntings that I mention above.
Barrett’s Other Ghost Hunts
Barrett conducted additional ghost hunts, some of which are noted in the “Hauntings and Poltergiests” chapter of his book-length survey titled Psychical Research (1911). His chronicle of a 1914 investigation struck me as material for very distinctive dramatic reading, and in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, I asked some actor friends to join me in treating it as exactly that:
Similar to the 1877 case, Barrett ends this outing with the Unsubstantial remaining elusive and, well, unsubstantial. Nonetheless, he exhibited solid abilities in paranormal investigation and a solid track record in such endeavors. | <urn:uuid:b85e37a0-ac6b-48df-a0a6-0f18f01d5c2f> | CC-MAIN-2023-06 | https://brombonesbooks.com/2023/01/03/william-f-barrett-a-solid-ghost-hunter/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-06/segments/1674764501066.53/warc/CC-MAIN-20230209014102-20230209044102-00032.warc.gz | en | 0.964642 | 1,042 | 2.90625 | 3 |
Some of the most important parts being separated into both male and female parts. This is the male part of the flower. It is made up of the filament and anther, it is the pollen producing part of the plant. The number of stamen is usually the same as the number of petals.
A flower has 4 main parts . They may include pistil (female part), stamen (male part), petals (colorful part) and sepals (modified leaves that protect the developing flower bud). The pistil is made up of stigma, style and ovary. The stamen consists of filament and anther.
A "perfect" flower has both stamens and carpels, and may be described as "bisexual" or "hermaphroditic". A "unisexual" flower is one in which either the stamens or the carpels are missing, vestigial or otherwise non-functional. Each plant produces either functionally male flowers or functionally female flowers.
Sepal: The outer parts of the flower (often green and leaf-like) that enclose a developing bud. Petal: The parts of a flower that are often conspicuously colored. Stamen: The pollen producing part of a flower, usually with a slender filament supporting the anther.
A plant is made up of many different parts. The three main parts are: the roots, the leaves, and the stem. Each part has a set of jobs to do to keep the plant healthy. The roots absorb water and minerals from the soil and anchor the plant in the ground.
The Four Parts of a Plant - Roots, Stem, Leaf, and Flower.
A radially symmetric flower. In a regular flower, all of the members of a single whorl, such as the petals, are similar in shape and size. Lilies and the apple tree, for example, bear regular flowers. Compare irregular flower.
The male reproductive part of a flower is called the stamen. It is composed of a long tube, called a filament, and has a pollen-producing structure on the end. This oval-shaped structure is called the anther. It is crucial in the reproduction of flowering plants, as it produces the male gametophyte, known as pollen.
A flower with male and female parts is called a perfect flower. If a flower has sepals, petals, pis- tils, and stamens, it is a complete flower. If a flower is missing one of those, it is an incom- plete flower. Imperfect flowers are always incomplete, but incomplete flowers may or may not be imperfect.
The pistil usually is located in the center of the flower and is made up of three parts: the stigma, style, and ovary. The stigma is the sticky knob at the top of the pistil. It is attached to the long, tubelike structure called the style. The style leads to the ovary that contains the female egg cells called ovules.
Petals are modified leaves that surround the reproductive parts of flowers. They are often brightly colored or unusually shaped to attract pollinators. The calyx and the corolla together make up the perianth. When the petals and sepals of a flower are difficult to distinguish, they are collectively called tepals.
Ovary: female reproductive structure of flower that usually develops into the fruit. Pericarp: fruit tissues surrounding the seeds that are derived from the ovary. Ovule: egg-bearing structure of the flower that develops into a seed.
Petals are modified leaves that surround the reproductive parts of flowers. They are often brightly colored or unusually shaped to attract pollinators. Together, all of the petals of a flower are called a corolla. The main function of flower petals is to attract pollinators such as butterflies, bees and bats.
A typical plant is made up of four main parts. These are (1) roots, (2) stems, (3) leaves, and (4) flowers. The roots, stems, and leaves are called the vegetative parts of a plant. The flowers, which includes fruit, and seeds are known as the reproductive parts.
The primary purpose of a flower is reproduction. Since the flowers are the reproductive organs of plant, they mediate the joining of the sperm, contained within pollen, to the ovules — contained in the ovary. Pollination is the movement of pollen from the anthers to the stigma.
Each carpel includes an ovary (where the ovules are produced; ovules are the female reproductive cells, the eggs), a style (a tube on top of the ovary), and a stigma (which receives the pollen during fertilization). The Male Reproductive Organs: Stamens are the male reproductive parts of flowers.
Stems do many things. They support the plant. They act like the plant's plumbing system, conducting water and nutrients from the roots and food in the form of glucose from the leaves to other plant parts. Stems can be herbaceous like the bendable stem of a daisy or woody like the trunk of an oak tree.
The male parts of the flower are called the stamens and are made up of the anther at the top and the stalk or filament that supports the anther. The female elements are collectively called the pistil. The top of the pistil is called the stigma, which is a sticky surface receptive to pollen.
A flower having sepals, petals, stamens, and pistils is complete; lacking one or more of such structures, it is said to be incomplete. Stamens and pistils are not present together in all flowers.
The style leads to the ovary that contains the female egg cells called ovules. The male parts are called stamens and usually surround the pistil. The stamen is made up of two parts: the anther and filament. The anther produces pollen (male reproductive cells). | <urn:uuid:f6db44e7-4187-4e48-b0be-9281010dff53> | CC-MAIN-2021-43 | https://answersdrive.com/what-are-the-most-important-parts-of-a-flower-6957927 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-43/segments/1634323585203.61/warc/CC-MAIN-20211018124412-20211018154412-00062.warc.gz | en | 0.953914 | 1,236 | 3.671875 | 4 |
By Diana Holan, MS
Hearing loss is the #1 disability for military veterans, which is attributed to acute or chronic exposure to excessive noise.
However, studies from the last 20+ years have shown that working in excessive noise while inhaling toxic chemicals, including jet fuel, may be even more ototoxic than noise exposure alone. Such hearing loss may take 2-5 years post-exposure before manifesting.
In a 2011 rat study,Fechter et al. looked at two types of jet fuel: JP-8 (petroleum-based with hydrocarbons) and FT (Fischer-Tropsch synthesized) to test for the risk of hearing loss from only fuel exposure, versus inhalant exposure to varying doses of each jet fuel when combined with continuous or intermittent noise exposure. Results showed that exposure to either jet fuel alone or the FT synthetic fuel + noise did not cause hearing loss. However, the combination of JP-8 fuel + excessive noise exposure damaged the outer hair cells (OHCs) more than noise exposure alone, as measured by DPOAE testing.
In another rat experiment in 2012, Matti et al. showed that the degree of OHC damage increased in proportion to higher concentrations of the JP-8 inhalant exposure. In addition, “… the CAP response is disrupted more reliably than is the DPOAE response,” indicating there was damage to inner hair cells (IHCs) and other auditory structures necessary for auditory processing. Interestingly, the male rats were affected more, possibly due to their higher body fat levels that may have stored the JP-8 in their bodies for a longer period than for the lighter weight female rats.
It is difficult to measure these effects in humans, either retrospectively because of age and potential co-existing health issues, or longitudinally because of safety and ethical concerns. But the results of these tests may help determine safer exposure limits to excessive noise when combined with toxic chemicals, as well as guide further research to develop safer, synthetic fuels. This will benefit military personnel, as well as civilian employees in other fields where workers are exposed to hydrocarbon fuels and noise. And it is important information to have about patients with hearing loss that may be due to excessive noise exposure, especially if they are having auditory comprehension issues.
Diana Holan, MS, has been practicing audiology for over 20 years in Tucson and is committed to improving communication between patients and their families through the use of state-of-the-art hearing aid technology and various assistive techniques. She received a Bachelor’s of Science in Speech and Hearing and a Master’s of Science in Audiology from the University of Arizona | <urn:uuid:5bf23b86-b452-4685-960a-ca7019e6c289> | CC-MAIN-2022-21 | https://hearinghealthmatters.org/hearinprivatepractice/2014/jet-fuel-combined-noise-exposure-decreases-auditory-function/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-21/segments/1652662512249.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20220516204516-20220516234516-00200.warc.gz | en | 0.959224 | 549 | 2.71875 | 3 |
Visual and Dramatic Arts
In early grades art lessons are based on line, color, and shape. Older students will add to these elements and also learn about the design principles of art. Students will engage in art making and other activities to learn about famous artists, cultures, and art history. Often lessons will relate to what students are studying in their academic classes. Students will learn that making art is a valued way of expressing their feelings or their reaction to the beauty around them. Within the classroom, students employ the dramatic arts to learn about content across the curriculum. Students choreograph mini dramas that incorporate science, social studies, and literature. In addition, Charleston Stage joins us for a drama intensive each Fall. | <urn:uuid:784f0db3-1e53-4afc-9af3-9e85dcbac7bc> | CC-MAIN-2019-39 | https://thecooperschool.org/our-approach/visual-dramatic-arts/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-39/segments/1568514573071.65/warc/CC-MAIN-20190917121048-20190917143048-00074.warc.gz | en | 0.949779 | 142 | 3.984375 | 4 |
Our most important resource
Water is our most important resource. Contamination by chemicals of any kind may therefore have particularly serious consequences. Lobbe remediates groundwater, standing waters, but also running waters in which mud and sediments have accumulated. Groundwater contaminations frequently consist of floating phases of petrol, diesel and kerosene, especially in locations of former fuel depots, petrol stations, military airports, transfer stations for fuels, and industrial and commercial enterprises. In these locations, the soil often needs to be remediated along with the groundwater.
Special pneumatic pumps
In classical groundwater contamination by floating oil products, outstanding remediation successes can be achieved using ejector technology. The special pneumatic special pumps operate particularly economically in continuous mode, as well as for measures in “Ex” areas. Ejector pumps require little maintenance and are resistant to aggressive media. In addition, the units are safe to run dry and separate pollutant phases without emulsification. Installation is possible in wells starting at a shaft cross-section of 50 (!) millimetres. Due to the extraction of the pure pollutant phase, no downstream purification step is necessary.
Light liquid separator
The principle is simple, but effective: Oil and water separate due to their different densities (gravity principle). In large-volume light liquid separators, this is accomplished especially quickly and effectively, at the rate of up to 90 cubic meters of oil-water mixture per hour. Water and oil remain behind as separate phases. The extent to which the water can be discharged without further treatment is determined by sampling.
Mopmatic-Wringer- attracts oil, repels water
Mopmatic wringers have proven to be extremely reliable in many long-term projects . The devices easily extract floating pollutant phases such as oil, kerosene, diesel, fuel oil, kerosene, heavy oil, etc. without emulsification, and can be used regardless of the terrain and weather conditions, whether stationary or mobile.
The technology is already legendary among professionals: a water-repellent cord with a high affinity for oils soaks up the pollutants and is squeezed out between two rollers. In the high-performance version, Mopmatic wringers extract up to 3,000 litres of pure contaminant phase per hour. Like ejector pumps, they can also be used for long-term projects. Some cases may benefit from the simultaneous use of both methods.
Information on the following topics
- Groundwater/water remediation
- Water treatment
- Water conservation
- Use of active charcoal filters
- Use of ejector pumps
- Use of other techniques
Central phone numbers
Duisburg (old federal states)
+49 203 – 50 04 – 354
Teutschenthal (young federal states)
+49 346 01 – 41 – 112 | <urn:uuid:167971bd-8c5f-4ea2-bca0-025e66cd387b> | CC-MAIN-2021-04 | https://www.lobbe.de/en/services/decontamination/water-remediation/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-04/segments/1610704839214.97/warc/CC-MAIN-20210128071759-20210128101759-00004.warc.gz | en | 0.918027 | 587 | 2.609375 | 3 |
About 37 million brand-new televisions were shipped to the U.S. in 2012. When those machines made their way into people’s homes, they likely displaced an older or non-working set. What happens to all those obsolete televisions? Many of them find their way into the trash, which is a real shame. Televisions are tough to recycle. They contain lots of materials that can harm human health, which makes them expensive to take apart. In some cases, they are quite bulky, making them difficult to move around. In 2013, Baltimore’s Public Works Department began refusing televisions at its electronics recycling center and asked the public to take them to disposal facilities instead. This is probably a growing trend. Televisions can be recycled if you get them into the hands of the right vendor. Unless your local government sponsors an electronics recycling program, or the company that sells you a new television will take your old one for free, expect to pay a fee to get rid of it.
Common materials found in televisionsTelevisions fall into two main categories: those with cathode ray tubes and those without. The CRT is the large, pyramid-shaped contraption attached to the screen that gives the monitor its bulk. The glass in the CRT contains up to 8 pounds of lead, a layer of cadmium-based phosphorous and other dangerous heavy metals. While it is in one piece, a CRT poses no threat to human health. But, if the glass breaks it can release the lead and other materials into the air. The danger and complexity required in processing CRTs makes them difficult and expensive to recycle. Flat-screen televisions are not much better. Older models with LCD lights in the screens can contain up to 20 tubes filled with mercury. The screens are harder to take apart, especially since workers have to worry about rupturing those tubes. Other materials in televisions include plastic, wood (from large console televisions), copper wiring and circuit boards.
Why it is important to recycle televisionsLike any other electronic device, there are a host of reasons not to toss your television in a dumpster:
- It is illegal in the 25 states that have passed e-waste laws, including Texas, Vermont, Indiana, Missouri and Washington.
- As televisions are run over by crushing equipment in a landfill, or burned in an incinerator, they release those heavy metals that can seriously affect human health.
- As rain falls on a landfill, it can wash away toxic chemicals like the brominated fire retardants in the TV’s plastic.
- Televisions contain high-value materials such as gold and platinum that should be put back to use, not buried in the ground or put up a chimney. | <urn:uuid:4b0e0a54-e58a-419e-aabd-56dae196d19e> | CC-MAIN-2021-49 | https://recyclenation.com/2014/05/recycle-televisions/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-49/segments/1637964363134.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20211205005314-20211205035314-00438.warc.gz | en | 0.951979 | 566 | 3.546875 | 4 |
At teaching hospitals across the country, July 1 generally marks the first day on the job for medical school graduates beginning their residencies. While teaching hospitals do their best to create a safe and seamless transition, studies have raised concerns about the “July effect” – the suspected link between the start of the residency period and increased risks of surgical complications and medical errors. Continue reading “Why July is the most dangerous month for surgeries”
The Surgeon General estimates about one half million Americans are affected by blood clots annually and between 100,000 and 180,000 people die of pulmonary embolism (PE), a blood clot that travels to the lungs. To combat this problem, doctors implant hundreds of thousands of Inferior Vena Cava (IVC) filters inside patients each year to stop blood clots before they reach the lungs. Retrievable IVC filters have been reported to cause serious injuries if left in the body too long, however some physicians fail to remove the filters once the threat of pulmonary embolism has passed.
PRESERVE Study Investigating IVC Filter Safety
In August of 2010, the FDA issued a medical alert, warning that retrievable IVC filters can move or break, causing serious injuries, prompting researchers to begin investigating the devices. In 2014, the FDA issued an updated safety communication and in 2016, a study entitled, Predicting the Safety and Effectiveness of Inferior Vena Cava Filters (PRESERVE) began enrollment. The IVC Filter Study Group Foundation, sponsored jointly by the Society for Vascular Surgery (SVS) and the Society of Interventional Radiology (SIR), oversees the project. Over the course of the five-year study, 2,100 patients are expected to participate through 60 different medical sites around the U.S.
“Our foremost commitment is to patient safety, and this study will help determine how well filters prevent pulmonary embolism and how they function over the course of their implantation,” said Matthew S. Johnson, Fellow of the Society of Interventional Radiology and professor of radiology and surgery at Indiana University School of Medicine.
According to the PRESERVE website, the study is unusual because, “More typically, studies follow one or two devices. Studying filters produced by seven different manufacturers at once is an enormous undertaking. The trial will follow 300 patients per device.”
- ALN Vena Cava Filter – ALN Implants Chirurgicaux
- Option™ Elite Retrievable Vena Cava Filter – Argon Medical Devices, Inc. (designed and manufactured by Rex Medical)
- VenaTech® LP Vena Cava Filter – B. Braun Interventional Systems Inc.
- Cook Günther Tulip Vena Cava Filter – Cook Incorporated
- DENALI® Vena Cava Filter System – CR Bard Peripheral Vascular, Inc.
- Cordis OptEase® Retrievable Vena Cava Filter – Cordis Corporation
- Cordis TrapEase® Vena Cava Filter – Cordis Corporation
- Crux® Vena Cava Filter System – Volcano Corporation
“The treatment of deep vein thrombosis in trauma patients has challenged physicians to know the best way to take care of those patients,” said co-principal investigator Dr. David Gillespie, chief of vascular and endovascular surgery at Southcoast Health System, Fall River, Mass. “There are a lot of devices from different manufacturers to choose from. Physicians have been using the retrievable filters with the idea they will retrieve them, but for many reasons they often don’t.
IVC filter lawsuits
Patients from across the country who were harmed by IVC filters have begun to file lawsuits against device manufacturers, seeking compensation for their injuries. Sadly, some family members of IVC filter patients filed a wrongful death claim as a result of the dangerous device.
It’s the championship football game and your favorite team is driving down the field to score a touchdown. Your star quarterback and seasoned offensive linemen are working together like a well-oiled machine. Everyone is in perfect sync and the entire team is seemingly moving as one. Your team can’t be stopped.
But wait! What’s this? A time out is called and in come a slew of substitutions. Your veteran quarterback and linemen are replaced by a rookie and four other practice squad players, who are being asked to play positions they have never played before.
For the rest of the game, lack of experience, unfamiliarity with each other and poor communication between the players lead to sacks, turnovers and a loss for your team.
Would the fans ever tolerate a change in personnel like this during the middle of an important game? No way!
But this is exactly the type of substitution that happens at Ohio’s teaching hospitals every summer and it puts patients at risk.
The most dangerous month for surgery
Every July, at teaching hospitals like The Cleveland Clinic, Ohio State University Hospital and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, there is a change of health care providers that threatens the safety of the patients at these facilities.
This is when the most experienced residents graduate and leave the hospital. These graduating residents have spent the past three to six years training under the guidance of more experienced doctors and the patients at these teaching hospitals served as their case studies.
However, these experienced residents are replaced by brand new doctors who just graduated from medical school. To compound the problem, the remaining residents who have been at the hospital for a year or two are now being asked to assume new and unfamiliar roles. Consequently, this can be a very dangerous time for patients at these teaching hospitals.
This is such a dangerous time of year for patients that studies show the rate of patient deaths and complications from medical procedures increases between 8% and 34% during the month of July.
Dr. John Young of the University of California, San Francisco, reported these findings in a study he published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. Every year this “July effect” – as the hospitals sometimes refer to it – affects about 100,000 doctors in teaching hospitals around the country. According to Dr. Young, no other industry undergoes such a dramatic change in personnel on such a regular basis.
Steps for a safer medical operation
So what can you do to protect yourself and your family members? Here are three tips from an experienced Ohio medical malpractice attorney:
1. Ask your doctor if he or she will be performing your surgery at a teaching hospital where doctors in training may be involved in your care. Some hospitals are not teaching hospitals or your procedure might be performed at a surgery center that does not use residents. If that is the case, then you likely won’t be affected by this problem.
2. If your surgery is elective and it is safe for you to put it off, request that your surgery be scheduled during the first six months of the year. At that time, the doctors being trained at a teaching hospital will be more experienced and familiar with the hospital’s policies, procedures and nursing staff, and there will be less of a chance for a mistake to be made.
3. If you have to have your surgery during the summer months because it can’t wait, let it be known that you want the most experienced doctor to perform your surgery and to be very involved in your care. Ohio’s teaching hospitals are important to train the doctors of the future, but your health and well-being should not suffer because you are being used as the guinea pig for a brand new doctor.
Craig McLaughlin represents people who have been seriously injured or killed as a result of nursing home neglect, motor vehicle crashes, defective products, workplace accidents and medical negligence. He has been recognized by Super Lawyers, Martindale-Hubbell, AVVO and is a life member of the Multi-Million Dollar Advocates Forum and Million Dollar Advocates Forum.
Not all hospitals are the same. In fact, one recent study showed patients who undergo common surgeries are safer at busy hospitals that perform the procedures regularly.
Hospital surgical volume matters
An article published in U.S. News and World report has shed the light on a little-known surgical risk: inexperience. Extrapolating data from Medicare statistics, the study revealed that hospitals performing only a small number of common surgical procedures place patients at a far greater risk than high-volume hospitals.
How big of a problem is it? “You can save your life by picking the right place,” says Leah Binder, director of the Leapfrog Group, a nonprofit organization that measures hospital safety and performance.
Dr. John Birkmeyer, Professor of Surgery at Dartmouth–Hitchcock Medical Center has estimated that as many as 11,000 deaths could have been prevented nationally if patients who went low-volume hospitals opted to for the highest volume hospitals instead. For example, at one low-volume Colorado hospital, patients were three times more likely to die during hip replacement surgery and 24 times more likely to die during a knee replacement.
Increased risks with low-volume hospitals
According to the study, hip replacement patients who had their surgery in the lowest-volume hospitals were about 50 percent more likely to die than patients treated at surgical centers in the top 20 percent. Knee replacement patients took a larger gamble using low-volume hospitals, with a nearly 70 percent higher risk of death. Patients with congestive heart failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease fared somewhat better; however, they still had a 20 percent increased risk of dying.
While these numbers are dramatic, it’s important to remember that volume is only one indicator patients should consider when selecting a healthcare facility. In fact, some low-volume hospitals provide excellent care. Conversely, some high-volume centers may perform unnecessary surgeries.
Choosing a hospital
One of the best ways to make a decision is to ask questions. Here are a few examples:
- What procedures do you recommend for my case, and why?
- Do I need this surgery? What other options are there?
- How many times have you performed this procedure in the past year?
- What is your complication rate?
- How do you follow a patient post-surgery?
- What will my follow-up care look like?
- Tell me about your medical team – nurses, physical therapists, and others who can help guide me pre and post-surgery.
There are also rating systems available online, including U.S. News Best Hospitals and Hospital Safety Score. So how do you know which hospital or surgeon is right for you? There is no magic formula, but most experts agree patients should take the time to educate themselves about the doctors and medical facilities they choose.
“Risks Are High at Low-Volume Hospitals” by Steve Sternberg and Geoff Dougherty, U.S. News & World Report, May 18, 2015.
“Hospitals Move to Limit Low-Volume Surgeries” by Steve Sternberg, U.S. News & World Report, May 19, 2015.
Most of us take medications knowing there is a risk of side effects, but that risk is small, right? Surely the FDA ensures the health benefits outweigh these minor inconveniences, right? But what if I told you that if your grandmother took a sleeping pill, she’d be 50% more likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease? Do I have your attention now?
A study published in the British Journal of Medicine has yielded some startling results. Researchers found that for older adults who took benzodiazepines for at least 90 days, the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease was increased by 43% to 51% during a five year period.
The study also revealed that people who were on a long-acting benzodiazepine like diazepam (Valium) and flurazepam (Dalmane) were at greater risk than those on a short-acting one like triazolam (Halcion), lorazepam (Ativan), alprazolam (Xanax), and temazepam (Restoril).
What are Benzodiazepines?
Benzodiazepines are a class drugs used to treat anxiety, insomnia, and a range of other conditions. Commonly known as tranquilizers, these medications act directly on the brain and central nervous system, affecting a person’s mood. They are one of the most widely prescribed medications in the U.S., particularly among elderly patients. Benzos are commonly divided in groups:
Short-acting anti-anxiety benzodiazepines
- alprazolam (Xanax)
- lorazepam (Ativan)
- oxazepam (Seresta)
- diazepam (Valium)
Longer-acting anti-seizure and “hypnotic” drugs frequently used to treat insomnia:
- clonazepam (Klonopin)
- flurazepam (Dalmane)midazolam (Versed)
- nitrazepam (Mogadon)
- temazepam (Restoril)
- triazolam (Halcion)
The authors of the study warn that doctors should “carefully balance the benefits and risks when initiating or renewing a treatment with benzodiazepines and related products in older patients.” Although the study only included elderly patients, it is important for people of all ages to discuss the use of benzodiazepines with their health care provider.
It is important to note that benzodiazepines may pose other serious risks for seniors. In 2012, the American Geriatrics Society added benzodiazepines to their list of Potentially Inappropriate Medication Use in Older Adults. The group warned that an increased sensitivity to benzodiazepines and decreased metabolism of long-acting agents could pose serious dangers, stating, “In general, all benzodiazepines increase risk of cognitive impairment, delirium, falls, fractures, and motor vehicle accidents in older adults.”
de Gage, S.B., Moride, Y., Ducruet, T., et al. Benzodiazepine use and risk of Alzheimer’s disease: case-control study. BMJ 2014; 349:g5205. Published September 9, 2014. Accessed October 29, 2014.
For millions of Americans, staying in a long-term healthcare facility means an increased risk of developing bedsores. Also known as pressure ulcers, these skin lesions can cause serious and painful infections of the skin, bones and joints. Complications can include tissue and nerve damage, organ failure and even cancer.
The best way to prevent pressure sores from occurring is to reposition patients frequently – doctors recommend changing positions every two hours. Unfortunately, with many nursing homes and other long-term healthcare facilities woefully understaffed, many patients are neglected. As a result, more than 2.5 million people in the United States develop pressure ulcers every ear.
Preventing Bedsores with Patient Monitors
An exciting new medical device may hold the answer to this pervasive medical mistake. A company called Leaf Healthcare, Inc. has developed a wearable patient sensor, which can help medical professionals reduce bedsores. Created for healthcare facilities, the Leaf System is comprised of patient sensors and a wireless central monitoring system. The system electronically monitors patients’ position and movements, recording each time a patient is moved and alerting caregivers when patients need to be repositioned.
Leaf Healthcare recently conducted a multiphase clinical trial, which yielded encouraging results. According to a news release, “The study showed that use of the device increased compliance with hospital turn protocols – a standard of care method to prevent pressure ulcers – from a baseline of 64 percent at the start of the trial to 98 percent after the monitoring system was deployed.”
Nursing Home Residents’ Rights
Section 3721.13 of the Ohio Revised Code provides residents of nursing homes with certain rights. Among these is the right to an “adequate and appropriate” level of care, which includes taking steps to prevent bedsores. If you have questions about nursing home neglect or abuse, including whether standards of care are being met, contact our experienced attorneys for a free, confidential case review.
*Links to other sites are for informational purposes only. The inclusion of links to other web sites does not imply any endorsement of the material on the web sites or any association with their operators.
Tarver, Chris; Schutt, Suann; Pezzani, Michelle. “We’re Sensing You! A Multiphase Clinical Trial Examining Innovative Technology to Improve Patient-Turning Compliance.” [Presentation]. ANCC National Magnet Conference® Dallas, TX. 08 October 2014 to 10 October 2014.
Leaf Healthcare, Inc., (16 Oct. 2014). “Study Shows Leaf Healthcare Wearable Sensor Dramatically Improves Compliance with Pressure-Ulcer Prevention Efforts.” [Press Release]. [Accessed 28 Oct. 2014].
It seems that even doctors can fall prey to the same counterfeit drug scams that have plagued consumers. We received an email today, which announced the FDA has launched a new website, warning health care professionals about a growing trend: Fake drug distributors.
“There is a growing network of rogue wholesale drug distributors selling potentially unsafe drugs in the U.S. market,” read the email. The new website,“Know Your Source,” advises healthcare professionals to only purchase prescription drugs from licensed wholesale distributors.
Too little, too late?
While we applaud the efforts of the FDA to combat this problem – fake drugs undoubtedly pose a serious risk to patients – the problem is anything but new. In a letter dated December 19, 2012, the FDA notified medical practices they may have received unapproved medications. According to the FDA, “These medications may be counterfeit, contaminated, improperly stored and transported, ineffective, and/or unsafe.”
In fact, consumers have been warned about counterfeit drugs for years, with “Canadian” distributors at the forefront of the problem. So, how is it that doctors are unaware of these scams—many of which appear to be rather obvious. For example, one flyer on the website warns doctors to “Beware of Offers Too Good to be True” and that, “Aggressive marketing tactics and deep discounts on prescription drugs may indicate that the products are stolen, counterfeit, substandard, or unapproved.”
The FDA also shared these rather common-sense signs that a drug may be fake:
- The label is not in English.
- The packaging looks slightly different from the FDA-approved product
- The product names differs from the name of the FDA-approved drug
- The dosing recommendations are unfamiliar
- Safety information or warnings are missing
- The dosage form or administration is different
How can we, as consumers, protect ourselves?
When a doctor administers medication in the office, you probably won’t see the packaging. A nurse may hand you a pill or give you a shot. So how can you be sure they received the medicine from a reliable distributor? ASK.
Don’t be shy about asking your doctor questions regarding your medication
- Ask where the medication came from. While it is not a guarantee, medicines are generally safe if your doctor purchased them directly from the manufacturer or a state-licensed wholesale drug distributor.
- Ask for a copy of the package insert, detailing the possible side effects and other important safety information.
- Tell your doctor if you experience unusual side effects or if the medication doesn’t seem to be working. These may be signs of counterfeit medication.
Remember, while most prescription drugs in the United States are safe, it is important to be a vocal advocate for yourself and your loved ones.
“FDA warns doctors to beware fake drug distributors” Modern Healthcare /Associated Press, September 23, 2104
“The Possible Dangers of Buying Medicines over the Internet” FDA.gov, January 26, 2011.
Anyone who went to a hospital within the Community Health Systems network may be at risk for identity theft. In a regulatory filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Community Health Systems said it was attacked during April and June of this year by an “Advanced Persistent Threat” group believed to be operating out of China.
Community Health officials have said the only information taken was “non-medical patient identification data related to the Company’s physician practice operations and affected approximately 4.5 million individuals who, in the last five years, were referred for or received services from physicians affiliated with the Company.”
So, what does that entail? Although CHS maintains your medical records and credit card information have not been compromised, important personal information is now in the hands of hackers, who can use it to steal your identity. The cyber-attack successfully liberated “patients’ names, addresses, birthdates, social security numbers, and, in some cases, telephone numbers, and the names of employers or guarantors.”
Community Health Systems owns, leases or operates 206 hospitals in 29 states.” In Ohio, the company operates four medical facilities:
- Affinity Medical Center – Massillon, Ohio
- Hillside Rehabilitation Hospital – Warren, Ohio
- Northside Medical Center – Youngstown, Ohio
- Trumbull Memorial Hospital – Warren, Ohio
In a press release, CMH stated they would contact individuals whose records were compromised and offer free identity theft protection as well as credit monitoring services.
Source: DuBois, Shelley, “Community Health Systems data breach affects 4.5M.” The Tennessean, August 18, 2014.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a warning that some products used to treat acne may cause potentially life-threatening side effects. According to an agency press release, over-the-counter acne products containing the active ingredients benzoyl peroxide or salicylic acid can cause severe irritation or even fatal allergic reactions.
The FDA warning names popular topical acne medications such as Proactiv, Neutrogena, MaxClarity, Oxy, Ambi, Aveeno, and Clean & Clear. Available without a prescription, these treatments are available as gels, lotions, facial washes, solutions, cleansing pads, toners and face scrubs.
Serious allergic reactions differ from the less harmful irritations included in acne treatment warnings, which include burning, dryness, itching, peeling, redness, and slight swelling where the product is applied.
“There is currently no mention of the possibility of these very severe allergic reactions on the product labels,” says FDA medical officer Dr. Mona Khurana. “It’s important that consumers know about them, and that they know what to do if they occur.”
Use Acne Products Safely
While severe reactions are rare, there are important steps you can take to protect yourself. For example, if you have never used a topical acne treatment before, the FDA recommends applying a small amount of the product to a small affected area for three days. If no discomfort occurs, then follow label directions for normal use. Other safety measures include the following:
- Avoid using the product if you’ve had previous allergic or hypersensitivity reactions
- Stop using the product if you develop hives or itching of the face or body
- Discontinue use and seek immediate medical attention if you develop throat tightness or swelling of the eyes, face, lips or tongue; feel faint; or have difficulty breathing
Although no deaths have been reported, nearly half of the 131 known cases of allergic and hypersensitivity required hospitalization, with the majority since 2012. Approximately 86 percent of the patients were female, and the average patient age was 32 years. Based on the information reported, the FDA cannot determine if these reactions were triggered by the products’ active ingredients, the inactive ingredients, or a combination of both.
“FDA will continue to monitor closely and evaluate this safety issue,” Khurana says. The FDA encourages consumers to report any negative reactions or side effects from use of these products to the FDA’s MedWatch program.
Source: “FDA warns of rare but serious hypersensitivity reactions with certain over-the-counter topical acne products.” U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Safety Announcement, June 25, 2014.
The first time I saw the Google Glass, I was positively captivated. The possibilities for this wearable computer with an optical display and camera seemed endless.
As technology has become exceedingly pervasive, it’s no surprise that the health care industry has been keen to adopt new innovations. From beeping pulse oximeters to robots performing surgery, it seems computers are everywhere – even worn by surgeons in the operating room.
At first blush, wearing computerized glasses with a heads up display and recording capabilities seems like a great idea. The device can provide surgeons with instantaneous, hands-free access to a patient’s medical records, vital signs, and other important information while in the operating room. The doctor can also transmit a live-stream video of the surgical procedure to remote locations, allowing for real-time consultations with specialists or providing valuable educational experience for medical students.
While Google Glass may offer an abundance of opportunities for health care providers, since it is connected to the internet, there are serious concerns over potential abuses.
“Being able to see your laparoscopic images when you’re operating face to face instead of looking across the room at a projection screen is just mind-bogglingly fantastic,” said Dr. Peter J Papadakos, anesthesiologist and Director of Critical Care at the University of Rochester Medical Center. “But the downside is you don’t want that same surgeon interacting with social media while he’s operating.”
We all know that texting while driving is dangerous because our attention is diverted from the task at hand. Now imagine your surgeon, anesthesiologist, or a nurse distracted by their smart phone or tablet during a surgical procedure. Think it doesn’t happen? Think again. A 2011 article published in the New York Times stated that examples of distracted doctoring “include a neurosurgeon making personal calls during an operation, a nurse checking airfares during surgery and a poll showing that half of technicians running bypass machines had admitted texting during a procedure.”
To combat this problem, many hospitals and other care facilities have established (or are in the process of creating) rules regarding the use of personal electronic devices by health care providers. Deviation from these regulations during critical care, which results in harm to a patient, may be considered medical malpractice.
Although some critics advocate banning such devices from the operating room, there may be an upside. In the unfortunate event of a medical mistake, the video capabilities of Google Glass may provide critical evidence at trial. Much like the dash cam of a police officer, the visual evidence collected by the device during surgery, combined with expert testimony, can help make a compelling case.
If you have questions about injuries in a medical setting due to a distracted health care professional, contact an experience medical malpractice attorney.
“Google Glass Enters the Operating Room” by Anahad O’Connor, New York Times, June 1, 2014.
“As Doctors Use More Devices, Potential for Distraction Grows” by Matt Richtell, New York Times, December 14, 2011. | <urn:uuid:8631f92a-e497-467a-a83b-b3e3ca34f2a7> | CC-MAIN-2018-30 | http://blog.elkandelk.com/tag/patient-safety/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-30/segments/1531676590199.42/warc/CC-MAIN-20180718135047-20180718155047-00346.warc.gz | en | 0.943466 | 5,763 | 2.71875 | 3 |
This past weekend, Dr. Matt Bulman spent some time with Sydney Trapeze School, where he observed the student circus performers and delivered a talk on circus injuries.
The epidemiology of circus injuries has been studied. Circus is a relatively safe sport, with an incidence of 0.3/1000hours. The vast majority of injuries are minor, requiring fewer than 3 days away from training. While there are some gender differences, the number 1 site of injury is the ankle; the second area of greatest injury is the combined cervical and lumbar spinal regions.
Dr. Bulman emphasized healthy movement through continued practice; effective coaching; and a lifelong pursuit of good movement.
He also went through a workshop on injury prevention on ankle sprains, as well as safe landing technique to prevent knee injuries, which are of great concern to teenage female athletes.
Circus is a fantastic way for children and adults to learn to move and develop their body to its fullest potential. It's also lots of fun.
One of the best ways that you can pursue a safe and healthy attitude towards exercise is to have fun. That's why we encourage you to take up any sport, activity or exercise that keeps you moving. But if for any reason you find pain or injury is preventing you from participating in the sport, we are hear to help you return to play as soon as possible. That is our view of chiropractic: a chiropractors role is to help keep you moving in a healthy way throughout life. | <urn:uuid:6b250e4b-9a60-4258-b84b-ebb1310f0233> | CC-MAIN-2018-13 | http://www.sportsnspine.com.au/blog/2016/4/5/trapeze-and-circus | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-13/segments/1521257645069.15/warc/CC-MAIN-20180317120247-20180317140247-00613.warc.gz | en | 0.970305 | 306 | 2.578125 | 3 |
Pakistan had a turbulent year in 2012, with the judicial ouster of Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani, attacks on civilians by militant groups, growing electricity shortages, rising food and fuel prices, and continuing political dominance of the military, which operates with almost complete impunity. Religious minorities continued to face insecurity and persecution as the government failed to provide protection to those threatened or to hold extremists accountable. Islamist militant groups continued to target and kill Shia Muslims—particularly from the Hazara community—with impunity. In September, the southwestern province of Balochistan experienced massive flooding for the third year running, displacing some 700,000 people.
Ongoing rights concerns included the breakdown of law enforcement in the face of terror attacks, continuing abuses across Balochistan, ongoing torture and ill-treatment of criminal suspects, and unresolved enforced disappearances of terrorism suspects and opponents of the military. Abuses by Pakistani police, including extrajudicial killings, also continued to be reported throughout the country in 2012.
Relations between Pakistan and the United States —Pakistan’s most significant ally and its largest donor of development and military aid—remained tense for much of the year due to the “Salala Attack” in November 2011, in which US forces killed 24 Pakistani soldiers during a military operation near the Afghan border.
In 2012, at least 325 members of the Shia Muslim population were killed in targeted attacks that took place across Pakistan. In Balochistan province, over 100 were killed, most of them from the Hazara community. On August 16, gunmen ambushed four buses passing through the Babusar Top area of Mansehra district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. The attackers forced all the passengers to disembark, checked their national identity cards, and summarily executed 22 travelers whom they identified as belonging to the Shia community. A spokesman for the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, the Pakistani Taliban, claimed responsibility. On August 30, gunmen shot dead Zulfiqar Naqvi, a Shia judge, in Quetta, Balochistan’s capital. In two separate attacks on September 1, 2012, gunmen attacked and killed eight Hazara Shia in Quetta.
Sunni militant groups, including those with known links to the Pakistani military, its intelligence agencies, and affiliated paramilitaries—such as the ostensibly banned Lashkar-e Jhangvi—operated with widespread impunity across Pakistan, as law enforcement officials effectively turned a blind eye to attacks.
Students and teachers were regularly attacked by militant groups. On October 9, 2012, gunmen shot Malala Yousafzai, a 15-year-old student and outspoken advocate for children’s right to education, in the head and neck leaving her in critical condition. The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan claimed responsibility for the attack in the Swat Valley. The attack on Yousafzai garnered condemnation from across the political spectrum in Pakistan. Militant Islamist groups also attacked more than 100 schools, and rebuilding is slow.
Religious Minorities and Women
Abuses under the country’s abusive blasphemy law continued as dozens were charged in 2012 and at least 16 people remained on death row for blasphemy, while another 20 servedlife sentences. Aasia Bibi, a Christian from Punjab province, who in 2010 became the first woman in the country's history to be sentenced to death for blasphemy, continued to languish in prison. In July 2012, police arrested a man who appeared to suffer from a mental disability for allegedly burningthe Quran. A mob organized by local clerics demandedthat the man be handed to them, attackedthe police station, pulled the victim out, and burned him alive.
On August 17, Islamabad police took into custody Rimsha Masih, a 14-year-old Christian girl from a poor Islamabad suburb with a “significantly lower mental age,” who was accused of burning pages filled with Quranic passages. Police had to beat back a mob demanding that it be handed the girl so that it could kill her. Threats against the local Christian community forced some 400 families to flee their homes. But Islamist groups who support the blasphemy lawtook a significantly different position,demanding a full investigation. The accuser, local cleric Khalid Chishti, was himself arrested for fabricating evidence in order to rid the neighbourhood of Christians. On September 23, police officials stated they hadfound no evidence against Rimsha Masih,who wasreleased and given state protection at an undisclosed location.
Members of the Ahmadi religious community continued to be a major target for blasphemy prosecutions and subjected to specific anti-Ahmadi laws across Pakistan. They faced increasing social discrimination as militant groups used provisions of the law to prevent Ahmadis from “posing as Muslims,” forced the demolition of Ahmadi mosques in Lahore, barred Ahmadis from using their mosques in Rawalpindi, and vandalized Ahmadi graves across Punjab province. In most instances, Punjab provincial officials supported militants’ demands instead of protecting Ahmadis and their mosques and graveyards.
Violence against women and girls—including rape, “honor” killings, acid attacks, domestic violence, and forced marriage—remained a serious problem. Intimidation and threats against women and girls out in public increased in major cities in 2012.
Freedom of Expression
At least eight journalists were killed in Pakistan during the year, including four in May alone. On May 9 and 10 respectively, Tariq Kamal and Aurangzeb Tunio were killed. On May 18, the bullet-riddled body of Express News correspondent Razzaq Gul was found dumped in a deserted area near Turbat in Balochistan province. Security agencies are suspected of involvement in his killing. On May 28, Abdul Qadir Hajizai was shot dead in Balochistan by armed men on a motorbike. The Baloch Liberation Front reportedly claimed responsibility for his killing. No one was held accountable in any of these cases.
A climate of fear impeded media coverage of the state security forces and militant groups. Journalists rarely reported on human rights abuses by the military in counterterrorism operations, and the Taliban and other armed groups regularly threatened media outlets over their coverage.
In June, gunmen shot at the building of Aaj TV, a private Urdu-languagenews channel,wounding two guards. The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility and threatened such attacks would continue if media outlets did not reflect the Taliban’s priorities and positions in coverage. However, as has been the case since the return to civilian rule in 2008, journalists vocally critical of the government experienced less interference from elected officials than in previous years.
Judicial Activism and Independence
Pakistan’s judiciary continued to assert its independence from the government in 2012. In December 2011, the judiciary began controversial hearings into the so-called “Memogate” scandal investigating Husain Haqqani, Pakistan’s former ambassador to the US on charges that he attempted to conspire against Pakistan’s military in collusion with the US. The court notably failed to investigate allegations from the same source that the head of the country’s dreaded Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) had conspired to oust the elected government.
In June, the Supreme Court controversially fired Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani for refusing to sign a letter to Switzerland asking for an investigation into corruption allegations against President Asif Zardari.
Despite the adoption of a National Judicial Policy in 2009, access to justice remained abysmal and courts remained rife with corruption and incompetence. Case backlogs remain huge at all levels. The judiciary’s use of suo motu proceedings—acting on its own motions—was considered so excessive that the International Commission of Jurists raised concerns about it.
While the Supreme Court was active in raising the issue of government abuses in Balochistan, no high-level military officials were held accountable for them. As has been the case since Pakistan’s independent judiciary was restored to office in 2009, Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry and the provincial high courts muzzled media criticism of the judiciary in 2012 through threats of contempt of court proceedings. In October, both the Lahore and Islamabad high courts effectively barred media from criticizing the judiciary or giving airtime to critics in the aftermath of a multi-million dollar corruption scandal involving Arsalan Iftikhar, the son of the Supreme Court chief justice.
The human rights crisis continued to worsen in the mineral-rich province of Balochistan. Human Rights Watch recorded continued enforced disappearances and killings of suspected Baloch militants and opposition activists by the military, intelligence agencies, and the paramilitary Frontier Corps. Baloch nationalists and other militant groups also stepped up attacks on non-Baloch civilians. Pakistan's military continued to publicly resist government reconciliation efforts and attempts to locate ethnic Baloch who had been subject to “disappearances.” Pakistan’s government appeared powerless to rein in the military’s abuses. As a result, large numbers of Hazara community members sought asylum abroad.
Militant Attacks and Counterterrorism
Suicide bombings, armed attacks, and killings by the Taliban, al Qaeda, and their affiliates continued in 2012, targeting politicians, journalists, religious minorities, and government security personnel. Many of these attacks were claimed by groups such as the Haqqani network, the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, and other al Qaeda affiliates.
Security forces routinely violated basic rights in the course of counterterrorism operations. Suspects were frequently detained without charge or were convicted without a fair trial. Thousands of suspected members of al Qaeda, the Taliban, and other armed groups—who were rounded up in a nationwide crackdown that began in 2009 in Swat and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas—remained in illegal military detention; few were prosecuted or produced before the courts. The army continued to deny lawyers, relatives, independent monitors, and humanitarian agency staff access to persons detained during military operations. Terrorism suspects, particularly in the Swat Valley, reportedly died inexplicably of “natural causes.” However, lack of access to the detainees made independent verification of the cause of death impossible.
Aerial drone strikes by the US on suspected members of al Qaeda and the Taliban in northern Pakistan continued in 2012, with some 44 strikes taking place through early November. As in previous years, these strikes were often accompanied by claims from Pakistanis of large numbers of civilian casualties, although lack of access to the conflict areas largely prevented independent verification.
Human Rights Defenders
Community-based human rights activists faced increased threats. In June, Asma Jahangir, the country’s most prominent human rights defender, alleged that she had discovered that an assassination attempt was being planned against her from “the highest levels of the security establishment.” In the preceding months, Jahangir had been at odds with the Pakistani military in a series of high-profile standoffs, including over the military’s policies in Balochistan and elsewhere.
Key International Actors
The US remained the largest donor of development and military aid to Pakistan, but relations remained abysmal through much of 2012. The US rejected apologizing for the “Salala Attack,” prompting Pakistan to ban the movement of NATO supplies to Afghanistan through Pakistan. The routes were only reopened in July after the US offered a formulation of regret that Pakistan found acceptable. Major areas of bilateral tension remained, particularly Pakistan’s alleged persistent support for the Haqqani network, a militant group that US officials accused of targeting US troops in Afghanistan. In September, the US declared the Haqqani network a terrorist body.
Pakistan and China continued to deepen extensive economic and political ties. Historically tense relations between Pakistan and nuclear rival India showed marked improvement in 2012. In September, the two countries signed landmark trade and travel agreements.
The United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID) visited Pakistan in September and reported in preliminary findings that there is “acknowledgment that enforced disappearances have occurredand still occur in the country.” | <urn:uuid:57a07e5e-95da-405b-9e6a-f0e01895043d> | CC-MAIN-2021-17 | https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2013/country-chapters/pakistan | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-17/segments/1618038077818.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20210414125133-20210414155133-00589.warc.gz | en | 0.964764 | 2,485 | 2.609375 | 3 |
The latest wildfire to break out near Chernobyl has consumed 130 hectares. It started on June 29, and it is unclear whether it is still burning or not.
Experts have recorded 0.0025 becquerels of Cesium-137 per cubic meter of air. The inspection found that it is beyond the measures usually observed.
According to the Ukrainian Ministry of Emergency Situations, the fire in the Chernobyl exclusion zone continues, firefighters are unable to resolve the situation. (link)
Air near the desolated settlement of Polesskoye in the Chernobyl zone is contaminated with the radioactive element cesium-137. Its content in the air has reached a level called “sequence above the norm” (approximately ten times the norm), the State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate of Ukraine (SNRI) reported on Wednesday.
Cesium-137 is one of the most dangerous nuclear elements, as it accumulates in the body and can lead to leukemia. (link)
The radiation risk involves the fire spreading to areas closer to the plant. But there is no danger of a new explosion.
Fire near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine poses a danger to the surrounding regions, expert of the Polish branch of Greenpeace Jan Haverkamp told TASS on Thursday.
“We are monitoring the situation. Fortunately, the fire has not yet reached the NPP reactor zone. It’s very dangerous that everything is happening in the nuclear power plant area. If the fire spreads there, a huge amount of radiation will get into the atmosphere,” he said. “It’s a risk, but the risk primarily to Ukraine, Russia and Belarus, as they are located in close vicinity,” Haverkamp said.
According to him, there will be no explosion, similar to the 1986 accident, and Eastern European countries, including Poland, have now nothing to worry about.
“We welcome the efforts of Ukrainian authorities that are doing their utmost to prevent the fire from spreading,” the expert said. (link)
Meanwhile, iodine-131 continues to spew out of the destroyed Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan. I-131 started rising in April, and it was detected in Scandinavia in early May.
These readings from Niigata prefecture sewage sludge in June indicate the highest level of I-131 since September 2013 (which was gnarly).
Sludge from Fukushima prefecture shows that I-131 was rising in the later part of May:
A surge in iodine-131 emissions indicates a recriticality is taking place. It also means that the corium is heating up. This isotope causes thyroid cancer and other thyroid and pituitary diseases.
And an emission event was observed yesterday by the webcam watchers at Enenews:
July 1, 2015 at 9:50 pm Log in to Reply
Alert for radiation readings this week:
People watching the webcams have reported an event ongoing at Fukushima
Pure water, Majia, Nuckelchen, Horse, irhologram and many others are posting images and describing an event with:
yellow gases coming up from the ground
Pink skies, etc.
Fallout from such an event would likely hit the west coast by July 4th, and the rest of the U.S. thereafter.
Some of their images:
Majia has a good summary of this event on her blog. | <urn:uuid:38d8eddd-175a-493f-8ddc-b3001a52d619> | CC-MAIN-2018-39 | http://optimalprediction.com/another-fire-in-chernobyl-exclusion-zone-increasing-i-131-and-emissions-at-fukushima/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-39/segments/1537267162385.83/warc/CC-MAIN-20180925182856-20180925203256-00003.warc.gz | en | 0.934325 | 704 | 2.609375 | 3 |
Many of the world’s soils are in poor condition. That’s why UN food organisation FAO has declared 2015 the Year of Soils. ImpactReporters has responded by initiating a special Healthy soils theme page on the popular science website Kennislink.
One fifth of the world’s soils are degraded
Soil is the soft, vulnerable layer overlaying the hard bedrock. A healthy soil is made up of half sand or clay, 40 percent water and air and 10 percent organic matter, such as the roots of plants and soil organisms. It’s estimated that one fifth to a quarter of the world’s soils has been degraded, with the result that less can grow there. Excessive intensive farming, urbanisation and neglect are just some of the contributing factors.
Educating the public
There’s a need for better soil management and that’s what the Year of Soils aims to get across. One of its aims is to ‘inform the public about the crucial role soils play in food security, climate adaptation, biodiversity and combating poverty.’ ImpactReporters will do this by reporting on the research news, starting with World Soils Week in Berlin (April 19-22) right up until World Soil Day on December 5. The multi-media e-platform with up-to-date articles and visual material will offer the broader public an insight into possible solutions for more sustainable soils.
This project has been made possible by Food & Business Knowledge Platform, Pubic Private Program BeterBodemBeheer, Triodos Foundation and the Dutch Association of Soil Experts.
Photo credit: cropping systems agronomist D.B. Pandit/CIMMYT. | <urn:uuid:fc66a315-c4af-443f-a1da-c0082ab551af> | CC-MAIN-2020-24 | http://www.impactreporters.eu/en/internationaal-jaar-van-de-bodem | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-24/segments/1590347399820.9/warc/CC-MAIN-20200528135528-20200528165528-00119.warc.gz | en | 0.914766 | 359 | 3.46875 | 3 |
IPv4 vs IPv6: What’s the Difference Between IPv4 and IPv6?
What is IP?
An IP (Internet Protocol) address is a numerical label assigned to each device connected to a computer network that uses the IP protocol for communication. An IP address acts as an identifier for a specific device on a particular network. The IP address is also called an IP number or Internet address.
IP address specifies the technical format of the addressing and packets scheme. Most networks combine IP with a TCP (Transmission Control Protocol). It also allows developing a virtual connection between a destination and a source.
Now in this IPv4 and IPv6 difference tutorial, we will learn What is IPv4 and IPv6?
What is IPv4?
IPv4 is an IP version widely used to identify devices on a network using an addressing system. It was the first version of IP deployed for production in the ARPANET in 1983. It uses a 32-bit address scheme to store 2^32 addresses which is more than 4 billion addresses. It is considered the primary Internet Protocol and carries 94% of Internet traffic.
What is IPv6?
IPv6 is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol. This new IP address version is being deployed to fulfill the need for more Internet addresses. It was aimed to resolve issues that are associated with IPv4. With 128-bit address space, it allows 340 undecillion unique address space. IPv6 is also called IPng (Internet Protocol next generation).
Internet Engineer Taskforce initiated it in early 1994. The design and development of that suite are now called IPv6.
IPv4 is 32-Bit IP address whereas IPv6 is a 128-Bit IP address.
IPv4 is a numeric addressing method whereas IPv6 is an alphanumeric addressing method.
IPv4 binary bits are separated by a dot(. ) whereas IPv6 binary bits are separated by a colon(:).
IPv4 offers 12 header fields whereas IPv6 offers 8 header fields.
IPv4 supports broadcast whereas IPv6 doesn’t support broadcast.
IPv4 has checksum fields while IPv6 doesn’t have checksum fields
When we compare IPv4 and IPv6, IPv4 supports VLSM (Variable Length Subnet Mask) whereas IPv6 doesn’t support VLSM.
IPv4 uses ARP (Address Resolution Protocol) to map to MAC address whereas IPv6 uses NDP (Neighbour Discovery Protocol) to map to MAC address.
Features of IPv4
Following are the features of IPv4:
Allow creating a simple virtual communication layer over diversified devices
It requires less memory, and ease of remembering addresses
Already supported protocol by millions of devices
Offers video libraries and conferences
Features of IPv6
Here are the features of IPv6:
Hierarchical addressing and routing infrastructure
Stateful and Stateless configuration
Support for quality of service (QoS)
An ideal protocol for neighboring node interaction
IPv4 vs IPv6
Difference Between IPv4 and IPv6 Addresses
IPv4 & IPv6 are both IP addresses that are binary numbers. Comparing IPv6 vs IPv4, IPv4 is 32 bit binary number while IPv6 is 128 bit binary number address. IPv4 address are separated by periods while IPv6 address are separated by colons.
Both are used to identify machines connected to a network. In principle, they are the same, but they are different in how they work. Below are the main differences between IPv4 and IPv6:
Basis for differences
Size of IP address
IPv4 is a 32-Bit IP Address.
IPv6 is 128 Bit IP Address.
IPv4 is a numeric address, and its binary bits are separated by a dot (. )
IPv6 is an alphanumeric address whose binary bits are separated by a colon (:). It also contains hexadecimal.
Number of header fields
Length of header filed
Has checksum fields
Does not have checksum fields
12. 244. 233. 165
Type of Addresses
Unicast, broadcast, and multicast.
Unicast, multicast, and anycast.
Number of classes
IPv4 offers five different classes of IP Address. Class A to E.
lPv6 allows storing an unlimited number of IP Address.
You have to configure a newly installed system before it can communicate with other systems.
In IPv6, the configuration is optional, depending upon on functions needed.
IPv4 support VLSM (Variable Length Subnet mask).
IPv6 does not offer support for VLSM.
Fragmentation is done by sending and forwarding routes.
Fragmentation is done by the sender.
Routing Information Protocol (RIP)
RIP is a routing protocol supported by the routed daemon.
RIP does not support IPv6. It uses static routes.
Networks need to be configured either manually or with DHCP. IPv4 had several overlays to handle Internet growth, which require more maintenance efforts.
IPv6 support autoconfiguration capabilities.
Widespread use of NAT (Network address translation) devices which allows single NAT address can mask thousands of
non-routable addresses, making end-to-end
It allows direct addressing because of vast address
Use for the designated network from host portion.
SNMP is a protocol used for system management.
SNMP does not support IPv6.
Mobility & Interoperability
Relatively constrained network topologies to which move restrict mobility and interoperability capabilities.
IPv6 provides interoperability and mobility
capabilities which are embedded in network devices.
Security is dependent on applications – IPv4 was not designed with security in mind.
IPSec(Internet Protocol Security) is built into the IPv6 protocol, usable with
a proper key infrastructure.
Packet size 576 bytes required, fragmentation optional
1208 bytes required without fragmentation
Allows from routers and sending host
Sending hosts only
Does not identify packet flow for QoS handling which includes checksum options.
Packet head contains Flow Label field that specifies packet flow for QoS handling
Address (A) records, maps hostnames
Address (AAAA) records, maps hostnames
Manual or via DHCP
Stateless address autoconfiguration using Internet Control Message Protocol version 6 (ICMPv6) or DHCPv6
IP to MAC resolution
Multicast Neighbour Solicitation
Local subnet Group management
Internet Group Management Protocol GMP)
Multicast Listener Discovery (MLD)
Has Optional Fields
Does not have optional fields. But Extension headers are available.
Internet Protocol Security (IPSec) concerning network security is optional
Internet Protocol Security (IPSec) Concerning network security is mandatory
Dynamic host configuration Server
Clients have approach DHCS (Dynamic Host Configuration server) whenever they want to connect to a network.
A Client does not have to approach any such server as they are given permanent addresses.
Uses ARP(Address Resolution Protocol) to map to MAC address
Uses NDP(Neighbour Discovery Protocol) to map to MAC address
Combability with mobile devices
IPv4 address uses the dot-decimal notation. That’s why it is not suitable for mobile networks.
IPv6 address is represented in hexadecimal, colon- separated notation.
IPv6 is better suited to mobile
IPv4 and IPv6 cannot communicate with other but can exist together on the same network. This is known as Dual Stack.
Everything You Need to Know About IPv4 vs. IPv6
The “IP” in IPv4 and IPv6 stands for Internet Protocol, which is a set of rules that determine how devices transmit data packets across the Internet. Internet Protocol also assigns a unique address to each device on the web. These addresses ensure data packets are routed to the correct device.
What is IPv4?
IPv4 or Internet Protocol Version 4 is the most common protocol for transmitting data packets on the web. IPv4 provides both the identification (IP addresses) for each device on the Internet and the rules that govern how data packets are transmitted between those devices.
With IPv4, a typical IP address has 32 bits and is in dotted-decimal form, like this:
192. 0. 2. 235
Because there are only 232 unique hosts in this decimal format, there are only about 4. 3 billion IPv4 addresses.
What is IPv6?
There’s been a massive increase in devices connected to the Internet in the last decade—with a rise from 5 Internet devices per household to 50 Internet devices per household from 2015 to 2020. This prompted the Internet Engineering Tracking Taskforce (IETF) to create a new Internet protocol, IPv6. It was released in December 1998.
IPv6 addresses are written in hexadecimal format, like this:
The Pros of IPv4 vs. IPv6
Despite IPv6 being the newer, updated IP, there are still many advantages of IPv4.
Existing infrastructure – Most websites use IPv4, even those that also support IPv6. This makes version four a more seamless experience. That is, until most of the Internet switches to version six.
Simplicity – IPv4’s 32-bit dotted decimal is much smaller and simpler than IPv6’s hexadecimal numbers. This simplicity is easier for humans to read.
Support – Because most traffic is still using IPv4, Network operators find IPv4 familiar. They may wait until more traffic is IPv6 before they make any decisions about their own infrastructure—especially if they have enough IPv4 addresses for the near future.
The Cons of IPv4 vs. IPv6
Running short on IPv4 addresses isn’t the only con of version four.
Exhaustion of IPv4 – As we’ve covered, the world is short on IPv4 addresses. This means there’s a cost to buy IPv4 addresses, where IPv6 addresses can be had (in unimaginable quantities) for the cost of registration with a regional registry (RIR). You also pay registry costs with IPv4.
IPv6 Speed – Web and cloud services provider, Akamai, measured the speed of IPv6 vs. IPv4. They found, “Sites load 5% faster in median and 15% faster for the 95% percentile on IPv6 compared to IPv4. ”
Network Address Translation (NAT) for IPv4 – NAT allows a group of devices (usually 10-20) that share a single public IP with IPv4. This requires complex configurations like forwarding and firewall alterations. Because IPv6 has so many addresses, IPv6 devices don’t require additional configuration.
Understanding the IPv4 market
The pros of IPv4, combined with the lack of addresses, created a new marketplace. Today, companies that need IPv4 addresses can buy them through IPv4 Brokers, or a company looking to move to IPv6 can sell IPv4 addresses.
When a company needs more IP addresses, they have three options:
Buy IPv4 addresses – That’s what is here for. Companies can also sell their IPv4 addresses if they’re beginning to deploy IPv6.
Use NAT – As mentioned above, NAT allows one address to be shared among many devices. However, NAT still requires one IPv4 address (usually one per 10-20 people). This has some drawbacks, namely speed issues as packets have to transition paths.
Deploy IPv6 – A business can deploy IPv6, but this may be of limited usefulness until most traffic is also on IPv6. So, even if a business deploys IPv6, it still needs more IPv4 addresses or NAT.
There’s much debate around which is better—IPv4 or IPv6. But really, it’s about your specific needs. If you’d like more information on the differences between IPv4 vs. IPv6, or if you’re looking for help with either, please reach out to us today.
Should I use IPv6 only or both IPv4 and IPv6 in my web server?
You should use both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses.
Nearly everyone on the Internet currently has an IPv4 address, or is behind a NAT of some kind, and can access IPv4 resources.
However, at the time of writing only about 0. 7% 2. 3% 3. 8% 6. 5% 9% 12% 19% 22% 26% 32% of the Internet is IPv6 capable, but that number is steadily growing as IPv6 begins to roll out worldwide.
In a very few places, ISPs are providing primarily IPv6 or only IPv6 to residential customers and using large scale NAT, NAT64 or other such solutions for IPv4 connectivity. This number is expected to grow as IPv4 address space is finally exhausted. These users will typically have better performance over IPv6.
Where ISPs have deployed large scale NAT to solve IPv4 exhaustion, users stuck with this will suffer reduced reliability of all their Internet connections due to the connection limits inherent in the large scale NAT gateways. For instance, a web page might only load some but not all of its resources, leaving broken icons where images should be, missing styles and scripts, etc. This is similar to connection limit exhaustion on a home router, but affecting all users of the ISP intermittently and seemingly randomly. If you want your site to be reliable for these users, you must serve it via IPv6 (and the ISP must have deployed IPv6).
Since IPv6 is where the Internet is going, having your web site IPv6 enabled now puts you ahead of the game and lets you resolve any problems long before they become serious.
By default with Linux and nginx, you can bind to both IPv4 and IPv6 at the same time by changing your listen directives to:
Or, for SSL sites:
listen [::]:443 ssl;
listen 443 ssl;
Frequently Asked Questions about difference between ipv4 vs ipv6
Which is faster IPv4 or IPv6?
IPv6 Speed – Web and cloud services provider, Akamai, measured the speed of IPv6 vs. IPv4. They found, “Sites load 5% faster in median and 15% faster for the 95% percentile on IPv6 compared to IPv4.”Aug 18, 2020
Should I use IPv6 or IPv4?
You should use both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses. Nearly everyone on the Internet currently has an IPv4 address, or is behind a NAT of some kind, and can access IPv4 resources. | <urn:uuid:06e94c1f-8f6c-48de-86d2-5cc962637cc0> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://bilderupload.net/difference-between-ipv4-vs-ipv6/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233506528.19/warc/CC-MAIN-20230923162848-20230923192848-00054.warc.gz | en | 0.884498 | 3,234 | 3.46875 | 3 |
The Properties of Optical Glass
Dr. Hans Bach
Dr. Norbert Neuroth
This book has 414 pages, with 161 figures and 62 tables
This volume describes the properties of the optical glasses developed by Schott. The properties of optical glasses for classical optical elements such as lenses and prisms are treated in detail. Further topics treated include special applications in optoelectronics, the mechanical and thermal properties of optical glasses, the interaction of glass surfaces with aqueous solutions and gases in the atmosphere, the production of optical surfaces, special glasses for ophthalmics, the ultraviolet and infrared spectral regions, photo- chromic glasses, glasses for lasers and nuclear engineering, and coloured and eye protection glasses.
The book is a monograph, but the individual chapters are by leading Schott experts on the corresponding topics. In all the chapters, tables and examples are chosen to support the reader’s daily work with glass and glass ceramics. Numerous references are given to more detailed literature. The volume fills the gap between the basic knowledge of glass provided by material science and catalogue data supplied by glass manufacturers. | <urn:uuid:006dc024-8397-4f25-9cb6-c2d5b914cff5> | CC-MAIN-2017-39 | http://www.schott.com/rd/english/the_schott_series/band3.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-39/segments/1505818692236.58/warc/CC-MAIN-20170925164022-20170925184022-00104.warc.gz | en | 0.858033 | 225 | 2.75 | 3 |
It is very common for students to search for references and content in books and internet portals for university work and final-year research papers. However, if the quote or excerpt used is not properly credited, it can be configured as academic plagiarism. Plagiarized works lose their validity, that is, they are invalidated. Before you throw away all the research and creation effort of your university work, make sure everything is as it should be.
Imagine the following situation: you did a job from scratch. You researched, read, gathered information, and, after much effort, created and published an original article. A while later, you discover that it is being copied, and other people are getting credit for your effort. That is, you were a victim of plagiarism!
It wouldn’t be cool, would it? Plagiarism is a serious problem in academia. If you’ve ever been plagiarized, you know how horrible it feels. Some students and researchers copy other authors intentionally, but it is also possible to commit plagiarism unintentionally.
It would not be good for your reputation to be accused of copying someone else. So it is worthwhile to understand better what plagiarism is. Then keep reading!
What is plagiarism?
The act of plagiarizing consists of copying or signing a text, music, photo, work, as if it were yours when it belongs or has parts of someone else’s work or ideas.
Types of Academic Plagiarism
There are several types of plagiarism. For example, use quotes, phrases, concepts, and ideas from another actor, without attributing the correct quote. In addition, the use of images, tables, and graphs, without due credit, is also prohibited.
This is the worst type of academic plagiarism, as it shows bad faith and a lack of ethics. It appears in the full copy of another author’s work without paying due credit. In other words, in this type of plagiarism, the author is not mentioned, and his work is entirely copied and credited to another person.
Partial academic plagiarism occurs when the author uses several phrases and fragments from different authors throughout the work without giving due credit. Unlike full plagiarism, the partial contains work by several authors.
Mosaic plagiarism occurs when the student paraphrases ideas from another author without identifying its true source. In other words, it is the act of writing; in other words, the same idea that the original author passed on in his work.
Many students use academic mosaic-style plagiarism, changing only a few words from the original text. The idea is to make it difficult to identify plagiarism; however, if plagiarism is proven, the work loses its validity in the same way.
Using another author’s ideas and concepts, as if they were his, is also characterized as academic plagiarism. All concepts used, which are defined by other authors, must be properly credited in the text.
This type of plagiarism is almost similar to the partial plagiarism; however, the writer changes the sentence structure and words to cover up copying another’s ideas.
Other types of Plagiarism
In addition to the main types of academic plagiarism, already mentioned above, you can also find:
- Data without source: it is common to find qualitative and quantitative data in academic works. However, informing these data without citing the source can also be characterized as plagiarism. Therefore, whenever you use any information from a survey, quote the institution that conducted the survey;
- Non-existent source: citing a non-existent source can also invalidate your work. Do not be tempted to invent a quote or assign a quote or information to any source;
- Self-plagiarism: Did you know that it is possible to self-plagiarize? This happens when the student uses work already done by him and does not give himself credit. For example, when a graduate student uses excerpts from his undergraduate degree for his graduate work and does not place the credits. Stay tuned!
- Visual content: As previously mentioned, visual content such as photos, drawings, tables, and graphs must also be correctly cited, and their authors must be credited.
How to Prevent and Detect Plagiarism?
First, citing all the sources, you use in your academic work. Also, using the referencing style of your institution correctly also helps a lot in the process. This is because the institution standards already stipulate guidelines that must be followed for different types of citations and references.
There is still no standardized rule within universities to identify and punish students who commit academic plagiarism. Because of this, in most cases, it is up to the teacher to perform this analysis. At the beginning of the academic career, it is common for students to present more work with small cases of plagiarism, without intention.
This is because the student is not yet familiar and can make some mistakes when crediting the explained content. However, it is important that students not commit plagiarism throughout their careers, as it can harm and invalidate research and work.
Remember the main types of citation generally accepted in the academic environment around the world:
To make a direct quote, that is, transcribe exactly what the author said, in your work, you must pay attention to the size of the quote.
For quotes of up to three lines, quotation marks and reference to the material used must be used.
For quotes of four lines or more, different formatting is required. The font used in the quote must be smaller than the font of the rest of the text; the font size ten is usually used. In addition, it is necessary to add a 4cm indentation in the left margin. Finally, add the reference to the material used in the end.
This type of quote is used when the author of the work paraphrases the original author; that is, he writes with his words the same idea or concept that the author used. As previously mentioned, this type of quotation must also receive the due credits, so, after the paraphrased phrase, insert the reference of the material used and year.
Tools to detect plagiarism
Some tools help in detecting plagiarism in academic works. Are they:
This is one of the most popular programs for detecting plagiarism and has personal and professional plans. Copyspace offers a report with information about the references found, what are the number of occurrences on the internet, and the percentage of suspicions.
This program also allows you to check if your work has excerpts copied from the internet or from files on your computer.
Yes, the world’s largest search engine can be used to screen for simple plagiarism, especially if it is full or partial. To do this, paste the excerpt that you suspect is plagiarized into the search engine and check the search for similar texts, or even the original content.
This online program offers more affordable prices and has a simple and quick way to analyze excerpts from academic papers, looking for whether there is any plagiarism.
This is a free tool and very simple to use. 1text checks if there are documents on the internet that resemble the analyzed content, thus looking for possible plagiarism.
Implications of Academic Plagiarism
Being caught plagiarizing can have serious legal implications for the people involved in the act. Plagiarizing another author’s work can be in breach of copyright laws. Also, those who commit plagiarism may have their diploma revoked, invalidating their entire academic career.
Students and professionals who are caught plagiarizing someone else’s content are also not well regarded at congresses, symposia, and other academic events. Thus, it is clear that plagiarism does not pay, as it checks all the professional or student’s credibility. | <urn:uuid:685ec84d-020b-427f-a9c1-1653b5cb1d55> | CC-MAIN-2020-40 | https://www.projecttopics.org/academic-plagiarism-know-what-it-is-and-how-to-avoid-it.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-40/segments/1600400192783.34/warc/CC-MAIN-20200919173334-20200919203334-00350.warc.gz | en | 0.949153 | 1,610 | 3.015625 | 3 |
Many people are familiar with four-sided dice (caltrops) and the fact that they don't roll very well due to the small number of sides. The situation is even worse for three-sided dice, since there are no polyhedra with only three sides. In order to decide between two choices, most people will flip a coin, but wouldn't it be nice if you could use the more satisfying motion of rolling a die? These unique dice solve all of these problems by numbering a modified rhombic dodecahedron to allow it to be read as a d2 (1 or 2), d3 (1-3), or d4 (1-4). Reading the d2/3/4 MultiDie The photo shows the top view of the die, in one of twelve possible orientations. The middle number is used to read the d3 value, the number set in a triangle the d4 value (think of a traditional d4), and the number set in a circle the d2 value (think of flipping a coin). Buy a single die (colour will be black, white or blue) or a set of 3 (search for D2/3/4 multidice set of 3). | <urn:uuid:612b7d0a-d656-4907-a6bf-53156988d606> | CC-MAIN-2020-16 | https://www.tarquingroup.com/d2-3-4-multidice.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-16/segments/1585370497301.29/warc/CC-MAIN-20200330181842-20200330211842-00087.warc.gz | en | 0.898089 | 250 | 2.953125 | 3 |
This report is drawn from a national survey of Canadian youth conducted by MediaSmarts in 2013. The classroom-based survey of 5,436 students in grades 4 through 11, in every province and territory, examined the role of networked technologies in young people’s lives. Life Online (the first in a series of reports from the survey) focuses on what youth are doing online, what sites they’re going to, their attitudes towards online safety, household rules on Internet use and unplugging from digital technologies.
Executive Summary (PDF)
Full Report (PDF)
Young Canadians in a Wired World, Phase III: Life Online was made possible by financial contributions from the Canadian Internet Registration Authority, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada and The Alberta Teachers’ Association.
Life Online Infographic
Share the Life Online infographic using the share icons above, tweeting using the hashtag #YCWW, and posting the infographic on your website using the embed code below.
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Life Online slideshow
About Young Canadians in a Wired World
Initiated in 2000 by MediaSmarts, Young Canadians in a Wired World (YCWW) is the most comprehensive and wide-ranging study of children’s and teens’ Internet use in Canada. Phase I and Phase II of this ongoing research project – which tracks and investigates the behaviours, attitudes and opinions of Canadian children and youth with respect to their use of the Internet – were conducted in 2001 and 2005. In 2011, MediaSmarts launched Phase III of the YCWW study with qualitative research comprising interviews with teachers from across Canada and focus groups with children and youth and parents, followed by a national classroom survey in 2013.
Young Canadians in a Wired World - Phase III
- Encountering Racist and Sexist Content Online
- Sexuality and Romantic Relationships in the Digital Age
- Experts or Amateurs? Gauging Young Canadians’ Digital Literacy Skills
- Cyberbullying: Dealing with Online Meanness, Cruelty and Threats
- Online Privacy, Online Publicity
- Life Online | <urn:uuid:ced4ab45-0252-4e35-b411-0dcaa2c63453> | CC-MAIN-2014-42 | http://mediasmarts.ca/ycww/life-online | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-42/segments/1414119647629.9/warc/CC-MAIN-20141024030047-00156-ip-10-16-133-185.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.898559 | 438 | 3.109375 | 3 |
Improving the economics of the production and development of an unconventional reservoir system is a key to meeting increased demand for hydrocarbons in the near future. In general, reservoir development is vastly assisted by using hard-computing models to evaluate the potential of the formation. These models have been used to identify infill drilling locations and forecast production. However, preparing the simulation models for discontinuous tight oil reservoir systems poses a challenge with hard-computing protocols. This paper discusses a methodology developed to depict the production characteristics of a reservoir via the geological properties of the reservoir. The methodology discussed in the paper is time efficient and is proven to generate effective results. The methodology discussed in the paper utilizes Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) to map the existing complex relationships between seismic data, well logs, completion parameters and production characteristics. ANNs developed in this work are used to forecast oil, water and gas cumulative production for a two year period. The results obtained are also extended to identify potential infill drilling locations. This work enables the practicing engineer and the geoscientist to analyze an entire reservoir in a time efficient manner. The workflow is demonstrated on a discontinuous tight oil reservoir located in West Texas. The results discussed in the paper show the robust nature of the methodology. The workflow also helps in improving the resolution of the production surfaces which help in identifying productive, yet undrilled, locations in the reservoir. The production surface for the entire field is forecasted within a one minute time frame (-6600 locations). The method developed will help in avoiding low producing wells prior to drilling, and thus, is expected to help in the economic development of complex tight oil reservoirs. | <urn:uuid:439f32ad-c942-4bab-bce7-60948d99b42c> | CC-MAIN-2021-31 | https://pennstate.pure.elsevier.com/en/publications/forecasting-well-performance-in-a-discontinuous-tight-oil-reservo | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-31/segments/1627046154053.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20210731043043-20210731073043-00061.warc.gz | en | 0.929793 | 332 | 2.578125 | 3 |
Guinea pigs are known for being snackers. They don’t eat a meal in the morning and a meal in the evening with regularity. Their schedule is more of an around-the-clock frenzy. Due to that, it may be difficult to see a guinea pig consistently eating all the food provided. This kind of sporadic eating can lead to the development of anorexia.
A guinea pig that suddenly stops eating can be caused by many factors, but should always be handled as seriously as a human with an eating disorder. GuineaLynx.com notes potential causes for a decreased, or halted, eating schedule as oral lacerations, water deprivation, a change in food, infectious diseases, and metabolic disorders, loss of a cage mate, loss of smell, temperature swings, and stress. Also, guinea pigs who were prescribed medication, such as antibiotics, might exhibit a lack of hunger.
Other symptoms might lead to the diagnosis of an eating disorder, including lethargy, rough/dry hair, weight loss, and loss of skin elasticity. A recent surgery could also kickstart disordered eating.
Anorexia in guinea pigs can turn life-threatening in under 24 hours, so noticing changes immediately may quite possibly save its life; guinea pigs are known to mask their ailments, so keeping a watchful eye could make all the difference. Switching out the regular loose bedding for a soft towel will simplify the urine and dropping the monitoring process as it will be easier to see the regularity and consistency of excrement. The towel will also need to be changed every day to prevent additional illnesses.
If any of the above situations manifest, take the guinea pig to the vet as soon as possible. The exotics veterinarian will run blood and dental tests, as those are the two that are ordinarily used for diagnoses. In addition to blood and dental records, the vet might administer tests for common diseases and infections like scurvy, respiratory issues, abscesses, ileus, ectoparasites, and uroliths.
In terms of treatment, it may be as simple as changing the feeding system. Implementing more fruits and vegetables into the diet, as opposed to pellets, and hand/syringe feeding are organic ways to enhance eating habits. Medications such as diazepam and cyproheptadine are commonly prescribed as appetite stimulants; it’s essential to diagnose the issue prior to administering medication correctly, as an improper diagnosis, or lack thereof, could mean the end for a guinea pig with severe anorexia. The vet will likely draw out a treatment plan, which can be supplemented with leafy greens mixed with fresh pellets and hay. Vegetable-based baby food is also an excellent semi-solid option for increasing appetite.
Guinea pigs should be taken to the veterinarian once a year, but more regularly after a treatment plan has been prescribed. The 24-hour threshold doesn’t allow much time for an issue to be handled, and if there are sudden complications, the emergency vet needs to be notified immediately. Guinea pig anorexia is a quick on-set issue, so getting a grip on a treatment plan quickly can’t be stressed enough; force-feeding an anorexic guinea pig adds stress to an already stressful situation, therefore exacerbating the issue. | <urn:uuid:166eb84a-0eac-498f-84b4-4823a8aac0c2> | CC-MAIN-2023-06 | https://happytailzpets.com/2019/10/01/dietary-tips-for-your-guinea-pig/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-06/segments/1674764499890.39/warc/CC-MAIN-20230131190543-20230131220543-00460.warc.gz | en | 0.954808 | 689 | 2.96875 | 3 |
We recently received questions from Priya and Tertia about biting. Biting is every parents nightmare. We don't want our kids to be known as "the biter." We don't want our kids to hurt others. And we certainly don't want our kids getting kicked out of school or daycare for biting. So what do we do?
Well, before Mary answers that question for us, let's first take a look at why children bite (Davis & Keyser, 1997; see the book in our sidebar!):
1) Anger -- some kids hit when angry, others bite.
2) Feeling out of control -- biting can offer temporary relief from such an uncomfortable feeling.
3) Limited verbal abilities -- the child may want to express his anger or frustration, but simply doesn't have the vocabulary to do so.
4) Communication -- maybe even if they do have the verbal skills, they may find biting to be a more efficient way to communicate, "Get out of my way!"
5) Teething pain -- the pain in their gums may create the impetus to bite as a way to offer relief.
6) Imitation -- the scary thing about biting is that it can sometimes run rampant in schools or daycare settings. When one child does it, all the children may start imitating him or her! They may also imitate it as a way to explore how it feels to bite another person.
7) Experimentation -- they may want to know what happens when they bite. In particular, they may want to know how their peers versus their parents react to it.
8) Tension release -- again, biting may offer some feeling of relief.
9) Attention -- if a child bites someone, that child is certainly going to get attention from one person, if not more!
10) Power -- it can feel powerful to bite. It sends a message to the bite-ee that the biter is dominant, and, because people respond so quickly, that powerful feeling is enhanced because the biter's action made all those other people react.
11) Impulse -- sometimes, kids don't even want to bite another person. They just need to bite. Did you ever bite your pencils when you were in kindergarten? I did!
So now we know why kids bite. Mary, tell the people what they can do!
Knowing the why's doesn't help when you have a child who's taking chunks out of their family and friends. You can't tolerate repeated bitings while you wait for the child to outgrow these factors. That can take weeks or even months! What do you do in the meantime?
1. As far as possible, keep your child out of situations that are likely to lead to a bite. When you see the frustration rising, intervene. Help her identify and communicate her feelings. If the frustration is too great for calm intervention, remove her from the situation. The debrief can come later, when she's calm enough.
2. Should a bite occur:
a) Give the injured child copious amounts of sympathetic attention, first, before you even so much as look at the biter. (What to do with Mr. Teeth in the meantime? You keep him right beside you, with your arm around him. But you're not looking at him, and you're not talking to him. If he can't/won't stand with you, he goes to a time out, preferably where he can see and hear your interactions with the injured child.) We don't want to reward the biter with huge amounts of attention - and remember, to a toddler, attention is attention. Even if they're being scolded, that's attention.
b) Part of what you say to the victim is intended for the aggressor, but you don't make that clear. As you give the other child a hug and maybe kissed the bo-bo, you will say things like, "I bet that hurt, didn't it? I bet it makes you sad when your friend hurts you. Mr. Teeth must have been upset, but that doesn't mean he can bite. He needs to learn to use his words, not his teeth. Don't worry, I'm sure Mr. Teeth will soon learn to Use His Words."
(Yes, it's preachy, but subtle doesn't get you far with toddlers.)
c) If the skin has been broken, it will be necessary to wash and disinfect the wound. If she's calm enough, the aggressor can watch this, again, while being completely ignored; if she's still too upset, she can go to time out.
3. Once the victim has had a few minutes of consoling attention, they can be sent to play. The biter now gets your attention. Hopefully, by now they're somewhat calmer, and they've also seen that biting doesn't get them lots of intense, immediate attention.
I generally kneel in front of the child, make firm eye contact, and act tremendously shocked and dismayed. "I can't believe a nice little boy like you would bite someone! You're not a wild animal, you're a little boy. It's okay to be upset, but people don't bite. When you're upset, you use your words." Now, I'm not angry, mind you, I'm just very, very shocked.
I give the child a few seconds to absorb my utter dismay, then I relax, smile, and draw the child into a warm hug. "I'll bet you're sad you hurt your friend. I'll bet next time you'll use your words, right?"
This generally gets a nod. Should there be another incident, the follow-up would have more dismay and less comforting in it, and a longer, more deliberately punitive time out.
The theatrics go a long way to teaching and preventing further episodes -- the empathy with the injured child; the shock, dismay, then the warm reassurance of the aggressor. Is it manipulative? I don't think so. Small children are still learning the emotional ropes of life. I am simplifying and exaggerating my response, but the response is real. Biting is a shocking thing to do. (Imagine another adult biting you, and test your response.) It's so common as to be within normal behaviour patterns for a child under the age of three, but that doesn't make it acceptable.
This is the response I typically use, and generally the biting is eliminated within a month. | <urn:uuid:a986a27c-b05a-41be-b780-83d54baf2b3c> | CC-MAIN-2017-13 | http://partners-in-parenting.typepad.com/pip/2006/10/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-13/segments/1490218189462.47/warc/CC-MAIN-20170322212949-00000-ip-10-233-31-227.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972236 | 1,339 | 2.875 | 3 |
Micro Machines and Opto-Electronics on a Contact Lense
Mathematician and SF writer Vernor Vinge has a thing for contact lenses. Wearing the special contact lenses he describes in his fiction –- coupled with computers in clothing and locational sensors scattered everywhere –- his characters see a constant stream of text and virtual sights overlaying the real world.
Fiction now meets reality with prototype contact lenses developed by Babak Parviz at the University of Washington, in Seattle. Dr. Parviz’s prototype lenses can be used as biosensors to display body chemistry or as a heads up display (HUD). Powered by radio waves and 330 microwatts of power from a loop antenna that picks up power beamed from nearby radio sources, future versions will also be able to harvest power from a cell phone.
In his early 2008 lab tests, rabbits safely wore contact lenses with metal connectors for electronic circuits. The prototype lenses contained an electric circuit as well as red light-emitting diodes for a display. The lenses were tested on rabbits for up to 20 minutes and the animals showed no adverse effects. Here’s a video of Dr. Parviz explaining the design of the lenses:
Fitting a contact lense with circuitry and power is a complex matter. The circuitry has to be transparent so as not to annoy the wearer. Also, techniques had to be developed to deal with the temperatures and chemicals used in large-scale microfabrication so that the polymer material used by the contact lenses is not ruined.
"Conventional contact lenses are polymers formed in specific shapes to correct faulty vision,” says Dr. Parviz. “To turn such a lens into a functional system, we integrate control circuits, communication circuits, and miniature antennas into the lens using custom-built optoelectronic components. Those components will eventually include hundreds of LEDs, which will form images in front of the eye, such as words, charts, and photographs. Much of the hardware is semitransparent so that wearers can navigate their surroundings without crashing into them or becoming disoriented.”
The prototype includes a lense with one LED powered wirelessly with radio frequency (RF). “What we’ve done so far barely hints at what will soon be possible with this technology," continues Parviz.
The power for the lense comes through an antenna that collects incoming RF energy from a separate portable transmitter. Power-conversion circuitry provides DC power to other parts of the system and sends instructions to the display control circuit. The display –- at the center of the lense –- can consist of multiple LEDs that turn on and off. Their transparency is modulated by the control circuit.
Dr. Parviz’s contact lenses offer the possibility of something akin to the augmented reality and graphical display effects used in the movie Iron Man
An energy-storage module such as a large capacitor can be connected to a solar cell to provide a power boost to the lense. A biosensor samples the surface of the wearer’s cornea, performs an analysis, and then provides data to the telecommunication module to transmit to an external computer. Such contact lenses will obviously spend hours touching the human eye. Parviz’s team wants to explore the depth and breadth of information that can be captured by wearing the contacts – for example, diabetics can monitor their blood sugar levels. The lense can sample the information obtained from the eye’s surface and display the results in front of the eye as a HUD.
The first HUDs were used in the military based on static gun sight technology for military fighter aircraft with a ring and dot of light called the "pipper," which projected onto the clear glass in front of the sight. HUDs soon were developed to display computed gunnery solutions — using aircraft data such as airspeed and angle of attack — to greatly increase the accuracy pilots could achieve in air-to-air battles.
Today’s fighter and space shuttle pilots are heavily dependent upon HUDs to provide up-to-the-second real time information. Here’s the view of an F16 HUD during a 5-minute flight (the real thing, not simulated, so hang on to your lunch):
Dr. Parviz’s contact lenses offer the possibility of a much more personal HUD, something akin to the augmented reality and graphical display effects used in the movie Iron Man. Here’s a short video (courtesy of Andrew Kramer’s Video Pilot web site) showing a somewhat futuristic vision of the types of graphical information displays that might possible with such contacts lenses:
When you combine Dr. Parviz’s contact lense technology with avatars and virtual worlds, you start to grasp Vernor Vinge’s vision of the near future. With your contact lenses in place, you chat with a distant friend’s quite lifelike image strolling at your side, and adjust the scenery to your mutual taste — adding, say, a raucous nightclub or a serene Zen temple — at the same time that you’re each privately IM’ing your friends and browsing the Internet, much as avatars do today in Second Life.
Given the recent research into the dangers of text messaging while driving, this type of iPhone-on-steroids distraction might seem extreme. Contact lenses as replacements for smart phone displays — even to monitor blood glucose levels — might best be done while not operating heavy equipment. "The true promise of this research is not just the actual system we end up making, whether it’s a display, a biosensor, or both,” comments Dr. Parviz. “We already see a future in which the humble contact lens becomes a real platform, like the iPhone is today, with lots of developers contributing their ideas and inventions. As far as we’re concerned, the possibilities extend as far as the eye can see, and beyond.” | <urn:uuid:b2e49abb-73b5-43f0-b08a-8bf86b689beb> | CC-MAIN-2020-40 | https://hplusmagazine.com/2009/11/20/micro-machines-and-opto-electronics-contact-lense/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-40/segments/1600401585213.82/warc/CC-MAIN-20200928041630-20200928071630-00642.warc.gz | en | 0.926685 | 1,236 | 3 | 3 |
Christina Yi, Colonizing Language: Cultural Production and Language Politics in Modern Japan and Korea, Columbia University Press, 2018. 248 pgs.
In this study of Korean authors writing in Japanese under Japanese colonisation of the Korean peninsula, Christina Yi, assistant professor of modern Japanese Literature at the University of British Columbia, explores in depth a not widely researched topic. In so doing, she problematises the relationship between Japan and Korea, opening it up as much more complex and layered than we are used to seeing. The tendency to look at that relationship as a black and white issue is understandable: the Japanese colonisation of Korea was hardly commendable, and the scars of Japan’s military adventurism—in Korea and in other parts of East Asia—are still in plain view. As always, though, individual lives find a way to exist through political turmoil. Writers seek to express themselves, looking for the right language in which to do so. And the forced hybridity of the colonised produces unexpected linguistic wealth and possibility.
Colonizing Language: Cultural Production and Language Politics in Modern Japan and Korea helps nuance some of the most common assumptions about Korean intellectuals under Japanese political control, in Korea, Japan and further afield.
It is a fraught issue, often exploited for political expediency in Tokyo, but also in Seoul and Pyongyang. The need for a fast national narrative in a divided Korea has meant that collaboration and wartime responsibility have often been approached in highly simplified descriptions. And Japan has managed to avoid looking at itself squarely in the mirror partially thanks to the “reverse course” policy of the occupying American forces, stationed in defeated Japan from 1945 to 1952. The Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces (SCAP), General MacArthur, who was obsessed with anti-Communist containment after Mao Zedong’s victory over the Nationalists in 1949, put a rather hurried stop to the de-fascistisation of Japan. MacArthur promoted political and social reforms aimed at preventing future militarisation of Japan, but the priorities of the “reverse course” allowed the country to skip the level of soul-searching that characterised post-war Germany. By 1950, a deep economic crisis and the consolidation of the Communist victory in North Korea made the SCAP decide to suspend whatever political reckoning had been put in place and proceed with a peace treaty. The Treaty of San Francisco of 1952, signed without representatives from the two Koreas and China, established what compensation Japan should pay to those who had been victims of war crimes and attempted to close the book on Japanese imperialism. Many festering wounds remained wide open.
This brief historical summary leaves little room for complexity, but Christina Yi reminds us that “Japanese-language literature by Korean writers both emerged out of and stood in opposition to discourses of national language, literature and identity. She looks at both the Korean writers in Korea who worked in Japanese and at the literature produced by those referred to as zainichi—Korean residents of Japan—both during and after the occupation.
The works analysed, written mostly in the 1930s up to the 1950s, by authors whose very decision to work as writers when the only language openly available to them was Japanese, show how colonialism unleashes forces it cannot control. In spite of what Japanese colonial ideology was decreeing, the boundaries between language, nationality, identity and subjectivity became blurred—in a manner that couldn’t be orchestrated exclusively by the Japanese authorities, but, also partially at least, by colonial subjects too.
The writers discussed are diverse: there were those like Chang Hyokchu, who would write left-wing critiques of both capitalism and empire for Japanese left-wing magazines. For Chang’s Japanese readers, though, who appreciated his novellas like the award-winning Hell of Hungry Spirits, the priority was opposing capitalism as the source of all evil, and not racist discrimination against Koreans. Just like feminist writers all over the world would discover, Communist intellectuals—whether Japanese, Chinese or Russian—saw class struggle as the paramount issue that would magically solve everything else.
Yi Kwangsu, author of The Unenlightened and Record, or Kim Saryang, who wrote Pegasus, could even become a commodity for Japanese publishers: “The value of Koreans (…) was their universalisation as consumers of Japanese literature as well as their simultaneous particularisation (and commodification) as producers of Japanese language literature.”
These were authors seduced (or pretending to be seduced) by the promise of equality between Japanese and Koreans under Japanese rule, left to explore the many layers of hypocrisy of all colonial projects: “in its challenge to the West, kokumin bungaku (national literature comprising writing from the colonies) depended upon the inclusion of colonial writers, but in doing so it also denied them an autonomy outside the domain of the Japanese language.” Japanese was imagining itself as a world language and in so doing lost control over what people wrote through it. However, things changed after 1941 when general Hideki Tojo took power and imposed much stricter levels of censorship on everything printed in Japanese in both Korea and in Japan.
Japan’s claim of wanting to spread progress and development were inextricability linked to the language, called at this point kokugo, “national language,” and not nihongo, “Japanese.” This definition encompassed also those Korean and Taiwanese absorbed into the empire and given the ambiguous status of “citizens” (even if overtly second-class ones) for as long as the fiction of a shared citizenry lasted. This has interesting parallels with the use of guoyu, putonghua and hanyu: all words that mean Mandarin Chinese, more literally translated as “national language,” “common language” and “language of the Han.” A political project is implicit in all these definitions, whether openly acknowledged or not.
If publishing in Japanese was the only choice, it allowed scant space for constructive criticism: in Korean, it would have meant certain incarceration. In Japanese, it could be accepted (within limits) as an attempt at being a “useful colonial subject.”
The question didn’t end with the war, as Yi’s discussion of zainichi writers who remained in Japan shows. Going back to Korea wasn’t always possible: some zainichi were born in Japan, others were from what had become North Korea. They stayed on—familiar strangers with whom Japan still had a complicated relationship. Among these authors, the most famous is doubtlessly Lee Hoe Sung, awarded the Akutagawa Prize (Japan’s main literary prize) in 1972 for The Cloth Fuller.
Colonizing Language is fascinating: it dwells in detail on this complicated play between language, ethnicity and political domination. While it offers an excellent analysis of Korean writing in the Japanese language, it also allows room to reflect on how other colonial languages—English, French, Spanish or Mandarin—affect and are affected by the (former) colonial subjects still using them.
At the end of Yi’s work, I thought of a conversation I had in Dakar with Ndiaye Tabara Korka, a young essay writer who uses French. “We paid very dear for this language. We should keep using it. Wolof is understood by less than half of all Senegalese,” she told me. This speaks to the problematic issue of the relationship people may chose to have with a language, and a culture, they elect as part of them, even if it came on the back of a conquering army. It is a hybrid relationship lasting for longer than colonialism itself.
Yi’s very words for this hybridity and linguistic appropriation of a formerly imposed language expresses it clearly: “Examining the continuities of colonialism not only helps us to reevaluate the position of Koreans in Japan; it also foregrounds the mutually constitutive relationship between Koreans and Japan—whatever and wherever ‘Japan’ may be.”
Ilaria Maria Sala is an award-winning journalist and writer. She has been living in East Asia since 1988, and calls Hong Kong home. Sala has written for a number of international publications, from Le Monde to The New York Times. She is currently a columnist for Hong Kong Free Press, and writes regularly for Quartz. She is the author of two books in Italian, and is on the Executive Committee of PEN Hong Kong. | <urn:uuid:9cd3b214-919d-4ed5-90d4-289fcf234b8f> | CC-MAIN-2020-45 | https://chajournal.blog/2019/01/12/colonizing-language/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-45/segments/1603107884755.46/warc/CC-MAIN-20201024194049-20201024224049-00587.warc.gz | en | 0.966626 | 1,752 | 2.546875 | 3 |
Spring 2018 quarter
Oscillations and waves have many common elements, and many physical phenomena can be modeled as oscillations. This course provides an overview of the physics of light and sound. Topics will include waves, optics, the photoelectric effect, atomic spectra, and an introduction to quantum physics. Conceptual understanding will be emphasized with algebra and basic trigonometry as mathematical foundations. Laboratory exercises will involve some experimental design and will focus on developing skill in observation and analysis while reinforcing conceptual understanding.
While there are no prerequisites for this course, prior experience in physical science is beneficial as is a general confidence in approaching mathematical information.
Taking this course as part of a sequence with Physics: Energy and Physics: Momentumprovides the equivalent of a standard, algebra-based, first-year physics sequence.
Fields of Studyphysics
medicine, science education, and further studies in STEM fields.
Location and Schedule | <urn:uuid:be1106c1-9ac3-43c5-83f6-786e7d240453> | CC-MAIN-2017-43 | http://www.evergreen.edu/catalog/offering/physics-oscillations-17131 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-43/segments/1508187823168.74/warc/CC-MAIN-20171018233539-20171019013539-00315.warc.gz | en | 0.895727 | 190 | 2.984375 | 3 |
Functional magnetic resonance imaging has become a seminal technique for researchers looking to map behaviors onto the brain. But a study in press in Perspectives on Psychological Science questions the validity of many fMRI studies and suggests that social neuroscience researchers who use the technique need to design their studies more carefully.
Edward Vul, a cognitive science graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was amazed by the remarkably high correlation scores between behavioral traits and regional brain activation in many studies. For example, a 2005 paper in NeuroImage found that a person's proneness to anxiety attacks correlated very strongly—r = 0.96—to his or her brain activation in the right cuneus when listening to angry speech (Vol. 28, No. 4). By comparison, Vul says, most personality correlations found using the Big Five and MMPI usually have r values between 0.7 and 0.8.
It seemed too good to be true, so he investigated the methodology of 54 studies published between 1998 and 2008. In those studies, researchers used fMRI to measure blood oxygenation—a marker of neuronal activity—in specific brain regions during behavioral tasks. As is typical in fMRI studies, researchers divided up the brain into tiny cube-shaped regions called voxels and looked for activation within regions they believed were key to the behavior.
The problem, Vul says, is that there are fundamental flaws in the way most researchers determine which voxels to include in their analyses. Many only include voxels that reach a certain threshold of activation; if they hit that threshold, it's a correlation. Since they average these data across many individuals, even random "noise" in the data gets amplified into a false correlation—something Vul refers to as "voodoo correlation."
Vul says that a "disturbingly large and quite prominent segment" of fMRI investigations into behavioral neuroscience are guilty of this. Mark Blumberg, PhD, a cognitive psychologist at the University of Iowa in Iowa City and editor of Behavioral Neuroscience, agrees that researchers who rely heavily on fMRI need to be more thorough.
"Most of these papers [mentioned in Vul's studies] could have been criticized before they even got to the statistics," he says.
Even so, he says, the fact that this sloppiness is coming to light is proof that the scientific process eventually weeds out its own errors.
The good news? There are other techniques that allow researchers to identify more accurate, representative voxel regions. Those techniques can even be applied to existing data sets.
Letters to the Editor
- Send us a letter | <urn:uuid:1648478c-3daf-4510-9b9d-f5202c805ac2> | CC-MAIN-2015-14 | http://apa.org/monitor/2009/05/voodoo.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-14/segments/1427131303502.37/warc/CC-MAIN-20150323172143-00219-ip-10-168-14-71.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950207 | 527 | 2.96875 | 3 |
Copyright © University of Cambridge. All rights reserved.
'Sandwiches' printed from http://nrich.maths.org/
Suppose you have two 1s, two 2s and two 3s. Arrange these six digits in a list so that:
between the two 1s there is one digit, giving 1?1,
between the two 2s there are two digits, giving 2??2, and
between the two 3s there are three digits, giving 3???3.
Can you do the same if you only have 1s and 2s? Explain your answer.
Can you do the same if you include two 4s, and between the two 4s there are four digits?
Here is a solution using 5's, 6's and 7's as well:
Find other solutions with all these digits.
Printable NRICH Roadshow | <urn:uuid:856bfe63-1029-4054-8084-86215485f1f6> | CC-MAIN-2015-22 | http://nrich.maths.org/522/index?nomenu=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-22/segments/1432207928479.19/warc/CC-MAIN-20150521113208-00093-ip-10-180-206-219.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933331 | 182 | 2.953125 | 3 |
To include comments in an HTML document, use a comment declaration. A comment declaration consists of `<!' followed by zero or more comments followed by `>'. Each comment starts with `--' and includes all text up to and including the next occurrence of `--'. In a comment declaration, white space is allowed after each comment, but not before the first comment. The entire comment declaration is ignored.
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN"> <HEAD> <TITLE>HTML Comment Example</TITLE> <!-- Id: html-sgml.sgm,v 1.5 1995/05/26 21:29:50 connolly Exp --> <!-- another -- -- comment --> <!> </HEAD> <BODY> <p> <!- not a comment, just regular old data characters -> | <urn:uuid:e11a940e-a6b1-4770-b4c1-16a164101a19> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://u20.freesoft.org/CIE/RFC/1866/15.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233511023.76/warc/CC-MAIN-20231002232712-20231003022712-00339.warc.gz | en | 0.779271 | 183 | 2.609375 | 3 |
PROGRAMS FOR ALL GRADE LEVELS and ALL ABILITIES
STATE OF FLORIDA APPROVED VENDOR
FIELD TRIPS OF THE MIND (All programs are age and ability adjusted.)
Recommended for All ages —
Turtles and Gators and Spoonbills, Oh My! Meet Florida coastal creatures of the land, sea, and air. Explore how and where they live. Learn about their habits as depicted through song, story, movement, and puppets. Discover ways to help preserve our wildlife and natural habitats.
Story Songs and Sing-a-longs: Actively listen to and sing the stories that music can tell. Experience the imagery found in stories that only the blending of words and melody can create.
Recommended for Pre-school through Grade 2 —
Songs and Stories for Fun and Movement: Sing and move along to musical instruments. Hear songs and stories, some with puppets, from exciting places across the planet and around the block. Make some new discoveries and have a great time!
The Roaring Rhinoceros and Friends: Hear the story of "The Roaring Rhinoceros" and find out her silly secret. Frolic and dance with the Baby Mammoth. Sing to the whales. Find out what has googly eyes, and much, much more! The program uses songs, stories, and puppets.
The Pirate Queen and the Crusty Crew: Join Captain Chris,The Queen of the Pirates, in song and story, as a member of the Crusty Crew.Thrill to an adventure on the high seas. Hoist the hook, haul the sails and discover buried treasure!
Instruments From Around the World: Discover the "first" rhythm. Hear and see instruments from near and far covering all of the instrument families. Learn about the principles of sound and about how some instruments are made, and perhaps, play an instrument of your very own!
Recommended for 1st through 6th Grades —
Let the Waves Roll High! Sail aboard a Tall Ship in song and story; today and yesterday. Hoist the anchor, set the sail, swab the deck, weather a storm, plot a course, learn the customs, and speak the language as part of a ship’s able bodied crew. Find out how to become a member of a crew on a traditionally rigged vessel that sails today!
Way Out West: Ride the trail on an adventure in song and story. Saddle your horse, catch a tumbling tumbleweed, eat biscuits and beans, look at the stars, sing cowboy songs, and swap stories around the campfire!
Shine Out Your Light: Travel to the beautiful lighthouses around the state of Florida through highly participatory song and story. Find out why we have lighthouses, what it was like to be a lighthouse keeper, and where you can go to see and even climb a lighthouse today. Learn about aids to navigation, weather, and other aspects of maritime life and history.
Down Below the Waves: Discover what it takes to be an underwater detective on the coast and inland waterways of Florida. Learn about traditional sailing, historic ships, and the tools it takes to be an underwater archeologist through song and story. Dive below the waves; describe the artifacts; do the math; understand the science – solve the mystery!
Only for Middle School through High School —
A Passel of Pirates: Set sail on a tall ship for a pirate adventure across the seven seas limited only by the boundaries of your imagination as guided by maritime lore, language, songs, and stories. Go in search of treasure, hear the cannons roar and meet bold buccaneers of days gone by.
WORKSHOPS AND RESIDENCIES FOR SCHOOLS AND CAMPS
Music and Musical Instrument Making • Music and Movement
Performance Skills and Public Speaking • Poetry • Puppet Making
Storytelling • Songwriting • Visual Art • Writing and Performance
Cross-disciplinary Standards Based Projects
“I was in awe of Ms. Kastle as she captured her audience and led them through her menagerie of stories and song! I even peeked across the room and saw our manly PE coach joining in with song and hand motions in the story of the turtle and beaver! Ms. Kastle shared so beautifully with her songs and her captivating stories. As an educator, I was stoked to hear all of the educational components, as well. Her words were inspiring and uplifting, engaging, educational, and memorable. I was impressed that even our toughest little darlings did not waver, but remained captivated by her engaging methods of audience participation. ” - Mary, Media Specialist
— Groveland Elementary Scholl | <urn:uuid:2ed1912b-5b36-40ec-a941-f1b407e8a1dd> | CC-MAIN-2022-49 | https://chriskastle.com/for-children-and-schools | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-49/segments/1669446710473.38/warc/CC-MAIN-20221128034307-20221128064307-00820.warc.gz | en | 0.947571 | 969 | 2.890625 | 3 |
Even before the United States entered World War II in December 1941, America was sending arms and equipment to the Soviet Union to help it defeat the Nazi invasion.
Although in August 1939 the Soviet Union and Germany had signed a nonaggression treaty, Germany’s June 1941 invasion of the USSR brought their alliance to an end, forcing the Soviets to confront the Nazis as enemies. President Franklin D. Roosevelt convinced Congress the U.S. should provide military aid to nations “vital to the defense of the United States.”
“We cannot, and we will not, tell [them] that they must surrender, merely because of present inability to pay for the weapons which we know they must have.”
Under the Lend-Lease Act, enacted nine months before the U.S. entered the war, Washington dispatched war supplies to Great Britain, China and the Soviet Union. While the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. disagreed in other areas, the threat Hitler posed to the world brought them to a common objective.
Technically, the U.S. lent these materials. As Roosevelt told cost-conscious Americans:
“Suppose my neighbor’s home catches fire. … If he can take my garden hose and connect it up with his hydrant I may help him to put out his fire. Now, what do I do? I don’t say to him before that operation, ‘Neighbor, my garden hose cost me $15; you have got to pay me $15 for it.’ I don’t want $15 — I want my garden hose back. In other words, if you lend certain munitions, and munitions come back after the war, you are all right.”
Ultimately, the U.S. did not seek or expect much in the way of monetary repayment. Some wartime debts were later settled at a greatly reduced rate, but Lend-Lease was mostly a grant by the United States, the nation Roosevelt called the “arsenal of democracy” to its partners against Nazism and fascism.
Equipping the Red Army
After Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941, America sent the first convoys with goods to the Soviet Union by August.
The scope of the aid is detailed by Russia Beyond, an online publication of Russia’s state newspaper (Rossiyskaya Gazeta), and also by many historians, including U.S. policy analyst Albert L. Weeks in his 2004 book Russia’s Life-Saver: Lend-Lease Aid to the USSR in World War II.
In the final tally, America sent its Russian ally the following military equipment:
- 400,000 jeeps and trucks
- 14,000 airplanes
- 8,000 tractors
- 13,000 tanks
And these supplies:
- More than 1.5 million blankets
- 15 million pairs of army boots
- 107,000 tons of cotton
- 2.7 million tons of petroleum products (to fuel airplanes, trucks, and tanks)
- 4.5 million tons of food
Americans also sent guns, ammunition, explosives, copper, steel, aluminum, medicine, field radios, radar tools, books and other items.
The U.S. even transported an entire Ford Company tire factory, which made tires for military vehicles, to the Soviet Union.
From 1941 through 1945, the U.S. sent $11.3 billion, or $180 billion in 2016 dollars, in goods and services to the Soviets.
The difference it made
In a November 1941 letter to Roosevelt, Soviet Premier Josef Stalin wrote:
“Your decision, Mr. President, to give the Soviet Union an interest-free credit of $1 billion in the form of materiel supplies and raw materials has been accepted by the Soviet government with heartfelt gratitude as urgent aid to the Soviet Union in its enormous and difficult fight against the common enemy — bloodthirsty Hitlerism.”
At a dinner toast with Allied leaders during the Tehran Conference in December 1943, Stalin added: “The United States … is a country of machines. Without the use of those machines through Lend-Lease, we would lose this war.”
Nikita Khrushchev, who led the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, agreed with Stalin’s assessment. In his memoirs, Khrushchev described how Stalin stressed the value of Lend-Lease aid: “He stated bluntly that if the United States had not helped us, we would not have won the war.”
Unearthing a forgotten story
The former Museum of the Allies and Lend-Lease, in Moscow, offered physical evidence of America’s contributions to the Soviet war effort.
When the museum opened in 2004, the son of Soviet Marshal K.K. Rokossovsky donated his father’s American-made World War II Willys jeep. The museum displayed the still-operational vehicle and even took it on occasional driving trips. The museum also showcased a unique collection of uniform buttons carrying Soviet symbols on the front and stamped “Made in Chicago” on the back.
The museum is no longer active, but its former director, Nikolai Borodin, remains dedicated to publicizing the Lend-Lease story. In addition to military aid, he says, the U.S. sent food, clothes and toys to Russian civilians.
Under Lend-Lease, “whatever was asked for was received,” he says.
In his May 9, 2005, remarks at a Moscow parade honoring the 60th anniversary of the Allied victory against Nazi Germany, Russian President Vladimir Putin honored Russian sacrifices — the U.S.S.R. suffered more casualties than any other force engaged in the war — and acknowledged Allied help in winning World War II.
Putin noted that “61 nations and almost 80 percent of the world’s population” were affected by the war in some way, and Allied help was integral to defeating Hitler.
“Dear friends, we never divided the victory into ours and someone else’s,” Putin said. “We will always remember the assistance from the Allies: the United States of America, Great Britain, France and other nations of the anti-Hitler coalition, [plus] German and Italian anti-fascists.”
Decades earlier, addressing the U.K. House of Commons shortly after Roosevelt’s death in April 1945, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill hailed the late president for ensuring the delivery of U.S. aid to the Allies during the largest armed conflict in human history.
Roosevelt, Churchill said, “devised the extraordinary measure of assistance called Lend-Lease, which will stand forth as the most unselfish and unsordid financial act of any country in all history.”
American leaders, for their part, were well satisfied that the Lend-Lease program helped achieve their objective: the defeat of Hitler. | <urn:uuid:1c72a711-a815-4eb1-a944-0fdcd37f2a06> | CC-MAIN-2021-39 | https://share.america.gov/america-sent-equipment-to-soviet-union-in-world-war-ii/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-39/segments/1631780058456.86/warc/CC-MAIN-20210927151238-20210927181238-00503.warc.gz | en | 0.962055 | 1,466 | 3.125 | 3 |
Austria is a German-speaking nation located in Central Europe. Austria prides itself for being one of the most stable and robust European member states offering its citizen high living standards and well-developed trading markets. Although it is a landlocked country, it provides the perfect environment for investors due to its diverse and healthy economic system characterized by a free market economy. The most significant industries in Austria include construction and building, electronics and electrics, tourism, food and drinks, logistics and transportation, automotive and chemical industries, as well as steel and mechanical engineering.
Construction and Building industries
The construction and building industry plays a crucial role in Austria’s economy with booming infrastructure markets creating a vibrant and diversified platform for new projects. This sector contributes over six percent of the country's gross domestic product. Development in the industry comes from both private and government projects with a high demand for residential properties due to current population growth. The industry covers areas such as organizing projects, production of materials, machines, and engineering tools, services, and civil engineering.
The tourism sector in Austria has been playing a significant role in its economic growth since the 1950s through embracing of modern mass tourism. Moreover, the tourism sector has an expansive character with high levels of employment and sales figures. The country has over 40,000 tourist establishments employing over 200,000 people.
The electronics and electrics industries in Austria have led to an outstanding export ratio of over 69.7 percent. This sector deals in mechatronics, electrical engineering, car electronics, electronic supply industry, automotive suppliers, services and diverse industry, control engineering, electronics wholesales, and plant technicians among others. The electronic industry employs thousands of locals every year. Austria’s electronics sector is popular for its innovativeness, product diversity, research, and know-how.
Food and Drinks
The food economy plays a crucial and integral part of the growth of the country’s GDP contributing 12% to the economy. Austrian groceries enjoy high popularity globally. The country boasts of having high quality modern and traditional resources for handling food productions. Additionally, the innovative manufacturing processes combined with international agricultural trade helps in creating a wide range of food and drinks. The major segments in the Food and drinks industries include food-processing sectors like slaughterhouses and dairy farms; agriculture, and food trade. Additionally, there are brewing companies, non-alcoholic beverage firms, and gastronomy services. The food sector employs over 27,000 people.
Logistics and Transportation
The Austrian logistic, traffic, and transportation sector are booming with the industry reporting growth in employment and productivity. The overland transport includes commuter trains, auto bus, railway, cabs, ships, and air that move cargo and commuters domestically and internationally. Austria has a well constructed and globalized distribution channel for transport of goods through cross-borders and international logistics systems. The various transport and logistics technology standards coupled with efficient innovations, high customer focus, and high technical standard have made Austria rank high in the global transport market. | <urn:uuid:9ebd8deb-014d-48a9-bebe-227a392b420f> | CC-MAIN-2023-14 | https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/what-are-the-biggest-industries-in-austria.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-14/segments/1679296950110.72/warc/CC-MAIN-20230401160259-20230401190259-00241.warc.gz | en | 0.946269 | 620 | 2.5625 | 3 |
Comprehensive Sexual Education – or just sex ed.
No, it’s not how to have sex, it’s not a combination of a banana and a condom.
No, it’s not about how men want sex and how women learn to say no.
Sex Ed is simply the instruction of issues relating to human sexuality.
No, human sexuality isn’t about heterosexuality, homosexuality, or any other sexuality you can think of.
Human sexuality involves emotional relations and responsibilities, human anatomy, activity, reproduction and reproductive health and rights, consent, safe intercourse, birth control, and sexual restraint.
A huge part of sex ed is consent.
Consent needs respect and communication and it’s actually an important concept for children to learn about from an early age as it can lead to better relationships with family, friends, peers and, eventually romantic partners.
Consent is either agreement or disagreement from both parties in complete understanding of what they’re getting themselves into.
Sexual consent is no different.
Consent is freely given, whether verbally or nonverbally; both body language and verbal language should give the same affirmative message and they should be confident and enthusiastic.
Intimidations, guilt-trips, bullying, blackmails, and threats for receiving a “yes” isn’t consent; coercion and consent are different.
Comprehensive sex ed teaches consent by aiding students on how to respect others’ personal, rightful, and changing boundaries, and how each and every person is fully entitled to their opinion and level of comfort.
It teaches the skill of leaving a situation which doesn’t feel comfortable, and how the one initiating sexual contact is fully responsible for asking and clearly receiving full consent before moving on with any sexual activity . And that the only person responsible for sexual assault is the perpetrator; the one who didn’t ask for it[consent].
It teaches women that they have a full right to wear whatever makes them feel good without owing anyone anything. It decreases “shame” society gives off to the person who was assaulted and spoke up.
Comprehensive sexual education allows growth and development while clearing up everything, leaving no room for confusion.
Sex Ed is necessary, not taboo. | <urn:uuid:e8c375d6-2565-430a-9f6f-aecccd9b2e56> | CC-MAIN-2020-50 | https://teenntimes.com/2019/03/08/what-sexual-education-is-and-why-we-actually-need-it/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-50/segments/1606141213431.41/warc/CC-MAIN-20201130100208-20201130130208-00597.warc.gz | en | 0.932108 | 469 | 2.84375 | 3 |
Miao Nationality Villages in Southeast Guizhou Province: The villages of Miao Nationality at the Foot of Leigong Mountain in Miao Ling Mountains
State Administration of Cultural Heritage
Autonomous Prefecture of Miao and Dong Nationalities in Southeast Guizhou, Guizhou Province
The Tentative Lists of States Parties are published by the World Heritage Centre at its website and/or in working documents in order to ensure transparency, access to information and to facilitate harmonization of Tentative Lists at regional and thematic levels.
The sole responsibility for the content of each Tentative List lies with the State Party concerned. The publication of the Tentative Lists does not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever of the World Heritage Committee or of the World Heritage Centre or of the Secretariat of UNESCO concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its boundaries.
Property names are listed in the language in which they have been submitted by the State Party
Leishan County, N 26 15-26 34, E 107 58-108 24
Taijiang County N 26 22-26 51, E 108 08-108 28
Jianhe County N 26 20-26 55, E 108 17-109 04
Congjiang County N 23 21-24 04, E 108 13-109 13
As one of the numerous nationalities living in Southwest China, the Miao Nationality has a unique cultural tradition of its own. The Miao Nationality Villages in Southeast Guizhou Province are distributed mainly in Leishan, Taijiang, Jianhe and Congjiang counties. According to legend, the Miao Nationality has originated from a tribe called Jiuli that lived in the lower reaches of the Yellow River more than 5,000 years ago. Later this tribe migrated to areas in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River to form the Sanmiao Tribe. During the Qin and the Han dynasties, they moved to settle down in today's east Guizhou Province. During the Yuan and the Ming dynasties, they moved further to the southwest part of Guizhou Province. By the Qing Dynasty, the Leigongshan area of Guizhou Province became the chief area for the Miao Nationality people to live. Later, some Miao people moved to today's Viet Nam, the Laos, Thailand, Burma, and some European and American countries. The Leigongshan area in the Autonomous Prefecture of Miao and Dong Nationalities in Southeast Guizhou are densely populated by the Miao People, dotted by more than 200 Miao Villages, including 21 that have been included in China's Tentative List of World Heritage.
Distributed in lofty ridges and towering mountains or in the depth of forests, these rationally laid out villages are unique in architecture, ancient and simple in custom, and strong in life flavour. These properties reflect the traditional mode of production and life style of the Miao people, their housing form, and the changes of their society. They also reflect the course of evolution of their culture, the relationship between the unique natural environment and human residences, and the diversity of human culture. Intangible cultural heritage also stands out as an important element. The layout and architectural form of the Miao Villages in the Leigongshan area have the distinctive local style of an ethnic culture, demonstrating the key value of the authenticity of a heritage.
The Miao Villages in Southeast Guizhou Province is an outstanding example of human residences. Being the representative of the Miao culture, they take up an important position in the development of the history and culture of the Miao people. Being influenced by modern civilization, however, the traditional life style and culture here have met with stern challenges.
As a unique architectural achievement and a masterpiece of talented creation, these villages are of great value for scientific study. The Miao culture kept here is the most authentic and integral. The Miao's flying songs, love songs, drinking songs, bronze-drum dances and other art popular in these villages are the important representatives of the Miao culture. The phenomena of the primitive culture kept in these villages are of outstanding universal value.
Statements of authenticity and/or integrity
As the property of building clusters, the authenticity of the Miao Villages in Southeast Guizhou Province is reflected in their environment, layout, architectural form, the building materials and technologies, and the traditional production mode and life style. The villages referred to in this project are numerous in number and differ from each other. Modern life has influenced and is continuously influencing the villages themselves, their architectures, and the production mode and life style, in particular. Generally speaking, however, the major villages mentioned here can fully reflect the uniqueness and authenticity of the Miao culture.
The environments and architecture of the Miao Villages in Southeast Guizhou Province as well as the production mode, life style, folkways, belief and art developed here can basically cover all the aspects of the tangible and intangible culture of the Miao villages, and demonstrate the basic form of layout, architectural style, and traditional culture of the Miao villages. With a comparatively large area of nominated property and a buffer zone, these villages reflect the relationship of harmony and unity between human residences and natural environments and the integrity of an ancient village culture.
Comparison with other similar properties
This cultural heritage reflects the diversity of China's ethnic culture, the current state of development of a traditional ethnic culture exposed to threats from modern civilization. It also includes the relative intangible cultural heritages. In the World Heritage List, no item reflecting the diversity of the Miao culture has been included yet. Compared with the Miao villages distributed in other parts of China, the Miao Villages in Southeast Guizhou Province are the most typical in terms of the environment and layout, the production mode and life style of their residents, and the craftsmanship and technology involved in the construction. | <urn:uuid:30a22757-05fd-4e6e-8cf7-181dbc9865e5> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/5344/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337971.74/warc/CC-MAIN-20221007045521-20221007075521-00437.warc.gz | en | 0.931833 | 1,223 | 2.796875 | 3 |
Updated: 17 September 2021
Next update: 16 September 2022
About the statistics
The statistics provide an overview of both the forest properties and forestry as an industry.
Property with at least 25 decares of productive forest area. Property parcels belonging to the same owner within one municipality are treated as one property.
Personal forest owner
Forest owner owning forest area as an individual owner. Forest areas owned jointly by several individuals are included for one of the owners; the reference owner.
Central government, the Educational Fund, common forest owned by the central government (Statsallmenning), common forest not owned by the central government (Bygdeallmenning), limited company, foundation, municipality etc.
Name: Forest properties
Topic: Agriculture, forestry, hunting and fishing
Division for Housing, Property, Spatial and Agricultural Statistics
The statistics are published yearly.
Edited microdata are stored at Statistics Norway.
The purpose of these statistics is to provide an overview of both the forest properties and forestry as an industry. Since 2006, Statistics Norway has published annual statistics for all forest properties by merging data from different administrative data sources. Prior to this, statistics for all forest properties were only available based on full censuses, the last of which was in 1989.
The main users of the statistics are professional forestry organisations, The Ministry of Agriculture and Food and various research and educational institutions.
No external users have access to the statistics and analyses before they are published and accessible simultaneously for all users on ssb.no at 8 am. Prior to this, a minimum of three months' advance notice is given in the Statistics Release Calendar. This is one of Statistics Norway’s key principles for ensuring that all users are treated equally.
Statistics Norway has yearly statistics on commercial roundwood removals and silviculture based on the same sources as these statistics. Linking the Farm Register with these sources makes it possible to publish figures on commercial removals and silviculture by the size of the productive forest area of the properties and the forest owners' productive forest area.
The National Forest Inventory also publishes figures on the productive forest area in Norway. The inventory estimates a productive forest area that is more than 10 per cent larger than the aggregated areas from the forest properties. The National Forest Inventory estimates the area based on sample plots.
The Statistics Act §§2-1 and 3-2
Including 2010, the statistics comprise all properties in the Farm Register of the Norwegian Agricultural Authority with at least 25 decares of productive forest area.
As from 2011, the number of forest properties and productive forest area are based on new cartographic data analyses and data on owners and properties from the cadastre in combination with data from the Farm register.
Some forest owners are represented in the Farm Register with more than one property within one municipality. In these cases, the properties owned by the same owner are merged into one property within the municipality. Thus the statistics on forest properties up to and including 2011 will include fewer units than the Farm Register. As from 2012 the number of forest properties incresed.
Common forests owned by the central government (Statsallmenning) will always be counted as one single property.
The statistics are derived from existing administrative data files.
Carteographic data and data on forest owners and properties from the cadastre (Land register) are combiined with The Farm Register of the Norwegian Agriculture Agency, and serves as the backbone of the statistics. The information from the Farm Register is combined with information at property level from different data sources such as the Register of Timber Trade and Diverted Trust Fund, and the Forest Trust Fund.
The statistics are derived from the whole population of forest properties.
The statistics are based on linked data files that were edited separately when established. The information on the productive forest area is checked if errors are suspected. Examples: i) If a forest property has commercial felling and does not have a forest area. ii) If a large forest property does not have commercial felling.
Figures are not presented if there is a risk of identifying any respondent.
The statistics on forest properties are comparable with statistics from the Census of Forestry 1967 and the Censuses of Agriculture and Forestry 1979 and 1989. They are also essentially comparable with statistics from the Sample Survey of Agriculture and Forestry in the 1990s and in 2000 and 2004. The number of forest properties has fallen from 128 300 in 1967 to 116 502 in 2005. The Censuses of Agriculture and Forestry 1979 and 1989 calculated 120 900 and 125 500 forest properties respectively. It has been difficult to trace all small-sized properties without commercial felling. In some regions it is difficult to assess whether the areas are productive or not. As from 2011, carteographic analysis are used to decide the properties and the number of properties increased to 131 800 properties. After a review of the properties that fullfill the requirement, the total in 2014 came to 128 200. This causes difficulties when comparing the number of forest properties over time.
Statistics are published for both forest properties and personal forest owners. The following is a brief explanation of the relationship between these units: a forest property is the forest owners' total productive forest area within a municipality. A forest owner may own forest properties in more than one municipality. Therefore the number of forest owners is less than the number of forest properties with a personal forest owner. About 113 000 forest properties with a personal owner are registered in The Farm Register. Out of the personal forest owners, almost 3 000 are deceased, living abroad or lacking information. The statistics on incomes are based on the personal forest owners that are alive.
The main concern is the quality of productive forest area. In the cadastre, 920 000 decares productive forest area are not linked to a title number of a holding number, and will not be included in the statistics. Furthermore, errors may arise when data are entered into the various administrative registers. Including 2010, 2-3 per cent of the quantity of commercial roundwood felled is not linked to any forest property. As from 2011, the Forest Trust Fund is used as source for roundwood cut. The new source also includes energy woood and some assortments that are removed from the statististics on commercial roundwood removals. | <urn:uuid:f6f78cfc-a9b0-4369-bbda-f43acd892638> | CC-MAIN-2021-39 | https://www.ssb.no/en/jord-skog-jakt-og-fiskeri/skogbruk/statistikk/skogeiendommer | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-39/segments/1631780057303.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20210922011746-20210922041746-00240.warc.gz | en | 0.942497 | 1,275 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Is planetary change bad?
Ed Nuhfer, Alan, Dorothea, Cinzia
We often hear about global warming as a problem, and there is now a reasonable consensus that humans are exacerbating the problem. Our global population is currently about 6 billion, and scientists estimate the planet's carrying capacity at about 12 to 15 billion. Doubling time is 38 years. If we examine a core profile, we see that tundra pollen lies in the lowest layers, sage and prairie grasses in the middle and spruce and pine pollen in the top. Would climate change occur in Minnesota without human interference? Should the human component of global warming be stopped? If it were stopped, would there be any larger problems to building to 100% sustainability? If we tried to bring sustainability to a dynamically changing Earth, who would oppose it and why, and who would favor it and why? How disruptive would this be to you, given your present view of your own life plans and aspirations? | <urn:uuid:2e39ddfe-6806-45a9-8acc-c134cb777687> | CC-MAIN-2016-22 | http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/affective/dilemmas/16710.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-22/segments/1464049273643.15/warc/CC-MAIN-20160524002113-00206-ip-10-185-217-139.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954939 | 202 | 2.734375 | 3 |
Earlier this week, Inez Tenenbaum, chairman of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, told the manufacturers of children's products that the agency would be issuing a warning on slings.
And the commission did just a few minutes ago. While the commission has recalled slings in the last year because of defective rings, which broke causing the sling and baby to fall, its statement today focuses on the risk of a baby suffocating in a sling.
The statement says that many of the babies who died were younger than four months, low weight or had breathing issues such as a cold.
Read the entire statement here:
"The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) is advising parents and caregivers to be cautious when using infant slings for babies younger than four months of age. In researching incident reports from the past 20 years, CPSC identified and is investigating at least 14 deaths associated with sling-style infant carriers, including three in 2009. Twelve of the deaths involved babies younger than four months of age.
Slings can pose two different types of suffocation hazards to babies. In the first few months of life, babies cannot control their heads because of weak neck muscles. The sling's fabric can press against an infant's nose and mouth, blocking the baby's breathing and rapidly suffocating a baby within a minute or two. Additionally, where a sling keeps the infant in a curled position bending the chin toward the chest, the airways can be restricted, limiting the oxygen supply. The baby will not be able to cry for help and can slowly suffocate.
Many of the babies who died in slings were either a low birth weight twin, were born prematurely, or had breathing issues such as a cold. Therefore, CPSC urges parents of preemies, twins, babies in fragile health and those with low weight to use extra care and consult their pediatricians about using slings.
Two months ago, the Commission added slings to the list of durable infant products that require a mandatory standard. Additionally, CPSC staff is actively investigating these products to determine what additional action may be appropriate. Until a mandatory standard is developed, CPSC is working with ASTM International to quickly complete an effective voluntary standard for infant sling carriers.
CPSC recommends that parents and caregivers make sure the infant's face is not covered and is visible at all times to the sling's wearer. If nursing the baby in a sling, change the baby's position after feeding so the baby's head is facing up and is clear of the sling and the mother's body. Parents and caregivers should be vigilant about frequently checking their baby in a sling.
CPSC is interested in receiving incident or injury reports that are directly related to infant slings. You can do this by visiting www.cpsc.gov/cgibin/incident.aspx or call CPSC's Hotline at (800) 638-2772." | <urn:uuid:728ca971-41ce-484c-8bb3-91a797acaa41> | CC-MAIN-2017-30 | http://www.wral.com/lifestyles/goaskmom/blogpost/7225249/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-30/segments/1500549425352.73/warc/CC-MAIN-20170725182354-20170725202354-00657.warc.gz | en | 0.961598 | 600 | 2.546875 | 3 |
Green Energy: The Energy Alternative That Is Going Mainstream
What is green energy? It is a way to power our vehicles, electronics and other items, without hurting the environment in the process. This article will outline some tips and tricks on how to harness the power you need for everyday activities, without hurting the planet in the process.
In order to save extra energy around the house, be sure to set your electronics to a power-saving mode when not using them. A power-saving mode will reduce the amount of energy spent by the device. This way, you can save energy and cut down the cost of the electric bill.
Try using energy efficient light bulbs or even LED lights in your home to cut costs for lighting. Turning off the lights when you are not in the room also helps to save energy. Keep this in mind when you are leaving home, as simply turning off the lights saves a lot of energy!
If you have a swimming pool, you can save a lot of money by using solar energy to heat the water. Solar heating systems are not more expensive than other solutions and are easier to maintain. These systems also work for your outdoor hot tub. This is probably the best use of solar power.
If your property has a small stream running through it, you can install a micro hydropower system. These systems divert a small amount of the water through a turbine or wheel, providing energy that can be used to light and heat your home. If the flow is strong enough, you can power multiple homes on one of these systems.
During the holidays, it can be tempting to want to put up a lot of lights, both inside and outside your home. However, this is not wise. Not only will your electric bill be extremely high, but you will be using too much energy. Try to use Christmas lights sparingly.
To help you increase your clean-energy consumption, try using wind energy. Wind is a very clean type of alternative energy, and it can help you cut your electricity bill a ton. If this solution interests you, check with your local authority to ensure you have proper zoning and also ensure you have sufficient space.
Consider a ground-source heat pump for your home. A ground source heat pump makes use of the constant temperature of the ground in order to heat and cool the home. The ground temperature will be warmer than the air in winter but cooler in the summer, making for highly efficient heat exchange.
Responsibly recycling electronics is a great way to maximize resources. When people think of green energy they think of alternative energy. However, it is just as important to get the most from the non-renewable resources that we use as it is to minimize our use. Recycling electronics prevents unnecessary polluting of landfills as well as reuses resources that non-renewable.
Now it’s up to you to take what you’ve learned here and put it to use. Keep these tips handy and continue to seek out more information. Soon, you’ll be able to run everything you need, from the washing machine to your car, in an environmentally responsible manner and that will feel great! | <urn:uuid:e0ffce58-fb33-44ca-9668-e0da62ed20c9> | CC-MAIN-2022-05 | https://www.travel-in-madrid.com/green-energy-the-energy-alternative-that-is-going-mainstream-2/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-05/segments/1642320301264.36/warc/CC-MAIN-20220119064554-20220119094554-00240.warc.gz | en | 0.945104 | 647 | 2.90625 | 3 |
Parenting style refers to a general child rearing pattern that characterises parents' behaviours toward their child. A way of reflection between parent and child relationships is parenting and it is a complex activity that includes many specific attitudes and behaviours that work separately and collectively to influence child outcomes and generate an emotional bond in which the parent’s behaviors are expressed. Whereas others have defined parenting style as a global constructs reflecting the overall emotional tone of the parent-child relationship.
Diana Baumrind, a developmental psychologist at the University of California, identified and defined three different parenting styles viz authoritarian, authoritative and permissive. Again, Baumrind, Maccoby and Martin mentioned that parenting styles arise from the crossing of two different dimensions i.e. demandingness/control and responsiveness. Demandingness is the claims parents make on children to become integrated into the family whole, by their maturity demands, supervision, disciplinary efforts, and willingness to confront the child who disobeys. Responsiveness is the extent to which parents intentionally foster individuality, self-regulation and self-assertion by being attuned, supportive and acquiescent to children’s special needs and demands. Categorizing parents according to whether they are high or low on parental demandingness and responsiveness creates a typology of four parenting styles viz authoritative, authoritarian, indulgent, and uninvolved.Authoritative parents are both demanding and responsive; warm and nurturing toward adolescent. Authoritative parent is high in control, responsiveness, communication and maturity demands. Their discipline is controlling but not restrictive, oriented to the child’s involvement in the family’s life. They offer trust, support, control, and open communication toward the children. They monitor and impart clear standards for their children’s conduct. They are assertive, but not intrusive and restrictive. Their disciplinary methods are supportive, rather than punitive. They want that their children to be assertive as well as socially responsible and self-regulated as well as cooperative. Authoritative parents participate in interactions with their children characterised by high warmth and utilise non-punitive discipline in which they share reasoning behind rules with their children.
The adolescents of authoritative parents are usually self-reliant and socially competent and have impulse control skills and coping mechanisms, such as emotional regulation, social behaviour, and social competence. Maccoby and Martin found that children achieve the most positive outcomes when reared by parents exhibiting an authoritative parenting style. A recent review found authoritative parenting style positively associated with adaptive behaviours and psychological adjustment and negatively associated with maladaptive behaviours and psychological maladjustment.
Authoritarian parents are highly demanding and directive, but not responsive. The authoritarian parents place firm limits and control on adolescents and allow little verbal exchange, resulting in socially incompetent behaviour, they are high in control and low in responsiveness. Authoritarian parents participate in interactions with their children characterised by low warmth and utilise a strict and harsh discipline style. Children are held to high standards and rules are made that must be followed for fear of punishment. Their child-rearing pattern combines high control and strict and coercive discipline with aggressive behaviours. These parents expect orders to be obeyed without explanation and offer a low level of trust and engagement toward the child.
Permissive parents (also referred to as indulgent parents or nondirective) are more responsive than demanding. Permissive parent is low in control and maturity demands and high in communication and responsiveness. Children growing up with neglectful and non-indulgent or permissive parents, who are low in control and high in responsiveness, are likely to be aggressive particularly if parents are permissive toward aggressive behaviour. Permissive parents participate in interactions with their children characterised by high acceptance and utilise low parental supervision, often consulting with children about how discipline should be exercised. The permissive style is highly responsive to children’s needs but does not place demands on children for achieving high standards. Their child-rearing pattern combines non-demanding behaviour, low parental control and low levels of disciplinary action. They offer warm acceptance and child-centered orientation. They are nontraditional and lenient, do not require mature behaviour, allow considerable self-regulation and avoid confrontation. Children growing up with neglectful and non-indulgent or permissive parents, who are low in control and high in responsiveness, are likely to be aggressive particularly if parents are permissive toward aggressive behaviour.
Uninvolved parents are low in both responsiveness and demandingness. In extreme cases, this parenting style might encompass both rejecting–neglecting and neglectful parents, although most parents of this type fall within the normal range. Uninvolvedness has been observed relatively infrequently in young populations compared to the three other styles but has mainly been reported in studies of adolescents.
The writer is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, CARe Medical College, Dhaka, Bangladesh. He can be reached at [email protected] | <urn:uuid:bddae06a-da66-4178-abf8-bc46c05a6f03> | CC-MAIN-2020-45 | https://www.daily-sun.com/printversion/details/406225/Types-of-parenting:-Which-one-is-better | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-45/segments/1603107867463.6/warc/CC-MAIN-20201019232613-20201020022613-00613.warc.gz | en | 0.950691 | 994 | 3.953125 | 4 |
Every child zigs and zags during development. Some of the most high-achieving adults in the world faced devastating diagnoses when they were children: from “will never be normal,” to “will never succeed.” As we sit and watch people like Charles Schwab and Richard Branson talk about their accomplishments — even after being given devastating judgment as children, the one thing that we DO know for certain is that adults are pretty awful when it comes to spending a couple of hours with a child and then predicting whether or not they will have success in the world.
However, if you scratch almost any parent whose child has trouble in school, you’ll find a parent determined to get a diagnosis. Getting a diagnosis is a huge goal for many parents. The diagnosis! That will solve things!
Unfortunately, while a diagnosis is extremely valuable, it’s really not a solution. A diagnosis can validate worries and let you and your child know that yes, their brain really DOES work differently than most. But unless your child’s school and teacher have training and programs in place, it will take a lot of effort to also help your child succeed in school.
Right at the beginning of your journey, as you’re heading into a diagnosis, it’s important to know what the doctor will say to you after getting a diagnosis. So let’s talk about what a diagnosis can and should do for your child —and what it won’t do.
The job of a diagnosing doctor is to identify and name problems. Their job is not to identify your child’s passions and special skills, and to help stoke the embers of a childhood interest into an interest that gives rise to an adulthood life path.
Your child has boundless possibility — just like every child. And adults who went far in life, talk about how their particular parent (usually a mother), refused to limit the possibilities, and worked to support them. We also hear stories of “unexpected success.”
Seriously, why would we think that an expert, having spent one to three hours with our child, can tell us what will be our child’s destiny in life?
So what can a diagnosis do, or not do, for your child?
A Diagnosis Can Help Match Teaching to Your Child’s Learning Needs
It turns out that there are countless developmental steps that must happen before children can mature, and that learning differences and learning disabilities are far more subtle and complex than we imagined. Your child might have problems seeing and understanding symbols, or processing sounds, turning them into usable information, and storing them in the correct place in memory. Maybe your child’s body awareness sense (also called proprioception) is immature, making it hard to sit still at a desk. Or perhaps your child isn’t able to recognize commas or memorize the alphabet.
There are many weaknesses that make up each learning disability, and LD testing helps to identify those weaknesses. Depending on your child’s learning fingerprint, you can then work with teachers to find teaching methods that support your child’s weaknesses, while allowing them to learn.
If you identify the challenges that keep your child from learning easily, you can help develop brain strengths, choose alternative learning and thinking skills and strategies, and give your child an understanding of how they learn.
A Diagnosis Can Make Your Child Eligible for Protection and Support
Every child in America is protected, as is their ability to receive understandable, learnable, education. This is called the equal opportunities for education.
Two laws are always mentioned when people talk about getting support from the educational system:
- Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 is a civil rights law that protects people with disabilities from discrimination. Section 504 ensures that a child with a disability has equal access to education, and provides accommodations and/or modifications to normal schoolwork.
- IDEA is the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which was enacted by Congress in 1975 to ensure that all children have the opportunity to receive a free and appropriate public education, regardless of ability. IDEA provides for most of the protection for children with LD, and laws in IDEA spell out the basic tool of special education: the Independent Education Plan, or IEP.
It’s important to know that your school doesn’t have to use your outside diagnosis to provide support. That’s because schools must follow IDEA. The IDEA law says that schools provide testing, for free, if a learning disability is suspected. That’s why we include simple directions for how you ask for an IEP.
A Diagnosis Can Help Your Child Feel Better
Many dyslexic children report feeling that they were stupid as children. It’s a terrible word, but it’s one used again and again. And many dyslexics say that when they discovered that they were dyslexic, their first thought was “I’m not stupid!”
It’s important to plan out how you will tell your child that they have a learning difference.
A Diagnosis Can Help Your Child Understand How Their Brain Works
Both parents and experts agree that teaching a child to understand how they learn and what they need in order to learn, and then training them to ask for that, is the key to many children’s success. Metacognition, or understanding how your brain works, is a big trend right now, in many schools.
As part of your child’s diagnosis, it’s a good idea to keep an eye out for information that can help inform and empower your child. And it’s a good idea to phrase the information that you find in a way that conveys power, rather than weakness. We talk about word choices and how to talk with children here.
A Diagnosis Doesn’t Define the Future
Read through stories about people with learning disabilities and you’ll hear a familiar refrain.
- “Experts told my mother that I would never read.”
- “Doctors said that I would have to be in special schools for my entire life.”
- “My child’s teacher said that he would never have a job.”
Regardless of the Diagnosis, it’s still very important to pay attention to what’s hardest for your child, and to prioritize efforts. Spend time building skills, but make time to develop strengths and passions. It’s amazing how many skills our mobile phones and various electronic tools can perform today, simply by talking with them.
Take a minute to read this post about the qualities for success. Our post profiles several of the best-respected studies that looked at hundreds of successful people to find the pattern for their success. Shockingly, almost none of the skills were academic! | <urn:uuid:50fc20f5-869e-4b82-b67c-17930b24ae7b> | CC-MAIN-2021-43 | https://www.helpmychildlearn.org/2020/02/15/what-can-an-ld-diagnosis-do-or-not-do-for-your-child/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-43/segments/1634323585201.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20211018093606-20211018123606-00412.warc.gz | en | 0.965522 | 1,423 | 2.734375 | 3 |
ADHD Symptoms Persist For Most Young Children Despite Treatment
Reports new study in Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
Washington D.C., March 7, 2013 – A study published in the March 2013 issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry found that 9 out of 10 young children with moderate to severe attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) continue to experience serious to severe symptoms and impairment long after their original diagnoses, and in many cases, despite treatment.
The study, a federally funded multi-center study led by investigators at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center, is the largest long-term analysis to date of preschoolers with ADHD, according to the researchers, and sheds much-needed light on the natural course of a condition that is being diagnosed at an increasingly earlier age.
“ADHD is becoming a more common diagnosis in early childhood, so understanding how the disorder progresses in this age group is critical,” said lead researcher Mark Riddle, M.D., a pediatric psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center. “We found that ADHD in preschoolers is a chronic and rather persistent condition, one that requires better long-term behavioral and pharmacological treatments than we currently have.”
The study shows that nearly 90 percent of the 186 youngsters followed continued to struggle with ADHD symptoms six years after diagnosis; children taking ADHD medication had just as severe symptoms as those who were medication-free.
Children with ADHD, ages 3 to 5, were enrolled in the study and treated for several months, after which they were referred to community pediatricians for ongoing care. Over the next six years, the researchers used detailed reports from parents and teachers to track the children’s behavior, school performance, and the frequency and severity of three of ADHD’s hallmark symptoms—inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity. In addition, children had full diagnostic workups by the study’s clinicians at the beginning, halfway through, and at the end of the research.
Symptom severity scores did not differ significantly between the more than two-thirds of children on medication and those off medication, the study showed. Specifically, 62 percent of children taking anti-ADHD drugs had clinically significant hyperactivity and impulsivity, compared with 58 percent of those not taking medicines. And 65 percent of children on medication had clinically significant inattention, compared with 62 percent of their medication-free counterparts. The investigators caution that it remains unclear whether the lack of medication effectiveness was due to suboptimal drug choice or dosage, poor adherence, medication ineffectiveness per se, or some other reason.
“Our study was not designed to answer these questions, but whatever the reason may be, it is worrisome that children with ADHD, even when treated with medication, continue to experience symptoms, and what we need to find out is why that is and how we can do better,” Riddle explained.
Children who had oppositional defiant disorder or conduct disorder in addition to ADHD were 30 percent more likely to experience persistent ADHD symptoms six years after diagnosis, compared with children whose sole diagnosis was ADHD.
“ADHD is considered a neurobehavioral condition and is marked by inability to concentrate, restlessness, hyperactivity and impulsive behavior, and can have profound and long-lasting effects on a child’s intellectual and emotional development,” Riddle added. “It can impair learning, academic performance, peer and family relationships, and even physical safety. Past research has found that children with ADHD are at higher risk for injuries and hospitalizations.”
According to the researchers, more than 7 percent of U.S. children are currently treated for ADHD, and the economic burden of the condition is estimated to be between $36 billion and $52 billion annually.
The research was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health under grant U01 MH60642.
The article “Preschool Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Treatment Study (PATS) 6-Year Follow-Up” by Mark A. Riddle, Kseniya Yershova, Deborah Lazzaretto, Natalya Paykina, Gayane Yenokyan, Laurence Greenhill, Howard Abikoff, Benedetto Vitiello, Tim Wigal, James T. McCracken, Scott H. Kollins, Desiree W. Murray, Sharon Wigal, Elizabeth Kastelic, James J. McGough, Susan dosReis, Audrey Bauzó-Rosario, Annamarie Stehli, Kelly Posner, (http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jaac.2012.12.007) appears in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Volume 52, Issue 3 (March 2013), published by Elsevier.
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About the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center
Founded in 1912 as the children's hospital at Johns Hopkins, the Johns Hopkins Children's Center offers one of the most comprehensive pediatric medical programs in the country, treating more than 90,000 children each year. Hopkins Children’s is consistently ranked among the top children's hospitals in the nation. Hopkins Children’s is Maryland's largest children’s hospital and the only state-designated Trauma Service and Burn Unit for pediatric patients. It has recognized Centers of Excellence in dozens of pediatric subspecialties, including allergy, cardiology, cystic fibrosis, gastroenterology, nephrology, neurology, neurosurgery, oncology, pulmonary, and transplant. For more information, go tot www.hopkinschildrens.org
Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (JAACAP) is the official publication of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. JAACAP is the leading journal focusing exclusively on today's psychiatric research and treatment of the child and adolescent. Published twelve times per year, each issue is committed to its mission of advancing the science of pediatric mental health and promoting the care of youth and their families.
The journal's purpose is to advance research, clinical practice, and theory in child and adolescent psychiatry. It is interested in manuscripts from diverse viewpoints, including genetic, epidemiological, neurobiological, cognitive, behavioral, psychodynamic, social, cultural, and economic. Studies of diagnostic reliability and validity, psychotherapeutic and psychopharmacological treatment efficacy, and mental health services effectiveness are encouraged. The journal also seeks to promote the well-being of children and families by publishing scholarly papers on such subjects as health policy, legislation, advocacy, culture and society, and service provision as they pertain to the mental health of children and families.
Elsevier is a global information analytics business that helps institutions and professionals advance healthcare, open science, and improve performance for the benefit of humanity. Elsevier provides digital solutions and tools in the areas of strategic research management, R&D performance, clinical decision support, and professional education; including ScienceDirect, Scopus, SciVal, ClinicalKey and Sherpath. Elsevier publishes over 2,500 digitized journals, including The Lancet and Cell, more than 35,000 e-book titles and many iconic reference works, including Gray's Anatomy. Elsevier is part of RELX Group, a global provider of information and analytics for professionals and business customers across industries. www.elsevier.com
JAACAP Editorial Office
+1 202 966 7300 x105 | <urn:uuid:7659b984-c4cf-4851-b2f0-e5766bd398dd> | CC-MAIN-2018-13 | https://www.elsevier.com/about/press-releases/research-and-journals/adhd-symptoms-persist-for-most-young-children-despite-treatment | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-13/segments/1521257650764.71/warc/CC-MAIN-20180324171404-20180324191404-00128.warc.gz | en | 0.936825 | 1,711 | 2.78125 | 3 |
Grey water recycling
As the rainwater storage on the rooftop only covers drinking water usage, grey water treatment and recycling is implemented, as shown in Fig.3. Including shower, dishwashing and toilet flushing a total water use for 2 persons is calaculated to be about 105 L/d (including 18 L drinking water) (see Table 1). As black water (from toilet flushing, 15 L) is collected in a separate black water container, the grey water treatment has to be able to cope with about 90 L/d.
Grey water treatment is kept as simple as possible to be as energy and maintenance efficient as possible. Grey water is treated with a membrane bioreactor (MBR) with a microfiltration membrane. Similar to the drinking water treatment, a gravity driven membrane filtration was chosen to avoid energy loss due to permeate pumping. The MBR is initially inoculated with conventional activated sludge of a waste water treatment plant and then on first hand fed with synthetic grey water.
The MBR has a fine bubble aeration which is operated intermittently and load proportional (production of greywater). With this treatment COD and nitrogen removal should be achieved. Furthermore, due to the membrane also particles and microorganisms are retained.
The biologically and mechanically treated grey water is then stored in the treated grey water eg. service water tank. This water is expected to still contain a certain amount of organic compounds (substrates) and an elevated temperature, and therefore regrowth needs to be considered. Here the use of a UV lamp is not so promising as in drinking water as the available substrate concentration and turbidity is much higher and the UV lamp should be on more often than in drinking water to achieve a good quality and thus the energy consumption would be too high. Therefore, a GAC (granulated activated Carbon) filter is installed in the service water tank. With this filter not only substrates but also odour and colour compounds can be removed in order to achieve a high bathing water quality, providing a secure living (showering) in self unit. It is expected that the GAC filter will remove further substrates by biological ativity (biofilm), resulting in far-going substrate consumption, so that pathogens are not able to grow in. This is especially relevant for fast growing organisms such as Pseudomonas aeruginosa and it is expected that bathing water quality can be achieved. This strategy will be tested soon with synthetic grey water and if successful it has to be guaranteed under real use conditions. | <urn:uuid:bc336897-4e17-467c-8fe7-4a38c600fa6c> | CC-MAIN-2019-09 | https://www.empa.ch/web/self/used-water | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-09/segments/1550247479159.2/warc/CC-MAIN-20190215204316-20190215230316-00275.warc.gz | en | 0.954191 | 517 | 2.890625 | 3 |
For most of us, our overriding goal in life is to fulfil our potential — and whether that is as part of a family, community or business, central to being the best we can be is to also be as healthy as we can.
We face many challenges in our modern world. The key is to identify and minimise what has the potential to compromise your health, and most importantly, to focus on simple principles to build mental, physical and emotional resilience. Here is a short list to get you started.
Your health is just too important to leave to anyone else.
If we are faced with a medical emergency we are fortunate to have the wonders of modern medicine to call on, and so often it is lifesaving.
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The problem is our healthcare system has become a chronic disease management system. It’s a great economic model, which keeps the chemical, processed food, pharmaceutical and healthcare industries generating billions of dollars.
It’s just not a very good health model. You can either choose to be part of the economic model, or take control of your own health, and reap the benefits.
2. A consistently good night’s sleep
Sleep is your body’s built-in life-support system, affecting every measure of health, physical and mental. A good night’s sleep is a function of quantity and quality.
In terms of quantity, 95% of the adult population requires seven to nine hours.
And in terms of quality, putting your head on the pillow is not enough. The quality of sleep is a function of how well you breathe while asleep.
If, despite your best efforts, you are still tired, seek out a sleep physician to explore your options. It could extend your life, and even save it.
A consistently good night’s sleep is the most important part of your day.
‘We are what we eat’ and there is a strong connection between ‘mood and food’.
If the evidence is anything to go by, with mental health and preventable chronic diseases on the rise, what we are eating is clearly not working for us.
For some people, food sensitivities or intolerances are real, and often complex, but some basic principles can get you started. Eat real food with a wide variety of lots of vegetables. Keep the carbohydrates, not just sugar, low.
This will mean measuring what you eat for a week or two to understand what you are actually consuming (70-100g each day is doable and sustainable). Lowering blood sugar and insulin levels is a positive for most diseases.
Consume a moderate amount of ethically grown proteins ( about 1g of protein for every kg of body weight) and include healthy fats — which could include butter, olive oil, and fat from ethically grown animals. We need healthy fat for every cell and hormone in our bodies and it ensures you won’t be hungry.
And finally, drink filtered water.
4. Reduce toxic load
We are literally exposed to thousands of chemicals on a daily basis in our air, water, food, personal care and household cleaning products, clothes and furniture.
We assume they have been tested and are safe. They haven’t and are not.
Household moulds and dust mites can also play havoc with our immune system, affecting both physical and mental health. Wi-fi radiation from phones, laptops and other devices has now been classified by the World Health Organisation (WHO) as a class 2B carcinogen — which means it is “possibly carcinogenic to humans”.
The good news is by making informed decisions you can reduce your toxic exposure and load by 90%.
It’s liberating to know just moving is good for you. Recent research has even found walking speed is a very good predictor of your chance of surviving the next five years, so it’s a great motivation to keep practising.
Walking is safe, social, sustainable and enjoyable.
You can also get some sun which gives you vitamin D — one of the most important hormones we need to be healthy, and one we are commonly deficient in. That is a win-win on the move-nourish front.
If you manage to exercise beyond that, doing 15 minutes of high-intensity intermittent training (HIIT) incorporating some everyday functional movements of bending and stretching, twisting and turning, pulling and pushing, then your metabolism will be elevated for 24-48 hours.
This is a good thing, considering a 10km run raises your metabolism for ‘only’ six-eight hours. Combine HIIT with some weight-bearing exercises and the effects are even better.
6. Value relationship and express gratitude
In the longest health study undertaken, Harvard University followed a group of individuals over a 75-year period. The study concluded relationships are the best predictor of health, wellness and longevity.
That doesn’t necessarily mean just a life partner. It can be family, friends, community, a church or club, amongst others.
Positively engaging in meaningful relationships and acknowledging their importance has a powerful effect, with the research further confirming expressing gratitude has a positive influence on health and happiness. | <urn:uuid:7c4555fd-d2ce-429b-921e-a31a0d5c8b8f> | CC-MAIN-2021-49 | https://www.smartcompany.com.au/people-human-resources/wellbeing/six-steps-healthier-happier-life/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-49/segments/1637964362919.65/warc/CC-MAIN-20211203212721-20211204002721-00404.warc.gz | en | 0.952432 | 1,103 | 2.640625 | 3 |
Viviette Applewhite, a 93-year-old African-American woman from Philadelphia, suddenly cannot vote. Although she once marched with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. for the right to do so, and has dutifully cast a ballot for five decades, in this election year she may be denied this basic right. Under Pennsylvania's new voter ID law, Applewhite is no longer considered eligible.
The Pennsylvania law requires that citizens present a state-issued photo ID card before voting, which, in Applewhite's case, required that she first produce a birth certificate. After much trying, and with the help of a pro bono attorney, she was finally able to obtain her birth certificate -- but on it, she is identified by her birth name Brooks, while her other forms of identification have her as Applewhite, the name she took after adoption.
Because her 1950s adoption papers are lost in an office in Mississippi, and the state is unable to track them down, Applewhite still can't get a Pennsylvania photo ID. She is therefore barred from voting in the November elections.
Such stringent obstacles, particularly for African-Americans, were not so long ago the accepted rule. Despite the 15th and 19th amendments to the U.S. Constitution, which extended the vote to black men and all women, respectively, election officials used poll taxes, literacy tests and other methods to deny this legal right. Then came the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson 47 years ago Monday, the Voting Rights Act empowered the federal government to oversee elections in states with racially discriminatory voting practices, and outlawed the use of literacy tests for all American voters. The landmark legislation not only broadened the franchise to African-Americans, it opened access to poor whites and others who had also been denied their right to participate in the electoral process.
These major social changes were hard-fought. Without protests by citizens who willingly confronted hatred and intimidation from furious mobs, as well as assault from billy clubs and fire hoses, it's doubtful that the Voting Rights Act would have ever passed.
Yet as we commemorate the anniversary, we must also remember that the fight to protect our vote continues. Across the country, efforts to suppress the turnout and registration of minority voters wage on, making that fight as urgent today as it was in the era of literacy tests and poll taxes.
Driven by nearly all Republican legislatures (Rhode Island, which has a Democratic-controlled legislature, is the lone exception), last year 34 states introduced voter ID laws with similar requirements, creating barriers for the 11% of voting-age Americans who lack state-issued photo IDs. These laws disproportionately affect minorities, the poor, senior citizens and the young. Of the more than 21 million Americans without the newly required photo identification, 25% are African-American, 15% earn less than $35,000 a year, 18% are 65 or older, and 20% are 18 to 29. Not so coincidentally, these groups turned out in huge numbers, largely voting Democratic, in 2008.
Voter ID laws, however, are just one arm of a systemic attempt to curb the participation of certain voters. In some of these same states, including Alabama, Kansas and Tennessee, legislatures have also passed laws that demand proof of citizenship to register to vote (a tough deal if you don't happen to walk around with a birth certificate, passport or naturalization records in your pocket) or that reduce early voting.
This includes the elimination of the Sunday before Election Day when many black churches hold successful "Take Your Souls to the Polls" campaigns encouraging their congregants to vote. Still more brazen tactics, as seen in campaigns mounted in Colorado, Florida and New Mexico, would summarily purge thousands of registered voters, whom state officials suspect might not be citizens, from the voter rolls.
These measures were supposedly enacted to prevent voter fraud, but any serious examination of voter fraud reveals that there is almost none. A five-year investigation by the Bush Justice Department concluded that incidents of voter fraud are exceedingly rare, and Pennsylvania officials have admitted that there is no in-person voter fraud in the state, not a single case that has ever been found or documented.
Rooting out such a small number of prospective fraudulent voters simply does not call for the extreme measures that shut out millions of legitimate ones. At best, these laws are scaring off a few tree bugs by burning down a 10th of the forest.
The real purpose behind these restrictive voting laws is not to prevent voter fraud, but to prevent voting in the interest of partisan gain. Pennsylvania House Majority Leader Mike Turzai even said as much in June, when he boasted to his Republican colleagues that the state's voter ID law "is going to allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania."
No matter which side of the aisle you're on, we can all agree that denying anyone's vote to skew the electorate undermines our shared American values of fairness and equality.
Just like poll taxes and literacy tests before them, these laws are also keeping targeted groups of people from having a voice in their government. But what we can learn from these similar struggles is that social progress, such as the passage of the Voting Rights Acts, did not just happen naturally, an inevitable result of the passing years. It happened because citizens, activists, lawbreakers and lawmakers acted to change their society. But that action -- or even the mere recognition that blocking equal access to voting is a civil rights emergency -- is lacking now.
It's wrong to believe that these struggles ended and are reserved now for history lessons and textbooks. Tomorrow's history is being written today, and we can all help shape the narrative.
In a country whose fundamental values are equality and freedom, we must always examine times when our freedoms are being violated. That means realizing that voter ID laws such as the one blocking the vote of Viviette Applewhite are not minor bumps on the road. Rather, they hit at the most central element of American democracy.
As we reflect on the strides made 47 years ago, we remind our fellow citizens that each victory is taken, not given. And as we confront the modern-day era of voter suppression, it's time that we all start protecting the free, fair and accessible vote that defines the greatness of our nation.
This piece originally appeared on CNN.com on August 6, 2012. | <urn:uuid:1a58d8a4-2e52-44a5-9f0b-6f91a989913b> | CC-MAIN-2016-22 | http://www.huffingtonpost.com/judith-browne-dianis/voters-purged-across-the-country_b_1756734.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-22/segments/1464049277091.36/warc/CC-MAIN-20160524002117-00065-ip-10-185-217-139.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964859 | 1,305 | 2.90625 | 3 |
If you are a horse race fanatic, there are several things you need to know. In this article, you’ll learn about the Statics of a horse race, Bar shoes, the over-reaching of the hind shoe, and bloodworms. You’ll also learn about the Blowout Workout to sharpen your horse’s speed. Finally, you’ll learn about the Bumble Step, a condition where the track breaks away from the horse’s hoof.
Statics of a horse race
You may not know it, but there are specific terms used in horse races. These terms refer to different elements of the race, such as the horse’s performance, the race track, and even the human factor. These terms are the backbone of any good handicapping system. Let’s examine these terms and how they relate to horse races. Here are some tips to improve your betting strategy. Here are some examples. Let’s look at each of them in turn.
Bar shoes protect an injured foot
A pair of bar shoes is a necessary part of your horse’s protective equipment for racing. These shoes are used to protect an injured foot. They sit on the inside of the foot, preventing pressure from the heel to compress the foot’s soft tissue. A veterinarian may decide to use a heart bar shoe to help a horse with a contracted heel. In either case, the goal of treatment is to help the foot expand.
Over-REACHING of the hind shoe
Over-REACHING of the hind foot occurs when the toe of the rear foot strikes the heel bulb of the front foot during a horse race. Over-reaching can cause extensive injuries, such as the tearing of the heel bulb, as well as bruising and scraping. The rear toe may be caught in the front shoe, which cannot be protected by bandages or other protective devices.
Over-REACHING of the nose
“Over-REACHING of the nose” in a horse race refers to a horse’s toe striking the front part of the hind shoe, injuring the horse’s nose. The smallest margin of victory is known as the nose, and it is a common reference for judges in horse races. A horse that wins by the nose might have been neck-and-neck during the race.
BREAK (a horse)
A break can be a very serious event in a horse race. A horse that breaks stride may throw the race, or it may simply throw the race itself. No matter which scenario occurs, the breaking of a stride is always dangerous for everyone in the race, including the other drivers. Here are some things to keep in mind if your horse breaks stride: | <urn:uuid:d8a4191a-9002-4d2c-8673-e5a30d3c797b> | CC-MAIN-2023-23 | https://flashartofwar.com/the-statics-of-a-horse-race/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-23/segments/1685224648911.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20230603000901-20230603030901-00158.warc.gz | en | 0.943919 | 565 | 2.734375 | 3 |
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Han Yu, portrait by an unknown artist; in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, Taiwan.—Courtesy of the Collection of the National Palace Museum, Taipei, Taiwan, Republic of China
(born 768, Henan province, Chinadied 824, Chang'an) Chinese poet and prose writer, the first proponent of Neo-Confucianism. An orphan, he joined the Chinese bureaucracy and served in several high government posts. He attacked Daoism and Buddhism, which were then at the height of their influence, and sought to restore Confucianism to its former status. He revived interest in the writings of Mencius and other neglected Confucian classics. His own works were written in a simple prose style unlike the elaborate manner popular at the time, and he became known as the Prince of Letters.
Variants of HAN YU
Han Yu or Han Yü
This entry comes from Encyclopædia Britannica Concise. For the full entry on Han Yu, visit Britannica.com.
Seen & Heard
What made you look up Han Yu? Please tell us what you were reading, watching or discussing that led you here. | <urn:uuid:982de96b-adbd-4a0e-8242-5caba3159698> | CC-MAIN-2013-48 | http://www.merriam-webster.com/concise/han%20yu | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-48/segments/1386164047228/warc/CC-MAIN-20131204133407-00053-ip-10-33-133-15.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96506 | 257 | 2.96875 | 3 |
“Till Max said “BE STILL” and tamed them with the magic trick of staring into all their yellow eyes without blinking once and they were frightened and called him the most wild thing of all”
—Where The Wild Things Are
The first part of “Raising Self-Confident Kids” discussed the importance of encouraging imaginative play with your children. Max, from Where The Wild Things Are, reminded me of this lesson. Another important lesson I’m reminded of and really appreciate about Max is his self-confidence. When Max is traveling in his private boat and he arrives at the place where the wild things are, he faces a dragon (as I call the wild thing in the water). Max looks afraid. Then he is confronted by the wild things on shore rolling their eyes and gnashing their teeth and flashing their claws. At this point Max doesn’t fret or cower- actually he is emboldened. Then he concentrates and tames the wild things with his hypnotic gaze!
This is quite a display of self-possession. I think we want our children to know how to manage themselves in the world with confidence. I think we want to parent in such a way as to foster children’s belief in themselves and their ability to effectively interact with their environment. We want our children to learn how to self-govern peacefully. Max could have been afraid or fearful of the wild things but he wasn’t. He was confident in himself. And he stared all the wild things down until they were all frightened and called him their king!
One of the ways we can raise our children to be confident is to create space for their emotions. For example, rather than saying, “There, there, don’t cry” to a child who is upset, get down face to face with the child and say, “You are really upset, huh?” Dan Siegel, in his book, The Whole-Brain Child, describes this simple step as connecting. This is an excellent strategy to help the child calm down sooner.
This parenting strategy can teach your child that connecting with people is a powerful technique for self-regulation. The next step is to help children name these feelings so they can learn how to identify their internal experience and then learn how to manage their internal experience effectively. This helps the child’s mind develop and integrate. The result of such parenting increases the child’s sense of self and this fosters self-government. In his book, Siegel outlines other parenting strategies to help maximize child brain development.
The sole reason Max was able to tame the wild things was because he had someone who loved him best of all and cared for his emotional needs. Based on Dan Siegel’s research, this accounts for Max’s self-regulation and effective coping. So a parenting strategy is this: Help your child name their feelings in order to accept their inner experience and learn how to manage it. Just like Max did!
More parenting support and self-acceptance education for children can be found in Dan Siegel’s book and can be gained through family counseling or individual youth counseling.
The story, Where The Wild Things Are, paints the emotions of a young boy dealing with social conflict very well. Here is a link to a great interview with author Maurice Sendak, who speaks about children and writing children’s stories: http://bit.ly/WI2PAx
All of our children are in a world that is hard to understand and navigate. As parents, we have the opportunity to give our children greater tools for learning how to organize and self-regulate. This builds self-confidence in children. And it also teaches peaceful and effective conflict resolution.
How is your self-regulation today? | <urn:uuid:3b945772-fdd9-4df6-8554-532d74d1de4d> | CC-MAIN-2018-26 | http://craigkern.com/2013/01/raising-self-confident-kids-pt-2/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-26/segments/1529267867424.77/warc/CC-MAIN-20180625033646-20180625053646-00094.warc.gz | en | 0.969658 | 784 | 2.90625 | 3 |
British Columbia is the westernmost province of Canada, located between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. British Columbia became the sixth province of Canada in 1871. Its capital is Victoria and its largest city is Vancouver. The province has a resource dominated economy which is centered on the forestry industry. In the first quarter of 2017, British Columbia has a population of over 4.7 million.
In 1974, with the aim to create a statutory holiday and recognize the pioneers in the province, the British Columbia Day Act was first introduced to the Legislative Assembly. The act gained royal assent in 1996 giving way to the British Columbia Day celebration every first Monday of August. British Columbia was the last province to establish an August Monday holiday. This yearly statutory holiday in the province gives Canadians the chance to celebrate with family and friends. This year, British Columbia Day falls on August 7.
During the long weekend, people grab the chance to make short trips out of town and spend time into one of the areas with beautiful scenery in the province. Some of the activities people do during the long weekend are camping, walking on the parks, hiking or canoeing. The first Monday in August falls in the middle of the summer season that is why people incorporate the holiday into their summer vacation. In most urban areas, various celebrations are organized which features fireworks displays, parades and cultural festivals. Events are held in appreciation of Canadian’s contributions in the areas of sport, technology, cuisine and Canadian-Japanese culture. | <urn:uuid:1754ae9e-eb82-4b97-96c2-289fb58b90a3> | CC-MAIN-2019-18 | http://blog.egetinnz.com/2017/07/21/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-18/segments/1555578759182.92/warc/CC-MAIN-20190426033614-20190426055614-00532.warc.gz | en | 0.960507 | 300 | 2.90625 | 3 |
A unit of land area in Roman times, said to be identical with the actus quadratus (a square 120 pedes on a side), but used in Spain and perhaps having a non-Latin origin.
Actus quadratus, qui et latus est pedes CXX et longus totidem: is modus acnua latine appellatur.
The actus quadratus, which is an area 120 pedes in each direction, is called acnua in Latin.
Marcus Terentius Varro.
On Agriculture, book 1, section 10.2
(1st Century bce)
Actus quadratus undique finitur pedibus CXX. Hoc duplicatum facit iugerum, et ab eo, quod erat iunctum, nomen iugeri usurpavit: sed hunc actum provinciae Baeticae rustici acnuam* vocant: itemque triginta pedum latitudinum et CLXXX longitudinem porcam dicunt.
The actus quadratus on all sides is 120 pedes. Doubled it makes a iugerum, and because it came from joining [iungere, to join], it took the name “iugeri”. The country folk of the province of Baeticae [Roman province in southern Spain, roughly the area of present-day western Andalusia] call this actus an acnua; they call an area 30 pedes wide by 180 pedes long a “porca”.
Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella.
De re rustica. Book 5, 1, 5.
(1st Century ce)
*In some manuscripts, agnuam.
Isidore of Seville, like Columella an inhabitant of Baeticae, repeats Columella's definition (Etym 15.15.5). A modern scholar comments:
The un-Latin agn- spelling attested in Columella is likely to be correct and suggests a Celtic origin, as is also the case with the other land measure arepennis discussed under (d) below. The acn- spelling may be a Latinization, perhaps influenced by actus. The use of agnua in Spain is attested on an inscription from Andalousia CIL 2.2361 siluae agnuarum trecentarum, so it could in fact be true that at least for some periods the word was used by Baetic peasants.
Hispanisms in the Language of Isidore of Seville.
in G.Urso, editor.
Hispania Terris Omnibus Felicior: atti del 2001 convegno internazionale, Cividale del Friuli.
Milan, 2002. Pages 219-234.
CIL is the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, see http://cil.bbaw.de/cil_en/index_en.html
Copyright © 2007 Sizes, Inc. All rights reserved.
Last revised: 10 May 2007. | <urn:uuid:18a9cce9-075e-4d19-9fae-2861f212f6a6> | CC-MAIN-2018-17 | https://sizes.com/units/acnua.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-17/segments/1524125945493.69/warc/CC-MAIN-20180422041610-20180422061610-00561.warc.gz | en | 0.728991 | 658 | 3.640625 | 4 |
Hydrogen atoms have a neutral charge, containing a single proton with a positive charge and a single electron with a negative charge. Unlike all other elements, hydrogen atoms contain no neutrons.
The term "atomic hydrogen" refers to single, unbonded atoms of hydrogen. Atomic hydrogen makes up 75 percent of the mass in the universe. On Earth, hydrogen is typically found in a diatomic state, meaning that two hydrogen atoms are bonded together. Diatomic hydrogen is expressed by the molecular formula H2. Bonded hydrogen only disassociates at extremely high temperatures, with the disassociation rate at 4,940 degrees Fahrenheit at 7.85 percent. | <urn:uuid:c7c7fcb3-a092-4a83-89b6-e24c8f201033> | CC-MAIN-2019-30 | https://www.reference.com/science/many-protons-hydrogen-atom-be56d8d5f0ba0403 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-30/segments/1563195526818.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20190721020230-20190721042230-00163.warc.gz | en | 0.911357 | 135 | 4.09375 | 4 |
The Apache War on the Mexican Border
This excerpt explains the importance of accord and cooperation between the governments of the United States and Mexico in controlling crime and predation on both sides of the border at the time of the Apache Wars.
from "Outlawry on the Mexican Border" by James E. Pilcher
The topography of New Mexico and Arizona in the United States, and Sonora and Chihuahua in Mexico, singularly adapts them to Indian warfare. The country is seamed in its entire length and breadth with mountain-ridges from one or two to nine or ten thousand feet in height, and abounds in magnificent canyons, chasms of tremendous depth, and inaccessible precipices. The sterile rocks and crags provide nourishment for neither plants nor animals. On old maps the central part of this region bears the name of Apacheria, indicating the impression upon old geographers made by the numbers of the Apache tribe and its affiliations. Always at war with the whites, their facility in concealing themselves in the fastnesses of their native hills rendered them almost unconquerable.
The wonderful endurance of these savages was shown in the campaigns against Victorio and his Apaches in 1879 and 1880, when they defied the United States and Mexican armies for two years, until Victorio himself was slain in Chihuahua by a detachment of volunteers raised under the authority of that State. During this time the Indians met our troops in more than twenty engagements, killing a hundred or more of their pursuers and losing even more of their own number. Constantly recruited by the disaffected of the various Apache tribes, losses in number affected neither their energy nor force. Even after the death of the chief, his place was assumed by Nana, who whirled through Texas and New Mexico, leaving a trail of smoke and blood behind him, and during the following two years terrorized the settlements until, by a fortuitous combination of the United States and Mexican troops, the band was dispersed and nearly annihilated.
For many years the Mexican authorities persistently objected to the entrance of United States troops into their territory, even in pursuit of hostile Indians whose presence was a menace to both nations. Mackenzie's dash into Mexico, in chase of the Kickapoos and Lipans under Costilietos, whom he surprised in camp near Remolina, created much excitement and was the subject of extensive comment by the Mexican press, which affected to believe that it was the opening wedge to an invasion of their country. As a more enlightened disposition was developed in the Mexican authorities it became possible to adopt from year to year mutual agreements by which the forces of either country were permitted to enter the territory of the other in pursuit of hostile Indians. Recently this agreement has been made permanent.
Without such an international understanding it would have been absolutely impossible to have brought to a successful termination the campaign against Geronimo and his Chiricahua Apaches in 1886. The savages had been pressed hard on all sides by Crook's forces, so that they fled into Mexico, taking refuge in their old haunts in the Sierra Madres. They were hotly pursued, however, by Captain Emmet Crawford's* company of Indian scouts, who overtook them at Teopa, in Mexico. Nightfall ending the fight, the tired campaigners lay down to rest, and slept as only men can sleep after twenty-four hours of fighting and riding without food or rest. The officers' slumbers were disturbed just before daybreak the following morning by cries from the scouts, followed by firing, and they discovered that they were attacked by Mexican troops. In spite of all efforts to assure the Mexicans that they were soldados Americanos, and not enemies, they continued firing, a shot in the brain during the rnelee ending the career of the gallant Crawford.
"The Death of Captain Crawford" by Frederic Remington
The command now devolved upon Lieutenant Maus, who, with consummate judgment, made peace with the Mexicans and persuaded Geronimo to return across the Rio Grande, there to surrender to Crook. After their interview with the General, however, the leaders became suspicious, and again fled to the mountains.
About this time General Crook was relieved by General Miles, who once more drew around the savages a cordon so close that they were again driven across the boundary, whither they were closely followed by a battalion of cavalry under Major Lawton, who pressed them hard through the mountains for nearly three months. In this remarkable campaign the endurance of the troops met with a test of the utmost severity. Picking their way over mountain peaks nine and ten thousand feet in altitude, creeping down their sides into canyons so deep that not a breeze ever entered to agitate the tropical air, suffering the pangs of hunger and thirst for days at a time, worn and sore from incessant climbing over beetling crags and shifting sands, they clung patiently to the trail. At times it apparently ended the savages practiced their usual resort for mystifying their pursuers when hard pressed, and separated, each man proceeding alone to a preconcerted rendezvous; the pursuit became slower, for the trail of a single galloping pony could be followed only by the closest scrutiny, but the trailers rarely faltered and a plain path again rewarded their search. The Indians were surprised in camp on the Yaqui River, in the district of Moctezuma; they escaped, but their camp was destroyed. Committing many depredations and several murders in the districts of Ures, Arizpe, and Moctezuma, the savages hurriedly made off to the North by a march of nearly three hundred miles, and were finally run to cover at Skeleton Canyon, formerly a favorite resort of the Indians, and, as remarked by General Miles, singularly suited by name and tradition to witness the closing scenes of such an Indian war.
If credit be given to the troops for the courage and endurance which animated them during this campaign, what can be said of their foes? For more than a year they made a running fight through the most rugged and barren portions of the Sierras, without subsistence of any kind except what they could rapidly snatch from the valleys as they swept from mountain to mountain, alternately scorched by the midsummer sun and chilled by the frost of snowclad peaks. At last, broken in spirit and worn in body, they buried the hatchet at the feet of their gallant pursuers. If the strategical skill and physical force manifested against the government by these outlaws can be directed to its advantage, no portion of our military establishment could be more efficient.
The halcyon days of outlawry upon the Mexican border have passed. A new and more prosperous era has dawned in the history of our next-door neighbor. Under the hand of wise and strong leaders, her most distant districts can be held in restraint. Numerous lines of telegraph connect the outlying States with the capital, so that an alarm can reach the chief executive in a few moments, and frequent railways ramify in various directions, so that the means of suppressing an uprising can be commanded within a few hours. The same influences have co-operated to secure tranquillity on the American bank of the Rio Grande. Justice on both sides of the border is swifter and surer, and the lawless exploits of the present day may be regarded as the fitful glimmer of an expiring flame.
*For a complete account of this expedition see A Campaign in the Sierra Madre, 1885-1886, a narrative by Lieutenant Marion P. Maus, First Infantry, U.S. Army,with illustrations by Frederic Remington | <urn:uuid:9059655f-07ba-43fe-a4d3-ae0d9f5df58e> | CC-MAIN-2015-22 | http://www.discoverseaz.com/History/ApacheWar.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-22/segments/1432207927634.1/warc/CC-MAIN-20150521113207-00338-ip-10-180-206-219.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973337 | 1,578 | 3.375 | 3 |
The general question is
Can I define an axiomatic system and prove theorems using Mathematica?
The more concrete one is about Boolean algebra.
I consider this axiomatic Boolean algebra system (wiki).
How can I
define the six (or twelve) axioms there in Mathematica and
then let Mathematica prove theorems in the user-defined axiomatic system, instead of the built-in system in Mathematica?
(Theorems like: De Morgan's law ($\lnot(a \lor b) \equiv \lnot a \land \lnot b$) or the easier (maybe harder) ones such as $\lnot(\lnot a) \equiv a$ and $\lnot 0 \equiv 1$.
You are not limited to Boolean algebra. You can show your skills in any fields you are good at. | <urn:uuid:c9693339-b727-4d2f-81da-efb4ac11326f> | CC-MAIN-2020-50 | https://mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/69427/can-i-define-an-axiomatic-boolean-algebra-system-and-prove-theorems-using-math | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-50/segments/1606141205147.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20201130035203-20201130065203-00513.warc.gz | en | 0.825411 | 190 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Cash crops are grown because of their profitability in the market rather than for personal consumption. Some examples of these are rice, coffee, sugar, and fruit trees.
Here are some articles on prolific crop varieties along with some tips on how successful farmers managed to grow and earn from them:
Did you know that growing watermelon can be a good source of income for farmers? A local seed distributor’s research claims that the potential income from growing watermelon can reach up to P200,000, depending on the present cost of materials and average selling price in the market.
Not into fruits? Read about how a farmer who is very fond of growing radish discovered a variety that allowed him to harvest 25,000 kilos from half a hectare. He then managed to sell the produce at P40/kilo.
Meanwhile, a small farmland in Nueva Ecija managed to produce at least 7.29 tons of red onions. The farmer said that his harvest could be worth about P218,700, depending on market value.
For those who are looking to rent rather than buying a farmland, earning money from it can still be possible. A couple from Iloilo grows guava as a sideline where they currently earn P12,000 from the 3,000 trees planted on 2.7 hectares that they rented.
Aside from gaining an income from the money-making potential that many crops have, it’s also important to earn experience along the way because knowledge on farming can also be something valuable.
Looking for more stories on cash crops and other agriculturally-related topics? Check out agriculture.com.ph. | <urn:uuid:c84b6c73-da8b-40b0-9c01-77991a53e942> | CC-MAIN-2020-05 | https://www.agriculture.com.ph/2019/12/20/2019-guide-to-cash-crops/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-05/segments/1579251776516.99/warc/CC-MAIN-20200128060946-20200128090946-00470.warc.gz | en | 0.960276 | 336 | 2.53125 | 3 |
When selecting protection devices, consideration must be given to the prospective short-circuit current (PSC) at the location the device is to be installed in (AS/NZS 3000:2018 clause 22.214.171.124). The PSC can be determined by measurement or by calculation. Many multi-function testers are able to measure the PSC.
PSC can also be calculated by undertaking a Live Fault Loop Impedance measurement (in ohms) and dividing the voltage by this measurement.
Voltage tests as 240 volts and the measured fault loop impedance between incoming line and neutral is 0.08.
Max PSC = E/R
240/0.08 = 3000 A or 3kA
Where there is a three phase supply, the PSC is likely to be between line conductors. In this case, the PSC can be calculated by multiplying the single phase reading by the square root of 3 or 1.73. Therefore in the example above, the PSC would be 3000 x 1.73 = 5190 A or 5.19kA. | <urn:uuid:0a3e753f-75c9-4367-b28c-01e9371275ea> | CC-MAIN-2019-18 | https://memberarea.ecawa.org.au/Admin/ViewContentPage?uniqueName=prospective-short-circuit-current | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-18/segments/1555578530161.4/warc/CC-MAIN-20190421020506-20190421041433-00039.warc.gz | en | 0.924206 | 223 | 2.828125 | 3 |
In 1576 Martin Frobisher captured an Inuk man off the coast of Baffin Island using several bells. These sounding objects were viewed in two fundamentally different ways. The Inuk considered them to be soul-filled gifts; all things, and especially sounding things, were said by the Inuit to have a guardian spirit. For Frobisher, however, as for most European merchant adventurers from the late 1400s onwards, bells had a specific function within the early capitalist enterprise. They were trinkets that helped get commodities by securing the trust of native peoples. For this reason, Frobisher brought along with him over three hundred bells on his first journey into the Arctic. Not yet considered a commodity in the classic economic sense, bells in the late sixteenth century were called “trinkets,” trinkets that were indispensable to making contact with indigenous Americans and to getting at the many commodities the Americas had to offer. | <urn:uuid:7573476f-18d4-4ac6-ad42-043e403f1a47> | CC-MAIN-2018-17 | https://www.escj.org/article/frobisher%E2%80%99s-bells-commodities-or-gifts | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-17/segments/1524125948549.21/warc/CC-MAIN-20180426203132-20180426223132-00502.warc.gz | en | 0.985943 | 191 | 4.3125 | 4 |
Commonly Encountered Computer Terms
In this day and age we frequently encounter computer terminology that makes us scratch our heads. It is important to be familiar with the most basic computer terms to not get left behind.
To help you out we’ve compiled a list of some of the computer terms we come across the most.
- BIOS – the fundamental input/output program computers use to interface with devices.
- Byte – 8 bits of data valued between 0 & 255. A bit is data valued at either 0 or 1.
- Crash – Occurs when applications don’t answer or respond. This is when a PC software problem occurs.
- Driver – Are programs that, when installed, interprets interfaced devices, so they can work on devices. Samples of hardware that require drivers are video cards and printers.
- Firmware – When software is permanently written into a computer, it is what’s called a Firmware.
- Hardware – Physical parts of computer (case, disk drive, monitor, microprocessor, etc.).
- Internet Service Provider – Internet Company.
- Network – Cables and other electrical components holding data between computers.
- OS – The core software component of a computer.
- File – Permanent storage structure for data kept on a hard drive or other permanent place.
- Security Flaw – When hackers gain unauthorized program entry as a result of bugs.
- Software – Applications that operate on a computer system.
- Storage Media – Magnetic products that store computer data.
- Vulnerability – When unauthorized access could be acquired because of software problems.
- Worm – Unwanted programs accessing computers via software/system vulnerabilities.
When you find yourself with free time, take a minute to read a tech blog or two. This will keep you aligned with tech’s current innovations and developments. Or at least not make you scratch your head anymore when shopping for your next laptop. | <urn:uuid:76cd37d9-509e-4e50-a97d-0f3bd61a4cb5> | CC-MAIN-2019-39 | http://www.cpu-museum.com/commonly-encountered-computer-terms.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-39/segments/1568514575076.30/warc/CC-MAIN-20190922032904-20190922054904-00299.warc.gz | en | 0.859713 | 398 | 3.609375 | 4 |
■ WITH RUSSELL KINCAID
In this column, I answer questions about all
aspects of electronics, including computer
hardware, software, circuits, electronic theory,
troubleshooting, and anything else of interest
to the hobbyist. Feel free to participate with
your questions, comments, or suggestions.
Send all questions and comments to:
Join us as we delve into the
basics of electronics as applied
CLASS A/B AMP
QCan you tell me how the AC
and DC analysis are done
on the class A/B transistor
amplifier (Figure 1) and
answer these questions?
1) Why is the signal input between
2) Does the signal voltage affect the
3) How can I use loop equations on
■ FIGURE 1
this circuit configuration?
— Sal Bivona
AThis is a non-linear circuit, so
you can’t do an accurate
analysis without knowing the
resistance values and voltages. However, you can linearize the
circuit by assuming a constant 0.6 volt
for the diode drop and Vbe. Then, Ve1
= Vin and the solution is trivial except
that at some point, as Vin increases, the
current through D1 will become zero
and the output will be constant (the AC
output will be clipped).
The signal input is between the
diodes because it is a symmetrical
circuit and you want a symmetrical
output signal. The presence of input
signal will increase the current output
of the circuit but since DC bias is
defined as the condition in the absence
of signal, the question is a non-sequitur.
Since the circuit is symmetrical,
analysis of the NPN circuit will also
apply to the PNP circuit. The only question of interest is: Where will the output be clipped? Let us find that point.
• Since Id1 = 0, then
Ib1 = (Vcc - Ve1 + . 6)/R1
• Also, Ve1 = (Ib1 + Iq1)*(R3+R5)
• And, Iq1 = Beta*Ib1
• This leads to: Ve1 = [(Vcc - Ve1 +
. 6)/R1]*(Beta+1)*(R3 + R5)
• To simplify, let K = (Beta+1)*
• Then: Ve1 = [(Vcc+. 6)*K] – Ve1*K
• Therefore the clipping point is:
Ve1 = (Vcc+. 6)*K/(K+1)
QWould you happen to know
where or how I can obtain
Howard Sam’s Photo Fact?
AThis site will give you many
and there is always: www.
samswebsite.com/ or you can write to:
Sam’s Technical Publishing, 9850 E.
30th St., Indianapolis, IN 46229.
60 HZ PICKUP CIRCUIT
QI have a need for a circuit
which will pick up the 60 Hz
power line signal as radiated
and generate a zero-cross
The circuit is battery powered
so it is not connected to the AC
mains. The circuit’s main source is a
solar-panel array. I would expect an
AM-ferrite type antenna and op-amp
or FET device could be used.
— Paul KJ4UO
AYou don’t say how far from
the power line you are. At any
rate, the AM radio antenna
that is designed for MHz will
not be efficient at 60 Hz. While it is true
that the US Navy transmits 10 kHz signals long distances, it requires a massive
antenna. The 60 Hz transmission lines
are designed not to transmit, so any sig- | <urn:uuid:e412219c-ec44-434d-b12d-7ad67054fe54> | CC-MAIN-2019-39 | http://nutsvolts.texterity.com/nutsvolts/200709?pg=28&lm=1316662137000 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-39/segments/1568514573827.2/warc/CC-MAIN-20190920030357-20190920052357-00119.warc.gz | en | 0.843548 | 831 | 3.234375 | 3 |
Are you frustrated with anger management?
Teaching anger management strategies to kids used to leave me frustrated. Ironic, isn’t it? For years, I felt like I taught coping skills to my students until I was blue in the face, only for them to leave my office and have an outburst minutes later. I didn’t know what was happening - my students could rattle off 15 different coping skills they could use in various settings, but yet they weren’t using them. Sound familiar?
Then one day I realized what I was missing. My students weren’t able to manage their anger, because they couldn’t tell when they were getting angry - until it was too late. They couldn’t use their coping skills because they didn’t realize they were angry until after they had already yelled out in class, or hit someone.
When/if they thought about using a coping skill, their anger had gotten so intense that it didn’t work. I like to compare it to a common cold. Many times I have ignored my fatigue, runny nose, and sore throat until I was completely miserable, and ended up taking time off work. If I had taken care of myself when the symptoms first began, I would have been able to treat it much easier.
I knew I had to change the way I taught about anger. I began to introduce the idea of anger warning signs.
Anger warning signs are the signals our bodies give us that tell us that we are angry.
These look different for every person. Some people may experience sweaty palms, some people may start to shut down or get quiet, while others may lash out verbally or even physically.
I teach four categories of anger warning signs - how your body feels, how your body looks, what you say, and what you do. Once students can identify these signs, they can begin to recognize their anger.
Practical Ways to Teach Anger Warning Signs
Talk about other warning signs that students experience and are familiar with.
Anger warning signs can seem like an abstract concept, so I like to introduce it by helping them recognize other warning signs their body gives them.
I explain that warning signs (e.g., fire alarms, tornado sirens) let people know what is coming. Then, we talk about how our bodies give us “warning signs” too and these tell us what is coming, such as when we get tired, sick or hungry.
I then ask them to list ways that they can tell they are experiencing these things, and what happens if they ignore the “warning signs.” Relating their anger warning signs to concepts that they already understand helps them to better comprehend this abstract concept!
Use a visual t0 help the students understand the four types of anger warning signs.
I like to create a simple chart like the one above to help students identify the symptoms they experience when they are feeling angry.
Another visual that students love is an actual warning sign. You can make one using yellow construction paper and have students write in their own anger warning signs.
Another alternative is to use the cut and paste activity from my TpT store, where students can choose from pre-populated ideas, or again, write in their own. I always tell my students to put these signs in a visible place so they can become more familiar with recognizing their anger.
Practice Recognizing the Signs
Talk about it, talk about it, talk about it! Like any anger management strategy, you need to introduce it and talk about it when the student is calm, but you can also review it with students when they are experiencing anger, and again after they have calmed down.
If you are seeing a student for a recent anger outburst, ask the student how he/she knew that he/she was angry. Encouraging the students to think about real life examples will help this concept to become less abstract, consequently becoming easier for them to apply in real life scenarios.
Once my students started to become familiar with their anger warning signs, they were able to “catch” their anger before it got too intense, and guess what?! They actually started being able to USE the coping skills that they had learned. This breakthrough has totally changed the way I teach anger management!
What are some of your favorite strategies to teach anger management? Share in the comments. | <urn:uuid:f1f59158-dc6e-40a8-83b3-c89d31f47600> | CC-MAIN-2021-43 | https://confidentcounselors.com/2018/09/17/anger-warning-signs-the-key-to-teaching-anger-management/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-43/segments/1634323585381.88/warc/CC-MAIN-20211021040342-20211021070342-00360.warc.gz | en | 0.97545 | 900 | 2.671875 | 3 |
Muscle mass (quantity) and radiodensity (quality) are associated with symptom burden, clinical outcomes, and survival among patients with advanced cancer. These findings, from a prospective study, were published in the Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network.
Loss of skeletal muscle is common among hospitalized patients with advanced cancer. Although the importance of muscle mass has been studied, the effects of muscle radiodensity or attenuation is not well-understood. Therefore, researchers sought to analyze the relationship between overall muscle health (quality and quantity), physical and psychological symptoms, healthcare use (hospital length of stay and readmissions) and survival.
For this study, 677 patients with advanced cancer who made an unplanned visit to Massachusetts General Hospital between 2014 and 2016 were enrolled in this study. Patients completed a symptom burden questionnaire and body composition was assessed by computed tomography scan.
Mean age of participants was 62.86±12.95 years, 51.1% were women, 92.2% were White, and BMI was 25.90±6.03 kg/m2. The most common cancers were gastrointestinal (36.8%), lung (16.7%), and genitourinary (8.9%).
Mean muscle mass was 43.61±8.69 cm2/m2. Muscle mass was reduced among women (P <.001) and older patients (P <.001), but increased among patients with higher BMI (P <.001).
Average muscle radiodensity was 33.31±10.61 Hounsfield units (HU). This was reduced among women (P =.014), patients who were older (P <.001), those with breast cancer (P =.028), and those with higher BMI (P <.001); it was increased among patients with higher educational attainment (P =.003).
A relationship was observed between muscle mass and risk of death (hazard ratio [HR], 0.969; 95% CI, 0.955-0.982; P <.001); and between muscle radiodensity and risk of death (HR, 0.969; 95% CI, 0.958-0.981; P <.001), readmission or death at 90 days (odds ratio [OR], 0.966; 95% CI, 0.945-0.986; P <.001), and hospital stay (95% CI, –0.117 to –0.021; P =.005).
This study was limited by its lack of diversity.
These data indicated poor muscle health in patients with advanced cancer were associated with increased healthcare burden and mortality.
Disclosure: Multiple authors declared affiliations with or received funds from industry. Please refer to the original article for a full list of disclosures.
van Seventer E, Marquardt JP, Troschel AS, et al. Associations of skeletal muscle with symptom burden and clinical outcomes in hospitalized patients with advanced cancer. J Natl Compr Canc Netw. 2021;19(3):319-327. doi:10.6004/jnccn.2020.7618 | <urn:uuid:06dd2a00-4741-444f-9b64-d4ea6b147763> | CC-MAIN-2023-06 | https://www.oncologynurseadvisor.com/home/cancer-types/general-oncology/advanced-cancer-muscle-health-symptom-burden-treatment-risk/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-06/segments/1674764494852.95/warc/CC-MAIN-20230127001911-20230127031911-00284.warc.gz | en | 0.960035 | 658 | 2.734375 | 3 |
A complete exercise program includes aerobic activity (running, walking, biking – anything that increases your heart rate), strengthening (using bands, weights or even just your own body weight as resistance) and stretching. Stretching exercises help you to cool down after completing your exercise routine for endurance and strengthening, help prevent muscle injury and help maintain the flexibility you need to more easily perform your activities of daily living.
The “old wisdom” was to stretch before AND after you completed your other exercises – the “new wisdom” is to stretch only after you have warmed up your muscles by doing your endurance or strengthening exercises first!
- Do ensure that your muscles are warmed up before stretching.
- Do breathe deeply all the way through each stretch.
- Do hold each stretch for a minimum of 20-30 seconds.
- Do stretch both your upper body and your lower body.
- Do avoid pain – it’s OK to feel mild discomfort or pulling, but stretching should never cause pain, especially joint pain.
- Don’t hold your breath during a stretch.
- Don’t try to stretch cold muscles – it’s a recipe for injury.
- Don’t “bounce” or rock while holding a stretch.
- Don’t lock your joints.
If you are just beginning a stretching program, or especially if you have had an injury, it is important that you learn to stretch correctly. Be sure to talk to a physical therapist to learn which stretching techniques are the best for you. | <urn:uuid:8b59fff9-5828-4fbb-8fd3-b84a81f2b1b9> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | https://www.st-lukes.org/Sub.aspx?id=3070&terms=Stretching | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988719638.55/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183839-00142-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930053 | 320 | 3.140625 | 3 |
Topic- General Studies Paper-2; Effect of policies and politics of developed and developing countries on India’s interests, Indian diaspora A trade war occurs when one country (Country X) raises tariffs which is a tax or duty on another country’s (Country Y) imports in retaliation for… Read More »US China Trade War impact on India
General Studies Paper-2
Topic- General Studies Paper-2; Important aspects of governance, transparency and accountability Social audits show how people’s participation in the planning, execution and monitoring of public programmes leads to better outcomes. They have strengthened the role of the Gram Sabha. Social audits were first mandated by… Read More »How can Social Audits be strengthened?
Topic-General Studies Paper-2; Indian Polity & Constitution Article 35A was not part of the Constitution as it was adopted in 1949. It was added later by a Presidential Order in 1954. This Order was issued under Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, which grants special autonomy to Jammu… Read More »Article 35A- The debate surrounding it
Discuss the role of MHM in enabling women realise their full potential and safeguarding their dignity, bodily integrity and life opportunities.
Topic-General Studies Paper-1; Social Enpowerment, Welfare schemes for vulnerable sections of the population by the Centre and States and General Studies Paper-2; Issues relating to Health. Menstruation is a monthly challenge for billions of women and girls worldwide. At least 500 million women and… Read More »Discuss the role of MHM in enabling women realise their full potential and safeguarding their dignity, bodily integrity and life opportunities.
Topic: Powers, functions and responsibilities of various constitutional bodies Model Code of Conduct (MCC) are a set of guidelines which are to be followed by political parties, leaders, election candidates, government machinery and officials, in the run-up to the elections to ensure fair and free… Read More »Model Code of Conduct (MCC) and it’s role in poll fray | <urn:uuid:7554d737-8f91-4269-9cab-128f6febf46d> | CC-MAIN-2021-17 | https://kavishias.in/blog/tag/general-studies-paper-2/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-17/segments/1618038060603.10/warc/CC-MAIN-20210411000036-20210411030036-00162.warc.gz | en | 0.923007 | 413 | 2.59375 | 3 |
Tanaka and Hironobu Yasuda from
Tanaka describes superstitions about the
"kita-madura" (north pillow) and about
snakes bringing good luck.
you put your head to the north when you sleep, you
will have bad luck because (in Japan) only dead
people lie with their head to the north. Most
people believe this superstition.
always pay attention to the direction our heads
will point when we put beds in a room or lay futons
on the floor. We call this superstition
"kita-makura." Kita means north.
Makura means pillow.
you put a piece of snake skin into your wallet, you
are going to become rich or find money. Snakes are
a symbol of money and wealth in Japan. Some people
believe the snake is an animal of God, so they
never kill snakes. People say if you kill a snake,
you will lose your money.
Yasuda describes three superstitions about a white
snake, sleep, and the number four.
Japan, there are a lot of superstitions. First,
there is a superstition about a white snake. People
say if someone finds a white snake, he will be
lucky in life. It's an event of good omen; it is
believed that white snakes carry good luck.
Actually, some people put a picture of a white
snake on the wall.
there is one about when we sleep. We can't sleep
with our heads to the north because a dead person
is always buried with his head to the north. It is
believed that death welcomes someone who sleeps
with his head to the north. That's a bad
last one is about the number four. There is a
superstition that four is an unlucky number because
the number four has the identical pronunciation as
the word 'death', so most people tend to avoid it
and most hotels don't use the number four.
are many traditional superstitions, but nowadays
most of them aren't believed by young people.
to: Superstitions Worldwide
- ©1997-2008 - Sandy and Thomas Peters - | <urn:uuid:fe4aceb1-e5ce-472c-94ce-c7158846915a> | CC-MAIN-2014-42 | http://www.topics-mag.com/internatl/superstitions/japan.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-42/segments/1414637903638.13/warc/CC-MAIN-20141030025823-00056-ip-10-16-133-185.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.904664 | 462 | 2.6875 | 3 |
Hexaplex trunculus (also known as Murex trunculus, Phyllonotus trunculus,) is a medium-sized sea snail, a marine gastropod mollusk in the family Muricidae, the murex shells or rock snails. Murice Hexaplex Trunculus intotheblue.it Murex trunculus Phyllonotus
This sea snail is historically important because its hypobranchial gland secretes a mucus used to create a distinctive purple-blue.
Hexaplex trunculus has a broadly conical shell about 4 to 10 cm long. It has a rather high spire with seven angolate whorls. Hexaplex trunculus is a very common mollusk throughout the Mediterranean sea and can be easily found.
The shell is variable in sculpture and coloring with dark banding, in four varieties. The ribs sometimes develop thickenings or spines and give the shell a rough appearance.
As ancient dye The purple dye originated in Phoenician colonies. The Phoenician port cities on the coast of current-day Lebanon, exported the dye across the Mediterranean.
Carthaginian Murex pigment from Tunisia The ancient method for mass-producing purple-blue dye from Hexaplex trunculus has not been successfully reproduced; the purplish hue quickly degrades, resulting in blue only. Nonetheless, archeologists have confirmed Hexaplex trunculus as the species used to create the purple-blue dye; large numbers of shells were recovered from inside ancient live-storage chambers that were used for harvesting. Apparently, 10- to 12,000 murex yielded only one gram of dye. Because of this, the dye was highly prized. Also known as Royal Purple, it was prohibitively expensive and was only used by the highest ranking aristocracy.
A similar dye, Tyrian purple, which is purple-red in color, was made from a related species of marine snail, Murex brandaris. This dye (alternatively known as imperial purple, see purple) was also prohibitively expensive.
Jews used the pigment from the shells to create a sky-blue, tekhelet, dye to put on the fringes that the Torah specifies for the corner of the prayer shawl. There are many opinions about how the tzitzit are tied. This blue dye was made by taking the yellow dye solution and letting it sit in the sunlight, and then dipping the wool in it. This dye was lost to history until it was rediscovered by Professor Otto Elsner of the Shenkar College of Fibers in Haifa. Since then, it has been re-introduced as the authentic ticheiles and has once again been reenstated to the Jewish garment although only with limited acceptance.
Purple was, in the ancient world, a rare and precious dye, which was obtained through elaborate and expensive procedures.
In the first millennium BC the most renowned producers of purple were the Phoenicians, who exported this coloring wherever it was required, deriving great profits from it. With time, the association between the Phoenicians and the purple became so close that those who said “Phoenician” used to say “purple”. In fact, the term “Phoenicians” we use derives from the Greek Phòinikes and is connected with phòinix, “purple-red”.
The Greek myth also linked the origin of purple to the Phoenicians. To invent the tincture would have been Heracles, who would have used it for the mantle of the legendary Phoenician king Phoenix. The king, enchanted by the beauty of that color, would have decreed that from then on only the sovereigns would have had the right to wear purple garments.
The purple is a dye produced by the secretion of some molluscs gastropods that in ancient times were available in great abundance in the shallow waters of all the coasts of the Mediteraneo.
The molluscs, probably caught by traps (wicker baskets) with baits, were placed in large tanks, where they were required to purge for a short time. The breakage and elimination of the shells that enclosed them was then proceeded. The shellfish were then macerated for a long time in the tanks with the addition of water and salt. The coloring matter that was forming was then washed with other water, and then boiled over a low flame for several days in large lead containers, while the debris and impurities were removed. Murice Hexaplex Trunculus intotheblue.it Murex trunculus Phyllonotus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexaplex_trunculus https://www.intotheblue.it/2018/11/16/hexaplex-trunculus/ https://www.intotheblue.it/2020/01/10/riproduzione_murice/ | <urn:uuid:dff64662-e3eb-43e2-abfa-6ba5d3f69ee6> | CC-MAIN-2020-16 | https://www.intotheblue.it/en_GB/gallery/molluschi-mollusca/murex-hexaplex-trunculus/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-16/segments/1585371821680.80/warc/CC-MAIN-20200408170717-20200408201217-00547.warc.gz | en | 0.971281 | 1,046 | 3.09375 | 3 |
The book is an essay collection of 17 writers with diverse backgrounds, who all have fought with feminism and its definition. It’s illuminating, because even when you think you’re trying to be inclusive, there’s always an intersection that you might miss. The anthology speaks volumes, because it lends an ear to underrepresented voices.
Feminism is not simply one box, that can be ticked. Whether it’s your race, your sexuality, your religion, your disability, your gender identity or even your body type, it all will probably make you question mainstream feminism at some point. Mainstream feminism tends to whitewash issues, that women of colour raise. June Eric-Udorie stresses, that when white feminism speaks about the gender pay gap, it focusses on the gap between men and white women, ignoring the fact that women of colour and disabled women are earning even less than their white, female counterparts. Another example she gives is: While career women debate, whether women can “have it all”, black and trans folks are dying at the hands of the police. Charlotte Shane points to, how some of us are concerned with the issue, that more women assume prominent roles in corporations. Thereby we fail to question, what it is, the corporation does. How would it socially benefit all women for one particular woman to earn an obscene amount of money?
Women with privilege (and I am one of them) need to start standing up for issues, that might not affect them directly. June Eric-Udorie suggests, they need to consider each issue through as many lenses, as they can. We need to re-shape feminism, and include marginalized voices! We need to ask ourselves as Selina Thompson suggests, “Who is dominating the conversation, and what doesn’t get spoken about as a consequence of this?”
This is an excellent book, that shows through the eyes of different marginalized voices, how the feminism that appeases the status quo, helps a small group of people to “further consolidate power and money without rocking the proverbial boat.” (Charlotte Shane) All oppression is structural, and if we want to overcome oppression, we need to re-design society. The first step is to include racist, capitalist, class, ableist and imperialist issues, when we seek to achieve equality between all sexes. A feminism, that tries to silence women in intersections, is no real feminism and is part of the issue. “Prioritizing the most vulnerable women and the issues that affect them most is what will make feminism truly comprehensive,” as Wei Ming Kam beautifully puts it in her essay.
The anthology made me think about my own struggle with feminism, but it also opened up my eyes to the suffering of intersections, that I don’t experience. It’s a valid reminder of how we should listen to minorities and start amplifying their voices already. If a trans woman isn’t free from violence and oppression, than none of us are free and the fight has to go on!
If you’d like to have a look, you can find it here. | <urn:uuid:fe35a80c-8526-4962-8c7c-ae1e945e21c3> | CC-MAIN-2021-10 | https://purplenoiz.com/2018/12/04/can-we-all-be-feminists-edited-by-june-eric-udorie/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-10/segments/1614178369054.89/warc/CC-MAIN-20210304113205-20210304143205-00382.warc.gz | en | 0.962034 | 651 | 2.625 | 3 |
Fiscal Competition And Public Education In Regions
AbstractWe explore an economy with two regions and independent local administrations. Local governments collect taxes to finance public education, but once educated agents can choose to migrate to the other region. The Nash equilibrium of the long-run game between the two governments is compared to a golden rule-type social optimum. Preliminary results show that the Nash equilibrium will result in over- or under-investment depending on the extent to which public education is subject to congestion.
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Bibliographic InfoPaper provided by Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas, S.A. (Ivie) in its series Working Papers. Serie AD with number 2004-43.
Length: 15 pages
Date of creation: Nov 2004
Date of revision:
Publication status: Published by Ivie
Successive generations; Public education; Federal and local government; Fiscal games.;
Find related papers by JEL classification:
- E13 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General Aggregative Models - - - Neoclassical
- O41 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - One, Two, and Multisector Growth Models
- I29 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Other
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
- NEP-ALL-2006-02-19 (All new papers)
- NEP-DGE-2006-02-19 (Dynamic General Equilibrium)
- NEP-EDU-2006-02-19 (Education)
- NEP-GEO-2006-02-19 (Economic Geography)
- NEP-MAC-2006-02-19 (Macroeconomics)
- NEP-PBE-2006-02-19 (Public Economics)
- NEP-URE-2006-02-19 (Urban & Real Estate Economics)
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
- Myers, Gordon M., 1990.
"Optimality, free mobility, and the regional authority in a federation,"
Journal of Public Economics,
Elsevier, vol. 43(1), pages 107-121, October.
- Myers & G.M., 1989. "Optimality, Free Mobility And The Regional Authority In Federation," Working Papers 10, John Deutsch Institute for the Study of Economic Policy.
- Starrett, David A, 1980. "On the Method of Taxation and the Provision of Local Public Goods," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 70(3), pages 380-92, June.
- Robin W. Boadway & Frank R. Flatters, 1982. "Efficiency and Equalization Payments in a Federal System of Government: A Synthesis and Extension of Recent Results," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 15(4), pages 613-33, November.
- Mansoorian, Arman & Myers, Gordon M., 1993. "Attachment to home and efficient purchases of population in a fiscal externality economy," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(1), pages 117-132, August.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Departamento de Edición).
If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form. | <urn:uuid:19492c99-a1c7-4d0b-ab63-8ac730b3f5ac> | CC-MAIN-2014-10 | http://ideas.repec.org/p/ivi/wpasad/2004-43.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-10/segments/1394678704953/warc/CC-MAIN-20140313024504-00045-ip-10-183-142-35.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.804563 | 816 | 2.59375 | 3 |
What it means to be a "libertarian" in a political sense is a contentious issue, especially among libertarians themselves. There is no single theory that can be safely identified as the libertarian theory, and probably no single principle or set of principles on which all libertarians can agree. Nevertheless, there is a certain family resemblance among libertarian theories that can serve as a framework for analysis. Although there is much disagreement about the details, libertarians are generally united by a rough agreement on a cluster of normative principles, empirical generalizations, and policy recommendations. Libertarians are committed to the belief that individuals, and not states or groups of any other kind, are both ontologically and normatively primary; that individuals have rights against certain kinds of forcible interference on the part of others; that liberty, understood as non-interference, is the only thing that can be legitimately demanded of others as a matter of legal or political right; that robust property rights and the economic liberty that follows from their consistent recognition are of central importance in respecting individual liberty; that social order is not at odds with but develops out of individual liberty; that the only proper use of coercion is defensive or to rectify an error; that governments are bound by essentially the same moral principles as individuals; and that most existing and historical governments have acted improperly insofar as they have utilized coercion for plunder, aggression, redistribution, and other purposes beyond the protection of individual liberty.
In terms of political recommendations, libertarians believe that most, if not all, of the activities currently undertaken by states should be either abandoned or transferred into private hands. The most well-known version of this conclusion finds expression in the so-called "minimal state" theories of Robert Nozick, Ayn Rand, and others (Nozick 1974; Rand 1963a, 1963b) which hold that states may legitimately provide police, courts, and a military, but nothing more. Any further activity on the part of the state—regulating or prohibiting the sale or use of drugs, conscripting individuals for military service, providing taxpayer-funded support to the poor, or even building public roads—is itself rights-violating and hence illegitimate.
Libertarian advocates of a strictly minimal state are to be distinguished from two closely related groups, who favor a smaller or greater role for government, and who may or may not also label themselves "libertarian." On one hand are so-called anarcho-capitalists who believe that even the minimal state is too large, and that a proper respect for individual rights requires the abolition of government altogether and the provision of protective services by private markets. On the other hand are those who generally identify themselves as classical liberals. Members of this group tend to share libertarians' confidence in free markets and skepticism over government power, but are more willing to allow greater room for coercive activity on the part of the state so as to allow, say, state provision of public goods or even limited tax-funded welfare transfers.
Table of Contents
- The Diversity of Libertarian Theories
- Natural Rights Libertarianism
- Consequentialist Libertarianism
- Other Approaches to Libertarianism
- References and Further Reading
As this article will use the term, libertarianism is a theory about the proper role of government that can be, and has been, supported on a number of different metaphysical, epistemological, and moral grounds. Some libertarians are theists who believe that the doctrine follows from a God-made natural law. Others are atheists who believe it can be supported on purely secular grounds. Some libertarians are rationalists who deduce libertarian conclusions from axiomatic first principles. Others derive their libertarianism from empirical generalizations or a reliance on evolved tradition. And when it comes to comprehensive moral theories, libertarians represent an almost exhaustive array of positions. Some are egoists who believe that individuals have no natural duties to aid their fellow human beings, while others adhere to moral doctrines that hold that the better-off have significant duties to improve the lot of the worse-off. Some libertarians are deontologists, while others are consequentialists, contractarians, or virtue-theorists. Understanding libertarianism as a narrow, limited thesis about the proper moral standing, and proper zone of activity, of the state—and not a comprehensive ethical or metaphysical doctrine—is crucial to making sense of this otherwise baffling diversity of broader philosophic positions.
This article will focus primarily on libertarianism as a philosophic doctrine. This means that, rather than giving close scrutiny to the important empirical claims made both in support and criticism of libertarianism, it will focus instead on the metaphysical, epistemological, and especially moral claims made by the discussants. Those interested in discussions of the non-philosophical aspects of libertarianism can find some recommendations in the reference list below.
Furthermore, this article will focus almost exclusively on libertarian arguments regarding just two philosophical subjects: distributive justice and political authority. There is a danger that this narrow focus will be misleading, since it ignores a number of interesting and important arguments that libertarians have made on subjects ranging from free speech to self-defense, to the proper social treatment of the mentally ill. More generally, it ignores the ways in which libertarianism is a doctrine of social or civil liberty, and not just one of economic liberty. For a variety of reasons, however, the philosophic literature on libertarianism has mostly ignored these other aspects of the theory, and so this article, as a summary of that literature, will generally reflect that trend.
Probably the most well-known and influential version of libertarianism, at least among academic philosophers, is that based upon a theory of natural rights. Natural rights theories vary, but are united by a common belief that individuals have certain moral rights simply by virtue of their status as human beings, that these rights exist prior to and logically independent of the existence of government, and that these rights constrain the ways in which it is morally permissible for both other individuals and governments to treat individuals.
Although one can find some earlier traces of this doctrine among, for instance, the English Levellers or the Spanish School of Salamanca, John Locke's political thought is generally recognized as the most important historical influence on contemporary natural rights versions of libertarianism. The most important elements of Locke's theory in this respect, set out in his Second Treatise, are his beliefs about the law of nature, and his doctrine of property rights in external goods.
Locke's idea of the law of nature draws on a distinction between law and government that has been profoundly influential on the development of libertarian thought. According to Locke, even if no government existed over men, the state of nature would nevertheless not be a state of "license." In other words, men would still be governed by law, albeit one that does not originate from any political source (c.f. Hayek 1973, ch. 4). This law, which Locke calls the "law of nature" holds that "being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, liberty, or possessions" (Locke 1952, para. 6). This law of nature serves as a normative standard to govern human conduct, rather than as a description of behavioral regularities in the world (as are other laws of nature like, for instance, the law of gravity). Nevertheless, it is a normative standard that Locke believes is discoverable by human reason, and that binds us all equally as rational agents.
Locke's belief in a prohibition on harming others stems from his more basic belief that each individual "has a property in his own person" (Locke 1952, para. 27). In other words, individuals are self-owners. Throughout this essay we will refer to this principle, which has been enormously influential on later libertarians, as the "self-ownership principle." Though controversial, it has generally been taken to mean that each individual possesses over her own body all those rights of exclusive use that we normally associate with property in external goods. But if this were all that individuals owned, their liberties and ability to sustain themselves would obviously be extremely limited. For almost anything we want to do—eating, walking, even breathing, or speaking in order to ask another's permission—involves the use of external goods such as land, trees, or air. From this, Locke concludes, we must have some way of acquiring property in those external goods, else they will be of no use to anyone. But since we own ourselves, Locke argues, we therefore also own our labor. And by "mixing" our labor with external goods, we can come to own those external goods too. This allows individuals to make private use of the world that God has given to them in common. There is a limit, however, to this ability to appropriate external goods for private use, which Locke captures in his famous "proviso" that holds that a legitimate act of appropriation must leave "enough, and as good... in common for others" (Locke 1952, para. 27). Still, even with this limit, the combination of time, inheritance, and differential abilities, motivation, and luck will lead to possibly substantial inequalities in wealth between persons, and Locke acknowledges this as an acceptable consequence of his doctrine (Locke 1952, para. 50).
By far the single most important influence on the perception of libertarianism among contemporary academic philosophers was Robert Nozick in his book, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974). This book is an explanation and exploration of libertarian rights that attempts to show how a minimal, and no more than a minimal, state can arise via an "invisible hand" process out of a state of nature without violating the rights of individuals; to challenge the highly influential claims of John Rawls that purport to show that a more-than-minimal state was justified and required to achieve distributive justice; and to show that a regime of libertarian rights could establish a "framework for utopia" wherein different individuals would be free to seek out and create mediating institutions to help them achieve their own distinctive visions of the good life.
The details of Nozick's arguments can be found at Robert Nozick. Here, we will just briefly point out a few elements of particular importance in understanding Nozick's place in contemporary libertarian thought—his focus on the "negative" aspects of liberty and rights, his Kantian defense of rights, his historical theory of entitlement, and his acceptance of a modified Lockean proviso on property acquisition. A discussion of his argument for the minimal state can be found in the section on anarcho-capitalism below.
First, Nozick, like almost all natural rights libertarians, stresses negative liberties and rights above positive liberties and rights. The distinction between positive and negative liberty, made famous by Isaiah Berlin (Berlin 1990), is often thought of as a distinction between "freedom to" and "freedom from." One has positive liberty when one has the opportunity and ability to do what one wishes (or, perhaps, what one "rationally" wishes or "ought" to wish). One has negative liberty, on the other hand, when there is an absence of external interferences to one's doing what one wishes—specifically, when there is an absence of external interferences by other people. A person who is too sick to gather food has his negative liberty intact—no one is stopping him from gathering food—but not his positive liberty as he is unable to gather food even though he wants to do so. Nozick and most libertarians see the proper role of the state as protecting negative liberty, not as promoting positive liberty, and so toward this end Nozick focuses on negative rights as opposed to positive rights. Negative rights are claims against others to refrain from certain kinds of actions against you. Positive rights are claims against others to perform some sort of positive action. Rights against assault, for instance, are negative rights, since they simply require others not to assault you. Welfare rights, on the other hand, are positive rights insofar as they require others to provide you with money or services. By enforcing negative rights, the state protects our negative liberty. It is an empirical question whether enforcing merely negative rights or, as more left-liberal philosophers would promote, enforcing a mix of both negative and positive rights would better promote positive liberty.
Second, while Nozick agrees with the broadly Lockean picture of the content and government-independence of natural law and natural rights, his remarks in defense of those rights draw their inspiration more from Immanuel Kant than from Locke. Nozick does not provide a full-blown argument to justify libertarian rights against other non-libertarian rights theories—a point for which he has been widely criticized, most famously by Thomas Nagel (Nagel 1975). But what he does say in their defense suggests that he sees libertarian rights as an entailment of the other-regarding element in Kant's second formulation of the categorical imperative—that we treat the humanity in ourselves and others as an end in itself, and never merely as a means. According to Nozick, both utilitarianism and theories that uphold positive rights sanction the involuntary sacrifice of one individual's interests for the sake of others. Only libertarian rights, which for Nozick take the form of absolute side-constraints against force and fraud, show proper respect for the separateness of persons by barring such sacrifice altogether, and allowing each individual the liberty to pursue his or her own goals without interference.
Third, it is important to note that Nozick's libertarianism evaluates the justice of states of affairs, such as distributions of property, in terms of the history or process by which that state of affairs arose, and not by the extent to which it satisfies what he calls a patterned or end-state principle of justice. Distributions of property are just, according to Nozick, if they arose from previously just distributions by just procedures. Discerning the justice of current distributions thus requires that we establish a theory of justice in transfer—to tell us which procedures constitute legitimate means of transferring ownership between persons—and a theory of justice in acquisition—to tell us how individuals might come to own external goods that were previously owned by no one. And while Nozick does not fully develop either of these theories, his skeletal position is nevertheless significant, for it implies that it is only the proper historical pedigree that makes a distribution just, and it is only deviations from the proper pedigree that renders a distribution unjust. An implication of this position is that one cannot discern from time-slice statistical data alone—such as the claim that the top fifth of the income distribution in the United States controls more than 80 percent of the nation's wealth—that a distribution is unjust. Rather, the justice of a distribution depends on how it came about—by force or by trade? By differing degrees of hard work and luck? Or by fraud and theft? Libertarianism's historical focus thus sets the doctrine against both outcome-egalitarian views that hold that only equal distributions are just, utilitarian views that hold that distributions are just to the extent they maximize utility, and prioritarian views that hold that distributions are just to the extent they benefit the worse-off. Justice in distribution is a matter of respecting people's rights, not of achieving a certain outcome.
The final distinctive element of Nozick's view is his acceptance of a modified version of the Lockean proviso as part of his theory of justice in acquisition. Nozick reads Locke's claim that legitimate acts of appropriation must leave enough and as good for others as a claim that such appropriations must not worsen the situation of others (Nozick 1974, 175, 178). On the face of it, this seems like a small change from Locke's original statement, but Nozick believes it allows for much greater freedom for free exchange and capitalism (Nozick 1974, 182). Nozick reaches this conclusion on the basis of certain empirical beliefs about the beneficial effects of private property:
it increases the social product by putting means of production in the hands of those who can use them most efficiently (profitably); experimentation is encouraged, because with separate persons controlling resources, there is no one person or small group whom someone with a new idea must convince to try it out; private property enables people to decide on the pattern and type of risks they wish to bear, leading to specialized types of risk bearing; private property protects future persons by leading some to hold back resources from current consumption for future markets; it provides alternative sources of employment for unpopular persons who don't have to convince any one person or small group to hire them, and so on. (Nozick 1974, 177)
If these assumptions are correct, then persons might not be made worse off by acts of original appropriation even if those acts fail to leave enough and as good for others to appropriate. Private property and the capitalist markets to which it gives rise generate an abundance of wealth, and latecomers to the appropriation game (like people today) are in a much better position as a result. As David Schmidtz puts the point:
Original appropriation diminishes the stock of what can be originally appropriated, at least in the case of land, but that is not the same thing as diminishing the stock of what can be owned. On the contrary, in taking control of resources and thereby removing those particular resources from the stock of goods that can be acquired by original appropriation, people typically generate massive increases in the stock of goods that can be acquired by trade. The lesson is that appropriation is typically not a zero-sum game. It normally is a positive-sum game. (Schmidtz and Goodin 1998, 30)
Relative to their level of well-being in a world where nothing is privately held, then, individuals are generally not made worse off by acts of private appropriation. Thus, Nozick concludes, the Lockean proviso will "not provide a significant opportunity for future state action" in the form of redistribution or regulation of private property (Nozick 1974, 182).
Nozick's libertarian theory has been subject to criticism on a number of grounds. Here we will focus on two primary categories of criticism of Lockean/Nozickian natural rights libertarianism—namely, with respect to the principle of self-ownership and the derivation of private property rights from self-ownership.
Criticisms of the self-ownership principle generally take one of two forms. Some arguments attempt to sever the connection between the principle of self-ownership and the more fundamental moral principles that are thought to justify it. Nozick's suggestion that self-ownership is warranted by the Kantian principle that no one should be treated as a mere means, for instance, is criticized by G.A. Cohen on the grounds that policies that violate self-ownership by forcing the well-off to support the less advantaged do not necessarily treat the well-off merely as means (Cohen 1995, 239–241). We can satisfy Kant's imperative against treating others as mere means without thereby committing ourselves to full self-ownership, Cohen argues, and we have good reason to do so insofar as the principle of self-ownership has other, implausible, consequences. The same general pattern of argument holds against more intuitive defenses of the self-ownership principle. Nozick's concern (Nozick 1977, 206), elaborated by Cohen (Cohen 1995, 70), that theories that deny self-ownership might license the forcible transfer of eyes from the sight-endowed to the blind, for instance, or Murray Rothbard's claim that the only alternatives to self-ownership are slavery or communism (Rothbard 1973, 29), have been met with the response that a denial of the permissibility of slavery, communism, and eye-transplants can be made—and usually better made—on grounds other than self-ownership.
Other criticisms of self-ownership focus on the counterintuitive or otherwise objectionable implications of self-ownership. Cohen, for instance, argues that recognizing rights to full self-ownership allows individuals' lives to be objectionably governed by brute luck in the distribution of natural assets, since the self that people own is largely a product of their luck in receiving a good or bad genetic endowment, and being raised in a good or bad environment (Cohen 1995, 229). Richard Arneson, on the other hand, has argued that self-ownership conflicts with Pareto-Optimality (Arneson 1991). His concern is that since self-ownership is construed by libertarians as an absolute right, it follows that it cannot be violated even in small ways and even when great benefit would accrue from doing so. Thus, to modify David Hume, absolute rights of self-ownership seem to prevent us from scratching the finger of another even to prevent the destruction of the whole world. And although the real objection here seems to be to the absoluteness of self-ownership rights, rather than to self-ownership rights as such, it remains unclear whether strict libertarianism can be preserved if rights of self-ownership are given a less than absolute status.
Even if individuals have absolute rights to full self-ownership, it can still be questioned whether there is a legitimate way of moving from ownership of the self to ownership of external goods.
Left-libertarians, such as Hillel Steiner, Peter Vallentyne, and Michael Otsuka, grant the self-ownership principle but deny that it can yield full private property rights in external goods, especially land (Steiner 1994; Vallentyne 2000; Otsuka 2003). Natural resources, such theorists hold, belong to everyone in some equal way, and private appropriation of them amounts to theft. Rather than returning all such goods to the state of nature, however, most left-libertarians suggest that those who claim ownership of such resources be subjected to a tax to compensate others for the loss of their rights of use. Since the tax is on the value of the external resource and not on individuals' natural talents or efforts, it is thought that this line of argument can provide a justification for a kind of egalitarian redistribution that is compatible with full individual self-ownership.
While left-libertarians doubt that self-ownership can yield full private property rights in external goods, others are doubtful that the concept is determinate enough to yield any theory of justified property ownership at all. Locke's metaphor on labor mixing, for instance, is intuitively appealing, but notoriously difficult to work out in detail (Waldron 1983). First, it is not clear why mixing one's labor with something generates any rights at all. As Nozick himself asks, "why isn't mixing what I own with what I don't own a way of losing what I own rather than a way of gaining what I don't?" (Nozick 1974, 174–175). Second, it is not clear what the scope of the rights generated by labor-mixing are. Again, Nozick playfully suggests (but does not answer) this question when he asks whether a person who builds a fence around virgin land thereby comes to own the enclosed land, or simply the fence, or just the land immediately under it. But the point is more worrisome than Nozick acknowledges. For as critics such as Barbara Fried have pointed out, following Hohfeld, property ownership is not a single right but a bundle of rights, and it is far from clear which "sticks" from this bundle individuals should come to control by virtue of their self-ownership (Fried 2004). Does one's ownership right over a plot of land entail the right to store radioactive waste on it? To dam the river that runs through it? To shine a very bright light from it in the middle of the night (Friedman 1989, 168)? Problems such as these must, of course, be resolved by any political theory—not just libertarians. The problem is that the concept of self-ownership seems to offer little, if any, help in doing so.
While Nozickian libertarianism finds its inspiration in Locke and Kant, there is another species of libertarianism that draws its influence from David Hume, Adam Smith, and John Stuart Mill. This variety of libertarianism holds its political principles to be grounded not in self-ownership or the natural rights of humanity, but in the beneficial consequences that libertarian rights and institutions produce, relative to possible and realistic alternatives. To the extent that such theorists hold that consequences, and only consequences, are relevant in the justification of libertarianism, they can properly be labeled a form of consequentialism. Some of these consequentialist forms of libertarianism are utilitarian. But consequentialism is not identical to utilitarianism, and this section will explore both traditional quantitative utilitarian defenses of libertarianism, and other forms more difficult to classify.
Philosophically, the approach that seeks to justify political institutions by demonstrating their tendency to maximize utility has its clearest origins in the thought of Jeremy Bentham, himself a legal reformer as well as moral theorist. But, while Bentham was no advocate of unfettered laissez-faire, his approach has been enormously influential among economists, especially the Austrian and Chicago Schools of Economics, many of whom have utilized utilitarian analysis in support of libertarian political conclusions. Some influential economists have been self-consciously libertarian—the most notable of which being Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, James Buchanan, and Milton Friedman (the latter three are Nobel laureates). Richard Epstein, more legal theorist than economist, nevertheless utilizes utilitarian argument with an economic analysis of law to defend his version of classical liberalism. His work in Principles for a Free Society (1998) and Skepticism and Freedom (2003) is probably the most philosophical of contemporary utilitarian defenses of libertarianism. Buchanan's work is generally described as contractarian, though it certainly draws heavily on utilitarian analysis. It too is highly philosophical.
Utilitarian defenses of libertarianism generally consist of two prongs: utilitarian arguments in support of private property and free exchange and utilitarian arguments against government policies that exceed the bounds of the minimal state. Utilitarian defenses of private property and free exchange are too diverse to thoroughly canvass in a single article. For the purposes of this article, however, the focus will be on two main arguments that have been especially influential: the so-called "Tragedy of the Commons" argument for private property and the "Invisible Hand" argument for free exchange.
The Tragedy of the Commons argument notes that under certain conditions when property is commonly owned or, equivalently, owned by no one, it will be inefficiently used and quickly depleted. In his original description of the problem of the commons, Garrett Hardin asks us to imagine a pasture open to all, on which various herders graze their cattle (Hardin 1968). Each additional animal that the herder is able to graze means greater profit for the herder, who captures that entire benefit for his or her self. Of course, additional cattle on the pasture has a cost as well in terms of crowding and diminished carrying capacity of the land, but importantly this cost of additional grazing, unlike the benefit, is dispersed among all herders. Since each herder thus receives the full benefit of each additional animal but bears only a fraction of the dispersed cost, it benefits him or her to graze more and more animals on the land. But since this same logic applies equally well to all herders, we can expect them all to act this way, with the result that the carrying capacity of the field will quickly be exceeded.
The tragedy of the Tragedy of the Commons is especially apparent if we model it as a Prisoner's Dilemma, wherein each party has the option to graze additional animals or not to graze. (See figure 1, below, where A and B represent two herders, "graze" and "don't graze" their possible options, and the four possible outcomes of their joint action. Within the boxes, the numbers represent the utility each herder receives from the outcome, with A's outcome listed on the left and B's on the right). As the discussion above suggests, the best outcome for each individual herder is to graze an additional animal, but for the other herder not to—here the herder reaps all the benefit and only a fraction of the cost. The worst outcome for each individual herder, conversely, is to refrain from grazing an additional animal while the other herder indulges—in this situation, the herder bears costs but receives no benefit. The relationship between the other two possible outcomes is important. Both herders would be better off if neither grazed an additional animal, compared to the outcome in which both do graze an additional animal. The long-term benefits of operating within the carrying capacity of the land, we can assume, outweigh the short-term gains to be had from mutual overgrazing. By the logic of the Prisoner's Dilemma, however, rational self-interested herders will not choose mutual restraint over mutual exploitation of the resource. This is because, so long as the costs of over-grazing are partially externalized on to other users of the resource, it is in each herder's interest to overgraze regardless of what the other party does. In the language of game theory, overgrazing dominates restraint. As a result, not only is the resource consumed, but both parties are made worse off individually than they could have been. Mutual overgrazing creates a situation that not only yields a lower total utility than mutual restraint (2 vs. 6), but that is Pareto-inferior to mutual restraint—at least one party (indeed, both!) would have been made better off by mutual restraint without anyone having been made worse off.
Figure 1. The Tragedy of the Commons as Prisoner's Dilemma
The classic solution to the Tragedy of the Commons is private property. Recall that the tragedy arises because individual herders do not have to bear the full costs of their actions. Because the land is common to all, the costs of overgrazing are partially externalized on to other users of the resource. But private property changes this. If, instead of being commonly owned by all, the field was instead divided into smaller pieces of private property, then herders would have the power to exclude others from using their own property. One would only be able to graze cattle on one's own field, or on others' fields on terms specified by their owners, and this means that the costs of that overgrazing (in terms of diminished usability of the land or diminished resale value because of that diminished usability) would be borne by the overgrazer alone. Private property forces individuals to internalize the cost of their actions, and this in turn provides individuals with an incentive to use the resource wisely.
The lesson is that by creating and respecting private property rights in external resources, governments can provide individuals with an incentive to use those resources in an efficient way, without the need for complicated government regulation and oversight of those resources. Libertarians have used this basic insight to argue for everything from privatization of roads (Klein and Fielding 1992) to private property as a solution to various environmental problems (Anderson and Leal 1991).
Libertarians believe that individuals and groups should be free to trade just about anything they wish with whomever they wish, with little to no governmental restriction. They therefore oppose laws that prohibit certain types of exchanges (such as prohibitions on prostitution and sale of illegal drugs, minimum wage laws that effectively prohibit low-wage labor agreements, and so on) as well as laws that burden exchanges by imposing high transaction costs (such as import tariffs).
The reason utilitarian libertarians support free exchange is that, they argue, it tends to allocate resources into the hands of those who value them most, and in so doing to increase the total amount of utility in society. The first step in seeing this is to understand that even if trade is a zero-sum game in terms of the objects that are traded (nothing is created or destroyed, just moved about), it is a positive-sum game in terms of utility. This is because individuals differ in terms of the subjective utility they assign to goods. A person planning to move from Chicago to San Diego might assign a relatively low utility value to her large, heavy furniture. It's difficult and costly to move, and might not match the style of the new home anyway. But to someone else who has just moved into an empty apartment in Chicago, that furniture might have a very high utility value indeed. If the first person values the furniture at $200 (or its equivalent in terms of utility) and the second person values it at $500, both will gain if they exchange for a price anywhere between those two values. Each will have given up something they value less in exchange for something they value more, and net utility will have increased as a result.
As Friedrich Hayek has noted, much of the information about the relative utility values assigned to different goods is transmitted to different actors in the market via the price system (Hayek 1980). An increase in a resource's price signals that demand for that resource has increased relative to supply. Consumers can respond to this price increase by continuing to use the resource at the now-higher price, switching to a substitute good, or discontinuing use of that sort of resource altogether. Each individual's decision is both affected by the price of the relevant resources, and affects the price insofar as it adds to or subtracts from aggregate supply and demand. Thus, though they generally do not know it, each person's decision is a response to the decisions of millions of other consumers and producers of the resource, each of whom bases her decision on her own specialized, local knowledge about that resource. And although all they are trying to do is maximize their own utility, each individual will be led to act in a way that leads the resource toward its highest-valued use. Those who derive the most utility from the good will outbid others for its use, and others will be led to look for cheaper substitutes.
On this account, one deeply influenced by the Austrian School of Economics, the market is a constantly churning process of competition, discovery, and innovation. Market prices represent aggregates of information and so generally represent an advance over what any one individual could hope to know on his own, but the individual decisions out of which market prices arise are themselves based on imperfect information. There are always opportunities that nobody has discovered, and the passage of time, the changing of people's preferences, and the development of new technological possibilities ensures that this ignorance will never be fully overcome. The market is thus never in a state of competitive equilibrium, and it will always "fail" by the test of perfect efficiency. But it is precisely today's market failures that provide the opportunities for tomorrow's entrepreneurs to profit by new innovation (Kirzner 1996). Competition is a process, not a goal to be reached, and it is a process driven by the particular decisions of individuals who are mostly unaware of the overall and long-term tendencies of their decisions taken as a whole. Even if no market actor cares about increasing the aggregate level of utility in society, he will be, as Adam Smith wrote, "led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention" (Smith 1981). The dispersed knowledge of millions of market actors will be taken into account in producing a distribution that comes as close as practically possible to that which would be selected by a benign, omniscient, and omnipotent despot. In reality, however, all that government is required to do in order to achieve this effect is to define and enforce clear property rights and to allow the price system to freely adjust in response to changing conditions.
The above two arguments, if successful, demonstrate that free markets and private property generate good utilitarian outcomes. But even if this is true, it remains possible that selective government intervention in the economy could produce outcomes that are even better. Governments might use taxation and coercion for the provision of public goods, or to prevent other sorts of market failures like monopolies. Or governments might engage in redistributive taxation on the grounds that given the diminishing marginal utility of wealth, doing so will provide higher levels of overall utility. In order to maintain their opposition to government intervention, then, libertarians must produce arguments to show that such policies will not produce greater utility than a policy of laissez-faire. Producing such arguments is something of a cottage industry among libertarian economists, and so we cannot hope to provide a complete summary here. Two main categories of argument, however, have been especially influential. We can call them incentive-based arguments and public choice arguments.
Incentive arguments proceed by claiming that government policies designed to promote utility actually produce incentives for individuals to act in ways that run contrary to promotion of utility. Examples of incentive arguments include arguments that (a) government-provided (welfare) benefits dissuade individuals from taking responsibility for their own economic well-being (Murray 1984), (b) mandatory minimum wage laws generate unemployment among low-skilled workers (Friedman 1962, 180–181), (c) legal prohibition of drugs create a black market with inflated prices, low quality control, and violence (Thornton 1991), and (d) higher taxes lead people to work and/or invest less, and hence lead to lower economic growth.
Public choice arguments, on the other hand, are often employed by libertarians to undermine the assumption that government will use its powers to promote the public interest in the way its proponents claim it will. Public choice as a field is based on the assumption that the model of rational self-interest typically employed by economists to predict the behavior of market agents can also be used to predict the behavior of government agents. Rather than trying to maximize profit, however, government agents are thought to be aiming at re-election (in the case of elected officials) or maintenance or expansion of budget and influence (in the case of bureaucrats). From this basic analytical model, public choice theorists have argued that (a) the fact that the costs of many policies are widely dispersed among taxpayers, while their benefits are often concentrated in the hands of a few beneficiaries, means that even grossly inefficient policies will be enacted and, once enacted, very difficult to remove, (b) politicians and bureaucrats will engage in "rent-seeking" behavior by exploiting the powers of their office for personal gain rather than public good, and (c) certain public goods will be over-supplied by political processes, while others will be under-supplied, since government agents lack both knowledge and incentives necessary to provide such goods at efficient levels (Mitchell and Simmons 1994). These problems are held to be endemic to political processes, and not easily subject to legislative or constitutional correction. Hence, many conclude that the only way to minimize the problems of political power is to minimize the scope of political power itself by subjecting as few areas of life as possible to political regulation.
The quantitative utilitarians are often both rationalist and radical in their approach to social reform. For them, the maximization of utility serves as an axiomatic first principle, from which policy conclusions can be straightforwardly deduced once empirical (or quasi-empirical) assessments of causal relationships in the world have been made. From Jeremy Bentham to Peter Singer, quantitative utilitarians have advocated dramatic changes in social institutions, all justified in the name of reason and the morality it gives rise to.
There is, however, another strain of consequentialism that is less confident in the ability of human reason to radically reform social institutions for the better. For these consequentialists, social institutions are the product of an evolutionary process that itself is the product of the decisions of millions of discrete individuals. Each of these individuals in turn possess knowledge that, though by itself is insignificant, in the aggregate represents more than any single social reformer could ever hope to match. Humility, not radicalism, is counseled by this variety of consequentialism.
Though it has its affinities with conservative doctrines such as those of Edmund Burke, Michael Oakeshott, and Russell Kirk, this strain of consequentialism had its greatest influence on libertarianism through the work of Friedrich Hayek. Hayek, however, takes pains to distance himself from conservative ideology, noting that his respect for tradition is not grounded in a fetish for the status quo or an opposition to change as such, but in deeper, distinctively liberal principles (Hayek 1960). For Hayek, tradition is valuable because, and only to the extent that, it evolves in a peaceful, decentralized way. Social norms that are chosen by free individuals and survive competition from competing norms without being maintained by coercion are, for that reason, worthy of respect even if we are not consciously aware of all the reasons that the institution has survived. Somewhat paradoxically then, Hayek believes that we can rationally support institutions even when we lack substantive justifying reasons for supporting them. The reason this can be rational is that even when we lack substantive justifying reasons, we nevertheless have justifying reasons in a procedural sense—the fact that the institution is the result of an evolutionary procedure of a certain sort gives us reason to believe that there are substantive justifying reasons for it, even if we do not know what they are (Gaus 2006).
For Hayek, the procedures that lend justifying force to institutions are, essentially, ones that leave individuals free to act as they wish so long as they do not act aggressively toward others. For Hayek, however, this principle is not a moral axiom but rather follows from his beliefs regarding the limits and uses of knowledge in society. A crucial piece of Hayek's arguments regarding the price system, (see above) is his claim that each individual possesses a unique set of knowledge about his or her local circumstances, special interests, desires, abilities, and so forth. The price system, if allowed to function freely without artificial floors or ceilings, will reflect this knowledge and transmit it to other interested individuals, thus allowing society to make effective use of dispersed knowledge. But Hayek's defense of the price system is only one application of a more general point. The fact that knowledge of all sorts exists in dispersed form among many individuals is a fundamental fact about human existence. And since this knowledge is constantly changing in response to changing circumstances and cannot therefore be collected and acted upon by any central authority, the only way to make use of this knowledge effectively is to allow individuals the freedom to act on it themselves. This means that government must disallow individuals from coercing one another, and also must refrain from coercing them themselves. The social order that such voluntary actions produce is one that, given the complexity of social and economic systems and radical limitations on our ability to acquire knowledge about its particular details (Gaus 2007), cannot be imposed by fiat, but must evolve spontaneously in a bottom-up manner. Hayek, like Mill before him (Mill 1989), thus celebrates the fact that a free society allows individuals to engage in "experiments in living" and therefore, as Nozick argued in the neglected third part of his Anarchy, State, and Utopia, can serve as a "utopia of utopias" where individuals are at liberty to organize their own conception of the good life with others who voluntarily choose to share their vision (Hayek 1960).
Hayek's ideas about the relationship between knowledge, freedom, and a constitutional order were first developed at length in The Constitution of Liberty, later developed in his series Law, Legislation and Liberty, and given their last, and most accessible (though not necessarily most reliable (Caldwell 2005)) statement in The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (1988). Since then, the most extensive integration of these ideas into a libertarian framework is in Randy Barnett's The Structure of Liberty, wherein Barnett argues that a "polycentric constitutional order" (see below regarding anarcho-capitalism) is best suited to solve not only the Hayekian problem of the use of knowledge in society, but also what he calls the problems of "interest" and "power" (Barnett 1998). More recently, Hayekian insights have been put to use by contemporary philosophers Chandran Kukathas (1989; 2006) and Gerald Gaus (2006; 2007).
Consequentialist defenses of libertarianism are, of course, varieties of consequentialist moral argument, and are susceptible therefore to the same kinds of criticisms leveled against consequentialist moral arguments in general. Beyond these standard criticisms, moreover, consequentialist defenses of libertarianism are subject to four special difficulties.
First, consequentialist arguments seem unlikely to lead one to full-fledged libertarianism, as opposed to more moderate forms of classical liberalism. Intuitively, it seems implausible that simple protection of individual negative liberties would do a better job than any alternative institutional arrangement at maximizing utility or peace and prosperity or whatever. And this intuitive doubt is buttressed by economic analyses showing that unregulated capitalist markets suffer from production of negative externalities, from monopoly power, and from undersupply of certain public goods, all of which cry out for some form of government protection (Buchanan 1985). Even granting libertarian claims that (a) these problems are vastly overstated, (b) often caused by previous failures of government to adequately respect or enforce private property rights, and (c) government ability to correct these is not as great as one might think, it's nevertheless implausible to suppose, a priori, that it will never be the case that government can do a better job than the market by interfering with strict libertarian rights.
Second, consequentialist defenses of libertarianism are subject to objections when a great deal of benefit can be had at a very low cost. So-called cases of "easy rescue," for instance, challenge the wisdom of adhering to absolute prohibitions on coercive conduct. After all, if the majority of the world's population lives in dire poverty and suffer from easily preventable diseases and deaths, couldn't utility be increased by increasing taxes slightly on wealthy Americans and using that surplus to provide basic medical aid to those in desperate need? The prevalence of such cases is an empirical question, but their possibility points (at least) to a "fragility" in the consequentialist case for libertarian prohibitions on redistributive taxation.
Third, the consequentialist theories at the root of these libertarian arguments are often seriously under-theorized. For instance, Randy Barnett bases his defense of libertarian natural rights on the claim that they promote the end of "happiness, peace and prosperity" (Barnett 1998). But this leaves a host of difficult questions unaddressed. The meaning of each of these terms, for instance, has been subject to intense philosophical debate. Which sense of happiness, then, does libertarianism promote? What happens when these ends conflict—when we have to choose, say, between peace and prosperity? And in what sense do libertarian rights "promote" these ends? Are they supposed to maximize happiness in the aggregate? Or to maximize each person's happiness? Or to maximize the weighted sum of happiness, peace, and prosperity? Richard Epstein is on more familiar and hence, perhaps, firmer ground when he says that his version of classical liberalism is meant to maximize utility, but even here the claim that utility maximization is the proper end of political action is asserted without argument. The lesson is that while consequentialist political arguments might seem less abstract and philosophical (in the pejorative sense) than deontological arguments, consequentialism is still, nevertheless, a moral theory, and needs to be clearly articulated and defended as any other moral theory. Possibly because consequentialist defenses of libertarianism have been put forward mainly by non-philosophers, this challenge has yet to be met.
A fourth and related point has to do with issues surrounding the distribution of wealth, happiness, opportunities, and other goods allegedly promoted by libertarian rights. In part, this is a worry common to all maximizing versions of consequentialism, but it is of special relevance in this context given the close relation between economic systems and distributional issues. The worry is that morality, or justice, requires more than simply producing an abundance of wealth, happiness, or whatever. It requires that each person gets a fair share—whether that is defined as an equal share, a share sufficient for living a good life, or something else. Intuitively fair distributions are simply not something that libertarian institutions can guarantee, devoid as they are of any means for redistributing these goods from the well-off to the less well-off. Furthermore, once it is granted that libertarianism is likely to produce unequal distributions of wealth, the Hayekian argument for relying on the free price system to allocate goods no longer holds as strongly as it appeared to. For we cannot simply assume that a free price system will lead to goods being allocated to their most valued use if some people have an abundance of wealth and others very little at all. A free market of self-interested persons will not distribute bread to the starving man, no matter how much utility he would derive from it, if he cannot pay for it. And a wealthy person, such as Bill Gates, will still always be able to outbid a poor person for season tickets to the Mariners, even if the poor person values the tickets much more highly than he, since the marginal value of the dollars he spends on the tickets is much lower to him than the marginal value of the poor person's dollars. Both by an external standard of fairness and by an internal standard of utility-maximization, then, unregulated free markets seem to fall short.
Anarcho-capitalists claim that no state is morally justified (hence their anarchism), and that the traditional functions of the state ought to be provided by voluntary production and trade instead (hence their capitalism). This position poses a serious challenge to both moderate classical liberals and more radical minimal state libertarians, though, as we shall see, the stability of the latter position is especially threatened by the anarchist challenge.
Anarcho-capitalism can be defended on either consequentialist or deontological grounds, though usually a mix of both arguments is proffered. On the consequentialist side, it is argued that police protection, court systems, and even law itself can be provided voluntarily for a price like any other market good (Friedman 1989; Rothbard 1978; Barnett 1998; Hasnas 2003; Hasnas 2007). And not only is it possible for markets to provide these traditionally state-supplied goods, it is actually more desirable for them to do so given that competitive pressures in this market, as in others, will produce an array of goods that is of higher general quality and that is diverse enough to satisfy individuals' differing preferences (Friedman 1989; Barnett 1998). Deontologically, anarcho-capitalists argue that the minimal state necessarily violates individual rights insofar as it (1) claims a monopoly on the legitimate use of force and thereby prohibits other individuals from exercising force in accordance with their natural rights, and (2) funds its protective services with coercively obtained tax revenue that it sometimes (3) uses redistributively to pay for protection for those who are unable to pay for themselves (Rothbard 1978; Childs 1994).
Robert Nozick was one of the first academic philosophers to take the anarchist challenge seriously. In the first part of his Anarchy, State, and Utopia he argued that the minimal state can evolve out of an anarcho-capitalist society through an invisible hand process that does not violate anyone's rights. Competitive pressures and violent conflict, he argued, will provide incentives for competing defensive agencies to merge or collude so that, effectively, monopolies will emerge over certain geographical areas (Nozick 1974). Since these monopolies are merely de facto, however, the dominant protection agency does not yet constitute a state. For that to occur, the "dominant protection agency" must claim that it would be morally illegitimate for other protection agencies to operate, and make some reasonably effective attempt to prohibit them from doing so. Nozick's argument that it would be legitimate for the dominant protection agency to do so is one of the most controversial aspects of his argument. Essentially, he argues that individuals have rights not to be subject to the risk of rights-violation, and that the dominant protection agency may legitimately prohibit the protective activities of its competitors on grounds that their procedures involve the imposition of risk. In claiming and enforcing this monopoly, the dominant protection agency becomes what Nozick calls the "ultraminimal state"—ultraminimal because it does not provide protective services for all persons within its geographical territory, but only those who pay for them. The transition from the ultraminimal state to the minimal one occurs when the dominant protection agency (now state) provides protective services to all individuals within its territory, and Nozick argues that the state is morally obligated to do this in order to provide compensation to the individuals who have been disadvantaged by its seizure of monopoly power.
Nozick's arguments against the anarchist have been challenged on a number of grounds. First, the justification for the state it provides is entirely hypothetical—the most he attempts to claim is that a state could arise legitimately from the state of nature, not that any actual state has (Rothbard 1977). But if hypotheticals were all that mattered, then an equally compelling story could be told of how the minimal state could devolve back into merely one competitive agency among others by a process that violates no one's rights (Childs 1977), thus leaving us at a justificatory stalemate. Second, it is questionable whether prohibiting activities that run the risk of violating rights, but do not actually violate any, is compatible with fundamental liberal principles (Rothbard 1977). Finally, even if the general principle of prohibition with compensation is legitimate, it is nevertheless doubtful that the proper way to compensate the anarchist who has been harmed by the state's claim of monopoly is to provide him with precisely what he does not want—state police and military services (Childs 1977).
Until decisively rebutted, then, the anarchist position remains a serious challenge for libertarians, especially of the minimal state variety. This is true regardless of whether their libertarianism is defended on consequentialist or natural rights grounds. For the consequentialist libertarian, the challenge is to explain why law and protective services are the only goods that require state provision in order to maximize utility (or whatever the maximandum may be). If, for instance, the consequentialist justification for the state provision of law is that law is a public good, then the question is: Why should other public goods not also be provided? The claim that only police, courts, and military fit the bill appears to be more an a priori article of faith than a consequence of empirical analysis. This consideration might explain why so many consequentialist libertarians are in fact classical liberals who are willing to grant legitimacy to a larger than minimal state (Friedman 1962; Hayek 1960; Epstein 2003). For deontological libertarians, on the other hand, the challenge is to show why the state is justified in (a) prohibiting individuals from exercising or purchasing protective activities on their own and (b) financing protective services through coercive and redistributive taxation. If this sort of prohibition, and this sort of coercion and redistribution is justified, why not others? Once the bright line of non-aggression has been crossed, it is difficult to find a compelling substitute.
This is not to say that anarcho-capitalists do not face challenges of their own. First, many have pointed out that there is a paucity of empirical evidence to support the claim that anarcho-capitalism could function in a modern post-industrial society. Pointing to quasi-examples from Medieval Iceland (Friedman 1979) does little to alleviate this concern (Epstein 2003). Second, even if a plausible case could be made for the market provision of law and private defense, the market provision of national defense, which fits the characteristics of a public good almost perfectly, remains a far more difficult challenge (Friedman 1989). Finally, when it comes to rights and anarchy, one philosopher's modus ponens is another's modus tollens. If respect for robust rights of self-ownership and property in external goods, as libertarians understand them, entail anarcho-capitalism, why not then reject these rights rather than embrace anarcho-capitalism? Rothbard, Nozick and other natural rights libertarians are notoriously lacking in foundational arguments to support their strong belief in these rights. In the absence of strong countervailing reasons to accept these rights and the libertarian interpretation of them, the fact that they lead to what might seem to be absurd conclusions could be a decisive reason to reject them.
This entry has focused on the main approaches to libertarianism popular among academic philosophers. But it has not been exhaustive. There are other philosophical defenses of libertarianism that space prevents exploring in detail, but deserve mention nevertheless. These include defenses of libertarianism that proceed from teleological and contractual considerations.
One increasingly influential approach takes as its normative foundation a virtue-centered ethical theory. Such theories hold that libertarian political institutions are justified in the way they allow individuals to develop as virtuous agents. Ayn Rand was perhaps the earliest modern proponent of such theory, and while her writings were largely ignored by academics, the core idea has since been picked up and developed with greater sophistication by philosophers like Tara Smith, Douglas Rasmussen, and Douglas Den Uyl (Rasmussen and Den Uyl 1991; 2005).
Teleological versions of libertarianism are in some significant respects similar to consequentialist versions, insofar as they hold that political institutions are to be judged in light of their tendency to yield a certain sort of outcome. But the consequentialism at work here is markedly different from the aggregative and impartial consequentialism of act-utilitarianism. Political institutions are to be judged based on the extent to which they allow individuals to flourish, but flourishing is a value that is agent-relative (and not agent-neutral as is happiness for the utilitarian), and also one that can only be achieved by the self-directed activity of each individual agent (and not something that can be distributed among individuals by the state). It is thus not the job of political institutions to promote flourishing by means of activist policies, but merely to make room for it by enforcing the core set of libertarian rights.
These claims lead to challenges for the teleological libertarian, however. If human flourishing is good, it must be so in an agent-neutral or in an agent-relative sense. If it is good in an agent-neutral sense, then it is unclear why we do not share positive duties to promote the flourishing of others, alongside merely negative duties to refrain from hindering their pursuit of their own flourishing.
Teleological libertarians generally argue that flourishing is something that cannot be provided for one by others since it is essentially a matter of exercising one's own practical reason in the pursuit of a good life. But surely others can provide for us some of the means for our exercise of practical reason—from basics such as food and shelter to more complex goods such as education and perhaps even the social bases of self-respect. If, on the other hand, human flourishing is a good in merely an agent-relative sense, then it is unclear why others' flourishing imposes any duties on us at all—positive or negative. If duties to respect the negative rights of others are not grounded in the agent-neutral value of others' flourishing, then presumably they must be grounded in our own flourishing, but (a) making the wrongness of harming others depend on its negative effect on us seems to make that wrongness too contingent on situational facts—surely there are some cases in which violating the rights of others can benefit us, even in the long-term holistic sense required by eudaimonistic accounts. And (b) the fact that wronging others will hurt us seems to be the wrong kind of explanation for why rights-violating acts are wrong. It seems to get matters backwards: rights-violating actions are wrong because of their effects on the person whose rights are violated, not because they detract from the rights-violator's virtue.
Another moral framework that has become increasingly popular among philosophers since Rawls's Theory of Justice (1971) is contractarianism. As a moral theory, contractarianism is the idea that moral principles are justified if and only if they are the product of a certain kind of agreement among persons. Among libertarians, this idea has been developed by Jan Narveson in his book, The Libertarian Idea (1988), which attempts to show that rational individuals would agree to a government that took individual negative liberty as the only relevant consideration in setting policy. And, while not self-described as a contractarian, Loren Lomasky's work in Persons, Rights, and the Moral Community (1987) has many affinities with this approach, as it attempts to defend libertarianism as a kind of policy of mutual-advantage between persons.
Most of the libertarian theories we have surveyed in this article have a common structure: foundational philosophical commitments are set out, theories are built upon them, and practical conclusions are derived from those theories. This approach has the advantage of thoroughness—one's ultimate political conclusions are undergirded by a weighty philosophical system to which any challengers can be directed. The downside of this approach is that anyone who disagrees with one's philosophic foundations will not be much persuaded by one's conclusions drawn from them—and philosophers are not generally known for their widespread agreement on foundational issues.
As a result, much of the most interesting work in contemporary libertarian theory skips systematic theory-building altogether, and heads straight to the analysis of concrete problems. Often this analysis proceeds by accepting some set of values as given—often the values embraced by those who are not sympathetic to libertarianism as a political theory—and showing that libertarian political institutions will better realize those values than competing institutional frameworks. Daniel Shapiro's recent work on welfare states (Shapiro 2007), for instance, is a good example of this trend, in arguing that contemporary welfare states are unjustifiable from a variety of popular theoretical approaches. Loren Lomasky (2005) has written a humorous but important piece arguing that Rawls's foundational principles are better suited to defending Nozickian libertarianism than even Nozick's foundational principles are. And David Schmidtz (Schmidtz and Goodin 1998) has argued that market institutions are supported on grounds of individual responsibility that any moral framework ought to take seriously. While such approaches lack the theoretical completeness that philosophers naturally crave, they nevertheless have the virtue of addressing crucially important social issues in a way that dispenses with the need for complete agreement on comprehensive moral theories.
A theoretical justification of this approach can be found in John Rawls's notion of an overlapping consensus, as developed in his work Political Liberalism (1993). Rawls's idea is that decisions about which political institutions and principles to adopt ought to be based on those aspects of morality on which all reasonable theories converge, rather than any one particular foundational moral theory, because there is reasonable and apparently intractable disagreement about foundational moral issues. Extending this overlapping consensus approach to libertarianism, then, entails viewing libertarianism as a political theory that is compatible with a variety of foundational metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical views. Individuals need not settle their reasonable disagreements regarding moral issues in order to agree upon a framework for political association; and libertarianism, with its robust toleration of individual differences, seems well-suited to serve as the principle for such a framework (Barnett 2004).
- Anderson, T. L. and Leal, D. R. Free-market Environmentalism. San Francisco: Pacific Research Institute, 1991.
- Argues that free markets can do a better job than government regulation and management at protecting and promoting environmental goods, with detailed application to water markets, oceans, forests, and more.
- Arneson, R. "Lockean Self-Ownership: Toward a Demolition." Political Studies, 39 (March), 36–54, 1991.
- A criticism of the concept of self-ownership from a contemporary liberal egalitarian philosopher. Argues that the principle is both less determinate than has been typically supposed, and that even where it has determinate implications it is unacceptable on moral grounds.
- Barnett, R. E. The Structure of Liberty: Justice and the Rule of Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
- A contemporary work of libertarian theory that weaves Hayekian insights regarding prices and information, public choice insights regarding governmental inefficiencies, and restitution-based insights on punishment arguing for a "polycentric constitutional order" (anarcho-capitalism).
- Barnett, R. E. "The Moral Foundations of Modern Libertarianism," in Peter Berkowitz (ed.), Varieties of Conservatism in America. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 2004.
- Argues that libertarians need not choose between consequentialist and deontological foundations for their position, but can advocate it based on the idea that libertarianism's
support for the rule of law serves as the basis for an "overlapping consensus" of reasonable moral views.
- Argues that libertarians need not choose between consequentialist and deontological foundations for their position, but can advocate it based on the idea that libertarianism's
- Barry, N. P. On Classical Liberalism and Libertarianism. London: Macmillan, 1986.
- A thorough and largely sympathetic survey of the major varieties of classical liberal and libertarian political thought, together with their philosophic foundations and weaknesses.
- Berlin, I. "Two Concepts of Liberty," in Isaiah Berlin, Four Essays on Liberty. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990 .
- A classic defense of the political pursuit of negative over positive liberty. See, however, Rothbard's essay "Isaiah Berlin on Negative Freedom" in The Ethics of Liberty (1982) for a libertarian criticism of this distinction and Berlin's argument for it.
- Buchanan, A. Ethics, Efficiency and the Market. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985.
- Critical survey of consequentialist, natural rights, and other deontological arguments for free markets by a first-rate philosopher.
- Buchanan, J. and Tullock, G. The Calculus of Consent. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1962.
- The founding text of the public choice school of political economics, which applies the assumption of rational self-interest to government agents to predict their behavior and assist in institutional design.
- Caldwell, B. Hayek's Challenge: An Intellectual Biography of F.A. Hayek. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.
- An excellent source for biographical details of Hayek's life, as well as a concise summary of his economic, political, social, and scientific thought, and discussion of its influence.
- Childs, R. A. "The Invisible Hand Strikes Back." Journal of Libertarian Studies, 1 (1), 23–33, 1977.
- An attempt to refute Nozick's argument that society can progress from anarchy to a minimal state by an "invisible hand" process that violates no one's rights.
- Childs, R. A. "Objectivism and the State: An Open Letter to Ayn Rand," in J. K. Taylor (ed.), Liberty Against Power: Essays by Roy A. Childs, Jr. San Francisco: Fox and Wilkes, 1994 .
- Argues that Ayn Rand's defense of a minimal state is incompatible with her more basic views regarding men's natural rights against the initiation of force, and that a proper respect for those rights requires anarcho-capitalism.
- Cohen, G. A. Self-ownership, Freedom, and Equality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
- A critical exploration of Nozick's reliance on the concept of "self-ownership." Cohen argues that Nozick's libertarian conclusions do not necessarily follow from self-ownership, and that we have good reason to reject the concept anyway.
- Epstein, R. A. Simple Rules for a Complex World. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995.
- An argument for a classical liberal order centered on the virtues of the simple legal rules such an order would employ. Epstein provides both a theoretical argument for the virtues of simplicity, and applications of the argument to a wide array of legal controversies.
- Epstein, R. A. Principles for a Free Society: Reconciling Individual Liberty with the Common Good. New York: Basic Books, 1998.
- Epstein's most philosophical contribution to classical liberal theory, an argument based on a utilitarian justification of natural law reasoning, and a reinterpretation of Mill's Harm Principle.
- Epstein, R. A. Skepticism and Freedom: A Modern Case for Classical Liberalism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.
- A defense of classical liberalism from challenges of moral relativism, skepticism over legal rules, skepticism over core concepts of classical liberalism, and behavioral economics.
- Fried, B. "Left-Libertarianissm: A Review Essay." Philosophy and Public Affairs, 32 (1), 66–92, 2004.
- Ostensibly a critique of the coherence and alleged "libertarianism" of contemporary left-libertarian theories. Fried's criticisms, however, apply to many natural-rights approaches to right-libertarianism as well. See also the response piece by Vallentyne, Steiner, and Otsuka in vol. 33, no. 2, of the same journal.
- Friedman, D. "Private Creation and Enforcement of Law: A Historical Case." Journal of Legal Studies, 8 (2), 399–415, 1979.
- Puts forth Medieval Iceland as a case study of a well-functioning anarchic social order.
- Friedman, D. The Machinery of Freedom: Guide to Radical Capitalism, 2nd ed. La Salle: Open Court, 1989.
- A utilitarian defense of anarcho-capitalism. The second condition also contains a valuable postscript that discusses problems for non-utilitarian defenses of libertarianism.
- Friedman, M. Capitalism and Freedom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962.
- Argues that economic freedom and political freedom are intimately connected, and presents the case for free markets and voluntary action in education, poverty relief, occupational licensure, and more. A classic.
- Gaus, G. "Hayek on the Evolution of Society and Mind," in E. Feser (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Hayek. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
- A systematic exploration of the concept of "evolution" as employed in Hayek's social and economic thought, and in his philosophy of mind. Defends Hayek's use of the concept against criticisms that it is normatively vacuous or that it fails to justify a market order.
- Gaus, G. "Social Complexity and Evolved Moral Principles," in P. McNamara (ed.), Liberalism, Conservatism, and Hayek's Idea of Spontaneous Order. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
- An exploration and defense of the Hayekian idea that because of the complexity of social orders, governments should adhere to abstract moral principles rather than violating those principles and seeking to promote expedient outcomes.
- Hardin, G. "The Tragedy of the Commons." Science,162, 1243–1248, 1968.
- The classic statement of the tragedy of the commons. Hardin, however, draws the distinctively un-libertarian conclusion that because the carrying capacity of the earth as a whole is a commons, freedom to reproduce must be severely coercively curtailed if overpopulation and its attendant problems are to be avoided.
- Hasnas, J. "Reflections on the Minimal State." Politics, Philosophy and Economics, 2 (1), 115–128, 2003.
- Argues that public-good arguments for the state provision of law and law enforcement fail, since the state can ensure such goods are provided without providing them itself. Hence, even if they were valid, public good arguments would not justify the "minimal state," but something smaller.
- Hasnas, J. "The Obviousness of Anarchy," in R. Long and T. Machan (eds.), Anarchism/Minarchism: Is Government Part of a Free Country? United Kingdom: Ashgate Press, 2007.
- Argues that anarchism's feasibility can be demonstrated by surveying a number of contemporary and historical examples where the goods that government is thought to be necessary to provide have been or are provided by voluntary means.
- Hayek, F. A. The Constitution of Liberty. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960.
- The early statement of Hayek's social theory, later developed in more detail in his Law, Legislation, and Liberty series. This book presents Hayek's theory of freedom, coercion, and law, presents a defense of a classical liberal social order, and discusses the problems involved in modern welfare states.
- Hayek, F. A. Law, Legislation and Liberty. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973.
- This three volume series represents the fullest development of Hayek's social and political thought, applying his concepts of dispersed knowledge and spontaneous order to the phenomena of law and justice.
- Hayek, F. A. "The Use of Knowledge in Society," in F. Hayek (ed.), Individualism and Economic Order. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980 .
- Hayek's seminal paper discussing the way in which a free price system serves to convey information and coordinate social action.
- Hayek, F. A. and Bartley III, W. W. The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.
- Presents Hayek's theory of the origins and evolution of modern society, his defense of a form of liberal traditionalism, and his critique of political rationalism, especially as it manifests itself in socialism.
- Kirzner, I. The Meaning of Market Process. New York: Routledge, 1996.
- A collection of essays by one of the world's leading Austrian economists. This book focuses on the role of ignorance, uncertainty, and time in market competition, and the role of the entrepreneur in the continual (but always incomplete) move toward equilibrium.
- Klein, D. and Fielding, G. J. "Private Toll Roads: Learning from the Nineteenth Century." Transportation Quarterly, 7 (July), 321–341, 1992.
- Discusses how roads, considered by many economists to be a classic public good, were provided on a fee-for-use basis in the nineteenth century, and what lessons can be learned from this example for contemporary transportation policy.
- Kukathas, C. Hayek and Modern Liberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.
- A sympathetic but critical appraisal of Hayek's social thought by a contemporary libertarian political theorist.
- Kukathas, C. "The Mirage of Global Justice." Social Philosophy and Policy, 23 (1), 1–28, 2006.
- A libertarian contribution to the debate on international justice, this paper argues that the political pursuit of global justice is an unworthy goal, and that the design of international institutions should be aimed at limiting power rather than securing justice.
- Locke, J. The Second Treatise of Government. New York: MacMillan, 1952 .
- Locke's classic statement of his positive political philosophy, which expounds upon the ideas of natural law, property rights, and limited governments.
- Lomasky, L. E. Persons, Rights, and the Moral Community. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987.
- A thorough and unique philosophical defense of classical liberalism, based on the idea that agents require liberty to pursue projects that matter to them, and must grant liberty to others to expect it themselves.
- Lomasky, L. E. "Libertarianism at Twin Harvard." Social Philosophy and Policy, 22 (1), 178–199, 2005.
- A playful piece that paints a picture of Twin Harvard (on Twin Earth) where Rawls is a libertarian and Nozick a welfare-state liberal, which suggests that Twin-Rawls and Twin-Nozick just might be more consistent than their real-world counterparts.
- Mack, E. "Self-ownership, Marxism, and Egalitarianism: Part I: Challenges to Historical Entitlement." Politics, Philosophy and Economics, 1 (1), 75–108, 2002a.
- A response to Cohen's criticism of Nozick, this piece defends the idea that rights to self-ownership legitimately yield unequal distributions of income and wealth.
- Mack, E. "Self-ownership, Marxism, and Egalitarianism: Part II: Challenges to the Self-ownership Thesis." Politics, Philosophy and Economics, 1 (2), 237–276, 2002b.
- This second part of Mack's response to Cohen defends the self-ownership thesis against his criticisms.
- Mack, E. and Gaus, G. "Classical Liberalism and Libertarianism: The Liberty Tradition," in G. Gaus and C. Kukathas (eds.), Handbook of Political Theory. London: Sage, 2004.
- A helpful discussion of classical liberalism and libertarianism, which focuses on the various commitments these theories share, and how their disagreement about the centrality or validity of some of these commitments divides the various members of this intellectual tradition.
- Mill, J. S. "On Liberty,"in Stefan Collini (ed.), On Liberty and Other Writings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989 .
- Mill's classic statement of the moral foundations of liberalism. Mill famously argues that each person should be at liberty to do as he wills so long as he does not harm others in doing so. One of the most influential defenses of individuality, free thought, and expression in the Western canon.
- Mitchell, W. and Simmons, R. Beyond Politics: Markets, Welfare, and the Failure of Bureaucracy. San Francisco: Westview Press, 1994.
- An accessible primer on public choice theory, with special focus on its implications for advocates of limited government.
- Murray, C. Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950–1980. New York: Basic Books, 1984.
- Argues that the growth of welfare in 1960s and 1970s America worsened the lot of poor and minority citizens, largely by eroding their incentive and ability to take responsibility for their lives.
- Nagel, T. "Libertarianism Without Foundations." Yale Law Journal, 85, 136–149, 1975.
- Argues that Nozick's defense of libertarianism is entirely unsuccessful insofar as it fails to provide a defense of the robust conception of individual rights that supports it.
- Narveson, J. The Libertarian Idea. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988.
- A contractarian defense of libertarianism, inspired by the work of David Gauthier and Robert Nozick. Discusses both libertarian theory and its application to current controversies such as children's rights, zoning laws, and national defense.
- Nozick, R. Anarchy, State, and Utopia. New York: Basic Books, 1974.
- Nozick's classic statement of libertarian principles. Highlights include a lengthy criticism of Rawls's Theory of Justice, and a neglected third section on how a libertarian society serves as a "framework for utopia."
- Otsuka, M. Libertarianism Without Inequality. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
- One of the most recent systematic developments of left-libertarianism, combining individual rights to full self-ownership with the egalitarian principle of equal opportunity for welfare.
- Otteson, J. Actual Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
- A Kantian defense of classical liberalism, centered on the idea of respect for persons, and developed with an Aristotelian conception of judgment.
- Rand, A. "Man's Rights," in A. Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness. New York: Signet, 1963a.
- Rand, A. "The Nature of Government," in A. Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness. New York: Signet, 1963b.
- These two essays provide the core statement of Rand's political philosophy. While rejecting the label "libertarian," Rand here advocates a minimal state that uses force only in retaliation as the only political system compatible with man's rational nature.
- Rasmussen, D. B. and Den Uyl, D. J. Liberty and Nature: An Aristotelian Defense of Liberal Order. La Salle: Open Court, 1991.
- Drawing some inspiration from Rand's work, this text is one of the most thoroughgoing applications of Aristotelian moral philosophy to the defense of natural law and classical liberalism.
- Rasmussen, D.B. and Den Uyl, D. J. Norms of Liberty: A Perfectionist Basis for Non-Perfectionist Politics. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005.
- A development of their earlier work, this view provides a more foundational defense for the authors' Aristotelian version of classical liberalism, and defends the view against communitarian and conservative critics.
- Rawls, J. Political Liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993.
- Rawls's classic expansion of his thoughts on domestic justice, following his seminal work A Theory of Justice (1971).
- Rothbard, M. N. "Robert Nozick and the Immaculate Conception of the State." Journal of Libertarian Studies, 1 (1), 45–57, 1977.
- Defends the anarcho-capitalist position against Nozick's arguments in the first part of Anarchy, State, and Utopia.
- Rothbard, M. N. For a New Liberty. New York: Collier, 1978.
- Rothbard's most accessible book, this volume sets out a natural rights basis for anarcho-capitalism. While weak in foundational moral theory, the volume provides a number of ingenious discussions of how a stateless society cold solve many pressing social and economic problems.
- Rothbard, M. N. The Ethics of Liberty. New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1982.
- This book explores many of the themes of Rothbard's For a New Liberty in greater theoretical depth. It develops Rothbard's theory of liberty, shows how it is incompatible with even a minimal state, and contrasts his position with those of von Mises, Hayek, and Robert Nozick.
- Schmidtz, D. Elements of Justice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
- Develops a pluralist account of justice based on considerations of desert, reciprocity, equality, and need, and shows how a classical liberal conception of the state is sensitive to this wide array of moral concerns.
- Schmidtz, D. and Goodin, R. Social Welfare and Individual Responsibility. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
- Part of Cambridge University Press's "For and Against" series, this volume has Schmidtz presenting the case for limited government involvement in the promotion of individual welfare via market regulation and redistribution, and Goodin presenting the case for a more active welfare state. A very accessible and useful volume.
- Shapiro, D. Is the Welfare State Justified? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
- Draws heavily on empirical research to argue that none of the dominant positions in contemporary political philosophy—egalitarianism, positive rights theory, communitarianism, and so on—support contemporary central welfare state institutions.
- Skoble, A. Deleting the State.New York: Open Court Press, 2008.
- An extended contemporary treatment of the case for anarcho-capitalism, arguing that centralized coercive political authority is incompatible with the value of liberty.
- Smith, A. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 2 vols. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1981 .
- One of the most historically important statements of the economic case for free exchange. Smith's book remains a masterful statement of both the strengths and weaknesses of a market economy.
- Steiner, H. An Essay on Rights. New York: Blackwell, 1994.
- Sets forward a libertarian theory of rights that protect each individual's claim to self-ownership, but which allows for the redistribution of external goods. An influential left-libertarian work in the Lockean tradition of natural rights.
- Thornton, M. The Economics of Prohibition. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1991.
- An application of the Austrian theory of economics to the issue of drug and alcohol prohibition, which argues that all such prohibitions should be repealed.
- Vallentyne, P. "Left-Libertarianism: A Primer," in P. Vallentyne and H. Steiner (eds.), Left Libertarianism and its Critics: The Contemporary Debate. New York: Palgrave, 2000.
- A useful overview of the core commitments of left-libertarianism, its historical origins and contemporary development, and its responses to common objections.
- von Mises, L. Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis. J. Kahane (transl.). Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1981 .
- A thorough critique of socialism from one of the leading figures in Austrian economics. Contains Mises's famous argument that economic calculation in a purely socialist society is impossible, given its lack of a free price system to convey information about relative supply and demand.
- Waldron, J. "Two Worries About Mixing One's Labour." The Philosophical Quarterly, 33 (130), 37–44, 1983.
- Argues that the Lockean idea of mixing one's labor with external property is incoherent and adds nothing to whatever other arguments Locke might have for the justification of private property.
University of San Diego
U. S. A. | <urn:uuid:2f95f74c-fbf5-41ad-85a1-d0e29a51687f> | CC-MAIN-2016-50 | http://www.iep.utm.edu/libertar/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-50/segments/1480698543614.1/warc/CC-MAIN-20161202170903-00321-ip-10-31-129-80.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939106 | 17,706 | 2.90625 | 3 |
If there are a lot of data and information in Excel, it will be cumbersome to view data. Therefore, you can embed a scrollable area in Excel.
In the image below, you can see the sales volume of many sales representatives. You need to move the worksheet of you want to check other numbers.
Now instead of moving the whole worksheet, you can also embed a scrollable area for this range.
Embed a Scrollable Area in Worksheet
In this part, we will show you the steps to embed such a scrollable area.
- Click the small arrow in the quick access toolbar.
- And then in the drop-down menu, choose the option “More Commands”.
- In the “Excel Options” window, choose the option “Customize Ribbon” on the left.
- And the check the tab “Developer” in the “Main Tabs” area.
- After that, click “OK”. Thus, you have added the tab “Developer” in the ribbon.
- Now click this tab in the ribbon.
- And then click the button “Insert” in the toolbar.
- In the drop-down list, choose the option “Scroll Bar”.
- And then click in the worksheet. Thus, you have inserted a new scrollbar in the worksheet.
- Now right click the scroll bar.
- And then choose the option “Format Control” in the list.
- In the “Format Control” window, set the corresponding number in those text boxes.
- In the text box of “Current Value”, input the number 1.
- Input the number 1 into the “Minimum value”.
- And then input the maximum value into the corresponding text box. Here you need to input the number according to your actual need. We have 30 rows of numbers, and we want to show 5 rows each time. Thus, the maximum number should be calculated by the formula “=30-5+1”. Here we input “26” in the text box. You can also use this formula to calculate your value.
- Now input the “Incremental change” and the “Page change” according to your need.
- In the “Cell link”, you need to input a cell reference into the text box. You can also use your mouse to select the designated cell.
- When you finish those settings, click the button “OK”.
- After that, input the same column header into the area that you need.
- And then adjust the size of the scrollbar.
- Now input this formula into the upper left cell in the scrollable area. In this example, we input the formula into the cell F1.
Here we use the OFFSET function to return the value. A1 is the first cell in the original area. E1 is the link cell that we use for this scrollbar. In this formula, you need to use the absolute for the cell E1.
- Now use the fill handle to fill other cells in this range. And then you will get the first 5 rows in the range.
Now you can click the arrow in the scroll bar or drag the scrollbar. The numbers in the area will also change according to the current value. Besides, you can also input the current value directly into the link cell. Therefore, you can check the sales volume in a small range.
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Anna Ma is a data recovery expert in DataNumen, Inc., which is the world leader in data recovery technologies, including repair docx data and outlook repair software products. For more information visit www.datanumen.com | <urn:uuid:965d9391-2dd1-4053-bb7c-67656885d280> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.datanumen.com/blogs/embed-scrollable-area-inside-excel-worksheet/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334855.91/warc/CC-MAIN-20220926082131-20220926112131-00638.warc.gz | en | 0.820686 | 881 | 2.671875 | 3 |
A system that is prevalent throughout several organisms, homeostasis maintains a stable, constant internal environment, despite external, environmental variations. Such a function, operates through a series of feedback controls, in attempt to preserve the equilibrium in the internal environment. In control of these feedback mechanisms, are the nervous system and the endocrine system. Furthermore, homeostasis will often involve balancing blood pressure, respiration, temperature (such as shivering as a response to chilly temperatures, like pictured above), electrolyte balance, pH balance, water balance, and much more. As can be seen, homeostasis is quite necessary to a plethora of organism’s struggles, when combating the fierce and unforgiving world. | <urn:uuid:713768fa-4084-4d13-9eec-1eea62e9627d> | CC-MAIN-2017-26 | https://apbiology2014mathew.wordpress.com/2013/08/24/homeostasis-12/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-26/segments/1498128320023.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20170623063716-20170623083716-00641.warc.gz | en | 0.918265 | 142 | 2.734375 | 3 |
The purpose of the action phase is to put the assessment’s findings and recommendations into practice. At a minimum, this may mean encouraging local actors to follow through on plans discussed at the in-country validation meeting. For assessments conducted with the goal of informing a broader health initiative, this phase will include program design and laying the groundwork for implementation. The three steps in the action phase—decide the type of action, determine the level of action, and develop an action plan—are sometimes iterative, rather than sequential, and are largely shaped by assessment findings, available resources, and local stakeholder capacity.
The action phase has three main steps, each shaped by assessment findings and recommendations, donor goals and available resources, and local stakeholder capacity. Unlike other phases in the assessment process, these are sometimes iterative, rather than sequential.
The first step towards action is deciding what type of action is both indicated and feasible. The types of action following an assessment will vary depending on proposed recommendations, donor and stakeholder priorities, and the country context. The following types of action may be carried out individually or in a myriad of combinations.
The level, or intensity, of follow-on actions can be categorized as high, moderate, or low. The largest determining factor may be the availability of funding, but other factors such as existence of other projects, timing, and government interest may also play a role.
The action plan consolidates decisions regarding the type and level of action into a working document. With increasing frequency, an action plan, or at least a “blueprint” for action, is initiated at the in-country dissemination workshop, where the findings and recommendations of the assessment report are presented to local stakeholders for feedback and validation. This serves as a solid foundation upon which to base a plan for action, which articulates WHO will do WHAT by WHEN, with WHAT RESOURCES.
See an example of an action plan developed with stakeholders in Dominica. In the event that a dissemination workshop was not possible, or the workshop concluded with building consensus around priority recommendations, there will be more work to do at this stage.
The main output of the action phase is an action plan that outlines proposed activities, followed by actual implementation. The initial output could be a detailed concept note incorporating one or more recommendations stemming from the assessment, or a written strategy for public-private engagement. Much as assessments are varied in terms of scope, and technical and health focus—so are activities that follow an assessment. Some examples of outputs in the action phase include:
- Terms of Reference for a public-private forum or working group
- Terms of Reference for establishing a PPP unit or desk within a ministry
- Revised training curriculum for private providers
- Private health insurance policy reforms
- Establishment of a coalition of private sector stakeholders
Phase 5 Team Roles and Responsibilities | <urn:uuid:f280acd2-fa5e-4667-a243-f5672b13ea2b> | CC-MAIN-2018-39 | https://assessment-action.net/assessment-phases/act/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-39/segments/1537267161638.66/warc/CC-MAIN-20180925123211-20180925143611-00168.warc.gz | en | 0.928425 | 583 | 3.21875 | 3 |
In this video, NCAT Sustainable Agriculture Specialist Felicia Bell discusses the role of cover crops in building soil health. She introduces managed grazing and varying cover crop options, and she discusses how they relate to water infiltration into the soil.
This workshop is produced by the National Center for Appropriate Technology through the ATTRA Sustainable Agriculture program, under a cooperative agreement with USDA Rural Development. ATTRA.NCAT.ORG.
This material is also based upon work that is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture, under award number 2019-38640-29878 through the Southern Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education program under subaward number LS20-325. USDA is an equal opportunity employer and service provider.
Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the view of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. | <urn:uuid:3284139b-fe65-47e5-80e4-bdc14da09bb4> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://attra.ncat.org/soil-health-101-cover-crops-and-water-infiltration/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233506429.78/warc/CC-MAIN-20230922234442-20230923024442-00223.warc.gz | en | 0.914227 | 191 | 2.65625 | 3 |
What can schools do to improve the reading and writing skills of adolescent students? Our panel of experts discusses ways to implement school-level literacy reforms without increasing staff or budgets. Learn how to use assessments to inform reform efforts; the importance of school literacy councils; the distinct role of school principals, reading specialists, and content-area teachers in literacy leadership; as well how to create a school culture that fosters achievement.
Don Deshler, Ph.D. is the director of the Center for Research on Learning (CRL) and a professor in the School of Education at the University of Kansas. Dr. Deshler’s work addresses ways to close the large “achievement gap” and to reduce the escalating drop-out rate for struggling adolescent learners. His work focuses on designing instructional routines that can be used by secondary teachers to help them more effectively teach subject-matter content to academically diverse classes in secondary schools.
Mel Riddile, Ed.D. is the Associate Director for High School Services at the National Association of Secondary School Principals. He previously served as T.C. Williams High School and J.E.B. Stuart High School in Northern Virginia. Dr. Riddile’s areas of expertise include restructuring and reinventing high schools, adolescent literacy, ninth grade transition, school-based central office experience and consulting.
Chris Gutierrez is a Reading Specialist at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Virginia. She develops the school’s in-house professional development program.
School-Wide Literacy Reforms
Principals’ Role in Improving Literacy
Teachers’ Role in Improving Adolescent Literacy
Assessments and Interventions
Doris McMillan: If a kid can’t read by the time he reaches high school, it takes more than a reading teacher to turn things around. How can schools help struggling teen readers? Hi, I’m Doris McMillan. Please join me for the ADLIT.org webcast, Making Room for Adolescent Literacy.
Hello, I’m Doris McMillan. Welcome to the ADLIT.org webcast, Making Room for Adolescent Literacy. In this segment of our four part series, we’ll be focusing on how middle and high schools can make time to help their struggling readers. Joining me are three experts.
Dr. Don Deshler is from the University of Kansas. He’s a professor in the department of special education and director of the Center for Research on Learning. Dr. Mel Riddile is a former high school principal who is now the associate director of High School Services at the National Association of Secondary School Principals.
And Miss Chris Gutierrez She’s a reading specialist at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Virginia. And I wanna say thank you all for joining us. Dr. Riddile, why don’t you kick us off by talking about what are some… what some are calling the adolescent literacy crisis. Is this a new problem?
Mel Riddile: It’s a problem that’s been going on for… for a while. In my experience in two diverse, high poverty schools, high schools, we found the significant percentage of our students who were functionally… could read functionally, but could not read academically.
They were reading in an elementary level. They could read words, but they couldn’t comprehend their textbooks.
Doris McMillan: Dr. Deshler, how many students are we talking about here? I mean, are we really facing a crisis?
Don Deshler: It is a crisis. It’s a crisis in terms of numbers. At least 30 and depending on the study percent of students are reading below proficiency. And that just in terms of graduate… future graduation, in terms of employment implications, the productivity of our country and so forth, it’s enormous.
However, on the personal level, for each student that is not at grade level or above, it’s a personal crisis that I don’t think any of us can fully appreciate unless we personally have experienced that.
Doris McMillan: Dr. Riddile, what are the consequences of not addressing this situation?
Mel Riddile: Well, essentially, anyone that doesn’t have the skill… these skills, these literacy skills, really is sentenced to a lifetime of marginal employment and second class citizenship. They really can’t participate in what we call the American Dream.
Doris McMillan: So they can’t get the good job?
Mel Riddile: They can’t get a job that will feed a family of four.
Doris McMillan: So, what do they do?
Mel Riddile: Well, they work a series of jobs. They work two or three jobs. It’s… it’s very difficult. They’re shut out from the mainstream of American life.
Doris McMillan: So how does a child get to that point?
Mel Riddile: Well, it’s often not the child, it’s us as adults. We… many places around the country stop teaching reading at the end of third grade. They stop when they learn to read. But they have to, for the rest of their time in school, read to learn. And it’s a different set of skills and tasks that we have to teach.
Doris McMillan: So when you identify a child with a problem like that, what’s the next step?
Mel Riddile: Well, the longer we wait, the harder it is to solve it. So if we wait to high school to identify a problem and try to resolve it, it’s expensive, and our success rate is not what we’d like it to be sometimes.
Doris McMillan: You know, does talking about consequences bring to mind a particular students?
Mel Riddile: Well, I think of a… whole groups of students, walking to one school and us doing our first literacy assessment and finding that 74% of our kids were more than two years below grade level and another school where a third of our students were more than three years below grade level.
Many… so many students couldn’t read their textbook. We couldn’t treat all the patients. You know, a child that really has a reading diff… a problem is equivalent to someone that’s critically ill in a hospital. If we don’t do something for them, from an educational standpoint, they’re not gonna make it.
Doris McMillan: So what’s it like for these kids?
Mel Riddile: Well, I always said kids would rather be bad than be embarrassed. And many times, these kids act out. They don’t come to school or when they are at school they have behavior problems. They can’t get recognition in their classrooms. They think about the… going to work every day and not being able to do what you’re being asked to do every day and by law, being required to be there.
Doris McMillan: Wow, Chris, let me come to you. You’re… you’re our representative from the front lines. I think I worry that some teachers may think that a 16 year old who can’t read will never read. You know, what have you seen?
Chris Gutierrez: I would refute that statement. What we see at the high school is kids who perhaps weren’t ready to be taught to read at the level of seven or eight year… or six or seven years old. And that keeps getting pushed down. And so they get early frustration and feel that they can’t be good readers.
But I find at the high school level, if we can dip into what the student is interested in and get them hooked on a topic, and most of that is non-fiction that we find, that the kids can start seeing a glimmer of hope. And one of the frustrating things with teaching is you never really see your end product. So it’s when those kids come back, and one kid came back to me and said “Miss Gutierrez, I just finished medical school.” You could have pushed me over with a feather because I thought his occupation would be snatching handbags, okay, because it was just amazing. And that’s not every kid.
But it’s seeing kids like that come back and saying, you know, a light went on in my brain when I was 15 or 16, and thank you a lot.
Doris McMillan: What are some of the reasonable goals for kids like this?
Chris Gutierrez: I’m happy if a student progresses a year within… with a reading program, you know, just a growth of a year. But we’ve seen, with some of the programs that we put into practice, a growth of two or three years in one year. So that pleases us a lot…
Doris McMillan: I would imagine so.
Kris Gutierrez: …in sustaining that growth, right.
Doris McMillan: Absolutely. Dr. Deshler, what does the… what do the researchers say about the effectiveness of high school litery [sic]… literacy programs?
Don Deshler: Well, just building on the point Kris made of sometimes seeing two to three years of gain with some students, that is interestingly on the kind of trajectory we need to be on. If we take a typical ninth grade student who has a literacy problem, and let’s say he or she is reading at about the fifth grade level.
Now, if we want that student to be at grade level upon graduation so they can compete and so forth as Mel described, we need to make about two and a half years of progress per year. Now, we can do that. We know so much more today than we did ten years ago, 15, certainly 30 years ago.
And if we fully leverage the things we know about high quality, instructional principles, there’s some marvelous instructional programs that are now available. And if we optimally group students as we know that we can do for great outcomes, we can see some remarkable gains.
Doris McMillan: Dr. Riddile, you’ve been closely involved with high school students, working with high schools that are working to improve literacy. What is your experience? Tell us about the impact of sustained, school-wide efforts. And I know you’ve got some great statistics for us.
Mel Riddile: Well, literally, schools that are failing can be transformed. It takes several years to do that, but with… with literacy focus, students can, because it is the gateway skill, and I call it the gateway skill, improving literacy improves their performance in every subject area including math.
With a school-wide focused effort as Dr. Deshler is talking about, it has to be school-wide, and it has to be… the student has to be immersed in every class with literacy, good literacy strategies. That’s an integral part of the instruction. With that, a school can literally turn around.
Those students, for example, in eighth grade where we had a group… we looked at our eleventh graders compared to our eighth graders. In the eighth grade, they were below 60% proficiency on the state exam and over 95% proficiency by grade eleven. So it literally can turn a school around.
Doris McMillan: Now what does school-wide focus mean?
Mel Riddile: That means every teacher has a role. Every person in that school, including the principal, has a role. Now, the roles are different. We have a literacy coach, we have reading teachers, you have social studies, science, math teachers. They all have a role.
And their role is really to teach the language of their content area, not to be reading teachers but teach the language of their content area.
Doris McMillan: Okay, and when you do that and they succeed, it’s a win-win for everybody.
Mel Riddile: The school wins, the students win, and you literally see a wave of achievement and positivity going through the school.
Doris McMillan: And you see less disciplinary problems.
Mel Riddile: That’s right. The… the suspensions and discipline incidents decline significantly and sometimes more rapidly than one would expect.
Doris McMillan: Okay. Dr. Deshler, let me turn to you. How replicable do you think Dr. Riddile’s efforts are?
Don Deshler: Well, Mel is a very special leader, and if we could just clone him, it would simplify our problems. However, what… I think the reason that Mel has been as successful as he has been and Chris as successful as she has been is because they have built their practice upon some known principles.
And if you go into their school and look at what is practiced on a day-to-day-to-day basis, it is following some of the things we know best about good educational practice. And if we will capture those particular principles and understand what’s unique about our school where we’re going to be adopting this because every school has its unique needs and unique personality, we can make some changes.
However, change takes time. Mel made that point. And we really do set ourselves, teachers, and students up for failure if we try to rush that process in short-term… and shortchange the… the planning.
Doris McMillan: Okay, well I wanna thank you all. And we’ll be talking with you a little bit more. But that marks the end of this segment but not this discussion. Please join us for part two of this webcast when we’ll be discussing building momentum for school-wide literacy initiatives.
You can learn more about adolescent literacy and watch the other segments of this webcast at www.ADLIT.org.
Narrator: Funding for this ADLIT.org webcast is generously provided by Carnegie Corporation of New York.
Doris McMillan: How can teachers and principals create a sense of urgency about literacy instruction in their schools? Hi, I’m Doris McMillan. Please join me for Laying a Foundation for School Level Literacy Reforms, part two of the ADLIT.org webcast, Making Room for Adolescent Literacy.
Hello everyone, I’m Doris McMillan, and welcome to the ADLIT.org webcast, Making Room for Adolescent Literacy. In part one we discussed the scope of the adolescent literacy crisis. Now we’re going to talk about developing support for a school-wide literacy initiative. I want to thank Dr. Deshler, Dr. Riddile, and Miss Gutierrez for joining me today.
Dr. Riddile, there are so many challenges facing principals. How can they make room for literacy in their schools?
Mel Riddile: Well, the first thing they have to ask themselves if your chil… if your students can’t read, what can they do? There are certain things you have to do.
Doris McMillan: Okay, where do they start?
Mel Riddile: Well, the first thing to do it we can’t run schools… is to understand we can’t run schools by intuition anymore, so we need data. And we need to do a diagnostic assessment to find out if our chi… if our students really have a problem and what the nature of the problem is.
And then we need to use the data to drive what we do from there on. Rather than it be the principal’s opinion or the curriculum specialist’s opinion, it has to be based on real data but about… the teacher’s have to know what their students are doing. It has to be personalized.
So when they pull up their grade book, they see their student in their class, and they see their reading levels. And they’re constantly reminded about that.
Chris Gutierrez: And it also… it’s everybody in the school’s responsibility. You don’t send them off to a reading class. Every teacher in every curriculum in the school needs to take responsibility. And it’s not really finding extra time in the day, it’s infusing strategies that we know work in whatever it is you’re teaching be it science, math, social studies, chemistry, whatever.
Doris McMillan: So it’s important to work with a… with a reading specialist. True?
Chris Gutierrez: I think so since I’m a reading specialist, absolutely.
Mel Riddile: But Chris as a reading specialist is really a peer coach because good literacy instruction is good instruction. And when she worked with teachers, she taught work with them on good instruction. Teachers don’t stop their classes and say “Okay, we’re gonna do a literacy strategy.”
It’s a… it has to be seamless part of everything that they do.
Don Deshler: And I was just gonna jump in. I agree with that. However, there are students within every school who need intensive instruction because they lack so many of the basic skills that is beyond what a content teacher can do in his or her content class.
Mel Riddile: And not only do they need… that’s like the critical care ward. Not only do they need that, but we need multiple levels. So one intervention isn’t usually sufficient in a high school. You have to have multiple levels. And Chris really could address that.
Chris Gutierrez: Yeah, as Dr. Riddile says, our intensive care section, we’re still working with phonetics. You know, how do you pronounce the words? How do you increase vocabulary? How do you become a smooth reader, a fluid reader? And at another level, we’re working with higher level comprehension skills.
You know, how can you read this book and get out the meat of it?
Doris McMillan: Okay, how important is it to develop a literacy council to represent the content area teachers?
Mel Riddle: Well, the first thing when you collect the data, to get people focused. We need input from everyone. One person today doesn’t know enough to be able to make reforms go in a school. It takes a team effort. And so it’s about putting together a team. Certainly you have a principal and a literacy coach.
But how do you get other people involved, and how do you get them to buy in? And they have to be part of the planning process. And that means putting a literacy council, getting volunteers who wanna be a part of that. And I’ve never had a problem finding people that wanted to… wanted to volunteer for that.
Doris McMillan: Okay, so how do you partner with a reading specialist?
Mel Riddile: Well…
Doris McMillan: As a principal.
Mel Riddile: It used to be about principals finding the right people, putting them on the right seat on the bus, and then letting them go. That doesn’t work anymore. It means a partnership. The literacy coach, Kris, in the case, would teach me about what I needed to know about literacy.
I would work with her about how to get things done in the school. So we’re a partnership. And that meant I was a co-pilot. I was with her all… when she… we had a literacy council meeting or a planning meeting, she would be able to have access to me on a frequent basis.
Doris McMillan: An important strategic alliance. Chris, let me ask you, Dr. Riddile describes the reading specialist as a co-leader of the literacy initiative. If you would explain the give and take between the principal and the reading specialist and then what was it like to work with Dr. Riddile?
Chris Gutierrez: It was really refreshing because he understood literacy, and so I didn’t have to do a lot of education. He ha… he came with it. But basically, I… we’d give the overview, we’d look at the data. I knew the faculty, and I said these are where our gaps are. What do you think about this idea, this idea?
And we’d float it before the literacy council. And that’s how we set up our staff development strands based… it was from the grassroots up with the support of the administration. So the teachers really had a buy in in terms of what we were offering in terms of our planning period staff development that we set up.
Mel Riddile: Those closest to the problem are the best to find the solutions to it. Rather than us tell them what they needed to do, we put the information there, and we all collectively looked at it and brainstormed solutions. And that’s the way you get buy in. There has to be buy in here in shared responsibility.
It can’t be, you know… We had a faculty meeting, one of the first faculty meetings, and I said, “English department, raise your hand and stand up.” That’s the last time we’re gonna look at the English teachers when we talk about literacy. It’s everybody including me, my job.
Doris McMillan: Okay. Chris, if you would, tell us more about the school literacy council. Why does it function and why is it so important?
Kris Gutierrez: Well, I think it’s like probably in any job, but particularly in education, you know, the principal comes down and says “Thou shalt…” And you go, “Yeah, when’s the last time you were in a classroom?” So when it comes actually from the classroom teachers saying we’re having these problems, one of the first workshops that we did was to give the teachers the lexile levels of all their students so they knew the reading level.
And then I had lexiled all their textbooks. And I said “Okay, here’s your textbook, an 1100, eleventh grade lexile. What are the reading level of the students that are attempting that book. And I just looked at the faces in the room. And they were like, “Oh my god, no wonder they don’t do their homework.” They can’t read the book.” And so then you start talking about how can you help these students attack that information.
Doris McMillan: So you take the lead in this?
Chris Gutierrez: In a lot of it. But then gradual release where, as a matter of fact, this afternoon we’re having a literacy council meeting, and we’re talking about next year. We’re gonna do a survey of the faculty, what worked for staff development this year, what didn’t work, and what more do you wanna see?
And we’ve gotten some feedback already. And then that will be the basis for what we do next year.
Mel Riddile: Now here’s one thing the principal can help the literacy council with is lear… I learned from experience that if your focus is too broad, nothing gets done. If you have twenty literacy strategies, that’s not gonna work. The staff needs to decide on three, maybe four.
But when you have too much, nothing really gets done. So that’s one thing I did help with.
Doris McMillan: Okay, cause I think it’s almost like a math equation. This is not bad math. It’s bad math. Three times three equals one. At least you’ll get one of those points through, right? Nine times one equals zero. Okay. Dr. Riddile, if you would, how can administrators convince skeptical teachers in the building that it works? And then tell us about a tough customer or two.
Mel Riddile: Well, the first thing is… if you look at this from a long-term basis instead of I have to do this in one year, and we’ve talked a little bit about that, then work first with the willing. And that’s the literacy council. For example, they should be trying some of the things out and coming back to the literacy council and saying this is working for me, this isn’t working for me. So you start small and grow a virus in a positive way. In other words, a virus spreads one person to another.
Doris McMillan: Give me an example.
Mel Riddile: Well, one teacher to one student. I told this… teachers at one time, I said, “How are we going to ever get where we need to go?” We had so many students way below grade level. One student at a time, that’s how we’re gonna do it. Focus on one. Just work with the one you have.
And each… if each person in the building does that… So if we work… one teacher to another teacher. How does the literacy coach work with a whole faculty of 200 people? How do you do that? One teacher at a time. And it spreads because if you’re doing good things and you’re doing the right thing, word travels.
If it works, people want to be a part of it.
Chris Gutierrez: Right, and they’ll say, “Chris, I saw you do this and that in somebody’s class. Can you… can you work with me?”
Doris McMillan: And then…
Kris Gutierrez: And then it goes from there.
Doris McMillan: …that’s how the virus spreads.
Mel Riddle: So you don’t force people. The worst thing the principal can do is go in and start mandating things. Other than the fact that we’re gonna start class when the bell rings and we’re gonna teach, here are some things you have to. But the reality is, this is a long-term process.
And we want people to buy in to it. Now, people knew when I went to that school that I was about literacy, but I refuse to do anything until we had our lexile scores. The company returned our scores but didn’t have the lexile, remember that?
Chris Gutierrez: Right, right.
Mel Riddile: And so I said, because it wasn’t gonna be meaningful to the teachers, they couldn’t relate the data that they were given to anything in their own lives.
Doris McMillan: Alright. Let’s talk about No Child Left Behind and accountability. Do principals and teachers have to choose between improving their students’ liter… literacy skills and then complying with No Child Left Behind?
Mel Riddle: If the students don’t have the literacy skills, they’re never going to have to worry about No Child Left Behind or adequate yearly progress because it’s not gonna be a reality. It’s a means to an end. It’s about literacy for learning, not about literacy as an end in itself.
And so when the teachers understand that, number one, that it’s about learning, this is my literacy project that I’m going to write articles about and make a name. That’s not what this is about. And number two that it’s a long-term process. And that, number three, their role is very simple.
Teach the language of your content area, the vocabulary. The… it’s about you teaching science, not about you teaching literacy.
Doris McMillan: Gotcha. Alright, Chris, are there other steps that are necessary to create a school culture that fosters literacy and achievement?
Chris Gutierrez: Well, I think it’s the positive attitude that needs to be engendered in the school. So you’re saying we can do this, you know, and that the support is here because teachers who maybe will go and try something in their classroom, it’s very scary to change your teaching style.
There’s a support there for them. And I think we also have to respect that these are adult learners we’re talking about. We’re not talking about the literacy coach teaching ninth graders. We’re teaching adults who are professionals who are well-trained in their subject area.
And I think we have to respect their knowledge. And, in turn, you get the respect back.
Mel Riddile: The other thing I said to teachers, teachers would complain that students aren’t ready, they don’t know how to take notes, they don’t have… I said, our job is to teach our students whatever you need to… they need to know. My job as principal, other than your content area which the state licensed you to teach, my job is to teach you whatever you need to know.
You don’t have to know anything about literacy. We’re going to teach you everything you need to know. All you have to do is work with us.
Doris McMillan: Okay, well, what I’d like to do now is focus in on instruction. Dr. Deshler, let me turn to you. Many of us have heard that rally and cry every teacher is a reading teacher, and that makes sense at the elementary school level, but is it really true for middle and high school content area instructors?
And then what are their roles in the literacy instruction?
Don Deshler: No, it’s not right. Every teacher is not a reading teacher. And if we tout that message, we’re gonna get an awful lot of pushback, and understandably so. A science teacher got into education because they love children and they love science, and they wanted to bring those two together.
However, as Mel and Chris have said, if a science teacher looks at his or her book and other literacy demands that they are using and expecting chil… students to meet and then see those demands from the vantage point of the student and say okay, what can I do to make this more learner friendly?
How might I unlock and unpack some of this difficult content? In other words, if we just have content teachers become sensitive to the literacy demands, choose critical content, choose key vocabulary that they should emphasize, and point out to students how their text is organized and how students can navigate it, great progress can be made.
Doris McMillan: Well then how then can content area teachers carve out the time for literacy instruction?
Don Deshler: It becomes a part of. It needs to be woven into their ongoing instruction of the content. It’s not either or, it’s… it becomes woven into the subject matter. For example, if you’re teaching a set of information, can say, hey, let’s just push the pause button for a moment and stand back from this.
Here’s how I would go about memorizing this information if I had to do so.
Doris McMillan: So you’re… go ahead.
Don Deschler: Do you’re demonstrating to them how a good learner in science or history or whatever thinks about and attacks that kind of text material.
Doris McMillan: Dr. Riddile.
Mel Riddile: In a factory model school of the 20th Century, it was about covering material. In the customized learning environment of the 21st Century, it’s about mastery. And if a teacher is just rushing through material and the students aren’t learning it, it’s just a waste of time.
And so helping teachers understand that, and helping them, as Dr. Deshler said, identify essential learnings and make sure those students master those essential learnings not just cover everything.
Doris McMillan: Okay, Dr. Deshler, if a school does not have a reading specialist, can the English teachers fill in?
Don Deshler: No. And we should not expect that. They are a subject matter expert as much as the science teacher, history teacher and so forth. It’s a big error that we’ve made and the wrong path we’ve gone down. As Mel and Chris have said, every teacher in the school has a responsibility for literacy.
But that should not be parked at the doorstep of the English teacher.
Chris Gutierrez: And I was just gonna add, I was a U.S. History teacher, and I went back to school in literacy because my kids couldn’t read the textbook, and I didn’t have the training to know what to do. And these strategies are most easily applied in history, social studies, and science, yeah.
Doris McMillan: Okay, well, on that note, I wanna thank you all, and we’re gonna see you again. There’s still more of this discussion to come. Please join us for part three of Making Room for Adolescent Literacy. We’ll be discussing the implementation of school level literacy initiatives.
You can learn more about adolescent literacy and watch the other segments of this webcast at www.ADLIT.org.
Doris McMillan: What are the key elements of a good literacy program and how can schools measure a program’s effectiveness? Hello, I’m Doris McMillan. Please join me for Implementing School Level Literacy Reforms, part three of the ADLIT.org webcast, Making Room for Adolescent Literacy.
Hello, I’m Doris McMillan. In the previous segment of Making Room for Adolescent Literacy, we discussed laying a foundation for school level literacy reforms. In this segment, our panelists will discuss how to implement those reforms. I wanna welcome Dr. Deshler, Dr. Riddile, and Miss Gutierrez.
Thank you all for being with us. Dr. Riddile, in previous segments, we’ve talked about some of the important prerequisites to a successful school literacy program, things like strong leadership, good professional development, and then the creation of a school literacy council.
Describe, if you would for us, how these elements come together to support a strong literacy program.
Mel Riddile: Well, some of the elements that we mentioned would be that this school conducts an annual diagnostic assessment of all students so they know how all their students are doing. And that’s the other thing, this… literacy is about every student, not just some students, not students that are struggling.
It’s about raising the bar for everyone. You would have participation from teachers in the form of a literacy council. You would have a literacy leader like a literacy coach or a peer coach. You would have multiple interventions for students at different levels.
And you would have an overall program for every student that every teacher was implementing in their own way, in their own classroom. And you would have annual reviews to make sure that you’re doing exactly what you said you’re doing. What that does to a school, it puts the focus… takes the focus away from adults and the focus is on students.
You hear teachers talking about what students need rather than what they want. You hear… the focus is on learning and how to teach students so that they do learn. You have… another thing you would see is focus on mastery and essential learnings as opposed to covering material.
So those are some things that you would… you would see different… that work differently in a school that had a comprehensive, school-wide literacy program.
Doris McMillan: Okay, Dr. Deshler, how should literacy instruction be adapted to meet the needs of English language learners in a school-based literacy program?
Don Deshler: Good question. And increasingly in many of our schools around the country, we have larger numbers of students, ELL students, and what we have found is that many of the principles that have worked effectively in teaching other… or struggling adolescent readers, work very well with students who have English as a second language.
For example, being very direct in the instruction that is provided, explicit, providing elaborated feedback, scaffold or design the instruction so they take it a step at a time and build up confidence with their practice with the language, and to be very deliberate in the selection of the materials that you’re going to give them exposure to.
Select things, and this is true for all kids, select things that light their fire and that attract them to the printed page. And that’s one thing, and particularly for these students, that we need to be sensitive to. It’s eyes on the page and engagement with the book.
Doris McMillan: And Kris, in your experience, how does an emphasis on literacy and content area classes change the look and the feel of a school?
Chris Gutierrez: Well, I see the school being more student-oriented rather than the teacher standing up in front lecturing…
Doris McMillan: Okay, give us an example.
Chris Gutierrez: …passively taking notes. Well, I see teachers using small group instruction with the kids where they’re pulling out the meat and they’re going beyond the literal level. They’re, you know, doing the what ifs and getting the kids to think ahead about the information and putting it in different contexts so that the information becomes part of them.
Doris McMillan: Okay, how do you do that in a math class?
Chris Gutierrez: Well, you use real world math problems with the class. One of our math teachers, I was fortunate enough just to be doing a walk-through observation one day, and they were doing the profits for a bakery that had just opened up nearby. And they were learning how to do the X and Y axis and plot profit.
And they then invited in the owner of this bakery who was a lawyer who had thrown in the law to go into baking…
Doris McMillan: He wanted to roll in dough. I’m so sorry.
Kris Gutierrez: …and he came to the class and talked to them about the financial side of his bakery business. And the kids were just enthralled with the mathematics of it all.
Doris McMillan: I bet they never looked at a donut the same way after that.
Chris Gutierrez: You’re right. No, this is… these are cupcakes. These are cupcakes.
Doris McMillan: Oh, okay, cupcakes, okay. Wow.
Don Deschler: One thing you see in the closure of classes, instead of the teacher summing up, you see students summing up or summarizing what they’ve learned instead of the teacher because the focus is on learning, not what we taught, but what they actually… what the students learned.
Doris McMillan: Cause kids are always saying, how are we gonna use this?
Kris Gutierrez: Right, right. And just as many real world applications as you can. And what was so fortunate about the recent election is every class could… could tag into that current event and use it in their classroom.
Doris McMillan: You know, with all that’s going on, where do you build in time for teachers planning periods and professional development?
Chris Gutierrez: We use the school day. We don’t extend the school day. We use the teachers’ planning periods once a month for a professional staff development that they registered for at the beginning of the year, and they recertification credits which we all need to build to keep our licenses current.
And then teachers, on their other planning periods through the rest of the month, can work with each other, they come and work with me and try some of these things and report back to each other. We have informal study groups all over the school of teachers who have come together and said well, let’s try some of this stuff. We need to beef up this particular unit of study.
Don Deshler: You know, I might just reinforce a point that was made in a previous segment, and that is the professional development that is done in Chris’s school is directly tied to that school-wide diagnostic assessment, the needs of the students, the needs of the teachers.
And that’s what drives professional development. And as obvious and logical as that may seem, that is not the case in many schools. Investments are made in one area when the needs are in another.
Mel Riddile: That’s right, and when I talk to people, my colleagues, generally about five percent are actually collecting data that relates to their school and using it to drive their reforms in their school whether it be ninth grade transitions or literacy or whatever their focus happens to be.
And I think you have to have something other than your opinion and your belief driving this. It has to be something other than the principal’s idea or philosophy.
Chris Gutierrez: Right, and it was so simple because we looked at the data from our first year of testing, and we saw that the vocabulary scores were much lower than the comprehension scores. So vocabulary was our target, and we spent a considerable amount of time discussing different ways to teach vocabulary in the different subject areas.
Doris McMillan: Good. Let me come back to professional development again. What are some of the elements of high quality professional development?
Chris Gutierrez: That it is targeted to the teacher need, I think, so that they can buy in. And that it be more than a sit and get, you know, that it be active learning. And that the people who are presenting the staff development model good teaching themselves. It’s not the professorial style, but it’s an interactive style with the teachers.
Don Deshler: And then it’s modeling, giving them an opportunity to practice and then some follow-up, good, instructional coaching and support as they try… as they attempt to apply that in the classroom.
Mel Riddile: And really important for principals is continuous and ongoing and it’s job embedded. Chris talked about that. But taking… sending people out and bring… and him coming back in really hasn’t worked well. It needs to be practical and related to what they need in their classrooms and a support system developed.
We mentioned the literacy council. Some of those people can act as supports to people in their own departments and their own teams.
Doris McMillan: Okay, now, let’s bring this background to the students. We’re gonna pull that back in. Dr. Deshler, I guess it’s gotta be really beyond frustrating to be a 15-year-old who struggles with reading. How can educators keep the kids from getting discouraged and just giving up?
Don Deshler: You know, the point you made, beyond frustrating, I don’t think any of us can appreciate what that must be like, what… how many doors are closed on our life without having access to ideas and so forth. How do we keep them from getting totally discouraged? One is to have conversations with them and find out what’s important in their life.
What things excite them. And design the instruction that we do around those kinds of interests and goals that they’ve got. Secondly, it’s important that we design the instruction out of the gate at a level where they don’t get frustrated once again. We need to structure it so they can experience some success.
We then build on that success and express our belief in them as learners and as individuals.
Doris McMillan: Dr. Riddile.
Mel Riddile: Our goals have to be places where kids wanna be, where they’re wel… not only welcomed, but they’re wanted, they feel wanted, where there’s hope, where they think every day that those people want me to succeed. We wanna hear students say, like one of my students said, in this school, it’s hard to fail.
The teachers won’t let you fail. And another student said instead of running to their cars to the end of the day, our teachers are waiting in their rooms to help us. That’s what’s different about this school. And when you do that… And the other thing that students have to know that there is a plan for them.
That whatever… wherever they are, they have… we have a plan for them to get there and succeed.
Doris McMillan: Chris, let me come back to you. How can parents partner with schools to promote literacy?
Kris Gutierrez: Well, I think at the secondary level it’s really difficult because those teenagers, the kids don’t want the parents around, and the parents think, well, I did my thing in elementary. But what we have done through a program that our city is sponsoring is set up a tutoring program for our ELL students, our ESL students.
And the parents and the students actually sign a contract where they will come to tutoring so many days a week, and we’re setting up an in school program very similar right now that it’s partnered in the… to the point of getting the kids to the tutoring so that they can see progress.
Doris McMillan: Okay, and as we talk about tutoring, what are some of the components of an effective afterschool tutoring program?
Chris Gutierrez: What I have seen with the program that we have is that the director of the program takes a personal interest in each of the kids. And it’s much more than just academic tutoring, it’s life tutoring. It’s how… what am I gonna do? It’s planning. She has leadership training for the kids.
She does college training, vocational school training. This is what you can do if you get your grades up and go on. And this is what your parents want for you.
Doris McMillan: Doctor… Oh, go ahead.
Mel Riddile: What Chris is describing really is a safety net that students aren’t allowed to continue to fall behind in school and be ignored and passed on. That has to stop. When… that all the students’ needs have to be met. We can’t just say we’re here to teach you literacy skills and ignore the reality of their own life. There has to be a support system for them.
Doris McMillan: Dr. Deshler, how often and using what measures should schools assess their struggling students?
Don Deshler: Well, Mel made the point several times before about the power of data. And it’s a tradeoff. In the one hand, theoretically, we’d like to have a lot of data points to tell us how we’re going so we can adjust the path that we’re on. On the other hand, the collection of data is a costly thing.
It’s… it takes time away from instruction. And, quite frankly, in today’s world, students are tested a great deal, and they get tired of going through that process. But at a minimum, we’re seeing that schools are trying to get at least three data points throughout the years, throughout the course of a year to see how students are progressing.
And that might be on a more type of a standard exam. However, we encourage teachers within their class to be having measures that are specific to their subject matter, for example, vocabulary acquisition and so forth, so that they can see on a week to week basis how students are doing and adjust instruction accordingly to meet their needs.
Doris McMillan: Let me come back to you, Dr. Riddile. When it comes to improving student achieving, we’re all impatient. We want it yesterday. So for schools that do implement an aggressive literacy initiative, how long does it take to really see results?
it’s never really in place because it’s going to involve and it’s going to grow. If you’re going a good job and if you’re, for example, as a high school is working with their feeder schools, and that the students come better prepared.
Their readiness levels. Then the nature of your program should change. So you’re constantly monitoring how you’re doing, how your students are doing. And as Dr. Deshler said, one of the things to understand is that what students like if you had a medical problem, if somebody’s sick, you take their temperature every hour.
Well, if they’re well, you might only go to the doctor once a year. Well, with students that are in interventions, we need to monitor them continuously. And for other students it’s more on longer intervals. So we need data points. And the other thing about the assessment, the diagnostic assessment, I said how can a herd of students sit down and read passages and answer questions?
And I always told the students, this is for you. The one test you take for you. You can’t fail. And it’s… it’s for you and how you are doing, not for the state or for the school, it’s for you.
Doris McMillan: Alright. On that note, I wanna say thanks everyone and those are the last of my questions. But in part four of our webcast, the panelists will answer questions from educators out in the field. I hope you will join us. You can learn more about adolescent literacy and watch other segments of this webcast at www.ADLIT.org.
Doris McMillan: How can librarians, school counselors and other staff help support literacy? What common mistakes should principals avoid as literacy leaders? Hi, I’m Doris McMillan. For the answers to these and other questions, join me for segment four of the ADLIT.org webcast, Making Room for Adolescent Literacy.
Hello, I’m Doris McMillan and welcome to the ADLIT.org webcast, Making Room for Adolescent Literacy. In previous segments we’ve discussed the scope of the adolescent literacy crisis as well as ways that principals and teachers can develop and implement school level literacy initive [sic]… initiatives.
Now, let’s get to the questions. Welcome back to Dr. Deshler, Dr. Riddile, and Miss Gutierrez. Our audience has some questions for you, and I have them right here. Our first question is from Bill in Maryland, and Dr. Riddile, he wants to know what role should other school staff like librarians and school counselors take in school-wide literacy efforts?
Mel Riddile: Well, the moment of truth for implanting any school in initiative including literacy is when the counselor sits down with the student to develop and individual learning plan. We call it a schedule. Now, that counselor today with a complex… complexities of today’s high school can’t do it alone anymore.
So they have to work together as a… in a team with other people and a literacy coach. It really… a counselor can’t schedule a student into a literacy intervention. They have to work with the literacy coach. And I think Kris probably ought to address that, how she does that.
As far as the librarians, they now become, instead of a book repository or lenders of books, they become information guides, helping teachers sort articles and readings by student lexile level so that they can have a, for example, a science teacher wants articles or readings on biomes.
They go to the librarian, and the librarian can then go through their databases and sort articles by lexile, and the teacher then can provide customized level readings for every student in their class.
Doris McMillan: Boy, things have changed a lot since we went to school. Chris, this next question is for you. It’s… it’s from Amanda in North Carolina. And Amanda says my high school students struggle with decoding. Can you suggest books with high interest but lower readability that won’t be too overwhelming for them?
Chris Gutierrez: Yes, there are lots of quality books written at the second and third grade level that are adventurous to high school students that are on the market. And with a little bit of research you can find it. You can Google in… there are some companies, Artisan Press is one.
If you look at the International Reading Association Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, they usually have information about those types of books in there. But there’s quite a bit on the market today.
Doris McMillan: Okay.
Don Deschler: And just, a point Mel had made before about the school librarians. They can be a tremendous resource to turn teachers on to certain types of literature for students.
Doris McMillan: Okay. We have another question. This one is from Mary in Memphis. Tracking is a controversial topic, but what do you think about vocational education or other options for students who struggle with literacy? Is that giving up, Dr. Deschler?
Don Deshler: Well, no, we have to stand back and take a look at what are the individual needs and interests of a student and how can we best put together a program that will allow that student to meet his or her potential, not how can we put together a program that will just keep them at the level that they’re performing?
There are some wonderful educational programs within vocational education, and it’s wrong, very wrong to think of vocational education as being a remedial or a lower track. The important thing is that we put students into an area that is of interest to them. And then we make certain that we get their skills to a level that they can thrive and be successful there.
Chris Gutierrez: Actually, the vocational remedial books that are used are the highest level books in any school. They’re much higher than physics, social studies, science, whatever.
Doris McMillan: Really?
Don Deshler: Oh, yeah.
Chris Gutierrez: They’re the most difficult books because they’re trade books, you know, that actual mechanics need to use. But the key for vocational education is many of those students are hands on learners. So if the academic core curriculum teachers would add more hands on learning in their classroom, it would help those students with that information.
Doris McMillan: They’d be more successful learners.
Kris Gutierrez: Be more successful.
Mel Riddle: Technology’s driven up the complexity for all career and technical education areas. For students to be able to be certified to be apprentices, to be a part of a meaningful occupation in that area, they’re going to have to read the content in that area.
And as Kris has pointed out, it’s the highest of all levels. Actually, English language arts has the lowest reading level of all subjects in high school. That wasn’t true ten years ago, but it is true today.
Doris McMillan: …(unint.) oh my.
Mel Riddile: The other thing is we know that students don’t grow emotionally, socially, inter… the same rate. They don’t learn at the same rate, either. By giving some students more time, we’re not tracking students. We’re still holding standards constant. So our goals remain constant, the time becomes a variable.
In the 20th Century, the time was a constant and our goals were variable. That’s where the old tracking idea comes in.
Doris McMillan: Okay. Let’s take a… Did you wanna add something, Dr. Deshler? Okay, let’s take another question. This one is from Shawn. Shawn is sending the question from New York. Shawn says what are the biggest mistakes principals make when implementing school-wide literacy programs. Dr. Riddile?
Mel Riddile: Not using data, using their opinion, forcing people to do it because they wanna do it quickly, not involving staff, not communicating. And I don’t mean by standing up in front of the faculty and saying we’re gonna have a literacy initiative, but it’s really the frequency of communication over an extended period of time.
Constantly walking the talk, so to speak. Those are some big… not creating a sense of urgency. Saying well, this is my literacy coach and walking away and never going to a literacy council meeting. In that kind of approach, nothing gets done.
Doris McMillan: Good, is there any sense of urgency about using off the shelf reading materials? An urge to purchase them, I guess I should say.
Mel Riddile: Well, I think there’s a sense that there’s a magic bullet that some way there’s one thing that I can do that’s gonna solve all my problems. And that’s the first them when I talk with principals, that’s the first thing to get out of your head because if we’re gonna customize an approach for every child because we want every child to be successful, that means we have to have to individualize it.
We’re not going to have a generic, off the shelf type approach. It has to be customizable.
Don Deshler: That… that is… huge investments have been made by school districts in reading programs in the hopes that expenditure of money on this program is going to do it. It won’t. The key is always having a highly skilled teacher making those programs come to life and be individualized for the students that he or she is working with.
Doris McMillan: Okay.
Mel Riddile: And the other thing I didn’t mention is activity does not equal success. Schools and school systems go out and buy packages and then they say well, we purchased this program. Well, they never monitored it to see if it actually was working. So it’s going on for years and years, and they never did an evaluation to see is this really helping our students?
Chris Gutierrez: Or they buy several programs that philosophically compete with each other. So the kids get very confused. So you have to pick wisely and carefully and selectively.
Doris McMillan: Now, as a reading specialist, let me come back to you on this one. What are some of the biggest mistakes that you see principals making? Not Dr. Riddile, of course.
Chris Gutierrez: Well, of course not. Nor my present principal. I think just thinking that the literacy coach can do it by themselves, giving cart blanche which is in one way nice for a literacy coach, but you need that administrator backing and involvement, not just the pat on the back and say go girl, you know.
You need them there with you all the time. And the administrative staff, when they do their evaluations of the teachers, need to add a literacy component to that evaluation in terms of praising the teacher for whatever literacy involvement they’re doing in the classroom.
Doris McMillan: A little encouragement goes a long way.
Kris Gutierrez: A little encouragement.
Mel Riddile: That’s important. You have to create heroes and recognize people. Have the teachers lead faculty meetings. Have the Spanish teachers that are using a literacy strategy in their Spanish classes or the art teachers, have them… I even had music teachers, the music department presented a fac… at a faculty meeting on integrating literacy strategies in music.
And it really broke down a lot of misconceptions. If they… they said if they can do that, we can do it in any class.
Doris McMillan: Right. Okay, let’s take another question. We have a question from Chuck in Chicago. Chuck says how can policymakers help middle and high schools improve adolescent literacy? Do you sense the political will for substantive funding and reform? Dr. Deshler?
Don Deshler: Policymakers play a significant role. We can have wonderful administrative leadership, we can have outstanding instruction in place. But if we don’t have the policy there to allow the right components to operate in the right way, it doesn’t happen of a (unint.) period of time.
There’s been considerable attention given to this over the past year and a half or so. And a report is going to be issued around the first of May. Governor Kaine from the state of Virginia has served as the chair person of this initiative that has been supported by the Southern Regional Education Board.
And this entire report is devoted to the role that policymakers at the state level and the local level can play in terms of putting in place the infrastructures to ensure high level literacy programs in their schools. So I’d strongly urge our listeners to access that.
Mel Riddile: Here’s three examples.
Doris McMillan: Okay.
Mel Riddile: State, district, and local school all need to have policies. It’s everybody’s… policies aren’t just state or national. The state can require all new teachers to have a lit… a reading content area course before they’re certified. They can do that. The district can require all teachers to receive recertification to take a college level literacy course in reading across content areas.
Kris actually teaches one of those courses. The local school can have a policy that once a month we’re going to have a literacy training professional development activity during a planning period. Those are just three examples how a state, a district, and a school can get in ali… align themselves to support literacy initiatives.
Doris McMillan: Okay. Let’s take another question. Bobby in South Carolina says the Reading Next reports says we should spend two to four hours every day on literacy. Here’s the other question. How is that possible?
Chris Gutierrez: It’s very possible. A kid is in school that long taking all the classes, you embed the strategies that Dr. Deshler and Mel have talked about, and they’re getting literacy in every subject area in the school.
Doris McMillan: Dr. Deshler?
Don Deshler: Totally agree. What’s important as we think about literacy instruction, however, is that different students require different levels of intensity of instruction. So all students are typically in their subject matter classes throughout the course of the day, but there will be some students who will get some additional intensive literacy instruction that might be over and above what their classmates will be getting.
And so to, again, we need to put together individualized programs for students to make certain they’re successful.
Mel Riddile: It’s really important to emphasize that liter… the best literacy instruction takes place in the context of course content, that course becomes a vehicle in which the skills are taught. So you kill two birds with one stone. They’re learning course content and they’re learning literacy skills.
When we talk about literacy, we’re talking about reading, comprehension, writing, and speaking and thinking. So it’s not just about reading words.
Doris McMillan: Okay, my final question. Will in Georgia says how can I involve parents in the school literacy program? Many parents at my school struggle with reading themselves. Chris?
Chris Gutierrez: Several years ago I did a Saturday class for parents and their students. And we pulled the students with low reading levels and invited their parents to join them in a literacy class on Saturday. And it was very successful. We had a small group to start.
But the parents that came were working and wanted promotions. Some had gone back to college and wanted to know how to study for college. And it was very stimulating for me to see this intergenerational give and take with the kids.
Mel Riddile: Schools have licenses for literacy, for example, software. They have labs that they’ve set up. Those can be used at night with parents. And with a small amount of funding, they can make those available to parents. And I’ve found that to be very successful.
Doris McMillan: Okay. Well, I wanna say thank you to everybody for your thoughtful answers. We’ve covered a lot in this webcast, but I’d like to get one final thought from each of you. So, what do you think is the most important thing, the most important take away from this webcast for our audience? And why don’t I start with you, Chris?
Chris Gutierrez: If I was a principal I’d say don’t hesitate. Get started and start with little steps, you know. Try the first initiative and then let it grow. Don’t just say, you know, we’re gonna turn the world on… upside down cause then you’re gonna get failure.
Doris McMillan: Dr. Deshler?
Don Deschler: We can make gains for students. The gap is large, however we do know a great deal right now as to what to do. And if we take it a step at a time and we’re in it for the long haul, lives can be transformed to high quality literacy instruction.
Doris McMillan: And finally Dr. Riddile?
Mel Riddile: There is hope. It can be done. It is being done. It takes a focused effort. Collect data, do a diagnostic assessment. Start small and work with the willing.
Doris McMillan: Okay, thanks so much. And I wanna thank you for joining us for Making Room for Adolescent Literacy. To view all segments of the webcast and for more information about how you can help the struggling readers and writers in your life, please visit us on the Web at www.ADLIT.org. And again, thank you for joining us. | <urn:uuid:d74676f6-fa41-4822-b1f7-91ed4ded7dea> | CC-MAIN-2022-27 | https://www.adlit.org/in-the-classroom/professional-development-webcasts/making-room-adolescent-literacy | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-27/segments/1656104692018.96/warc/CC-MAIN-20220707124050-20220707154050-00751.warc.gz | en | 0.95779 | 14,148 | 2.953125 | 3 |
last week and you can understand how a good cover of vegetation helps hold the soil together in extreme weather events such as flooding or high winds, or conversely, how in dry times, covered soil full of organic matter remains moister for longer than exposed bare ground.
Healthy soils also support production – and not just for this or next season, but with the right investment, sustainably for the long term.
Isn’t soil formation a natural process? Why do we have to manage it?
Through the soil’s natural formation process, pedogenesis, it takes around 2000 years to build 10 cm of fertile topsoil ( 1). However, soil erosion due to traditional agriculture is occurring at a rate between 10 and 100 times faster than this formation process (2,3). Although the lack of good data makes predictions highly uncertain, at the current rate of topsoil loss, indications are that the earth may only have around 50 years of topsoil left (4).
The first Global Soil Week, last week in Berlin, looked at issues such as the how it is a combination of environmental/climatic conditions and political-economic processes (both past and present) that have brought about land and soil degradation. Global Soil Week brought together stakeholders from around the world to translate land and soil knowledge into societal action – an international version of what we’re trying to do here at Soils for Life!
What we try to focus on here at Soils for Life, is that it’s not all doom and gloom. Yes, globally, landscape degradation is extensive and has the potential to lead to many challenges – particularly in producing sufficient food and fibre to support a growing population. But solutions do exist now.
Innovative farmers and land managers are fighting the trend – building, not degrading their soils – by restoring natural pedogenesis processes. These farmers are delivering sustainable production on fertile landscapes, and providing a model for all farmers and land managers to follow.
What can we do to look after soil health?
The Soils for Life case studies demonstrate a range of ways Australian farmers and land managers are already looking after soil health – with positive results.
Some farmers take action to directly address soil health, such as Greg and Sally Chappell of Shannon Vale Station near Glen Innes, NSW, who apply tailored solid organic fertilisers and liquid foliar fertiliser to target specific deficiencies in nutrient availability. Combined with their grazing management, they’ve consequently increased soil organic carbon and soil fertility, have overcome a weed invasion and now have highly productive pastures – as I’m sure all who attended the Field Day there last week could attest to!
For other case study participants, improved soil health was more of a consequence of other actions. Tim and Karen Wright of Lana, also on the NSW Northern Tablelands, use their grazing management as a farm tool as a part of a Holistic Management approach across their property. As Tim says, “We use the farm livestock as the tools to enhance the land as well as their being a source of income. The slasher in their teeth, the plough in their feet and the fertiliser equipment in the rear. Animals distribute nutrients across the grazed areas and build soil.”
As a result, due to improved soil health and a functioning soil-water-vegetation cycle, the Wright’s stock carrying capacity has increased from around 8000 to 20,000 dry sheep equivalent (DSE) and they have sustained this even through periods of reduced rainfall.
How can we encourage the wider adoption of practices such as these?
If you’re a farmer or land manager, what support do you need to adopt regenerative practices to look after your soil health?
Click on ‘Comments’ below and tell us what you think.
Over the next few weeks, we’ll take a closer look at the physical, biological and mineral qualities of soil, what our innovative farmers are doing to address each of these specific areas and the results they are achieving by doing so.
The Soils for Life Team
(2) United Nations Environment Program, 2012, UNEP Year Book 2012: Emerging issues in our global environment, www.unep.org/yearbook/2012
(3) Pimentel, D., 2006, ‘Soil erosion: A food and environmental threat.’ Environment Development and Sustainability, 8, pp119-137
(4) Marler, J.B., and Wallin, J.R., 2006, Human Health, the Nutritional Quality of Harvested Food and Sustainable Farming Systems, Nutritional Security Institute,www.nutritionsecurity.org/PDF/NSI_White%20Paper_Web.pdf , p1
Soils for Life, | <urn:uuid:a2fec620-7b5d-4fbe-9fee-a7d0585bd14e> | CC-MAIN-2020-29 | https://soilsforlife.org.au/2012/11/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-29/segments/1593655911092.63/warc/CC-MAIN-20200710144305-20200710174305-00379.warc.gz | en | 0.938131 | 984 | 2.9375 | 3 |
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LANSING – Traumatic brain injury (TBI) and acquired brain injury (ABI) are the leading cause of injury-related deaths and disability in the United States. To bring awareness to this often-preventable injury, March has been declared Brain Injury Awareness Month.
Falls, motor vehicle accidents and sports-related trauma are leading causes of TBIs and the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) is urging residents to learn about injury prevention strategies to keep themselves and their families safe.
An ABI is a form of brain injury that an individual sustains, or acquires, after birth. This includes TBIs and medical issues as a stroke. A TBI is any injury that occurs to the brain. It is caused by a bump, blow or jolt to the head or a penetrating head injury that disrupts the normal function of the brain. TBIs may affect cognitive function, motor function, sensation and emotional function.
“Prevention strategies can greatly reduce the risk for traumatic brain injuries and death,” said Robert Gordon, MDHHS director. “This can include removing hazards in and around the home such as rugs and clutter in walkways, keeping sports safe by wearing protective gear including helmets and always wearing a seatbelt while in a vehicle.”
Nationally, the total cost of emergency department visits, hospitalizations and deaths related to traumatic brain injuries, either alone or in combination with other injuries, exceeds $76.5 billion annually.
In 2017, 11,585 people in Michigan were hospitalized for a TBI. Among Michigan residents who died of an injury, 1,748 had a TBI listed as an underlying or contributing cause of death on the death certificate.
Observable signs of traumatic brain injury may include appearing dazed or stunned, forgetting an instruction, moving clumsily, answering questions slowly, losing consciousness, showing mood, behavior or personality changes and being unable to recall events prior to and/or after a hit or fall.
For more information on TBIs, visit Cdc.gov/traumaticbraininjury.
More information about sports concussions is available at Michigan.gov/sportsconcussion. Additional resources for seniors for classes to prevent falls and improve mobility and independence may be found at Greatatanyagemi.com. | <urn:uuid:61589053-5c6d-47bd-850c-c61b9fa99a8f> | CC-MAIN-2019-30 | https://www.upmatters.com/news/learn-how-to-prevent-brain-injuries-during-brain-injury-awareness-month/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-30/segments/1563195526506.44/warc/CC-MAIN-20190720091347-20190720113347-00122.warc.gz | en | 0.950133 | 487 | 3.1875 | 3 |
SNRIs (Serotonin Norepinephrine Reuptake Inhibitors) are a class of antidepressant drugs capable of treating depression along with a variety of other neurological disorders.
These drugs are fairly new but are gaining popularity due in part to their effectiveness at treating depressive disorders but bolstered by the lack of severe side effects when compared to SSRIs. Additionally, SNRIs have a higher degree of versatility at treating a myriad of conditions.
How They Work:
SNRIs, like the SSRIs, take advantage of the well established “monoamine hypothesis” which states that so-called “monoamine” neurotransmitters are responsible for moderating depressive conditions. Among these are serotonin, norepinephrine, dopamine and others.
These neurotransmitters moderate a variety of neurological “pathways” which, when appropriately stimulated, can lead to feelings of happiness
SNRIs regulate two of these “monoamines,” serotonin (aka 5-HT) and norepinephrine to increase stimulation of their respective pathways. This is accomplished by preventing their reuptake into the presynaptic cell out of the synaptic cleft.
The more time a neurotransmitter spends in the synaptic cleft, the more postsynaptic stimulation, the more “results.” Stimulation of neurons has consequences, in the case of this pathway, the consequence is reduced levels of depression.
A “good” SNRI will have high affinity for postsynaptic serotonin and norepinephrine transporters and low affinity for the receptors of other neurotransmitters (high specificity). SNRIs should be highly selective to avoid the unpredictable side effects caused by MAOIs and tricyclic antidepressants.
Clinically Available SNRIs:
There are currently a variety of SNRIs on the market, all with slightly varying effects.
All function by a similar mechanism but some have very different effects and treatment capacity.
List of SNRIs:
Duloxetine (Cymbalta, Ariclaim, Xeristar, Yentreve, Duzela):
Also used as a highly effective treatment for fibromyalgia. Used for anxiety disorders and more severe depression
Venlafaxine (Effexor): Most popular and first SNRI. Lower selectivity than other SNRIs which may lead to more side effects.
Milnacipran (Dalcipran, Ixel, Savella): treats both depression and fibromyalgia. | <urn:uuid:47629f75-dcaa-403b-957b-4750ad4fb6ec> | CC-MAIN-2014-35 | http://brainyinfo.com/antidepressants/snri/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-35/segments/1408500823598.56/warc/CC-MAIN-20140820021343-00346-ip-10-180-136-8.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.906825 | 525 | 2.703125 | 3 |
A Healthy Body
Your body is perhaps the most important and complex organism on planet Earth. It is made up of billions of microscopic parts, each working together in an organized fashion that allows the total being to function. How well each of those parts work together might define how healthy the body is.
It is through maintaining or improving the efficiency of our body and keeping its various systems in balance that health is maintained.
While science and the practice of medicine is important to our health, perhaps the most important factors are impacted through individual effort. Activities such as fitness training, weight loss, a healthy diet, nutritional supplementation, stress management and quitting smoking are examples of things you can do to improve your health.
The Wikipedia Encyclopedia defines “Health” as the level of functional and/or metabolic efficiency of an organism at both the micro(cellular) and macro(social) level. In the medical field, health is commonly defined as an organism’s ability to efficiently respond to challenges (stressors) and effectively restore and sustain a “state of balance,” known as homeostasis.
You are in control of your own health, life and fitness.
It should be one of your top priorities to take care of your body. After all, you only have ONE body and when it’s gone… it’s gone. It is, therefore, important that you take responsibility for your health and begin to make informed decisions about your healthcare.
Taking personal control over your health will become even more important in the coming years. With the advent of Obamacare, healthcare costs will continue to skyrocket and the quality of healthcare provided by the medical industrial complex will decline. If you want to avoid the nightmare of Obamacare, you will need to put yourself in a position where you don’t need to visit your doctor as often and you don’t contract the many diseases that are sweeping the globe.
If you want to be healthy, you need to STOP listening to MD’s for nutritional advise. Medical doctors are the wrong person to go to for advice about health. MD’s do not practice health care, they practice for profit disease management. They do not attend to your health, they will only prescribe toxic drugs to mitigate your symptoms. In fact, while MD’s have been in control chronic disease has gotten worse; we’ve lost the war on cancer, we’ve lost the war on heart disease, obesity is escalating, and we’re getting sicker every year.
The mission of A Better Health Plan is to provide you resources to improve your health and to empower you to make more healthy lifestyle choices. As you become better informed about health issues related to your body and gain access to resources to improve your health, you will be empowered to make the choices necessary to improve your overall quality of life.
The Absence of Health
A disease condition is when an organism within the body is functioning abnormally or impairing other bodily functions. In the broader sense, “disease” is often used to refer to any condition that causes discomfort, dysfunction, distress, and/or death to the person afflicted.
It’s been estimated that more than 50% of us die from cardiovascular disease. One third of us develop cancer and an increasing percentage of us suffer from life threatening infectious diseases. In addition, most Americans have weakened immune systems that leave us vulnerable to debilitating, avoidable infections. These conditions are all preventable when you take an active role in your body’s health. | <urn:uuid:9a756b0c-e00a-4961-9a15-6126b8d43497> | CC-MAIN-2015-11 | http://www.abetterhealthplan.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-11/segments/1424936462426.4/warc/CC-MAIN-20150226074102-00030-ip-10-28-5-156.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951484 | 726 | 2.828125 | 3 |
Voter turnout in Indiana’s recent primary election was the lowest in 20 years, 35 percent below average. It’s time for a serious conversation about whether the growing use of voting centers is bad for turnout.
From time immemorial, people in Indiana and elsewhere voted in their own neighborhoods at precinct locations typically within four or five blocks of home. The locations included schools, churches, firehouses and libraries, staffed mostly by neighbors and led by precinct captains of both parties.
The organizational task of arranging for these neighborhood sites and fielding the army of poll workers grew more challenging over time for election officials and the political parties. The parties have often found their capacities diminished. The abolition of the patronage system and campaign finance restrictions have enhanced the role of special interest groups and candidate committees at the expense of the traditional political party.
In 2003, Colorado first experimented with a new model for Election Day: Open a limited number of voting centers and end voting in neighborhood precincts. Boosters declared it a success and perhaps half a dozen states have moved in the same direction.
The Indiana General Assembly authorized experiments with this model in 2006, and Cass, Wayne and Tippecanoe counties tried it.
This experiment clearly succeeded on multiple grounds. Local officials identified readily accessible sites, undertook considerable advance planning, and trained the people who would staff the new centers.
They also used technology to assure the integrity of the vote. This was important for a regime in which neighborhood-based teams likely recognized many voters and in a state with recent multiple criminal convictions for voter fraud. On this point, these systems seem to work well.
And, using only voting centers saves lots of taxpayer money. Rather than staffing 92 precincts as Tippecanoe County once did, it now needs to place, pay and support teams in just 20 places.
Based on these three pilots, the Legislature authorized all counties to use such centers on Election Day, and 17 counties now do so. Why wouldn’t we support a system that functions smoothly, securely and inexpensively?
The answer might be that using voting centers on Election Day rather than voting in neighborhoods means fewer voters participating.
To be sure, many factors affect voter turnout, like whether there are headline races, lots of contests, and our old friend gerrymandering.
Still, in spite of regular declarations that convenient voting centers would enhance turnout, studies for Ball State University and the Indiana Fiscal Policy Institute could find no evidence that using such centers lifts voter participation. Easier early voting apparently helps, but not the voting centers. Brian Howey has calculated that, in May, the 17 counties using centers trailed the state average by 2.6 percent.
I looked at May’s returns, comparing primary turnout over the last four off-year elections in some counties that moved to voting centers. Starting with 2002, the number of people voting in Tippecanoe County ran from 20,800 to 15,300 to 19,000, ending with 13,900 this May. In Floyd County, the turnout went from 11,100 to 9,300 to 9,800 to 7,900. In Vanderburgh County, the vote moved from 9,350 to 16,100 to 19,100 to 8,100.
This admittedly fragmentary examination, buttressed by the Howey calculation, suggests the article of faith that voting centers are “good for voter turnout” could use some really serious study.
Successful self-government requires wide participation. We might not be headed in the right direction.•
Shepard, formerly Indiana chief justice, is executive in residence at IU’s Public Policy Institute, a research arm in the School of Public and International Affairs. Send comments to firstname.lastname@example.org. | <urn:uuid:6ff94ebe-ff1d-4bd2-ae1d-a2bbadf84582> | CC-MAIN-2018-09 | https://www.ibj.com/articles/48121-shepard-voting-centers-might-not-be-a-great-idea-after-all | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-09/segments/1518891815034.13/warc/CC-MAIN-20180224013638-20180224033638-00390.warc.gz | en | 0.958913 | 769 | 2.515625 | 3 |
This Sourcebook contains numerous original translations of ancient poetry, inscriptions and documents, all of which illuminate the multifaceted nature of sexuality in antiquity.
The detailed introduction provides full social and historical context for the sources, and guides students on how to use the material most effectively. Themes such as marriage, prostitution and same-sex attraction are presented comparatively, with material from the Greek and Roman worlds shown side by side. This approach allows readers to interpret the written records with a full awareness of the different context of these separate but related societies. Commentaries are provided throughout, focusing on vocabulary and social and historical context.
This is the first major sourcebook on ancient sexuality; it will be of particular use on related courses in classics, ancient history and gender studies.
'Instructors will want to use this sourcebook.' - BMCR
Series: Routledge Sourcebooks for the Ancient World
Tertiary; University or College
Number Of Pages: 280
Published: 1st April 2005
Country of Publication: GB
Dimensions (cm): 22.86 x 15.24
Weight (kg): 0.54
Edition Number: 1 | <urn:uuid:c3563790-ebff-4ac8-9077-bc6931de35e8> | CC-MAIN-2019-18 | https://www.booktopia.com.au/sexuality-in-greek-and-roman-literature-and-society-marguerite-johnson/prod9780415173308.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-18/segments/1555578613888.70/warc/CC-MAIN-20190423214818-20190424000737-00082.warc.gz | en | 0.848785 | 234 | 2.859375 | 3 |
Hello everyone. My name is Kia and this is my 2-year-old son Bodhi. He loves to bounce on my knees. Doing rhymes with actions helps stretch out the words. This rhyme reinforces familiar words that you might use, like Mother and Father. But you can change the words to ones you may use instead, such as Mommy and Daddy.
Mother and Father and Uncle John (bounce child slow and steady on your knees)
Went to town, one by one (keep bouncing).
Mother fell off (tilt child to one side)
Father fell off (tilt child to other side)
But Uncle John went on, and on, and on, and on (bounce child again, faster).
- Creator: Colorado Libraries for Early Literacy
- Performers: Kia Ruiz and Bodhi
- Contributors: Rocky Mountain PBS
- Source: Public Domain | <urn:uuid:0edbdd6c-e66b-4646-a481-7d3887805aec> | CC-MAIN-2017-47 | http://www.storyblocks.org/project/mother-and-father/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-47/segments/1510934806317.75/warc/CC-MAIN-20171121055145-20171121075145-00783.warc.gz | en | 0.915443 | 190 | 2.78125 | 3 |
Researchers at Disney Research, Pittsburgh, and Carnegie Mellon University have devised a system called SideBySide that enables animated images from two separate handheld projectors to interact with each other on the same surface.
The system, suitable for games, education and a variety of other applications, is self-contained in special handheld devices. No external cameras or other sensors are required, which enables people to use the projectors to interact with each other anywhere and at anytime. SideBySide also can be used to exchange contact information, or even share data files. The technology can spur a more participatory and intimate style of interaction than is possible with computers or overhead projectors.
"Smartphones have made it possible for us to communicate, play games and retrieve information from the Web wherever we might be, but our interaction with the devices remains a largely solitary, single user experience," said Karl D.D. Willis, a Ph.D. candidate in computational design at Carnegie Mellon and a lab associate at Disney Research. "Now that handheld projectors have become a reality, we finally have a technology that allows us to create a new way for people to interact in the real world."
The handheld projectors are hybrid devices that emit both visible and infrared light and contain a camera for monitoring the projected images, a ranging sensor and an inertial measurement unit.
The infrared channel plays a key role in enabling interaction. It is used to project markers that help the system recognize when the images are moving or overlapping and to communicate information between the devices.
The researchers have developed a number of applications to demonstrate the capabilities of the technology. Games include Boxing, in which matches are performed without a ring; Cannon, in which players knock a stack of bricks off a platform by firing a cannon ball from one screen to another; and Gorilla, in which one player uses a plane and a net to catch the other player's gorilla. They also have developed a 3D viewer, which allows two users to control and explore a 3D model together, and applications for exchanging contact information and transferring files. A question & answer application can be used to teach basic vocabulary to young children.
Willis will discuss SideBySide on Wednesday, Oct. 19 at the Association for Computing Machinery's Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST) in Santa Barbara, Calif. Conference organizers already have presented SideBySide with UIST's best paper and best demonstration awards. In addition to Willis, the SideBySide development team included Ivan Poupyrev and Moshe Mahler of Disney Research and Scott Hudson, professor in Carnegie Mellon's Human-Computer Interaction Institute.
More information: www.disneyresearch.com/researc … i_sidebyside_drp.htm
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Type: The Bridges of Sarajevo
Many wooden bridges (drvenije) were built in Sarajevo during the period of Ottoman rule. One such bridge was on Bentbaša, where the timber from the surrounding forests was harvested, collected and then put into the Miljacka to drift downstream to Sarajevo.
A second one spanned the river between Šeherćehajin and Emperor's Bridges, there was a third one called Hadži Bešlijina Drvenija and collective memory makes note of a few other such bridges, none of which stood the test of time.
During bad weather, the Miljacka River would often wash this wooden bridge away, but it was always rebuilt.
The last reconstruction was carried out in 1988, when the then-famous Sarajevo construction company, Hidrogradnja, donated a reinforced concrete bridge to the city. The bridge had a symbolic wooden railing.
During all of its years, Drvenija has often gone by the name, “Gimnazijski Most”, because of the primary school, gymnasium, medresa, two high schools and several university faculties and academies nearby. | <urn:uuid:55ca921f-a5cb-4226-9536-3482957bf982> | CC-MAIN-2017-30 | http://sarajevo.travel/en/things-to-do/drvenija/565 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-30/segments/1500549426086.44/warc/CC-MAIN-20170726082204-20170726102204-00033.warc.gz | en | 0.978583 | 256 | 3.078125 | 3 |
In the developed world, expectation is nothing less than a right. We open the tap, and we expect clean drinking water to flow. We switch on the lights, and bulbs must illuminate. We swim in waterways that must be safe and free from bacteria. Many resources that are critical for life are taken for granted with little regard as to how the water came to be in the tap or how the power got to the bulb. They are regarded as an entitlement. But beneath the surface, hidden and unseen, lie literally hundreds of thousands of kilometres of pipes and wires, connected by a myriad of pumps and valves all pulsing away in real time in the most intricate interconnected web that make our cities habitable. Decades of planning, engineering, sweat and hard labour have been invested to provide these precious commodities and the tide of demand is rising ever higher.
It’s often said that we don’t realise what we have until it’s gone . This is perhaps how some of the 1,7 million residents of South Australia felt the evening of 29 September 2016, when severe storms toppled power transmission towers and left their state in darkness. The infrastructure that ensured the steady provision and flow of electricity went largely unnoticed and unappreciated, until it was no longer doing its job.
The resource supply systems undergirding our cities are currently pressed from numerous sides.
Many cities are facing the real possibility of a perfect storm that will push their infrastructure close to breaking point unless a radical shift in thinking is embraced. The confluence of our insatiable appetite for urbanisation coupled with an unpredictable climate, all superimposed on infrastructure that is decades old, is demanding new thinking.
Ongoing demands for upkeep and expansion have an eye watering price tag. Water infrastructure is a multibillion-dollar asset that, if we were currently to overhaul and redo, would likely drain an entire city budget. Sydney alone will spend $2.2 billion on water infrastructure in the next four years. As the tidal wave of urbanisation increases in the coming 20 years, how can Governments and water authorities manage the compounding pressures on limited resources, coupled with the adverse effects of climate change? The public purse and taxpayer pool will have to somehow satisfy the living standards and expectations to which communities have become accustomed.
About 40% of the world’s population currently lives in water-stressed areas. With three billion more people added to the planet by 2050, water scarcity will soon become a matter of life or death. We face lower and lower tidemarks on our water supplies.
Water cannot be seen as an isolated utility, but an integrated variable in the quest to solve societies’ major problems. The world of water in a decade’s time will see people expect exactly the same level of service (if not better), yet the problem will have grown in complexity. More pipelines are only a part solution. It’s a paradigm shift that’s called for: the utility authorities will need to change people’s behaviour through better digital interaction with water.
If we fail to address the social mindsets driving city planning up until now, our problems will only get worse. But if we can use the digital world to sidestep this static analogue problem, we can turn crisis into opportunity. Digital technology allows us to step back and ‘smart up’ around the current cycle of water consumption and wastage. We can begin to see the grim reality of limited supply as the ‘dark room’ of innovation, whereby bold new ideas can be born to secure societal welfare in future uncertain times.
Moving from point a to point b
Up until now, we have lived in an analogue-based society. Our infrastructure is essentially ‘dumb’, marked by physical variables that function independently of one another. But as digitalisation and mobile technology continue to evolve at pace, the systems and spaces we inhabit will begin to catch up. Autonomous vehicles represent 1%of the automotive market worldwide today, but autonomous vehicles will secure a 35% advantage by 2040, and that will continue to rise. Equally, the flow of water through a city’s network of steel and copper waterways will someday be analysed and controlled by smart grids. Our analogue world will become digitised; we will cross over. But where does this leave our clients today, when we stand on the precipice of change and don’t see a bridge in sight?
Our job is to build that bridge through digital transformation. Our current ‘unintelligent’ analogue systems must be progressively transformed if we are going to change user behaviours through their enhanced interaction with the precious resource they are consuming. Real-time predictive analytics can draw the best out of our limited water supply by offering simple, intuitive, and meaningful insight into unique infrastructure. This, in turn, can be transferred into optimal and cost-effective management strategies that keep the water cycles healthy.
Getting one step ahead
Installing predictive maintenance applications can feel at times like a Herculean task. But statistics alone present a convincing argument that motivates a speedy change of gears into digital integration. While the demand for freshwater is increasing by 64 billion cubic metres annually, the U.S. alone loses 2.1 trillion gallons of treated water every year due to pipe breaks, leakages and mismanagement. This economic loss amounts to trillions, with a downward chain reaction on food prices, health and sanitation.
Connecting these assets into a real-time monitoring network will reduce the time it takes to discover and solve problems that historically appear only when they literally surface. That same data can be applied as red alerts to motivate preventative maintenance and mitigated risk into the future. Smart meters, high-tech leak detection devices and water data software are starting to offer sophisticated and granular information on how to maximise profit, impact and environmental sustainability within water management and distribution systems. The municipalities who are taking heed are gaining traction in the future-ready race.
Contextualising the issue
The ‘magnifying glass’ or micro approach to problem solving is no longer viable within the context of our interconnected digital world. If we don’t contextualise the water crisis under the bigger themes of climate change and urbanisation, we could solve a water problem, while unintentionally creating an economic one.
Our water problems will not ultimately be solved by throwing water solutions at them . If we are to ensure this precious commodity’s sufficient supply into the future, we have to adopt new ways of thinking around our capability and responsibility to steward the resource. Smart cities are the only solutions with shoulders broad enough to buffer the oncoming high tide of overpopulation . | <urn:uuid:f0b3a226-ab6e-428d-9537-18c90d8ea0b2> | CC-MAIN-2017-17 | http://justimagine.aurecongroup.com/what-happens-our-taps-run-dry/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-17/segments/1492917123590.89/warc/CC-MAIN-20170423031203-00044-ip-10-145-167-34.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937894 | 1,363 | 2.75 | 3 |
The Torah instructs that before waging war the enemy should first be offered the opportunity to surrender peacefully. Rashi writes that this option is only given during a milchemes reshus, but not a milchemes miztva, such as the battle against Amalek or the other 7 nations living in Eretz Yisrael. Ramban and Rambam (Hil Melachim ch 6) disagree and write that this choice is always offered. Any nation, even Amalek, which accepts the 7 Noahide commandments and agrees to pay taxes and Jewish dominion can peacefully surrender and avoid war. The Rambam (see also Tosfos Sota 34b) writes that before Yehoshua began his wars in Eretz Yisrael he sent letters to the nations living there offering them the option of peaceful surrender, fleeing the land, and a warning that otherwise he would wage war.
Commenting on the Rambam’s position that even Amalek and the 7 nations may sue for peace by accepting servitude, taxes, and the 7 Noahide laws, the Ra’avad writes “zeh shibush, elah sheyachol lomar hashlimu l’kabeil mitzvos” – “the Rambam is in error, as they can say make peace by accepting the mitzvos.” The comment of the Ra’avad is very difficult to understand – the Rambam himself acknowledges that accepting the 7 Noahide mitzvos is a prerequisite for peace?
Most (see Radbaz, KS”M, Minchas Chinuch) interpret the Ra’avad as amplifying his own position. Ra’avad earlier writes that all nations other than the 7 of Eretz Yisrael and Amalek may sue for peace by accepting Jewish dominion and the obligation to pay taxes without the accepting the Noahide laws. The Ra’avad here makes clear that with respect to the 7 nations of Eretz Yisrael and Amalek more is needed – they must accept the 7 Noahide laws as well. The problem with this reading is it does not seem to explain what the Ra’avad objected to in the Rambam’s position other than perhaps his syntax.
The Chazon Ish (Y.D. 157:5) offers a brilliant explanation of this Ra’avad that seems to fit the words exactly. The Ra’avad thought the Rambam mistaken in saying the 7 Nations and Amalek are extended an offer of peace. However, Ra'avad agrees that these nations may voluntarily come forward and sue for peace based on their acceptance of the 7 Noahide laws. “Sheyachol lomar hashlimu l’kabeil mitzvos” – the 7 Nations can say of their own accord that they desire peace and accept the 7 Noahide mitzvos, and only under those terms can they be spared. | <urn:uuid:85bb4ed0-f502-4be1-9ff5-50796a31911d> | CC-MAIN-2020-10 | http://divreichaim.blogspot.com/2007/02/making-peace-with-amalek.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-10/segments/1581875146033.50/warc/CC-MAIN-20200225045438-20200225075438-00367.warc.gz | en | 0.94798 | 636 | 2.71875 | 3 |
Mountain Violet, Showy Violet
The genus Viola is large with over 400 species worldwide. The majority of these grow in temperate parts of the northern hemisphere with only 11 species occurring naturally in Australia. One of these, Viola betonicifolia, occurs over much of the moderate rainfall areas of eastern Australia, extending from Tasmania to Cape York. It also occurs in Papua-New Guinea. Several exotic species have become naturalised.
Plants are often found in damp, shaded forest habitats, but they may also occur in more open sclerophyll forest or on grassy hillsides, growing well on cleared land not heavily grazed. Plants occur singly although clusters are more common. Individual plants have a tufted appearance growing from 5-40 cm high depending on local conditions. When found in an exposed situation, plants may die down to a perennial rootstock, particularly during a severe winter or drought.
Viola betonicifolia will often set seed without obvious flowering, the plant producing some small, self-pollinating flowers that never open. This phenomenon is known as cleistogamy. Normal flowers are also produced. Plants flower prolifically, especially in spring. Flowers are usually 2 cm across and held singly above the foliage on slender stems. The colour may vary from pale purple to violet, fading with age. Leaves are 3-30 cm long, with a long petiole and a leaf blade resembling an arrow head.
As with many plants with a wide natural distribution, best results are often obtained by growing a local form or one from a location similar to the area in which it will be cultivated. New plants can be grown easily from seed that may be available on cultivated plants throughout the year. Like other Viola species, once a plant is established in the garden self-sown seedlings appear around the mother plant in a short time. Division of large plants during winter and the use of root cuttings are other possible methods of increasing limited stocks or maintaining selected forms.
Pests and diseases have not been observed although it is suspected that earwigs cause some damage by eating flowers.
A rockery is an ideal site for Viola betonicifolia and it can be used to advantage in small pockets of fairly deep soil where the thickened main root can establish.
Text by Peter Ollerenshaw, ANBG (1981)
Name meaning: Viola betonicifolia
Viola - the Latin name for the Violet flower;
betonicifolia - from Betonica, a genus of plants now included in Stachys; and folia from the Latin for leaf, alluding to the leaves being similar to those of Betonica | <urn:uuid:b36d32a8-f6e2-4703-8108-4f742f3f2aed> | CC-MAIN-2016-50 | http://www.anbg.gov.au/gnp/gnp11/viola-betonicifolia.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-50/segments/1480698542060.60/warc/CC-MAIN-20161202170902-00236-ip-10-31-129-80.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946553 | 550 | 3.8125 | 4 |
Nutrition is key to maintaining the function of your body, and a healthy lifestyle will benefit you in the long run (more than you know).
A good diet consists of everything in moderation. There’s fat, carbohydrates, protein and fibers… all of these should be consumed but in an intermediate level of consumption that would allow your body to maximize the benefits, yet not be overwhelmed with the particular types of nutrients.
If you want to switch up your diet and switch to that healthy lifestyle than check out these 10 foods that are the basis of a good diet and nutrition.
This nearly-magical beverage is one of the healthiest things you can put in your body. It’s packed with antioxidants that can help you lose weight. Research has shown that the active compounds in green tea can help mobilize fat from your cells. It works by boosting the effects of your fat burning hormones.
Natural yogurt contains probiotics that can improve the processes happening in your stomach. A healthy stomach can protect against leptin resistance, which is one of the hormonal reasons for obesity. Make sure you choose full-fat, natural yogurt and not the low-fat or flavored kind. The latter type of yogurt is full of sugar and associated with diabetes and heart disease.
Studies have shown that people who eat a regular oatmeal breakfast instead of cold cereal saw healthier levels of cholesterol and significant weight loss. Why? Because oatmeal provides enough fiber to keep you full and satisfied for an entire morning (or until lunchtime kicks in). Make sure you eat rolled oats rather than the sugary instant packets. | <urn:uuid:dd17a6d0-51ea-4a64-8e78-aafd22dba738> | CC-MAIN-2020-10 | https://welcometothetrailerpark.com/10-foods-you-should-be-eating-if-youre-trying-to-lose-weight/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-10/segments/1581875146341.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20200226084902-20200226114902-00004.warc.gz | en | 0.937104 | 321 | 2.890625 | 3 |
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