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By Tom Rohrer
That’s been the migratory choice for the dynamically beautiful snowy owl, which has occupied areas on the coast of Washington, particularly Damon Point in Ocean Shores.
The snowy owl’s majestic beauty and relatively easy going manner make it appealing to bird watchers and nature enthusiasts alike. Harry Potter fans will recognize the snowy owl as the same species characterized by Harry’s pet owl Hedwig.
“People seem fascinated by these birds and a lot of that is due to the fact that they’re very gorgeous and relatively calm,” said Dianna Moore of the Grays Harbor Audubon Society. “Also, they’re out in open view and make no attempt to hide in trees.”
However, Moore noted that the owls will retreat to trees or cover if humans get too close to their position. She encourages bird watchers to observe the animals from afar.
According to Moore and scientific studies on the snowy owl, a percentage of the animal’s population migrates during a period of the harsh tundra winter. However, the surge in snowy owls in Grays Harbor is likely caused by an irruption in the owl’s population. This irruption is determined by the lemming population, the primary source of food for the snowy owl. If the lemming population is high, that leads to more food for the snowy owls, and in turn, more breeding. If the lemming population decreases, the owls will search for a primary food source. This may lead the birds to return to Ocean Shores.
“This year, we’re not sure if it’s another irruption, or echo irruption,” Moore said. “The lemming population could have crashed and forced a lot of owls to search for food.”
“Damon Point is a strip of sand that has dune grass growing on it and there are lots of logs deposited there from high wave action. The owls can see from those logs and then fly out for prey,” Moore continued. ”It’s very similar to a tundra habitat in that it’s flat without much cover or trees.”
Moore noted that the majority of the snowy owls at Damon Point are younger, immature owls, identifiable by the dark spots barring across their white feathers. Adult males are very pale compared to the younger owls. Like most owls, the snowy owls hunt at night. Moore added that instead of feeding on lemmings, they will often prey on small shore birds, which are plentiful in the area.
Due to the harsh conditions on the tundra, there have been very few scientific studies on the species, adding even more to their appeal to bird watchers.
Moore wants to make sure that bird watchers and Damon Point visitors respect the bird’s habitat and privacy.
“They are calm for an owl, but they still don’t like to be harassed. People should not approach them with a camera phone to get a really close shot,” Moore said. “If the bird starts to move, don’t approach anymore. They hunt at night and are resting all day so they don’t want to be disturbed.”
Along with the Damon Point area, Moore noted she has seen television news reports of the owls staying on rooftops in the Ballard and Capitol Hill areas of Seattle. This is likely caused by the owl searching for a food source.
Local naturalists and bird watchers have enjoyed the opportunity to to view the snowy owl.
“They are a very large bird and are soft and downy looking,” Moore said. “Plus they’ve got these big eyes. That’s what makes babies and puppies cute and we as people love the big eyes. But really, they’re just plain beautiful.”
Photos courtesy of Olympia artist Kim Merriman, using a telephoto lens so she can maintain a respectful distance away from the snowy owls and not disturb them. | <urn:uuid:7d8b63e3-6091-441e-89c2-cccab5d23613> | CC-MAIN-2014-35 | http://www.thurstontalk.com/2013/02/06/snowy-owls-migrate-to-ocean-shores/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-35/segments/1409535921872.11/warc/CC-MAIN-20140909032233-00085-ip-10-180-136-8.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951863 | 859 | 2.625 | 3 |
Oregon lawmakers pass "life-saving" bill to help residents survive "scorching summer heat"
Minerva Studio (Canva Pro license.) According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, more than 1,300 people lose their lives each year due to exposure to extreme heat. In 2021, at least one hundred Oregon residents died during the summer heatwave. Many of these deaths could have been avoided if residents had access to cooling devices in their homes or an alternative place to go to escape the heat on scorching summer days.
Earth’s core may be cooling quicker than assumed: We may not be here for long
After the Big Bang, when Earth was formed, it cooled over the years to develop the crust layer, which now holds all the different life forms as we see today. However, Earth’s inner core remains molten until this day - or that is what had been assumed for long. | <urn:uuid:c6a0df8e-4fee-4756-9748-2f579c3f7819> | CC-MAIN-2022-27 | https://original.newsbreak.com/tag/cooling | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-27/segments/1656104514861.81/warc/CC-MAIN-20220705053147-20220705083147-00711.warc.gz | en | 0.966907 | 189 | 3.3125 | 3 |
Death certificates may not adequately report dementia as cause of death
The actual number of deaths linked to dementia may be about three times greater than what is reported on U.S. death certificates, according to a recent NIA-supported study. The findings were published online August 24, 2020, in JAMA Neurology.
Previous studies have established that doctors and medical examiners may be underreporting Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias as an underlying cause of death on death certificates. To investigate whether the impact from the underreporting was substantial, a research team led by investigators at Boston University compared dementia-related deaths determined by a nationally representative study to what is reported on death certificates. The researchers also calculated deaths related to cognitive impairment because about one-third of people with cognitive impairment develop dementia within five years.
The cohort analysis from the NIA-funded Health and Retirement Study (HRS) included more than 4,300 women and nearly 3,000 men who were 70 to 99 years old in 2000. The HRS is a large, nationally representative study that surveys up to 26,000 U.S. adults over the age of 50 every two years. HRS data includes validated measures of cognitive status and tracks participants from the community into nursing homes. For participants who can no longer complete the survey, the data is collected by a proxy informant, often the person’s spouse or adult child. Overall, about 14% of the participants in the recent cohort analysis had dementia, and an additional 25% had cognitive impairment without dementia. Of those who died during the study period, the proportion of dementia (22%) and cognitive impairment without dementia (29%) was higher.
The HRS analysis showed that about 13.6% of deaths during 2000 to 2009 had an underlying cause of dementia. However, on death certificates, only 5% had been assigned to dementia as an underlying cause of death. The researchers concluded that death certificates may underreport dementia as the cause of death by a factor of 2.7. If cognitive impairment was added to dementia, the underreporting factor rose to 4.8.
After analyzing subgroups of participants, the team noted that underestimating dementia as a cause of death was more likely for Black and Latino participants than white participants, for men than women, and for participants who did not graduate from high school than those with more education.
At the end of life, older adults tend to have many chronic conditions, which may include dementia, making it difficult to assign any single cause of death. The results of this study suggest that dementia may be far more commonly a primary or contributing cause of death than is reported on death certificates, and dementia may be especially underreported in Black and Latino Americans, men, and those with less than a high school education. Whereas routine death records show that dementia is the third leading cause of death, it may be even more of a burden in the U.S. than realized, the study authors noted.
This research was supported by NIA grant P30AG017265.
NIA leads NIH’s systematic planning, development, and implementation of research milestones to achieve the goal of effectively treating and preventing Alzheimer’s and related dementias. This activity demonstrates efforts toward these research milestones, such as Milestone 1.D, “Develop state-of-the-art protocol for assessing dementia on large nationally representative samples.”
Stokes AC, et al. Estimates of the association of dementia with US mortality levels using linked survey and mortality records. Journal of the American Medical Association Neurology. 2020. ePub Aug. 24;e202831. doi: 10.1001/jamaneurol.2020.2831. | <urn:uuid:1eefabdb-1aa2-4276-b0ee-88c9ee5a43fd> | CC-MAIN-2020-45 | https://www.nia.nih.gov/news/death-certificates-may-not-adequately-report-dementia-cause-death | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-45/segments/1603107880519.12/warc/CC-MAIN-20201023014545-20201023044545-00078.warc.gz | en | 0.953783 | 752 | 2.546875 | 3 |
While severe weather like hurricanes and tornadoes typically only hit particular areas of the globe, lightning can strike anywhere. And it does, a lot. A bolt of lightning flashes through the sky and hits the ground somewhere around the world about 100 times every second. That’s 8 million lightning strikes in a single day — yes, you read that right: just one day.
Now, a new study finds that lightning strikes could flash through the sky even more often than that as the planet warms, at least over the continental U.S.
For years scientists have been exploring how the steady warming of the planet might be impacting severe weather, though most of the attention has been placed on hazards like hurricanes and heavy downpours. And while those events are major killers, lightning is also a significant hazard. So far this year, 25 people have been killed by lightning strikes in the U.S., and lightning is the trigger for more than half of U.S. wildfires, putting pressure on human infrastructure as well as natural ecosystems.
But so far, relatively scant attention has been paid to how lightning might change as the planet’s temperature rises with the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. And the studies that have been done to date estimate the increase in lightning to be anywhere from 5 to 100 percent per degree Celsius rise — a strikingly wide range.
The new study, detailed in the Nov. 13 issue of the journal Science, has found a relatively simple way to use other atmospheric factors to predict changes in lightning rates. The findings suggest that lighting rates will increase 12 percent per every degree Celsius (about 2°F) rise in global temperatures. That comes to a 50 percent increase by the end of the century.
‘Beautiful’ Lightning Data
Study author David Romps, who studies atmospheric dynamics at the University of California, Berkeley, didn’t set out to study the effect of warming on lightning, but instead was trying to use lightning to “understand something about how, when, where, and why convection pops up over the United States,” he told Climate Central. (Convection is the process that drives thunderstorms.)
It just so happens that there is what Romps calls a “really beautiful” lightning dataset from the National Lightning Detection Network, which records when and where each of the approximately 20 million flashes of cloud-to-ground lightning occurs over the U.S. each year.
Somewhere during the process of exploring his initial question, Romps started to wonder if other atmospheric variables could be used to predict lightning rates. In science, “it’s rare that you end up doing what you think you’re going to do,” he said.
The particular variables he looked at can be used as measures of storm convection, the idea being that more vigorous convection is linked to more lightning. They include how heavy the rain in a storm is and how much energy is available in the atmosphere to fuel the storm’s convection.
Measurements at individual weather stations suggested these factors could say something about lightning rates, but they were fairly isolated. While he was skeptical, it was enough for Romps to start digging deeper into the data.
To start, Romps made some simple maps: One showed lightning strike data over the continental U.S. from 2011. The other combined precipitation and convection energy data for the same year (the only one for which data for all three variables was available). The two maps showed a surprising similarity, with much of the area with the most lightning also the area where the other two factors were high.
“I was puzzled by that,” Romps said. “It’s very rare in observations that you see a correlation that good, especially for three completely independent datasets.”
A graph that compared lightning with the other two factors over time was even more shocking, with the peaks and valleys of all three matching strikingly closely. Romps was, well, thunderstruck.
“That’s basically when my jaw hit the floor,” Romps said. “That’s when we knew we were really on to something.”
Romps said that match shows that using precipitation and storm energy data was “a much more robust method for predicting lightning” than other studies have previously used.
Lightning in a Warmer World
It’s also fortuitous because the latest batch of climate models from the most recent assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are the first to include those two factors, meaning Romps and his colleagues could use that model data to make a prediction of the changes to lightning rates in a warmer future.
Running the data, the team found that lightning would be expected to increase by about 12 percent per degree Celsius of warming (give or take 5 percent), with about a 50 percent rise over the 21st century. Using the 20 million-strike average, that would mean some 30 million lightning strikes per year over the continental U.S. by 2100.
The results make physical sense given that both heavy precipitation and storm energy are related to the amount of water vapor available in the atmosphere and one of the main accepted results of a warming atmosphere is also a moister one. Essentially, more moisture suggests more vigorous thunderstorms and so more lightning.
Colin Price, an atmospheric scientist at Tel Aviv University and one of the few people to look at the issue of warming and lightning, said that the results of the study were in broad agreement with ones he published for the whole globe in 1994, “so I am happy to see this study supports our earlier work.”
Price, who was not involved in the new study, said that it was “not surprising” that factors investigated in this study could say something about lightning rates. “But I am sure there are many other indices and parameters that may be just as good in predicting lightning. And the proxies will very likely vary with region and season,” he said in an email.
That variation is something the new study didn’t look at, since it examined only the continental U.S. “We don’t know how that increase is distributed over the seasons or geographically,” Romps said, and is one of the next steps in the research.
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Listen to a Glacier, Forecast a Flood | <urn:uuid:b464bae3-7e73-4498-bdf9-7909c17192f0> | CC-MAIN-2022-21 | https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/lightning-may-increase-with-global-warming/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-21/segments/1652662543264.49/warc/CC-MAIN-20220522001016-20220522031016-00336.warc.gz | en | 0.952907 | 1,359 | 4.03125 | 4 |
How to Help Your Child Make Healthy Eating Choices at School
School cafeterias give children the opportunity to become independent eaters at an early age. While it’s a great way to try new foods, it also means parents are unable to control what and how much a child consumes.
Thankfully, USDA’s regulations assist children in making better decisions by requiring cafeterias to offer more fruit, vegetables and whole grains while limiting sodium, calories and unhealthy fats. However, it’s still important to educate young children on nutrition and how to make healthy decisions on their own.
Keep these tips in mind:
- Talk it Out: Explain to your child that a balanced diet filled with fruits and vegetables is vital to well-being. Have an age-appropriate discussion on the importance of nutrition and how their food choices impact how they feel throughout the day. Explain that a healthy lunch will give him or her more energy to play at recess and do well in class.
- Prepare for the Week: Review the school lunch menu with your child each week and discuss which foods and drinks are healthy, so they will know what to choose when purchasing lunch. For more information on the school meal program, check with the cafeteria manager or on the school’s website. Many districts include a page listing of ingredients, nutritional facts, allergen information and more.
- Set an Example: The daily influence of a parent is more impactful than many people realize. Studies have shown young children’s food preferences are significantly influenced by what mothers liked, disliked and even those she had never tasted. The more excitement parents express about fruits and vegetables, the more likely their children will want to eat them, too.
- Plan a Lunch Date: The School Nutrition Association recommends parents have lunch with their child in the school cafeteria. This special one-on-one time allows moms and dads to spend extra time with their child, and encourage healthy food choices. Check with the principal or cafeteria manager first regarding visitor policies.
- Build Healthy Habits: Kids who eat with their families are less likely to snack on unhealthy foods and more likely to eat fruits, vegetables and whole grains. Although it can be challenging with busy schedules, family mealtime is key to developing healthy habits. Also, lessen the temptation to reach for processed after-school snacks by keeping fresh fruit and vegetables pre-washed, cut up and available for easy consumption.
- Make it Fun: Healthy eating habits should be introduced and reinforced in creative and playful ways. For example, make a game out of consuming colorful fruits and vegetables daily. Encourage everyone in the family to “Eat the rainbow” by consuming red, orange, yellow, green, blue or purple and white or brown produce daily to win. After school, discuss who ate the most colorful lunch. Think of a fun prize for the family member who has the most wins at the end of the week or month. The United States Department of Agriculture Choose My Plate website is a great resource for games and activities that encourage healthy choices in a positive way that kids can understand.
What are some of the ways you encourage kids to make healthy lunchroom choices? Share your tips with us by leaving a comment below.
Photo Credit: A Healthier Michigan | <urn:uuid:a25374df-f1c7-4ca6-abe6-0e89db5ae60d> | CC-MAIN-2019-18 | https://www.ahealthiermichigan.org/2017/08/23/how-to-help-your-child-make-healthy-eating-choices-at-school/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-18/segments/1555578528433.41/warc/CC-MAIN-20190420000959-20190420021741-00031.warc.gz | en | 0.952391 | 666 | 4.15625 | 4 |
Montana State Standards for Language Arts: Grade 11
MT.1. Reading: Students construct meaning as they comprehend, interpret, and respond to what they read.
1.1. Students will make predictions and describe inferences and connections within material and between new material and previous information/experiences.
1.2. Students will integrate new important print/nonprint information with their existing knowledge to draw conclusions and make application.
1.3. Students will provide oral, written, and/or artistic responses to ideas and feelings generated by the reading material, providing examples of the way these influence one's life and role in society.
1.4. Students will demonstrate understanding of main ideas and formulate arguments using supporting evidence.
1.5. Students will accurately paraphrase reading material, reflecting tone and point of view.
MT.2. Reading: Students apply a range of skills and strategies to read.
2.1. Students will decode unknown words combining the elements of phonics, grammatical structures, analysis of word parts, word connotation, and denotation and context to understand reading material.
2.2. Students will identify, analyze, and evaluate literary elements (e.g., plot, character, theme, setting, point of view, conflict).
2.3. Students will identify, analyze, and evaluate the use of literary devices (e.g., figurative language, exaggeration, irony, humor, dialogue, satire, symbolism).
2.4. Students will use features and organization of fiction and nonfiction materials to comprehend increasingly complex material (e.g., paragraphs, chapters, titles, indexes, tables of contents, graphs, charts, visuals, and methods of organization).
2.5. Students will adjust fluency, rate, and style of reading to content and purpose of the material.
2.6. Students will develop vocabulary through the use of context clues, analysis of word parts, auditory clues, and reference sources, and expand and refine vocabulary related to specific academic areas, culture, and technology.
2.7. Students will use a variety of reading strategies to comprehend complex material, including self-correcting, re-reading, using context, and adjusting rate.
2.8. Students will ask questions, check predictions, summarize, and reflect on information to monitor progress while taking responsibility for directing ones own reading.
MT.3. Reading: Students set goals, monitor, and evaluate their progress in reading.
3.1. Students will articulate and evaluate strategies to solve reading problems, self-monitor progress, and direct ones own reading.
3.2. Students will analyze reading successes and attainment of reading goals.
3.3. Students will select authors, subjects, and print and nonprint material, expressing reasons for recommendations, and information and insights gained.
MT.4. Reading: Students select, read, and respond to print and nonprint material for a variety of purposes.
4.1. Students will integrate purposes for reading into daily life (e.g., personal satisfaction, lifelong reading habits, reading as a leisure activity, sharing, and reflecting upon the reading).
4.2. Students will read to evaluate appropriate resource material for a specific task.
4.3. Students will locate, read, analyze, and interpret material to investigate a question, topic, or issue (e.g., reference material, pamphlets, book excerpts, articles, letters, and electronic information).
4.4. Students will read, analyze, and synthesize information to perform complex tasks for a variety of purposes (e.g., schedules, maps, instructions, consumer reports, and technical manuals).
4.5. Students will read and analyze works of various authors (e.g., diverse cultures, perspectives and issues, recurring themes).
4.6. Students will read, evaluate, and create material and documents related to social and civic responsibilities (e.g., letters to the editor, posters).
4.7. Students will locate, read, analyze, and evaluate information from a variety of sources (e.g., manuals, instructions, flowcharts, television, Internet).
MT.5. Reading: Students gather, analyze, synthesize, and evaluate information from a variety of sources, and communicate their findings in ways appropriate for their purposes and audiences.
5.1. Students will compare and contrast information and broad themes within and among a variety of information sources.
5.2. Students will logically synthesize information from a complex range of print and nonprint sources.
5.3. Students will apply basic principles of formal logic to print and nonprint material.
5.4. Students will analyze use of evidence, logic, language devices, and bias as strategies to influence readers.
1.6. Students will demonstrate oral, written, and/or artistic responses to ideas and feelings generated in literary works.
3.4. Students will monitor understanding by identifying and using strategies (e.g., asking probing questions, paraphrasing, interpreting, evaluating oral and visual clues).
3.5. Students will recognize and analyze points of view, purposes, emotional appeals, and logical fallacies in verbal and nonverbal messages.
3.6. Students will compare and contrast ones experiences, information, and insights with the message in a variety of communication situations.
3.7. Students will analyze and evaluate aesthetic listening experiences by examining speakers' style, interpreting characters in a dialogue, and studying the projection of emotion.
3.8. Students will identify, anticipate, and manage barriers to listening.
MT.6. Writing: Students use the inquiry process, problem-solving strategies, and resources to synthesize and communicate information.
6.1. Students will pose questions or identify problems.
6.2. Students will find, evaluate, and use a variety of technologies and information sources.
6.3. Students will identify and investigate alternative explanations or solutions, and use criteria to draw and defend conclusions based on their analysis and evaluation of the information.
6.4. Students will share information in appropriate ways for intended audiences. | <urn:uuid:bdda54f4-a21f-4192-9d14-c2609d5735c5> | CC-MAIN-2017-43 | https://www.perma-bound.com/state-standards.do?state=MT&subject=language-arts&gradeLevel=11 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-43/segments/1508187823168.74/warc/CC-MAIN-20171018233539-20171019013539-00498.warc.gz | en | 0.85473 | 1,256 | 4.0625 | 4 |
Conditional Formatting changes the font, border or colour of a cell depending on the criteria you have chosen. For example you might set a cell to go red if it went over 32 or green if a certain date is only three weeks away. This is very useful for highlighting records, eg, a temperature threshold exceeded or forthcoming subscription renewal.
Conditional formatting is a very useful tool in 2003, which has become even more powerful in 2007, because it’s not restricted to three criteria per cell.
However, the extra flexibility of 2007 also means it is easier to set up conflicting rules.
Worse than that, Excel also sets up duplicate rules in the background because they refer to a different range. This is a particular problem when one is developing rules, a process which is best done step by step (conditional formatting doesn’t always behave in the way one expects). Unfortunately having developed it for one cell, copying it forward over a range of cells, retains the original test, so there are now two rules.
I think two main rules apply with conditional formatting:
1/ Don’t have too many – it just gets confusing
2/ Define your own rules and don’t use Excel presets, because then you know what is going on | <urn:uuid:f7899220-afb8-41dd-be3e-2245204eb952> | CC-MAIN-2022-21 | https://spreadsheetexpertblog.com/2013/08/25/conditional-formatting-highlight-items-automatically/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-21/segments/1652662560022.71/warc/CC-MAIN-20220523163515-20220523193515-00467.warc.gz | en | 0.938249 | 260 | 3.03125 | 3 |
Editor's note: This article is the last of a three-part series by John Carey. Part 1, "Storm Warning: Extreme Weather Is a Product of Climate Change," was posted on June 28. Part 2, "Global Warming and the Science of Extreme Weather," was posted on June 29.
Extreme weather events have become both more common and more intense. And increasingly, scientists have been able to pin at least part of the blame on humankind's alteration of the climate. What's more, the growing success of this nascent science of climate attribution (finding the telltale fingerprints of climate change in extreme events) means that researchers have more confidence in their climate models—which predict that the future will be even more extreme.
Are we prepared for this future? Not yet. Indeed, the trend is in the other direction, especially in Washington, D.C., where a number of members of Congress even argue that climate change itself is a hoax.
Scientists hope that rigorously identifying climate change's contribution to individual extreme events can indeed wake people up to the threat. As the research advances, it should be possible to say that two extra inches (five centimeters) of rain poured down in a Midwestern storm because of greenhouse gases, or that a California heat wave was 10 times more likely to occur thanks to humans' impacts on climate. So researchers have set up rapid response teams to assess climate change's contribution to extreme events while the events are still fresh in people's minds. In addition, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is preparing a special report on extreme events and disasters, due out by the end of 2011. "It is important for us emphasize that climate change and its impacts are not off in the future, but are here and now," explained Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the IPCC, during a briefing at United Nations climate talks in Cancún last December.
The message is beginning to sink in. The Russian government, for instance, used to doubt the existence of climate change, or argue that it might be beneficial for Russia. But now, government officials have realized that global warming will not bring a gradual and benign increase in temperatures. Instead, they're likely to see more crippling heat waves. As Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told the Security Council of the Russian Federation last summer: "Everyone is talking about climate change now. Unfortunately, what is happening now in our central regions is evidence of this global climate change, because we have never in our history faced such weather conditions."
Among the U.S. public, the feeling is different. Opinion pollsand anecdotal reports show that most Americans do not perceive a threat from climate change. And a sizable number of Americans, including many newly elected members of Congress, do not even believe that climate change exists. Extreme weather? Just part of nature, they say. After all, disastrous floods and droughts go back to the days of Noah and Moses. Why should today's disasters be any different? Was the July 23, 2010, storm that spawned Les Scott's record hailstone evidence of a changing climate, for instance? "Not really," Scott says. "It was just another thunderstorm. We get awful bad blizzards that are a lot worse."
And yes, 22 of Maryland's 23 counties were declared natural disaster areas after record-setting heat and drought in 2010. "It was the worst corn crop I ever had," says fourth-generation farmer Earl "Buddy" Hance. But was it a harbinger of a more worrisome future? Probably not, says Hance, the state's secretary of agriculture. "As farmers we are skeptical, and we need to see a little more. And if it does turn out to be climate change, farmers would adapt." By then, adaptation could be really difficult, frets Minnesota organic farmer Jack Hedin, whose efforts to raise the alarm are "falling on deaf ears," he laments.
Many scientists share Hedin's worry. "The real honest message is that while there is debate about how much extreme weather climate change is inducing now, there is very little debate about its effect in the future," says Michael Wehner, staff scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and member of the lead author teams of the interagency U.S. Climate Change Science Program's Synthesis and Assessment reports on climate extremes. For instance, climate models predict that by 2050 Russia will have warmed up so much that every summer will be as warm as the disastrous heat wave it just experienced, says Richard Seager of Columbia University's Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory. In other words, many of today's extremes will become tomorrow's everyday reality. "Climate change will throw some significant hardballs at us," says Martin Hoerling, a research meteorologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo. "There will be a lot of surprises that we are not adapted to."
One of the clearest pictures of this future is emerging for the U.S. Southwest and a similar meteorological zone that stretches across Italy, Greece and Turkey. Work by Tim Barnett of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Seager and others predicts that these regions will get hotter and drier—and, perhaps more important, shows that the change has already begun. "The signal of a human influence on climate pops up in 1985, then marches on getting strong and stronger," Barnett says. By the middle of the 21st century, the models predict, the climate will be as dry as the seven-year long Dust Bowl drought of the 1930s or the damaging 1950s drought centered in California and Mexico, Seager says: "In the future the drought won't last just seven years. It will be the new norm."
That spells trouble. In the Southwest the main worry is water—water that makes cities like Los Angeles and Las Vegas possible and that irrigates the enormously productive farms of California's Central Valley. Supplies are already tight. During the current 11-year dry spell, the demand for water from the vast Colorado River system, which provides water to 30 million people and irrigates four million acres (1.6 million hectares) of cropland, has exceeded the supply. The result: water levels in the giant Lake Mead reservoir dropped to a record low in October (before climbing one foot, or 30 centimeters, after torrential winter rains in California reduced the demand for Colorado River water). Climate change will just make the problem worse. "The challenge will be great," says Terry Fulp, deputy regional director of the U.S. Department of the Interior's Bureau of Reclamation's Lower Colorado Region. "I rank climate change as probably my largest concern. When I'm out on my boat on Lake Mead, it's on my mind all the time."
The Southwest is just a snapshot of the challenges ahead. Imagine the potential peril to regions around the world, scientists say. "Our civilization is based on a stable base climate—it doesn't take very much change to raise hell," Scripps's Barnett says. And given the lag in the planet's response to the greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere, many of these changes are coming whether we like them or not. "It's sort of like that Kung Fu guy who said, 'I'm going to kick your head off now, and there's not a damn thing you can do about it,'" Barnett says.
Although efforts to fight climate change are now stalled in Washington, many regions do see the threat and are taking action both to adapt to the future changes and to try to limit the amount of global warming itself. The Bureau of Reclamation's Lower Colorado Region office, for instance, has developed a plan to make "manageable" cuts in the amounts of water that the river system supplies, which Fulp hopes will be enough to get the region through the next 15 years. In Canada, after experiencing eight extreme storms (of more than one-in-25-year intensity) between 1986 and 2006, Toronto has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to upgrade its sewer and storm water system for handling deluges. "Improved storm drains are the cornerstone of our climate adaptation policy," explains Michael D'Andrea, Toronto's director of water infrastructure management.
In Iowa, even without admitting that climate change is real, farmers are acting as if it is, spending millions of dollars to alter their practices. They are adding tile drainage to their fields to cope with increased floods, buying bigger machinery to move more quickly because their planting window has become shorter, planting a month earlier than they did 50 years ago, and sowing twice as many corn plants per acre to exploit the additional moisture, says Gene Takle, professor of meteorology at Iowa State University in Ames. "Iowa's floods are in your face—and in your basement—evidence that the climate has changed, and the farmers are adapting," he says.
Local officials have seen the connection, too. After the huge floods of 2008, the Iowa town of Cedar Falls passed an ordinance requiring that anyone who lives in the 500-year flood plain must have flood insurance—up from the previous 200-year flood requirement. State Sen. Robert Hogg wants to make the policy statewide. He also is pushing to restore wetlands that can help soak up floodwaters before they devastate cities. "Wetland restoration costs money, but it's cheaper than rebuilding Cedar Rapids," he says. "I like to say that dealing with climate change is not going to require the greatest sacrifices, but it is going to require the greatest foresight Americans have ever had."
Right now, that foresight is more myopia, many scientists worry. So when and how will people finally understand that far more is needed? It may require more flooded basements, more searing heat waves, more water shortages or crop failures, more devastating hurricanes or other examples of the increases in extreme weather that climate change will bring. "I don't want to root for bad things to happen, but that's what it will take," says one government scientist who asked not to be identified. Or as Nashville resident Rich Hays says about his own experience with the May 2010 deluge: "The flood was definitely a wake-up call. The question is: How many wake-up calls do we need?"
Reporting for this story was funded by the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. | <urn:uuid:b9ceccdb-15dc-4a7f-8e51-e7112ea9cdd8> | CC-MAIN-2021-04 | https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/extreme-future-predicting-coping-with-the-effects-of-a-changing-climate/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-04/segments/1610703565376.63/warc/CC-MAIN-20210125061144-20210125091144-00455.warc.gz | en | 0.962882 | 2,116 | 3.296875 | 3 |
ACCOUNTING TERMS - ACCOUNTING DICTIONARY - ACCOUNTING GLOSSARY
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RAN see REVENUE ANTICIPATION NOTE.
Learn new Accounting Terms
GENERAL ACCOUNTING involves the basic principles, concepts and accounting practice, recording, financial statement preparation, and the use of accounting information in management.
ACTIVITY DRIVERS, in activity based costing (ABC), activity costs are assigned to outputs using activity drivers. Activity drivers assign activity costs to outputs based on individual outputs' consumption or demand for activities. For example, a driver may be the number of times an activity is performed (transaction driver) or the length of time an activity is performed (duration driver) see DURATION DRIVERS, INTENSITY DRIVERS, TRANSACTION DRIVERS. | <urn:uuid:c1696693-8ba8-41e5-b24e-ad62913031fb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ventureline.com/accounting-glossary/R/ran-definition/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705043997/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115043-00079-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.870665 | 177 | 2.984375 | 3 |
Autism is more heritable than anorexia, alcohol dependence, depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder, according to an analysis of data from nearly 4.5 million people1.
At 64 percent, its heritability is similar to that of schizophrenia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and bipolar disorder, the new study shows.
Heritability refers to the degree to which differences in people’s genes, as opposed to environmental factors, account for their traits. The new study measures the heritability of these conditions by calculating how often pairs of siblings — who share about half their DNA — have the same diagnosis compared with half siblings, who have about one-quarter of their genes in common.
“Between conditions and disorders we see large differences in heritability estimates, and autism is one of the most heritable,” says co-lead investigator Tinca Polderman, assistant professor of complex trait genetics at VU University Amsterdam in the Netherlands.
The estimate for autism is in line with results from twin studies. Those studies show that identical twins, who have nearly identical DNA, are more likely than fraternal twins to both have autism. (Fraternal twins share about half their DNA, as other siblings do.)
“It’s reassuring,” says Sven Sandin, assistant professor of psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, who was not involved in the study. “We see again the heritability for autism is especially high, and it’s in the same range where we have estimated earlier.”
Polderman and her colleagues combed through Sweden’s Multi-Generation Register to identify siblings born in Sweden since 1932. For each sibling pair, they included the two eldest siblings in a family who were born within five years of each other. They looked at full siblings and half siblings who share a mother. The final sample includes 4,408,646 people.
The researchers identified people diagnosed with any of the eight psychiatric conditions. For autism, the study included people born since 1990, when diagnoses of the condition first appeared; the sample includes more than 1 million full siblings, 9,347 of whom have an autism diagnosis, and more than 55,000 half siblings, 1,114 of whom have an autism diagnosis.
Full-sibling pairs are more likely than half-sibling pairs to both have autism, the researchers found. They estimated that 64 percent of the variability in autism diagnoses in siblings can be explained by genetic variation.
The heritability estimates for other diagnoses vary widely, from as high as 80 percent for ADHD to as low as 30 percent for depression. The findings appeared 17 September in Psychological Medicine.
The team also looked at common genetic variants — those present in more than 1 percent of the population — in more than 333,000 people, including 18,381 with autism. The data come from the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium, an ongoing international effort to catalog variants associated with autism and other conditions.
The researchers scanned up to about 3 million sites in the genome for common variants. By comparing the patterns of variants in autistic people with those in controls, they estimated the heritability of autism at about 12 percent.
The fact that this genetics-based estimate is far lower than the sibling-based estimates suggests that common variants do not fully account for autism’s heritability.
“That suggests for autism, there’s possibly a bigger role for rare variants,” says Emma Meaburn, senior lecturer of psychological sciences at Birkbeck, University of London, who was not involved in the study.
The estimate for common-variant contribution is also likely to be low, because it is not based on the entire genome, Polderman says.
She and her colleagues are looking for common variants that can help explain the overlap in traits of autism, schizophrenia and ADHD seen in siblings. They are also using the data to predict a person’s odds of being diagnosed with one of the conditions. | <urn:uuid:b6cd29ed-4ed7-4073-8fb1-f39467b97480> | CC-MAIN-2020-16 | https://www.spectrumnews.org/news/genetics-plays-outsized-role-autism-large-study-shows/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-16/segments/1585371858664.82/warc/CC-MAIN-20200409122719-20200409153219-00007.warc.gz | en | 0.964668 | 824 | 3.328125 | 3 |
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
2004 May 12
Explanation: Comet NEAT (Q4) is showing its tails. As the large snowball officially dubbed Comet C/2001 Q4 (NEAT) falls toward the inner Solar System, it has already passed the Earth and will reach its closest approach to the Sun this coming Saturday. Reports place the comet at third magnitude, making it easily visible to the unaided eye to northern sky gazers observing from a dark location just after sunset. The above image was captured last Saturday from Happy Jack, Arizona, USA. Visible is a long blue ion tail, a blue coma surrounding the comet's nucleus, and a shorter but brighter sunlight reflecting dust tail. Q4 will likely drop from easy visibility during the next month as it recedes from both the Earth and the Sun. Another separate naked-eye comet, Comet Linear (T7), is also as bright as third magnitude and should remain bright into June.
Authors & editors:
NASA Web Site Statements, Warnings, and Disclaimers
NASA Official: Jay Norris. Specific rights apply.
A service of: LHEA at NASA / GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U. | <urn:uuid:fe8ca38a-2684-4d12-afc5-c0221f4834e5> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap040512.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571692.3/warc/CC-MAIN-20220812105810-20220812135810-00297.warc.gz | en | 0.917012 | 289 | 3.234375 | 3 |
The Wonder of Bees with Martha Kearney - Episode 2
Martha discovers a bee with deformed wing virus in one of the hives she has set up on a Suffolk wildflower meadow. With the help of a master beekeeper, she treats the hive for verroa mite. Britain's leading bee scientist explains the role of verroa in the decline of bees throughout the country.
As spring arrives, Martha witnesses the growth of the colony and watches as bee larvae hatch out. She investigates the science behind the decline of the honey bee and examines evidence that pesticides may be to blame. Back at her cottage, she tackles a colony of angry bees by replacing their queen with a more mild-mannered individual ordered online and delivered through the post, and she meets the Archbishop of Canterbury to talk about his family's love of beekeeping and why he told the bees about his girlfriends. | <urn:uuid:0a8c964a-ef70-4579-854f-03514d704f44> | CC-MAIN-2019-04 | http://elbka.com/news/wonder-bees-martha-kearney-episode-2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-04/segments/1547583745010.63/warc/CC-MAIN-20190121005305-20190121031305-00118.warc.gz | en | 0.965882 | 181 | 2.578125 | 3 |
A Fish to Feed
Come along with a toddler and Daddy as they walk to the store to buy a pet fish, and find lots to talk about along the way. They see many other fish – but where is that special “fish to feed”? Toddlers will love peeping through the holes to find the pet fish, and talking about what they see inside the different stores.
Includes a note from early literacy and language expert Dr. Betty Bardige that shows adults how everyday activities and conversation with young children offer rich opportunities to build early language. To see more language-building tips from Dr. Bardige you can visit Early Childhood Investigations.
To see more of award-winning illustrator Ying-Hwa Hu’s artwork you can visit her at www.yinghwahu.com.
“A straightforward, informative, and joyous read for both parent and child.” – Kirkus Reviews, A Featured Kids’/Teen Book Review
“In A Fish to Feed, a sweet book in which a father and son go shopping for a fish and carry it home, the board book is constructed with holes in the pages that children will enjoy playing with and looking through. The text shows how shopping, something we all do with kids, is a rich opportunity to talk. “There are so many things in this store,” says Dad. “What do you see?”” – Jarrett Dapier, “Building Better Brains,” in Children and Libraries, journal of the Association for Library Service to Children
“A Fish to Feed is an exciting new board book from the Small Talk Books® series to encourage early communication and socialization skills. . . . The conversational tone of A Fish to Feed promotes early language development and awareness, and the book’s appealing illustrations increase environmental awareness as well as the concept of cultural diversity. A Fish to Feed is a delightful experience to enhance the learning and literacy of very young children.” – Midwest Book Review
Illustrated by Ying-Hwa Hu
Published by Star Bright Books, 2015
Board book with die-cut holes, 18 pages
For ages 1-3
Un pez para alimentar / A Fish to Feed, 2016
Spanish/English bilingual edition | <urn:uuid:424e0083-22dd-4db5-83d1-692dc1291592> | CC-MAIN-2023-50 | https://ellenmayerbooks.com/books/a-fish-to-feed/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-50/segments/1700679100286.10/warc/CC-MAIN-20231201084429-20231201114429-00353.warc.gz | en | 0.933086 | 471 | 2.8125 | 3 |
Choosing the best knife for yourself and your task at hand can feel overwhelming when looking at all of the options that there are. You have to decide between steel types, blade shapes, and what the knife’s purpose is. To make this process easier for everyone, I have decided to do a beginner’s series. To start off with, I am going to define the different terms used in ranking knife steels and then go into the different popular types of steels and dig deep into their details to help you figure out which knife is your perfect option.
For starters, there are a few different terms that I should define. First off, the Rockwell Hardness Scale, this is a scale that determines the hardness of a material by a series of tests. The lower the number of Rockwell Hardness, the softer the steel. The higher the number, the harder the steel. Often times, these numbers are paired with either “HRC” or “RC”. These terms just say that the number is on the Rockwell Hardness scale, just two different ways of saying that. With steel, the hardness is often described as the strength of the steel.
Another important aspect is toughness. Often times, hardness and toughness are used as synonyms, however there is a difference. The toughness of a knife is referring to how much force the blade can endure before chipping, cracking, or breaking during heavy use. The thing about toughness and hardness is that the harder a knife is, the less tough it will be and vice versa.
The third main factor in steel is corrosion resistance. Corrosion resistance is how well the knife holds up to rust and other discolorations of the steel.
While hardness, toughness, and corrosion resistance are the three main factors in steel, there is another factor in choosing which steel to purchase. The edge retention of a knife’s steel. This is used when describing how long the blade will stay sharp after a period of usage.
Before we dive in, let’s go over the most common elements present in steel and the properties they give it.
- Iron is the main ingredient in steel.
- Carbon is one of the most important factors, as it functions as a hardening element and makes the iron stronger. Every type of steel will have some amount of carbon, and oftentimes the amount can be telling of the quality of a blade. Low carbon means there is 0.3 percent or less carbon in the alloy, medium carbon is typically between 0.4-0.7 percent, and high is generally considered 0.8 percent and above.
- Chromium is what makes stainless steel stainless. Technically all steel can rust, but types with more chromium (usually around 12-13 percent) are much less prone to it.
- Cobalt adds strength to the blade.
- Manganese hardens the blade, but also makes it brittle if added in high quantities.
- Nickel adds toughness to the blade.
- Molybdenum helps a steel maintain strength at high temperatures.
- Tungsten increases wear resistance.
- Vanadium increases wear resistance and makes the blade harder.
Different Types of Steel
Now that we all understand the basic terms used to describe the steels, let’s focus on the individual types of steel that can make up a knife blade.
Another popular steel used in knives is AUS 8 steel. This steel is also referred to as 8A steel. The Rockwell Hardness level is 57-58. One of the biggest pros about AUS 8 steel is how well it can hold an edge. It is also extremely easy to sharpen. This type of steel has .75% carbon, so this means that it is a relatively hard knife. This is a cheaper knife and for the price, it has great corrosion resistance capacities. Overall, this type of steel has a good balance of toughness, strength, edge holding, and resistance to corrosion, especially for the price. Because of its lower price, it won’t hold up forever, but is great if you are looking for a cheaper option.
VG-10 steel was originally used for kitchen cutlery, because it is one of the highest levels of stainless steels. This is also because this steel holds a great edge and has a fantastic anti-rust property. The carbon content in this steel is around 1%. This steel is one of the hardest steels and because of this, it can get brittle and chip. VG-10 steel contains vanadium which is what gives it the extra toughness. Because of the high quality of its stainless properties and its strength, VG-10 is sometimes known as a super steel. This steel is very similar to ATS-34 and 154CM steel. The Rockwell Hardness is 60. VG-10 steel originated in Japan and was first introduced in America by Spyderco. While the cost might seem steep when first looking at it, you get what you pay for and it is well worth the extra money.
While Damascus steel is a popular steel, it is very different than any of the other steels that we’ve been discussing. This steel is made out of two or more layers of different types of steel and “folding” them together. Folding, is just a specific type of welding, where the different layers of steel are fused together. After these layers are fused together, the steel is etched with acid. Because the acid reacts differently to the two different types of steel, it reveals a striped pattern out. Knives with Damascus steel has a high toughness, but the process is long and the cost of production is high. This means that Damascus blades are usually just used for the aesthetic in decorative blades. Damascus is actually considered a precious metal. These knives are usually collector’s knives. The Rockwell Hardness level of Damascus steel is a little bit trickier because there are different types of steels in it, but they usually range from a 53 to 62.
VG-1 is also known as V Gold 1 steel and is a high Carbon (C) Molybdenum (Mo) stainless steel manufactured by Takefu Special Steel Co.,Ltd. It is not the same steel as VG-10.
VG-1 has a Carbon (C) content between 0.95-1.05 %, Chromium (Cr) content between 13.0-15.0 %, Molybdenum (Mo) content between 0.2-0.4 % and contains less than 0.25 % of Nickel (Ni). During forging, Mo and Cr form hard double carbide bonds, which help improve the abrasion and corrosion resistance of the steel. It is usually heat treated to reach hardness of 58-61
Claims are made that VG-1 has better sharpness, edge retention, point strength, shock and strength characteristics than 440C, VG-10, or ATS 34 stainless steels, though any of those alloys may be better than VG-1 in individual categories.
VG-1 is also used in hairdresser’s scissors, kitchen knives and blades for food-processing machines.
440A, 440B and 440C Stainless Steels
Grade 440C stainless steel is a high carbon martensitic stainless steel. … Grade 440C is capable of attaining, after heat treatment, the highest strength, hardness and wear resistance of all the stainless alloys.
Cromova is the name Global use for their stainless steel. It is steel with 0.8 % carbon and added chrome, molybdenum and vanadium. Cromova steel has a fine grain structure and can be sharpened very sharp. It combines good cutting characteristics with good rust resistance.
Hyper Molybdenum Vanadium
This is a stain resistant steel blades that is bacteria resistant. This steel gives the blade incredible strength, toughness, and corrosion resistance. Korin Masamoto are the main manufacturer using this steel for kitchen knives. HRc: 58-59.
154 CM Steel: This is high quality steel — arguably one of the best available for knives. It has a carbon content of 1.05 percent, it holds an edge well, and has pretty good toughness for how hard the steel It is tougher than 440C and is often compared to ATS 34 because the two are so similar.
M390 Steel: M390 as 1.9 percent carbon, is very stain-resistant, and has excellent wear resistance. It has vanadium as an additive, and consequently is a popular hard steel. This is also the type of steel used most often for surgical applications.
N680 Steel: Last but not least, N680 has .54 percent carbon. This is another very hard steel that is highly stain resistant, making it good for saltwater applications.
General features of carbon steel make it perfect for Japanese blacksmiths as this steel is often used for Traditional Japanese knives. The only downside is that it’s not rustproof so a higher maintenance skills are needed.
The Japanese company Hitachi Metals makes special cutting steels which represent the highest global standard and are used for almost all the knives we offer. These Yasugi Special Steels , named after their place of origin, are produced from iron sand, the same material that was used to make the legendary Samurai swords. They have a highly pure structure and thus offer the best achievable sharpness for cutting.
Blue Paper Steel (Aogami)
High carbon steel is specifically developed for tools and knives. This one has highest wear resistance and lowest toughness. Very good steel and a very popular choice for high end Japanese kitchen knives. A lot of Japanese custom makers use it. Easy to sharpen, even high hardness. Edge holding is just outstanding. Original Japanese knives made from these materials are treated with non-corrosive, food-safe oils (e.g. camellia oil) to prevent oxidation.
White Paper Steel (Shirogami)
Identical to Blue Paper Steel (Aogami) , except for the absence of Cr and W. It’s very pure carbon steel. Very popular knife steel for high end Japanese cutlery and especially with Honyaki type blades.
Very good edge holding, very high working hardness. This means you can grind it to exceptional sharpness, which retains it for a long time. These blades are particularly suitable for the gentle preparation of foods – but they are prone to oxidation, which means your knife will rust if not taken care of.
Yellow Paper Steel (Kigami)
Better steel compared to SK series, but worse than both, Aogami and Shirogami. Used in high end tools and low/mid class kitchen knives.
SK Steel series
Solid performer as a cutlery steel. Low grade steel, mainly due to impurities. Used mainly in hand tools like axes, hammers and cheap kitchen knives.
Japanese Steel (Nihonko, Hagane, Virgin Carbon Steel)
Important steel that has been used to produce knives in Japan since ancient times, providing better sharpness than common stainless steel. The Japanese steel is a premium grade of steel that boasts extremely high carbon content. It is manufactured in limited quantities in Japan. The steel is harder than German steel and has a greater sharpening potential. It also maintains an edge longer than other lower-carbon steel formulae. These features make Japanese steel the ideal material for manufacturing high performance cutlery.
Although very sharp and durable, they are brittle and do not stand sideways pressure. NOT suitable. | <urn:uuid:88d78dd8-5d6c-491b-b696-ebf8c5b4547c> | CC-MAIN-2019-35 | https://4kitchenknives.com/category/steels | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-35/segments/1566027330913.72/warc/CC-MAIN-20190826000512-20190826022512-00459.warc.gz | en | 0.94231 | 2,385 | 2.515625 | 3 |
- freely available
Sensors 2009, 9(3), 1471-1484; doi:10.3390/s90301471
Abstract: A devastating earthquake with a magnitude of Mw 7.4 occurred on the North Anatolian Fault Zone (NAFZ) of Turkey on August 17, 1999 at 00:01:39 UTC (3:01 a.m. local time). The aim of this study is to propose a new approach to automatically identify earthquake induced damage areas which can provide valuable information to support emergency response and recovery assessment procedures. This research was conducted in the Adapazari inner city, covering a 3 × 3 km area, where 11,373 buildings collapsed as a result of the earthquake. SPOT high resolution visible infrared (HRVIR) Pan images obtained before (25 June 1999) and after (4 October 1999) the earthquake were used in the study. Five steps were employed to conduct the research and these are: (i) geometric and radiometric correction of satellite images, (ii) Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) of pre- and post-earthquake images and filtering the images in frequency domain, (iii) generating difference image using Inverse Fast Fourier Transform (IFFT) pre- and post- earthquake images, (iv) application of level slicing to difference image to identify the earthquake-induced damages, (v) accuracy assessment of the method using ground truth obtained from a 1/5,000 scale damage map. The total accuracy obtained in the research is 80.19 %, illustrating that the proposed method can be successfully used to automatically identify earthquake-induced damage areas.
Turkey is one of the most seismically active regions on the earth. Different fault systems in Anatolia and the surrounding regions were created due to the complex plate interactions among Arabia, Eurasia and Africa . The North Anatolian Fault Zone (NAFZ) and the East Anatolian Fault Zone (EAFS) are the main strike-slip fault belts in Turkey where several earthquakes have occurred, resulting in huge numbers of fatalities over the past several hundred years (Table 1).
Earthquakes and other natural hazards can cause disasters of uncontrollable magnitude when they hit large urban areas. Emergency response and early recovery assessment in earthquakes require rapid and reliable damage assessment and loss estimation. In the case of suddenly occuring earthquakes, remote sensing data can be reliably used to create fast draft damage maps of the affected urban areas which provide valuable information to support emergency response teams and decision making during the recovery process. Remotely sensed images ranging from very high resolution to medium resolution have been widely used to derive information and estimation for damage assessment [2–7]. Morevover, multitemproral remote sensing data can serve as a basic data set to support post-disaster planning.
Different remote sensing methods have been used by many scientists to identify earthquake-induced damage areas. Sertel et al. investigated the relationship between semivariogram metrics and degree of earthquake damage using transects over an earthquake area. Turker and San used differences between merged pre- and post-event Satellite Pour l’Observation de la Terre (SPOT) high resolution visible (HRV) data to reveal the location of earthquake-induced changes. Stramondo et al. used coherence and correlation maps from Advanced SAR (ASAR) and change maps from advanced space-borne thermal emission and reflection radiometer (ASTER) to analyze the capabilities and limitations of satellite remote sensing to detect damage due to earthquakes. Kaya et al. used government statistics and SPOT HRV data to estimate the proportion of collapsed buildings in an earthquake area. Although there have been a lot of earthquake damage assessment studies using different remote sensing methods, there has not been that much research on the application of Fourier Transform to satellite image for an earthquake case. This research focuses on integrated usage of Fourier Transform and level slicing to identify earthquake induced damage areas, also detailed accuracy assessment of proposed method was conducted using 1/5,000 scale damage map data and error matrix analyses.
Fourier transforms have been applied to different remote sensing applications. Lillo-Saavedra et al. used Fourier transforms to fuse panchromatic and multispectral data obtained from Landsat ETM+ sensor. Westra et al. used Fourier analysis of Moderate Resolution Image Spectrometer (MODIS) time series data to monitor the flooding extent. Pal et al. used fast Fourier transform (FFT) filter to extract linear and anomalous patterns. Their results showed that numerous lineaments and drainage patterns could be identified and demarcated by FFT filters.
In this study, the following steps were conducted to accurately identify the location and magnitude of earthquake induced damages in an urban area and to quantify the accuracy of the proposed method: (i) pre- and post-earthquake images of the region were geometrically and atmospherically corrected, (ii) Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) was applied to pre- and post-earthquake images and images were filtered in the frequency domain, (iii) a difference image was generated using Inverse Fast Fourier Transform (IFFT)-pre- and post-earthquake data, (iv) level slicing method was applied to difference image to identify the earthquake-induced damages, (v) accuracy assessment was performed by comparing the results of the proposed method with the 1/5,000 scale damage map of the earthquake area.
2. The Study Area and Data
A devastating earthquake with a magnitude of Mw 7.4 occurred on the North Anatolian Fault Zone (NAFZ) of Turkey on August 17, 1999 at 00:01:39 UTC (3:01 a.m. local time). The center of the earthquake was at 40.74 N., 29.86 E. The earthquake struck Kocaeli and surrounding cities, namely Adapazari, Golcuk and Yalova, and brought about massive destruction to these cities and their surrounding rural areas. This was one of the most destructive earthquakes of the Twentieth Century considering the amount of damage and number of casualties. At least 17,118 people were killed, approximately 50,000 injured and the estimated financial loss in Istanbul, Kocaeli and Adapazari was 3 to 6.5 billion U.S. dollars [3, 5, 10].
This research investigates the earthquake induced changes in the city center of Adapazari where the recorded number of collapsed buildings was 11,373 . The district of Adapazari is located in the northeastern part of the Marmara Region, Turkey, covering 29°57′–30°53′ N and 40° 17′–41°13′ E. The population of the Adapazari inner city was 169,099, 184,013, and 172,000 in 1990, 1997, and 2000, respectively .
SPOT HRVIR panchromatic images obtained before (25 June 1999) and after (4 October 1999) the earthquake were used in the research. These images have 10 m spatial and 8 bit radiometric resolution. The 1/5,000 scale digital damage map illustrating the degree of earthquake damage was used to analyze the accuracy of the proposed method. This map was produced by local and federal authorities by conducting a field survey on the building base after the earthquake.
3.1. Radiometric Normalization and Geometric Correction
Both images were first geometrically corrected into Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) projection using first order polynomials and appropriate Ground Control Points (GCP) collected from topographic maps. Then, radiometric normalization was employed using a histogram matching algorithm.
3.2. Fourier Transform
Any one-dimensional function, f(x) (which might be a row or column of pixels), can be represented by a Fourier series composed of some sine and cosine terms and their associated coefficients combination. Different spatial frequencies over an image can be represented by many sine and cosine terms and with their associated coefficients. Fourier series are effective to identify and quantify spatial frequencies [12,13]. Since an earthquake changes the spatial structure of a related area because of collapsed or damaged buildings, roads etc., Fourier series can be used to identify different spatial frequencies in images obtained before and after the earthquake which indeed lead information about the earthquake-induced damages.
M = the number of pixels horizontally
N = the number of pixels vertically
u,v = spatial frequency variables
e = 2.71828, the natural logarithm base
j = the imaginary component of a complex number
Once the FFT is applied, a raster image from the spatial domain is converted into a frequency domain image. The Fourier image can be edited (mainly using filters) to reduce noise, to identify specific features or to remove periodic features. After editing the Fourier image, it is transformed back into spatial domain using Inverse Fast Fourier Transform (IFFT) equation (Equation 2) :
3.3. Difference Image and Level Slicing
A difference image was calculated by subtracting the inverse Fourier transformed post- and pre-earthquake images. The difference image then divided into slices based on the number of bins (10 for this research) using the following equations:
DNmax = Maximum value of Digital Numbers
DNmin = Minimum value of Digital Numbers
DNin = Input Digital Number
DNout = Output Digital Number after level slicing
DNout values obtained after the level slicing were categorized as either damaged or non-damaged based on their values. Lower DNout values represent the non-damaged areas whereas higher values represent damaged areas.
3.4. Accuracy Assessment
The inner city of Adapazari was divided into ninety nine blocks of 300 m x 300 m size and these blocks were used for the detailed accuracy assessment procedure. The results obtained after the level slicing of the difference image (calculated from inverse Fourier transformed images) illustrates the damaged and non-damaged areas. These areas were compared with the 1/5,000 scale damage map for each block on a parcel basis to investigate the applicability of this method to automatically identify earthquake-induced damage. The number of parcels in each block was evaluated individually and error matrix for each block was created as shown in Figure 2.
Each block has four values corresponding to parcels identified as damaged both in the damage map and with the proposed method (cell 1), parcels identified as non-damaged both in the damage map and with the proposed method (cell 4), parcels identified as damaged in the damage map but non-damaged with the proposed method (cell 3) and parcels identified as non-damaged in the damage map but damaged with the proposed method (cell 2). Overall accuracy of each block was calculated by summing diagonal elements and dividing them to total number of parcels within that block. The equation of the overall accuracy for a block based on the values described in Figure 2 is as follows:
After calculating the overall accuracy of each block, total accuracy of the proposed method was calculated by rationing the sum of diagonals of all blocks to total number of parcels of all blocks. The performance of the proposed method was evaluated considering the total accuracy. Figure 3 shows the steps conducted during the study and this figure is also a summary of the methodology section.
The original pre- and post-earthquake images are shown in Figures 4 a and b and the FFT images generated from these data are illustrated in Figures 4 c and d. As a result of collapsed buildings and roads, spatial structure and texture of the post-earthquake image had changed. This caused differences in spatial frequency which can be determined via Fourier Transform. The differences in spatial frequency for pre- and post-earthquake data can be identified from Figures 4 c and d.
The low frequencies are plotted near the origin (center) while the higher frequencies are plotted further out. Generally, the majority of the information in an image is in the low frequencies indicated by the bright areas at the center of the Figures 4 c and d.
High pass filter was applied to satellite images in frequency domain to delineate the border of linear objects like roads and buildings precisely. Filters were applied to the low frequencies which are around the center for both pre- and post-earthquake data. After the filtering, IFFT was applied and edited Fourier images were converted back into the spatial domain.
After the visual interpretation of IFFT images, a difference image was generated by subtracting post-IFFT-image and pre-IFFT-image. Level slicing method with 10 slices was conducted to identify the damaged and non-damaged areas. Different numbers of levels were tried to find out the optimum number of slices and the analyses shows that having a slice number higher than 10 did not contribute significant information since only a few number of pixels was assigned to a slice. The histogram of the difference image was investigated to see the general distribution of data and to determine a threshold value for damaged and non-damaged regions. Further analyses were conducted with different threshold values to find out the most appropriate value for the study to identify the changes. Standard deviation (σ) and mean (µ) values obtained from the difference image were used for the analysis. 3σ, 2.5σ, 2σ, 1.8σ and 1.6σ, 1.5σ and1.4σ were tried and 1.4σ was found as the best threshold value to determine changes. Using this threshold value, slices including data between µ-1.4σ and µ+1.4σ were assigned as non-damaged areas whereas slices outside this range were assigned as damaged areas. Figure 5 shows the result of level sliced-difference image and blocks overlaid on this image with parcel boundaries.
Damaged areas obtained from remote sensing methods were compared with the 1/5,000 scale damage map to quantify the accuracy of the proposed method. Figure 6 shows the damage map and blocks where the detailed accuracy assessment was conducted and error matrixes created.
Comparisons were conducted for each block in parcel base. Number of damaged or non-damaged parcels within a block were calculated from difference image (Figure 5) and damage map (Figure 6). Table 2 includes each block with box number (BOX NO), box number are called based on their row and column location. For example, BOX NO 1–2 is corresponded to the box at row 1 and column 2 in Figure 5 and 6. Each block has four values corresponding to status of parcels as explained in Section 3.4. N/A is corresponded to not available meaning that there is either no parcel or damage data in those regions. Based on Table 2, the corresponding values of each cell for BOX 1–2 will be as following:
Cell 1: parcels identified as damaged both in damage map and with the proposed method, this value is 3 for block 1–2.
Cell 2: parcels identified as non-damaged in damage map but damaged with the proposed method, 4 for block 1–2.
Cell 3: parcels identified as damaged in damage map but non-damaged with the proposed method, 1 for block 1–2.
Cell 4: parcels identified as non-damaged both in damage map and with the proposed method, 6 for block 1–2.
In most cases parcels identified as damaged in the damage map but non-damaged with the proposed method (cell 3) occurred because there were only one or two collapsed buildings within a parcel which could not be identified using SPOT images. Block 1–2, 1–3, 1–10, 4–5 are examples of this situation. On the other hand, most of the parcels having more than three collapsed buildings were easily identified using the proposed method. Higher resolution satellite images should be used to identify collapsed buildings individually.
The overall accuracy of each block ranges from 50 % to 100 % (Figure 7). Most of the blocks have accuracy value higher than 75 %. The minimum accuracy was obtained for Block 1–10, because there are three damaged parcels and two of these parcels include only one collapsed building which is hard to identify with current spatial resolution. Most of the parcels which have plenty of collapsed buildings were easily identified with 75 % or higher accuracy.
Total accuracy of the proposed method was calculated by rationing the sum of diagonals of all blocks to total number of parcels. The total accuracy obtained from this ratio is 80.19 %. The results illustrated that the proposed method can be successfully used to identify earthquake-induced damage areas automatically. Considering the spatial resolution of the satellite image used in this study, this accuracy value is reasonable. The results derived from this research can provide important information to many decision-makers and local authorities to determine location and magnitude of destructions and conduct emergency operations. However, depending on the end-user needs, if higher accuracy value is desired, high resolution satellite image should be used.
Remotely sensed data are crucial for disaster management, and rapid and reliable information extraction from these data is an important source for decision-making. Quick identification of heavily damaged areas in a disaster provides key information on potential damage and losses to buildings, transportation systems, industrial facilities and critical emergency facilities. These data can be used by urban planners and emergency managers to manage vulnerabilities of a region and develop risk mitigation plans.
This research proposed a new approach which is the integration of FFT and level slicing to accurately identify the location of the damaged areas caused by an earthquake. A difference image obtained from IFFT-pre- and post-earthquake data can provide significant information about the location and degree of earthquake induced damage areas. Most of the parcels which include more than three collapsed buildings were easily determined using the proposed method. The total accuracy of the method is calculated for pre-defined blocks in parcel basis and found to be 80.19 %. Higher resolution satellite images should be used to identify collapsed buildings individually. However, in some cases high resolution data of the region is not available and available satellite images of the region obtained before and after the disaster have to be used. Therefore, it is important to process the available data set rapidly and accurately and this research proposed an approach to fulfill this aim.
With the use of the proposed method, emergency managers, risk managers, and public policy/decision makers can understand the impact of earthquakes, identify the heavily damage areas to direct the emergency-response teams and incorporate the results into preparedness programs and early warning systems.
The author would like to thank the Istanbul Technical University Director for the SPOT HRVIR images and the ITU Research Foundation for funding.
References and Notes
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|17 August 1668||Anatolia||8.0||8,000|
|9 August 1912||Murefte (Ottomon Empire)||7.8||2,800|
|3 October 1914||Burdur (Ottoman Empire)||7.0||4,000|
|26 December 1939||Erzincan||7.8||32,700|
|26 November 1943||Ladik, Samsun||7.6||4,000|
|18 Mart 1953||Gonen||7.3||1,073|
|19 August 1966||Varto, Mus||6.8||2,529|
|28 March 1970||Gediz||6.9||1,086|
|30 October 1983||Erzurum||6.9||1,342|
|17 August 1999||Izmit||7.2||11,718|
|BOX NO||PARCELS||BOX NO||PARCELS||BOX NO||PARCELS||BOX NO||PARCELS||BOX NO||PARCELS|
© 2009 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland This article is an open-access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/). | <urn:uuid:328baf1d-6447-4faf-b57f-ac90702f2a9c> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/9/3/1471/htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501170609.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104610-00108-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.909283 | 4,797 | 2.53125 | 3 |
|home > pagan origins > heaven||
|Heaven on High -- Pagan Gods lived there first|
Christians adopted the Pagan cosmology jot and tittle The Earth is the center of the universe. The moon, sun, planets and stars go around the Earth in perfect circles attached to perfect celestial spheres -- the heavens had to be perfect because they are the realm of God.
For the ancients, people are composed of body, soul, and divine intellect. At death the soul and intellect ascend to the moon, leaving the outer shell of the body back on Earth. The divine intellect leaves the soul on the moon and rises to the sphere of the sun and God.
For the ancients this wasn't allegory, it was the rational and literal explanation of the physical structure of the universe -- and man's place in it.
For Christians, people are composed of body and soul. At death the soul ascends to heaven, leaving the outer shell of the body back on Earth. The soul ascends to heaven and the sphere of God.
the Christians for 1700 years this wasn't allegory, it was the rational
and literal explanation of the physical structure of the universe -- and
man's place in it. So when Galileo saw and described mountains on the
moon and moons orbiting Jupiter -- both observable facts disproving the
divine perfection of the heavens -- he shook the foundations of the west's
three thousand of year old Pagan-Christian cosmology. He published Dialogue
on the Two Chief World Systems in 1632; the next year the Church banned
the book and tried Galileo for heresy. | <urn:uuid:46932603-51ae-41cd-b2c9-1e9467d74f01> | CC-MAIN-2022-27 | http://www.entheology.org/POCM/pagan_origins_heaven.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-27/segments/1656103324665.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20220627012807-20220627042807-00543.warc.gz | en | 0.897705 | 346 | 2.765625 | 3 |
Historian David Roberts says there is not much known about the Barbara, but there are records of her being constructed as a large square-rigger in Sunderland, near Newcastle, on England's northeast coast in 1877.
Barbara was an "iron-clad" ship built by W. Doxford and Sons, and weighed 1,108 gross tons, according to historical records kept between 1881 and 1882. "She would have been a typical shipping vessel of that time in regards to size and weight," says Roberts.
She measured 73-1/2 feet, with a 20-foot beam and a 10-foot draft. It took eight months to build her, and Liverpool was her home port. "We have not been able to find any photographs of her, and we think it's because photographs were just becoming popular at the time and were very expensive," says Rich Hughes, the diver who found the pocket watch at the Barbara wreck site. Hughes says the search for renderings of the vessel will continue.
Roberts believes Barbara was more than capable of sailing in the gale the night of Nov. 22, 1881, had Capt. John Jones stayed on his northeast course toward Liverpool. Driven by the southwest winds of a gale approaching from the south on a large, rising spring tide, the ship missed the St. George's Channel by some 30 nautical miles to the east. The captain also was struggling with limited visibility in a driving rain.
The collision on the rocky coast near Pembrokeshire occurred around 10 p.m., according to an account by another local ship, the Ocean Monarch I. "[The cliffs] would've been a devastating sight for Capt. Jones, as he would've known instantly the ship was doomed," Roberts says. "The anchor was dropped, but to no avail, as the local seabed is light sand."
Waves were reportedly crashing 30 feet up the cliffs, and the water temperature was around 48 F, according to the Ocean Monarch I logs.
Roberts assumes that since Jones made the mistake of heading straight for the cliffs rather than the channel, he would be the one to stay with the ship and give the rest a chance for survival. He was eventually washed overboard "in taking to the rigging," according to a news report. His was the only death among the crew.
See related article -
This article originally appeared in the July 2010 issue. | <urn:uuid:387a6463-3f55-4f50-ad0e-2d31d3f54da6> | CC-MAIN-2022-05 | https://www.soundingsonline.com/features/historian-says-ship-was-doomed | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-05/segments/1642320299852.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20220116093137-20220116123137-00374.warc.gz | en | 0.990019 | 494 | 2.546875 | 3 |
My Schoendorf line lived for several generations in Peppenkum . Although now a part of Germany, this area was ruled at various times by both France and Bavaria. Records for this predominantly Catholic area are written in at least three different languages, Latin, French and German, depending on the period and context of the document. For example, I have three different documents (all available at the Family History Library). The first is from a marriage record in a church register from 1782 for Johann Georg Schoendorf and Catherine Conrad.
|Source: Film 351837|
Next is the marriage record for their son Johann Schoendorf and his wife Anna Maria Klinlger from 1817.
|Source: Film 351839|
You may have noticed the similarities between the French and Latin words for year an and anno and those for thousand mil and millesimo. This is because French, like all Romance languages, descends from Latin.
The final record, from 1866, is the civil registration of the birth of Caspar Schoendorf, the grandson and great grandson of the above couples.
|Source : Film 1057430|
Because English is a Germanic language, you will notice the similarities between German and English. The word Jahr, where the initial J is pronounced like English Y, is similar to the English word year, and tausend is very close to thousand.
The first few words in all three documents contain the same two words, "year" and "thousand". Think of these as keywords; since you are very likely to encounter them in a document, they can help you identify the language. It may not help for every record, but it is at least one way of narrowing down the possibilities. | <urn:uuid:861827bc-3740-4920-8ec3-63e7ed0c56bc> | CC-MAIN-2015-35 | http://linguistgenealogist.blogspot.com/2012/03/tip-for-identifying-language-of.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-35/segments/1440644062782.10/warc/CC-MAIN-20150827025422-00142-ip-10-171-96-226.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94876 | 365 | 2.859375 | 3 |
68000 MACHINE LANGUAGE COURSE PART I by Mark van de Boer
Originally published in ST NEWS Volume 1 Issue 6, launched on
November 15th 1986.
As the title already says this is the first part of an 68000
assembly language programming course. This course is intended for
people who already have a little experience with programming in
assembly language on microprocessors like the 6502 (6510 is in
fact the same) and the 68xx (like 6800, 6801, 6805, 6809) series.
In this course these two microprocessor-families will be
referenced by their most famous members, the 6502 and the 6809. At
this time it is not exactly known how many articles this course
will have. I think it will be about six articles long.
Now I will describe some features of the 68000. The 68000 is a
sixteen-bit microprocessor. This means that an opcode is always
sixteen bits (On the 6502 and 6809 an opcode is 8 bits, therefore
they are called 8-bit microprocessors). The databus of the 68000
is 16 bits wide, this means that 16 bits can be transferred at
once by the 68000 (The 6502 and 6809 both have a databus that is
eight bits wide, so they can transfer 8 bits at once).
Another important feature of the 68000 is its impressive set of
registers. First there are the eight data registers, numbered D0-
D7. They are 32 bits wide and can be used for operations on 8-bit,
16-bit and 32-bit quantities. Data registers can be compared with
the A-register (Accumulator) on the 6502 and 6809, their
function same, but the use of the data registers is much more
convenient. Second, there are the eight address registers,
numbered from A0-A7. They are 32 bits wide as well and their only
use is in addressing memory. However, the upper 8 bits are
ignored by the 68000 since its address bus is 'only' 24 bits
wide, meaning that the 68000 can address up to 16 megabytes of
memory. Register A7 has a special function; it is called the
system stackpointer. This means that if you execute a JSR
instruction, some data will be saved on the address contained in
this register. By the way, you can use every address register
very easily as a stackpointer. The third class consists of one
register, the PC (program counter). This register always contains
the address of the instruction to be executed next. Of course,
the upper eight bits of the PC are also ignored. The fourth class
consists of one 16 bit register, the status register, called SR.
This register is built up like this:
| T | | S | | I0| I1| I2| | | | X | N | Z | V | C |
system-byte | user-byte
The upper 8 bits are called the system byte. This byte contains
information that is important to the system. Normally you can not
change this byte if you run an application. Bit 15 is called the
trace-bit. If this bit is set, every time after executing an
instruction the 68000 will generate an exception (This is called
an interrupt on the 6502 and 6809). This is especially useful when
debugging programs. Bit 13 is called the supervisor bit. When this
bit is set the 68000 is in supervisor mode; when this bit is
cleared, however, the 68000 is in user mode. When executing in
supervisor mode, the 68000 can execute the so called privileged
instructions, which are not available in user mode. For example,
it is illegal trying to change the upper 8 bits of the SR when in
user mode. Bits 8, 9 and 10 are called the interrupt mask. In
total they can contain eight different values ranging from zero to
seven. For instance, if bits 8 and 10 are set and bit 9 is
cleared, the value of the interrupt mask is 5. This means that
only interrupts with a level of 5 and higher are recognized by the
68000 and interrupts with a level lower than 5 are ignored.
Interrupts of level 7 can be considered as non maskable interrupts
(compare this to the NMI on the 6502 and 6809). The lower 8 bits
are called the conditioncode register, CCR (this can be
compared to the CC of the 6502 and 6809). The CCR contains 5 bits,
which contain useful data. Bit 0 is the carry-flag (C), bit 1 is
the overflow-flag (V), bit 2 is the zero-flag (Z), bit 3 is the
negative-flag (N). The meanings of these bits are exactly the
same as on the 6502 and 6809. Then there is bit 4 which is called
the extend-flag (X). It is nearly exactly the same as the carry-
flag, but is not affected by every instruction that affects the
carry-flag. This feature of the extend-flag is especially useful
when using multiple precision arithmetic, e.g. adding 64-bit
Another feature of the 68000 is its ability to access three data
formats: byte (8 bits), word (16 bits) and longword (32 bits). You
can indicate this with a suffix in the mnemonic field. The
suffixes are .b for byte, .w for word and .l for longword. E.g.
asr.b d0 , asr.w d0 , asr.l d0. These instructions shift
data register d0 one place to the right.
I think this is enough new stuff for today. Next time I will
explain the addressing modes of the 68000. If you have any
comments or questions on this article, please write to the
correspondence address and I'll take your notes into account.
A good Motorola MC 68000 book is:
The Motorola 68000 programming guide, which unfortunately is not
available in the stores.
Further there are a number of books on the 68000. I would like to
mention the book written by Lance Leventhal & Gerry Kane, which I
think gives good value for its money. Another good book is Steve
Williams' "Programming the 68000".
The text of the articles is identical to the originals like they appeared in old ST NEWS issues. Please take into consideration that the author(s) was (were) a lot younger and less responsible back then. So bad jokes, bad English, youthful arrogance, insults, bravura, over-crediting and tastelessness should be taken with at least a grain of salt. Any contact and/or payment information, as well as deadlines/release dates of any kind should be regarded as outdated. Due to the fact that these pages are not actually contained in an Atari executable here, references to scroll texts, featured demo screens and hidden articles may also be irrelevant. | <urn:uuid:29e91b0b-47ae-43e5-a954-8f3f706922dc> | CC-MAIN-2019-39 | https://st-news.com/en/issues/st-news-volume-1-compendium/education/mc-68000-part-i/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-39/segments/1568514572516.46/warc/CC-MAIN-20190916080044-20190916102044-00342.warc.gz | en | 0.916161 | 1,516 | 3.125 | 3 |
The idea of Europe has fallen into a strange twilight today…Boundaries appear once again in their immovable significance; the antithetical character of nationalism could become stronger than the European fellowship that has scarcely begun to grow. It must be demonstrated anew whether Europe is only an idea or a real power for reconciliation. (Europe – Hopes and Dangers, 1990)
Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI predicted the collapse of the European Union. I do not mean that he declared it grandly (or even authoritatively). Rather, through his books, articles, and quite a few sermons, he delivered a general syllogism:
I. Any unity rooted in mere economic interest is a precarious one.
II. The EU is a fundamentally monetary union (without the roots required to sustain genuine human community).
III. The EU is precarious.
As the world reels and celebrates over the grand British departure from the European Union, a moment of reflection on this enduring warning seems in order.
Europe, and, by extension, the Western world, has only ever come close to unity by virtue of a common creed. In Europe: Today and Tomorrow, Benedict roots the idea of Europe in the Christianized Roman Empire which, “in connection with the book of Daniel, the Roman Empire–renewed and transformed by the Christian faith–was considered to be the final and permanent kingdom in the history of the world.”
Despite this “New Rome” taking on unique forms in the East and West, “there were still sufficient unifying elements to make one continent of these two worlds: in the first place, their common heritage of the Bible and of the early Church…the same idea of empire, their basic understanding of the Church, and hence also the common fund of ideas concerning laws and legal instruments…[and] monasticism, which among the great movements of history had remained the essential guarantor not only of cultural continuity, but above all of fundamental religious and moral values, of man’s awareness of his ultimate destiny; and as a force prior and superior to political authority, it became the source of the rebirths that were necessary again and again.” (Europe: Its Spiritual Foundations, 2000)
A union without genuine cultural unity, shared mission, and a rooted sense of value will not penetrate to the lowest levels of the community as a felt phenomenon of familial relation. Both the arguments for and against the British exit — focused as they were on the relative economic benefits of remaining or leaving the European Union — showed that whoever won, Europe had already lost. A unity of self-interested nation-states is about as stable as a family of self-interested brothers and sisters. Without an ethical and spiritual unity, it is only a question of time before a person, a community, or a nation asks, “And what is this communion doing for me?” Again, Benedict noted this rather incisively: “Over the last fifty years, this [monetary] aspect of European unification has become ever more dominant, indeed, almost exclusively influential. The common European currency is the clearest expression of this in the work of European unification: Europe appears as an economic and monetary union, which as such participates in the formation of history and lays claim to a space of its own.” (Reflections on Europe, 2001)
The continued effort of the European Union to achieve unity through money and national self-interest has kept it far from Benedict’s healing advice: “Europe, as a political idea, must finally replace the model of the nation state with a generous concept of cultural fellowship, with a solidarity that embraces all of mankind.” (Europe: Its Spiritual Foundations, 2000)
Benedict’s basic thesis — that true unity depends on the pre-economic and even pre-political foundations of value, morality, mission, and creed — has a lesson for us ex-Europeans on the other side of the Atlantic. Populism, and even racist populism, is not simply the result of poverty or economic crisis. It is very often an evil reaction against a feigned togetherness. For while we seldom hate a person simply for their differences, we are very often tempted to hate a person when we are pushed together, told that we are neighbors and friends when there is no tangible bond of unity between us — some shared truth, history, or creed. This could never justify the anti-immigrant sentiments that strangle American politics (and, at least in the popular press, fueled Brexit) but it does go a long way towards explaining them. We are an over-sized nation claiming unity in transient third terms: a national economy, corporate franchises, vague patriotic stereotypes, and an increasingly homogeneous culture.
Genuine unity needs a genuine third term. For Benedict, this third term must be something beyond the political and the economic spheres, beyond even culture and race. For Benedict, the unity of man only attains its fullness in the religious sphere, precisely because the Creator of mankind is both eminently personal and eminently common to all men. Benedict does not advocate a homogeneous religious culture. Rather, he seems to believe that a common faith, or, at the very least, a common recognition of being a nation “founded in faith,” is the essential basis by which we are free to practice tolerance towards other religions, rather than submitting them to a reductive and violent secularism:
Unless we embrace our own heritage of the sacred, we will not only deny the identity of Europe. We will also fail in providing a service to others to which they are entitled. To the other cultures of the world, there is something deeply alien about the absolute secularism that is developing in the West. They are convinced that a world without God has no future. Multiculturalism itself thus demands that we return once again to ourselves. (Europe and Its Discontents, 2006)
The banishment of Christian roots does not reveal itself as the expression of a higher tolerance, which respects all cultures in the same way, not wishing to privilege any, but rather as the absolutizing of a pattern of thought and of life that are radically opposed, among other things, to the other historical cultures of humanity.
The real opposition that characterizes today’s world is not that between various religious cultures, but that between the radical emancipation of man from God, from the roots of life, on one hand, and from the great religious cultures on the other. If there were to be a clash of cultures, it would not be because of a clash of the great religions which have always struggled against one another, but which, in the end, have also always known how to live with one another but it will be because of the clash between this radical emancipation of man and the great historical cultures.
Thus, even the rejection of the reference to God, is not the expression of a tolerance that desires to protect the non-theistic religions and the dignity of atheists and agnostics, but rather the expression of a conscience that would like to see God cancelled definitively from the public life of humanity, and relegated to the subjective realm of residual cultures of the past.
Relativism, which is the starting point of all this, thus becomes a dogmatism which believes itself to be in possession of the definitive scope of reason, and with the right to regard all the rest only as a stage of humanity, in the end surmounted, and that can be appropriately relativized. In reality, this means that we have need of roots to survive, and that we must not lose sight of God, if we do not want human dignity to disappear. (Lecture, 2005)
Without a recognition (even a non-believing recognition) of Europe’s Christian roots, a genuine European unity will end in Brexit after Brexit, maintaining itself only “when the going is good” — a farce of fellowship that masks the monetary interest of its individual members. The situation is not so different in the United States. If we do not find some pre-political, pre-economic ground of our fellowship, we will perish as a nation. The old saying holds true: we either serve God or Mammon. To it, Benedict adds that we are only unified in God or in Mammon — and the latter is a shaky union indeed. | <urn:uuid:6a580d1f-dbe7-48c2-ab38-1578bb72b4d1> | CC-MAIN-2018-30 | https://bad-catholic.com/2017/02/17/how-benedict-xvi-predicted-brexit/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-30/segments/1531676591543.63/warc/CC-MAIN-20180720061052-20180720081052-00438.warc.gz | en | 0.959221 | 1,711 | 2.59375 | 3 |
An absorbing-layer-stack model allows quantitative analysis of the light flux in flowers and the resulting reflectance spectra. It provides insight in how plants can optimize their flower coloration for attracting pollinators.
The coloration of flowers is due to the combined effect of pigments and light-scattering structures. To interpret flower coloration, we applied an optical model that considers a flower as a stack of layers, where each layer can be treated with the Kubelka-Munk theory for diffusely scattering and absorbing media. We applied our model to the flowers of the Chilean Bellflower, Nolana paradoxa, which have distinctly different-colored adaxial and abaxial sides. We found that the flowers have a pigmented, strongly scattering upper layer, in combination with an unpigmented, moderately reflecting lower layer. The model allowed quantitative interpretation of the reflectance and transmittance spectra measured with an integrating sphere. The absorbance spectrum of the pigment measured with a microspectrophotometer confirmed the spectrum derived by modeling. We discuss how different pigment localizations yield different reflectance spectra. The absorbing layer stack model aids in understanding the various constraints and options for plants to tune their coloration. | <urn:uuid:8e17bc0f-9040-481e-a8cc-ef61f45a8032> | CC-MAIN-2021-39 | https://research.rug.nl/nl/publications/coloration-of-the-chilean-bellflower-inolana-paradoxai-interprete | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-39/segments/1631780057447.52/warc/CC-MAIN-20210923195546-20210923225546-00021.warc.gz | en | 0.867598 | 247 | 3.0625 | 3 |
Corporal Punishment on Decline in N.C. Public Schools
Corporal punishment, once a standard behavioral tool in schools, is becoming less common in North Carolina. Teachers are now trained to use positive reinforcement, which research shows is more effective.
By Marisa Grant
A recent study by Action for Children North Carolina shows that the use of corporal punishment is on the decline in the state’s public school system. During the 2012-13 school year, there were 184 reported incidents of corporal punishment, down from 404 the previous year.
Of 115 school districts, the use of corporal punishment remains in only six: Robeson, Graham, Swain, Madison, McDowell and Onslow.
Tom Vitaglione, a senior fellow with Action for Children North Carolina, said the decline in the use of corporal punishment is a result of “research that has found no academic benefit to hitting students. Districts have switched to other methods of discipline that are associated with positive academic outcomes. The most popular of these is Positive Behavior Intervention and Support.”
Positive Behavior Intervention and Support (PBIS) involves a tiered-system approach in which teachers define behavioral expectations, outline consequences for problem behavior, develop methods of increasing communication between home and school and reward appropriate behavior.
A 2013 annual report from the N.C. PBIS Initiative indicates that there is a continued correlation between positive support in the classroom and academic success. The report found that during the 2011-12 school year, high schools that implemented PBIS had higher graduation rates than the statewide average.
Corporal punishment is defined as “the intentional infliction of pain upon the body of a student as a disciplinary measure.” In North Carolina, school officials are allowed to use wooden paddles and there are no restrictions on the number of times a student is allowed to be struck.
In fact, officials do not have to report the number of times a student was hit, only that corporal punishment was used. State law requires that the use of corporal punishment cannot result in any student requiring medical care beyond first aid.
Robeson County saw the highest use of corporal punishment in the state, with 141 of the 184 reported instances, or 76 percent. Representatives of the school district superintendent’s office and the support group Communities in Schools of Robeson County declined to comment on the study.
Corporal punishment has been prohibited by school authorities in 99 districts. In 10 districts, the practice is formally allowed but officials have chosen not to use it as a method of punishing students. Those districts are Alleghany, Alexander, Ashe, Bladen, Caswell, Macon, Person, Randolph, Stanly and Thomasville.
Opponents to the use of corporal punishment in the state include the state board of education, Superintendent June Atkinson, the N.C. Association of Educators and the N.C. PTA.
Multiple attempts to obtain a comment from Gov. Pat McCrory’s office about the use of corporal punishment in public schools were unsuccessful.
Cover cartoon of students receiving the cane, 1888. Copied and digitised from an image appearing in Queensland figaro, 28 July 1888, p. 140. Courtesy wikimedia creative commons.
Tagged Action for Children NC, Alexander County, Alleghany County, Ashe County, Bladen County, Caswell County, Macon County, Person County, Positive Behavior Intervention and Support, Randolph County, Robeson County, Stanly County | <urn:uuid:a3325151-17af-433d-8cdc-089e51399018> | CC-MAIN-2015-14 | http://www.northcarolinahealthnews.org/2013/10/14/corporal-punishment-on-decline-in-n-c-public-schools/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-14/segments/1427131304625.62/warc/CC-MAIN-20150323172144-00262-ip-10-168-14-71.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952965 | 720 | 2.546875 | 3 |
Eye Catching Gender Neutral Kid Room. Typically, parents tend to choose a room atmosphere for children, based on their gender, which is blue for boys or pink for girls.
Now, neutral colors are developing. In addition to avoiding gender bias, children can also share rooms with different siblings. Here are tips on creating a child’s neutral room:
Make a theme
The theme of the room is not necessarily limited by car pictures or flowers. Neutral themes can be selected from animals to musical instruments. Teach your child, to recognize shapes, colors and numbers through a gender-neutral theme.
When buying child room furniture, choose a wood, black, or white. This furniture can later also be used for his brother someday. We are used to buying furniture that can only be used for one child.
Neutral colors good for boys or girls are pastel colors like sage green, butter yellow, and brown skin. You can also choose the color of espresso, red, and gold brown.
Avoid furniture that has too many ornaments or decorations. Furniture with many details or difficult work, can be seen as a presentation of one gender.
Use wall stickers
If you decorate a children’s room, wall stickers are a perfect way to describe both gender without changing the room’s decor. From the natural atmosphere to the sporting activities, children can choose one of them, as long as it grows and develops.
Combine the room with color
If you are decorating a room for your child of the same gender, consider the colors that match both. The room with shades of brown expreso as a universal color, can be combined with the green color for the male side, and the pastel green for the female side.
Color of pleasure
The neutral room is not just for small children. The teenager, who may not share a room with his brother, has his own colorful pleasures. Ask them what color they like.
The room is multifunctional
If your child’s room is used also for another room, neutral colors can help fuse both functions of the room. Use color palettes such as brown, yellow, and green to unify the room.
Decorate by name
Simple, alphabetical decoration is a popular way to create a neutral space without having to spend a lot of money. The wooden letters on the bed, representing your child’s name. Use unusual letters to bring a unique touch to their room. The more personal the room is, the lower the gender specific nuances are required. | <urn:uuid:ee85120f-c92c-4e7a-a7b5-0f718896bb03> | CC-MAIN-2020-40 | http://wanitamalas.com/eye-catching-gender-neutral-kid-room/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-40/segments/1600400283990.75/warc/CC-MAIN-20200927152349-20200927182349-00080.warc.gz | en | 0.9439 | 524 | 2.953125 | 3 |
How Kant solved one of the greatest dilemmas
Published on 27 Aug 2018.
Reading time: 8 min.
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher who was born in 1724 and lived until 1804. He was also one of the most important philosophers who has ever lived. His contributions to the study of metaphysics (questions relating to the nature of reality) and the study epistemology (questions relating to knowledge) have had a profound influence on all philosophers who came after him.
This is all because he went about philosophy in a unique way.
Before Kant, philosophers had tried to answer questions such as: what is the soul? Is all matter made of the same substance? What can we have knowledge of? And does God exist?
Kant instead begun by asking a more fundamental question. He claims this question has to be answered before we can ask any other questions.
The question is: how do we attain knowledge of the world? What conditions must be satisfied in order to have any knowledge at all? Only when we have an answer to this question can further questions be asked about the nature of the world. Kant’s answer to this question, and the consequences of his answer, form his ‘critical philosophy.’1
The main idea is this: instead of humans passively receiving information from the world around us via the sensory data collected by the sense organs, the human mind instead actively plays a part in shaping the world that we experience. This means that everything which we experience does not come to us already shaped. Instead, we play a part in shaping how our experiences are structured.
This idea is not that controversial: current researchers in neuroscience and psychology agree with this. Anil Seth, a cognitive neuroscientist and the co-director of the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science, describes it as your brain ‘hallucinating’ the conscious reality you experience.2
It also makes sense of our understanding of how animals perceive the world. Consider two animals: dogs and flies. Dogs are red-green colour-blind, so cannot perceive the same range of visible light that humans can. Flies experience the world in a way we are thoroughly unable to comprehend, as they have prismatic vision, so only experience a ‘prismatic’ word.3
An example of one of the specific ways in which Kant thinks we shape the world is to do with causal relations. According to Kant, we only ever perceive two events as being causally related because we sculpt them as being causally related. (This view of causality is meant to solve Hume’s famous problem of causality;5 Kant claims that it was Hume who awoke him from his “dogmatic slumber”).
A consequence of this is that all we ever experience is a world of appearances. We never directly experience any kind of objective reality, which Kant refers to as the world as it is in itself (or Ding an sich).6 This view is controversial, but it allows Kant to provide a solution to a problem that raged between the greatest philosophers in the centuries preceding him.
The Greatest Dilemma In All Human Thought #
Before Kant, there were two conflicting answers to the question: what can you know using the pure faculty of reason? Think about this for a moment. If you were sat in an armchair with your eyes closed, could you know anything? What would you be justified in claiming knowledge of?
Before we answer let me introduce a distinction between four types of knowledge:7
- Knowledge that is analytic doesn’t introduce anything new which isn’t already contained within the meaning of the words. The propositions “all triangles have three sides” and “this bachelor is an unmarried man” are examples of analytic propositions.
- Knowledge that is synthetic adds something to a concept. For example, the propositions “the grass is green” or “tomorrow it will rain” are both synthetic propositions, as new knowledge is gained.
- Knowledge that is a posteriori is derived from sense experience. The above example “the grass is green” is a posteriori, as we come to know it by looking at the grass.
- Knowledge that is a priori is derived from reason alone. One example would be the claim “god is supremely good;” if a person were to know that proposition, they wouldn’t be able to know it via experience, so would know it a priori.
The rationalist philosophers (Descartes, Leibniz, Spinoza and others) thought we could have synthetic a priori knowledge. This meant that we would be able to know things only by using our faculty of reason. Descartes’ famous Meditations make use of this. From his armchair, Descartes conducts a thought experiment: what if everything we experience is an illusion caused by an evil demon? He claims that this isn’t the case, by a series of steps that only use his faculty of reason. He first realises that he is a thinking being (this is the famous “I think, therefore I am,” which is often called the cogito). He then reasons that, as he clearly and distinctly knows that he is a thinking thing, anything he thinks clearly and distinctly must be true. He continues to reason in a similar way, to reach conclusions about the existence of God and the nature of his soul. All of this is done without any appeal to the world of experience. It all happens from his armchair.
The empiricist philosophers (Hume, Locke, Berkeley and others) thought that we could not have synthetic a priori knowledge. Hume famously writes in the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (12:34) “Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.” By this he means that we only allowed to claim knowledge of truths that are synthetic a posteriori or analytic a priori, and nothing else.
This leaves us in this situation:
|a priori||a posteriori|
|synthetic||Rationalist: yes / Empiricist: no||Rationalist: yes / Empiricist: yes|
|analytic||Rationalist: yes / Empiricist: yes||na|
Synthetic a priori truths are ones that we can’t get from external experience, but still increase our knowledge. Answers to metaphysical questions, like what is the nature of the world, or can events cause other events, or does God exist, are all synthetic a priori. It is supremely important that we are able to give answers to such questions instead of just remaining sceptical about them; if we can’t give answers, all of metaphysical enquiry is doomed, as Hume thought it was. But the rationalist solution is no good either – there clearly seems to be something wrong with laying claim to grand ideas about God and the world purely using reason.
Kant’s Solution #
Kant provides an incredibly clever solution to this problem. Instead of siding with either the rationalists or the empiricists, he synthesises their two answers into one position, claiming that the two sets of philosophers before him were just “wrestling with shadows.”
Quick recap of earlier: Kant’s great idea was that we actively shape the world we experience. Sensations don’t passively arrive to us fully formed, entering our brain; instead our brain creates our reality. As he writes, “up to now it ha[d] been assumed that all cognition must conform to the objects… let us now assume that he objects must conform to our cognition [of them].” The direction of explanation changes: instead of the limits of what we experience being the limits of our cognition, it is the limits of our cognition itself that become the limits of what we can experience. The world we experience is thus only a world of appearances, and not an underlying objective reality.
This gives Kant an answer to what we can know solely by using our faculty of pure reason:
Our experience of objects is known a priori. This is because we shape that experience using categories which are innate, i.e. using part of our faculty of reason.8 This experience is also synthetic, as having knowledge of objects in the world is gaining new knowledge. So Kant disagrees with the empiricists: we can have synthetic a priori knowledge.
Our knowledge is limited to what we can experience. Because we shape what we experience, we can never know anything beyond the world of appearance. So, while Kant thinks we can have synthetic a priori knowledge, he still disagrees with the rationalists. This is because he denies that we can know anything about God, the soul, and so on. There are limits to what we can know because of how we know things.
Kant’s synthesis thus provides a way out of this grand dilemma.
How This Has Impacted Everything Since #
Before Kant, philosophers and scientists were roughly the same thing. They both investigated the nature of the world. But during and after Kant’s time, new scientific and mathematical methods were being developed. This led to the distinction between philosophy and science becoming stronger. The job of the philosopher became to support science, by finding a ground that justified all the discoveries of the scientist.
Kant was writing in the time of Newton. Newton was making leaps and bounds in the fields of mathematics and science; meanwhile, the philosophers were unable to even know whether one event had caused another. Kant’s project was thus incredibly important at that time. His writing was hunting for a metaphysical system that was able to ground the objectivity required by the scientists.
Could there be a more consequential philosophical project? Kant’s ideas about the world respect the cognitive and perceptual resources that come to bear on every knowledge claim that we make. His ideas provide a metaphysical analysis that manages to accommodate the unique stamp of human cognition, without lapsing into rampant subjectivity. And most importantly, Kant’s project is able to inform the sciences on what precisely it is that makes the sciences successful.
I stand in the garden, observing the beautiful yellow sunflowers that have just bloomed. A honeybee is alongside me.
The peak spectral sensitivity of normal human vision is 555 nanometres, whereas honeybees have three types of photoreceptor that all peak in the ultraviolet range of light. That is to say, unlike us, honeybees can only see things that are outside the range of what we anthropocentrically refer to as ‘visible light.’
The honeybee sees nothing that is yellow. I see nothing that is ultraviolet. Are we both hallucinating? No – we both perceive something that really does exist. Kant’s argument is what allows us to explain that objectivity of shared experience, while also retaining the uniquely human subjectivity that we bring to the situation. Building on this, all of science is possible.
1 Kant’s philosophy is called the ‘critical philosophy’ because he proposes it across the three Critiques, namely the Critique of Pure Reason (1781/87), the Critique of Practical Reason (1788) and the Critique of the Power of Judgment (1790).
2 See Seth’s TED Talk for more information: https://www.ted.com/talks/anil_seth_how_your_brain_hallucinates_your_conscious_reality
3 We know that creatures different from humans experience the world differently by examining their sense organs. However, we can never really know what the conscious experience of another creature is like. This is related to the hard problem of consciousness. For more on this, see Thomas Nagel’s brief essay on ‘What Is It Like to Be A Bat?’
4 According to Kant, the way that we ‘shape’ or ‘mould’ our experience is done using a set of innately held categories that are schematised. Kant was incredibly precise about this list of categories and how we derive them from a set of logical forms. This has led some to accuse him of an unnecessary “architectonic mania” – meaning that he subdivides things excessively and irrationally, trying to find patterns that aren’t really there.
5 According to Hume, causality is a habit of the mind, fabricated out of repeated experiences. When we experience two events repeatedly occurring together, we assume that one event causes the other, just because of habit. There is no deeper ‘causal power.’
6 Claiming that objects are in some way dependent on our mind is a stance known as idealism. Kant’s idealism is different from Berkleian idealism, however. For Berkeley, all objects exist in the mind. For Kant, objects still exist physically, but the conditions of our experience of those objects is mind-dependent. This results in his idealism being labelled transcendental idealism, as transcendental means relating to preconditions of experience.
7 To be precise, when Kant writes about these distinctions, they apply to judgements (Urteil) about our cognition (Erkenntnis). Cognition is slightly different to what Kant calls knowledge (Wissen) – however, for our purposes these finer details aren’t relevant.
8 Here I am simplifying again; Kant uses the word ‘reason’ in a very specific way differently to how I write about it here, but which isn’t relevant to our purposes. | <urn:uuid:cd15f6ec-8b6f-46c9-97a7-fd59934313e7> | CC-MAIN-2020-24 | https://paavanblog.com/posts/kant/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-24/segments/1590347406365.40/warc/CC-MAIN-20200529183529-20200529213529-00592.warc.gz | en | 0.960044 | 2,852 | 3.671875 | 4 |
Wu Daxin is fascinated by ice and by the seemingly miraculous ways in which it is formed and transformed. For him, frozen water is a metaphor for life: “Ice is a unique material because it is evanescent,” he says. “In the end, it always melts and disappears.” Many of his works play on this analogy. Ashley’s Heart (2011) originated while the artist was travelling through Tibet with a group of artists and critics from China and Australia. Ashley Crawford, an Australian art writer, fell dangerously ill and was flown to hospital in Hong Kong, where Wu Daxin visited him. “He was lying in the ward with many tubes attached to his body,” the artist recalls. “The only sign that he was alive was the fact that his heart was still beating.” Crawford recovered, and Wu Daxin set about making an artwork “to record this memory that we shared”. Using copper tubing, he made a giant sculpture of the branching network of blood vessels that surround the human heart. A refrigeration compressor chills the gas-filled tubes, and moisture from the surrounding air condenses onto them and freezes. The reddish vessels gradually go white—the colour of death in China, and associated in the West with the deposits that cause heart disease. When the compressor is switched off, the ice melts away, and the cycle can start again. The appearance and vanishing of the ice is almost magical. So, for the artist, is the fact that this work now resides in Australia, Crawford’s home. | <urn:uuid:9480c84d-0dbd-4a57-942a-1c58f90bd281> | CC-MAIN-2014-23 | http://www.whiterabbitcollection.org/artists/wu-daxin-%E5%90%B4%E8%BE%BE%E6%96%B0/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-23/segments/1406510273676.54/warc/CC-MAIN-20140728011753-00280-ip-10-146-231-18.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978583 | 328 | 2.578125 | 3 |
A new study released by the MN Pollution Control Agency confirms that lakes and streams across Minnesota are contaminated by endocrine-disrupting compounds, pharmaceuticals, and cosmetic ingredients. The study's author, environmental scientist Mark Ferrey of the MPCA, joined Dave TerSteeg June 5 to explain. You can learn more at www.pca.state.mn.us.
Chel Anderson is a botanist and plant ecologist who has lived and worked on the North Shore since 1974; you might know her as the North Woods Naturalist on WTIP. She's just written, with Heidi Fischer, an amazing comprehensive environmental history of the North Shore. It's titled "North Shore: A Natural History of Minnesota's Superior Coast." She spoke with Ann Possis May 22 about deciding to write the book, the processes and time involved, and what they hope to convey about this remarkable place in our world. You can learn more about the book here.
Hosts Diane Booth (CC Extension), and Joan Farnam (Northwoods Food Project), welcome Dave Steckelberg to talk about installing drip irrigation systems and the Wright family (Jeanne, Greg and Olya) to
What do these three words, inch, deal and peg, have in common? You might be able to answer more quickly if you've been spending time outdoors--it turns out that time in nature can actually enhance your brain function. Dr. Frank Ferraro, a psychology professor at Nebraska Wesleyan University, has been studying this phenomenon right here in the BWCAW. He talked with Dick May 8 about his research and what he found. Oh, the answer to that question? Square.
Ely Timberjay Editor Marshall Helmberger explains events leading to MN governor's ban on moose collaring-
Last week Gov. Dayton ordered the MN DNR to stop the practice of radio-collaring moose, citing reports that collaring has caused the abandonment of some calves as well as the deaths of some adults. Marshall Helmberger, editor of the Ely Timberjay, has done a great deal of investigation and reporting on the issue. He joined Ann Possis May 1 to explain. You can read the Timberjay here.
Dr. Robert Sterner, director of the Large Lakes Observatory at UMD, on why large lakes are so important-
Just five lakes contain more than half of the Earth's liquid surface fresh water. Dr. Robert Sterner, director of the Large Lakes Observatory (LLO) at UMD, has been giving public talks about the 'outsized' role large lakes play in our lives. He spoke with Ann Possis May 1. You can learn more about the work of the LLO here.
Mark Seeley, climatologist, meteorologist, and MPR commentator, is just out with the revised edition of his best-selling book, "Minnesota Weather Almanac," full of both facts and fun information about weather history. He chatted with Buck May 1 about the book and all things weather. | <urn:uuid:6603c8e6-e4e1-47ff-86a4-5bb2b5509493> | CC-MAIN-2015-40 | http://www.wtip.org/drupal/category/news-subcategory/environment?page=4 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-40/segments/1443737994631.83/warc/CC-MAIN-20151001221954-00224-ip-10-137-6-227.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954454 | 617 | 2.515625 | 3 |
We all know that it’s better for us and the environment if we hop on our bikes to commute, especially the short trips we have every day, but it’s always awesome to have some solid numbers on our side too. Check it out…
A new study by the European Cyclists Federation (ECF) looked at the CO2 impact of biking, driving cars, taking the bus, and found – not too surprisingly, but it’s good to have the hard data to back up any claims – that if the countries of the EU-27 reached a level of biking similar to Denmark’s, that reductions of CO2 emissions of between 63 and 142 million tonnes per year could be possible by 2050. This would be 12 to 26% of the target reduction set for the transport sector by the European 2050 targets.
This isn’t some pipe dream. 2050 is far enough in the future that there’s time to make infrastructure investments to bring up the level of “bike-friendliness” in cities where it is lagging, and it’s long enough for smart incentives to work their magic and discourage car usage (especially in cities and for commuting).
via Bike Portland:
What makes the study interesting (and useful for settling debates) is that it took into account not just the emissions from the vehicles themselves, but from the entire life cycle of the mode including production, maintenance and fuel — which in the case of bicycling includes caloric intake.
Even with the CO2 emissions of food required to power a bicycle, the ECF study found that — while not emissions free — the bicycle is still the lowest emitter of greenhouse gasses per passenger kilometer traveled. One of the key findings was that emissions from cycling are over 10 times lower than those stemming from the passenger car, “even taking into account the additional dietary intake of a cyclist compared with that of a motorised transport user.”
When the complete life cycle of each mode is calculated, here’s how they stack up (results in grams of CO2 per passenger per kilometer traveled):
- Bicycle: 21 g
- Electric-assist bicycle: 22 g (e-bikes scored well due to larger range of standard bicycle and therefore greater chance to replace passenger car trips)
- Passenger car: 271 g (based on short trips similar to those a bicycle could make)
- Bus: 101 g
The study was focused on the European Unions emission reduction goals, but the findings are useful for anyone in the transportation realm who needs data to back up arguments about CO2 emissions.
Infographics via ECF (pdf)
Every Wednesday on Ditch Your Car we’ll be bringing you just another reason to spend more time on two wheels. Be it a photo, a statistic or an inspirational video, we want to keep reminding you about why riding is great! | <urn:uuid:5e580315-6ceb-40ac-a4be-eaf199fe6e25> | CC-MAIN-2017-26 | https://www.ospreypacks.com/stories/1451/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-26/segments/1498128320368.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20170624235551-20170625015551-00577.warc.gz | en | 0.938814 | 595 | 2.90625 | 3 |
Mustard Barberry, Spiderwort And Phlox Families
Iris Family Iridaceae
Read More Articles About: Wildflower Families
( Originally Published 1908 )
FEW families of wild flowers are more distinctive or more beautiful than that of the Lilies. The conspicuous blossoms consist of three sepals and three petals which are frequently similar in structure and appearance and which, taken together, are called the perianth. Within these six parts of the perianth there are generally six stamens and a single central pistil, with three divisions of the ovary and three lobes of the stigma. The plant arises from a bulb and commonly has a single erect stem along which in the typical lilies are sessile alternate leaves. The filament is commonly attached to the anther at the middle of the latter, a condition in which the attachment of the anther is said to be versatile.
Dog's-TOOTH VIOLET. The word that is most expressive of the character of the Yellow Trout Lily or Dog's-tooth Violet is grace. In few plants are the simple lines of a graceful picture so well shown as in this: from the grassy bank there rises a cylindrical stem which on each side gradually enlarges into a thickened leaf with smooth margins, rounded and lovely surfaces and a tip that is neither too pointed nor too obtuse.
From between the bases of the leaf rises the slender stem of the flower, showing the slight and inimitable curves of a living thing and arching near the end to hold the bell-like blossom, which is in itself a marvel of pensile grace. In the middle of the latter the stamens and pistils hang downward, the stamens near the petals and the pistil projecting straight out from the center, appearing as a prolongation of the blossom stem.
The plant as a whole is a charming example of that harmonious asymmetry dear to the art of the Japanese. The colors also are in harmony with the simple outline of the plant : the leaves are of varying shades of green, mottled with rather indistinct markings of a dull whitish color or of a faint purplish hue, while the blossom is a lovely yellow, having occasionally a purplish tinge.
The Dog's-tooth Violet, often called also the Adder's Tongue, is one of our earliest flowers, appearing in April and lasting well into May. From the situations where it is most commonly found one would think that it loved the music of the little rivers, lingering near to listen to the gladsome songs of these " in the season of their prosperity." But it also habitually occurs in open groves and even along the borders of the forest. In rainy weather and at night the flowers close, but they open again upon the appearance of sunshine and are said to turn on their stalks to follow the sun. The blossoms are freely visited by many bees, by which cross-pollination seems to be very generally brought about.
In the western states the White Adder's Tongue is found. This plant bears a general re-semblance to the yellow species but it has much longer lobes of the stigma. The blossoms some-times vary from white to blue or purple.
BELLWORTS. The Bellworts are very generally classified with the Lily family, although some re-cent authors have placed them next to this family in the Bunchflower family. Three species of Bell-worts are commonly found in the north-ern and eastern states. In general appearance when growing they resemble one a n o t h e r, although they may easily be distinguished by the leaves. In two species葉he Perfoliate Bellwort and the Large-flowered Bellwort葉he stems run through the leaves near the base while in the third葉he Sessile-leaved Bellwort葉he leaves are simply sessile. Of the two first named the Large-flowered Bellwort can generally be distinguished by the size of its leaves and blossoms, which, on the average, are nearly twice as large as the Perfoliate species. A surer character, however, is found in the fact that in the former the under surface of the leaves is pubescent while in the latter it is glabrous or glaucous.
All three of these Bellworts inhabit the same situations : they are lovers of moist and shady woods. Over a wide range容xtending from Canada to Georgia and west beyond the Mississippi葉hey may be found in bloom about the middle of the spring season. In the latitude of southern New England the height of the flowering season comes early in May.
The structure of the plant in all three species is delicate : the stems are slender, swaying with the slightest breeze; the oval leaves are thin and semi-transparent, bending of their own weight; the flowers droop modestly on fragile stalks, their light yellow tints scarcely serving to render them conspicuous to human eyes, although they are readily found by bumble-bees, which visit them freely. Few plants of similar size are so likely as these to be overlooked by the careless stroller in the May woods. On account of their fragile structure they wilt quickly when picked, another reason why they are not more generally known. But as types of gentle modesty the Bellworts add a peculiar charm to the spring woodlands, serving admirably as a foil to the somewhat flaunting beauty of the Painted Trilliums and other more venturesome plants.
LILIES. July is the month of the lilies葉he glorious flowers which so long have served as types of grace, purity and beauty. In all of these the structure is simple, yet there is a decided difference in the appearance of the various sorts. If we stop to consider the reasons for this difference we see at once that it is due chiefly to two causes 幼olor and position. All of our common lilies are constructed on the same general plan : there are six petal-like divisions which form the perianth, an equal number of stamens, and a single pistil. The great and striking differences apparent in different sorts of lilies are chiefly due to variations in the color of the blossom and the position in which it is attached to the stem.
CANADA LILY. One of the most familiar lilies in the northern states is the Canada Lily or Wild Yellow Lily, the flowers of which are represented on the opposite page. The bell-shaped blossoms hang down nearly vertically, with the pollen-bearing anthers of the stamens in a cluster where the clapper to the bell would be. Just below these anthers and projecting from the middle of them is the stigma on the end of the pistil. The number of blossoms on a plant varies from one or two to ten or twelve. These lilies grow along streams and in meadows where the yellowish red flowers are conspicuous above the grass. Here they are seen by various bees容specially the mason or leaf-cutting bees謡hich alight upon the stigma and anthers. They collect pollen from the latter, and perhaps they crawl up the filaments of the stamens to reach nectar at the top of the bell. In thus going from blossom to blossom, the bees brush the grains of pollen upon the stigmas of new flowers and cross-pollination is brought about.
These lilies blossom in midsummer when the bees are most abundant; they are chiefly found in open sunny places, such as the bees frequent; and they are of a color easily seen by daylight. In each of these ways they are well adapted to cater to the bees that pollenize them.
The Canada Lily is a widely distributed species, ranging from Nova Scotia and Minnesota in the north to Georgia and Missouri in the south.
WOOD LILY. Entirely different in appearance is the more reddish Wood Lily or Philadelphia Lily in which the flower is held straight up, and so loses the graceful curves that add so much attractiveness to the species with supended blossoms. This seems to prefer drier situations than the Canada Lily, and is found also in more restricted regions, its range being given by the latest authorities as " Maine to Ontario, south to North Carolina and west to Virginia." The petals are generally of a bright red color, being narrowed below so that each flower appears open at the base. The stamens and petals are of about the same length, and project upward in the middle of the blossom. To me this species is most attractive when there is but one blossom on a stalk, as in the picture opposite, but plants with two, three or even four flowers are not uncommon.
There are various other species of wild lilies often to be found. The beautiful Turk's-cap Lily of our meadows and marshes is one of the most attractive of these. It is distinguished by its re-curved petals of an orange-yellow color 容specially toward the ends, with numerous tawny spots upon the front surface. The anthers hang downward, though not always in a vertical position, and the stigma does not project beyond them. I should think that the flower would be pollenized by bees similar to those which pollenize the yellow Canada Lily.
In the West there is a Red Lily quite similar to the Philadelphia Lily in appearance, while in the South there is still another similar species. The Carolina Lily is an attractive flower found in dry woods in the southern states.
In the older settled regions of the United States the Tiger Lily is not uncommon as an escape from cultivation. It usually marks the site of a ruined or deserted homestead. The magnificent flowers are always attractive and add greatly to the roadside scenery.
To gild refined gold, to paint the Lily, | <urn:uuid:ee4a4e9b-d0b3-42ba-a90b-26019565a67a> | CC-MAIN-2018-13 | http://www.oldandsold.com/articles35/wildflowers-12.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-13/segments/1521257647556.43/warc/CC-MAIN-20180321004405-20180321024405-00528.warc.gz | en | 0.958501 | 2,058 | 3.5625 | 4 |
Written by: Jody Segrave-Daly, RN, MS, IBCLC
Cluster feeding is a phrase that is used to describe infant feeding behavior. Generally, it’s breastfeeding or bottle feeding that is in a different pattern from your baby’s typical feeding pattern. It is described as breastfeeding sessions or bottle-feeding sessions that are much shorter and more frequent, for 3-4 hours of the day. It often happens during a baby’s fussy period of the day.
Cluster feeding is a phrase that sometimes is also called “comfort-feeding.” As parents, we react to infant cries and feeding cues, so naturally we will assume a baby is hungry and when we feed them, they will be satisfied. But some babies will snack and will not take a full feeding during their cluster-feeding time; this is normal. Some babies simply want to suckle on a pacifier after nursing or bottle feeding. This is because their bellies are full, but they want to suckle for soothing and not for a feeding of milk. Some breastfeeding babies will suckle, using non-nutritive sucking patterns for soothing only. Some babies will also want to be held and snuggled or may want to be carried or want movement, while suckling too!
Cluster feeding can happen during growth spurts as well, but babies generally take in more milk during this time. It can also happen during times when a baby is not feeling well, teething or is tired or cranky. And it’s true—some babies don’t cluster feed at all. My exclusively breastfed babies never did and preferred sucking on a pacifier, after nursing for comfort.
When is cluster feeding considered normal?
- It happens after a mother’s full milk supply is in, after birth.
- It is during a limited time period of 3-4 hours in 24 hours.
- The breastfeeding mother has adequate milk supply.
- Baby is having plenty of dirty and wet diapers.
- The baby is gaining enough weight.
If you are concerned that you are not making enough breast milk, or your baby isn’t transferring enough milk, you can do a simple check to see if you are.
If your milk supply is low and/or your baby isn’t transferring enough breast milk, you can get immediate help to determine why your supply is low. This is very important information to know so that timely milk supplementation can occur to protect your baby from underfeeding. It’s also important so that you won’t miss an opportunity to increase your milk supply.
Do babies “cluster feed” before the onset of copious milk production during the first few days of life?
No. Breastfeeding babies nurse frequently, every 2-3 hours which is normal but different from “cluster feeding.” Bottle-feeding babies do not cluster feed during this time either.
When is frequent breastfeeding not normal?
- A baby who is breastfeeding non-stop, despite having a perfect latch and swallowing confirmed before the onset of copious milk production in the hospital.
- A baby who cries unless they are breastfeeding and continues to exhibiting hunger cues.
- A baby who is jaundiced, becomes lethargic, or has tremors after long periods of non-stop nursing, or at ANY time.
- A baby who has a 4 percent weight loss at 24 hours of life, or a 7 percent weight loss at any time.
- A mother who can’t self express or pump any colostrum.
- A test weight after nursing on both breasts, for at least 15 minutes each, that reveals inadequate colostrum intake.
- A mother who is at risk for delayed onset of copious milk production requires special considerations for timely supplementation.
Babies who are nursing constantly or babies who nurse and are not satisfied and cry when removed from breast, require an immediate exam by the pediatrician and a full assessment by the mother-baby RN to be sure they are receiving enough colostrum. Babies who are sleepy or lethargic and not nursing or bottle feeding, require an exam and assessment as well.
Delayed onset of copious milk production is common and happens to one in five mothers. Therefore, it is important for babies to have timely supplementation, to prevent exclusive breastfeeding complications from inadequate colostrum intake.
When your baby requires supplementation, donor milk from a milk bank or formula can be used. Supplementing will protect your baby from complications while waiting for your milk to come in.
A recent study showed underfed babies who were supplemented with limited amounts of formula after breastfeeding nearly doubled their breastfeeding rates at 3 months.
For stories of mothers who supplemented their breast-feeding babies and went on to breast-feed click here.
For stories of mothers who regret not supplementing their breastfeeding babies and who suffered complications click here.
To learn more about our safe infant feeding guidelines we have a FREE downloadable feeding plan for every family to use.
HOW YOU CAN SUPPORT FED IS BEST
There are many ways you can support the mission of the Fed is Best Foundation. Please consider contributing in the following ways:
- Join the Fed is Best Volunteer group to help us reach Obstetric Health Providers to advocate for counseling of new mothers on the importance of safe infant feeding.
- Make a donation to the Fed is Best Foundation. We are using funds from donations to cover the cost of our website, our social media ads, our printing and mailing costs to reach health providers and hospitals. We do not accept donations from breast- or formula-feeding companies and 100% of your donations go toward these operational costs. All the work of the Foundation is achieved via the pro bono and volunteer work of its supporters.
- Share the stories and the message of the Fed is Best Foundation through word-of-mouth, by posting on your social media page and by sending our resources to expectant moms that you know. Share the Fed is Best campaign letter with everyone you know.
- Write a letter to your health providers and hospitals about the Fed is Best Foundation. Write them about feeding complications your child may have experienced.
- Print out our letter to obstetric providers and mail them to your local obstetricians, midwives, family practitioners who provide obstetric care and hospitals.
- Write your local elected officials about what is happening to newborn babies in hospitals and ask for legal protection of newborn babies from underfeeding and of mother’s rights to honest informed consent on the risks of insufficient feeding of breastfed babies.
- Send us your stories. Share with us your successes, your struggles and every thing in between. Every story saves another child from experiencing the same and teaches another mom how to safely feed her baby. Every voice contributes to change.
- Send us messages of support. We work every single day to make infant feeding safe and supportive of every mother and child. Your messages of support keep us all going. Thank you for your advocacy! | <urn:uuid:c967459b-baf9-4f0e-8ec6-d08b11389fc5> | CC-MAIN-2019-22 | https://fedisbest.org/resources-for-parents/cluster-feeding-normal/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-22/segments/1558232262600.90/warc/CC-MAIN-20190527125825-20190527151825-00068.warc.gz | en | 0.948709 | 1,447 | 3.09375 | 3 |
Bed bugs were almost wiped out in the United States by the use of DDT. Since the 1950’s however, they have become resistant to the insecticides we use today and spread more easily because of the ease of international travel.
Today, 20% of the American population will admit to either having had bed bugs or knowing someone who has. The incidence of bed bug infestation has increased 500% in the past two years. Heat treatments are the only way to kill all bed bugs, larvae and eggs in one safe, chemical-free treatment. Alliance Environmental Group offers ThermaPureHeat to treat bed bugs in any structure. | <urn:uuid:38391c02-a84a-49f3-b896-f3a95b2d464f> | CC-MAIN-2019-22 | http://info.alliance-enviro.com/blog/video_bed_bug_apocalypse/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-22/segments/1558232256858.44/warc/CC-MAIN-20190522143218-20190522165218-00442.warc.gz | en | 0.965438 | 128 | 2.515625 | 3 |
You may have noticed that there is nothing to notice this year regarding Monarch Butterflies. You wouldn't be the only one. Dozens of people across the county have been calling asking where the Monarchs are.
Some of the callers are farmers, some are gardeners and some are those who mow the median strips on the highways. All have noticed that the Monarch Butterflies that normally fill their fields at this time of year are absent.
Scientists watched in horror as the Monarch Butterfly population plunged almost 60 percent last year to the smallest number seen since researchers first found where they migrate to in 1975. The drop is due to a number of reasons, according to Dr. Chip Taylor of MonarchWatch.
A Monarch Butterfly on milkweed.
Photo by Jeff Tome
Droughts in the Midwest and Texas, areas through which the Monarch Butterflies migrate to get to their wintering grounds in Mexico, created large areas with no food for the butterflies to eat. Increased demand for corn and soybeans to use as food and fuel has led to over 25 million more acres of land being planted with crops in this country. These crops have replaced the flowers that adult butterflies feed on as well as the milkweed that their eggs are laid on.
In fact, perhaps the most important thing that can be done to help the Monarch Butterflies is to plant milkweed. The Chautauqua Lake watershed is largely rural, and milkweed of various kinds tends to be abundant outside the towns and cities. However, milkweed has been kicked out of town in many places. It is mowed and sprayed until it can no longer survive in corners of yards and vacant lots. A few milkweed plants encouraged in a yard can help the Monarch Butterfly find more places to lay eggs.
In reality, roughly eight out of 10 of the Monarch caterpillars on milkweed will probably get eaten by other animals. Another good thing to help Monarchs is to raise caterpillars on milkweed indoors and let them go later. Chip Taylor's site, www.monarchwatch.org, is a great site to learn how to find and recognize Monarch Caterpillars and raise them to adults.
Chautauqua Watershed Notes
Raising Monarchs and releasing them so that there are more eggs, more caterpillars and more adults in the area may be the only way to see many of them this year. Huge fields of milkweed, once filled with Monarch Butterflies, are now missing their most conspicuous and recognized butterfly.
The king is not dead, but may be fading fast. If a few people all raise a few butterflies, we may help restore the Monarchs to the prominence that they deserve throughout the watershed.
Jeff Tome is a senior naturalist for programs and exhibits at the Jamestown Audubon Society and a longtime CWC volunteer and former board director. He has been raising and watching Monarch Butterflies since he raised and released them at his wedding in 2005.
The Chautauqua Watershed Conservancy is a local nonprofit organization that is dedicated to preserving and enhancing the water quality, scenic beauty and ecological health of the lakes, streams, wetlands and watersheds of the Chautauqua region. For more information, call 664-2166 or visit www.chautauquawatershed.org or www.facebook.com/chautauquawatershed. | <urn:uuid:49e99023-660d-409a-a332-a22120508096> | CC-MAIN-2015-35 | http://post-journal.com/page/content.detail/id/626252/Disappearing-Monarchs.html?nav=5207 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-35/segments/1440644064919.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20150827025424-00289-ip-10-171-96-226.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964493 | 688 | 3.203125 | 3 |
Boy Scouting was modeled after the Scouting movement founded by Lord Robert S. Baden-Powell in England in 1908.
Boy Scouting is actually owned by the National Council of the Boy Scouts of America.
It was incorporated on February 8, 1910, and chartered by Congress in 1916 .
High level organization chart:
The National Council does not attempt to administer directly the more than 150,000 registered Boy Scout units
(troops, packs, explorer posts, etc.). To achieve this, each year, the National Council issues a charter to an
autonomous organization called a Local Council. The United States and its territories is divided into Local Councils.
Local Councils are usually not-for-profit private corporations registered within the State in which they are headquartered.
The Local Council that we operate under is called the "Circle 10 Council".
The District that we operate under is called the "Great Plains District".
The Chartered Organization, in our case, is the "Wells Elementary PTA".
Chartering is done on a yearly basis.
Our Unit is called "Pack 1256".
The Pack is a group that has been assigned a unique number, and it is made up of several dens.
The Pack includes not only the boys in those dens, but also their families, and their leaders.
The Packs meets once a month with Cub Scouts, leaders, parents and other family members attending.
The Pack meeting is the climax of the month's den meetings and activities. It gives the dens something to look forward to and work toward.
This is a chance to recognize the boys, their parents, and their leaders.
A Cub Scout Pack is divided into smaller groups of about eight boys called dens, who meet weekly under the
direction of adult Den Leaders and, in some cases, Boy Scout Den Chiefs.
The Den Leaders are trained parent volunteers.
The den allows boys to get to know each other better and engage in activities that would be difficult in a larger group.
The den also provides leadership opportunities for the boys as they elect "denners" or help to teach each other.
Den meeting activities are planned around the monthly theme and include games, handicrafts, hikes and other
outdoor fun, practicing skits and stunts in preparation for the next Pack meeting and taking part in simple ceremonies and songs.
Sometimes work on advancement requirements is included, but most of that work is accomplished by the boys with
their parents (see details on the Webelos rank for an exception).
The Den Leaders may ask for special help occasionally from parents (helping with a meeting, sharing a special skill, or just providing a snack for the boys).
Dens are organized by rank, and ranks are organized by grade and age:
- Tiger Cub Dens
- Bear Dens
- Wolf Dens
- Webelos Dens
Grade and Age
Several years ago joining and advancement requirements for Cub Scouting were changed to a grade basis
(with age as backup). Age is still used by some packs whose national organization has made that determination
As a refresher, here are some age/grade requirements. Keep in mind that grade is the primary determination
and age is the backup (note the work "or"):
- Tiger Cubs -- In the first grade, (or 7 years old)
- Cub Scouts (Wolves and Bears) -- In the second and third grade, (or 8 or 9 years old)
- Webelos Scouts -- In the fourth and fifth grade, (or 10 years old)
- ARROW OF LIGHT -- Six months since completing the fourth grade, or six months since turning 10.
- Boy Scouts -- Completed the fifth grade, or age 11, or have earned the Arrow of Light.
The Pack Leadership
The pack leadership consists of Den Leaders, Den Leader Coach, the Chartered Organization Representative,
the Pack Committee Chairperson, the Pack Committee and the Cubmaster. These are adult positions.
The Pack Committee
The Pack Committee takes care of the administrative needs of the pack. It is organized and chaired by the
Pack Committee Chairperson. The committee consists of at least three people and is responsible for:
A complete Pack Committee consists of the following people:
- Finding a meeting place
- Setting the Pack policies in accordance with Boy Scouting and the chartered organization.
- Coordinatng the Pack program with that of the charter organization.
- Assist with the annual Pack charter renewel.
- Is responsible for carrying out the policies and regulations of the Boy Scouts of America.
- Provides encouragement to leaders in carrying out the Pack program.
- Provides the finances and fundraising coordination for the Pack.
- Is responsible for Pack property.
- Is responsible for the quality of the adult leadership, that the leadership is recruited and trained. This is all adult leadership, including Cubmaster.
- Responsible for recommending this leadership to the charter organization for final approval.
- Coordination between the Pack and other scouting units.
- Chartered Organization Representative
- Pack Committee Chair
- Public Relations
- Membership and Registration
- Sustaining Membership Enrollment Chairperson (a.k.a. Friends of Scouting)
- Den Leader Coach(es)
Chartered Organization Representative
This person is the liaison between the Pack, the chartered organization, and the BSA.
They make sure that the chartered organization is awaire of what the Pack is doing, and coordinates activities
between the chartered organization and the Pack. It is also the responsibility of the chartered organization
representative to communicate any relavent policies that the charter organization has to the Pack committee.
A point that a new scouter often misses is that the chartered organization 'owns' the Pack, not the Pack
committee. The Pack committee is simply an administrative arm of the chartered organization.
The Chartered Organization Representative is a voting member of the local BSA Council and District committees.
As such, they represent the Pack on these committees.
If the chartered organization has more than one unit (e.g., a Pack and a Troop) the Chartered Organization Representative serves all.
Pack Committee Chairperson
The Pack Committee Chairperson organizes and facilitates the running of the Pack committee.
This person works with the Cubmaster and Chartered Organization Representative to make sure that the
responsibilities of the Pack Committee are being met.
The Cubmaster, who is sometimes refered to as the unit leader, is up front. Most parents think they run the
show all by themselves. Now you know different. So what does a Cubmaster do? Plenty!
The Cubmaster is responsible for:
- Conducting the pack program which includes leading the monthly Pack
- meeting, with the help of the other leaders.
- Guiding, supporting, motivating, and inspire the other adult leaders. Make sure they receive training for their positions.
- Making sure the dens are functioning well.
- Plannning the den and pack programs with the help of the other leaders.
- Coordinating the total Cub Scout program for the pack.
- Helping recruit den leaders and coaches.
- Establishing and maintaining good relationships with Boy Scout Troops.
Den Leader Coach
The den leader coach is responsible for ensuring stable, active and enthusiastic den leaders for all Cub
Scout and Webelos dens. They also help to insure that:
- Leaders complete Fast Start and Cub Scout Leader Basic Training.
- A Den Leader Coach Seminar is conducted for the leaders.
- Leaders attend the monthly rountables.
- Leaders understand the purposes, policies and procedures of the chartered organization and the Boy Scouts of America.
- Help is available for new den leaders.
- Cub Scout leader recognition awards are available to the leaders.
- Monthly coach-den leader meetings are held to help plan den activities and programs.
- Information about the current and up to date program literature and material is passed on to den leaders.
- No den is ever without a leader and assistant.
- New den leaders are recruited.
- There is a communications link (usually the den leader coach) between the ubmaster and the den leaders.
For more details, please visit "Organization of the Boy Scouts of America".
Last update: August 17, 2000
Send comments to: Marius Popa, Webmaster | <urn:uuid:32cfd93d-b9f3-4241-b08c-8bc74f9601b5> | CC-MAIN-2016-22 | http://www.angelfire.com/tx3/pack1256/organization.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-22/segments/1464051165777.47/warc/CC-MAIN-20160524005245-00056-ip-10-185-217-139.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941326 | 1,741 | 3 | 3 |
The Marquesas Islands are part of French Polynesia and yet proudly apart. You won’t find overwater bungalows and turquoise lagoons on these 12 volcanic islands, six of which are inhabited. Instead, the Marquesas feature green peaks that plunge directly into the sea, waterfall-laced valleys, and dramatic rock spires. In addition to this rich natural heritage, the Marquesans are active in keeping alive distinctive cultural traditions in tattooing, dance, language—and horse riding.
Horses were introduced to the island of Ua Huka in the mid-19th century, a gift from French admiral Abel Dupetit-Thouars, who brought them from Chile. Islanders tamed and adopted them over the years, and they became the perfect transport for traversing roadless valleys, steep slopes, and high ridges. Horses enabled islanders to range widely in their hunt for wild goat and pig, which are traditionally slow-cooked in an umu, an underground oven.
Along with the meat from hunting, and the islands’ abundance of breadfruit, coconut, mango, banana, and other tropical fruits, and the sea’s bounty, Marquesans have long “had a very good living from the land,” says photographer Julien Girardot. Nowadays, with the introduction of cars and roads, he says, “almost every Marquesan goes with a Japanese pickup to the shop to buy rice, pasta, and frozen chicken from the U.S.” Yet, there are still people, he says, who resist the islands’ globalization and continue a generations-old horse culture.
In a series of photos, Girardot, who has lived in French Polynesia for the past seven years, tells the story of three horsemen: Vohi Brown of Ua Huka, and Lucien “Paco” Pautehea and Jérémie Kehuehitu, who both live on the island of Hiva Oa.
On Ua Huka, wild horses outnumber the inhabitants. Vohi, who has an image of a rearing stallion tattooed on his back, is especially skilled in capturing, taming, and training them. He tends to his stable of horses when he’s not working at local guest house Mana Tupuna Village or tending his crop of copra (dried coconut), from which coconut oil, one of French Polynesia’s top exports, is manufactured. And occasionally Vohi does lead visitors on horseback treks along the island’s arid uplands.
The island of Hiva Oa may be known by Westerners—if it’s known at all—for artist Paul Gauguin, who spent the last years of his life here. But both Paco (who runs Hamau Ranch) and Jérémie lead horse treks that reveal what they know and love about their island: its lush landscapes fragrant with frangipani and tiare (the national flower of Tahiti); the sacred site at Meae Iipona, where ancient tikis brim with mana (spiritual power); and ridgetop views of the vast ocean, riding fearlessly to unknown horizons—just like the last horsemen of the Marquesas themselves.
- Nat Geo Expeditions | <urn:uuid:5c78130f-50ca-4838-96ff-c562dd165bf7> | CC-MAIN-2021-10 | https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/article/french-polynesia-marquesas-islands-horse-riding-pictures | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-10/segments/1614178356140.5/warc/CC-MAIN-20210226030728-20210226060728-00589.warc.gz | en | 0.944426 | 701 | 2.765625 | 3 |
A little more than two years ago, as the market for coal kept collapsing, a 1-gigawatt coal plant in the U.K. town of Rugeley was one of many that closed around the world. Now, the utility company that owns the site plans to transform it into something quite different: sustainably powered housing.
“Rapid change within the energy industry has meant a transition to a lower carbon, flexible, and more decentralized model for power generation,” says Niel Scott, a spokesman for Engie, the France-based utility that owns the coal plant. (The company, formerly called Gaz de France Suez, changed its name in 2015 to reflect its own move away from fossil fuels.) “We were inspired by the possibility to ourselves lead the transformation of a site associated with a more carbon-intensive era of energy generation into a new chapter of use as one of the most efficient, low-carbon redevelopment projects in the U.K.”
The mixed-use development, on 139 acres, still needs to go through a community planning process in 2019. But it may include more than 2,000 new homes running on renewable electricity, at least half of which can be generated with on-site solar panels and stored in batteries. Heat will come from geothermal heat pumps. An efficient design will make it possible for the homes to use only about a third as much energy as a typical new house. At least 30% of the homes will be affordable. The development will also include commercial buildings.
Another energy company might have decided to sell the property. Engie saw it as an opportunity to showcase its ability to produce clean energy. The project “will be the first instance of a major energy company repurposing its own site in this way,” says Scott. “We also believe that in the future, energy will increasingly be embedded in buildings and places–from batteries and [solar] to microgrids in neighborhoods and the integration of an electric vehicle infrastructure.”
In 2017, the company acquired one arm of a home-building and retrofitting company called Keepmoat that has experience in building zero-carbon houses. Since buildings are a major source of energy use, Engie saw it as a natural acquisition as it works on the transition to a lower-carbon economy. The company is also beginning to work with cities to help them shape the future use of developments and public spaces. “We see this type of activity as an extension of provision of energy-related services for our customers,” Scott says. | <urn:uuid:84aa5685-4494-4991-949f-4edee6587c9c> | CC-MAIN-2019-09 | https://www.fastcompany.com/90273347/this-coal-plant-closed-now-its-being-converted-to-a-solar-powered-neighborhood | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-09/segments/1550247487595.4/warc/CC-MAIN-20190218155520-20190218181520-00338.warc.gz | en | 0.97094 | 526 | 3.15625 | 3 |
Jumping spiders look like most any other spider, but don’t act much like their araneid cousins. They don’t use sticky webs or traps to catch meals, or ambush prey that strays too close to a hiding place. Instead, they hunt by sight, actively stalking insects and then attacking with a precise leap onto their victims. It’s behavior that researchers say is “more vertebrate, or even mammalian, than spider-like.” They can hunt this way thanks to eyesight that’s sharper than most other arthropods and rivals that of big cats like lions, and an arrangement of eight eyes that gives them a near 360-degree field of view.
The spiders’ amazing vision is processed by a brain that’s about the size of a poppy seed and has long been a black box to researchers. The problem with studying the spiders’ neurobiology is that their internal fluids are highly pressurized. This allows them to power some of their movements, including their jumps, with hydraulic pressure, but it also means that cutting them open to access their brains results in “catastrophic fluid loss.” The spiders “bleed out,” sometimes bursting, and die.
Ron Hoy and the researchers in his neurobiology lab at Cornell University wanted a better look at how the spiders’ visual system is structured and functions by making a recording of their brain activity. To get around the exploding spider issue, one of the scientists, Gil Menda, suggested that a very tiny incision, just big enough to fit a hair-width recording electrode, would allow a spider’s body fluid to clot and the cut would heal. Making such a small hole and inserting the electrode would require a delicate touch and a subject that held very still, though, and a spider probably wouldn’t oblige the researchers with sitting calmly while they poked a hole in its head. The keep their research subjects in place, the team designed a tiny harness, made the parts with a 3D printer, and then sealed the spiders in it with sticky dental wax.
With the spiders immobilized and the electrodes inserted, the team was able to record the spiders’ brain activity as they were shown images of flies and other spiders on a video screen. When pictures of flies, the spiders’ natural prey, popped up, the researchers saw a burst of activity from certain neurons, revealing the cells associated with the spiders’ visual system.
To see how the spiders’ eight eyes split the work load, the researchers also made little blinders with the 3D printer and showed the spiders the fly images while blocking some eyes and leaving the others unobstructed. They found that the two pairs of forward-facing eyes handled different tasks. The large primary eyes are responsible for high-acuity vision, while the smaller secondary eyes take care of motion detection. When either pair was covered, the spider’s neural response to the images wasn’t as strong. Because different information comes from different sets of eyes, the spiders need all eyes on the prize to detect their prey.
In this video from the lab, you can watch Menda secure a spider in its harness and see how their brains react to spotting a fly.
And if you ever find yourself needing a spider harness of your own, the researchers’ design is available here. | <urn:uuid:9009d4d3-b18a-490c-b0b8-72086a1c72e3> | CC-MAIN-2022-21 | https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/59825/scientists-make-3d-printed-harness-study-spider-brains | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-21/segments/1652662658761.95/warc/CC-MAIN-20220527142854-20220527172854-00680.warc.gz | en | 0.954527 | 705 | 3.9375 | 4 |
A.K. Manrai et al./JAMA Internal Medicine 2014
Imagine a hypothetical baseball player. Call him Alex. He fails a drug test that is known to be 95 percent accurate. How likely is it that he is really guilty?
If you said 95 percent, you’re wrong. But don’t feel bad. It puts you in the company of a lot of highly educated doctors.
OK, it’s kind of a trick question. You can’t really answer it without knowing some other things, such as how many baseball players actually are guilty drug users in the first place. So let’s assume Alex plays in a league with 400 players. Past investigations indicate that 5 percent of all players (20 of them) use the illegal drug. If you tested them all, you’d catch 19 of them (because the test is only 95 percent accurate) and one of them would look clean. On the other hand, 19 clean players would look guilty, since 5 percent of the 380 innocent players would be mistakenly identified as users.
So of all the players, a positive (guilty) test result would occur 38 times — 19 truly guilty, and 19 perfectly innocent. Therefore Alex’s positive test means there’s a 50-50 chance that he is actually guilty.
Now if these mathematical machinations mattered only for baseball, it wouldn’t be worth blogging about. But the same principles apply to medical screening tests. For decades, doctors and advocacy groups have promoted screening tests for all sorts of diseases without putting much thought into the math for interpreting the test results.
Way back in 1978, one study found that many doctors don’t understand the relationship between the accuracy of a test and the probability of disease. But those doctors probably went to med school in the ’60s and weren’t paying much attention. And there were no blogs or Twitter to disseminate important medical information back then. So some Harvard Medical School researchers recently decided to repeat the study. They posed the question in exactly the same way: “If a test to detect a disease whose prevalence is 1 out of 1,000 has a false positive rate of 5 percent, what is the chance that a person found to have a positive result actually has the disease?” The researchers emphasized that this was just for screening tests, where doctors had no knowledge of anyone’s symptoms.
Of 10 medical students given the quiz, only two got the right answer. So we can hope that the other eight will flunk medical school and never treat any patients. But of 25 “attending physicians” given the question, only six got the right answer. Other hospital staff (such as interns and residents) didn’t do any better.
Among all the participants, the most common answer was 95 percent, the test’s accuracy rate. But as with the hypothetical drug test, the test’s actual “positive predictive value” for how many people really had the disease was much lower, in this case only about 2 percent. (If only 1 in a 1,000 people have the disease, testing 1,000 people would produce about 50 false positives and 1 correct identification; 1 divided by 51 is 1.96 percent.)
“Our results show that the majority of respondents in this single-hospital study could not assess PPV in the described scenario,” Arjun Manrai and collaborators wrote in a research letter published April 21 in JAMA Internal Medicine. “Moreover, the most common error was a large overestimation…, an error that could have considerable impact on the course of diagnosis and treatment.”
Really, you don’t want a doctor who tells you it’s 95 percent likely that you’re toast when the actual probability is merely 2 percent.
It’s natural to wonder, though, whether these hypothetical exercises ever apply to real life. Well, they do, in everything from prostate cancer screening to mammography guidelines. They also apply to news reports about new diagnostic tests, an area in which the media are generally not very savvy.
One recent example involved Alzheimer’s disease. In March, the journal Nature Medicine published a report about a test of blood lipids. It predicted the imminent arrival (within two to three years) of Alzheimer’s (or mild cognitive impairment) with over 90 percent accuracy. News reports heralded the 90 percent accuracy of the test as though it were big deal. But more astute commentary pointed out that such a 90 percent accurate test would in fact be wrong 92 percent of the time.
That’s based on an Alzheimer’s prevalence in the population of 1 percent. If you test only people over age 60, the prevalence rate goes up to 5 percent. In that case a positive result with a 90 percent accurate-test is correct 32 percent of the time. “So two-thirds of positive tests are still wrong,” pharmacologist David Colquhoun of University College London writes in a blog post, where he works out the math in detail for use in evaluating such screening tests.
Neither the scientific paper nor media reports pointed out the fallacy in the 90 percent accuracy claim, Colquhoun noted. There seems to be “a conspiracy of silence about the deficiencies of screening tests,” he comments. He suggests that researchers seeking funding are motivated to hype their results and omit mention of how bad their tests are, and that journals seeking headlines don’t want to “pour cold water” on a good story. “Is it that people are incapable of doing the calculations? Surely not,” he concludes.
But many doctors and journal editors and journalists surely aren’t capable (or at least haven’t tried) to do the calculations. As the Harvard researchers point out in JAMA Internal Medicine, efforts to train doctors about statistics need improvement.
“We advocate increased training on evaluating diagnostics in general,” they write. “Specifically, we favor revising premedical education standards to incorporate training in statistics in favor of calculus, which is seldom used in clinical practice.”
Statistical training would also be a good idea for undergraduate journalism programs. And it should be mandatory in graduate level science journalism programs. It’s not — perhaps because many students in such programs already have an advanced science degree. But that doesn’t mean that they actually understand statistics. Even if they’ve taken a statistics course. Science journalists really need a course in statistical inference and evaluating evidence, designed specifically for reporting on scientific studies. Maybe in my spare time I could put something like that together. But I’d probably have to hype it to get funding.
Follow me on Twitter: @tom_siegfried
Editor's Note: This story was updated on April 23, 2014, to correct the title and affiliation of David Colquhoun. | <urn:uuid:ba43969f-5e75-445c-b8c7-1360a2d86409> | CC-MAIN-2018-09 | https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/context/doctors-flunk-quiz-screening-test-math?mode=topic&context=49 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-09/segments/1518891812758.43/warc/CC-MAIN-20180219171550-20180219191550-00503.warc.gz | en | 0.953988 | 1,431 | 3.078125 | 3 |
The back is a common site for deadly melanoma
When you’re frolicking on the beach this summer, don’t forget to put sunscreen on your back. According to a new survey, this is the most neglected body part for many people in the United States when they try to be proactive about skin cancer prevention.
Experts at the American Academy of Dermatology, sponsors of the survey, say the back is a common site for melanoma, a potentially deadly skin cancer. But of the more than 1,000 people polled, more than a third said they rarely or never apply sunscreen to their backs. Nearly half (43 percent) also said they never or rarely ask anyone to assist applying sunscreen to their backs.
Men were most likely to forego sunscreen, with 40 percent of survey participants saying they rarely or never apply sunscreen to their backs, and they were twice as likely to be uncomfortable about asking for help applying it. Thirty-three percent of women said they skip sunscreen on their backs.
The poll also that too few Americans check their backs for signs of skin cancer. More than half (57 percent) said they know how to do a self-check (women were more likely than men to understand the procedure), but only half inspect themselves at least once a year. Overall, only 36 percent of those surveyed check their backs for skin cancer at least once a year, and only 35 percent ask someone else to help.
Experts say that while many people may be uncomfortable asking someone to apply sunscreen, we need to take charge of our health and monitor our skin for new or changing spots because the best way to cure skin cancer is early detection.
Skin cancer is one of the most common cancers, with more than 3.5 million cases of basal and squamous cell skin cancer diagnosed in the U.S. each year, according to the American Cancer Society. Another 73,000 cases of the most deadly form of skin cancer, melanoma, are diagnosed annually. | <urn:uuid:179662d7-9dd7-49bd-9903-f42b90d34a2c> | CC-MAIN-2017-51 | http://www.blackhealthmatters.com/health-conditions-hub/cancer/prevention/skin-cancer-have-a-backup-plan/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-51/segments/1512948594665.87/warc/CC-MAIN-20171217074303-20171217100303-00740.warc.gz | en | 0.973307 | 403 | 3.09375 | 3 |
If you think President Barack Obama has done little for the Black community, you likely have not been keeping up with the news. Here’s NewsOne’s short list of accomplishments that the President has achieved for Black Americans — and everyone else too.
1) Awarded $1.2 Billion To Black Farmers
President Obama’s administration oversaw the $1.2 billion settlement awarded to Black farmers who have been denied loans and assistance by the Agricultural Dept. for decades.
This is the second round of settlements in a case filed in 1997, which alleged that thousands of black farmers had been discriminated against between 1983 and 1997. This round is directed at farmers who were not awarded payment because of missed filing deadlines. The judge said payments would likely be dispersed in a year or so, after neutral parties reviewed the individual claims.
This agreement will provide overdue relief and justice to African American farmers, and bring us closer to the ideals of freedom and equality that this country was founded on,” Obama said in a statement.
2) Expanded Funding For HBCUs
In February of this year, President Obama signed an executive order increasing funding for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) to $850 million over the next 10 years. The funding is being administered through the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities that was, ironically, started by the late Ronald Reagan.
3) Signed The Crack Cocaine Bill (Fair Sentencing Act)
Crack users are disproportionately sentenced to longer jail terms than those who use powder. This unfair sentencing practice punished African Americans more severely than their white counterparts. With the signing of the Fair Sentencing Act, though, President Obama narrowed that disparity significantly.
President Obama signed into law Tuesday the Fair Sentencing Act, which narrows the huge disparity in punishment given to those convicted of possessing crack cocaine versus those found with the drug in powder form.
The gap has been of particular concern to the African-American community. Crack users tend to be poorer than those who use powder – and disproportionately African-American.
Under the old law, someone convicted of possessing five grams of crack cocaine received a mandatory five years in prison. Those convicted of possessing powder cocaine had to be holding 100 times that amount to get the same mandatory sentence.
Source: The Washington Post
4) Passed Health Care Reform (Affordable Care Act)
More than 19 percent of African Americans do not have health care, according to TheRoot. When the highly debated health care reform bill was signed into law in March of 2010, millions of African Americans benefited.
As reported by the blog “Jack and Jill Politics,” Blacks will enjoy a number of benefits that the bill provides:
The Affordable Care Act expands insurance coverage by a number of mechanisms the some examples include establishing the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan, which is working to make health insurance coverage available to individuals who have been uninsured for at least six months and have been denied health insurance because they have a pre-existing condition. By 2014, this program will end and will be replaced by new health insurance exchanges.
Also by 2014 Medicaid will be expanded to cover individuals under age 65 with incomes up to 133% of the federal poverty level. In 2014, using 2010 federal poverty guidelines, 4.1 million African Americans making less than $14,403.90 and a family of four making less than $29,326.50 will be eligible for Medicaid. In addition, individuals without dependent children or who are not pregnant will now be eligible for Medicaid once this provision is enforced beginning in 2014.
Coverage for preventative conditions many of which disproportion ally impact African Americans. As of September 23, 2010, requires health plans to cover certain preventive and immunization services without charging a deductible, co-pay or coinsurance. This applies only to care delivered by in network health professionals. Specifically, new health plans will have to offer consumers 45 free screenings and other preventive services, similar changes will affect Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries Seniors enrolled in Medicare will no longer have to pay for preventive services starting January 1, 2011.
Additionally, the health reform law provides new funding to state Medicaid programs that choose to cover preventive services for patients at little or no cost starting January 1, 2013. These include (note from Jill, I’ve bolded the ones that impact African-Americans especially):
• Blood pressure testing
• Cardiovascular screening
• Cervical cancer screening
• Cholesterol measurement
• Colorectal cancer screening
• Diabetes screening
• HIV testing
• Immunizations and vaccines
• Obesity screening and counseling
• Screening newborns for sickle cell disease
Already in 2010, adults enrolled in Medicare Part D received a tax-free, one-time rebate check of $250 when they reached the Medicare drug coverage gap or “donut hole.” The donut hole refers to the gap in coverage enrollees face between the initial coverage limit and the yearly, out-of-pocket limit known as the catastrophic coverage threshold during which beneficiaries have to pay for the entire cost of their prescription drugs.
Beginning in 2011, enrollees with high prescription drug costs that put them in the donut hole will get a 50% discount on covered brand-name drugs and reductions in the cost of generic drugs while they are in the hole. Between 2010 and 2020, Part D enrollees will get increasing, continuous Medicare coverage for their prescription drugs; by 2020, they will pay only 25% out of pocket for the total cost of their drugs and the donut hole will be eliminated.
5) Created The Civil Rights Division Of The Justice Department
The U.S. Justice Department is leading one of the most aggressive defenses of civil rights in recent memory. Whether it is clamping down on Arizona for its bias against Latinos or fighting unjust state voter ID laws, this Justice Department has been fully engaged in fighting for the rights of all minorities. When President Obama chose Eric Holder to lead the department, he picked a true champion of civil rights. For a rundown of how powerful the Civil Rights Division has become, check out this article by TheRoot. | <urn:uuid:e062015a-2148-4659-8b44-6be0cd58132b> | CC-MAIN-2018-51 | https://newsone.com/1797175/barack-obamas-top-five-accomplishments-for-black-america-wiki/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-51/segments/1544376828507.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20181217113255-20181217135255-00594.warc.gz | en | 0.952985 | 1,248 | 2.671875 | 3 |
Commonwealth Missionary Society
Name of creator(s):
Colonial Missionary Society
The Congregational Missionary Society was formed in 1836 with the principal aim of working to provide communities in Canada and North America with ministers. The Society changed its name to the Colonial Missionary Society soon after its formation. Its work was restricted to the British colonies, and later its work would spread out from its base in North America. The Colonial Missionary Society was linked to the Congregational Church, which is reflected in its early name, and the administrative Board or Committee was a committee of the Congregational Church. These close links lessened over time, but a link was always maintained. The Society's object was 'the promotion of education and religion in the British colonies', and in 1834 the Congregational Union made representation to the London Missionary Society, who agreed to donate the sum of £1000 towards provision of ministers for the colonies. The first minister appointed was the Revd H Wilkes, who left for Montreal, Canada, in 1836. The Society grew rapidly, and by 1842 had established mission stations in Wellington, New Zealand, and Canada. By the end of the 19th century, work had expanded to include missions in South Africa, Australia and the British West Indies.
The Society was organised through a main Committee or Board, with a Treasurer and Honorary Secretary. Originally staff were unpaid, but gradually salaried officials were appointed to run the administration. The headquarters of the Colonial Missionary Society were originally at the Congregational Library, Blomfield Street, Finsbury Circus, London, but moved to the Memorial Hall, Farringdon Street. Sub-committees dealt with the day-to-day administration of the Society, with a North sub-committee and a South sub-committee having geographical responsibilities for regions north and south of the equator. By the 1890s, an Eastern and a Western sub-committee had been formed to deal with stations in areas such as Jamaica, Rhodesia and South Africa. The Colonial Missionary Society became an incorporated body on 16th October 1897. In 1956 it changed its name to the Commonwealth Missionary Society, and in 1966 it merged with the London Missionary Society to form the Congregational Council for World Mission.
Immediate source of acquisition:
Deposited by the Congregational Council for World Mission (later Council for World Mission) in 1973.
CONTENT AND STRUCTURE
Scope and content/abstract:
Records, 1836-1966, of the Commonwealth (formerly Congregational or Colonial) Missionary Society, relating to the administration of the Society and its mission activity in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, southern Africa, Jamaica, and India, and comprising Board minutes, Committee minutes, finance minutes, annual reports, and overseas correspondence. Few records survive for the 19th century, although both Board and Committee minutes date from 1836-1837.
System of arrangement:
Materials are arranged as a sub-collection within the Council for World Mission archive (Ref: CWM), and the papers have accrued in a main deposit, 1836-1940, and three subsequent accruals, 1941-1950, 1951-1960, 1961-1970. The papers were rearranged in 2001.
ACCESS AND USE
Conditions governing access:
Conditions governing reproduction:
No publication without written permission. Apply to the Archivist in the first instance.
A draft unpublished guide to the records to 1940 was prepared by Hannah Lowery in 1994. There are three unpublished handlists to the accruals, 1941-1950, 1951-1960, 1961-1970.
The School of Oriental and African Studies holds another sub-collection of the Council for World Mission, the records of the London Missionary Society (Ref: CWM/LMS).
Date(s) of descriptions: 15th May 2000, revised 27th February 2002. | <urn:uuid:05d03dc5-b68e-471f-917c-1282d2e64aa9> | CC-MAIN-2017-30 | http://www.mundus.ac.uk/cats/4/250.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-30/segments/1500549423842.79/warc/CC-MAIN-20170722022441-20170722042441-00042.warc.gz | en | 0.951488 | 806 | 2.859375 | 3 |
In 2002, April was designated as Minority Health Month to increase awareness about health disparities that exist for people of color. Even though April 2014 Minority Health Month is now past, we must continue to address health disparities head on every month of the year.
Health disparities exist when certain segments of the population have higher rates of preventable diseases and mortality. Many populations are affected by disparities, including racial and ethnic minorities, residents of rural areas, women, children, the elderly, and persons with disabilities.
In a recent report to the MN legislature on health equity, the MN Department of Health stated that although Minnesota is deemed one of the healthiest states, African Americans and American Indians in the state have continued to experience higher rates of preventable disease as well as reduced life expectancy. Historical and structural racism continues to place barriers that affect opportunities for African Americans and American Indians that in the long term lead to poor health outcomes
The United States Department of Health and Human Services has an initiative called Healthy People 2020 that promotes health equity, “the highest level of health for all people.” In order to achieve health equity, the social determinants of health must be addressed.
A wide range of personal, social, economic, and environmental factors contribute to health. For example, people with a quality education, stable employment, safe neighborhoods, and access to preventive health services tend to have greater health outcomes throughout their live spans.
The leading social determinant of good health outcomes is achieving a high school diploma. Graduation rates for Whites in MN are close to 80 percent, while rates for African Americans are 51 percent and for American Indians 41 percent. In order to reduce health disparities, the social inequities that lead to historical and current-day discrimination and racism must be addressed.
Everyone must be valued equally, including people who have systematically experienced greater obstacles to health based on their racial or ethnic group; religion, culture or socioeconomic status; education, gender or age; mental health; cognitive, sensory or physical disability; sexual orientation or gender identity; geographic location; or other characteristics historically linked to discrimination or exclusion.
The quest for health equity should begin at infancy and extend across the life span. The conditions in which people are born, live, learn, work and age can have the most significant influence on health outcomes.
During early and middle childhood, the physical, cognitive and social-emotional foundation for lifelong health, learning and well-being is established. A history of exposure to adverse experiences in childhood, including exposure to violence and maltreatment, is associated with increased risks for obesity, diabetes, substance abuse, heart disease, sexually transmitted diseases, and attempted suicide later in life.
There are many environmental hazards ranging from toxic exposure to lead paint to living in dangerous and violent neighborhoods that can impact the health and development of children. Communities need to join the quest for health and challenge those who make policies and laws to stand with you.
Deirdre Annice Golden, Ph.D., LP, is director of Behavioral Health for NorthPoint Health and Wellness Center Behavioral Health Clinic, 1313 Penn Ave. N. She welcomes reader responses to Deirdre.Golden@co.hennepin.mn.us, or call 612-543-2705. | <urn:uuid:650befe6-4941-4025-8107-ac24866dc332> | CC-MAIN-2018-22 | http://spokesman-recorder.com/2014/05/08/the-quest-for-health-equity-is-lifelong/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-22/segments/1526794864725.4/warc/CC-MAIN-20180522112148-20180522132148-00526.warc.gz | en | 0.950553 | 660 | 3.921875 | 4 |
Symbols of Poland
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National symbols of Poland are the symbols that are used in Poland to represent what is unique about the nation, reflecting different aspects of its cultural life and history. They intend to unite people by creating visual, verbal, or iconic representations of the national people, values, goals, or history. These symbols are often rallied around as part of celebrations of patriotism or nationalism and are designed to be inclusive and representative of all the people of the national community.
The official symbols of the Republic of Poland are described in two legal documents: the Constitution of the Republic of Poland of 1997 (Polish: Konstytucja Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej) and the Coat of Arms, Colors and Anthem of the Republic of Poland, and State Seals Act (Polish: Ustawa o godle, barwach i hymnie Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej oraz o pieczęciach państwowych) of 1980 with subsequent amendments. The Jack of the President is defined in the Ordinance of the Minister of National Defense on the Use of Insignia of the Armed Forces of January 26, 1996 with subsequent amendments.
The Flag of Poland consists of two horizontal stripes of equal width, the upper one white and the lower one red. The two colors are defined in the Polish constitution as the national colors. They are of heraldic origin and derive from the tinctures (colors) of the coats of arms of the two constituent nations of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, i.e. the White Eagle of Poland and the Pursuer of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, a white knight riding a white horse, both on a red shield.
Coat of arms
The White Eagle (Polish: Orzeł Biały) is the national coat of arms of Poland. It is a stylized white eagle with a golden beak and talons, and wearing a golden crown, in a red shield. The White Eagle emblem originated when Poland's legendary founder Lech saw a white eagle's nest. When he looked at the bird, a ray of sunshine from the red setting sun fell on its wings, so they appeared tipped with gold, the rest of the eagle was pure white. He was delighted and decided to settle there and placed the eagle on his emblem.
Dąbrowski's Mazurka (Polish: Mazurek Dąbrowskiego) is the national anthem of Poland. The English translation of its Polish incipit is "Poland is not yet lost". The lyrics were written by Józef Wybicki in July, 1797, two years after the Third Partition of Poland. The music is an unattributed mazurka and considered a "folk tune" that was altered to suit the lyrics. It was originally meant to boost the morale of Polish soldiers serving under General Jan Henryk Dąbrowski's Polish Legions in the Italian campaigns of the French Revolutionary Wars. "Dabrowski's Mazurka", expressing the idea that the nation of Poland, despite lack of independence, had not disappeared as long as the Polish people were still alive and fighting in its name, soon became one of the most popular patriotic songs in Poland. When Poland re-emerged as an independent state in 1918, "Dabrowski's Mazurka" became its de facto anthem. It was officially adopted as the national anthem of the Second Polish Republic in 1926.
Presidential jack flag
The Jack of the President of the Republic of Poland – Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Poland (Polish: proporzec Prezydenta Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej – Zwierzchnika Sił Zbrojnych Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej) is a jack flag used in the Polish Armed Forces to mark the presence and pay respect to the President of the Republic of Poland who is also ex officio the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces. The jack is raised on Polish Navy ships when the president is officially on board, as well as on land, if the president is present. The design of the jack is based directly on the pre-war Banner of the Republic of Poland which used to be part of presidential insignia. The ordinance defines the jack of the President as "a piece of red cloth with the image of the state eagle (i.e. the White Eagle from the national coat of arms) in the middle, bordered with a wężyk generalski", an ornate wavy line used in the Polish military as a symbol of general's rank.
There are a number of unofficial symbols used to represent Poland.
Poland has no official motto of the State, namely the one which is recognized as such by the Polish national law. However, there are some common phrases which appear commonly on banners, flags and other symbols of the Polish State. One of the most common of such unofficial mottos is Za wolność Naszą i Waszą ("For our freedom and yours"). Another one is Bóg, Honor, Ojczyzna ("God, Honour, Fatherland").
The ethnonyms for the Poles (people) and Poland (their country) include endonyms (the way Polish people refer to themselves and their country) and exonyms (the way other peoples refer to the Poles and their country). Endonyms and most exonyms for Poles and Poland derive from the name of the West Slavic tribe of Polans (Polanie), while in some languages the exonyms for Poland derive from the name of another tribe – the Lendians (Lędzianie).
The Polish words for a Pole are Polak (masculine) and Polka (feminine), Polki being the plural form for two or more women and Polacy being the plural form for the rest. The adjective "Polish" translates to Polish as polski (masculine), polska (feminine) and polskie (neuter). The common Polish name for Poland is Polska.
The full official name of the Polish state is Rzeczpospolita Polska which loosely translates as "Republic of Poland". The word rzeczpospolita has been used in Poland since at least the 16th century, originally a generic term to denote any state with a republican or similar form of government. Today, however, the word is used almost solely in reference to the Polish State.
Polonia, the name for Poland in Latin and many Romance and other languages, is most often used in modern Polish as referring to the Polish diaspora. However it was also used as a national personification or the symbolic depiction of Poland as a woman called by the Latin name of that country was common in the 19th Century. This is exemplified in Jan Matejkos, Polonia with the aftermath of the failed January 1863 Uprising; one of the most patriotic and symbolic paintings by Matejko. Captives await exile to Siberia. Russian officers and soldiers supervise a blacksmith placing shackles on the woman (Polonia). The blonde haired woman next to her represents Lithuania.
- (Polish) Konstytucja Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej [(English) Constitution of the Republic of Poland], Dz.U. 1997 nr 78 poz. 483 Archived 7 October 2009 at WebCite
- (Polish) Ustawa o godle, barwach i hymnie Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej oraz o pieczęciach państwowych [Coat of Arms, Colors and Anthem of the Republic of Poland, and State Seals Act], Dz.U. 1980 nr 7 poz. 18
- (Polish) Zarządzenie Ministra Obrony Narodowej z dnia 29 stycznia 1996 r. w sprawie szczegółowych zasad używania znaków Sił Zbrojnych Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej oraz ustalenia innych znaków używanych w Siłach Zbrojnych Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej (M.P.96.14.178)
- Miłosz, Czesław (1983). The History of Polish Literature. University of California Press. p. 11. ISBN 9780520044777.
- Michałowska, Teresa, ed. (1990). Słownik Literatury Staropolskiej. Średniowiecze - Renasans - Barok. Zakład Narodowy Imienia Ossolińskich. p. 354. ISBN 8304022192.
- Pałłasz, Edward. "The Polish National Anthem". Poland - Official Promotional Website of the Republic of Poland. Warsaw, PL: Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Archived from the original on 7 March 2013. Retrieved 7 March 2013.
- Trochimczyk, Maja (2000). "Dąbrowski Mazurka". National Anthems of Poland. Los Angeles, CA: Polish Music Center. USC Thornton School of Music. Archived from the original on 7 March 2013. Retrieved 7 March 2013.
- This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Soboleski, Paul, ed. (1883). "Joseph Wybicki". Poets and Poetry of Poland. A Collection of Verse, Including a Short Account of the History of Polish Poetry, With Sixty Biographical Sketches or Poland's Poets and Specimens of Their Composition, Translated into the English Language. Chicago, IL: Knight and Leonard. pp. 200–201. OCLC 681812227. Archived from the original on 18 October 2007. Retrieved 7 March 2013.
- "Polish Birds Directory". birds.poland.pl. Retrieved 2011-05-30.
- Neal Bedford (2008). Poland. (6th ed.). Footscray, Vic.: Lonely Planet. p. 71. ISBN 9781741044799.
- Gábor Klaniczay; Otto Gécser; Michael Werner (September 2011). Multiple Antiquities - Multiple Modernities: Ancient Histories in Nineteenth Century European Cultures. Campus Verlag. p. 126. ISBN 978-3-593-39101-4.
- Wrocławskie Towarzystwo Naukowe. Komisja Językowa (2005). Rozprawy Komisji Językowej (in Polish). Państwowe Wydawn. Naukowe. p. 95.
- Polani by John Canaparius, Vita sancti Adalberti episcopi Pragensis, or Life of St. Adalbert of Prague, 999.
- Polenia by Thietmar of Merseburg Chronicle, 1002. (German: Polen)
- (Polish) Wielka Encyklopedia Powszechna PWN
- (Polish)Wielka Encyklopedia Powszechna PWN
- Jan Cavanaugh. Out Looking in: Early Modern Polish Art, 1890-1918. University of California Press. 2000. pp. 18, 106-107, 188. | <urn:uuid:2c1207ff-355f-43d1-826c-bd9d023ef926> | CC-MAIN-2014-49 | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_symbols_of_Poland | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-49/segments/1416400380948.74/warc/CC-MAIN-20141119123300-00214-ip-10-235-23-156.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.851501 | 2,586 | 3.640625 | 4 |
Basic Building Parameters
Basic Building Parameters:
Pre-Engineered Buildings are defined by the following basic parameters.
Building width is distance from outside of sidewall girt flange to the outside of opposite sidewall girt flange. This does not include width of lean to area, canopy or roof extension. These limits are also termed as steel line.
Building Length is out to out longitudinal distance between flanges of end wall columns or end wall girts whichever is greater.
Building Height can be defined in three different ways.
- Clear Height is defined as the height of building from the FFL to the bottom flange of main frame rafter. It is minimum possible clear height throughout the building.
- Eave Height of the building is the distance between the finish floor level to the top of outer point of eave purlin or eave strut.
- Peak / Ridge Height is the distance between the FFL and highest/peak point of the building (ridge line.)
Roof Slope is the angle of roof with respect to horizontal. Any particular roof slope is possible, however generally roof slope 0.5: 10 to 1.5: 10 is used considering the economy and aesthetics. For bulk storage roof slope is also dependent upon the angle of repose of that particular material.
Bay Length is the distance between two frames of building. For first and last bays (Exterior Bays) this distance is considered between the outside of steel line (defined early) to the center line of interior steel column while for the rest of the bays (Interior Bays) it is the distance between the center line of two consecutive steel columns. | <urn:uuid:b474a24c-c8b3-4927-b97b-1876e66125c4> | CC-MAIN-2020-29 | https://banumukhtar.com/basic-building-parameters/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-29/segments/1593655896374.33/warc/CC-MAIN-20200708031342-20200708061342-00221.warc.gz | en | 0.934457 | 339 | 2.578125 | 3 |
Can racial language in literature be an effective teaching tool?
Sometimes teachers can be torn between the desire to teach good literature and the fear of offending students, especially when the literature in question uses derogatory racial terms and the class itself is multiracial.
Those teachers who do not share the ethnic backgrounds and experiences of their students may be timid about reading aloud or discussing racially insensitive language in novels.
But controversial language in fiction can lead to powerful discussions, deeper understanding of sensitive topics and critical thinking. Diversity of race and experience can add insight and perspective to classroom discussions. Students can often be the guide to what is right and fair.
I am a white, female teacher of five years experience. This year my classroom of 25 fifth graders included four Asian Americans, three African Americans and two first-generation European Americans. The novels that complemented our U.S. history curriculum presented plenty of hot topics for discussion.
One book that generated controversy was The Cay (Doubleday, 1969) by Theodore Taylor. It is about Timothy, an elderly, illiterate black sailor, and Phillip, the blind white boy with whom he is shipwrecked.
My mentioning that The Cay had been banned in some schools made my students eager to read it.
The Cay prompted our most in-depth character studies of the year. After listing the positive and negative qualities of both Timothy and Phillip, we speculated about where those qualities came from.
Were they learned? Innate? Circumstantial? Which, if any, were due to ethnicity?
Some students thought that Timothy was portrayed in a racially unflattering light. Others saw him as a genuine hero. They concluded that Phillip had been taught bigotry and that his rise from it was redeeming.
When several students determined that Phillip was prejudiced when he called Timothy "ugly," a whirlwind of debate followed. The students’ comments were filled with logic, insight and humor.
"He only said he was ugly because he was black."
"You don’t have to be black to be ugly."
"Phillip probably thought anyone who is black is ugly."
"Maybe he really was ugly."
The next day’s commentary offered no relief from controversy. It was clear that despite valid arguments and passionate debate, no consensus would be reached.
I explained that since each reader brought his or her own experience and point of view to the story, there was no right or wrong interpretation of the character’s meaning.
Peter (all students’ names are fictitious), an African American student, suggested that Phillip was racist when he called Timothy a "Negro."
I asked the students which of them found Negro to be offensive. To my surprise, more than half raised their hands. "It means the same as ‘nigger,’" Peter explained.
As a class we looked up the word "Negro" in the dictionary. We learned that the English word was borrowed from the Spanish for the color black. The definition read that a Negro is a member of the black race.
I explained that many people consider Negro offensive because of its use during the Jim Crow era of segregation. The racial epithet "nigger," though derived from Negro, is usually considered far more derogatory.
Some students still believed Negro to be a racist term, so everyone got a homework assignment: to ask their parents what they thought Negro meant and report their findings.
I did my homework, too. I went to an African American staff member and asked her what she thought. She told me that although Negro is not a derogatory term, her family and other people whom she knows from the South don’t like it.
"It’s just another term that white people put on us," she said. "We didn’t give it to ourselves."
The students and I shared our findings the next day. They reported that in their homes, Negro was considered everything from "just fine" to "strictly forbidden."
The discussion went on and on and soon developed into an intensely personal discussion about racial slurs and name-calling.
"If someone calls me Negro, I’ll get mad," Peter insisted.
"There are words they call people from Japan," said Sam, a Japanese American, "but I won’t say them."
The great debate was never completely settled. But every student had given bigotry and labeling serious thought.
I stepped in to end the argument. "Some words are considered crude and inappropriate everywhere," I said. "But out of respect, you should never call anyone what they don’t like to be called."
Two months later the pressure was on again. I was reading aloud War Comes to Willy Freeman by James and Lincoln Collier (Dell, 1987). In it, Willy, a young, freed slave girl, disguises herself as a boy during the Revolutionary War.
Throughout the book, some characters refer to the African Americans as "niggers." Again I consulted my class.
We read and discussed the authors’ afterword in which they explain that, despite their discomfort, they decided to use the term for historical accuracy. We talked about the dangers of censorship.
Ultimately, the class decided that they preferred not to hear the word "nigger" read out loud.
"We know it says that," said Amy, "so you don’t have to say it."
I was relieved. I would substitute "Negro" instead. The Class agreed that is was OK as a substitute. Although derogatory, it was not as repulsive as the alternative.
The decision on how to handle racially sensitive literature ultimately lies with the teacher, who may choose to avoid material that causes discomfort. But we cannot ask children to question the meaning of literature if we shelter them from those selections which offer the greatest springboard for thought and discussion.
Kathryn Knecht was a 5th grade teacher at Hunting Ridge School in Palatine, Ill., from 1993 to 1995 | <urn:uuid:66b5922a-c1c1-4b34-a123-1cda62733585> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.tolerance.org/article/facing-n-word | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279379.41/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00541-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981619 | 1,236 | 3.875 | 4 |
Early Australian History, by Charles White. Title: Early Australian History.
Convict Life in New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land, Parts I & II] Author: Charles White * A Project Gutenberg Australia eBook * eBook No.: 1204081.txt Language: English Date first posted: November 2012 Date most recently updated: November 2012 Produced by: Maurie Mulcahy Project Gutenberg Australia eBooks are created from printed editions which are in the public domain in Australia, unless a copyright notice is included. We do NOT keep any eBooks in compliance with a particular paper edition. Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing this file. This eBook is made available at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. GO TO Project Gutenberg Australia HOME PAGE. Convicts and colonisers:the early history of Australia. Thomas Barrett was sentenced to death three times.
His first capital offence was in 1782 when, as a young boy, he was found guilty of stealing a silver watch in London. Barrett’s sentence was commuted and he was despatched instead to the North American colonies. However before his ship had left Britain there was a convict uprising that enabled Barrett to escape. His freedom was short-lived. Barrett was recaptured and the death penalty was again handed down for his actions. Barrett’s story illustrates a key idea to emerge from Australians, the first part of Thomas Keneally’s epic history of a continent and its people. Having been deprived of American colonies following the emergence of the United States, Britain in the 1780s was desperate to find an alternative territory for its miscreants.
Who were the people who landed on what Keneally describes as “a sunstruck dungeon at the end of the world”? Australian History : Convicts. During the period between 1788 and 1868, about 160,000 convicts were sent to Australia.
What happened to them when they got to Australia depended on their skills or education, how they behaved themselves and some luck. The First Fleet carried 780 British convicts who landed in Botany Bay, New South Wales. Two more convict fleets arrived in 1790 and 1791, and the first free settlers didn' arrived until 1793. During this period, the colony of New South Wales was officially a penal colony comprising mainly of convicts, marines and the wives of the marines. Who were the convicts? Low on food - Just after landing the food situation in the colony became scarce as the land wasn't fertile enough to produce any food yet. Good Behaviour - Good behaviour meant that convicts rarely served their full term and could qualify for a "Ticket of Leave", Certificate of Freedom, Conditional Pardon or even an Absolute Pardon.
Life on a Convict Ship - Western Australia. Convicts To Australia ... Research Guide - Life at Sea. Convicts were housed below decks on the prison deck and further confined behind bars.
In many cases they were restrained in chains and were only allowed on deck for fresh air and exercise. Conditions were cramped and they slept on hammocks. Very little information seems to be available about the layout of convict ships but a few books do contain artists impressions and reproductions of images held in library collections. Convicts To Australia ... Research Guide - Timeline. The colony of VAN DIEMEN'S LAND was established in its own right and its name was officially changed to TASMANIA on 01/01/1856.
The first settlement was made at Risdon on 11/09/1803 when Lieut John Bowen landed with about 50 settlers, crew, soldiers and convicts. The site proved unsuitable and was abandoned in August 1804. Lieut-Col David Collins finally established a successful settlement at Hobart in February 1804 with a party of about 260 people, including 178 convicts. (Collins had previously attempted a settlement in Victoria.) Convict ships were sent from England directly to the colony from 1812-1853 and over the 50 years from 1803-1853 around 67,000 convicts were transported to Tasmania.
The convict system. Between 1788 and 1868, 165,000 convicts were transported to Australia.
Transportation in New South Wales officially ceased in 1840, although there was a short-lived revival in 1849. During that period there were gradual changes in living conditions for the convicts. Under Governor Phillip and the early governors most convicts were employed on public works constructing roads, bridges and public buildings and cultivating government farms. Female convicts were generally employed as domestic servants to the officers.
As the colony developed and free immigration increased, convicts were assigned to work for free settlers and small landholders. "Convicts" letter writing at Cockatoo Island, NSW, "Canary Birds", 1849, by Phillipe de VigorsInk and watercolour. Until 1810 the government issued convicts ordinary civilian clothing or 'slops'. A convict Story. Convict Facts. Convict tokens. At a glance Coins engraved with convict details and messages of affection World's largest collection Created between 1762 and 1856 Left behind by convicts with their loved ones in England A rare personal and emotional memento from prisoners On show in the Journeys gallery Rare personal convict mementos Smoothing and engraving a coin with a message of affection was one of the few ways a convict transported to Australia could leave a memento behind with loved ones in England.
These small tokens are also known as 'leaden hearts'. They record personal and emotional responses from convicts whose lives are more often represented by official government records. The National Museum of Australia holds the world's largest collection of convict tokens, with more than 310 in its collection. Tracing the lines The tokens often include the names of the convict and their loved one, the length of the convict's sentence and popular phrases and rhymes of separation. James Godfrey Thomas Lock Abraham Lawley Journeys. Meet a convict. Browse Convicts. Browse By Surname Browse convicts by their surname.
Select the first letter of the surname below to get started. Or Try A Search Just enter the name of the person you are searching for. If you prefer, try searching this website with a Google search. Pictures - Convict portraits, Port Arthur, 1874 [picture] Convicts To Australia ... Some Tales. Profiles. | <urn:uuid:74cc6ae1-17c0-4cf5-b6ae-7c0643e28935> | CC-MAIN-2017-47 | http://www.pearltrees.com/vbunce/convicts/id13747993 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-47/segments/1510934806842.71/warc/CC-MAIN-20171123142513-20171123162513-00437.warc.gz | en | 0.971793 | 1,328 | 3.328125 | 3 |
Looking for fun and simple gross motor activities for preschoolers? Look no further! I collected lots of gross motor activities for children that are simple and fun.
Early childhood physical development includes gross motor development. It is the development of the large muscles in our body, the ones that help us walk, run, and simply move around.
Generally speaking, boys at the preschool age tend to have better gross motor development than girls of the same age.
Make sure you are in a safe and large space where the child can run freely without getting hurt.
Most of these games require a number of children in order to become a fun meaningful experience.
Your child needs you and your patience. Teach them how to throw a ball, kick, skip, and balance. This is a great opportunity to create memorable experiences.
Like anything else in life, practice makes perfect!
A classic game that helps children with their co-ordination and spatial orientation (the awareness of their bodies with relation to other objects around them).
Recommended Jump Rope: Green Toys Jump Rope
This game helps children practice their balance and coordination.
A great way to get children to move around their bodies. Hula hoop on your legs, arms and neck as well as your stomach.
Recommended Hula Hoop: Wavy Hoop Hula Hoop
Using cones, signs and hoops have the children imagine they are walking over water full of sharks or perhaps they are traveling in the forest. Children love pretend play and with the help of the obstacle tools below it is easy to set up challenging gross motor activities that are fun and creative.
One of the easiest gross motor activities for preschoolers is playing ball games. Soccer or baseball help preschoolers practice their throwing and catching, kicking, and hitting. Ball games also help children develop their spatial orientation and their laterality (being aware of the right and left sides of their bodies).
Recommended Soccer Ball: Chastep Foam Soccer Ball
Recommended Baseball Set: Anokey Baseball and Bat
In this body awareness gross motor activity for preschoolers game, get you child to identify body parts and then shake them. Shake your head, knees, hands, arms and so on.
This is a great game for early childhood physical development. Get your child to hold their ankles with their hands and walk. This is a great way to improve their coordination and directional awareness.
A simple way to practice road rules. Green light means go (or run), and red light means stop (or stand).
The 'wolf' stands on one end of the yard with his back turned and everyone else is all the way on the other side. All the children ask: "What time is it Mr. Wolf?" and the wolf answers with a time, the children would then have to walk steps corresponding to the time (e.g. if it was 5 o'clock, the children would have to take 5 steps).
The game continues in the line of questioning until the wolf thinks the children are close, in which case he or she would reply "LUNCH TIME!" and would turn around and try to catch the children. Whoever is caught becomes the wolf in the next round. This game is one of the loved gross motor activities for preschoolers.
Play some music and dance. When the music stops your child has to FREEZE! In class, I incorporate the theme of that week into the game. For instance, when we were learning about Autumn, I would tell the children to freeze in the shape of a tree. A simple and easy gross motor activity for preschoolers.
The classic game can be played anywhere and anytime, but the only downfall is that you need at least six to ten children. The children sit in a circle and one child walks around the outside of the circle tapping the others' heads and saying: "Duck, duck, duck...Goose!" Whoever is the "Goose" needs to get up and run after the first child before they reach their spots back in the circle.
If they are caught then they go into the chicken soup (the center of the circle). You can vary this game by using any other two word such as: circle/square, cow/horse and my son's favorite hotdog/hamburger.
Here is another simple early childhood physical development game. In partners, the children face one another (or you can play this at home with your child), and one partner plays the part of the 'reflection' of the other. When the child jumps, the partner needs to jump. When the child touches their nose, the partner needs to touch their nose. This helps in body awareness.
Here is another simple early childhood physical development game. In partners, the children face one another (or you can play this at home with your child), and one partner plays the part of the 'reflection' of the other. Get the children to point to their nose, their toes, or can put their elbows on their knees. Create many combinations and get the children to come up with new combinations. This gross motor activity for preschoolers is also a great way to teach children body awareness.
This is my favorite gross motor activities for preschoolers. Lying on mats with their stomach and bending their knees, get your child to hold on to their ankles and sway from side to side like a basket. This is a great exercise that stretches their muscles, and teaches co-ordination and balance. Children love these simple gross motor activities for preschoolers.
Recommended Play Mat: Play Platoon Play Mat
Being able to express themselves through music and movement is a great gift that children have. Put on their favorite song and simply dance. By dancing children learn about spatial awareness, co-ordination, and body awareness.
Recommended Dance Songs: Kid's Dance Party | <urn:uuid:88ea9ac7-5018-47d9-a410-5aaec335ce28> | CC-MAIN-2019-43 | http://www.preschools4all.com/gross-motor-activities-for-preschoolers.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-43/segments/1570986702077.71/warc/CC-MAIN-20191020024805-20191020052305-00546.warc.gz | en | 0.959345 | 1,185 | 3.015625 | 3 |
Mention the millennium, and most people in the UK will think of the saga of the Millennium Dome. Few will recall Lord Tanlaw rising in the House of Lords in March 1998 to ask Her Majesty’s Government for their response to a claim being made, that the third millennium was ‘to be celebrated at Greenwich on the wrong meridian with the wrong time-scale and in the wrong year of the second millennium’.
In our system of counting years, there is no year zero. The year run goes straight from 1 BC (BCE) to 1 AD (CE). Because there is no year zero, an interval of 100 years only elapsed at the end of the year 100 AD. Likewise, 2,000 years only elapsed at midnight on 31 December 2000. Despite this, the World at large chose to celebrate the start of the third millennium not at the end of the year 2000, but at its start. That they did this was nothing new. The controversy had previously been aired in The Times both in 1899 and one hundred years earlier in 1799 when the paper stated:
We have uniformly rejected all letters and declined all discussion upon the question of when the present century ends? as it is one of the most absurd that can engage the public attention, and we are astonished to find it has been the subject of so much dispute, since it appears to be perfectly plain. The present century will not terminate till Jan. 1, 1801, unless it can be made out that 99 are 100 ... It is a silly, childish discussion, and only exposes the want of brains of those who maintain a contrary opinion to that we have stated... .
The same arguments were aired once again at the start of 2010, which many declared as the beginning of a new decade.
An area of speculation and extensive press coverage revolved around which point on land would see the first light of the new millennium. Things got very heated, when on 23 December 1994 the Republic of Kiribati, a group of Islands, divided by the International Date Line, announced that from 1 January 1995 it was uniting itself by pushing the Date Line eastwards. The government then changed the name of Caroline, the easternmost of its islands to Millennium Island and attempted to cash in by staking its claim for first light. In the event the claim was wrong.
Whilst the Kiribati controversy grabbed the headlines, other controversies were subtler and went largely unnoticed, particularly those which arose as a result of the niceties surrounding the meaning and use of Universal Time, which had been adopted at the start of the 20th century.
The seeds for confusion were sown at the International Meridian conference of 1884, when it was proposed not only that the Greenwich Meridian should be adopted as the Prime Meridian of the World, but also that there should be a ‘universal day for all purposes for which it may be convenient, and which shall not interfere with the use of local or other standard time …’. This universal day would ‘begin for all the world at the moment of mean midnight of the initial meridian, coinciding with the beginning of the civil day and date of that meridian’.
The key word here is ‘convenient’. For in effect, two widely different time systems are in operation, a local time and a universal time. Did the millennium begin at local midnight, in the time zone defined by the local jurisdiction or did it begin at midnight on the Meridian of Greenwich as the sign, outside the Royal Observatory, (which was rather more economical with the truth), had claimed? The pragmatic answer would be that it began at both. In reality though, this was not quite the case.
Little by little, the Earth is slowing down – not at a steady rate, but at a rate that varies over time. So small is the change, that it remained undetected until the 20th century. Once detected though, it presented scientists with a problem. Like length and mass, time is one of the fundamental quantities and it is important that the units in which it is measured stay constant in value from one day to the next. With an Earth whose speed was changing, time itself was going to be a bit of a variable quantity. The development of the atomic clock, gave scientists the potential for a new time scale steadier than the Earth itself. In 1967, following much discussion and after years of careful measurements, International Atomic Time (TAI) was introduced and the second redefined. No longer was it formally to be 1/86,400 of a mean solar day, but ‘the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom’. The new definition although sounding complicated, assigned the second the same length that it had had on average during the year 1900 – the same length in fact that it had been assigned before the new definition came into effect.
With the Earth gradually slowing, but the timescale not slowing with it, the position of the Sun in the sky was set to get more and more out of step with the time it represented. The idea of 12 noon gradually shifting into the morning and then into the night was not something that most people wanted to contemplate – even if it was going to take tens of thousands of years to become significant.
The problem was solved in 1972, with the introduction of an adjusted atomic time scale, Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). The rotation of the Earth is monitored by various organisations around the world, the data being coordinated by the International Earth Rotation Service (IERS) in Paris. Every now and again, (historically at the end of either June or December), an extra second known as a leap second, is introduced to keep UTC within 0.9 seconds of GMT. Although UTC has no legal status in the UK, it is this rather than GMT which is used in practice, as Lord Tanlaw made clear during the second reading of the Coordinated Universal Time Bill in the House of Lords on 11 June 1997. He also pointed out for those who were listening, that: ‘It is quite impossible ...to set a watch or clock to Greenwich Mean Time’ and ‘that when Big Ben ... strikes in the new millennium it will be UTC time …’. He went on to say how he hoped that the time displayed at the Millennium Dome, would be described correctly as UTC and not as GMT, ‘as is the case today outside the Maritime Museum at Greenwich.’ His rebuke, fell on deaf ears.
In April 1997, a countdown clock sponsored by Accurist was set running on the Line at the Royal Observatory. Like others around the World, it counted down the days, hours, minutes and seconds until the start of the year 2000. It is now counting upwards as the picture shows.
Although the sign displayed alongside it at the Observatory implies otherwise, it calculated the time left to the start of the millennium not in terms of GMT, but in terms of UTC as derived from the time signals it received from the GPS satellites.
When the 1000-day countdown began, the approach taken by the owners of the various countdown clocks was decidedly uncoordinated. Whilst most strived to estimate the number of leap seconds that would need to be allowed for, the National Maritime Museum (NMM) as custodians of the Royal Observatory decided that its countdown clock would not take leap seconds into account until they were actually inserted, at which point, the clock would effectively pause for a second. Inevitably, different authorities did not agree in their estimates of how many leap seconds would be added. So, when they started, the various countdown clocks differed from one another by one, two, or three seconds. Fortunately for the NMM, no leap second was added at the end of 1999. Imagine the embarrassment if under the full spotlight of the World’s media, the clock had counted down to zero, but with a second still to go before the start of the year 2000 (UTC).
One reason why the Millennium Dome was sited in Greenwich is that the Meridian runs though the site. Quite correctly, the various authorities turned to the NMM as custodians of the Airy Transit Circle for an official take on the Meridian. Some have argued, most notably Tom Standage in The Daily Telegraph (on 9 September 1997), that the NMM took a rather narrow approach to the matter. Standage argued that in a forward looking world, the position of the WGS84 Meridian should be given precedence over the Airy and be the one that was marked at the Dome. While not denying the existence of the WGS84 Meridian, the NMM repeatedly played down its significance. Although both meridians pass though the site of the Dome, only the Airy Meridian passes though the site of the Observatory. And it is to the Observatory that visitors come from all around the World in order to stand astride the Line. It is brand recognition like this that drives sponsorship and licensing deals. But those, who believed that the place to be at midnight UTC was on the WGS84 or the closely aligned International Reference Meridian, were also mistaken. As we have already seen, time has been decoupled from the spinning Earth. There is no link between UTC and any fixed point or line on the Earth, or indeed in the space above it, nor has there ever been.
But if as the NMM claimed, the millennium was going to start at midnight GMT on the Greenwich Meridian, how, was anybody supposed to know when this moment had arrived since all the clocks showed UTC? Since the discrepancy between UTC and GMT was always going to be less than 0.9 seconds, this might sound rather nitpicking, especially as in the UK, the words UTC and GMT are often used interchangeably – particularly by the BBC and Her Majesty’s Government. But time and location are critical here. Each 0.1 seconds of time represents a distance on the ground of a little over 28 metres at the latitude of Greenwich. Were such a thing as a UTC meridian to exist, its distance at Greenwich from the Airy Meridian would vary continuously by up to 250 metres in either direction.
The uncertainties associated with predicting the Earth’s future rotation rate are not dissimilar to those associated with weather forecasting – the predictions tend to be reliable in the short term only. Only after the event, is it possible to determine (rather than estimate) the difference between GMT and UTC at any particular moment in time. At the end of 1999, this difference was decreasing by about a thousandth of a second a day – an amount that would have caused the hypothetical UTC meridian to move towards the Airy Meridian at a rate of roughly one foot a day. So did the people of Britain mark the start of the millennium at midnight GMT? There is only one answer. They most certainly did not. They marked it at midnight UTC. At the start of 1 January 2000, GMT was running 0.355499 seconds ahead of UTC. So in practice, depending on how you look at it: either the celebrations started on the Airy Meridian as the NMM claimed they should, but roughly a third of a second too late, or they started at midnight, but on a hypothetical meridian that at that moment was roughly 100 metres to its west – a line incidentally that passes through neither the curtilage of the Observatory or of the Dome.
The people at the Dome were un-persuaded by Standage’s arguments and pressed ahead, with creating the Meridian Quarter containing extensions of the four meridians that were (until March 2010) marked as shown, on the external wall of the Meridian Building at the Royal Observatory.
The observant visitor to the Observatory will note that the marks on the wall of the Meridian Building do not all line up with the marks on the floor inside. They might enquire why the so-called Halley Meridian (H) is marked by the quadrant wall (and on the wrong side at that) rather than where it should be at the historic site of his transit instrument. They might ponder too, if John Flamsteed would have agreed with where his so-called meridian (F) is marked. And should this enquiring visitor make his or her way down to the Dome, they would probably not be surprised to discover that the four lines there are all marked too far to the west.
Although the Dome is the best known of the Millennium Projects to have actually been sited on the Greenwich Meridian, it was by no means the only one. Two other high budget projects were the Millennium Tree Line and a public sundial in Greenwich Park. Like the Dome, neither can be regarded as having been successful. But all is not doom and gloom, for although the Millennium Dome is widely remembered as a financial disaster, it is now said to be the most successful entertainment venue in the World.
At the time of the millennium, beacons and fireworks were lit and many new markings of the Line occurred. The London Borough of Waltham Forest and the Sussex town of East Grinstead for example went overboard, marking the Meridian on virtually every street it crossed. There was a departure too – for the first time in the UK the WGS84 meridian was marked. Of the two such markings that are known, one was positioned by a pilot and the other by a naval man. Tanlaw and Standage would no doubt have been delighted. | <urn:uuid:f8600025-6179-4c98-9700-6242b77d9ba5> | CC-MAIN-2019-09 | http://www.thegreenwichmeridian.org/tgm/articles.php?article=12 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-09/segments/1550247495367.60/warc/CC-MAIN-20190220170405-20190220192405-00388.warc.gz | en | 0.973183 | 2,757 | 2.90625 | 3 |
Here are 3 main trends you can expect to see this Fall/Winter year. Clothing (also known as clothes and attire) is a collective term for garments, items worn on the body. Clothing can be made of textiles, animal skin, or other thin sheets of materials put together.
The most obvious function of clothing is to improve the comfort of the wearer, by protecting the wearer from the elements. In hot climates, clothing provides protection from sunburn or wind damage, while in cold climates its thermal insulation properties are generally more important. The shelter usually reduces the functional need for clothing. For example, coats, hats, gloves, and other superficial layers are normally removed when entering a warm home, particularly if one is residing or sleeping there. Similarly, clothing has seasonal and regional aspects, so that thinner materials and fewer layers of clothing are generally worn in warmer seasons and regions than in colder ones.
Although dissertations on clothing and its function appear from the 19th century as colonising countries dealt with new environments, concerted scientific research into psycho-social, physiological and other functions of clothing (e.g. protective, cartage) occurred in the first half of the 20th century, with publications such as J. C. Flügel’s Psychology of Clothes in 1930, and Newburgh’s seminal Physiology of Heat Regulation and The Science of Clothing in 1949. By 1968, the field of environmental physiology had advanced and expanded significantly, but the science of clothing in relation to environmental physiology had changed little. While considerable research has since occurred and the knowledge-base has grown significantly, the main concepts remain unchanged, and indeed Newburgh’s book is still cited by contemporary authors, including those attempting to develop thermoregulatory models of clothing development.
#3: Social status
In some societies, clothing may be used to indicate rank or status. In ancient Rome, for example, only senators could wear garments dyed with Tyrian purple. In traditional Hawaiian society, only high-ranking chiefs could wear feather cloaks and palaoa, or carved whale teeth. In China, before establishment of the republic, only the emperor could wear yellow. History provides many examples of elaborate sumptuary laws that regulated what people could wear. In societies without such laws, which includes most modern societies, social status is instead signaled by the purchase of rare or luxury items that are limited by cost to those with wealth or status. In addition, peer pressure influences clothing choice. | <urn:uuid:98be0461-0114-4947-8564-0c1311ec8a9d> | CC-MAIN-2021-43 | https://bannerstore.us/year-%D1%81lothes-trends/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-43/segments/1634323584567.81/warc/CC-MAIN-20211016105157-20211016135157-00661.warc.gz | en | 0.954804 | 503 | 3.453125 | 3 |
A University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill researcher has been awarded a four-year, $507,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health’sto study the effectiveness of rotavirus vaccines in the Central American nation of Nicaragua.
The grant was awarded to Sylvia Becker-Dreps, M.D., M.P.H., an assistant professor of family medicine in the, who recently completed a National Research Service Award (NRSA) Primary Care Research Fellowship at UNC. It adds to initiatives within the UNC Center for Latino Health and the ’ program in Nicaragua.
“Nicaragua was one of the first developing world nations to start universal immunization of its children against rotavirus, so the lessons learned here could be important to other developing nations,” Becker-Dreps said.
Rotaviruses are the most common infectious cause of diarrhea and cause the deaths of about 527,000 children worldwide each year. “These deaths are really the tip of the iceberg- many children have repeated diarrhea episodes and end up with malnutrition, stunted growth, and even developmental delays.”
In Nicaragua, diarrhea is the leading cause of death in children between infancy and age 5. In 2006, Nicaragua implemented universal infant rotavirus immunization with the pentavalent rotavirus vaccine, which manufactured by Merck. All Nicaraguan infants receive this live, oral vaccine at the ages of 2 months, 4 months and 6 months, as do children in the United States.
Clinical trials in the U.S. and Europe have shown the vaccine to be highly effective in reducing rotavirus diarrhea, but it is not known how well the vaccine works in developing countries like Nicaragua or in preventing less severe cases of diarrhea that may never receive care in the hospital.
Becker-Dreps’ study aims to determine the effectiveness of the vaccine in the primary care setting and in the community setting in Nicaragua. In addition, researchers will perform genotyping of rotavirus-positive samples collected in the study in order to identify if shifts in rotavirus strains are occurring as a result of the immunization program.
Media contact: Tom Hughes, (919) 966-6047, firstname.lastname@example.org | <urn:uuid:6cda539f-4005-4552-b72a-3de95620137f> | CC-MAIN-2014-41 | http://www.med.unc.edu/www/newsarchive/2009/october/unc-researcher-awarded-grant-for-anti-diarrhea-vaccine-study-in-nicaragua | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-41/segments/1412037662910.19/warc/CC-MAIN-20140930004102-00066-ip-10-234-18-248.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936283 | 467 | 2.78125 | 3 |
To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, takes place in the 1930's in the calm atmosphere of the small southern town of Macomb, located in the red clay hills of Alabama. Miss Lee portrays her characters through the innocent eyes of a child named Scout. With the usage of this first-person narrative technique, the reader is able to clearly see the facts for himself and to gain an insight into the inequities and injustices running through the prejudice and discrimination surrounding the town.
Lee builds to the major climax of the story by involving the characters in many smaller conflicts in building toward the culmination of events. The initial conflict is seen with the introduction of the character, Arthur "Boo"ÃÂ Radley. Mr. Radley "ÃÂs reputation has been established by the town gossips as being that of an alarming and a frightening man. In fact, even his nickname of "Boo"ÃÂ gives credence to the attitude that the townspeople possess toward him.
Even though Scout has the same feelings toward Mr. Radley, she also has feelings of pity toward him. Her father, Atticus Finch, had always told her "not to judge a person until he has walked in their skin."ÃÂ This conflict is resolved when "Boo"ÃÂ comes to the aid of the Finch children, and the townspeople realize that he is a decent, honest, and thoughtful man.
Harper Lee carries the reader through the normal daily activities of the town as she builds to the climax of the book. She frequently mentions the children's attempts to catch a glimpse of "Boo"ÃÂ Radley and of their strong desire to know him as a person. Once, "Boo"ÃÂ, unbeknownst to the children, appears and performs a kind thoughtful act for them. They were chilled by the night air when they stood and watched Miss Maudie's house burn. Due to their fascination with the clouds of smoke and fiery flames, they were not even aware when "Boo"ÃÂ placed a warm blanket around their shoulders. Purposefully, Harper Lee keeps "Boo"ÃÂ and the children continually in our minds in her steps toward building to the climax of the story.
The conflict of the townspeople against Atticus Finch is revealed when he is appointed to defend the black man, Tom Robinson, against the rape charges filed by Mayella Ewell. The people of Macomb, with their deeply planted roots of prejudice and discrimination, rise together against Atticus. They brand him as a "nigger-lover"ÃÂ and refuse to acknowledge his obligation to defend the black man against the rape charges. Even during the lunch mob scene when the vigilantes try to seize Tom Robinson from the jail, Atticus is firm in his belief of the man's innocence and manages to stop their attempts. Atticus does effectively prove Tom Robinson's innocence, but the jury ignores this and casts their vote for the man to die. Further, the conflict within Atticus himself is seen as he wrestles with his conscience in a passionate struggle to do what is right for the accused and what is right for his family. His conflicting emotions show his deep love for his children and his strong sense of justice.
The conflict of Tom Robinson versus the town is also revealed in the trial scene as the townspeople intentionally overlook the fact that his withered arm was not capable of striking and injuring the Ewell girl. Their only thoughts of Tom are that he is black, and they are white. In their eyes, a white man can do no wrong and a black man is the root of all evil. Atticus feels very despondent because the values he has worked to instill within his children of justice and truth are being ignored because of the powerful influence of hate and bigotry.
The townspeople resolve their conflict with Tom Robinson, though, by killing him when he attempts to escape from the jail. Seemingly unconcerned, they settle back into their daily lives as though nothing has ever happened. But Harper Lee jolts the reader when she presents the conflict of Bob Ewell against that of Atticus Finch. Atticus had destroyed his credibility during the trial, and Ewell had vowed to murder the Finch children. They are saved by "Boo"ÃÂ Radley, and Bob Ewell falls upon his own knife that he had intended for the children. His assassin is himself and all of his hatred and evil thoughts that he possesses.
Jem and Scout Finch now fully understand the meaning of their father's wise words, "Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. That is why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird."ÃÂ Atticus was attempting to convey to his children the fact some people such as "Boo"ÃÂ Radley and Tom Robinson is victims of our society. They are innocent simple people who don't bother anyone and should have the right to be left to their own solitude. "Boo"ÃÂ is a good man who has harmed no one, but is made the butt of countless jokes. Tom, also, has inflicted no wrongs upon anyone, but is chastised for the fact that he is black.
Harper Lee develops the plot of her book, To Kill a Mockingbird, very fluidly through a series of minor conflicts, a climax, and its resolution. The words of justice, prejudice, and discrimination take on new meaning through Lee's telling of the story of two young children and two innocent men who are the victims of the evil of the world. | <urn:uuid:b1df9dd9-1069-4313-bba4-5abb1499679a> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.writework.com/essay/kill-mockingbird-15 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280761.39/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00249-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984289 | 1,123 | 3.375 | 3 |
Late last year Russia and OPEC agreed to extend their agreement to decrease oil production until the end of 2018. Russia, OPEC, and other major oil-producing countries agreed to reduce their oil production in 2017 in an attempt to decrease the global supply of oil and in turn increase the price of oil. An extension was signed in advance of the previous deal ending in this coming March. The original cut in oil production was in response to falling oil prices. After declining for the previous few years, 2017 saw rising oil prices worldwide, due in large part to the agreement limiting oil that OPEC and other countries enacted last year. West Texas Intermediate saw crude oil prices rise from $43.33 per barrel in 2016 to $50.56 per barrel in 2017.
Oil is a major source of revenue for many countries worldwide. More specifically Russia and the countries in OPEC rely heavily on oil for revenue. Many of the major oil producing companies in these countries are owned by the government. Declining oil revenue means big problems not just for private companies but also for most of the national governments involved in this agreement.
A major reason behind the falling price of crude oil is the rising production from US oil producers. Some analysts predict the United States to surpass its all-time high oil production numbers during 2018; however, other experts see disappointing production from US-based oil companies. Many oil giants are nervously waiting to see how US oil companies will handle 2018. Coupled with decreased American dependence on imported oil is an increase in America exporting oil. America lifted what was essentially a 40-year long ban on exporting crude oil at the end of 2015. In 2017 the US oil exports reached 1 million barrels per day on several occasions.
It is difficult to predict what 2018 holds for oil companies. No one can truly predict whether the price will rise or fall and what companies will see increased revenue. | <urn:uuid:8f4debb6-ec6e-4639-bfd9-e4e60521ad48> | CC-MAIN-2021-43 | https://globaledge.msu.edu/blog/post/54539/an-outlook-on-the-oil-market-for-2018 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-43/segments/1634323588341.58/warc/CC-MAIN-20211028131628-20211028161628-00250.warc.gz | en | 0.966348 | 374 | 2.515625 | 3 |
The ocean covers more than 70 percent of our planet, an area of over 160 million square miles. It is so immense that explorers once thought there was no way to cross it. When our ships were advanced enough to do so, naturalists then thought it impossible for humans to ever exhaust fisheries or drive marine species to extinction.
They were wrong.
Commercial fishing now covers an area four times that of agriculture, and much of that expanse has been rendered completely unsustainable. We have depleted 90 percent of formerly important coastal species. Large fish have been harvested so heavily that they are virtually wiped out in many places. Indeed, studying once vital fish habitats such as coral reefs has been compared to trying to understand the Serengeti by studying termites and locusts while ignoring the wildebeest and lions.
Some may hope that there are immense areas still untouched, given that humans do not live on the ocean and we need specialized ships to go far beyond the coast. But that is incorrect. In a study published this summer in Current Biology, we used fine-scale global data on 15 human stressors to the ocean—including commercial shipping, sediment runoff and several types of fishing—to show that Earth's “marine wilderness” is dwindling. Just 13 percent of the ocean remains as wilderness, and in coastal regions, where human activities are most intense, there is almost no wilderness left at all. Of the roughly 21 million square miles of marine wilderness remaining, almost all is found in the Arctic and Antarctic or around remote Pacific island nations with low populations.
These remnants of wilderness are home to unparalleled marine life, sustaining large predators and high levels of genetic diversity. The lack of human impact can also make them highly resilient to rising sea temperatures and coral bleaching—stressors that cannot be halted without globally coordinated efforts to reduce emissions.
In an era of widespread marine biodiversity loss, wilderness areas also act like a window into the past, revealing what the ocean looked like before overfishing and pollution took their toll. This is crucial information for marine conservation. If we are to restore degraded areas to their former state, we need to know what to aim for.
What concerns us now is that most wilderness remains unprotected. This means it could be lost at any time, as advances in technology allow us to fish deeper and ship farther than ever before. Thanks to a warming climate, even places that were once safeguarded because of year-round ice cover are now open to fishing and shipping.
This lack of protection stems in large part from international environmental policies failing to recognize the unique values of wilderness, instead focusing on saving at-risk ecosystems and avoiding extinctions. This is akin to a government using its entire health budget on emergency cardiac surgery, without preemptive policies encouraging exercise to decrease the risk of heart attacks occurring in the first place.
If Earth's marine biodiversity is to be preserved in perpetuity, it is time for conservation to focus not only on the E.R. but also on preventive health measures.
Our Current Biology paper comes with a plea. As we develop international conservation agreements, it is crucial that we recognize the unique values of wilderness and set targets for its retention. Without further action, wilderness areas will likely be lost forever—something President Lyndon B. Johnson urged us to avoid when he signed the Wilderness Act in 1964. “If future generations are to remember us with gratitude rather than contempt,” Johnson observed, “we must leave them more than the miracles of technology. We must leave them a glimpse of the world as it was in the beginning.” | <urn:uuid:ab0a84b6-e6cf-48a7-852c-efacd527c69c> | CC-MAIN-2019-35 | https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-oceans-wilderness-areas-are-smaller-than-you-think-and-theyre-disappearing-fast/?error=cookies_not_supported&code=f23e90c0-a084-4057-a77e-8a0d54441428 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-35/segments/1566027330750.45/warc/CC-MAIN-20190825151521-20190825173521-00475.warc.gz | en | 0.958271 | 727 | 4.09375 | 4 |
What to Expect in Your Specimens
We guarantee your specimens will arrive fully preserved, free from decay, and will not excessively dry out for one year after purchase. The specimens are fully preserved and can last almost indefinitely, but will dry out over time. Specimens used within one year will have the best outcomes. Occasionally, a specimen will appear normal, but the internal tissue is not fully preserved. These specimens can decompose over time and become unusable. If you receive a specimen like this or suspect that your specimen isn’t preserved properly, please call us at (800) 860-6272. We will be happy to send you a replacement or refund.
Q: Why dissect?
Dissection allows students to visualize the anatomical structure of different animal classes and species. The mammal specimens we offer have similarities to humans that are helpful for learning more about our own bodies. For example, by dissecting and examining the anatomy of a cow eye, students learn the components of human eyes, including the cornea, iris, pupil, connecting muscles and veins, and other features. Other specimens, such as a dogfish shark or crayfish, show the differences among species (). When students are simultaneously engaging the senses of sight and touch, along with analytical thinking, during a dissection, they learn anatomy more easily.
Q: What tools do I need?
Note that Dissection Kits come with the basic dissection tools you’ll need. Individual specimens do not come with tools. The basic dissection tools are a dissection tray, pins, a scalpel, and scissors. You can also use a teasing needle or probe to examine delicate parts. Sometimes it’s helpful to have multiple scalpels or teasing needles, as a different size or shape may help examine different parts of a specimen. You’ll also want a guide to show you how to dissect the specimen. We recommend wearing latex or nitrile gloves when handling specimens to minimize exposure to residual chemicals. Wash hands thoroughly after use.
Q: Should I wear safety equipment?
Specimens contain trace amounts of preservation chemicals. To eliminate skin contact with these chemicals, wear nitrile or latex disposable gloves. Also, wear safety glasses or goggles, as liquids containing trace amounts of chemicals can occasionally squirt out during dissection.
Q: Do the specimens need to be refrigerated? How do I store them?
The specimens are fully preserved and do not need refrigeration. Keep them away from direct sunlight or a hot place like an attic; a closet works well. Specimens may discolor over time. This is normal and does not indicate decay.
Q: How do I dispose of a dissected specimen?
Seal the dissected specimen in a Ziploc bag and place it and the dissection tray in your regular outdoor trash container Use disinfectant soap and water to thoroughly clean your dissection tools and the area where you worked.
Q: What if I can’t finish my dissection during one class period?
Seal the dissected specimen in a Ziploc bag to keep it from drying out. Finish the dissection within a week for best results. If you want the specimen to stay fresh longer, use a heavy-duty plastic Ziploc bag, and add a bit of water or glycerin to keep it moist.
Q: What do “single injected” and “double injected” mean?
Specimens can be injected with red and/or blue latex to clearly show the arteries and veins. ‘Single-injected’ means that just the arteries have been injected with red latex. ‘Double-injected’ means that the arteries are injected with red latex and the veins have been injected with blue latex.
Q: Do the dissection specimens smell bad?
If you did dissections more than 10 years ago, you might remember the terrible formaldehyde smell of preserved specimens. Things have improved since then! Our specimens are initially preserved in formaldehyde, then it’s displaced with a glycol solution and then with a water solution, so there will be very little chemical or “preserved” smell. You will smell some of the natural odor of the specimen, such as a fishy smell with the perch or dogfish. Because specimens have been originally fixed in formaldehyde and a trace may remain, students should wear latex or nitrile disposable gloves and eye protection during dissections.
Q: Are dissections hard to do?
Dissections vary in the amount of time each takes, as well as complexity. Generally, a student in junior high or high school will be able to dissect any specimen we offer. Elementary students do well with an owl pellet, earthworm, or cow eye. Frogs and snakes are slightly more complex. For more advanced students, a fetal pig dissection is appropriate. Plan to allow about 45-60 minutes for a simple dissection and 90-120 minutes for larger specimens with more complicated anatomy, such as a shark or fetal pig. Allow more time for in-depth dissections that identify major muscle systems or trace the circulatory system. Usually, all that is required is to identify the major organs.
Q: How do I store vacuum packed specimens sold in large quantities?
We sell our quantity discount specimens in a 10-pack. Therefore, if you order 14 cow eyes, you’ll get a vacuum pack of 10, plus four individually packaged ones.
If you don’t want to use all the specimens at once, you can repack each one in a heavy-duty Ziploc plastic bag and use a little water or glycerin to keep the specimens moist. They should keep indefinitely; we guarantee them for one year from date of purchase. | <urn:uuid:f5bc9cfc-1c35-408d-b1fd-478b34aecbc2> | CC-MAIN-2018-17 | https://learning-center.homesciencetools.com/article/dissection-faq/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-17/segments/1524125937045.30/warc/CC-MAIN-20180419204415-20180419224415-00042.warc.gz | en | 0.923383 | 1,185 | 2.953125 | 3 |
Premature babies fare less well at school and need more support before starting education than those born at full term, research from the Children of the 90s project has found.
Some 71% of babies born between 32 and 36 weeks are successful in key stage 1 (KS1) tests (defined as achieving at least level 2 in reading, writing and maths), compared to 79% of babies born at full term (37-41 weeks).
Babies born between 32 and 36 weeks (‘late-preterm’) make up 82% of all premature births and 6% of all live births in the UK, and are generally considered to be in the ‘safe zone’ of premature births.
But this group requires closer attention to ensure they receive adequate educational support, according to researchers from the University of Bristol.
Analysing data from 13,978 infants in Children of the 90s, the researchers found that the 5% (734) of babies born at 32-36 weeks fared less well in KS1 tests compared to the 86% (12,089) of babies born at term.
The lower overall success rate was replicated in the success rates for individual subjects: reading 78% vs 85%; writing 77% to 84%; and maths 82% to 89%.
Previous research has shown that premature babies are more at risk of developmental delay, cerebral palsy and learning difficulties but little has been known until now about how well late-preterm babies in the UK fare at school compared to babies born at full term.
The findings of this study agree with previous research suggesting poorer school outcomes in late-preterm infants and add to an emerging evidence base of poor long-term neurological and developmental outcomes among children born late-preterm.
Speaking about the findings, the report’s main author Dr Philip Peacock said: “Given that children born late-preterm make up the majority of all preterm births, and comprise around six per cent of the population, this group warrants more recognition and surveillance than is currently provided.
“We recommend children born late-preterm receive a ‘school readiness’ and educational assessment prior to starting school to help identify potential learning problems. Early intervention within this vulnerable group of children may help reduce the burden of school problems and their associated consequences.” | <urn:uuid:ececd439-e4cc-4af5-8bae-a8c70919525a> | CC-MAIN-2014-23 | http://www.bristol247.com/2011/12/08/premature-babies-do-less-well-at-school-bristol-study-finds-21625/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-23/segments/1406510280868.21/warc/CC-MAIN-20140728011800-00042-ip-10-146-231-18.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968307 | 475 | 2.84375 | 3 |
Make a difference in the challenge to confront global warming and prevent nuclear war and the development and use of nuclear weapons.
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New Global Warming Factsheets
Heat's Deadly Effects (PDF)
Heat-related illnesses are serious and can lead to death. In fact, extreme heat events are already a significant public health problem in the U.S.
Vector-Borne and Water-Borne Diseases (PDF)
Learn how changes in temperature and precipitation affect the development, reproduction, behavior and geographic range of insects that carry dangerous infectious diseases. Climate change and its effects such as intense storms and flooding are also likely to worsen the spread of water-borne diseases.
Shrinking the Food Supply (PDF)
Global warming will damage crops, increase the risks of secondary impacts such as fires, insect pests and pathogens, and endanger in food security, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia. The U.S. won’t be exempt from the impacts, either.
Vulnerable Populations, Environmental Justice (PDF)
Global warming threatens to harm our health and well-being – but it won’t affect all of us equally. Some groups of people are more likely to be harmed than others. The most vulnerable tend to be the youngest and the oldest among us, the poor, and those who are already sick. The disproportionate and discriminatory impacts that climate change will have on vulnerable populations make climate change one of the most significant environmental justice issues of our time.
Mental Health Implications of Global Warming (PDF)
While the physical threats from global warming are more widely known, a larger number of people are likely to be vulnerable to climate change’s mental health implications. Among the anticipated impacts: increased alcohol abuse, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, grief, and family violence.
In the Spotlight
March 25, 2016
What now, after the Supreme Court stay?
The Supreme Court in February 2016 issued a "stay," or a temporary suspension, of the Clean Power Plan while a lower court reviews this legal challenge. This situation raises many questions. | <urn:uuid:a71fe054-ecc1-4fdb-b8b0-f689cb171bab> | CC-MAIN-2016-30 | http://www.psr.org/resources/new-global-warming-factsheets.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-30/segments/1469257832939.78/warc/CC-MAIN-20160723071032-00256-ip-10-185-27-174.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928466 | 461 | 3.078125 | 3 |
Nowadays, keeping corporate data secure is the most important worry for any company. Data security against unauthorised infiltration is on everyone’s mind as a result of the increasing number of security breaches at various firms. IT security is one of the most significant concerns that enterprises confront, regardless of size. The impact of a security attack on a small or medium-sized business is significantly greater. Small businesses are a favourite target of cyber criminals, owing to their inability to afford to build adequate security systems. Nothing can be 100% secure, but SMEs may improve the security environment by gaining a thorough understanding of their external online presence, ensuring it is secure through penetration testing, and minimising exposure through actions such as frequently upgrading security patches. Learn more about Houston Managed IT Services – Cloud Computing – Houston Cybersecurity Services.
What is a data breach and how does it occur?
A data breach occurs when sensitive, protected, or confidential information is potentially seen, stolen, or utilised by someone who is not allowed to do so. An adversary hacking into a network to steal sensitive data is the most popular definition of a data breach. To avoid data breaches, a number of business principles and government compliance rules require rigorous governance of sensitive or personal data. It is a situation in which the data of your corporation or organisation is stolen. When we check the corporate folder, we discover that all information has vanished, including client files, logs, and payment information. Then it’s evident that your company is a victim of a cyber-attack involving a data breach. The most typical causes of data breaches are as follows:
Protecting sensitive data is important to a company’s survival. What are the most typical factors that lead to data breaches? One of the most common sources of data breaches is the physical loss or theft of devices: This is, without a doubt, the most basic of the common reasons of data leaks. However, there are a variety of ways in which this can happen. Any of your laptops, external hard drives, or flash drives could have been damaged, stolen, or misplaced.
Internal risks such as an unintentional breach (employee error) or a deliberate breach (employee misuse): This might happen when personnel handling sensitive data don’t fully comprehend security standards and procedures. A mental error can also result in a data breach, such as when an employee delivers papers to the incorrect recipient.
Weak security measures are frequently cited as a major source of concern when it comes to protecting an organization’s data: Employees may be able to view and carry information they don’t need to complete their jobs if access to programmes and other sorts of data is improperly managed. Another major problem has been a weak or stolen password. Hackers can quickly enter into systems secured by weak passwords, such as laptops, tablets, cell phones, PCs, and email systems. Subscription information, personal and financial information, and critical business data are all at risk. | <urn:uuid:748299ec-f1df-455d-a2b4-fb62d15c4033> | CC-MAIN-2021-31 | http://www.ohhewett.com/houston-cybersecurity-services-secrets-revealed/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-31/segments/1627046153515.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20210727233849-20210728023849-00397.warc.gz | en | 0.93815 | 602 | 2.90625 | 3 |
Gusev Crater, the landing site for one of the two Mars Exploration Rovers. The yellow oval shows the target landing zone.
Click on image for full size
Mars Rover Landing Sites Selected
News story originally written on April 25, 2003
NASA has chosen two locations on Mars to explore with its Mars Exploration Rover (MER) missions. The missions are scheduled for launch in May and June of 2003. They will arrive on Mars in January 2004. The two landing sites the rovers will explore were chosen from a list that originally included 155 locations on the Red Planet.
Scientists are interested in finding locations on Mars that have water or that had water in the past. They believe those places provide the best chance to find signs of life. Both MER landing sites show signs of the presence of water in the past.
The two landing sites are Gusev Crater and Meridiani Planum. Gusev Crater may have been filled with a large lake in the past. Meridiani Planum appears to have extensive deposits of the mineral hematite. Hematite deposits often form at hot springs, so the deposits may indicate that water was present at Meridiani Planum at some time.
You might also be interested in:
Meridiani Planum is a small, flat region near the equator on Mars. As is the case on Earth, locations on Mars are specified by stating their latitude and longitude. Meridiani Planum is near the prime meridian,...more
The Galileo spacecraft, which has been orbiting Jupiter since 1995, has finally reached the end of its road. On September 21, 2003, Galileo will make a fiery plunge into Jupiter's atmosphere and be vaporized....more
NASA has chosen two locations on Mars to explore with its Mars Exploration Rover (MER) missions. The missions are scheduled for launch in May and June of 2003. They will arrive on Mars in January 2004....more
Scientists have recently discovered that thousands of Adelie Penguins thrive in patches of the chilly Southern Ocean near Antarctica's coastline. In these special areas of the ocean, called polynyas,...more
A new study has found that a mixing of two different types of magma is the key to the historic eruptions of Mount Hood, Oregon's tallest mountain, and that eruptions often happen in a relatively short...more
Researchers have found a primitive Earth mantle reservoir on Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic. Geologist Matthew Jackson and his colleagues from a multi-institution collaboration report the finding--the...more
Some geologic faults that appear strong and stable, slip and slide like weak faults. Now an international team of researchers has laboratory evidence showing why some faults that 'should not' slip are...more | <urn:uuid:2e9c856a-e19b-4259-afa1-9d6497e75019> | CC-MAIN-2021-10 | https://www.windows2universe.org/headline_universe/space_missions/stories_2003/mer_landing_sites_april_2003.html&edu=high | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-10/segments/1614178347321.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20210224194337-20210224224337-00416.warc.gz | en | 0.955705 | 554 | 2.984375 | 3 |
|Frequently Asked Questions
GPS (Global Positioning System) is a satellite navigation system to determine
accurate location and time. It was developed by the U.S. Department of
Defense, and is widely used today for both navigation and time
synchronization. The satellites are owned by the Department of Defense,
paid for by U.S. tax dollars, and reception of satellite signals is available
for public use. More on GPS technology...
ClockWatch Star Sync GPS time synchronization
works by using a GPS receiver that is connected to your computer.
Beagle Software has designed a software interface to turn your computer into a
network time source.
Here are some frequently asked questions
Feel free to with other
questions you have.
How does Star Sync get
the time from GPS ?
What type of GPS
receiver works best?
How accurate is GPS time synchronization?
How does GPS work?
Where does GPS work?
What type of hardware do I need?
Do I need an Internet connection to use GPS?
I already have a GPS receiver; will ClockWatch Star Sync
work with it?
Why would I want to use GPS?
Can other computers and devices get their time from Star Sync?
How does Star Sync get
the time from the GPS?
The GPS receiver outputs UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) date and time of day
in the transmitted data. After the initial position fix, the date and time of
day are calculated using GPS satellite information and are synchronized with the
The highly accurate one-pulse-per second output
is provided to Star Sync from the Garmin GPS35. The signal is generated after
the initial position fix has been calculated and continues until power down.
This rising edge of the signal is synchronized to the the start of each GPS
second. The information transmitted to Star Sync is referenced to the pulse
immediately preceding the NMEA 0183 RMC sentence. Beagle Software specially
configures the Garmin GPS35 so that this pulse is usable by the Star Sync
What type of GPS receiver
Some GPS receivers work better for receiving time signals. This is due to
the default port used for time, which is considered by navigational receivers to
be a secondary priority. You will have more accurate time if you use a
receiver that has PPS (pulse per second) output available, and that this output
is the priority.
Beagle Software offers the Garmin GPS35
receiver, which is specifically designed for time output.
How Does GPS
GPS receivers integrate a radio and a navigation
computer and can receive the faint, twenty-watt signals coming from the
satellites. The computer uses these signals to calculate the distance between
the satellites and the receiver. With this information, the computer can further
calculate the position and velocity of the receiver.
The number of satellites visible to a receiver constantly varies between four
and eleven according to time and location. Each satellite broadcasts a number of
unique spread-spectrum codes, but only one, the Coarse Acquisition (C/A) code,
is easily accessible for civilian use. The C/A in orbit 11,000 miles above
earth, GPS satellites transmit at twenty watts a number of unique
spread-spectrum code. The number of satellites visible to a GPS receiver
constantly varies between four and eleven according to time and location. Code
is effectively a timing signal synchronized to an international time
standard-Universal Coordinated Time (UCT). UCT is kept by a world-wide ensemble
of cesium and hydrogen maser frequency standard atomic docks. The
highest-quality GPS receivers measure the C/A code to better-than- nanosecond
How accurate is GPS
GPS time synchronization is highly accurate, but your results will vary
depending on your receiver and computer. The Garmin GPS35 receiver is
accurate to within a millisecond of UTC; however, the time that is ultimately
synchronized to your computer will not be as accurate. Why? Because
computer systems are not fast enough nor consistent enough for better
accuracy. Our tests show an accuracy of +/- 0.1 second using the Garmin
Where can GPS work?
GPS reception is available around the globe. You will need to have a clear
view of the skies so the receiver can triangulate at least three
satellites. An office window works well, but you may have problems
receiving signals in the inner area of buildings. In general, metal and masonry
block GPS signals, while glass, wood, or plastic does not.
Under specific conditions, GPS will not provide
the time. For instance, the 1,542 MHz GPS signal does not penetrate buildings,
which makes it difficult to receive signals indoors away from windows. Also the
signal can be critically weakened by heavy foliage and interfered with by other
sources such as poorly maintained television broadcasting equipment.
What type of hardware do
You need a GPS receiver, antenna, power supply, data cable and serial port
come standard with the Garmin GPS35. You also need access to a power
source. You may also purchase accessories, including mounting units from
The only other requirement is a functioning
with an available serial (COM) port.
Do I need an Internet
connection to use GPS?
No. GPS time synchronization does not require an Internet connection.
I already have a GPS
receiver; will ClockWatch Star Sync work with it?
ClockWatch Star Sync will work with most GPS receivers with
NMEA 0183 data output connected to an available serial port on the computer
running Star Sync software.
Why would I want to use GPS for time synchronization?
Time syncing using GPS is a good alternative for remote or highly secured
computers. ClockWatch Star Sync does not require an Internet or modem
GPS time synchronization may potentially be more accurate than syncing over
the Internet or by modem. The true accuracy depends on the receiver as
well as the computer. Beagle Software's experience is that the Star Sync
when used with the supplied Garmin
GPS35 receiver is consistently accurate within 0.1 second.
other computers and devices get their time from Star Sync?
Yes, computers, routers, printers, PBXs and other devices on your LAN can use
Star Sync as a central timeserver. All they need to do run an NTP or SNTP client
and point to the computer running Star Sync. Many computers (including Windows)
and networked devices have this capability built in.
Back to top
For more information:
or Star Sync software
Star Sync GPS Receivers:
Antenna Mounting Options
Frequently Asked Questions about GPS
Star Sync Main Page
Star Sync Site Index | <urn:uuid:5ec4de77-7c87-46b0-8aa9-bed81916183a> | CC-MAIN-2018-26 | http://beaglesoft.com/gpsfaq.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-26/segments/1529267864148.93/warc/CC-MAIN-20180621114153-20180621134153-00318.warc.gz | en | 0.909549 | 1,416 | 3.0625 | 3 |
ST. PAUL, Minn. – Come the first of the year, a new pest quarantine will be put in place to protect Minnesota’s pine forests. The Minnesota Department of Agriculture (MDA) will implement an exterior state quarantine for the mountain pine beetle on January 1, 2015. This quarantine is designed to stop the movement into Minnesota of any wood potentially infested with mountain pine beetle.
This insect, which is native to the western United States and Canada, spends most of its life in the area of a pine tree between the bark and the wood. The adult beetles can release a pheromone, or natural scent, to attract other beetles and eventually they may overwhelm the health of entire stands of pines to the extent they all die off. This makes the mountain pine beetle one of the most damaging forest insects in North America.
Recently, these beetles and their larva have been found by MDA in wood brought into Minnesota. This quarantine will reduce the risk of the human-aided movement of the insect from happening again. | <urn:uuid:5db470a8-c0c5-413c-b6b4-74bfed148c34> | CC-MAIN-2018-05 | http://rjnews.blogspot.com/2014/12/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-05/segments/1516084892059.90/warc/CC-MAIN-20180123171440-20180123191440-00422.warc.gz | en | 0.9552 | 213 | 3.0625 | 3 |
Methane seeps in the ocean are much more important to life in the ocean than we previously have suspected.
Sketch showing the effects of methane (and light oil) seeps in the ocean.
In this sketch, the following legend applies: 1) ebullition of bubbles, 2) hydroacoustic flares, 3) methane concentration anomalies, 4) aureoles (visual, chemical, mineralogical, biological), 5) topographical effects, 6) MDAC development, 7) bacterial mats, 8) upwelling seawater, 9) downwelling water / entrainment, 10) slicks and nutrients on surface /birds feeding, 11) attraction of fish and other macro-fauna, 12) methane anomalies in atmosphere. Note, that not all of these effects occur at all methane macro-seeps that have been described so far.
Discussion and conclusions With numerous macro seeps and abundant gas-charged sediments and an apparently reliable and steady flux of methane and other nutrients to the water column, there are the following beneficial (significant) effects: 1) A rugged terrain, which undoubtedly leads to induced turbulence in the bottom currents, 2) Hard-rock surfaces with many nooks and crannies, for benthic organisms to utilize for attachment and fish and other organisms to utilize for shelter 3) Cryptic micro-environments for many types of microorganisms to utilize for primary production 4) Flow of allochtonous chemicals, some of which will act as ‘fertilizers’ for primary producers 5) Plenty of authigenically precipitated (inorganic) carbonate (calcite and aragonite) for boring organisms to utilize and extract.
There are still several questions remaining to be answered in relation to seeps like the Heincke seep. One is an old question: to which extent does visible, not to say diffusive and invisible (micro) seeps of hydrocarbons contribute to the total carbon cycle in the regional area? Another important question is to what extent such seeps contribute to the total atmospheric methane and carbon dioxide content (Hovland et al., 1993; Judd et al., 2002). A third question is if the seeps can be used for general hydrocarbon exploration (Thrasher et al., 1996). Although all of these questions have been addressed before, it is only ongoing and future quantitative and holistic research and more fieldwork that can positively contribute to answer them.
The increased use of high-resolution multibeam systems for seafloor mapping has led, not only to pockmarks being recognized and mapped worldwide, but also to the distinction between various types of pockmarks (Pinet et al., 2010; Judd and Hovland, 2007; Hovland et al., 2010; Weibull et al., 2010). Even though it is very rare to find pockmarks directly associated with macro-seepage, as in the Scanner and REGAB examples, the pockmarks, and especially, the smallest ones, the unit-pockmarks, represent foci of ongoing active micro-seepage. Pockmarks are generally associated with any kind of fluid flow, where the fluids (gas, and/or liquids) originate from any depth in the subsurface (Judd and Hovland, 2007). Even though the first to discover and name pockmarks, Lew King and Brian MacLean (1970) suggested them to be solely related to hydrocarbon-prone areas, the occurrence of pockmarks in areas underlain by metamorphic basement rocks (Pinet et al., 2010; Brothers et al., 2011) and hydrothermal activity, clearly demonstrates that thermogenic fluids and derivatives (biogenic methane) are not the only fluids responsible for these morphological features (Kelley et al., 1994). Thus, the fluids responsible for pockmarks may be any fluid, ranging from groundwater to deeply sourced CO2, CH4, or locally sourced fluids of biogenic origin associated with the degradation of recently buried, organic-rich material.
Most of the significant effects of methane macro-seeps we have described and discussed herein, are, on a large scale, regarded as being positive, or beneficial to the marine and lacustrine environment. This is because the allochtonous input from the substratum may be regarded as causing a general fertilization effect. Furthermore, this fact has also been recognised by the paleontologists, some of which have seeked to find seep-related carbonates in ancient sedimentary rock, as guides for the finding of spectacular animal remains, from large animals that utilized the seep-related organisms (Hammer et al., 2011).
However, there is one great potentially negative effect: the climate response to variations in methane from oceanic and lacustrian seepage (Hovland et al., 1993; Kennett et al., 2000; Westbrook et al., 2009). However, Reeburgh (2007, 2011) and also others, have recently pointed out the extremely efficient way in which AOMs manage to utilize methane advecting (migrating) upwards to the seafloor, before it should enter the water column. He calls it a ‘stealth process’ (Reeburgh, 2011), as it is a process impossible to measure, and he concludes, saying: ”Several recent high-profile climate modeling papers have fallen into the ‘stealth process’ trap by failing to explicitly consider microbial oxidation.” (Reeburgh, 2011, p. 1702).
Although some of the deep-water coral reefs (DWCR) occurring world-wide have been shown to occur adjacent to methane macro-seeps (Hovland, 2008), there is still no firm documentation that they are directly dependent on either macro- or micro-seeps. But, the intensified study of microorganisms in the water and sediments surrounding and beneath such reefs, demonstrates the presence of seep-related microorganisms in their immediate surroundings (Jensen et al., 2008, 2010). They seem to be ‘bathing’in nutrient rich water containing similar primary producers as those observed blooming in the Deepwater Horizon blowout plume, mentioned previously. Thus, based on Reeburgh’s notion of stealth processes, instead of looking for methane oxidizers in the water column, we should be looking for (and we are now finding) microorganisms utilizing other types of complex organic and inorganic substances caused by seepage, such as ethane, propane, etc.
Most studies of the ocean floor are local by nature. Over the last 30 years, therefore, we have learnt much about many different locations, where detailed mapping and investigations have been conducted. However, what we see as lacking, is an integration of this knowledge on a broad scale: – What are the effects of allochtonous (exotic) material seeping up to the seafloor and into the water column, in the long run, and on a broad scale? This may represent a typical ‘emerging science’, as discussed by Brett et al. (2011), where they point to the necessity for clarified definitions within the “allochtonous versus autochthonous framework”, with respect to organism nutrient uptake in the marine and lacustrine environments.
Summary of characteristics of methane macro-seeps To conclude this holistic study of macro-seepage, we list a dozen of the most environmentally significant aspects of marine macro-seeps identified so far (see Fig. 7). It is expected that future work at macro-seeps, world-wide, will find even more aspects that are caused by seeps.
Visual ebullition through seafloor holes This is the hallmark of a marine methane macro-seep, and as such is prerogative, for naming it a macro-seep. This means that if ebullition is not seen over a certain time-span (years) it is not a macro-seep. However, as macro-seeps expend their reservoir of sub-surface gas, whatever way it may have formed, they may turn into micro-seeps.
Hydroacoustic ‘flares’ If there are bubbles emitting from the sea- or lake-floor, then there will also be acoustically detectable columnar mid-water reflections. This is because the impedance contrast between gas and water is so high, that the reflection will be strong at most seismic frequencies, except for low frequencies, where the wave-length is too large for bubble detection. However, there is one exception from this aspect, i.e., when methane bubbles from a macro-seep occur at depths and temperatures that are well within the stability envelope of methane hydrates. If the seep is feeble, and the small bubbles are coated with hydrates, they may not rise very high (tens of metres?) from the seafloor before they drift horizontally and dissolve into the surrounding water. But, for vigorous seeps and large bubbles, hydrate skins tend to enhance bubble survival in the water column.
Methane concentration anomalies Because free methane bubbling through the sea- or lake-floor is at saturation level, it will be at higher concentrations than in the ambient water. The methane will therefore immediately start to dissolve in the surrounding water and may cause a strong methane concentration gradient, with highest concentration adjacent to the stream of bubbles and reducing outwards in a radial aureole pattern. Because the rising plume of bubbles is influenced by currents, this methane concentration anomaly will be highest down-current (Fig. 6). Within the sub-surface sediments, the same will occur, and there will be a concentration gradient in the pore-water surrounding the conduits transporting methane through the sediments. This gradient will be dependent on the porosity and permeability of the sediments.
Aureoles: visual, chemical, temperature, and/or biological anomalies Strong gradients in composition, temperature, or biological species in the water column, especially down-current of seeps (e.g., pH, eH, CO2, O2, CH4, sulphate, sulphide, bacteria, archaea, etc) are common aspects of seepage. Due to the rather deep origin of the gas, heat, water, and other components are transported upwards. Seepage can, therefore, manifest itself by chemical, temperature, and biological anomalies in the water column above, and in the pore-water system below ground. Surrounding the seep-location, where the sub-surface conduit(s) break through to the water column, there is often a visible aureole, a circular zone of influence. It is caused by chemical and/or biological reactions and processes induced by the seeping action and by concentration gradients of various compositions transported upwards. The aureole is, thus, a manifestation of seepage. Thus, seeps induce spatial heterogeneity in the microbial activity and faunal zonation on the seafloor.
Topographical effects Topographical features, such as depressions, craters (pockmarks), and mounds are perhaps the most common manifestations of focused fluid flow (seepage) through the seafloor. The features are caused either by local erosion, accretion, or a combination of both (i.e., ‘eyed pockmarks’, pockmarks with bioherms and/or MDAC structures).
MDAC development The development of MDAC structures, nodules, pipes, pinnacles, mounds, crusts, etc., is caused either by the inorganic and/or biologically mediated aragonite and/or calcite (CaCO3) precipitation at seep locations. Precipitation (crystallization) occurs as a consequence of the super-saturation of water-dissolved CaCO3, caused by temperature changes, pH-changes, AOM-activityand/or other physicochemical changes at seep sites. As the process relies on a cryptic micro-environment, isolated from circulating seawater, the carbonate cementation mostly occurs in the sub-surface sediments surrounding the conduit (seepage feeder channel).
Bacterial mats As a consequence of strong chemical gradients at seep locations (e.g., reduced vs oxic fluids), bacteria flourish at such sites. The most common visible bacterium found at marine methane seep sites, the world over, is the Beggiatoasp. It is dependent on the anoxic-oxic seawater boundary and forms at the oxylimnion and produces white natural sulphur within its fibrous cells. This and also many other types of bacteria can produce thick mats on the seafloor, which can be torn and suspended into the water column where they can represent organic “snow”.
Up-welling of seawater When bubbles rise under influence of buoyancy through the water column, they will cause turbulence in their wakes. If there is a significant ebullition of gas, this turbulence is strong enough to draw water from the surrounding seawater column into the upward rising gas bubble stream. Thus, an upwelling of bottom water may occur, which again gives rise to temperature and chemical anomalies in the water column.
Entrainment (down-welling) of seawater into the ground Because conduits leading gas bubbles to the seabed cause hydraulic action (pressure pulses) within the sub-surface conduit system, negative pressure gradients, will cause seawater to entrain into the ground (O’Hara et al., 1995) called down-welling of seawater into the pore-water system at seep locations. This action may cause chemical and temperature anomalies in the sub-surface micro-environment.
Sea-surface slicks and sea-birds feeding The action of methane macro-seepage may also be detectable on the sea surface, mainly because of the up-welling effect and also by the consequential transport of temperature, chemicals, and nutrients (bacteria, and other organisms/organic particles). Seeps can also cause disturbances in the surface capillary wave patterns, due to changes in surface currents surrounding the up-welling area. Down-current of the seepage and up-welling locations, there may be slicks (water devoid of capillary waves) due to the entrainment of oil on rising bubbles. In addition, there may be birds feeding on organic particles (such as pieces of bacterial mats) carried to the surface by the up-welling. Thus, slicks and feeding sea-birds may also represent manifestations of seeps.
Attraction of fish and other macro-fauna Because seeps may disturb the ambient layering of nutrients and organisms in the water column, seepage is expected to attract fish from other locations. These effects may also cause the development of sessile colonies of filter-feeders and other invertebrate organisms (bioherms) down-stream of the seep locations. Thus, the ‘hydraulic theory’ for deep-water corals is explained by this process (manly from micro-seeps, e.g.,Hovland, 2008).
Anomalies in methane concentration in lower atmosphere On some occasions, the seafloor seepage of methane provides higher concentrations of methane in the near-surface seawater. Any such anomalous seawater concentration will cause the entrainment of methane into the lower atmosphere. Thus, also methane concentration anomalies in the lower atmosphere may be regarded as manifestations of sub-marine seepage.
This holistic 12-point summary of the most important environmental effects of marine and lacustrine methane macro-seeps provides a preliminary list of what to look for when searching for seeps. As more research is conducted, especially with respect to temporal variation of flux, and the effects on the surrounding biological and physicochemical systems, it is expected that more items may be added. It should, however, be borne in mind, that not all of these elements occur at all seeps or at a given time. This is what makes seep-hunting so fascinating. There may actually be some seeps that are only manifested by only one or two of the listed aspects.
Abstract The two main observations characterising marine and lacustrine methane macro-seeps are ebullition through holes in the sea- or lake-bed, and hydroacoustic flares in the water column. The paper reviews multi-year, multi-scale, and multi-discipline results from three seep locations in the North Sea and combines the knowledge with recent seafloor and water column results from seeps in the Santa Barbara basin, California, a seep off West Africa, seeps in the Gulf of Mexico, and in Lake Baikal, Russia. We have identified a total of 12 characteristics of methane and minor oil macro-seeps that are not only geological in nature, but also biological and geochemical. These are shown to impact the marine environment in different ways, not least in benefactory manners, as primary producers (mainly bacteria and archaea) tend to bloom during seepage. Therefore, the seepage is inferred to have a fertilizing effect on both the seafloor and the water column, which may be of broad ecological and biological significance. The study concludes with a holistic conceptual seep-model which is expected to be of interest to a broad range of researchers in the fields of oceanography and limnology. | <urn:uuid:54845bf7-d8c1-4247-b387-b294cc2f9291> | CC-MAIN-2024-10 | http://martinhovland.weebly.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2024-10/segments/1707947474669.36/warc/CC-MAIN-20240226225941-20240227015941-00060.warc.gz | en | 0.920225 | 3,619 | 3.609375 | 4 |
Spices come from the earth naturally and have many benefits to our culture, cuisine and health as well as a way to make food flavorful! More and more scientific research is emerging that backs up the health benefits of spices. There is a reason ancient civilizations prized spices above all else. Many spices contain antioxidants, a powerful disease fighter. Spices are believed to help fight diseases such as cancer, diabetes, arthritis and Alzheimer’s. Beyond serious diseases, spices can help fight less serious aliments such as the common cold and an upset stomach. | <urn:uuid:c44216d0-4d8d-4b26-802d-f59707d1ccdf> | CC-MAIN-2021-17 | https://abingdonoliveoilco.com/spices/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-17/segments/1618039544239.84/warc/CC-MAIN-20210421130234-20210421160234-00451.warc.gz | en | 0.949367 | 109 | 2.53125 | 3 |
Mongols - Kinship, Marriage, and Family
Kinship. The kinship system (i.e., relations governed by rules of marriage, filiation, and descent) was strongly patrilineal in the past, but its larger units, the clans and lineages, lost many of their functions to the Manchu administrative institutions. Among herders the ail, a group of households consisting of kin and nonkin that migrated together, formed a discrete social unit. The functions of the ail included mutual help in times of trouble, common kinship rituals (weddings, hair-cutting rites, funerals, etc.), and economic exchange (payment of marriage expenses). Within urban settings, situational use of kinship ties is preferred over other corporate forms of kinship.
Marriage. Within the domestic cycle, there is more importance placed on marriage than on birth or death. Mongols typically married young: for girls it was at age 13 or 14, for boys a few years later. Today Mongolian peasants marry in their early twenties and immediately start a family. Urban Mongols, especially the college-educated, delay marriage until their late twenties and, sometimes, early thirties. Except for urbanites, there is no dating tradition and marriages continue to be arranged. Premarital sex is common among Mongolian herders in the IMAR. Postmarital residence is almost exclusively patrilocal. Birth control is discouraged in the MPR and encouraged in the IMAR. Among peasants and herders, divorce is rare.
Domestic Unit. Historically, the main kinship groups are the nuclear and extended family and the patronymic group (a group of agnatically related men with their wives and children). Within the MPR collective farm the household remains the basic domestic unit. Among the Mongols in the PRC the primary domestic units are the nuclear and stem family.
Inheritance. Until the seventh century and the establishment of Buddhist estates, "property" was defined only as movable property. Wives in Mongolian society had rights to inherit property. Under Communism that right continues to be guaranteed by law. The eldest son inherited part of the family wealth at the time of his marriage, and the youngest son inherited the remaining family property after both parents had died.
Socialization. Historically, cultural transmission occurred informally between parent and child. The common means of discipline are verbal reprimand and corporal punishment. In the MPR, primary education after the age of eight is free and compulsory. Ten years of schooling are required. Ninety percent of the Mongols in the MPR are literate. In the IMAR most Mongols attend primary school. In urban areas, most attend middle school. Very few Mongols attend college. | <urn:uuid:964cbcd2-4862-426e-bd21-0c013e6470e6> | CC-MAIN-2014-23 | http://www.everyculture.com/Russia-Eurasia-China/Mongols-Kinship-Marriage-and-Family.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-23/segments/1405997889314.41/warc/CC-MAIN-20140722025809-00089-ip-10-33-131-23.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959778 | 562 | 3.71875 | 4 |
SPAN 102: Spanish II Beginning Spanish
Prerequisite: Spanish 101 or placement by examination
Credit Hours: (3)
A continuation of Spanish I with emphasis upon communication in both the present and past tense. Independent laboratory practice required. This course has been approved for credit in the Foreign Languages Area of the Core Curriculum.
Detailed Description of Content of Course
This course is conducted primarily in Spanish and represents the second semester of a four-semester sequence. The course is designed to develop the speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills in addition to instruction in basic information about Hispanic cultures in Latin America and Spain.
- Communicative functions focus on: describing an individual’s physical appearance and personality; talking about activities in the past; talking about food and ordering a meal; expressing obligation.
- Grammatical functions include: present and past tense verb forms; reflexive constructions; direct and indirect object pronouns.
- Task functions focus on: writing brief compositions; reading authentic materials (i.e. produced for native speakers) for information and pleasure.
- Cultural sections include information on: Argentina and other countries in South America; shopping hours; biographies of famous leaders; city profiles; literature; politics.
Detailed Description of Conduct of Course
Class instruction targets communication practice utilizing the situations, intentions, vocabulary, culture, and grammar introduced in a given chapter. Other activities include: grammar and vocabulary explanations, pronunciation practice, listening comprehension exercises, writing, and grammatical drills. Students must hand in workbook assignment based on taped materials in the laboratory and brief elementary compositions summarizing noncomplex texts dealing with cultural readings conducted on the WEB. Class is taught primarily in the target language.
Goals and Objectives of the Course
Speaking and listening goals (standardized ACTFL proficiency criteria): Students will be able to speak Spanish by relying heavily on learned utterances but occasionally expanding these through simple recombination of their elements. Students will be able to ask questions or make statements involving learned material. There will be some spontaneity, but speech will continue to consist primarily of learned phrases. Students will be able to pronounce nearly all Spanish sounds accurately when uttered in isolation and a growing number even in rapid speech. As regards listening skills, students will be able to understand short, learned phrases and some sentence-length utterances, particularly where context strongly supports understanding and speech is clearly audible.
Reading and writing goals (standardized ACTFL proficiency criteria): Students will be able to identify an increasing amount of learned material without assistance and to understand a limited amount of new material when supported by context or dictionary assistance. In writing, students will be able to reproduce a variety of learned phrases and some basic sentences by recombining learned material. Students will be able to meet a number of practical writing needs and write short, simple letters.
Students will achieve a degree of competence in a foreign language and culture.
Students will be able to:
a. demonstrate language skills appropriate to the level of study
b. analyze similarities and differences between their own and the target cultures
c. xplain contemporary international issues from the perspectives of their own and the target cultures
Speaking progress is evaluated in class and in conversational practice. In addition, each student is required to pass two oral interviews. Written homework assignments provide a basis for the evaluation of writing progress. Listening and reading comprehension and grammatical accuracy are tested in homework assignments, hourly exams, chapter tests, and on the final exam. In most of these testing situations, SPAN 102 students will also either demonstrate or further expand their familiarity with cultural topics and current global issues. Students’ success in using Spanish will therefore reveal not only their linguistic abilities but also their cultural competence to anticipate and to simulate the use of different cultural perceptions and behaviors through the new language.
Other Course Information
To supplement linguistic and cultural encounters in class, students are expected to participate in some extracurricular activities such as conversations with native speakers, watching Spanish movies, and inquiring about Spanish-speaking cultures by means of the multitude of media available as informational resources. Additional taped materials, representing Spanish speakers from different areas and authentic video materials accompanying the subject matter of the text’s lessons are available in the language laboratory. The Foreign Language Department’s Homepage contains links to newspapers from every Spanish speaking country and to the most important newspapers published in Madrid, Mexico City, and Buenos Aires.
Approval and Subsequent Reviews
Date Action Reviewed by
September 2005 Reviewed Philip Sweet | <urn:uuid:ac66b37d-c4ba-44a4-8477-e3e3993ac848> | CC-MAIN-2015-35 | http://www.radford.edu/content/registrar/home/course-descriptions/chbs-descriptions/spanish/span-102.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-35/segments/1440645298781.72/warc/CC-MAIN-20150827031458-00061-ip-10-171-96-226.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.923212 | 917 | 3.15625 | 3 |
Famous Mosques in Kerala
Masjid (Mescit) is a word meaning ‘place for prostration’. This word is commonly used by the early Muslims for houses of worship. Earlier it is also used by other religions. Now a days, Arabic ‘masjid’, and the English ‘mosque‘ are used exclusively for religious houses in Islam religion. In this top 10 article, you can find the list of Famous Mosques in Kerala with its historical importance, address and current status.
1. Cheraman Perumal Juma Masjid, Kodungallur
Cheraman Perumal Juma Masjid is a famous mosque located at Kodungallur, Thissur District. This mosque Built in 629 AD and considered to be the first mosque in India. After undergoing through many rebulit and renovations, it maintains modern architectural façade along with a bit of the original style in the interiors. There is also option for Vidyarambham.
It is a little strange that the mosque faces east, not Mecca in the west. A huge bronze lamp as in temples kept lit inside. Not only Muslims, all religious people bring oil or contribute money to buy oil for the lamp on auspicious occasions. Here the Muslim priests light incense stick in a small mausoleum as of some temples. This practice is not seen in any other mosques.
2. Malik Ibn Dinar Mosque, Kasargod
Malik Ibn Dinar Mosque is a famous one located at Thalangara, Kasargod district. This is a top Muslim pilgrim centers in Kasaragod built in the year AD 642. A well known Arabian Islam missionary Malik Ibn Dinar constructed this. The mosque is known after his name. The tomb of Malik Ibn Mohammed, a disciple of Malik Ibn Dinar is located here.
Everywhere you can find the typical Kerala traditional architecture along with pillars and beams of Malik Ibn Dinar Mosque carry Arabic writings. The great attraction is its, flooring made of marbles which are believed to be brought from Mecca by Malik Ibn Dinar. A festival called Uroos conducted once in three years.
3. Beema Palli (Mosque) – Thiruvananthapuram
Beema Palli is a prominent mosques in Thiruvananthapuram. Story behind its publicity is by Hazratha Bee Amma (Beema Beevi) and her son. They belong to the family of holy Prophet Mohammed are believed to have come here from Arabia centuries ago. The came here for preach the religion Islam.
People believes that, Beema Beevi had divine powers. Urs Shareef festival (Chandankudam festival) of this Mosque is very popular and it is conducted during March-April. This festival attracts thousands irrespective of religion. You can reach this by air -Thiruvananthapuram International Airport (03 km) or rail-Thiruvananthapuram (05 km) or bus- Thiruvananthapuram town (05 km).
4. Erumeli Vavar Mosque
Erumeli Vavar Mosque is a famous and holy place for both Muslims and Hindu people. It is located in Erumeli in Kottayam district. You can reach here by bus – Kottayam town (49 km) or rail- Kottayam (49 km). Erumeli mosque known in the name of Vavar who was believed to be a friend of Lord Ayyappa .
The Chandanakudam festival of this mosque is very famous and well celebrated in Januvary coincides with the Makaravilakku festival of Sabarimala. Every pilgrim to Sabarimala visit this mosque in respect of Ayyappa and Vavar.
5. Sheik Fariduddin Mosque- Kanjiramattom
This is a well known mosque in Kanjiramattom located in Ernakulam District. You can reach here by train – Ernakulam town (25 km) or air – Cochin International Airport (48 km). The mosque dedicated to Sheik Fariduddin. This mosque is well known for its famous ritual- Kodikuthu. This celebration held in Januvary. It is one of the most colourful religious festivals of Kerala.
In Chandanakudam ritual – hundred of pilgrims carrying earthen pots smeared with sandal paste and filled with coins move to the mosque. There is also presence of lots of Elephants in this artistic practice. Irrespective of religion many of them visits here and participates in Chandanakudam ritual.
6. Mampuram Mosque, Tirurangadi
The Mampuram Mosque is a famous mosque in kerala. It is located in Tirurangadi in the Malappuram District of Kerala. The place is Historically related to the Mappila Lahala of 1921 against the British Government. Mambram is located on the banks of the beautiful river Kadalundipuzha.
Mambaram is famous for Mambaram Makham. This is the sanctuary provided and used primarily as a receptacle for the corpses of the main Thangals . The Mambaram Nercha, is held annually in the month of Muharram at the tomb of Sayyid Alavi Thangal , the famous Mambaram Thangal.
7. Ponnani Juma Masjid, Malappuram
Ponnani Juma Masjid is a famous mosque records in Malabar Manual by William Logan, the famous historian-turned-civil administrator. The Ponnani Juma’ Masjid built in 925 Hijra.
Ponnani is often referred as the cultural capital of Kerala Muslims. It is known as ‘Small Mecca’ as many students and pilgrims from many countries reach here. It is Established by Zainuddin Makhdum I.
8. Korome Mosque, Wayanad
This is a famous mosque in kerala believed to a 400-year-old which is built in traditional Kerala style. Overall you can see the extensive woodcarvings, originally built by the Nair community. Later the mosque modified, which is 250 years ago under the leadership of Athilan Bappan. It is Located 23 km from Mananthavady.
An annual Uroos festival conducted in April which is very famous and draws thousands of people from all communities. Most important is the janazas (funeral processions) would come to Korome from as far as Varampetta. You can also visit the dargah of Syed Shihabuddin Imbich, a Muslim saint.
9. Mishkal Masjid – Kuttichira
It is bulit by a rich Arab businessman and ship owner named Nakhooda Mishkal in 1300. This is a wonderful s five-storied structure, which is currently the famous mosque of kerala.
Originally this was a seven-tiered structure before the attack by the Portuguese On 3rd January 1510. Mishkal Palli was once the tallest building in Kozhikode and the heart of the Muslim settlement at Kuttichira.
10. Odathil Palli, Thalassery
Most noticing in this unusual structure is Hindu-Buddhist style copper roofing. Odathil Palli is a famous mosque in kannur district, located in Thalassery. This 270-year-old shrine follows a mix of Hindu and Muslim architecture.
On external there is neither a central dome nor minarets. It is made beautiful and rich with roof covered in copper sheets and wooden walls and pillars with intricate carvings. This is one of the oldest surviving mosques in Thalassery. | <urn:uuid:3f9ce51f-7fd2-4e00-b18b-cab2090fd07f> | CC-MAIN-2017-30 | http://www.wlivenews.com/top-10-famous-mosques-in-kerala.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-30/segments/1500549426133.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20170726102230-20170726122230-00119.warc.gz | en | 0.958068 | 1,637 | 2.546875 | 3 |
STRASBOURG, France -- Monitoring the saltiness of the ocean water could provide an early indicator of climate change. Significant increases or decreases in salt in key areas could forewarn of climate change in 10 to 20 years time. Presenting their findings at a recent European Science Foundation (ESF) conference, scientists predicted that the waters of the southern hemisphere oceans around South Africa and New Zealand are the places to watch.
Palaeoclimate data shows that the ocean’s currents (like the Gulf Stream and its North Atlantic deep water partner) are capable of shifting gears very suddenly, but until now it wasn’t clear how this occurred. Using a combination of modern observations, numerical models and palaeoclimate data scientists are increasingly realising that salt is the key.
Their results reveal that a build up of salty water can stimulate deep water circulation, while a diluting of the waters is linked to sluggish flow. “Salt plays a far more important role that we first thought,” says Professor Rainer Zahn, a palaeoclimatologist at the Autonomous University of Barcelona in Spain.
Salt increases the density of water. Once a pocket of water becomes salty enough it sinks, drawing in additional water from surrounding areas, and initiates an ocean circulation loop called thermohaline overturning.
The scientists discovered that a build up of salt in the waters off the coast of South Africa could help to speed up ocean circulation in the North Atlantic, despite the two areas being thousands of kilometres apart. “A salt surge is enough to kick start circulation,” says Zahn. Meanwhile, a decrease in saltiness in South African waters could be linked to a slowing down of the North Atlantic circulation.
Models and data both indicate that these changes in ocean circulation occur over very short time-scales, usually in less than a decade or two. Ocean water can’t possibly travel this fast (it takes nearly a century for a parcel of water to move from the South Atlantic to the North Atlantic). Instead the scientists think that energy is transferred through the ocean along a deep pressure wave. “The surge of salt generates a pressure gradient in the ocean that sends energy to the north without water actually being transported,” explains Zahn.
Regardless of whether ocean circulation speeds up or slows down it causes significant climate change, altering the hydrological cycle and affecting atmospheric circulation patterns too.
Currently there is no large-scale salt monitoring system in place in the southern hemisphere oceans. Zahn thinks that regular measurements taken in the waters around South Africa and New Zealand could be useful. “It could act as an early warning system for climate changes 10-20 years down the road,” he says.
Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of UnderwaterTimes.com, its staff or its advertisers. | <urn:uuid:860951da-f905-4d65-a4ca-9f83c83f8d02> | CC-MAIN-2019-22 | https://www.underwatertimes.com/news.php?article_id=81429106503 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-22/segments/1558232257553.63/warc/CC-MAIN-20190524064354-20190524090354-00544.warc.gz | en | 0.928415 | 584 | 3.859375 | 4 |
Ahmose I, also spelt Amosis I, from the Egyptian iaHms, or "Iah is born". An Egyptian Pharaoh, and founder of the 18th Dynasty, who completed the reunification of Egypt and the expulsion of the Hyksos, ending the Second Intermediate period, and beginning the New Kingdom.
His reign is estimated to have been around 25 years, with approximate dates been c.1550 - 1500 BC, during which time he ended the Hyksos occupation, united the nobility, and laid the foundations for the period of Egypt's greatest period as a empire, and Bronze Age super-power, securing strategic sites in Nubia and the Levant.
Ahmose was descended from the 17th dynasty line of Theban rulers who ruled Upper Egypt during the Hyksos occupation, and a son of Ta'a II, and ultimately from the dynastic matriarch, Tetisheri, reverence for whom was shown throughout the early 18th Dynasty, and lived into the time of Ahmose's reign.
It used to be believed the his predecessor, Kamose, was his elder brother, but the current view is this may be inaccurate, and that Kamose was more likely been a brother of Ta'a II, who came to the throne when Ta'a II was killed in battle, and Ahmose too young to effectively rule at such a critical time.
He took Ahmose-Nefertari, his sister, as his principal wife, and both she and his mother would be key figures during his reign, and prominent players in state affairs, being the first two holders of the post of God's Wife of Amun. Ahmose-Nefertari outlived Ahmose, and continued to play a part in the reign of their son, Amunhotep I.
We are left with a good account of some of the campaigns of Ahmose from the tomb of one of his military commanders, Ahmose, son of Ebana. Following his rise to the throne, there was a lull in the war, as the Hyksos also had a new ruler, Khamudi, following the death of Apepi.
When hostilities resumed, Ahmose bypassed the Hyksos stronghold of Avaris, pressing north to Heliopolis. Within three months had had advanced to Tjaru, the Egyptian border fortress on eastern edge of the Delta. The Hyksos were now essentially cut off from their homeland and only feasible route of retreat. This done, Ahmose made his move against Avaris itself.
The battle for Avaris appears to have been a drawn out affair, with the Egyptians having to adapt to new military technologies they had only recently adopted from the Hyksos, namely the chariot and an early version of the composite bow.
Ahmose son of Ebana records the initial clash being naval, with him aboard the warship "Northerner" before a ground campaign conducted with chariots and on foot, before two more naval campaigns, and a final land campaign "to the south of this town".
Classical sources say the war itself ended with a negotiated settlement upon which the Hyksos would leave Egypt, but the exact situation is unknown for certain. In either case, the Egyptian exploited the situation to the full, as event post-unification attest. Egypt was now essentially unified, but not yet at peace.
Following the Hyksos expulsion, Ahmose pressed southward into Nubia, where local chiefs had sided with the Hyksos as part of a an earlier Hyksos initiative to defeat the 17th Dynasty Upper Egyptian state by forcing the rulers to fight on two fronts simultaneously. The exact order of events here is unclear, and it is possible Ahmose was forced to do just this, as (possibly) at the same time his armies also advanced out into the Levant, engaging in three year siege of Sharuhen, which was ultimately captured. The Nubian campaign was also successful.
Possibly immediately following this, two dissident groups emerge, one under Aata, in the south, and possibly again a Nubian, and an Egyptian group led by a dissident named Tetian, whom Bourriau argues may well have been leading a group of northern minor Princes, who had served the Hyksos and now feared for their position. Ahmose son of Ebana writes tellingly of the seriousness with which Ahmose regarded this rebellion:
Then came that foe named Tetian. He had gathered the malcontents together. His Majesty slew him; his troop was wiped out. Then I was given three persons and five arurae of land in my town
Whilst the death of a rebel leader was the only acceptable punishment for such a character in Egypt, the slaying of his entire troop is extremely uncharacteristic, the norm being to conscript them into the service of the Pharaoh's army.
However, ultimately all rebellions were dealt with, and the last five years of the reign of Ahmose would be dedicated to building. Later in his reign, he also appears to have established trading relations deeper in the Levant, cut off by the Hyksos occupation, trading with Byblos, an ally since the Early Dynastic period, and Phoenicia.
Monuments and Archaeology
Ahmose began a large number of building projects across Egypt and deep into Nubia. Activity to his reign has been recorded at Avaris, Buhen, Heliopolis, Karnak, Memphis and in particular, Abydos, where he constructed the last royal pyramid, along with a valley temple and a cenotaph to his ancestor, Tetisheri. The pyramid complex was first excavated by the Egypt Exploration Fund between 1899 and 1902, with work carried out by Arthur Mace. However, a much more detailed excavation has been conducted in recent years by Steven Harvey, which has given us the first depictions of chariot warfare and horses in Egypt, imagery of archers and captives, including vividly preserved colours.
In Avaris, Ahmose demolished the Hyksos fortifications and palaces, and rebuilt them, constructing a palace for himself on the same site. This palace is curious, featuring frescos of Minoan origin that indicate a deep knowledge of Minoan beliefs, leading some to speculate that Ahmose had a secondary wife who was of Minoan origin. There is no firm evidence of this, however. At present, the decorative scheme remains unexplained, though it is possible settlers from earlier periods remained in the city and served under Ahmose as artists.
The actual tomb of Ahmose has not yet been located. Though a single, well made shabti figure from his burial lies in the British Museum, it is of unknown provenance. It is widely believed he was buried in Western Thebes, along with his 17th Dynasty predecessors, with the pyramid complex at Abydos acting as a cenotaph. Though Harvey has not ruled out a burial at Abydos, this seems unlikely. His mummy was discovered in the Deir El Bahri cache in 1881 in an excellent state of preservation, and now rests in the Luxor Museum, alongside some of the burial goods of Ahhotep I which contained his cartouche. However, there is some doubt over whether or not the body is actually that of Ahmose I.
- Borreau, J (2000), The Second Intermediate Period in: Shaw, I (Ed.), The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, OUP, Oxford
- Dodson, A and Hilton, D (2004), The Complete Royal Families of Ancient Egypt, Thames & Hudson, London
- Lichtheim, M (1976), Ancient Egyptian Literature Vol. II : The New Kingdom, University of California Press, Los Angeles
- Newby, P H (1980), Warrior Pharaohs : The Rise and Fall of the Egyptian Empire, Guild Publishing, London
- Harms, W (2003), Abydos: A Place With Many Stories to Tell, University of Chicago Chronicle, Vol 23 #6 | <urn:uuid:72c42dc3-3891-441d-8fdf-b3a6fdc191bd> | CC-MAIN-2013-48 | http://conservapedia.com/Ahmose_I | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-48/segments/1386164034983/warc/CC-MAIN-20131204133354-00080-ip-10-33-133-15.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97595 | 1,667 | 3.109375 | 3 |
Updated: Feb 4
“What quality should we continue to develop as we transition from college to our careers?” This question was posed to me a couple years ago by my undergraduate teaching assistants as we celebrated the end of a great semester and their upcoming graduation. Before I tell you what I said, what would you say? Think about it before you scroll past the image below.
Now, if you had to pick from the following list, which of the following qualities would you say is most important?
Tough choice, right? The National Education Association, the largest professional interest group in the United States, advocates for the first “Four Cs” to prepare students for a global society. My goal as an educator has always focused on helping others develop these qualities; however, I increasingly think curiosity is an important element to living a good life.
Curiosity helps us perform better in school and at work. It also helps us better understand others and ourselves.
Curiosity Starts At Home
Children are born curious. And as soon as they can talk they express their curiosity with questions. Lots of them.
What happened to dinosaurs?
How do leaves change color?
How many words are there?
Where do people go when they die?
Why can’t I stay up as late as you?
Caregivers can create a home environment where questions are celebrated. When children ask a curiosity question, we should stop what we are doing and give them positive attention. Instead of rushing to answer, consider asking them what they think. My wife and I have recently started encouraging our children to write down their questions on what we are calling our “wonder wall.” At dinner, we bring up questions they asked during the day and explore related questions. We don’t always figure out the answer and that’s okay.
Curiosity Leads to Success In School
Greater curiosity is associated with higher academic achievement in children. A longitudinal study of 6,200 kindergarteners found children with higher curiosity performed better in reading and math. While intelligence has long been the focus of psychologists who study academic performance, intellectual curiosity is increasingly recognized as a key contributor to success in school.
While teachers understand the importance of curiosity, research suggests they do not prioritize it when creating lesson plans. Susan Engel, in her book The Hungry Mind, suggests schools place too much emphasis on standardized tests and lose focus on getting children excited about learning.
Unfortunately, once children enter school they tend to ask fewer questions. The focus shifts to answering questions. Warren Berger, author of A More Beautiful Question, suggests our schools aren’t preparing our children for the modern-day entrepreneurial workforce that demands question-asking skills.
Curiosity Leads To Positive Workplace Outcomes
Managers regularly cite curiosity as a quality they look for when evaluating job candidates. A recent Gallup survey found “curiosity and interest in work that is meaningful to them” to be one of the most important workforce readiness skills. In fact, developing students’ curiosity is among the outcomes on which managers feel colleges should focus.
Francesca Geno, a professor at Harvard, writes: “Most of the breakthrough discoveries and remarkable inventions throughout history… are the result of curiosity.” She has identified the following benefits of curiosity to organizations, leaders, and employees:
Fewer decision-making errors.
More innovation and positive changes in both creative and non-creative jobs.
Reduced group conflict.
More-open communication and better team performance.
According to other research published in Harvard Business Review, high performing groups treat mistakes with curiosity. This allows members of teams to ask questions, express their ideas, and take action without fear of punishment. An environment where it is safe to take risks improves a team’s ability to solve complex problems.
You can take personal responsibility for increasing your curiosity at work by challenging yourself to learn something new everyday. Also, become more conscious of how often you ask questions and compare that to how often you make assertions.
Curiosity Improves Romantic Relationships
Curiosity plays an important part in romantic relationships. Early phases of relationships are characterized by sharing of information, experiences, and resources. However, in committed relationships, couples tend to overestimate how well they communicate. The closeness-communication bias may be to blame for lower levels of curiosity and the tendency to tune out your partner. Esther Peral, a psychotherapist and relationship expert, notes that we are constantly changing and the people we think we know well are somewhat mysterious. The key is to remain curious about each other. When you exhibit curiosity in your partner you will be perceived as more attractive, and your partner will feel closer to you.
Curiosity Helps You Understand Yourself
A variety of societal forces can lead us to lose touch with who we really are and what we believe. The authors of Difficult Conversations write, “The process by which we construct stories about the world often happens so fast, and so automatically, that we are not even aware of all that influences our views.” Understanding yourself begins with asking important questions. What do you value? What is truly important in your life? How are you spending your time? Parker Palmer, author of A Hidden Wholeness, argues for the need to create space where we can listen to our inner teacher so we can hear our own answers to life’s important questions.
Curiosity Can Be Developed
We can all learn to be more curious. The habit of being inquisitive that we had as a child can be relearned as adults. Like our intelligence quotient (IQ) and emotional intelligence (EQ), we can develop what some are calling curiosity quotient (CQ).
Scholars have found evidence of multiple dimensions of curiosity. Understanding these dimensions can give us ideas about how to practice curiosity in our own lives.
Joyous Exploration: View challenging situations as opportunities to learn and look for experiences that challenge how you think about yourself and the world.
Social Curiosity: Attempt to find out why others behave the way they do and listen to others when they speak.
Deprivation Sensitivity: Recognize when you have a gap in your knowledge and seek to fill that gap.
Stress Tolerance: Put yourself in situations where you don’t feel confident about your abilities or where you could be surprised.
These dimensions suggest curiosity can be exhibited in many ways. Where do you see yourself? Are you curious about the world around you? Do you like to solve problems? Are you curious about other people?
When thinking about who you are and who you want to surround yourself with, is curiosity a quality you should give more consideration?
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Ramsden, S., Richardson, F.M., Josse, G., Thomas, M.S., Ellis, C., Shakeshaft, C., Seghier, M.L. and Price, C.J., (2011). Verbal and non-verbal intelligence changes in the teenage brain. Nature, 479(7371), 113-116.
Reynolds, A., & Lewis, D. (2018). The two traits of the best problem-solving teams. Harvard Business Review.
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Shah, P. E., Weeks, H. M., Richards, B., & Kaciroti, N. (2018). Early childhood curiosity and kindergarten reading and math academic achievement. Pediatric research, 84(3), 380-386.
Stone, D., Heen, S., & Patton, B. (2010). Difficult conversations: How to discuss what matters most. Penguin.
Murphy, K. (2020). You’re Not Listening: What You’re Missing and Why It Matters. Random House.
Von Stumm, S., Hell, B., & Chamorro-Premuzic, T. (2011). The hungry mind: Intellectual curiosity is the third pillar of academic performance. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6(6), 574-588. | <urn:uuid:e862ed59-3bea-4169-a18d-720d5bf450b3> | CC-MAIN-2021-31 | https://www.andrewquagliata.com/post/what-quality-should-you-develop | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-31/segments/1627046153899.14/warc/CC-MAIN-20210729234313-20210730024313-00118.warc.gz | en | 0.92625 | 2,094 | 2.8125 | 3 |
The Schmidt–Cassegrain telescope is a known variation of the Schmidt camera, and is compact enough to present excellent results especially when not pushed to its design limits. It permits outstanding visual observation of the skies with its convex and spherical secondary mirror reflecting the converging beam originating from the primary mirror back through a specific central hole within the primary. This allows an eyepiece to be positioned at the tube’s back end.
The Schmidt–Cassegrain telescope is basically a catadioptric telescope combined with the optical path of the Cassegrain reflector and the Schmidt reflector plate. The design was made by James Gilbert Baker back in the forties as a modified version of the Schmidt camera. It employs the usual spherical primary mirror and the Schmidt corrector plate for adjustments on the spherical aberrations. What’s special about the Cassegrain configuration is the convex secondary mirror which acts as an effective field flattener to facilitate the relay of images through the telescope’s perforated primary mirror towards that final focal plane just behind the primary.
This special design is currently very popular within the consumer telescope industry because of its easy-to-construct optical spherical surfaces with the advantages of the long focal length of refracting telescopes all with the low costs of every aperture. This makes for a compact telescope that is very portable given the apertures involved, which only adds to the usability and marketability. It may not have that wide field view of the Schmidt camera but it fares much better with a narrower and deep-sky viewing. | <urn:uuid:30ef66ea-9ec1-49d6-be3d-627898a3384b> | CC-MAIN-2021-39 | https://planetfacts.org/schmidt-cassegrain-telescope/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-39/segments/1631780056711.62/warc/CC-MAIN-20210919035453-20210919065453-00315.warc.gz | en | 0.934609 | 317 | 3.265625 | 3 |
The Truth Is Out There. Extraterrestrials, Probably Not
BY Benjamin Wiker
December 13-19, 2009 Issue | Posted 12/4/09 at 5:39 PM
The Pontifical Academy of Sciences and the Vatican Observatory recently brought together a group of scholars who study astrobiology, that is, the possibility of some kind of life existing elsewhere in the universe.
The media immediately seized on the convocation as a sign that the Pope was affirming the existence of intelligent extraterrestrials. This notion was given an unfortunate nudge forward by statements from Jesuit Father Jose Gabriel Funes, an astronomer who now directs the Vatican Observatory. “How can we rule out that life may have developed elsewhere?” Father Funes has said before, in an interview in the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano. “Just as there is a multitude of creatures on Earth, there could be other beings, even intelligent ones, created by God. This does not contradict our faith, because we cannot put limits on God’s creative freedom.”
This is one of those issues ripe for considerable confusion. How do I know? Because the question of whether there is intelligent life beyond Earth has been an issue ripe for confusion for well over two millennia. The enchantment with aliens is very old hat, and a short review of the history of its embarrassing tendencies should be enough to make us very, very cautious of alien enthusiasm entering the Church.
Space (pardon the pun) doesn’t permit a full historical review. Suffice it to say that what’s gone before all adds up to a very important maxim: The more we know, the less likely alien life becomes. The advance of science points to the inhospitableness of most of the universe for life.
Having said that, it does seem likely that there’s got to be some form of life out there somewhere. After all, there are hundreds of billions of galaxies in the universe. But the closest galaxy to ours is the Andromeda Galaxy. It’s 2.5 million light years from Earth; that is, on rough calculation, somewhere around 14,109,600,000,000,000,000 miles away. And there’s a big difference between life and intelligent living beings.
Think about it. Even if it were possible to travel at the speed of light, and even if some other intelligent creatures had developed technology far more quickly than we did, they would have to have lived for two and a half million years of space travel (as the crow flies) to find us. How likely is that?
And now we can return to the embarrassments of history I mentioned earlier because it allows us to make a very serious point in regard to the possible existence of intelligent aliens and Christian theology.
Again, speculations about intelligent extraterrestrial life are old hat. They began in the centuries before Christ and were offered up by the philosophers Epicurus and Lucretius. Epicurus and Lucretius disliked religion, arguing that it caused no end of miseries for humanity. Against the notion of a creator God, they asserted that mere chance, by jostling atoms, came up with not only our world, but endless others peopled by even more intelligent life. That’s a warning sign.
But atheism is not the only source of Alienmania. In a rather arcane conflict in the late 1200s, the bishop of Paris, one Etienne Tempier, condemned the position that God “cannot make more than one world.” Bishop Tempier was not trying to argue for aliens, but against those who asserted that it was beyond God’s power to create more than one world.
Pretty soon, however, theologians were wildly asserting that God must have created all kinds of ETs. In the mid-1400s, Nicholas of Cusa assured us that “in the area of the sun there exist solar beings, bright and enlightened intellectual denizens, and by nature more spiritual than such as may inhabit the moon.”
That was only the beginning. By the 18th and 19th centuries, the world’s top astronomers were assuring everyone that every planet in our solar system, and the sun itself, was crawling with intelligent life. Even the great Johann Bode tried to give a theological explanation: The “most wise author of the world,” he said, would “certainly not permit … the great ball of the sun to be empty of creations and still less of rational inhabitants who are ready gratefully to praise the author of life.”
Based on the “scientific” certainty of extraterrestrial life on the moon, Mars, Jupiter, Venus, all the rest of the planets and the sun, well-intentioned Christians started redefining Christian dogma accordingly, trying to make room for aliens with the incarnation of Christ.
That is embarrassing. It’s also a foolish mistake we must not repeat. What science does indeed know, with ever greater certainty, is the increasing improbability of extraterrestrial life. The ever slimmer possibility remaining should make us quite sober in our speculations, especially as they touch matters of our faith.
Ben Wiker is online at
Copyright © 2013 EWTN News, Inc. All rights reserved. | <urn:uuid:c23a79f4-16c2-4dfe-ad49-8ab22dae7b07> | CC-MAIN-2015-35 | http://www.ncregister.com/site/print_article/19624/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-35/segments/1440645353863.81/warc/CC-MAIN-20150827031553-00298-ip-10-171-96-226.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949231 | 1,099 | 2.5625 | 3 |
Daycare’s focus mainly on child’s development through social interaction with children and caregivers. Then there are head start programs that are geared to give children a foot in the right direction in order to be ready for preschool or kindergarten. The right kind of childcare can be a wonderful opportunity to promote the profound learning children experience from birth through age five (Selecting child care, 2002). When selecting childcare for your child the foundation of early learning has offered some tips that they believe will be helpful in the process. The foundation says that parents have always known that good early experience was important for their child.
This essay aims to critically evaluate, compare, contrast and criticize, and integrate theories, strategies and skills from the Humanist, Psychodynamic and Behaviourist perspective. This essay will discuss Maslow, Rogers’, Freudian and Skinner’s approaches to understand how counselling theories may be used by teachers and other staff for supporting children and young people in terms of their social and emotional well-being within the educational context, and the factors that influence their use. Based on the research evidence, this essay will discuss whether there is a need to support children in schools in these ways. Social and emotional wellbeing is one of the important areas of learning and development and it plays an important role in early personal development. It involves helping and supporting children to develop a positive sense of themselves and others (DfES 2012, p69).
Samuelsson, I.P., Sheridan, S. and Williams, P. (2006). Five preschool curricula —comparative perspective. International Journal of Early Childhood, 38(1), pp.11–30. Soler, J. and Miller, L. (2003). The Struggle for Early Childhood Curricula: A comparison of the English Foundation Stage Curriculum, Te Wha¨riki and Reggio Emilia.
This booklet is created for early year’s practitioners that are just starting and it is aimed to provide practitioners about children, early year’s documents and play. As an early years’ practitioner, there is much information that is useful to know. For example, the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) framework is a framework that all settings in the United Kingdom (UK) have to provide for children and babies by the Department for Education. The EYFS ensures that all children learn and develop well and are kept healthy and safe according to the statutory standards that are set for the early years providers to meet (DfE, 2012). The EYFS aims to provide a secure base that will ensure all children with good progress through school and life, quality and consistency in all early years setting, partnerships between practitioners and parents or carers and equal opportunity for all children (DfE, 2012).
London: Hodder Education. DCSF (2008) The Early Years Foundation Stage. Nottingham: DCSF DfE (2012) The Early Years Foundation Stage.London: DfE Fumto, H. Hargreaves, D. Maxwell, S. (2004): The concept of Teaching :a reapprasil Early Years , 24 (2) pp.179-182 Gray, C. and Macblain, S. (2012) Learning Theories In Childhood . London: Sage. Meade, A. and Cubey, P. (2010)thinking children:learning about schemas.berkshire: Open university press Nutbrown, C., Clough, P. and Selbie, P. (2008) Early Childhood Education.London: Sage.
Keystone Stars sets requirements for early childhood education program to promote the best learning environment and safest setting possible for each child. A Keystone Stars program provides children with individual attention, daily learning activities, a safe, friendly, and respectful environment; self-esteem, a well educated staff, and parent and community involvement (A Parent’s Guide to Choosing Quality Child Care). Accrediting programs is a way of child care centers providing the best possible care that promotes social, emotional, and cognitive development for young childre... ... middle of paper ... ...itizing needs for the children and staff. Children who participate in quality early learning programs tend to be more successful later in school. They are also most socially and emotionally competent.
(2006). Assessing Students with Special Needs (4th ed.). New Jersy: Pearson. Westwood, P. (1995). Effective Teaching: Paper Presented at the North West Region Inaugural Special Education Conference Prioritries, Partnerships (and Pulm Puddings).
the characteristics of an ideal early childhood classroom is to set goals and meet the developmental needs of each child by promoting quality care according to NAEYC Standards for Early Childhood Education. One more characteristic is to stimulate children with choices of materials, learning and welcoming environment, engagement activities, good relationship with peers and teachers, and enhance children’s learning and development. I have many reasons I want to become an early childhood teacher.one of them, is that I think that the early childhood education is fundamental to build up the base for children’s future formation. It is the foundation for the new generations and their future. From my experience I recognize that teaching children is unique and therefore it is necessary that as teachers we should be flexible and provide opportunities for them to expand their skills, and interests, about themselves and their future. | <urn:uuid:1600f1c1-7384-4626-ab05-11e81134a9de> | CC-MAIN-2021-04 | https://www.123helpme.com/essay/Discussion-about-the-Document-of-National-Quality-292879 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-04/segments/1610703522242.73/warc/CC-MAIN-20210121035242-20210121065242-00797.warc.gz | en | 0.933861 | 1,103 | 3.046875 | 3 |
posted by SAMM .
18.0 grams of oxygen is reacted with nitrogen to make 56.0 grams of nitrogen dioxide according to the following reaction:
2O2 + N2 ---> 2 NO2
How much nitrogen (in grams) reacted?
There is something inconsistent about your numbers. You need more than 18 g of O2 to make 56 g of NO2. The stoichiometry does not match up.
Check your numbers again. | <urn:uuid:49e8790d-74be-4902-9635-f94c2bba8a66> | CC-MAIN-2017-26 | https://www.jiskha.com/display.cgi?id=1290180829 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-26/segments/1498128323870.46/warc/CC-MAIN-20170629051817-20170629071817-00133.warc.gz | en | 0.938637 | 94 | 2.921875 | 3 |
Goddess MedusaCoven of the Goddess
There was a time long ago when Medusa’s people worshiped Her as a Goddess. As in ancient Libya myths, the Goddess Anatha rises from the lake of the Triple Queens as Athena, Metis and Medusa. Athena, a New Moon Warrior Maiden who inspires courage, strength, and valor, the Sea Goddess Metis, a Full Moon Mother of wisdom who, in later mythical tales, conceived Athena from Zeus and Medusa, Dark Moon Goddess and Crone. All three aspects of Goddess Anatha worshiped by the Libyan Amazons as Serpent Goddesses of female wisdom.
Serpent-haired Medusa ruled over the regenerative mysteries of sex and death, and protected these magical rites from being discovered and abused by the uninitiated. As the third, crone/destroyer aspect of the lunar triad, Medusa’s message was one of wisdom, and it concerned the inevitability of death. AS an Ocean Goddess of the West She guarded the gateway of death and granted safe passing to all souls entering the oceanic entrance to the underworld.
In Greek mythology, the patriarchy, in their fear of the wise woman of death, and of the magical sexual power of the menstruating feminine, demonized Medusa (as they did the other dark goddesses) into a monstrous figure of the devouring, castrating mother. In this tale, Medusa was one of three Gorgon sisters born from ancient sea deities. Two sisters were born immortal and ageless, Medusa was born mortal. They lived near the border of life and death at the ocean’s edge near the edge of the world. Tales of their beauty was told all over the world and many suitors called upon the sisters. From the many suitors it was Poseidon that Medusa took as Her lover one day in the temple of Athena.
The tale continues of Athena’s anger due to Medusa daring to compare her beauty to that of Athena or that Medusa dare sleep with Her most bitter rival in the sanctuary of Her temple. Athena transformed Medusa and Her sisters into ugly hags, winged monsters with glaring eyes, huge teeth, protruding tongues, brazen claws, and serpent locks. Medusa, receiving the majority of Athena’s wrath, became the most terrifying of the three. Her face was made so hideous that a glimpse of it would turn men into stone. Tales, embellished with danger, spread far and wide. Tales of the lands and caverns of these fearsome sea monsters abounded with the rigid shapes of petrified men and animals and the Gorgons were feared for their deadly power. Hence the death of Medusa became a worthy heroic quest for the patriarchal solar heroes.
This classic Greek myth is also infused by patriarchal-dominated invaders of mainland Greece. It was their hero Perseus who beheaded our Goddess Medusa. Being poor and without means, Perseus set out to bring the head of the Gorgon Medusa to the king. Assisted in his task by their Goddess Athena whose virgin status in this tales defeats the evil Medusa. It is also believed in these portrayals of Athena, Her shield and head-dress retain the legends of Goddess Anatha if one looks closely enough. Goddess Medusa’s snake locks and head are carried on upon Her shield and Her breast-plate is made of goatskin reflecting the shape shifting abilities of Goddess Metis.
Earlier tales of Medusa, dating from the seventh century BCE tells of small, slender mare-woman who, although masked with a Gorgon’s Head, shows none of the frightful aspects of the classical Gorgon. It was the face of the Moon the people expressed in the Gorgon mask and the horse as well were sacred to the indigenous people who worshiped Her. In this story it is Poseidon’s rape of Medusa in the form of a stallion that tells the story of the first wave of invading Hellenes from Greece. Riding large vigorous horses they forcibly married the Amazon Moon Priestesses and took over the rainmaking rites of the sacred horse cult through the birth of Pegasus.
This is only one of many stories that appear all over the Mediterranean Crescent around this time, a testament of transition of Goddess worship to God. The supremacy of the Great Goddess who took the young God as her Consort/lover was overturned and the God matures and then usurps her power by forcibly raping, marrying and subjugating her and by suppressing her worship. Poseidon’s soldiers likewise raped the Amazon priestesses, and they ignored the injunction of the aegis and Gorgon mask to stay away unless invited. The Gorgon mask then turned into the portrait of horror, fear, and rage frozen on the faces of these warrior women resulting from their forceful violation.
It is in all these tales we seek Goddess Medusa as we turn towards the Wheels end. Medusa, wise crone who holds the secrets of sex, divination, magic, death and renewal we seek the truth. It is Her Gorgon mask worn by the Priestess of old in celebration of Moon worshipping Rituals in Her honor we paint upon our face. Masks of glaring eyes, bared fanged teeth and protruding tongue that shall cast out the doubt and demons of self.
In day of old these mask held the secret of the blood mysteries that gave women their healing powers and tonight we shall seek to heal self. To die off the old and carry forth into the new all that is well. As primitive tribes believed the menstrual blood of a woman could turn a man to stone so shall the demons of self die in Her presence. As the Gorgons stood watch at Delphi so shall the Gorgon mask stand guard at our shrines of self. As the Gorgons initiated souls into death so shall our Gorgon mask protect us in our journey.
Image Source: Wikimedia | <urn:uuid:95755d15-cb9b-4451-853b-b1db9c0f76bc> | CC-MAIN-2018-26 | https://www.covenofthegoddess.com/goddess-medusa/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-26/segments/1529267863830.1/warc/CC-MAIN-20180620163310-20180620183310-00155.warc.gz | en | 0.953845 | 1,225 | 3.0625 | 3 |
For Immediate Release
KDHE Office of Communications
TOPEKA, Kan. – The Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE) Bureau of Disease Control and Prevention will observe National Native HIV/AIDS Awareness Day on March 20. Communities across the United States commemorate this day to raise awareness of the impact of HIV and AIDS among American Indians, Native Alaskans, Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders.
Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders have the third highest rate for new HIV infections and American Indians and Native Alaskans have the fourth highest rate for new HIV infections, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Hunter Health Clinic in Wichita is an important community partner working to raise awareness of HIV/AIDS in native communities. Clinic staff frequently conduct outreach at Pow Wows and health fairs, and offer free rapid confidential HIV testing every weekday, with test results available within 20 minutes. On March 20, Hunter Health Clinic will offer a free T-shirt and gift to anyone who comes into their location for HIV testing at 2218 E. Central, Wichita, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. For more information, please contact Vonnie Long at 316-262-3611 or firstname.lastname@example.org.
KDHE would like to encourage all Kansans to get tested for HIV. You can find HIV testing locations near you by visiting www.hivtest.org. Knowing your HIV status now and getting proper healthcare if you are HIV-positive is much better than finding out too late.
“The first step in preventing HIV from becoming AIDS is to be tested and be tested early,” said Brenda Walker, Director, KDHE’s Bureau of Disease Control and Prevention. “In 2010, 57 percent of the newly diagnosed HIV cases in Kansas were also AIDS diagnoses. Those who first learn of their HIV status when they already have AIDS have less likelihood of keeping their immune systems healthy long term. Testing is crucial for people who are at risk for acquiring HIV. Knowing your HIV status is critical.”
For further information about HIV/AIDS awareness events in Kansas, please contact Travis Barnhart, HIV Prevention Director at the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, at 785-296-1037 or email@example.com. Visit http://www.nnaapc.org/news/awareness-day.htm for more information about National Native HIV/AIDS Awareness Day. | <urn:uuid:93706233-cc9d-4e0c-bb18-b7613d31d45d> | CC-MAIN-2016-50 | http://www.kdheks.gov/news/web_archives/2012/03192012.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-50/segments/1480698541995.74/warc/CC-MAIN-20161202170901-00461-ip-10-31-129-80.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930751 | 510 | 2.671875 | 3 |
The natural or synthetic refrigerant takes care of the transport of heat away from the cold storage. It will be discarded outside or sent to an installation that enables you to reuse your own surplus heat. Especially in our times, more and more care is demanded for the use of environmental friendly solutions: ammonia (NH3) and carbon dioxide (CO2) are examples of natural refrigerants for cooling and freezing.
Measuring the degree of environmental care of natural and synthetic refrigerants.
This works with a set of three values for each refrigerant:
How does this affect you? Refrigerants that damage the ozone layer have already been banned in most countries and new legislation now aims at reducing the GWP of refrigerants (see also phasing out refrigerants). Geerlofs Refrigeration relies on natural refrigerants such as ammonia (NH3), propane and carbon dioxide (CO2). All of these have an ODP level of zero. Ammonia also has a GWP of 0, while that of CO2 is 1. While these refrigerants represent a ‘green’ solution, they are also possibly hazardous for people. Thus strict rules apply for the design and build up. Geerlofs follows all legislative rules to ensure safety.
Next to these natural refrigerants, we apply synthetic refrigerants that have a low GWP, such as R134a, R407a and R407c. All of these have a GWP lower than 2500 and, according to the new legislation, will still be usable for some time.
Is ammonia cooling an interesting option for you? Or another natural refrigerant? We will find out when our sales engineers run through the process and goals together with you. | <urn:uuid:c88d1976-626c-4c96-b880-f12761065587> | CC-MAIN-2021-31 | https://www.geerlofs.com/products/gisocool-cooling-technology-natural-and-synthetic-refrigerants | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-31/segments/1627046154277.15/warc/CC-MAIN-20210801221329-20210802011329-00048.warc.gz | en | 0.929869 | 352 | 2.515625 | 3 |
What makes a person choose to engage in the community? Typically, people do not engage for the sake of engagement, but because they are concerned about a specific issue impacting their lives. Major barriers to engagement include a lack of information as well a lacking sense of empowerment. The cure: Ensuring popular voice and transparency of governmental processes.
The theme of accountability is surfacing in various forms in a number of conversation strings. (See also the game blog, “Where to, Transparency?”) Suggestions for increasing accountability and reducing the influence of narrow interests (e.g. financial interests and power of a few) range from institutional changes to opportunities for using technology to increase transparency in elections and the legislative process.
Surfacing in the global exchanges, accountability is not achieved merely through live broadcasts of the legislative process but must also suggest criminal liability. And governments must hold all administrators responsible and carry out open budgeting processes. See following strings:
For the good of the community, some participants believe that greater accountability is required among companies and other organizations, too. What new mechanisms or legal forms (such a B Corps) could create this? http://game.connected-citizens.org/card_plays/5476
Many conversations touch on access to information. Creating easy access to information is important, but it’s not just about making data public. There’s also the need for citizens who know how to work with data and advocate for the community. See two strings touching on these points:
Finally, there can be no real accountability in government without ensuring popular voice. Citizen voice is vital for the sustainability of any governmental system. A communication string contends that free communication should be recognized as a human right. Another observes the need for people to also see how their voices influence decision makers. See two strings:
Ensuring popular voice and open access to information about governmental processes (such as elections and enacting laws), and who is trying to influence them, are core issues being raised in the Connected Citizens Forecast Engine. | <urn:uuid:7e52cead-8bd7-4a2b-9e10-dcf3954eae66> | CC-MAIN-2014-41 | http://blog.connected-citizens.org/open-information-and-citizen-voice-the-vehicles-for-greater-government-accountability/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-41/segments/1412037663417.12/warc/CC-MAIN-20140930004103-00452-ip-10-234-18-248.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.908686 | 414 | 3.421875 | 3 |
This article is Not Ready.
Inherits from SVGElement
Inherited from SVGElement
Note: In addition to the attributes, properties, events, methods, and styles listed above, SVG elements also inherent core HTML attributes, properties, events, methods, and styles.
The a command uses relative coordinates to draw an elliptical arc from the current point to (x, y). The size and orientation of the ellipse are defined by two radius values (rx, ry) and a rotation about the x-axis, which indicates how the ellipse is rotated relative to the current coordinate system. The center (cx, cy) of the ellipse is calculated automatically to meet the constraints from the other parameters. large-arc-flag and sweep-flag contribute to the automatic calculations and help determine how the arc is drawn.
- Scalable Vector Graphics: Paths, Section 8.5.12
The SVGPathSegArcRel object has these properties:
- angle: Gets or sets a value that indicates an angle unit.
- largeArcFlag: Gets or sets the value of the large-arc-flag parameter.
- pathSegType: Gets the type of the path segment.
- pathSegTypeAsLetter: Gets the type of the path segment, specified by the corresponding one-character command name.
- r1: Gets or sets the x-axis radius for an ellipse that is associated with a path element.
- r2: Gets or sets the y-axis radius for an ellipse that is associated with a path element.
- sweepFlag: Gets or sets the value of the sweep-flag parameter.
- x: Gets or sets the x-coordinate value.
- y: Gets or sets the y-coordinate value.
This article contains content originally from external sources.
Portions of this content come from the Microsoft Developer Network: [Windows Internet Explorer API reference Article] | <urn:uuid:61d1126d-4baf-47f5-a929-d482c4c0b595> | CC-MAIN-2015-40 | http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/svg/objects/SVGPathSegArcRel | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-40/segments/1443737951049.91/warc/CC-MAIN-20151001221911-00172-ip-10-137-6-227.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.731333 | 407 | 3.359375 | 3 |
The Lightning Network ELIDHDICACS*
(Explain Like I Don’t Have Degrees in Cryptography and Computer Science)
This article will attempt to explain how the Lightning Network operates, by making extensive use of analogy and avoiding intricate details of the underlying cryptography which validates the entire system. The goal here is to give the layperson a general understanding of how the Lightning Network operates by using, as close as possible, a real world analogy. Needless to say, such an explanation is going to leave out a lot of important details which are already well covered in the Lightning Network technical documentation. At times, the metaphors used may seem a bit stretched since, in most cases, the real world analog would be wildly impractical. By using analogies we are attempting to describe operations which happen on computer networks capable of executing contracts hundreds of thousands of times a second and with perfection.
So, let us begin by imagining a small town where everyone carries their gold in their pockets to buy and sell everything. It should be clear that such a situation would work just fine, since it has worked in human society for thousands of years. There is the question, however, of just how difficult it is to carry gold with you everywhere, because of security concerns, and the challenge of constantly having to make small change all of the time.
For this example, let us imagine that we do what early banks did during the days of the Wild West.
Instead of carrying gold with you everywhere, you could deposit your gold in the bank and carry sheets of paper which represent it; paper which is redeemable for actual gold at the bank as well. As we all know, this is how things used to work back in the Old West. Individual banks would each issue their own gold certificates of deposit which could be exchanged for goods and services around town. Since everyone in town accepted these notes as ‘good as gold’, this method functioned well for many years. People did not need to carry heavy gold with them everywhere they went, nor had to make change by carving it up into ever smaller amounts. It is important to note these paper certificates could be redeemed for actual physical gold at the bank; payable to whomever presented them. Since anyone could redeem these notes, it didn’t solve the basic security issue of simply being robbed. In contrast, the Lightning Network solves this problem of security very well.
Now, using this analogy, let’s try to understand how the Lightning Network operates. To be clear, at first glance it may seem dramatically more complicated than the Old West system, but keep in mind that things which are complex to you and I are not necessarily an issue for computers. A modern computer can multiply, add, subtract, or divide any two arbitrarily complex numbers about a billion times a second or so; something no human could ever do.
In this analogy the following holds true:
Bitcoin represents the Gold
The Bitcoin network and blockchain represents the Bank, but, unlike a regular bank, it cannot practice fractional reserve banking (lending out more money than it holds). Every single claim represents actual gold (i.e. bitcoin) in 100% perfect and immutable reserve. So, in our fictional Old West town, we have something which also doesn’t exist in the real world, a perfectly honest and incorruptible bank with 100% matching gold reserves.
The following properties are true in this analogy: The bank is the absolute arbiter of truth; the bank holds all of the gold; the bank decides who gets the gold and in what distribution; the bank has absolute power when determining between truth or lies; you cannot lie to the bank because this bank knows with absolute certainty, whether a signed contract is true or untrue—something that cannot be forged. This is a lot to accept at face value, but these points are all actually true on the bitcoin network due to the power of cryptography and can be mathematically proven. The details of this proof include a lot of nasty technical points that we are trying to avoid bringing into the presentation. So, let’s forego all the mathematical details and keep things simple. If you want to understand more thoroughly what makes these things possible, feel free to take an advanced course in cryptography at your local University.
In our fictional Old West town, things work a little bit differently with the Lightning Network model as a payment system. There is no paper money which is freely exchanged among businesses. Also, the ‘certificates of deposit’ that anyone can redeem at the bank don’t exist in the Lightning Network model as well. Instead, there are legal contracts between individuals; legal contracts which are enforced by the bank using a very strict and ironclad (programmatic) set of rules.
Let’s say that your name is Bob the Farmer, and you want to do regular business with the town's General Store. Under the Lightning Network model, Bob the Farmer and the General Store would enter into a contract with the bank. First, they would each deposit a certain amount of gold at the bank. Let’s say Farmer Bob deposits $100 worth of gold to do business with the General Store. In this first example, the General Store doesn’t deposit anything, but they could if they wanted to. Both Bob and the General Store agree to a contract, with a particular set of rules, that will be enforced by the bank. Before they leave the bank, the two parties exchange an initial receipt with each other, a receipt stating the initial balance, with $100 belonging to Farmer Bob and, at this time, nothing to the General Store; we’ll talk more on this later.
Once they have opened up this joint account at the bank, Bob can now start buying goods at the General Store; up to the $100 worth of gold that he deposited at the bank to begin with.
On the first day, Bob goes to the General Store and he buys a hammer worth $5. Rather than Bob handing over $5 worth of gold, or even paper money, he signs a note that says, "Of the $100 I have deposited in the bank, $5 now belongs to the General Store, and $95 belongs to me." Both he and the General Store sign the other’s copy of this receipt, and they each keep a copy for themselves. Farmer Bob’s copy of the receipt is signed by the General Store and the General Store’s copy of the receipt is signed by Farmer Bob. Neither of them sign their own name yet, they wait to do that until they present it to the bank to close out the account. As you can see, no actual money has changed hands. Instead, they have simply made a notation in their personal ledgers. Also note, that the bank knows nothing about this transaction, nor does the bank need to know anything about this transaction either. In fact, even if Farmer Bob and the General Store perform a thousand transactions, all the bank cares about, or needs to know, is the current final balance between them.
The next day, Bob goes back to the store and buys some nails for $1. Now, the same procedure happens as the day before. Two copies of a new receipt are written up, that states that the General Store gets $6 of the $100 deposited at the bank, and Bob gets the remaining $94. Each party signs and dates the other’s receipt, but they don’t sign their own copy yet.
Now, here is an interesting point. The note from the day before, which stated that the store had $5 and Bob had $95, can be thrown away! It is no longer needed. Other than for personal accounting purposes, this signed note with the old balance can be thrown in the trash since it no longer reflects the currently agreed-upon balance, and is null and void (exactly how it becomes voided will be discussed in more detail later).
At any time, either Bob or the General Store can close their account with one another. They each have a valid signed copy of the balance, and the bank will honor it because, remember, the bank has the awesome super cryptographic power of knowing with absolute certainty that the signatures are correct. For reasons of security, the party that wishes to close the account does not sign their copy of the receipt until they are at the bank. The bank verifies that the signatures are valid, and divvies up the gold they were holding on behalf of the clients, according to the signed agreement on the note (this doesn’t happen immediately, we will discuss this later). The bank doesn’t need to know the transaction history between Bob or the store. The bank really doesn’t care. All the bank needs to know, is that the final balance signed by both parties, is valid.
The bank isn’t a charity. For the service of opening and then closing the account, they will charge a small fee. However, for the purposes of this discussion, fees are not particularly relevant; it just means that when the bank settles up the account, they might give the General Store $5.95 (instead of the $6) and Farmer Bob $93.95 (instead of $94), keeping the 10 cent difference as a fee for providing the service of executing the contract and holding the gold. Of course, the General Store could choose to pay the entire ten cent fee as the cost of doing business if they want. The two parties can simply agree to the appropriate fee when they set up the account..
Hopefully, with this analogy, you can understand how this system could work. So long as the General Store and Farmer Bob maintain a current balance between the two of them, they: (a) don’t need to actually exchange any money (just signed and dated receipts representing the current balance); and (b), the bank doesn’t need to know about any of the individual transactions between the two parties. The bank only needs to know the final balance to settle up the bill at the end. It does assume that the bank is 100% trustworthy and infallible—which, as we know in real life, is an absurd assumption. However—and this is the amazing part—with the power of the bitcoin blockchain and smart contracts, this actually is completely true!
Each time Bob buys something at the General Store, and exchanges a copy of the receipt, each party signs the other one’s receipt. However, it is very important to note that they do not sign their own copy yet! The reason for this is because once a receipt has been signed by both parties, it can be presented to the bank, by anyone, and it will be executed. If Bob signs his copy of the receipt right away, then what happens if he loses it? Let’s say Bob signs his receipt and drops it on the ground. If someone else finds it, that means they can present the receipt signed by both parties to the bank to initiate a settlement of the funds prematurely. It is important to note that this 3rd party cannot, in any way, steal any of the money. The contract with the bank states that Bob gets his share of the money and the General Store, theirs. By presenting the receipt, the bank will begin to close the account but will not, and cannot, redirect the funds to someone else. So, why would a 3rd party present a signed receipt if they can’t benefit financially from it? The answer is simple — even in the Wild West, some people are just jerks.
This is the reason neither party signs their copy of the receipt until they are actually ready to present it to the bank. A receipt signed by only one party is completely safe from meddlesome people who might manage to steal a copy. In fact, not only is it safe, but Bob could even make multiple copies of each receipt and store them in different locations. The receipts are extremely valuable to Bob and the General Store, because if either of them loses their receipt, they can no longer initiate a settlement transaction with the bank. So, for the purposes of backup and redundancy, both Bob and the General Store can freely keep multiple copies of their receipts just to be completely safe and secure; they are protected even if they hand those receipts over to a 3rd party for safekeeping.
By now, this thought may have occurred to you: What is to prevent Farmer Bob from presenting one of the older signed receipts to the bank? In fact, what if, after receiving $100 worth of goods from the General Store, he tries to present the initial receipt that was exchanged back when the account was originally opened? How does the bank know that they should not honor this one? Here is where things get a bit tricky. If either party requests to close out the account, the bank will not pay out the funds immediately, even though the receipt is properly signed. Before they honor the receipt, giving Bob money he doesn’t deserve, the bank will first contact the General Store and ask, "Hey, Farmer Bob is trying to close out his account with the following receipt. Is this cool?" The bank continues, “Farmer Bob says that the last time you two did a transaction was on this date and he doesn’t owe you anything.” At this point, the General Store says, “Hell no, that’s not right! The most recent balance between us, is that he owes me $100 and (through the magic of cryptography) I can prove it!” The General Store presents the most recent signed receipt and the bank says, “Yep, you are right. Bob is a stinking liar and scam artist. For attempting to defraud you, he forfeits the entire $100; you get it all!”
The penalty for submitting an invalid receipt, is the complete loss of all funds, which are handed over to the counterparty.
This is probably the most critical part of how the system works. Even though anyone can present a valid receipt to the bank at any time, the bank will wait a short period so that the counterparty can contest the receipt, simply by presenting proof of a newer one. Remember that Farmer Bob cryptographically signed the newer receipt, and his signature confirms that this transaction is newer than the bogus one he presented to the bank. Again, this is an example of something that would be almost impossible in the material world, but can be irrevocably proven using cryptographic systems. Without this window of time for the counterparty to object, this entire system would not work. The bitcoin network is the world's most powerful time-stamping system and the Lightning Network leverages against it to make this kind of a payment system an actuality.
Considering the penalty for presenting a false receipt to the bank, Farmer Bob is highly motivated not to lie to the bank.
At this point, we should probably note that this analogy wouldn’t work very well in the real world because, in the real world, being able to perfectly validate dates and signatures, with 100% certainty, is not so easy. Yet, with computer networks and the power of cryptographic signatures, this is entirely possible.
Now, let’s look at a couple more edge cases. What happens if Farmer Bob presents the invalid receipt, the General Store is notified, but they don’t say anything about it? In that case, the transaction will still go through since it has valid signatures of both parties—because no one objected. The time window, where the second party is notified, is what prevents people from defrauding someone else; it is because of the threateningly high risk of losing all of their money on deposit. In the real world, the bank notifying the store might come in the form of a phone call. In bitcoin, that notification comes in the form of a transaction published to the bitcoin network; this transaction is not valid until a certain amount of time has passed, but everyone can see and monitor it, including, in this analogy, the General Store.
You might be wondering what would happen if Farmer Bob presents an invalid receipt only to have the bank fail to contact the General Store for confirmation. Then what? Who knows, maybe the General Store is closed for the holidays and Farmer Bob thinks he can take advantage of this to get his invalid receipt accepted. This is, indeed, a problem. If the counterparty fails to properly monitor any attempts to close the account prematurely with an invalid receipt, and misses the deadline, they could definitely be defrauded. With the Lightning Network, there are multiple redundant systems running 24/7, which monitor the closing transactions submitted to the bitcoin network in order to make sure that this cannot happen. The mechanism which enforces this is as follows. Each time the two parties update their balance receipts, they both create a side contract; we will call this the ‘claiming transaction’. This is a signed contract which is only valid if the counterparty attempts to close the account fraudulently. That is the only condition where this contract holds true; in fair account closure, there is no need to readdress this claiming transaction. Within this side contract, the counterparty agrees to pay a small bounty to whoever presents the contract to the bank. By sharing this contract with a group of bounty hunters, there is an incentive for them to police any attempts to commit a fraudulent closing transaction on your account, because they would get rewarded for doing so. If this were ever to occur, as it is a rare or infrequent event, you can be assured that the claiming transaction ensures the securing of your funds; even if you were unavailable to do so yourself at the time.
So far, we have presented an explanation for how two people could perform financial transactions without actually having to exchange any money directly. But what if Farmer Bob wants to pay someone who he does not already have an existing account with? If it is someone he regularly does business with, he could consider making a new deposit with the bank and transact with them the same way that he has being doing with the General Store. However, if Farmer Bob wanted to pay Seamstress Alice just this one time, it is a lot of trouble to create a whole new deposit and contractual relationship with the bank for just one payment. Luckily, he doesn’t have to go to all this trouble. In this particular Old West town, for exemplar purposes, almost everyone does regular business with the General Store. Both Bob and Alice already have existing business relationships with the store. Therefore, Bob can pay Alice through the General Store as an intermediary. The solution is actually relatively straightforward. Farmer Bob can send $10 to Seamstress Alice by asking the General Store to forward it to her. First, Farmer Bob adjusts his balance with the General Store and, in turn, the General Store can adjust its balance with Alice for the same amount. As you can see, no actual money changes hands, but parties along the chain merely update balances between them to get the same effect.
We can even take this scenario a step further. Let’s say that Alice DOESN’T have an open account with the General Store. However, let’s say that she does have one with the Blacksmith, who, in turn, has an account open with the General Store. In this scenario, Bob could pay Alice by adjusting his balance with the General Store, who then in turn, adjusts their balance with the Blacksmith, who then adjusts his balance with Alice. There is an often-quoted ‘six degrees of separation’ theory, which posits that everyone knows every other person on the planet within just six logical connections. Likewise, with the Lightning Network, every person can pay anyone else within just one, two, or maybe three hops along the way. In fact, it is this process of connecting people along existing open payment channels, that creates the underlying ‘network’ that the Lightning Network operates upon. Using the Lightning Network, anyone can pay another simply by forwarding funds and without the need to create any new deposits at the bank. By adjusting everyone’s balance sheet in accordance to everyone involved, you can effectively move money around without moving any physical money at all.
It may seem like this system is too highly complex and inefficient to equip everyone with the ability to pay everyone else; yes, in the real world, this would be the case. The hassle of having to update everyone’s outstanding balance just to ‘move some money around’ may seem like an impractical burden. However, just as multiplying a billion numbers in one second is fairly unrealistic for the average person to do, such a task is trivial for a computer.
So far, we have avoided diving too deeply into the technical details about how this system actually works. We have been able to explain, through a fairly straightforward analogy, how two people or businesses can perform financial transactions securely without needing to exchange any physical money—so long as they have a deposit backing it up. Unfortunately, trying to explain how multi-hop payments (payments forwarded through intermediaries) can be done securely, through an Old West analogy, is not quite so easy to do. Therefore, the following explanation will act only as a very rough approximation of how the multi-hop payment system actually works.
Let us return to the simple example of Bob wanting to pay Alice, with the General Store as an intermediary. What is needed, is a way to guarantee Bob and Alice that his funds were properly forwarded and credited to Alice. The way this is accomplished is by creating a temporary side contract between each party. First, Alice directly informs Bob of a secret; for the sake of this example, let’s say that it is a riddle question. Next, Bob creates a contract with the General Store and that contract includes the riddle as a dependent clause; the General Store can only keep the money he is holding onto for Alice if he can provide the answer to the riddle, but the General Store is unaware of the answer—Alice is the only person who can provide an answer to this riddle. When Alice attains the copy of the contract from the General store, she can redeem her riddle answer for the money. If there are multiple people in the chain to Alice, none of them will be able to obtain the money since none of them have the answer. Each person in the chain forwards the contract, with the riddle question as a dependent clause, until it reaches Alice in this example. Here is the sequence of events explaining this example:
Bob wants to pay Alice $10
Alice gives Bob a riddle directly.
Bob discloses the riddle question to the General Store and asks the General Store to forward $10 to Alice.
Now the General Store creates a side contract for $10 with Alice, providing the riddle question in the terms, which proves that he got the money from Bob because the only way he could know the riddle question is if he got it from Bob.
Once Alice confirms that the payment was forwarded from Bob, she then gives the answer to the riddle to the General Store, which fulfils the contract terms. Now, everyone is settled up (to be clear, what actually happens with the Lighting Network, is that instead of a ‘riddle’ and an ‘answer’, there is a mathematical equation to be solved containing two components; one component serves as the ‘riddle question’ and the other serves as the confirmed mathematical result).
Once everyone knows both the riddle and the answer, this proves that the money was properly forwarded along the chain. At this point, the side-contract can be discarded and the two parties simply adjust their normal balance.
The Lightning Network is a system for exchanging signed contracts, which entitles various entities access to previously-deposited funds, in a safe and secure way. The bitcoin network acts as the perfect Judge. The bitcoin network can validate any contract with absolute authority and veracity. These contracts essentially act as a mathematical equation to be solved, and the bitcoin network can rigorously and perfectly enforce the terms of any contract submitted to it.
This, in a nutshell, is the genius of the Lightning Network. It is an ambitious and audacious application of ‘smart contracts’; contracts which are not enforced by a real-world judge, but are instead enforced by the power of the bitcoin trust network and impossible-to-hack mathematics.
Avoiding the Old West analogy for a moment, here is a summary of what the Lightning Network actually ‘is’:
● The Lightning Network is an extension of the bitcoin network which uses time-locked, hashed smart contracts to safely exchange value.
● All Lightning Network transactions ARE bitcoin transactions. Admittedly, they are unconfirmed transactions. However, these are transactions which are dependent upon an already-existing and confirmed funding transaction that resides on the blockchain.
● By using smart contracts, Lightning Network ‘transactions’ are not transactions in the traditional sense. Participants are merely signing a contract representing an agreed-upon balance in an existing account. This can be done safely and securely. Not only that, but it also avoids having to publish every intervening transaction to the blockchain. This enhances privacy, security, and has a multiplier effect on the main bitcoin blockchain. It is important to avoid thinking about Lightning Network transactions as something separate from bitcoin transactions—they are not. They actually are bitcoin transactions, and the only thing the ‘network’ part of the term ‘Lightning Network’ does, is facilitate the mechanics of safely/securely signing and forwarding these bitcoin transactions among participants of the system.
There are some things that the Lightning Network does extremely well, and there are other areas that still have some rough edges to smooth out.
Things which the Lightning Network does well
● The Lighting Network is capable of supporting billions upon billions of transactions for free (or nearly free), since the only thing that is happening between parties, is the updating of a balance sheet between two individuals, and revision of signed contracts. It does, however, require that the main bitcoin network has a sufficient transaction capacity equal to the number of individuals and businesses who wish to open and close channels. Currently, the bitcoin network blocksize restriction limits the actual number of people capable of opening and closing channels, to only a few million. The bitcoin network itself will, naturally, need to grow larger in order to support the expected influx of active users over time; it will need to grow large enough to allow every user of the Lightning Network to regularly open and close payment channels.
● The Lighting Network enables the transfer of value in extremely tiny quantities. In the real world, moving around value equivalent to one one-hundredth of a penny would be both wildly impractical and cost prohibitive. But, over the Lightning Network, this is a trivial operation and is essentially free. You might wonder what good is such a miniscule exchange? The reality, is that in our ever more connected world, there not only are billions of humans interconnected via their mobile devices and the Internet, but soon, there will be billions upon billions of ‘things’ connected as well. The ability for billions of devices to exchange miniscule amounts of value, essentially for free, is going to transform our world in a multitude of ways. For example, what if you could pay a fraction of a penny each time you listen to a song, watch a video, or read an article on the Internet? In this way, you would be able to directly fund the artist behind that work and, in aggregate, all of those fractions of a penny can really add up (@see ‘Office Space’). In exchange for making these tiny payments, you could opt-out of obnoxious advertising without necessitating enrollment in some sort of ‘subscription’ service. You could pay for Wi-Fi service, or any other streaming service, ‘by the nanosecond’ if you wanted to. Simply pay for what you use, and it can all happen seamlessly over the Internet. Now, imagine that you are a musician who just created a new song. You might allow anyone to listen to your song for the low, low price of just one one-tenth of a penny per listen. Maybe, your song turns out to be a really great and popular song. People dig the hook, and it just so happens that a few hundred thousand people listen to the song a few times each, for a total of one million plays. In return, the artist would receive $1,000 for just that one song alone! With no middlemen and virtually no fees, it would all come into his payment channel one one-tenth of a penny at a time. And, who wouldn’t pay one one-hundredth of a penny to listen to a good song? As you can see, extremely high-frequency and low-value microtransactions enable a whole new way to pay for nearly everything on the Internet.
Potential concerns with the Lightning Network
Since all payments over the Lightning Network are based on a certain amount of value ‘on deposit’ with the Bitcoin blockchain, you run into ‘aliasing’ problems. If you have a channel open with $100 on deposit, but want to send $101 dollars, you simply cannot do so. First, you’d have to close that channel and open a new one with at least $101. Clearly, this can be a major inconvenience. This aliasing problem requires that you ‘guess’ how much money you will need at any given time, and lock those funds up for that timespan. On top of that, opening and closing a new channel is not instantaneous; it takes time and there are inherent delays built into it to resolve the settlement transaction securely.
When opening a channel, either party or both parties, can fund the initial deposit. Without doubt, there will be numerous businesses happy to open channels with customers. Those businesses will be willing to dedicate a certain amount of value to each person. What this means for the business, is that an enormous amount of capital will be ‘locked up’ in channels simply to accommodate the level of economic activity potentially needed by each participant. Since you cannot send value larger than what is available on an open channel, everyone needs to seriously consider overestimating the maximum amount that they will need for the time period that the channel is open. In turn, this will further increase the ‘locked up’ value and reduce overall liquidity across the network.
Anyone using the Lightning Network effectively has a ‘hot-wallet’, meaning their transactions are being signed by a piece of software connected to the Internet. Best practices in the industry today are to keep most bitcoin reserves in a multi-signature cold storage account which has never been accessed on the Internet, or to use a hardware wallet like the Trezor to do offline signing. However, if the Lightning Network becomes very popular and is used to transact a lot of value, this would become a lightning rod for hackers to attack users machines, in an attempt to compromise them such that they could get away with authorizing payments against their wishes. While the risk may be low, we know from history that any time someone runs software which is authorized to automatically sign transactions, they are at risk.
Probably one of the biggest open questions surrounding the Lightning Network, relates to legal concerns. Governments around the world have a large repertoire of rules and regulations governing financial networks. However, since the Lightning Network is fairly recent and has a very original idea, its difference to traditional transaction systems renders application of these laws difficult. That said, you can be absolutely certain that the State will attempt to apply old laws to this new invention and create a regulatory burden of nightmarish proportions. Even though no one on the Lightning Network technically ‘holds’ anyone else's funds, it is doubtful that will matter much to regulators. It is probably safe to say that any business which is providing a substantial amount of liquidity (by funding payment channels) or otherwise acting as the middleman for significant amounts of value transfer, will be treated as a money-services business and be required to be fully AML/KYC compliant.
Ideally, the Lightning Network, like the bitcoin network, would be fully decentralized. However, due to the ‘liquidity problem’ (meaning you have to open a channel with at least as much value as the maximum payment you will ever want to make), there is going to be a natural tendency for large businesses to centralize around providing that liquidity. In theory, every single Bob, Dave, or Alice could provide their own liquidity to others (by tying up their own personal bitcoin to open payment channels as a service). In practice, though, only larger organizations will be able to do this at scale.
In conclusion, the Lightning Network is an incredible invention. It shows the almost mind boggling power of smart contracts; contracts which have mathematical certainty and are executed with absolute precision and security by the bitcoin network. Over time, systems based on this technology will completely and utterly transform the entire financial system of the planet and enable the ‘internet of things’; a world containing billions of interconnected devices capable of directly exchanging value and performing tasks and duties for the services they provide.
The Lightning Network is not a competitor of the bitcoin network in any way. Rather, it is an extension of the network itself—one that enables new kinds of value transfer, backed up by the most powerful decentralized trust system in human history!
(About the Author : John W. Ratcliff is a Principal Engineer with NVIDIA Corporation, a long time veteran of the video game industry, and has a strong personal interest in bitcoin and related cryptocurrency technologies. Special thanks to Alffranco, an artist from Venezuela who did the illustrations for this article and was paid, whether he knew it or not, via bitcoin on fiverr. Proofreading was done by Indigo Skies, an immunology student in Canada, also paid in bitcoin via fiverr) | <urn:uuid:86bce993-cb96-4782-8f6f-43739ec0c83b> | CC-MAIN-2019-43 | https://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/post/the-lightning-network-elidhdicacs | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-43/segments/1570986677964.40/warc/CC-MAIN-20191018055014-20191018082514-00487.warc.gz | en | 0.96054 | 6,993 | 2.515625 | 3 |
24th November 2021—Dressed in an eye-catching shade of fuchsia pink, Kate added a bright pop of colour to an otherwise grey and dreary afternoon.
The Duchess wore a pink coat and rollneck sweater to visit Nower Hill High School in Harrow, London. She joined a class of year eight pupils for a special science lesson.
The children have spent the last few weeks studying early childhood development and neuroscience as part of a pilot research project called SEEN (an acronym for Secondary Education around Early Neurodevelopment.) SEEN is run by early years charity Kindred2 and the University of Oxford. Together, they have developed a pilot curriculum for Key Stage 3 pupils and hope to embed them with the key principles of early childhood development and neuroscience. For anybody wondering why you’d want to teach these topics to 12 and 13-year-olds:
The first 1001 days (pregnancy and the first two years of a child’s life) is a critically important period for development that significantly influences a child’s long-term health, well-being, learning and earnings potential. It provides the foundation for children’s nascent emotional wellbeing, resilience and adaptability. Sensitive and responsive parent-infant relationships have been shown to be pivotal for the development of infants’ social, emotional, behavioural and cognitive outcomes. It is therefore essential to develop a community-wide understanding of the neuroscience that underpins how caregivers’ behaviour contributes to children’s future outcomes.Psych.ox.ac.uk
The researchers are hoping this will have a positive effect on future generations:
More than 90 per cent finished the classes knowing that a care giver should speak to a baby to promote their language development.
It is hoped that the lessons will stick with young people as they grow up to become parents themselves, helping to transform the outcomes for the next generation.Telegraph
Now the pilot scheme is over, the researchers will use their findings to inform recommendations relating to the teaching of neuroscience around child development to policymakers.
Of course, early child development is something Kate is very passionate about. She has spent the last decade as a working royal learning about the topic. Oxford University’s research project aligns strongly with the Duchess and her work:
…[The research project] is steeped in the understanding of the critical importance of early child development and its influence on an individual’s long-term health, wellbeing and potential in the future. The lessons focused on the neuroscience underpinning how caregiver’s behaviour is pivotal to childhood development and children’s future outcomes.Kensington Palace
You may remember that Kate launched The Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood earlier this year. The Centre is “on a mission to transform society through early childhood”. A reminder, should you need it:
In the lesson, the children gave Kate a recap of everything they’ve learnt and understood. Before leaving, Kate thanked the students for taking part, and asked them to carry on chatting with their friends about the topic. She told them was “super impressed” by their efforts.
The Kensington Palace social media team published the following tweet:
The first five years of our lives have an extraordinary impact on the adults we become. They provide the foundations for how we respond to our biggest challenges in later life, our long-term health, wellbeing and resilience.
Everyone involved in a child’s early life has a pivotal role to play & @OxChildPsych’s research educating teenagers in science lessons about how early experiences shape brain development is just one example.Kensington Palace
They signed off by thanking the pupils at Nower Hill for sharing their experiences.
The day didn’t end there for Kate. She then travelled to Buckingham Palace where she joined the Chief Executives of Academy Trusts for a briefing. They discussed the results of the research project.
Video of Kate at Nower Hill:
Onto the fashion portion of our article now.
Kate wore a berry pink coat over a matching roll-neck sweater. She paired the fuchsia pieces with darker items—a pair of navy slim-fitting trousers and navy suede heels. Let’s take a closer look:
The pink coat is by Hobbs London. It’s the London-based brand’s Tilda style. (Thank you to Susan and Bojana for identifying the item quickly.) The smart coat features a notch lapel, welt pockets, seam detailing and contrasting black buttons. Hobbs describe the piece as “immaculately cut”.
I’m sure Kate chose the coat for its eco-credentials (something she’s been doing a lot of lately): it’s made from brushed wool, a fibre that’s naturally warm and biodegradable. Plus, the lining is partly made from recycled polyester which helps to reduce the amount of scrap fabric that ends up as landfill.
If you’re hoping to buy the pink coat, you’re in luck. At the time of writing, it’s still available in most sizes (standard and petite) in the colour ‘fuchsia’ pink. At Hobbs London, the piece was £299 but currently retails for £224.25 in the Black Friday sale. On their US site, the coat is selling for $450 (was $600). (Other currencies are available, I just don’t have time to check and list them all. Use the currency switcher on the top right of the website.) It’s also available for the same price at Bloomingdale’s and John Lewis.
Not a fan of pink? You might be interested to learn the coat comes in a rainbow of other colours too: pale blue, deep ochre, camel, red, fern green, black and navy…
Let’s take a look at Kate’s coordinating pink roll neck top now. It’s also by Hobbs London. It’s the Lara style in ‘Granita Pink‘.
Described by the company as “a foundation piece” that is “perfect for layering”, the sweater is made from soft merino wool certified with the Responsible Wool Standard. The fine gauge knit sweater features a rib design throughout and gold-tone buttons on the sleeve cuff.
Again, if you’re hoping to copy Kate’s look and buy the pink roll-neck sweater, you’re in luck! At the time of writing, the piece is still available to buy on the UK website for £56.25 (was £75) and on the USA website for $120 (was $160). (As above, other currencies are available too.) You’ll also find the sweater at Bloomingdale’s and John Lewis for the same price.
Like the coat, the sweater also comes in a myriad of colours. Choose from chocolate, black, ivory, khaki, grey, camel and burgundy.
Kate’s trousers are still a mystery to us fashion bloggers. We’ve not managed to ID them yet. I believe she first wore them last month to visit the Imperial War Museum in London. She also wore the same blue mystery belt on both occasions.
I can identify Kate’s suede heels. They are by Gianvito Rossi. They’re the ‘Gianvito 85’ style in ‘Midnight Blue’. They’re quite a recent addition to Kate’s shoe closet—she’s only worn them on one other public engagement so far.
The Gianvito 85 heels feature a pointed toe, a leather insole and a mid-size (85mm) stiletto heel. They were crafted in Italy.
The shoes are currently available to buy: they’re in stock at Net-A-Porter.com. They retail for £510 in the UK and $675 in the USA.
I believe Kate also own the style in three other colours: Dark Olive, Praline and Texas Brown.
Kate finished the look with a pair of 9ct gold and diamond hoop earrings. They’re by Daniella Draper, the Luxury Maxi Cupid Hoop style. (Note, in an earlier version of this post, I listed Kate’s earrings as the gold hoops by Liv Thirlwell—I was incorrect.)
The earrings are made from recycled yellow gold and feature three diamonds on each hoop: two that are round brilliant-cut style and one baguette. The diamonds total 0.65cts.
The coat is a beautiful shade to wear on a cold and grey winter day. I like the simplicity for a school visit. The coat is affordable and perfect for the event.
Kate has some beautiful and memorable coats and jackets in her wardrobe. I hope we see some repeats this cold-weather season. | <urn:uuid:c41cc561-be2a-4c05-9962-9e5b35db8b76> | CC-MAIN-2023-23 | https://katemiddletonstyle.org/school-lesson-pink/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-23/segments/1685224653608.76/warc/CC-MAIN-20230607042751-20230607072751-00270.warc.gz | en | 0.929979 | 1,891 | 2.953125 | 3 |
Translation of easel in Spanish:
- Example sentences
- The show is also a wonderful time to watch artists set up easels and paint for the crowds or sign posters and books.
- The artist's easel, paint box, palettes, paintbrushes and dried tubes of paint occupied a corner.
- Here exhibited for the first time, it depicts a painting on an easel and a bird on the wing, the easel representing the artist and the bird in flight the liberating act of painting.
What do you find interesting about this word or phrase?
Comments that don't adhere to our Community Guidelines may be moderated or removed. | <urn:uuid:70144e51-c4fa-4a43-b571-ece141a5d782> | CC-MAIN-2015-18 | http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/translate/english-spanish/easel | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-18/segments/1429246640124.22/warc/CC-MAIN-20150417045720-00147-ip-10-235-10-82.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.927921 | 134 | 2.875 | 3 |
Baking powder is considered nontoxic when it is used in cooking and baking. However, serious complications can occur from overdoses or allergic reactions. This is for information only and not for use in the treatment or management of an actual overdose.
Why is baking powder not healthy?
It is not good for you because it has sodium bicarbonate that belongs to a group of drugs known as antacids. Likewise, it is a generic drug to treat upset stomachs caused by acid reflux irritation. In addition to that, sodium bicarbonate is safe enough to consume for most people as an antacid a couple of times.
Which is healthier baking soda or baking powder?
Numerous baked dishes incorporated baking soda or baking powder as a leavening agent. … In the end, baking soda is healthier than baking powder. It is a neutralising agent. This non-toxic substance is used to reduce the effect of acid and inflammation in the body and treat most ailments.
How much baking powder is considered toxic?
10-20 grams per pound of body weight ) a toxic amount of baking powder or soda then it can it! Body, the excess sodium can cause things to rise uncontrollably, and much more than!
Is baking powder good for the body?
In addition, baking soda has a variety of health benefits. For example, it can help treat heartburn, soothe canker sores, and even whiten your teeth.
What are the disadvantages of baking soda?
Long-term and overuse of baking soda can increase your risk for:
- hypokalemia, or potassium blood deficiency.
- hypochloremia, or chloride blood deficiency.
- hypernatremia, or rise in sodium levels.
- worsening kidney disease.
- worsening heart failure.
- muscle weakness and cramps.
- increased stomach acid production.
What is better baking powder or yeast?
In baked goods, you can replace yeast with an equal amount of baking powder. Just keep in mind that the leavening effects of baking powder will not be as distinct as those of yeast. Baking powder causes baked goods to rise rapidly, but not to the same extent as yeast.
What happens if you use baking soda instead of baking powder?
If you swap in an equal amount of baking soda for baking powder in your baked goods, they won’t have any lift to them, and your pancakes will be flatter than, well, pancakes. You can, however, make a baking powder substitute by using baking soda.
What happens if you don’t use baking powder?
It is possible to make cookies without baking soda or baking powder, but the resulting cookie will be dense. This is because carbon dioxide is not being produced by a chemical reaction that typically occurs when baking soda or powder is present in the cookie batter.
What can you use instead of baking powder?
Here are 10 great substitutes for baking powder.
- Buttermilk. Buttermilk is a fermented dairy product with a sour, slightly tangy taste that is often compared to plain yogurt. …
- Plain Yogurt. …
- Molasses. …
- Cream of Tartar. …
- Sour Milk. …
- Vinegar. …
- Lemon Juice. …
- Club Soda.
Can I use baking soda instead of baking powder for pancakes?
Can I make pancakes without baking powder? Yes, absolutely. To use baking soda instead of baking powder, you will need to swap the milk for sour milk or buttermilk and use 3/4 teaspoon of baking soda.
What happens if I eat too much baking powder?
The symptoms of a baking powder overdose include: Thirst. Abdominal pain. Nausea.
What happens if you have too much baking powder?
Too much baking powder can cause the batter to be bitter tasting. It can also cause the batter to rise rapidly and then collapse. (i.e. The air bubbles in the batter grow too large and break causing the batter to fall.) Cakes will have a coarse, fragile crumb with a fallen center.
Can baking powder help you lose weight?
Adding baking soda to the mix appears to offer few additional benefits. There’s little to no scientific suggesting that baking soda can help you lose body fat. Mixing baking soda with water, lemon water, or apple cider vinegar may indirectly help you lose weight, but baking soda appears to have little to do with this. | <urn:uuid:bdea6138-d3f4-4fec-a364-8bdee52859f4> | CC-MAIN-2022-05 | https://mainesource.net/to-bake/is-baking-powder-unhealthy.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-05/segments/1642320304572.73/warc/CC-MAIN-20220124155118-20220124185118-00616.warc.gz | en | 0.914355 | 926 | 3.359375 | 3 |
There never has been even a partial, inadvertent U.S. nuclear detonation despite the very severe stresses imposed upon the weapons involved in these accidents. All `detonations' reported in the summaries involved conventional high explosives (HE) only. Only two accidents, those at Palomares and Thule, resulted in a widespread dispersal of nuclear materials.
Nuclear weapons are never carried on training flights. Most of the aircraft accidents represented here occurred during logistic/ferry missions or airborne alert flights by Strategic Air Command (SAC) aircraft. Airborne alert was terminated in 1968 because of:
- Accidents, particularly those at Palomares and Thule
- The rising cost of maintaining a portion of the SAC bomber force constantly on airborne alert, and,
- The advent of a responsive and survivable intercontinental ballistic missile force which relieved the manned bomber force of a part of its more time-sensitive responsibilities. (A portion of the SAC force remained on nuclear ground alert).
Although normal DOD policy is to neither confirm nor deny the presence of nuclear weapons or components, recently revised DOD Directive 5230.16 governing public affairs guidance allows for confirmation when required to protect public safety or as a means of reducing widespread public alarm. Therefore, in some of the events summarized here, confirmation of presence is not published. Except for Palomares and Thule, it is not possible to specify the location of the accidents that occurred overseas.
Most of the weapons systems involved in these accidents are no longer in the active inventory. Those include the B-29, B-36, B-47, B-50, B-58, C-124, F-100, and P-5M aircraft, and the Minuteman I missile.
With some early models of nuclear weapons, it was standard procedure during most operations to keep a capsule of nuclear material separate from the weapon for safety proposes. While a weapon with the capsule removed did contain a quantity of natural (not enriched) uranium with an extremely low level of radioactivity, accidental detonation of the HE element would cause neither a nuclear detonation nor contamination. Modern design incorporates improved redundant safety features to insure that a nuclear explosion does not occur as the result of an accident.
This list of accidents was compiled by DOD/DOE researchers during December 1980-January 1981. The researchers reviewed all available records of the military services and DOE, applying current definition to determine if an event warranted categorization as an accident.
For example, one event not covered by these narratives was included in a `Chronology of Nuclear Accident Statements', released by DOD in 1968. The researchers found, however, that only a small retrorocket on the missile had accidentally fired. The missile and its warhead were not damaged. That event did not warrant inclusion in a list of accidents involving nuclear weapons.
Another event from the 1968 list, involving a U.S. Navy Terrier missile (January 1966; NAS Mayport, Florida) was not considered to be an accident, but has been categorized as a significant incident. In that incident, a nuclear warhead separated from the missile, and fell about eight feet. The warhead was dented; no other damage occurred.
Twenty-six of these summaries were first released by the Air Force in 1977; another was prepared following the Titan II explosion in Arkansas in September 1980. These previously released summaries are marked with a figure `1'; in some cases they include new material made available as a result of more search.*
The other events in this list, that were also cited in the 1968 `Chronology * * *', are identified with a figure `2'.
The events outlined in the attached narratives involved operational weapons, nuclear materials, aircraft and/or missiles under control of the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy, or the Atomic Energy Commission (a DOE predecessor agency). The U.S. Army has never experienced an event serious enough to warrant inclusion in a list of accidents involving nuclear weapons. The U.S. Marine Corps does not have custody of nuclear weapons in peacetime and has experienced no accidents of significant incidents involving them.
To the best of our knowledge, this list is complete. Reporting requirements varied among the Services, (particularly in the earlier period covered by these narratives) so it is possible, but not likely, that an earlier accident has gone unreported here. All later events, however, have been evaluated and are included if they fall within the established definition of an accident.
DEFINITION OF AN ACCIDENT
An `accident involving nuclear weapons' is defined as--
An unexpected event involving nuclear weapons or nuclear weapons components that results in any of the following:
Accidental or unauthorized launching, firing, or use, by U.S. forces or supported allied forces, of a nuclear-capable weapon system which could create the risk of an outbreak of war.
Non-nuclear detonation or burning of a nuclear weapon or radioactive weapon component, including a fully assembled nuclear weapon, an unassembled nuclear weapon, or a radioactive nuclear weapon component.
Seizure, theft, or loss of a nuclear weapon or radioactive nuclear weapon component, including jettisoning.
Public hazard, actual or implied.
February 13, 1950/B-36/Pacific Ocean, off Coast of British Columbia:
The B-36 was enroute from Eilson AFB to Carswell AFB on a simulated combat profile mission. The weapon aboard the aircraft had a dummy capsule installed. After six hours of flight, the aircraft developed serious mechanical difficulties, making it necessary to shut down three engines. The aircraft was at 12,000 feet altitude. Icing conditions complicated the emergency and level flight could not be maintained. The aircraft headed out over the Pacific Ocean and dropped the weapon from 8,000 feet. A bright flash occurred on impact, followed by a sound and shock wave. Only the weapon's high explosive material detonated. The aircraft was then flown over Princess Royal Island where the crew bailed out. The aircraft wreckage was later found don Vancouver Island. (*1)
April 11, 1950 /B-29/ Manzano Base, New Mexico:
Aircraft departed Kirtland AFB at 9:30 p.m. and crashed into a mountain on Manzano Base approximately three minutes later, killing the crew. Detonators were installed in the bomb on board the aircraft. The bomb case was demolished and some high explosive (HE) material burned in the gasoline fire. Other pieces of unburned HE were scattered throughout the wreckage. Four spare detonators in their carrying cases were recovered undamaged. There were no contamination or recovery problems. The recovered components of the weapons were returned to the Atomic Energy Commission. Both the weapon and the capsule of the nuclear material were on board the aircraft but the capsule was not inserted for safety reasons. A nuclear detonation was not possible. (*1)
July 13, 1950 /B-50/ Lebanon Ohio:
The B-50 was on a training mission from Biggs AFB, Texas. The aircraft was flying at 7,000 feet on a clear day. Aircraft nosed down and flew into the ground killing four officers and twelve airmen. The high explosive portion of the weapon aboard detonated on impact. There was no nuclear capsule aboard the aircraft. (*1)
August 5, 1950 /B-29/ Fairfield/Suison AFB, California:
A B-29 carrying a weapon, but no capsule, experienced two runaway propellers and landing gear retraction difficulties on takeoff from Fairfield/Suison AFB (now Travis AFB). The aircraft attempted an emergency landing and crashed and burned. The fire was fought for 12-15 minutes before the weapon's high explosive material detonated. Nineteen crew members and rescue personnel were killed in the crash and/or the resulting detonation, including General Travis. (*1)
November 10, 1950 /B-50/ Over Water, outside United States:
Because of an in-flight aircraft emergency, a weapon containing no capsule of nuclear material was jettisoned over water from an altitude of 10,500 feet. A high-explosive detonation was observed.
March 10, 1956 /B-47/ Mediterranean Sea:
The aircraft was one of a flight of four scheduled for non-stop deployment from MacDill AFB to an overseas air base. Takeoff from MacDill and first refueling was normal. The second refueling point was over the Mediterranean Sea. In preparation for this, the flight penetrated solid cloud formation to descend to the refueling level of 14,000 feet. Base of the clouds was 14,000 feet and visibility was poor. The aircraft, carrying two nuclear capsules in carrying cases, never made contact with the tanker.
An extensive search failed to locate any traces of the missing aircraft or crew. No weapons were aboard the aircraft; only two capsules of nuclear weapons material in carrying cases. A nuclear detonation was not possible. (*1)
July 27, 1956 /B-47/ Lakenheath Air Base, Suffolk, England :
A B-47 aircraft with no weapons aboard was on a routine training mission making a touch and go landing when the aircraft suddenly went out of control and slid off the runway, crashing into a storage igloo containing several nuclear weapons. The bombs did not burn or detonate. There were no contamination or cleanup problems. The damaged weapons and components were returned to the Atomic Energy Commission. The weapons that were involved were in storage configuration. No capsules of nuclear materials were in the weapons or present in the building. (*1)
May 27, 1957 /B-36/ Kirtland AFB, New Mexico:
The aircraft was ferrying a weapon from Biggs AFB, Texas, to Kirtland AFB. At 11:50 a.m. MST, while approaching Kirtland at an altitude of 1,700 feet, the weapon dropped from the bomb bay taking the bomb doors with it. Weapon parachutes were deployed but apparently did not fully retard the fall because of the low altitude. The impact point was approximately 4.5 miles south of the Kirtland control tower and .3 miles west of the Sandia Base Reservation. The high explosive material detonated, completely destroying the weapon and making a crater approximately 25 feet in diameter and 12 feet deep. Fragments and debris were scattered as far as one mile from the impact point. The release mechanism locking pin was being removed at the time of release. (It was standard procedure at that time that the locking pin be removed during takeoff and landing to allow for emergency jettison of the weapon, if necessary). Recovery and cleanup operations were conducted by Field Command, Armed Forces Special Weapons Project. Radiological survey of the area disclosed no radioactivity beyond the lip of the crater at which point the level was 0.5 milliroentgens. There were no health or safety problems. Both the weapon and capsule were on board the aircraft but the capsule was not inserted for safety reasons. A nuclear detonation was not possible. (*1)
July 28, 1957/C-124/Atlantic Ocean:
Two weapons were jettisoned from a C-124 aircraft on July 28 off the east coast of the United States. There were three weapons and one nuclear capsule aboard the aircraft at the time. Nuclear components were not installed in the weapons. The C-124 aircraft was enroute from Dover AFB, Delaware when a loss of power from number one and two engines was experienced. Maximum power was applied to the remaining engines; however, level flight could not be maintained. At this point, the decision was made to jettison at 4,500 feet altitude. The second weapon was jettisoned at approximately 2,500 feet altitude. No detonation occurred from either weapons. Both weapons are presumed to have been damaged from impact with the ocean surface. Both weapons are presumed to have submerged almost instantly. The ocean varies in depth in the area of the jettisonings. The C-124 landed at an airfield in the vicinity of Atlantic City, New Jersey, with the remaining weapon and the nuclear capsule aboard. A search for the weapons or debris had negative results.(*1)
October 11, 1957/B-47/Homestead AFB, Florida:
The B-47 departed Homestead AFB shortly after midnight on a deployment mission. Shortly after liftoff one of the aircrafts outrigger tires exploded. The aircraft crashed in an uninhabited area approximately 3,800 feet from the end of the runway. The aircraft was carrying one weapon in ferry configuration in the bomb bay and one nuclear capsule in a carrying case in the crew compartment. The weapon was enveloped in flames and burned and smoldered for approximately four hours after which it was cooled with water. Two low order high explosive detonations occurred during the burning. The nuclear capsule and its carrying case were recovered intact and only slightly damaged by heat. Approximately one-half of the weapon remained. All major components were damaged but were identifiable and accounted for.(*1)
January 31, 1958/B-47/ French Morocco :
A B-47 with one weapon in strike configuration was making a simulated takeoff during an exercise alert. When the aircraft reached approximately 30 knots on the runway, the left rear wheel casting failed. The tail struck the runway and a fuel tank ruptured. The aircraft caught fire and burned for seven hours. Firemen fought the fire for the allotted ten minutes fire fighting time for high explosive contents of that weapon, then evacuated the area. The high explosive did not detonate, but there was some contamination in the immediate area of the crash. After the wreckage and the asphalt beneath it were removed and the runway washed down, no contamination was detected. One fire truck and one fireman's clothing showed slight alpha contamination until washed. Following the accident, exercise alerts were temporarily suspended and MDS B-47 wheels were checked for defects.(*1)
February 5, 1958/B-47/Savannah River, Georgia:
The B-47 was on a simulated combat mission that originated at Homestead AFB, Florida. While near Savannah, Georgia, the B-47 had a mid-air collision with a F-86 aircraft at 3:30 a.m. Following the collision, the B-47 made three attempts to land at Hunter AFB, Georgia, with a weapon aboard. Because of the condition of the aircraft, its airspeed could not be reduced enough to insure a safe landing. Therefore, the decision was made to jettison the weapon rather than expose Hunter AFB to the possibility of a high explosive detonation. A nuclear detonation was not possible since the nuclear capsule was not aboard the aircraft. The weapon was jettisoned into the water several miles from the mouth of the Savannah River (Georgia) in Wassaw Sound off Tybee Beach. The precise weapon impact point is unknown. The weapon was dropped from an altitude of approximately 7,200 feet at an aircraft speed of 180-190 knots. No detonation occurred. After jettison the B-47 landed safely. A three square mile area was searched using a ship with divers and underwater demolition team technicians using Galvanic drag and handheld sonar devices. The weapon was not found. The search was terminated April 16, 1958. The weapon was considered to be irretrievably lost. (*1; **2)
March 11, 1958/B-47/Florence, South Carolina:
On March 11, 1958 at 3:58 p.m. EST, a B-47E departed Hunter AFB, Georgia, as number three aircraft in a flight of four enroute to an overseas base. After leveling off at 15,000 feet, the aircraft accidentally jettisoned an unarmed nuclear weapon which impacted in a sparsely populated area 6 1/2 miles east of Florence, South Carolina. The bomb's high explosive material exploded on impact. The detonation caused property damage and several injuries on the ground. The aircraft returned to base without further incident. No capsule of nuclear materials was aboard the B-47 or installed in the weapon. (*1; **2)
November 4, 1958/B-47/Dyess AFB, Texas:
A B-47 caught fire on takeoff. Three crew members successfully ejected; one was killed when the aircraft crashed from an altitude of 1,500 feet. One nuclear weapon was aboard when the aircraft crashed. The resultant detonation of the high explosive made a crater 35 feet in diameter and six feet deep. Nuclear materials were recovered near the crash site. (*1; **2)
November 26, 1958/B-47/ Chennault AFB, Louisiana:
A B-47 caught fire on the ground. The single nuclear weapon on board was destroyed by the fire. Contamination was limited to the immediate vicinity of the weapon residue within the aircraft wreckage. (*1; **2)
January 18, 1959/F-100/ Pacific Base:
The aircraft was parked on a reveted hardstand in ground alert configuration. The external load consisted of a weapon on the left intermediate station and three fuel tanks (both inboard stations and the right intermediate station). When the starter button was depressed during a practice alert, an explosion and fire occurred when the external fuel tanks inadvertently jettisoned. Fire trucks at the scene put out the fire in about seven minutes. The capsule was not in the vicinity of the aircraft and was not involved in the accident. There were no contamination or cleanup problems.(*1)
July 6, 1959/C-124/ Barksdale AFB, Louisiana:
A C-124 on a nuclear logistics movement mission crashed on take-off. The aircraft was destroyed by fire which also destroyed one weapon. No nuclear or high explosive detonation occurred--safety devices functioned as designed. Limited contamination was present over a very small area immediately below the destroyed weapon. This contamination did not hamper rescue or fire fighting operations.(*1; **2)
September 25, 1959 /P-5M/ Off Whidbey Island, Washington:
A U.S. Navy P-5M aircraft ditched in Puget Sound off Whidbey Island, Washington. It was carrying an unarmed nuclear antisubmarine weapon containing no nuclear material. The weapon was not recovered.
October 15, 1959 /B-S2/KC-135/ Hardinsberg, Kentucky:
The B-52 departed Columbus Air Force Base, Mississippi at 2:30 p.m. CST, October 15, 1959. This aircraft assumed the #2 position in a flight of two. The KC-135 departed Columbus Air Force Base at 5:33 p.m. CST as the #2 tanker aircraft in a flight of two scheduled to refuel the B-52s. Rendezvous for refueling was accomplished in the vicinity of Hardinsberg, Kentucky, at 32,000 feet. It was night, weather was clear, and there was no turbulence. Shortly after the B-52 began refueling from the KC-135, the two aircraft collided. The instructor pilot and pilot of the B-52 ejected, followed by the electronic warfare officer and the radar navigator. The co-pilot, navigator, instructor navigator, and tail gunner failed to leave the B-52. All four crewmembers in the KC-135 were fatally injured. The B-52's two unarmed nuclear weapons were recovered intact. One had been partially burned but this did not result in the dispersion of any nuclear material or other contamination. (*1; **2)
June 7, 1960 /BOMARC/ McGuire AFB, New Jersey:
A BOMARC air defense missile in ready storage condition (permitting launch in two minutes) was destroyed by explosion and fire after a high-pressure helium tank exploded and ruptured the missile's fuel tanks. The warhead was also destroyed by the fire although the high explosive did not detonate. Nuclear safety devices acted as designed. Contamination was restricted to an area immediately beneath the weapon and an adjacent elongated area approximately 100 feet long, caused by drainoff of firefighting water. (*1; **2)
January 24, 1961 /B-52/ Goldsboro, North Carolina:
During a B-52 airborne alert mission structural failure of the right wing resulted in two weapons separating from the aircraft during aircraft breakup at 2,000-10,000 feet altitude. One bomb parachute deployed and the weapon received little impact damage. The other bomb fell free and broke apart upon impact. No explosion occurred. Five of the eight crew members survived. A portion of one weapon, containing uranium, could not be recovered despite excavation in the water-logged farmland to a depth of 50 feet. The Air Force subsequently purchased an easement requiring permission for anyone to dig there. There is no detectable radiation and no hazard in the area. (*1; **2)
March 14, 1961/B-52/Yuba City, California:
A B-52 experienced failure of the crew compartment pressurization system forcing descent to 10,000 feet altitude. Increased fuel consumption caused fuel exhaustion before rendezvous with a tanker aircraft. The crew bailed out at 10,000 feet except for the aircraft commander who stayed with aircraft to 4,000 feet steering the plane away from a populated area. The two nuclear weapons on board were torn from the aircraft on ground impact. The high explosive did not detonate. Safety devices worked as designed, and there was no nuclear contamination.(*1; **2)
November 13, 1963/Atomic Energy Commission Storage Igloo/Medina Base, Texas:
An explosion involving 123,000 pounds of high explosive components of nuclear weapons caused minor injuries to three Atomic Energy Commission employees. There was little contamination from the nuclear components stored elsewhere in the building. The components were from obsolete weapons being disassembled.
January 13, 1964/B-52/Cumberland, Maryland:
A B-52D was enroute from Westover Air Force Base, Massachusetts, to its home base at Turner Air Force Base, Georgia. The crash occurred approximately 17 miles SW of Cumberland, Maryland. The aircraft was carrying two weapons. Both weapons were in a tactical ferry configuration (no mechanical or electrical connections had been made to the aircraft and the safing switches were in the `Safe' position). Prior to the crash, the pilot had requested a change in altitude because of severe air turbulence at 29,500 feet. The aircraft was cleared to climb to 33,000 feet. During the climb, the aircraft encountered violent air turbulence and aircraft structural failure subsequently occurred. Of the five aircrew members, only the pilot and co-pilot survived. The gunner and navigator ejected but died of exposure to sub-zero temperatures after successfully reaching the ground. The radar navigator did not eject and died upon aircraft impact. The crash site was an isolated mountainous and wooded area. The site had 14 inches of new snow covering the aircraft wreckage which was scattered over an area of approximately 100 yards square. The weather during the recover and cleanup operation involved extreme cold and gusty winds. Both weapons remained in the aircraft until it crashed and were relatively intact in the approximate center of the wreckage area.(*1; **2)
December 5, 1964/LGM 30B (Minuteman ICBM)/Ellsworth AFB, South Dakota:
The LGM 30B Minuteman I missile was on strategic alert at Launch Facility (LF) L-02, Ellsworth AFB, South Dakota. Two airmen were dispatched to the LF to repair the inner zone (IZ) security system. In the midst of their checkout of the IZ system, one retrorocket in the spacer below the Reentry Vehicle (RV) fired, causing the RV to fall about 75 feet to the floor of the silo. When the RV struck the bottom of the silo, the arming and fusing/altitude control subsystem containing the batteries was torn loose, thus removing all sources of power from the RV. The RV structure received considerable damage. All safety devices operated properly in that they did not sense the proper sequence of events to allow arming the warhead. There was no detonation or radioactive contamination.(*1)
December 8, 1964/B-58/Bunker Hill (Now Grissom) AFB, Indiana:
SAC aircraft were taxiing during an exercise alert. As one B-58 reached a position directly behind the aircraft on the runway ahead of it, the aircraft ahead brought advanced power. As a result of the combination of the jet blast from the aircraft ahead, the icy runway surface conditions, and the power applied to the aircraft while attempting to turn onto the runway, control was lost and the aircraft slid off the left hand side of the taxiway. The left main landing gear passed over a flush mounted taxiway light fixture and 10 feet farther along in its travel, grazed the left edge of a concrete light base. Ten feet farther, the left main landing gear struck a concrete electrical manhole box, and the aircraft caught on fire. When the aircraft came to rest, all three crew members aboard began abandoning the aircraft. The aircraft commander and defensive systems operator egressed with minor injuries. The navigator ejected in his escape capsule, which impacted 548 feet from the aircraft. He did not survive. Portions of the five nuclear weapons on board burned; contamination was limited to the immediate area of the crash and was subsequently removed.(*1)
October 11, 1965/C-124/Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio:
The aircraft was being refueled in preparation for a routine logistics mission when a fire occurred at the aft end of the refueling trailer. The fuselage of the aircraft, containing only components of nuclear weapons and a dummy training unit, was destroyed by fire. There were no casualties. The resultant radiation hazard was minimal. Minor contamination was found on the aircraft, cargo, and clothing of explosive ordnance disposal and fire fighting personnel, and was removed by normal cleaning.(*1)
December 5, 1965/A-4/At Sea, Pacific:
An A-4 aircraft loaded with one nuclear weapon rolled off the elevator of a U.S. aircraft carrier and fell into the sea. The pilot, aircraft, and weapon were lost. The incident occurred more than 500 miles from land.
January 17, 1966/B-52/KC-135/Palomares, Spain:
The B-52 and the KC-135 collided during a routine high altitude air refueling operation. Both aircraft crashed near Palomares, Spain. Four of the eleven crewmembers survived. The B-52 carried four nuclear weapons. One was recovered on the ground and on April 7, one was recovered from the sea. Explosive materials exploded on impact with the ground, releasing some radioactive materials. Approximately 1400 tons of slightly contaminated soil and vegetation were removed to the United States for storage at an approved site. Representatives of the Spanish government monitored the cleanup operation.(*1;**2)
January 21, 1968/B-52/Thule, Greenland:
A B-52 from Plattsburgh AFB, New York, crashed and burned some seven miles southwest of the runway at Thule AB, Greenland while approaching the base to land. Six of the seven crewmembers survived. The bomber carried four nuclear weapons, all of which were destroyed by fire. Some radioactive contamination occurred in the area of the crash, which was on the sea ice. Some 237,000 cubic feet of contaminated ice, snow and water, with crash debris, were removed to an approved storage site in the United States over the course of a four-month operation. Although an unknown amount of contamination was dispersed by the crash, environmental sampling showed normal readings in the area after the cleanup was completed. Representatives of the Danish government monitored the cleanup operations.(*1;**2)
May 22, 1968/At Sea, Atlantic:
The submarine USS SCORPION (SSN-589) sank May 22, 1968 in more than 10,000 feet of water about 400 miles southwest of the Azores. SCORPION is in two major sections. The forward hull section including the torpedo room and most of the operations compartment is located in a trench that was formed by the impact of the hull section with the bottom. The sail is detached. The aft hull section including the reactor compartment and engine room is located in a separate trench that was formed by the impact of the hull section with the bottom. The aft section of the engine room is inserted forward into a larger diameter hull section in a manner similar to a telescope. There were two Mark 45 ASTOR torpedoes with nuclear warheads aboard SCORPION when she was lost in 1968. The warheads were low-yield tactical nuclear weapons. The special nuclear material from the warheads has not been recovered.
September 19, 1980/Titan II ICBM/Damascus, Arkansas:
During routine maintenance in a Titan II silo, an Air Force repairman dropped a heavy wrench socket, which rolled off a work platform and fell toward the bottom of the silo. The socket bounced and struck the missile, causing a leak from the pressurized fuel tank. The missile complex and the surrounding area were evacuated and a team of specialists was called in from Little Rock Air Force Base, the missile's main support base. About 8 1/2 hours after the initial puncture, fuel vapors within the silo ignited and exploded. The explosion fatally injured one member of the team. Twenty-one other USAF personnel were injured. The missile's reentry vehicle, which contained a nuclear warhead, was recovered intact. There was no radioactive contamination.(*.1)
|Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list| | <urn:uuid:1eb148d7-c518-4c03-9144-3c4677aeb38d> | CC-MAIN-2014-35 | http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/ops/broken-arrow.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-35/segments/1408500830903.34/warc/CC-MAIN-20140820021350-00108-ip-10-180-136-8.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967424 | 6,095 | 3.3125 | 3 |
Digestive disorders of one kind or another including chronic constipation, malabsorption or acid reflux disease are a widespread problem. The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDKD) estimates that 10-15% of American adults suffer from irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) alone. And this is an issue of real concern, since such digestive disorders can also lead to another health problems.
Approximately 80% of the body’s immunity resides in the gut and in the healthful colonies of bacteria which reside there and keeping them healthy is vital to overall continued wellbeing. Prebiotic foods, rich in fiber, are able to nurture these colonies and keep them functioning so that the immune system is not damaged. Five of the best prebiotic foods are discussed below.
Raw Chicory Root
This is a rich source of prebiotic fiber but also of fructooligosaccharides (FOS), prebiotic sugars which also nurture the healthful bacteria in the gut and maintain strong immunity. They can be chopped up and added to salads and other cold vegetables dishes as an easy way to include them in the diet. (1)
Dandelion greens, like chicory root, are a great source of both prebiotic fiber and FOS. They are best if harvested in the spring when the leaves are still young and tender and can be easily mixed into salads or even sautéed like mustard greens for full effect. (2)
Garlic and Onions
Garlic and onions are botanically related, both being members of the allium family and well-known for their healing properties. Both also contain FOS and prebiotic fibers to help support a healthy and nourished colony of beneficial bacteria. They also have the advantage of being incredibly versatile, and can be added to soups, salads, casseroles or pasta dishes.(3)
Yogurt is an excellent source of another compound known to promote the health of the gut. It is known as galacto-oligosaccardes (GOS); it is often found in fermented dairy products and is very nourishing to the bacteria in the gut. It can be eating as is (with fresh fruit for added benefits) or added to a variety of smoothies.(4)
Buttermilk, like yogurt, is a fermented dairy product and as such is also a great source of GOS. Buttermilk, though not quite so versatile as yogurt, can be drunk plain, added to cold summer soups, or even be used to make recipes like buttermilk pancakes.(5)
Whichever way someone chooses to add these foods to their diet, the health benefits are incredibly important. Prebiotics help to encourage a healthy balance of probiotics in the intestines and can improve the absorption of important nutrients like calcium and iron, thus reducing the risk of chronic conditions like osteoporosis and anemia. And, of course, is plays a strong role in the immune system, which in turn can protect the body from illness and disease.
About the author:
Sandeep Godiyal Founded Godiyals.com, Godiyals.com is to make search process quicker and Easier and Help you find best Travel deals from 100s of travel site with just one click.
Try Godiyal for free | <urn:uuid:ce4a162c-dcdb-4972-b801-1f7df71abb64> | CC-MAIN-2018-39 | https://www.naturalnewsblogs.com/top-5-prebiotic-foods-gut-health/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-39/segments/1537267159820.67/warc/CC-MAIN-20180923212605-20180923233005-00496.warc.gz | en | 0.956065 | 692 | 2.734375 | 3 |
Sleeping is pretty great. You feel refreshed, energized, and your mood is generally better after a good sleep session. But if we don’t sleep, we become cranky, tired, confused, and have baggy/puffy eyes that make us look terrible. How much sleep we require differs from individual to individual, but we all need to sleep eventually. That means we spend on average 7-8hrs of lying still every day of our lives recharging ourselves like batteries. It may seem normal and benign because we have been doing it for so long and we are not the only animals to sleep. Many creatures of the Earth also needs sleep and are probably as cranky as humans if they don’t get it.
But why do we sleep? Why don’t we just recharge our bodies without sleep? The truth is that scientists don’t know as of yet. We know how it helps but we don’t know why we need it to help. It is very strange that our ancestors, who slept in the wilderness with predators around every corner, would have to go into a paralyzed state that left them vulnerable just to recover. They left themselves exposed to many uncertainties that could have killed them. On top of this danger, they were also losing a lot of time every day to just do nothing. They could have been preparing food, clothes, weapons, and many other things that would have made them more ready for the world they lived in. Even now, we could use these extra hours to do so much from extra work (not my first choice), relax, try new experiences, have fun, learn, and many more things instead of just doing nothing.
While a world without sleep might still be a trope of science fiction, scientists are working on ways to minimize the need for sleep and treat tiredness for those who cannot get enough sleep. Recently, scientists, funded by DARPA, have uncovered a chemical that can help treat sleepiness and disorders like narcolepsy . The chemical in question is orexin A, a naturally occurring brain hormone. The scientists placed the hormone in nasal sprays and used them on monkeys that were sleep deprived. The monkeys went 30-36hrs without sleep and were split into two groups: half had the orexin A spray and the other half had a placebo . They then placed the monkeys through cognitive trials and found that those with orexin A were able to function as well as monkeys that were not sleep deprived and performed better than monkeys that received the placebo. Because this is a natural hormone that already exists in us as part of sleep/wake regulation, there were no notable negative side effects. The researchers also found that orexin A only worked on monkeys that were sleep deprived and did not affect monkeys that were already alert/rested .
For its results and minimal negative effects, Orexin A is now a strong candidate for the treatment of tiredness and lack of sleep. Previous sleep treatments were addictive, had terrible side effects (rise in blood pressure and mood swings for example), and did not work as well . It is one of the reasons that the military is so interested in orexin A. Previously, they would use amphetamines on air pilots for long distance flights, which is obviously a bad idea . Besides treating tiredness, orexin A might be capable of treating narcolepsy because Jerome Siegel, one of the researchers in this study, previously found that orexin A deficiency was linked to narcolepsy and that a potential treatment might be supplements of orexin A to compensate .
While this all sounds wonderful, there are still a lot of work that needs to be done before we can have this regularly in our lives. We need to conduct more animal trials to ensure that we are not missing any crucial effects that orexin A may have over a short term and long term period. We then need to test how effective orexin A remains over a long term usage. Right now, we know that it helps with tiredness, but we need to continue testing to see how/if it affects other problems associated with a lack of sleep such as increased cardiovascular disease risk . Even after all of this is done in animals, we then need to spend considerable time testing this on humans before we can introduce it as a drug for general use. Despite the work that needs to be done, orexin A stands as a glimpse of the future where we would have a lot more time to enjoy life and uncover even more discoveries that were once thought to be science fiction. | <urn:uuid:fc3b078b-7455-4f25-a992-aca7fa22e0cf> | CC-MAIN-2021-04 | https://whentoscience.com/2017/05/30/what-to-expect-when-expecting-sleep/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-04/segments/1610703527850.55/warc/CC-MAIN-20210121194330-20210121224330-00410.warc.gz | en | 0.980712 | 934 | 3.125 | 3 |
Take a deep breath and count to 10. Exhale. Now, pick a part of your body to try to relax. Breathe in as slowly as you can, while focusing on relaxing that piece of yourself. Exhale through your mouth, again as slowly as you can. Pick another part of your body. Repeat until you are completely relaxed.
As holistic pediatricians, we recognize that anxiety can affect our quality of life and general health, especially during prolonged stressful events. We want to encourage you to be especially kind to yourself during this season. Here are some ways you can help naturally manage stress in difficult times:
- Pick one or two defined times a day to check the news. Set boundaries so that you won’t be tempted to obsessively check up on events that may be distressing to you.
- Start journaling. The act of putting your thoughts on paper can be cathartic.
- Do you have a friend with a great attitude that you admire? Ask them about their favorite book. Read it. Now you have something in common to talk about with someone who is pleasant to be around. Great books bring people together.
- Teach one of your childhood games to your children. Do you have an old Croquet set in the garage or attic? What about Badminton? Half the fun of teaching your kids will be trying to remember the rules, Googling the rules, and finding out you were never playing it correctly in the first place.
- Stretch. Stretch while doing yoga. Stretch when you get up. Stretch before you go to bed. Make a game of stretching with your children. How does a dog stretch? How does a cat stretch? What about the dinosaurs? Do you think they stretched?
- Bookmark this post and come back to it and practice the breathing.
Our children will take their cues from us. If we set an intention to make modeling calmness a priority during difficult times, we may give them coping mechanisms that they can use for the rest of their lives. If you need a little more support for your anxiety, don’t hesitate to contact your primary care physician. If your child needs a little more support for theirs, give us a call. We’d love to help. | <urn:uuid:9c6b8d87-a2c3-4bb7-9ccc-a5338238cf5b> | CC-MAIN-2024-10 | https://harmonypeds.com/keeping-calm-during-stressful-times/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2024-10/segments/1707947474660.32/warc/CC-MAIN-20240226130305-20240226160305-00337.warc.gz | en | 0.970342 | 464 | 2.875 | 3 |
The latest science on climate change warns that the Earth is in serious trouble. Sea levels are rising, biodiversity loss is accelerating, and extreme weather events—from the polar vortex to summer typhoons—are wreaking havoc. If we are to survive, we must change our lifestyle so that the Earth can regain its natural balance and return to equilibrium.
The idea of restoring balance is an integral part of traditional Chinese medicine. Recently practitioners of this art have been applying their expertise to the problem of climate change, examining it in a holistic way and taking into account the relationship between individual well-being and the global environment.
The Yin and Yang of Climate
One of the best known books on this topic is The Yin and Yang of Climate Crisis by Brendan Kelly. Kelly, a practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine, explains how the contrasting opposites of yin (contentment and coolness) with yang (unsettledness and heat) offers fresh insight into our changing climate.
“Chinese medicine’s understanding of yin and yang allows us to see that personal health comes from balance and that if we are to address the destabilization of the climate we need to address the condition of our internal environment.” —Brendan Kelly, “Yoga, Yin, and Climate Change”
Kelly’s fundamental diagnosis is that the Earth is “yin deficient.” This means that yang-induced temperatures are dominant and are rising unchecked. Yang is all about being busy and active (hot), and yin is our sense of contentment and relaxation (cool). The problem is that people’s overly enterprising tendencies are heating things up. According to Kelly, people are under pressure to “do things” and advance material wealth at the expense of real contentment and relaxation. Lives thus are being thrown out of balance and—since everything is connected in Chinese medicine—the Earth, too, loses balance.
“It’s not a coincidence that so many of us in the U.S. are so overstimulated and lack a sense of fulfillment because we’re encouraged to live a yang excess life which compromises our yin,” he writes. When yin and yang are out of balance, diseases and disruptions take hold.
How to be Cool
Kelly recommends that individuals embrace “cooler” lifestyles, which includes things such as adopting less “inflammatory diets” and practicing greater self awareness through activities such as yoga.
“If we’re to address the rapid warming of the planet,” he writes, “it’s of vital importance that we understand how to create balance internally.” To counteract the overstimulating effects of yang, he also recommends that individuals ask themselves three basic questions: 1. Is “doing” better than not doing? 2. Is new better than old? 3. Is more better than less? The answers to these questions will help to create greater self awareness and allow more yin to enter our lives.
The idea of fostering greater yin is gaining traction in many areas. For example, it is reflected in the minimalist philosophy of Marie Kondo, who is leading a wildly popular movement to reduce the clutter of material possessions and consider what really “sparks joy” in our lives. | <urn:uuid:029780ec-7ab3-4832-9b44-1b3c4a142650> | CC-MAIN-2021-04 | https://personalasecological.com/climate-change-and-chinese-medicine/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-04/segments/1610703519843.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20210119232006-20210120022006-00076.warc.gz | en | 0.931131 | 687 | 2.84375 | 3 |
Nitric oxide was identified in 1998 as the mysterious “relaxing factor” that is produced by the internal lining of the arteries, known as the endothelium. Once produced inside the artery, nitric oxide signals the smooth muscle of the artery to relax and thereby dilate the artery. This results in lowered blood pressure throughout the system as well as enhanced delivery of blood to the outermost tissues such as the skin and extremities. This discovery led to three Nobel Prizes being awarded due to the fact that this discovery constituted a giant leap in cardiovascular research, and the understanding of the pathological changes in the arterial system that result in heart attack, stroke, erectile dysfunction, neuropathy, peripheral artery disease, and more.
As is often the case, the bodybuilding community was the first to seize upon this scientific breakthrough and apply it as an aid to further fitness through enhanced training intensity. In the early days of nitric oxide research, the only supplement available that could enhance the body’s ability to produce this crucial molecule was l-arginine. And since L-arginine is metabolized through eight different pathways it is not a very efficient mechanism for the enhancement of nitric oxide production by the endothelium. To compensate for this inefficiency, many bodybuilders simply supplemented huge doses of L-arginine as well as alpha-ketoglutarate, which facilitates the intestinal absorption of L-arginine. Huge doses of L-arginine may unfortunately lead to some unwanted nitric oxide side effects.
Here’s what you need to know….
There are three enzymes that are used within the body to produce nitric
oxide from various precursors that come from diet and/or supplements:
1. eNOS: used to produce nitric oxide at the level of the arterial
2. nNOS: used to produce nitric oxide at the level of the neuron (brain
3. iNOS: used by immune cells to produce nitric oxide in order to destroy pathogens (bacteria, viruses, fungi, and potential cancer cells)
The main takeaway point is the first two enzymes are anti-inflammatory in nature and prevent plaque formation in the arteries as well as degenerative changes in the brain and peripheral nervous system. The third enzyme, iNOS, is pro-inflammatory and is involved in the destruction of cells (pathogens) and if concentrated in an area for a sustained period, will be destructive to bodily tissue as well.
If an individual is plagued with a chronic inflammatory condition such as an infection or autoimmune disorder (think rheumatoid arthritis, Lupus, Sjogren’s, psoriasis, Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis, etc) then iNOS may be the most abundant enzyme available for the production of nitric oxide. In this case, any supplement that supplies the body with precursors to the production of nitric oxide will facilitate the pro-inflammatory state and accelerate the progression of the disease. Worse yet, if an individual is supplementing with an inefficient precursor such as l-arginine and therefore taking massive doses of it as a way to make up for the inefficiency, the majority of the L-arginine may be used to ramp up nitric oxide production by the immune system. This could, therefore, create a systemic inflammatory response. If the body is under attack by pathogens or is in need of a stronger response to mutant cells that pose a risk of later developing into a tumor, then this is awesome. But if the immune system is accidentally and mistakingly attacking the body (as is the case with autoimmunity) then this attack against one’s own self will also be ramped up and could, in the worst case, lead to the demise of the individual.
So how do you know if supporting nitric oxide through supplements is going to be safe for you or not? Should you roll the dice and cross your fingers?
Probably not. First, you can have a simple blood test done that will look at inflammatory markers such as cardiac c-reactive protein (CRP) and erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) and if suspected autoimmunity is in play, you can have your antibodies measured to rule it out. That said, you should begin slowly with low doses and work your way up over a longer period of time. That way, if you begin to experience any undesirable effects (such as headache, nausea, muscle or joint pain, weakness, cramping, etc), you can discontinue the dose right away and symptoms should dissipate quite rapidly. If this does occur, you should contact a doctor who is trained in Functional Medicine and seek advice. You can find a doctor by going the website for The Institute for Functional Medicine and using the doctor locator tool.
The best nitric oxide boosters do not contain massive doses of L-arginine since L-citrulline is far more efficient and, therefore, will reduce the likelihood that iNOS produced nitric oxide will rise. Look for a supplement that also supports the nervous system because it will need extra support to be able to handle the extra intensity of your workouts and will facilitate quicker recovery times. The best formulas should include ingredients such as Vinpocetine, Huperzine A, and alpha GPC for the brain and peripheral nerves. For the endothelium the formula should contain substances such as beetroot extract, hawthorn extract, and cocoa since they all have profound effects on the endothelium of the artery and facilitate the production of nitric oxide while ensuring an anti-inflammatory environment.
These supplements always do what they are designed to do, which is to increase nitric oxide production in the body. The question is: which of the three enzymes (isomers) will be involved in the production of the sought after molecule? If the answer is iNOS, it will be a very negative thing if the supplementation continues for extended periods of time. Yet if the user knows to begin with minimal dosage and titrate up slowly over time, the first sign of discomfort will act as the proverbial canary in the coal mine and will alert the individual to a previously unknown illness or pro-inflammatory state. In this way, trying a nitric oxide supplement could truly save lives as it may act as an early diagnostic tool.
For most fitness enthusiasts, however, it will simply enhance strength and endurance and provide an edge in the never-ending endeavor known as bodybuilding. | <urn:uuid:203e8380-8bad-4930-a895-364e498ea8ed> | CC-MAIN-2016-07 | http://www.bestnitricoxidesupplements.net/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-07/segments/1454701168998.49/warc/CC-MAIN-20160205193928-00040-ip-10-236-182-209.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946254 | 1,340 | 2.78125 | 3 |
The health department also accepts Medicaid and participates in the Vaccine for Children program.
An estimated 80,000 Americans died of flu and its complications last winter, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Flu activity traditionally begins to increase in October and can last as late as May, with cases typically peaking between December and February. That strain tended to send people to the hospital and result in fatalities, particularly among those who are vulnerable, such as young children and the elderly.
"The thing that was most notable about a year ago was how high in terms of activity things were", said Nordlund.
With the approach of flu season, the Ohio Department of Health (ODH) is recommending all Ohioans six months and older get a flu shot as soon as possible.
Last year, the Miller County Health Unit gave out 400 doses of the vaccine.
Miller County Health officials made tackling the flu season a lot easier Wednesday with a drive-by flu clinic. But they said it is not expected to go down.
The flu vaccine may take up to two weeks to become effective, so getting it earlier in the season is ideal, OHA disease and vaccine experts say.
SC Senator Graham Gives The Angriest Response Of Entire Kavanaugh Hearing
I felt that it was important to go down to the Senate to bear witness, to the best of my ability, to this momentous day. Kavanaugh denied all of the allegations and said the hearing was a "national disgrace". "I just told the truth".
"Most people with the flu have mild illness and don't need medical care or antiviral drugs", the CDC stated in a recent bulletin. The estimate of 80,000 deaths past year, still considered preliminary, eclipses the estimates for every flu season going back to the winter of 1976-1977.
In previous seasons, flu-related deaths have ranged from a low of about 12,000 during the 2011-2012 season to a high of about 56,000 during the 2012-2013. Estimates for many earlier seasons were not readily available.
The makeup of the vaccine has been changed this year to try to better protect against expected strains.
"I think a lot of people had a bad experience a year ago", she said. But the vaccine has been tweaked to better match circulating strains, including getting an updated H3N2 component.
Question 3: Do you know if this year's flu vaccine strain will work? Vaccines typically come in trivalent (protecting against three viruses - two A-strains and one B-strain) or quadrivalent (protecting against four strains - two A-strains and two B-strains).
Now that the end of September is here, it's definitely a good time to get vaccinated for flu season. | <urn:uuid:847aecb4-7613-414f-b0d2-2c315ba6ec29> | CC-MAIN-2018-43 | http://vothemes.com/2018/09/flu-season-deaths-top-80-000-previous-year-cdc-says/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-43/segments/1539583516071.83/warc/CC-MAIN-20181023044407-20181023065907-00270.warc.gz | en | 0.977004 | 571 | 2.75 | 3 |
0 pts endedThis question is closed. No points were awarded.
a person stands close enough to two equally loud jet engines to hear a sound intensity from them of B= 110 db. a) what is the intensity in W/M^2? b) he doubles his distance from the jet engines, and one of them shuts off. What intensity does he then hear from the remaining engines, in decibles? | <urn:uuid:d438312f-dd47-421b-9d02-b92d8aaec8f3> | CC-MAIN-2014-15 | http://www.chegg.com/homework-help/questions-and-answers/person-stands-close-enough-two-equally-loud-jet-engines-hear-sound-intensity-b-110-db-inte-q2461737 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-15/segments/1397609532374.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20140416005212-00153-ip-10-147-4-33.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97851 | 84 | 2.984375 | 3 |
Often, tourists go to Gelendzhik (Krasnodar Territory, Russia) to rest at the shores of the Black Sea. And also for the realization of a secret dream: to see Russian mini-copies of the Egyptian pyramids. Of course, the ancient buildings are not quite like their foreign brothers, but there is still a magnificent similarity.
Even now, in the age of advanced computer technologies, people want to plunge into the world of antiquity and millennial secrets. It is very interesting to look at the small stone buildings from the rough gray stone - dolmens. They were studied by many scientists, became the basis of historical research, and were immortalized by the writer Vladimir Megre in one of the nine books about Anastasia.
Outside the city of Gelendzhik was found somewhere a hundred dolmens. Interestingly, this is the universal detection of similar stone structures (starting from Europe and ending with India, Japan). Our Caucasian "pyramids" date from three to five thousand years. They are somewhat like small houses: powerful solid walls, a flat roof, and a round hole in one of the walls in the middle. But sometimes, as an exception, there are structures from a stone that does not contain a hole, or consisting of a smaller number of stone bricks.
Scientists are racking their brains: who created the dolmens. For primitive peoples living in the vicinity of the city of Gelendzhik, such complex structures are uncharacteristic. Dolmens are laid out of well-placed stone slabs, on the stones an intricate ornament is put. Their creation took place with the help of cattle (draft).
Local residents tell their version of ancient constructions: according to legend, dwarfs living on the shores of the sea forced giants to build their dwellings - dolmens turned out. Archaeologists believe that dolmens used to calm the spirit of the deceased. They have a ritual-symbolic purpose. | <urn:uuid:83802651-7b38-4153-bcb4-533cb2a9501b> | CC-MAIN-2018-39 | https://set-travel.com/en/blog/item/10764-who-created-the-dolmens | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-39/segments/1537267159193.49/warc/CC-MAIN-20180923095108-20180923115508-00153.warc.gz | en | 0.964706 | 403 | 2.75 | 3 |
Canada-Ontario Action Plan for addressing algae blooms in Lake Erie needs work
Today the the federal and Ontario governments released their draft action plan for addressing algae blooms in Lake Erie.
While this is a start, and we are encouraged to see there is an opportunity to provide public input before it is finalized, the plan needs to be strengthened to adequately address the increasingly frequent and severe algae blooms afflicting the lake.
Phosphorus pollution from agricultural fields and greenhouses is a key factor in causing algal blooms in the lake. While we are pleased to see that the draft plan addresses pollution from municipal wastewater facilities and greenhouses, including a commitment to ensuring compliance with the rules, it fails to adequately address pollution from agricultural fields. Instead, there is an over-reliance on voluntary actions from the agricultural sector.
The plan needs to be strengthened in key areas including: addressing non-compliance in cases where farms do not follow the pollution prevention laws, doing more to protect critical nutrient-absorbing wetlands from development, and identifying interim targets for addressing pollution in the eastern portion of the lake.
Without amendments, the draft plan will not achieve the governments’ obligations to reduce phosphorus pollution in Lake Erie. Last year, under the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, Canada and the U.S. agreed to a 40 per cent nutrient reduction target for the lake. This target echoed a commitment that Ontario made with Michigan and Ohio in 2015 to reduce nutrient loading in the western basin of Lake Erie by 40 per cent by 2025. We are disappointed to see the 2025 timeline conspicuously missing from the draft Lake Erie Action Plan. A time-bound goal demonstrates commitment to immediate and comprehensive actions.
Lake Erie is a global treasure – it provides drinking water for millions of people, and supports a vibrant economy and a truly remarkable ecosystem. We need policies that translate into real action to ensure Lake Erie can provide safe drinking water and continue supporting its $12.9 billion dollar recreation and tourism industry.
You can read and comment on the governments' draft action plan here. We will also be facilitating conversations and feedback over the coming two months, including at our first town hall event in Hamilton on March 28th.
Statement prepared by the Canadian Freshwater Alliance, Environmental Defence, and Freshwater Future | <urn:uuid:3bea2ee9-3ce2-4ae5-be0b-d804387ac3c8> | CC-MAIN-2021-17 | https://www.freshwateralliance.ca/lea_action_plan_needs_work | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-17/segments/1618039568689.89/warc/CC-MAIN-20210423070953-20210423100953-00225.warc.gz | en | 0.925559 | 463 | 2.546875 | 3 |
Reed's 2nd Law: on communications
Reed’s 3rd Law on Group Forming Networks is widely known. His 2nd Law was invented to explain a paradox he observed: most communications channels spend most of their 'bits' conveying 'information' already known to the receiver. In information theory these ‘bits’ are redundant. Human factors explain why we need them.
This is David Reed’s 2nd Law: Communications media exist to confirm the prejudices of their audience.
And this is my elaboration of the law: The more open the communications loop the higher the level of information restatement as senders: compete for Focus, need to demonstrate Agreement on meaning, and must establish Trust, with the receiver.
David Reed wrote: “This law was invented to explain a paradox that troubled me for a long time: why do most communications channels spend most of their 'bits' conveying 'information' already known to the receiver.
In information theory, a bit of information is defined to be the distinction between two equally likely possible states, where the actual state is unknown to the receiver, but known to the sender. Sending a bit of information from the sender to the receiver allows the receiver to reach the same state of knowledge as the sender. If the information is actually known to the receiver already, it is, of course, unnecessary to transmit anything to ensure that the receiver knows what the sender knows.
The paradox appears when we look at any of the dominant communications media, such as television broadcast news. Stories are repeated over and over again, commentators make the same, entirely predictable comments, etc. When you think about it, it's quite easy for any member of an audience to simulate or satirize the content on almost any communications medium. If so, why do we need to waste the expensive bandwidth to deliver to the audience what it already knows is coming?
Thus we must look beyond information theory to explain why we need all those television bits, or radio bits, or newspaper bits, etc.”
Looking beyond information theory—something I often do—I see there are a few significant factors which come into play when communicating with people. These can be summarised as focus, agreement and trust, and the more remote the communication the more important these factors are.
Broadcasting messages to a human audience, is perhaps the most open form of communications loop. Focus, agreement and trust are, I believe, are the key factors which promote re-statement in human communications.
Firstly humans are limited communication devices; we can only accept and process a limited number of bits at any one time. Even when we appear to be attending to a message our focus may be elsewhere. Perhaps the most common experience of this is when we see a favorite movie or painting again and notice something we had missed previously. Psychologist George A. Miller demonstrated that, in tests, humans can attend to roughly seven distinct simple stimuli. Most communications are complex and could easily overload us as receiver if we did not filter out irrelevant information. More recently neuroscience suggests that in order for our brains to work quickly and efficiently we also need to forget what our brains judge irrelevant.
Thus many, perhaps the majority, of information ‘bits’ received by humans will be discarded. So for a ‘bit’ to get through it may need to be resent many times.
Secondly humans communicate using tokens which encode the meaning of events and data. Sender and receiver will often not have an agreed shared meaning for a new bit of data. If agreement on meaning could be taken as a given then all phone calls to help desks would be answered simply and easily! In reality human communication is plagued by differences in meaning. We see these communications differences clearly when we look at learning styles. There are many different theories about learning styles. All suggest that to get a group of people to learn a piece of information it may need to be repeated in different ways to get a closer match with each learners preferred style of receiving communications. Some people need the detailed spelled out, some need to see the big picture first.
Repeating known information in slightly different ways can be used to build up shared agreement.
Thirdly, in information theory all bits have equal value, because information theory does not look at quality of information. In human communications quality can be vital. (For example: Can I trust this person to tell me the safest way across the desert?) The issue of trust is most acute where the data has programmatic effect, in other words accepting the data as valid will cause us to think differently. (For example: They are telling me that white birds landing on that tree mean that it is going to rain. Should I act accordingly in future?).
So how do we know who we can trust? Usually by association—can we rely on what they have told us before, are the contradicting themselves, does someone we respect agree with them.
Information about the identity of the sender, consistency of message and authoritative support can help ensure that new ‘bits’ of information are accepted as trustworthy.
The old saying that ‘half the money spend on advertising is wasted, you just don’t know which half’ may in fact be missing the point. It can be essential to ‘waste’ resources on communicating with people in order to get your message through.
If you need to get your message through then:
- Keep getting the message out there, so that you catch the audience’s attention.
- Use different ways of getting the message across. Not everyone will respond to tightly worded text. Some people need to see the picture to understand.
- Be consistent and reliable if you want people to trust your message. Even better show that the message is supported by someone the audience already sees as an authority.
If you want to be heard, keep talking.. | <urn:uuid:f2d9e0bd-08ea-447e-b5ca-931d5d6d57e0> | CC-MAIN-2018-13 | http://seamus.mcgrenery.com/2011/07/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-13/segments/1521257646952.38/warc/CC-MAIN-20180319140246-20180319160246-00626.warc.gz | en | 0.959568 | 1,200 | 2.65625 | 3 |
Some six million years ago, the mountains and pampas of what is now Argentina were shaded by the wings of the largest flying bird ever discovered, the condor-like Argentavis magnificens. Now researchers led by Sankar Chatterjee of Texas Tech University have analyzed its capabilities, feeding measurements into a computer program to simulate the great bird's flight, and concluded this 70-kg bird with a wingspan over six meters was probably as large as any flying bird could get. It was so large that, while an excellent glider, it could not take off from level ground. If it came down to the flatlands for prey, it probably needed to find a slight downslope into a headwind just to get airborne. While some researchers believe the bird was a scavenger, Chatterjee and his colleagues believe its skull and beak (over half a meter long!) were better suited for a hunter-killer lifestyle.
(Comment: This is one of those species we humans should be truly sad that we never got to observe in person. We don't know when it became extinct, but it was presumably long before the first humans appeared in that region. As to its lifestyle, almost all predators will scavenge when the opportunity presents itself. We recently discovered that even the ocean's apex predator, the orca, will scavenge. It seems reasonable that A. magnificens would take whatever it could find, living or dead. ) | <urn:uuid:55a67ff8-edaf-4535-9b62-208f23de6c90> | CC-MAIN-2017-39 | http://mattbille.blogspot.com/2007/07/argentinas-winged-wonder.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-39/segments/1505818687333.74/warc/CC-MAIN-20170920161029-20170920181029-00443.warc.gz | en | 0.979385 | 296 | 3.65625 | 4 |
- This article is about the U.S. Senator and Supreme Court Justice. For his son and grandson, both attorneys, see Hugo Black, Jr and Hugo Black III.
Hugo LaFayette Black (born February 27, 1886 in Wilcox County, died September 25, 1971 in Bethesda Naval Hospital) was an attorney, politician and jurist. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential Supreme Court justices in the 20th century, serving the fourth longest term, from 1937 to 1971. He also represented Alabama in the United States Senate from 1926 to 1937, and worked previously as a lawyer and, briefly as a municipal judge for the Birmingham Police Department.
On the Supreme Court, Black is remembered for his literal reading of the Constitution and the position that the liberties guaranteed in the Bill of Rights were imposed on the states ("incorporated") by the 14th Amendment.
Hugo LaFayette Black was the youngest of the eight children born to William Lafayette Black and Martha Toland Black in a small wooden farmhouse in Harlan, an isolated town in Clay County.
Hugo decided at first to follow in the footsteps of his brother, Orlando, a physician. At age seventeen he left school in Ashland and enrolled in the 1902–03 term at Birmingham Medical School. Orlando later suggested that Hugo should enroll in law school. Black graduated the University of Alabama School of Law in June 1906, and moved back to Ashland to establish his legal practice. His office, located above a grocery store on the courthouse square, burned to the ground after 18 months of meager practice. Black then moved back to Birmingham in 1907 and staked out a specialty in labor law and personal injury cases.
Following his defense of an African American forced into a form of commercial slavery following incarceration, Black was befriended by A. O. Lane, then a judge who was connected with the case. When Lane was later elected to the Birmingham City Commission, he asked Black to serve as a police court judge, an experience that would be his only judicial experience prior to the Supreme Court. In 1912 Black resigned that seat in order to return to practicing law full-time. In 1914 he began a four-year term as the Jefferson County prosecutor.
Three years later, during World War I, Black resigned in order to join the Army. He enrolled in the Officers Training School at Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, eventually reaching the rank of captain. He served in the 81st Field Artillery Unit near Chattanooga, Tennessee, but never participated in armed combat. In September 1918 shortly before the war ended, he returned to his practice in Birmingham.1
On February 23, 1921, he married Josephine Foster, with whom he would have three children: Hugo (born 1922), Sterling Foster (born 1924), and Martha Josephine (born 1933). The couple resided in the large home on Niazuma Avenue built by Josephine's father, the Presbyterian theologian Sterling Foster. As the Foster's fortunes declined, Black took over responsibility for the house, which he sold in the 1940s.
Black was a member of First Baptist Church of Birmingham.
Ku Klux Klan
In the 1920s the Ku Klux Klan re-emerged as a political force in defiance of waves of immigration to the United States. Some estimates put as many as 85,000 members of the Ku Klux Klan in Alabama, wielding substantial influence over the state's elections.
On August 11, 1921, Black was asked to defend the Reverend Edwin Stephenson, a Klansman who had been accused of killing Father James Coyle, pastor of St Paul's Cathedral, on the steps of his rectory. In a trial where the presiding judge as well as several members of the jury were Klansmen. Black is reported to have approached prosecution witnesses with the question "You're a Catholic, aren't you?". The jury acquitted Stephenson.
Black became a member of the Robert E. Lee Klan No. 1 at a massive rally held at Edgewood Park in September 1923.2. Though he claimed to have attended only four meetings of the KKK, and to have quit the group in 1925. According to a published version of the Hugo Black Symposium, "Herman Beck, a leading Jewish merchant in Birmingham, encouraged his young friend Black to become a Klansman so that he could help contain the trouble-making element just coming to the fore of the organization in Alabama."3.
Former Grand Dragon James Esdale showed a handwritten note to Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reporter Ray Sprigle dated July 9, 1925 and reading "Dear Sir Klansman, Beg to tender you herewith my resignation as a member of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, effective from this date on. Yours I.T.S.U.B. Hugo L. Black." ("I.T.S.U.B." stands for "In the Sacred, Unfailing Bond" in Klan lingo.)
Black is known, though, to have addressed the delegates to a statewide Klan "Klorero", as the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in September 1926 . A transcription of his remarks, also kept by Esdale, includes the statement, "I realize that I was elected by men who believe in the principles that I have sought to advocate and which are the principles of this organization."
Black did later publicly disavow the group.
In 1926, Black sought election to the United States Senate from Alabama, following the retirement of Senator Oscar Underwood. He easily defeated his Republican opponent, E. H. Dryer, in the general election with 81% of the vote. He was reelected in 1932, winning 86% of the vote against Republican J. Theodore Johnson.4.
Senator Black gained a reputation as a tenacious and talented investigator. In 1934, for example, he chaired the committee that looked into the contracts awarded to air mail carriers under Postmaster General Walter Folger Brown, an inquiry which uncovered the Air Mail Scandal. In order to correct these abuses, he introduced the Black-McKellar Bill, later the Air Mail Act of 1934. The following year he participated in a Senate committee's investigation of lobbying practices. He publicly denounced the "highpowered, deceptive, telegram-fixing, letterframing, Washington-visiting" lobbyists, and advocated legislation requiring them to publicly register their names and salaries.5.
In 1935, Black became chairman of the Senate Committee on Education and Labor, a position he would hold for the remainder of his Senate career. In 1937 he sponsored the Black-Connery Bill, which sought to establish a national minimum wage and a maximum workweek of forty hours. Although the bill was initially rejected in the House of Representatives, a weakened version passed in 1938 (after Black left the Senate), becoming the Fair Labor Standards Act.
Black was an ardent supporter of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal. In particular, he was an outspoken advocate of the Judiciary Reorganization Bill of 1937, popularly known as the court-packing bill, FDR's unpopular and unsuccessful plan to stack a hostile Supreme Court in his favor by adding more associate justices.
Supreme Court career
Soon after the failure of the court-packing plan, President Roosevelt obtained his first opportunity to appoint a Supreme Court Justice when conservative Willis Van Devanter retired. On August 12, 1937, Roosevelt nominated Black to fill the vacancy. By tradition, a senator nominated for an executive or judicial office was confirmed immediately and without debate. However, when Black was nominated, the Senate departed from this tradition for the first time since 1888; instead of confirming him immediately, it referred the nomination to the Judiciary Committee.
Republican Senator Warren Austin, objected to Black's nomination on constitutional grounds. Article I, Section 6 of the Constitution provides that "No Senator or Representative shall, during the Time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil Office under the Authority of the United States which shall have been created, or the emoluments whereof shall have been increased during such time." Austin argued that since retirement benefits for Supreme Court Justices over 70 had recently been increased, Black was constitutionally barred from taking the post. Black's defenders responded that he was then 51 and would not receive the increased pension until he turned seventy — long after his senatorial term would have expired. Ultimately, Austin's objections were set aside, and the Judiciary Committee recommended Black's confirmation by a vote of 13–4 on August 16 of that year.6.
The next day the full Senate considered Black's nomination. Rumors relating to Black's Klan involvement the surfaced, and Democratic Senators Royal S. Copeland and Edward R. Burke urged their colleagues to defeat the nomination. However, with no conclusive evidence of Black's involvement available at the time, the Senate voted 63-13 to confirm Black's nomination after six hours of debate.7. He resigned from the Senate and was sworn in as an Associate Justice three days later. Alabama Governor Bibb Graves appointed his wife, Dixie, to fill Black's vacated Senate seat.
The next month, Ray Sprigle, a reporter for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette published an in-depth exposé of Black's KKK past in a series of Pulitzer Prize-winning articles. Facing an inflamed public, Black delivered a nationally broadcast radio address in which he explained his decision to join and subsequently resign from the KKK.8. The controversy, kept alive in the press, only subsided after Black contributed to a ruling in favor of a group of African American defendents in the 1940 Chambers v. Florida case.
During his early years on the Supreme Court, Black helped reverse several earlier court decisions taking a narrow interpretation of federal power. Many New Deal laws that would have been struck down under earlier precedents were thus upheld. In 1939 Black was joined on the Supreme Court by fellow Roosevelt appointees Felix Frankfurter and William O. Douglas. Douglas voted alongside Black in several cases, especially those involving the First Amendment, while Frankfurter soon became one of Black's ideological foes.
Justice Black became involved in a bitter dispute with Justice Robert H. Jackson as a result of Jewell Ridge Coal Corp. v. Local 6167, United Mine Workers (1945). In this case the Court ruled 5–4 in favor of the union; Black voted with the majority, while Jackson dissented. However, the coal company requested the Court rehear the case on the grounds that Justice Black should have recused himself, as the mine workers were represented by Black's former law partner. Under the Supreme Court's rules, each Justice was entitled to determine the propriety of disqualifying himself. A statement accompanying the court's denial of rehearing, penned by Jackson and signed by Frankfurter, affirmed the Court's rules without endorsing Black's participation in the judgment.
During the ensuing decades, marked by Cold War fervor, the Supreme Court considered, and upheld, the validity of numerous anti-communist laws. For example, in American Communications Association v. Douds (1950), the Court upheld a law that required labor union officials to forswear membership in the Communist Party. Black dissented, claiming that the law violated the First Amendment's free speech clause. Similarly, in Dennis v. United States (1951), the Court upheld the Smith Act, which made it a crime to "advocate, abet, advise, or teach the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing the Government of the United States." The law was often used to prosecute individuals for joining the Communist Party. Black again dissented, writing:
"Public opinion being what it now is, few will protest the conviction of these Communist petitioners. There is hope, however, that, in calmer times, when present pressures, passions and fears subside, this or some later Court will restore the First Amendment liberties to the high preferred place where they belong in a free society."
Beginning in the late 1940s, Black wrote for the Court in several cases relating to the establishment clause, where it had historically insisted on the strict separation of church and state. The most notable of these was Engel v. Vitale (1962), which declared state-sanctioned prayer in public schools unconstitutional. This provoked considerable opposition, especially in the South.
In 1953 Chief Justice Vinson died and was replaced by Earl Warren. Black was often regarded as a member of the liberal wing of the Court, together with Warren, Douglas, William Brennan, and Arthur Goldberg. Yet while he often voted with them on the Warren Court, he occasionally took his own line, most notably Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), which established that the Constitution protected a right to privacy. Black's most prominent ideological opponent on the Warren Court was John Marshall Harlan II, who replaced Justice Jackson in 1955. Black and Harlan disagreed on several issues, including the applicability of the Bill of Rights to the states, the scope of the due process clause, and the "one man, one vote" principle.
Because of Black's his insistence on a strict textual analysis of Constitutional issues, as opposed to the process-oriented jurisprudence of many of his colleagues, it is difficult to characterize Black as a liberal or a conservative as those terms are generally understood in the current political discourse United States. On the one hand, his literal reading of the Bill of Rights and his theory of incorporation often translated into support for strengthening civil rights and civil liberties. On the other hand, Black consistently opposed the doctrine of substantive due process and believed that there was no constitutionally-protected right to privacy.
Black was noted for his advocacy of a textualist approach to constitutional interpretation. He took a "literal" or absolutist reading of the provisions of the Bill of Rights and believed that the text of the Constitution is absolutely determinative on any question calling for judicial interpretation, leading to his reputation as a "strict constructionist".
Thus, Black refused to join in the efforts of the justices on the Court who sought to abolish capital punishment, efforts that succeeded (temporarily) in the term immediately following Black's death. He claimed that the Fifth and 14th Amendments' references to taking of "life" meant that approval of the death penalty was implicit in the Bill of Rights. He also was not persuaded that a right of privacy was implicit in the 9th or 14th amendments, and dissented from the Court's 1965 Griswold decision which invalidated criminal convictions for the sale of contraceptives.
In his dissent, Black wrote:
The idea is that the Constitution must be changed from time to time, and that this Court is charged with a duty to make those changes. For myself, I must, with all deference, reject that philosophy. The Constitution makers knew the need for change, and provided for it. Amendments suggested by the people's elected representatives can be submitted to the people or their selected agents for ratification. That method of change was good for our Fathers, and, being somewhat old-fashioned, I must add it is good enough for me.
Like the other Justices appointed by President Roosevelt, Black held an expansive view of federal power, especially under the commerce clause. Previously, during the 1920s and 1930s, the Court had interpreted this clause narrowly, often striking down laws on the grounds that Congress had overstepped its authority. After 1937, however, the Supreme Court overturned several precedents and affirmed a broader interpretation of the commerce clause. Black consistently voted with the majority in these decisions; for example, he joined United States v. Darby Lumber Co. (1941), Wickard v. Filburn (1942), Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States (1964), and Katzenbach v. McClung (1964).
In several other federalism cases, however, Black ruled against the federal government. For instance, he partially dissented from South Carolina v. Katzenbach (1966), in which the Court upheld the validity of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In an attempt to protect the voting rights of African Americans, the act required any state whose population was at least 5% African American to obtain federal approval before changing its voting laws. Black wrote that the law, "... by providing that some of the States cannot pass state laws or adopt state constitutional amendments without first being compelled to beg federal authorities to approve their policies, so distorts our constitutional structure of government as to render any distinction drawn in the Constitution between state and federal power almost meaningless." 9. Similarly, in Oregon v. Mitchell (1970), he delivered the opinion of the court holding that the federal government was not entitled to set the voting age for state elections.
In the law of federal jurisdiction, Black made a large contribution by authoring the majority opinion in Younger v. Harris. This case, decided during Black's last year on the Court, has given rise to what is now known as Younger abstention. According to this doctrine, an important principle of federalism called "comity"—that is, respect by federal courts for state courts—dictates that federal courts abstain from intervening in ongoing state proceedings, absent the most compelling circumstances. The case is also famous for its discussion of what Black calls "Our Federalism," a discussion in which Black insists on "proper respect for state functions, a recognition of the fact that the entire country is made up of a Union of separate state governments, and a continuance of the belief that the National Government will fare best if the States and their institutions are left free to perform their separate functions in their separate ways." 10.
During his tenure on the bench, Black established a record sympathetic to the civil rights movement. He joined the majority in Shelley v. Kramer (1948), which invalidated the judicial enforcement of racially restrictive covenants. Similarly, he was part of the unanimous Brown v. Board of Education (1954) Court that struck down racial segregation in public schools. For this, he was burnt in effigy by segregationists back in Alabama.
Black also wrote the court's majority opinion in Korematsu v. United States, which validated Roosevelt's decision to inter Japanese Americans on the West Coast during World War II, a decision roundly criticized today. He stated that, while race-based internment was "constitutionally suspect", it was permissible during "circumstances of direst emergency and peril." In dissent Justice Frank Murphy accused the government of "fall[ing] into the ugly abyss of racism."
Black took an absolutist approach to 1st Amendment jurisprudence, as reflected by his famous aphorism, "No law means no law." As a result he often found himself in dissent, although he was usually joined by Justice William O. Douglas. However, his interpretation of the establishment clause was (for the most part) shared by his colleagues, especially during the tenure of Chief Justice Warren.
Black took a dim view of government entanglement with religion. He believed that the First Amendment erected a "wall of separation" between church and state. During his career Black wrote several important opinions relating to church-state separation. He delivered the opinion of the court in Everson v. Board of Education (1947), which held that the establishment clause was applicable not only to the federal government, but also to the states. His majority opinion in McCollum v. Board of Education (1948) held that the government could not provide religious instruction in public schools. In Torasco v. Watkins (1961), he delivered an opinion which affirmed that the states could not use religious tests as qualifications for public office. Similarly, he authored the majority opinion in Engel v. Vitale (1962), which declared it unconstitutional for states to require the recitation of official prayers in public schools.
Justice Black is often regarded as a leading defender of 1st Amendment rights such as the freedom of speech and of the press. He refused to accept the doctrine that the freedom of speech could be curtailed on national security grounds. Thus, in New York Times Co. v. United States (1971), he voted to allow newspapers to publish the Pentagon Papers despite the Nixon Administration's contention that publication would have security implications. In his concurring opinion, Black stated, "The word 'security' is a broad, vague generality whose contours should not be invoked to abrogate the fundamental law embodied in the First Amendment." 11. He rejected the idea that the government was entitled to punish "obscene" speech. Likewise, he argued that defamation laws abridged the freedom of speech and were therefore unconstitutional. Most members of the Supreme Court rejected both of these views. However, Black's interpretation did attract the support of Justice Douglas.
However he did not believe that individuals had the right to speak wherever they pleased. He delivered the majority opinion in Adderley v. Florida (1966), controversially upholding a trespassing conviction for protestors who demonstrated on government property. He also dissented from Tinker v. Des Moines (1969), in which the Supreme Court ruled that students had the right to wear armbands (as a form of protest) in schools, writing, "While I have always believed that under the 1st and 14th Amendments neither the State nor the Federal Government has any authority to regulate or censor the content of speech, I have never believed that any person has a right to give speeches or engage in demonstrations where he pleases and when he pleases." 12.
Moreover, Black took a narrow view of what constituted "speech" under the 1st Amendment. For example, he did not believe that flag burning was protected speech; in Street v. New York (1969), he wrote: "It passes my belief that anything in the Federal Constitution bars a State from making the deliberate burning of the American flag an offense." 13. Similarly, he dissented from Cohen v. California (1971), in which the Court held that wearing a jacket emblazoned with the words "Fuck the Draft" was speech protected by the 1st Amendment. He agreed that this activity "was mainly conduct, and little speech."
Black adopted a narrower interpretation of the 4th Amendment than many of his colleagues on the Warren Court. He dissented from Katz v. United States (1967), in which the Court held that warrantless wiretapping violated the Fourth Amendment's guarantee against unreasonable search and seizure. He argued that the 4th Amendment only protected tangible items from physical searches or seizures. Thus, he concluded that telephone conversations were not within the scope of the amendment, and that warrantless wiretapping was consequently permissible.
Justice Black originally believed that the Constitution did not require the exclusion of illegally seized evidence at trials. In his concurrence to Wolf v. Colorado (1949), he claimed that the exclusionary rule was "not a command of the 4th Amendment but ... a judicially created rule of evidence." 14. But he later changed his mind and joined the majority in Mapp v. Ohio (1961), which applied it to state as well as federal criminal investigations. In his concurrence, he indicated that his support was based on the 5th Amendment's guarantee of the right against self-incrimination, not on the 4th Amendment's guarantee against unreasonable searches and seizures. He wrote, "I am still not persuaded that the Fourth Amendment, standing alone, would be enough to bar the introduction into evidence ... seized ... in violation of its commands." 15.
In other instances Black took a fairly broad view of the rights of criminal defendants. He joined the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Miranda v. Arizona (1966), which required law enforcement officers to warn suspects of their rights prior to interrogations, and consistently voted to apply the guarantees of the 4th, 5th, 6th, and 8th Amendments at the state level.
One of the most notable aspects of Justice Black's jurisprudence was the view that the entirety of the federal Bill of Rights was applicable to the states. Originally, the Bill of Rights was binding only upon the federal government, as the Supreme Court ruled in Barron v. Baltimore (1833). According to Black the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, "incorporated" the Bill of Rights, or made it binding upon the states as well. In particular, he pointed to the Privileges or Immunities Clause, "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States." He proposed that the term "privileges or immunities" encompassed the rights mentioned in the first eight amendments to the Constitution.
Black first expounded this theory of incorporation when the Supreme Court ruled in Adamson v. California (1947) that the 5th Amendment's guarantee against self-incrimination did not apply to the states. In an appendix to his dissenting opinion, Justice Black analyzed statements made by those who framed the 14th Amendment, reaching the conclusion that "the 14th Amendment, and particularly its privileges and immunities clause, was a plain application of the Bill of Rights to the states." 16.
This theory sparked an extended debate within the Court and the academic legal community. It attracted the support of Justices such as Frank Murphy and William O. Douglas. However, it never achieved the support of a majority of the Court. The most prominent opponents of Black's theory were Justices Frankfurter and Harlan, who argued that the 14th Amendment did not incorporate the Bill of Rights per se, but merely protected rights that are "implicit in the concept of ordered liberty."
The Supreme Court never accepted the argument that the 14th Amendment incorporated the entirety of the Bill of Rights. However, it did agree that some "fundamental" guarantees were made applicable to the states. For the most part, during the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, only 1st Amendment rights were deemed sufficiently fundamental by the Supreme Court to be so incorporated.
However, during the 1960s the Court under Chief Justice Warren took the process much further, making almost all guarantees of the Bill of Rights binding upon the states. Thus, although the Court failed to accept Black's theory of total incorporation, the end result of its jurisprudence is very close to what Black advocated.
Due process clause
Justice Black was well-known for his rejection of the doctrine of substantive due process. Most Supreme Court Justices accepted the view that the due process clause encompassed not only procedural guarantees, but also "fundamental fairness" and fundamental rights. Thus, it was argued that due process included a "procedural" component as well as a "substantive component."
Black advocated a much narrower interpretation of the clause. In his dissent to In Re Winship, he analyzed the history of the term "due process of law", and concluded: "For me, the only correct meaning of that phrase is that our Government must proceed according to the 'law of the land'—that is, according to written constitutional and statutory provisions as interpreted by court decisions." 17.
None of Black's colleagues shared this interpretation of the due process clause. Harlan in particular was highly critical of it, indicating his "continued bafflement at my Brother Black's insistence that due process ... does not embody a concept of fundamental fairness" in his Winship concurrence. 18. Since Black's death the Court has continued to apply the doctrine of substantive due process (most notably in Roe v. Wade, which proclaimed that abortion was a constitutionally protected right).
Black was one of the Supreme Court's foremost defenders of the "one man, one vote" principle. He delivered the opinion of the court in Wesberry v. Sanders (1964), holding that the Constitution required congressional districts in any state to be approximately equal in population. He concluded that the Constitution's command "that Representatives be chosen 'by the People of the several States' means that as nearly as is practicable one man's vote in a congressional election is to be worth as much as another's." 19. Likewise, he voted in favor of Reynolds v. Sims (1965), which extended the same requirement to state legislative districts on the basis of the equal protection clause.
At the same time, Black did not believe that the equal protection clause made poll taxes unconstitutional. Thus, he dissented from the Court's ruling in Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections (1966) invalidating the use of the poll tax as a qualification to vote. He criticized the Court for exceeding its "limited power to interpret the original meaning of the Equal Protection Clause" and for "giving that clause a new meaning which it believes represents a better governmental policy." 20.
Resignation and death
Justice Black admitted himself to the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, on August 28, 1971, and subsequently resigned from the Court on September 17. He suffered a stroke two days later and died on September 25. He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Black had served on the Supreme Court for 34 years, making him the fourth longest-serving Justice in Supreme Court history.
President Richard Nixon first considered nominating Hershel Friday to fill the vacant seat, but changed his mind after the American Bar Association found Friday unqualified. Nixon then nominated Lewis Powell, who was confirmed by the Senate.
In 1986 Black appeared on a postage stamp issued by the United States Postal Service. He is one of only three Associate Justices so honored; the other two are Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr and Thurgood Marshall. 24. In 1987, Congress passed a law designating the new courthouse building for the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama in Birmingham, as the "Hugo L. Black United States Court House".
|U.S. Senator from Alabama
March 4, 1927–August 19, 1937
Willis Van Devanter
|Justice of the U. S. Supreme Court
August 19, 1937–September 17, 1971
Lewis Franklin Powell, Jr
- Federal Judicial Center. "Black, Hugo Lafayette"
- Van Der Veer, Virginia. "Hugo Black and the KKK."
- Van Der Veer, Virginia. (1978). Hugo Black and the Bill of Rights: Proceedings of the First Hugo Black Symposium in American History on 'The Bill of Rights and American Democracy.' Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.
- Carr, Adam. "Direct Elections to the United States Senate 1914-98.
- United States Senate. "Lobbyists."
- Van Der Veer - 1978
- Rehnquist, William H. (1987) The Supreme Court. New York:Knopf
- Dennis v. United States, 341 U.S. 494 (1951). (Black, J., dissenting).
- Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965). (Black, J., dissenting).
- South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U.S. 301 (1966). (Black, J., concurring and dissenting).
- Younger v. Harris, 401 U.S. 37 (1971).</ref></blockquote>
- New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971). (Black, J., concurring).
- Tinker v. Des Moines, 393 U.S. 503 (1969). (Black, J., dissenting).
- Street v. New York, 394 U.S. 576 (1969). (Black, J., dissenting).
- Wolf v. Colorado, 338 U.S. 25 (1949). (Black, J., concurring).
- Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643 (1961). (Black, J., concurring).
- Adamson v. California, 332 U.S. 46 (1947). (Black, J., dissenting
- In Re Winship, 397 U.S. 358 (1970). (Black, J., dissenting).
- In Re Winship, 397 U.S. 358 (1970). (Harlan, J., concurring).
- Wesberry v. Sanders, 376 U.S. 1 (1964).
- Harper v. Virginia Bd. of Elections, 383 U.S. 663 (1966). (Black, J., dissenting).
- United States Postal Service. Philatelic News.
- Van der Veeer (April 1968) "Hugo Black and the K.K.K." American Heritage, Vol. 19, No. 3
- Ball, Howard. (1992). Of Power and Right : Hugo Black, William O. Douglas, and America's Constitutional Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press.
- Ball, Howard. (1996). Hugo L. Black: Cold Steel Warrior. New York: Oxford University Press.
- Black, Hugo, Jr. (1975). My Father: A Remembrance. New York: Random House.
- Dunne, Gerald T. (1977). Hugo Black and the Judicial Revolution. New York: Simon Schuster.
- Frank, John Paul. (1949). Mr. Justice Black, the Man and His Opinions. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
- Freyer, Tony Allen. (1990). Hugo L. Black and the Dilemma of American Liberalism. Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman.
- Mr. Justice and Mrs. Black: The Memoirs of Hugo L. Black and Elizabeth Black. (1986). New York: Random House.
- Simon, James F. (1989). The Antagonists: Hugo Black, Felix Frankfurter, and Civil Liberties in America. New York: Simon & Schuster
- Newman, Roger K. (1997) Hugo Black: A Biography. New York: Fordham University Press ISBN 0823217868
- Suitts, Steve. (2005). Hugo Black of Alabama. Montgomery, AL: New South Books.
- Yarbrough, Tinsley E. (1989). Mr. Justice Black and His Critics. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. | <urn:uuid:87d90100-164f-4aeb-a053-e4847e419935> | CC-MAIN-2021-17 | http://www.bhamwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Hugo_Black | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-17/segments/1618038077336.28/warc/CC-MAIN-20210414064832-20210414094832-00586.warc.gz | en | 0.969092 | 6,986 | 3.015625 | 3 |
New Lens Device Will Shrink Huge Light Waves to Pinpoints
Manipulating light waves, or electromagnetic radiation, has led to many technologies, from cameras to lasers to medical imaging machines that can see inside the human body.
Scientists at the University of Michigan have developed a way to make a lens-like device that focuses electromagnetic waves down to the tiniest of points. The breakthrough opens the door to the next generation of technology, said Roberto Merlin, professor of physics at the University of Michigan.
Find out more from the University of Michigan.
Image Credit: Roberto Merlin | <urn:uuid:6b1553a1-146c-469a-a106-0e22c8f7d35a> | CC-MAIN-2015-06 | http://www.aps.org/about/physics-images/archive/lens.cfm?renderforprint=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-06/segments/1422115863063.84/warc/CC-MAIN-20150124161103-00243-ip-10-180-212-252.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.901959 | 118 | 3.296875 | 3 |
Euphrates, drying up
Fresh water has never been plentiful in the Middle East.
Rainfall, what there is of it, only comes in the winter, and drains quickly
through the semiarid land.
Now the region's accelerating population, expanding
agriculture, and industrialization demand more fresh water. Nations like Israel
and Jordan are swiftly sliding into that zone where they are using all the water
resources available to them. They have only 15 or 20 years left before their
agriculture, and ultimately their security, is threatened ("Water: The Middle
East's Critical Resource", National Geographic, May 1993).
Some experts feel that water wars are imminent, and that water
has replaced oil as the region's most contentious commodity. Scarcity is one
element of the crisis. But in this patchwork of ethnic and religious rivalries,
water seldom stands alone as an issue. It is entangled in the politics that keep
people (even diverse Arab peoples, much less Arabs and Jews!) from trusting and
helping each other.
Compared with the United States, which has a freshwater
potential of 10,000 cubic meters a year for each citizen, Iraq has 5,500, Turkey
has 4,000, and Syria has 2,800. These are the "haves" in the regions; the
"have-nots": Egypt: 1,100; Israel: 460; Jordan: 260. But these are not firm
figures, because upstream use of river water can dramatically alter the
Nowhere is this more evident than in the mammoth Southern
Anatolia Project, with its huge Ataturk Dam on the Euphrates River in Turkey.
Ataturk is the centerpiece of Turkey's plans for 22 dams to hold the waters of
the Euphrates and the Tigris, which also originates in eastern Turkey, and to
fill reservoirs that will eventually hold more than ten times the volume of
water in the Sea of Galilee.
When nations share the same river, the upstream nation is
under no legal obligation to provide water downstream. But the downstream nation
can press its claim on the basis of historical use. This is what happened in
1989 when President Turgut Ozal of Turkey alarmed Syria and Iraq by holding back
the flow of the Euphrates for a month to start filling the Ataturk. Full
development of the Anatolia project could eventually reduce the Euphrates' flow
by as much as 60%. This could severely jeopardize Syrian and Iraqi agriculture.
A technical committee of the three nations -- Turkey, Syria, and Iraq -- has met
intermittently to address such questions, but no real headway has been
In turn, less water in the Euphrates has meant lower power
output at Syria's own large-scale Euphrates Dam at Tabqa. And, predictably,
Syria's big dam has kindled fear of scarcity further downstream in Iraq, adding
to longstanding tension between these two nations, apart from their respective
tensions with Turkey.
Other water problems abound in the region. Israel -- in its
National Water Carrier project -- has been tapping the Sea of Galilee to channel
water as far south as the Negev, virtually drying up the southern Jordan River.
This has caused substantial hard-ship for Jordanian farmers, and outraged their
government, which calls the transfer of water from the Jordan basin a breach of
international law. King Hussein of Jordan has said that water is such a volatile
issue that "it could drive nations of the region to war."
And now Egypt, nearly totally dependent on water from the Nile
River, is troubled by an unstable Ethiopia, source of 85% of the Nile's
headwaters. No wonder that UN Secretary-General Bhoutros-Ghali, while he was
still Egypt's foreign minister, said, "The next war in the Middle East will be
fought over water, not politics."
Does all this have relevance to Bible prophecy of the Last
Days? Or is it the merest coincidence that, in Revelation, the great event that
immediately precedes the battle of Armageddon is the drying up of the Euphrates
River?: "The sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and
its water was dried up to prepare the way for the kings from the East... Then
they gathered the kings together to the place that in Hebrew is called
Armageddon" (Rev 16:12,16).
Historically, the Euphrates River was diverted and dried up by
the invading Persians as part of the campaign that led to the fall of the
Babylon of Nebuchadnezzar's successors in 536 BC (Dan 5). This led, in short
order, to the repatriation (under the benevolent Cyrus of Persia) of Jewish
refugees back to the Land of Israel, from whence they had been transported away
by Nebuchadnezzar in 587 BC.
This history suggests that, in the Last Days, the "drying up
of the Euphrates" will lead again to the fall of modern "Babylon" (cp Rev 16:12
with Rev 16:19), which answers geographically to Iraq (and Syria and Jordan?).
Rev 16:12 echoes its Old Testament counterpart (Isa 11:10-16):
"In that day the Root of Jesse [Jesus, son of David and thus son of Jesse too]
will stand as a banner for the peoples; the nations will rally to him, and his
place of rest will be glorious. In that day the Lord will reach out his hand a
second time to reclaim the remnant that is left of his people from Assyria
[modern Syria and/or Iraq], from... Egypt, from Babylonia [Iraq]... He will
raise a banner for the nations and gather the exiles of Israel; he will assemble
the scattered people of Judah... They will swoop down on the slopes of Philistia
to the west; together they will plunder the people to the east. They will lay
hands on Edom and Moab, and the Ammonites will be subject to them. The LORD will
dry up the gulf of the Egyptian sea; with a scorching wind he will sweep his
hand over the Euphrates River. He will break it up into seven streams so that
men can cross over in sandals. There will be a highway for the remnant of his
people that is left from Assyria, as there was for Israel when they came up from
This cross-reference, together with the history, suggests that
the "kings of the east" who return through the dry Euphrates riverbed will be
the remnant of Israel who had been previously carried captive by victorious
Arabs (Zec 14:2). From their concentration camps in Egypt, but especially in
Syria, Jordan, and Iraq, they will call upon the God of their fathers, and upon
His Son. And from thence they will be delivered back to their own Land, as part
of the process by which their Savior will reestablish the Kingdom of Israel in
Jerusalem again. Why are they called "kings"? Because, along with Jewish and
Gentile believers from others ages and other nations, they will then reign with
Christ over the nations (cp Rev 1:6; 2:26,27; 5:9,10).
[Other prophecies which present the same basic picture, ie, of
a believing Jewish remnant brought back out of the Arab nations in the Last
Days: Isa 19:23-25; 27:12,13; 35; 43:1-7; 52:1-10; Jer 3:18; 16:14, 15; Joel
3:2-7; and Zec 10:9-11.]
It is possible that God, through Turkey's project at Ataturk,
is presently arranging the "pieces of the puzzle" for the future -- when the
drying Euphrates will accelerate the time of war in the Middle East. In the near
future, the Arab nations may fight with one another, and with Israel, about
water (and land, and "holy places" too, of course!). The outcome of the last
such war will be the defeat of Israel. But, in some strange way as yet difficult
to perceive, the continuous shortage of water for "Babylon"
(Iraq/Syria/Jordan?) will contribute to the weakening of Israel's enemies, and
the subsequent return of Israeli captives (prospective "kings from the east") to
Jerusalem to participate in Christ's kingdom.
How exactly will this be brought about? Who will finally dry
up the Euphrates? Turkey, or Christ? When will it be finally accomplished?
Before Christ comes, or after? For the present, we can only guess at the
answers. Perhaps there are other "puzzle pieces" lying right in front of us,
which we simply haven't thought of in the right context yet.
[One final question: Is there any significance to the verbal
similarity between the "east" -- in Greek, anatole -- of Rev 16:12, and the
region of Anatolia in eastern Turkey?] | <urn:uuid:6ee01c92-5b89-4489-b784-ade6e70d879c> | CC-MAIN-2017-17 | http://christadelphianbooks.org/agora/art_less/e23.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-17/segments/1492917119120.22/warc/CC-MAIN-20170423031159-00252-ip-10-145-167-34.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932875 | 1,932 | 3.421875 | 3 |
At least 589 lynchings reported in GA through Google initiative
The wounds of racial torture of African Americans during the Civil War and World War II are still evident in the Deep South. More than 4,000 African Americans were lynched in the U.S. between 1877 and 1950. The stories of these individuals have never bee
- Jun 25, 2017, 3:12 p.m.
- Jun 25, 2017, 1:34 p.m.
- Jun 25, 2017, 3:51 p.m. | <urn:uuid:7c96aa11-1784-4eef-86dc-c6d715526ab1> | CC-MAIN-2017-26 | http://www.11alive.com/news/at-least-589-lynchings-reported-in-ga-through-google-initiative/448856900 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-26/segments/1498128320582.2/warc/CC-MAIN-20170625203122-20170625223122-00082.warc.gz | en | 0.941947 | 110 | 2.90625 | 3 |
Moku O Keawe – The Island of Keawe recalls and honors a 17th-century chief, Keaweʻīkekahialiʻiokamoku (Keawe the One Chief of the Island,”) whose reign was ascribed “such peace and prosperity as the island of Hawai‘i had not enjoyed since the time of his ancestor Līloa”. (Barrere, deSilva)
James Cook (1778) and George Vancouver (1793) both referred to the island as “Owhyhee.” Today, we more commonly call it Hawaiʻi, Hawaiʻi Island or the Big Island.
The following is a portion of Kūaliʻi’s chant (he was a chief from Oʻahu.)
Ua like; aia ka kou hoa e like ai,
‘O Keawe, haku o Hawai‘i
There is a comparison; here, indeed, is the one you resemble,
Keawe, Lord of Hawaiʻi.
(Ka Inoa O Kūaliʻi, The Chant Of Kūaliʻi; Fornander; deSilva)
“Kūaliʻi’s chant devotes over a hundred lines in its own closing section to extolling his superiority; nothing on land, sea, or sky can compare to him; he is not like the hala, ‘ōhi‘a, or ʻaʻali‘i; nor is he like the porpoise, shark, or līpoa; nor is he like the ʻōʻō, nāulu rain, or mountain wind.”
“He can be compared to one thing only, the chant finally concedes; he finds an equal in his Hawai‘i island counterpart, the Hōnaunau-based chief Keaweʻīkekahialiʻiokamoku.” (deSilva)
Keawe was believed to have lived from 1665 to 1725. He is sometimes referred to as King Keawe II, since prior to him there was already a King Keawenuiaumi. He was son of Keākealaniwahine, the ruling Queen of Hawaiʻi and Kanaloa-i-Kaiwilena Kapulehu. Keawe was the great-grandfather of Kamehameha I.
Keākealaniwahine ruled from what is referred to as the Hōlualoa Royal Center, in Kona; it is split into two archaeological complexes, Kamoa Point/Keolonāhihi Complex and Keākealaniwahine Residential Complex.)
The Hōlualoa Royal Center had three major occupation sequences with various aliʻi: AD 1300 (Keolonāhihi), AD 1600 (Keākealaniwahine and Keakamahana (her mother)) and AD 1780 (Kamehameha I) – it appears very likely that the Hōlualoa Royal Center grew and changed over time. (DLNR)
Prominent aliʻi in the Kona District who also may have resided at Hōlualoa include Keakealani-kane (father of Keakamahana,) Keawe, Keʻeaumoku-nui (son of Keawe) and Alapaʻi-nui (nephew of Keawe.) (DLNR)
Keawe ruled along with his half-sister wife Kalanikauleleiaiwi who inherited their mother’s kapu rank. After his death, a civil war broke out over succession between his sons, Keʻeaumoku and Kalaninuiʻamamao, and a rival chief known as Alapaʻinuiakauaua (his nephew.)
Hale O Keawe, at the northern end of the eastern wing of the Great Wall at Puʻuhonua O Honaunau, was named after and either built by or for Keawe around 1700.
In ancient times the Heiau served as a royal mausoleum, housing the remains of deified high chiefs. The powerful mana (divine power) associated with these remains served to sanctify and validate the existence of the Puʻuhonua.
The earliest western accounts indicate that in the 1820s the structure was largely intact with thatched hale, wooden palisade, and multiple kiʻi (wooden images of gods.) (NPS)
The only heiau allowed standing by Kaʻahumanu after the breaking of the kapu were Hale O Līloa (built by the High Chief Līloa in the 16th century) in Waipiʻo Valley and Hale O Keawe at Hoʻonaunau in Kona. These two edifices were the sacred repositories of the iwi of Hawai`i’s greatest chiefs. (Parker)
However, in December of 1828, Kaʻahumanu visited Hale O Keawe. She found to her dismay that someone had left hoʻokupu (gifts) inside to honor dead ancestors. She was so angry that she ordered the dismantling and destruction of both Hale O Keawe and Hale O Līloa in Waipiʻo. (Parker)
Hale O Keawe was dismantled by Ka‘ahumanu in 1829; its bones were removed to Kaʻawaloa, its large timbers were used in the construction of a school and government house, and smaller pieces of its kauila wood framework were given as souvenirs to the missionaries. (deSilva)
The pu‘uhonua was deeded to Miriam Kekāuluohi, a granddaughter of Kamehameha I, in the Māhele of 1848, and it was inherited, upon her death, by Levi Ha‘alelea, her second husband. In 1866, the property was auctioned by Ha‘alelea’s estate to Charles Kana‘ina, the father of William Charles Lunalilo.
Kana‘ina, however, did not pay the $5000 bid, and Charles Reed Bishop stepped in to purchase Ha‘alelea’s land for that same amount on April 1, 1867. In 1891, six years after Pauahi’s death, Bishop deeded the land to the trustees of the Bishop Estate who leased it to one of their members, SM Damon.
Damon was responsible for the 1902 restoration work on the Great Wall and the stone platforms of two heiau, Hale o Keawe and ‘Ale‘ale‘a. The County of Hawai‘i took over Damon’s lease in 1921. That lease expired in 1961 when the then County Park was acquired by the US National Park Service. (deSilva)
Further reconstruction consisted of four terraces and a passage between the southern end of the platform and the northern end of the Great Wall. In 1966-67 Edmund J Ladd directed the excavation and re-stabilization of the Hale o Keawe platform.
Ladd’s excavations in addition to historical accounts indicated that the platform did not originally have multiple tiers; therefore, the 1967 work restored the platform to its more authentic form that joins the Great Wall on its south side.
After the platform was restored, the thatched hale, wooden palisade, and kiʻi were also rebuilt on the site. Since the time of Ladd’s initial reconstruction, the Hale o Keawe structure and carved wooden kiʻi have been replaced on two occasions with the most recent efforts being completed in 2004. (NPS)
The image shows the ahupuaʻa of Moku O Keawe. In addition, I have added other images to a folder of like name in the Photos section on my Facebook and Google+ pages. | <urn:uuid:5fd40584-e573-4e16-8bc0-191d86124fcc> | CC-MAIN-2017-43 | http://imagesofoldhawaii.com/moku-o-keawe/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-43/segments/1508187824068.35/warc/CC-MAIN-20171020101632-20171020121632-00019.warc.gz | en | 0.962101 | 1,746 | 3.6875 | 4 |
Isotta Padovesi. Coloring Pages Kids. August 04th , 2017.
Christmas coloring pages are a new hit and have become widely popular among kids. They carry so many brightful coloring options for the kids that they become like Santa Claus building up their own world. Parents can easily access such pages over internet and can print them for free. Moreover kids can also color Christmas pages online. This gives them an option to color the one which they like the best among a variety of pages available. Every child loves to express their curiosity in the form of coloring printable pages. There are kids who become very much color coordinated along with coloring projects. They are very easy and possess a lot of fun.
In order for a child to be happy and develop well, the role that parents play is extremely critical. They are the children‘s first heroes and friends. Children learn most of their first lessons and concepts of the world around them from their parents. This is why parents should understand the ways to put their children‘s creativity and mental abilities to positive use. Among the easiest ways to do this is through encouraging the children in coloring at a young age. Children who begin coloring at an early age have fewer mental problems than those who don‘t. They are also better writers and artists, have fuller imaginations, and learn important life lessons and values more easily.
All types of alphabet coloring pages available over the internet are an extension of Preschool Alphabet activities and crafts work. They have been designed in such ways that create interest in the minds of children. Simply teaching the preschools with boring alphabets may have negative impact on them. They may not find things interesting and may feel that you go too strict with them when they cannot pronounce or write the letters or able to relate to objects or things that start with the any alphabet initially. For instance they may find it difficult to remember tough words like ‘H for Horse or House or Home.‘ You may think it is silly, but remember they are small kids, what is easy for you may not be easy for them.
Children who use coloring pages will also better their ability to concentrate. Being able to concentrate is an important skill for children to have, and the earlier they start developing it, the better. Focusing on a drawing on a page does much for children. Children learn to be patient as they take their time to apply colors to the images in the coloring book. Problems with hyperactivity and attention deficit disorders, as well as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, also known as ADHD, are diminished, psychologists believe, in children who devote a good portion of their time to coloring pages.
Any content, trademark/s, or other material that might be found on this site that is not this site property remains the copyright of its respective owner/s. In no way does mymontessoriacademy claim ownership or responsibility for such items, and you should seek legal consent for any use of such materials from its owner. | <urn:uuid:64c4fdb8-7434-4a46-80b4-9bfe6f076325> | CC-MAIN-2018-43 | http://mymontessoriacademy.com/jasmine-coloring-pages/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-43/segments/1539583513384.95/warc/CC-MAIN-20181020184612-20181020210112-00213.warc.gz | en | 0.963389 | 609 | 2.75 | 3 |
Abstract from the article:
Background: The prevalence of undernutrition is decreasing in many parts of the developing world, but challenges remain in many countries. The objective of this study was to determine factors associated with temporal changes in childhood nutritional status in two countries in sub-Saharan Africa: Kenya and Zambia.
Methods: Data from national demographic and health surveys from the World Bank for Kenya (1998–2009) and Zambia (1996–2014) were used to select the youngest child of each household with complete data for all variables studied. Multiple linear regression analyses were used for data from 2902 and 11,335 children from Kenya and Zambia, respectively, in each year to determine the relationship between social and economic factors and measures of nutritional status, including wasting, stunting, and overweight.
Results: There was a decreased prevalence of stunting (35% in Kenya and 40% in Zambia), while the prevalence of wasting was unchanged (6–8% in both countries). From 1998 to 2009, there was a protective effect against stunting for wealthier families and households with electricity, for both countries. Finally, better educated mothers were less likely to have stunted children and girls were less likely to be stunted than boys.
Conclusions: Based on the data analyzed, there was a higher risk of stunting in both Kenya and Zambia, for those with lower literacy, less education, no electricity, living in rural areas, no formal toilet, no car ownership, and those with an overall lower wealth index. Improving the education of mothers was also a significant determinant in improving the nutritional status of children in Kenya and Zambia.
More broad-based efforts to reduce the prevalence of undernutrition need to focus on reducing the prevalence of undernutrition without promoting excess weight gain. Future economic advances need to consider integrated approaches to improving economic standings of households without increasing the risk for overnutrition.
Hoffman, D., T. Cacciola, P. Barrios and J. Simon. 2017. Temporal changes and determinants of childhood nutritional status in Kenya and Zambia. Journal of Health, Population and Nutrition. 36:27. doi:10.1186/s41043-017-0095-z | <urn:uuid:eadef14e-22e2-470e-9f2e-b77a18dcf41c> | CC-MAIN-2020-34 | https://horticulture.ucdavis.edu/information/temporal-changes-and-determinants-childhood-nutritional-status-kenya-and-zambia | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-34/segments/1596439737168.97/warc/CC-MAIN-20200810175614-20200810205614-00478.warc.gz | en | 0.954245 | 453 | 2.90625 | 3 |
Each year, thousands of people choose to adopt a vegan diet – a diet free of all animal products. While veganism is a lifestyle choice, it is also a powerful boycott against some of the world\’s largest and most entrenched institutions: corporate farms that produce more than half of the country\’s food, global financial institutions that require countries to feed only the wealthy, meatpacking plants that have the highest injury rates of any industry, stockyards that pollute the poorest neighborhoods, and corporate media that censor public health advisories. Veganism is at heart a boycott against the old and destructive belief that profits are more important than human and non-human welfare. Likewise veganism should be seen as an essential part of our work for social justice. As a movement, we should begin our work by taking the protest to our plates.
Animal agriculture is an enormous industry. In 1999, more than 9 billion farm animals were slaughtered and packaged in the U.S. alone. Last year, the U.S. produced more than $25 billion in beef, $20 billion in milk, $15 billion in chicken, $7 billion in pork, and $5 billion in eggs. Likewise, animal agriculture is made up of some of the richest companies in the country, many of which have virtual monopolies in their industries. Currently, only four companies account for: 42% of all turkey production , 49% of all chicken production , 57% of all U.S. pork slaughterhouses , and 79% of all beef-packing. And just 1% of all feedlots in the U.S. feed 55% of the country\’s cattle. The animal industry, in turn, depends upon three transnational companies to supply most of its animal feed: ADM, Cargill, and ConAgra.
As a result of its alliances with the transnational feed companies, animal production has effectively destroyed family farms in the U.S. Small grain farms cannot compete with the giant feed companies that are supported every year by the hundred billion-dollar animal industry. And small animal farms cannot match the economy-of-scale of animal \’factory farms,\’ where animals are placed in inhumane conditions for the sake of efficiency. Bernard Rollin, Ph.D., explains that it is \”more economically efficient to put a greater number of birds into each cage, accepting lower productivity per bird but greater productivity per cage…individual animals may \’produce,\’ for example gain weight, in part because they are immobile, yet suffer because of the inability to move…Chickens are cheap, cages are expensive.\” So-called \’free range\’ farms are little better — merely corporate factory farms with a small outdoor yard, usually impossible for animals to reach. As a result, an American consumer can almost never buy animal products without supporting the corporate farms, multinational seed companies, and animal agriculture monopolies that keep family farms out of business.
The federal government hasn\’t helped small farmers either. Animal agriculture is one of the richest beneficiaries of corporate welfare in the U.S. Thanks to the USDA Agricultural Marketing Service, taxpayer money is used to buy $500 million in animal products for National School Lunch Programs and other public assistance programs every year. Although many of these animal products are believed to contribute to heart disease, cancer, osteoporosis, and a number of other health problems, they continue to be distributed to public programs across the country. Why? The federal board that produces the U.S. Dietary Guidelines is made up of 11 members, 6 of whom have links with the meat, dairy, or egg industries. The committee chairman has worked for the National Dairy Council, Dannon, and Nestle — a classic conflict of interest demonstrating how corporate and governmental interests can become synonymous.
Globalization and World Hunger
Animal products are a centerpiece in the globalization of agriculture. The increasing demand for animal products in the U.S. and abroad has fueled the import/export agriculture system. Through the WTO and other liberal trade policies, the U.S. and other high-income countries (HICs) have found new markets for their animal products by exporting to low-income countries (LICs), where only the wealthiest can afford them. At the same time, these exports have encouraged LICs to switch from a largely self-sufficient plant-based agriculture to a largely import-export animal-based agriculture. In the last decade alone, per capita meat consumption doubled in LICs. This has increased many LICs\’ demand for animal feed, which has of course benefited large U.S. grain merchants that export grain at highly subsidized prices.
How did this trend emerge? After World War II, the United States became the model of economic prosperity for much of the Third World, and animal agriculture became one of the symbols of its affluence. For the poor, meat, milk, and eggs symbolized entry into the middle class. For poor nations, they symbolized entry into the industrialized world. As the editors of Farm Journal observed, \”Enlarging and diversifying their meat supply appears to be a first step for every developing country. They all start by putting in modern broiler and egg production facilities — the fastest and cheapest way to produce nonplant protein. Then as rapidly as their economies permit, they climb \’the protein ladder\’ to pork, milk, and dairy products, to grass-fed beef, and finally, if they can, to grain-finished beef.\”
Many developing nations began the climb at the height of the \’green revolution.\’ In 1971, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization issued a report encouraging developing countries with surplus grain to develop a market in animal feed. In countries where rice was the dominant crop, FAO promoted increased production of grains, which can be more easily used for animal feed. The U.S. provided further encouragement in its foreign aid programs, tying food aid to the development of feed grain markets. The U.S. even gave companies like Ralston Purina and Cargill low-interest government loans to start poultry operations in developing countries, to help them up the ladder.
This was just the kind of help American companies wanted. As Americans\’ own per-capita consumption of beef, pork, and eggs was declining because of health concerns, U.S. companies were looking for markets abroad. There were simply more customers to be found in the LICs. As Dan Glickman, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, put it, \”World population is growing faster than ever. Rising incomes in Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe are translating into more money for food and an increasingly Western palate, including an increased appetite for animal products . . . We should see the world for what it is — 96% of our potential consumer base.\”
Corporate marketing strategies were aided by U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) policies that pushed many LICs to invest in local livestock production. Countries like the Philippines, Egypt, and India received loans to develop animal industries, which corporations hoped would cultivate a local taste for future American animal products and grain imports. The strategy worked. From 1970 to 1990, livestock production in the Philippines and Egypt increased more than 50%. During the same period in India, local milk and egg consumption tripled. But only the rich could afford to buy these products. Products that couldn\’t be sold locally were exported to rich countries, where consumers could pay a higher price. In India, where more than half of the population lives on $1 per day, and more than half of all children under 5 suffer malnutrition, the government pushed to increase meat exports more than twenty-fold.
Perhaps most astonishing is that in 1984, when thousands of Ethiopians were dying each day from famine, the public was unaware that at the very same time, Ethiopia was using much of its prime agricultural land to produce grains for export to feed livestock in the United Kingdom and other European nations. The 1984 famine was not a result o
f food shortages, as such, but of the shift from food to animal feed.
Since 1984, food grain deficits have struck many other countries and forced them to import grain from American companies — often using development loans that increased their debt to Western banks and development agencies. Egypt, for instance, imported eight million tons of grain in 1990 and fed 36% of it to livestock. A dramatic shift from having been self-sufficient in grain during 1970, with only 10% of the grain fed to livestock.
The irony is, most LICs would not need any imports were they growing plants instead of raising animals. In fact, almost all would be able to feed their entire country if they switched back from import-export animal agriculture to their more efficient plant-based agriculture. But the import-export animal agriculture suits U.S. grain companies, two-thirds of whose exports now go to feed livestock in other countries.
It also suits agricultural landlords who, due to the increased demand for land to grow feed, can now charge outrageous rents. Many of the world\’s malnourished are tenant farmers who rent the land they work. The increasing demand for animal feed has led to increased rents that only corporate granaries can afford. As a result, growing numbers of farmers are landless and unable to feed their families. As the Worldwatch Institute reported, \”Higher meat consumption among the affluent frequently creates problems for the poor, as the share of farmland devoted to feed cultivation expands, reducing production of food staples. In the economic competition for grain fields, the upper classes usually win.\”
Throughout the Third World, livestock production is monopolizing the best land, undermining the local food supply, and barring the efforts of citizens to become food self-reliant. The trend continues to this day. The WTO, USAID, and development banks increase the trade in animal products, while U.S. corporations continue to reap the benefits.
Animal agriculture is among the dirtiest industries on the planet. The United Nations\’ Food and Agriculture Organization has linked animal agriculture to the contamination of aquatic ecosystems, soil, and drinking water by manure, pesticides, and fertilizers; acid rain from ammonia emissions; greenhouse gas production; and depletion of aquifers for irrigation.
As with most industries, factory farms and slaughterhouses are ordinarily located in poorer communities, where citizens do not have the political power to protect themselves from pollution. Of particular concern in these communities is manure pollution. As the number of animals raised for meat, milk, and eggs has skyrocketed, so has the amount of animal waste. Manure contains nitrogen and phosphorus, which lead to algal blooms when in waterways and lakes. These blooms deplete oxygen, kill fish, and destroy ecosystems. Manure also contaminates groundwater; in areas around factory farms, as many as one-third of all drinking wells don\’t meet EPA safe drinking water standards for nitrate.
In addition to being dirty, animal agriculture is also inefficient. Every year, 70% of the U.S. grain harvest is fed to farmed animals. Eating animal products thus requires growing more grain for animal feed, which, in turn, means using more genetically-engineered crops, more pesticides, more synthetic fertilizers, and more petroleum. Animal agriculture\’s dependence on higher yields accelerates topsoil erosion on farms, rendering land less productive for crop cultivation and forcing the conversion of wilderness to grazing and farmlands.
At a time when population and consumption pressures have become an increasing stress on the environment, the inefficiency of animal agriculture has sparked widespread concern. The grain and soybeans used in the production of meat consumed annually by one average American could instead be used to feed 7 people for a year. UN projections have estimated that the 1992 food supply could have fed about 3.2 billion people on a 75% vegetarian diet, 4.2 billion people on a 85% vegetarian diet, or 6.3 billion people on a purely vegetarian diet.
Few places are more dangerous than factory farms and slaughterhouses. Conveyor \’kill lines\’ are cranked to run up to 140 animals per minute. On the job, workers are exposed to a variety of toxins, allergens, and diseases found only in decaying animals. Because of increased production, repetitive motion injuries — such as arthritis, carpal tunnel syndrome, and tendonitis — have increased 10-fold in slaughterhouses during the past 15 years. It should be little surprise, then, that animal agriculture workers have the single highest injury rate of those in any U.S. industry. Injuries among poultry workers are three times the national average; among beef-packing workers, ten times the national average. 36% of beef-packing workers sustain serious injuries each year.
Along with hazardous working conditions, the U.S. Department of Labor has documented widespread violations of workers\’ rights in animal production. These include routine violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act, failure to pay overtime for hours worked, and monies deducted from workers\’ paychecks for clothing and protective gear which the companies are supposed to provide.
Frequent injuries and low wages (poultry workers, for instance, earn $7.45/hr on average — only 63% of the average wage for manufacturing industries ) have kept the turnover-rates high in most farms and slaughterhouses. Meatpacking plants generally have the highest turnover rates of any U.S. industry. In poultry plants, an annual turnover of 100% is considered low. In many plants, turnover is as high as 400% annually. Such high turnover helps companies to keep unions from developing. In turn, companies have turned increasingly to exploit immigrant workers, who are ill-prepared to assert their legal rights, and are thus ideal workers for the dangerous conditions. In 1996, U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS) estimated that one-quarter of all meatpacking workers in Iowa and Nebraska were non-citizen immigrants. ,
Public Health and the Media
Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the U.S. 70% of heart disease cases are associated with the intake of cholesterol, a substance found only in animal products. Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the U.S., with 35-60% of cancer cases believed to be linked with diet — particularly high-fat, low-fiber diets representative of animal products. The American Dietetic Association has linked the consumption of animal products with increased risks for a number of other debilitating conditions, including osteoporosis, diabetes, kidney disease, hypertension, and obesity.
Why haven\’t we heard more about these and other health problems associated with animal products? When the dairy industry alone spends more than $300 million each year to advertise the \’health benefits\’ of milk, the mass media are not likely to air stories that suggest animal products are actually bad for your health. For example, in 1997, two Fox TV reporters investigated the links between cancer and bovine growth hormones (BGH), a chemical found in most milk. Upon learning that the story was likely to be aired, lawyers from Monsanto (a producer of BGH and an advertiser on Fox) pressured the network not to air the story and to dismiss the reporters. When the reporters protested, they were fired by Fox. Similar pressures by animal industries have kept a tight leash on the reporting of salmonella poisoning, \’Mad Cow Disease,\’ and the general dietary risks associated with animal foods.
Human liberation and animal liberation
Lastly, there is the treatment of animals in animal agriculture. Today\’s farms are not like the ones most of us learned about in school; they are mechanized factories where an animal\’s welfare is of little concern compared to profit. Each year in the U.S., more than 9 billion animals are caged, drugged, mutilated, and slaughtered f
or food. Each one of these animals is treated more like a machine than a living creature capable of experiencing pain.
Why should this concern us? Historically, human societies have extended the reach of their ethical considerations — first beyond family and tribe; later beyond religion, race, gender, and nation; and eventually beyond species. To bring other animals into our ethics may seem as absurd now as abolition or women\’s suffrage did 200 years ago. But some day it will seem an obvious extension of compassion and respect to treat animals as sentient beings, deserving of our consideration. As Alice Walker, civil rights activist and author of The Color Purple has stated, \”The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men.\”
Americans\’ increased appetite for animal products has made things worse for all of us. The good news is, we do not need to sacrifice our work on other issues to make a gradual change in our diet. As the philosopher Peter Singer has written, \”Those who claim to care about the well-being of human beings and the preservation of our environment should become vegetarians for those reasons alone. They would thereby increase the amount of grain available to feed people everywhere, reduce pollution, save water and energy, and cease contributing to the clearing of forests . . . [W]hen non-vegetarians say that \’human problems come first,\’ I cannot help wondering what exactly it is that they are doing for human beings that compels them to support the wasteful, ruthless exploitation of farm animals.\”
Likewise, a broad range of human rights, animal protection, environmental justice, labor, consumer, and family farm activists are realizing that we share a common foe — animal agriculture. These activists are making a concrete difference by progressing toward a vegan diet. Many start by reducing their consumption of meats. But the same corporations, import/export policies, pollution, and social injustices involved in meat production are also involved in dairy and egg production. Giving up meat is a good start, but not enough. A vegan diet, free of all products from the corporate animal industries, is one of the most effective protests we can make against corporate farming, globalization, labor abuse, environmental degradation, corporate journalism, and the callous indifference to both human and animal suffering. Every time we eat we have an opportunity to take the protest to our plates.
For more information, contact:
PO Box 4353
Berkeley CA, 94704 | <urn:uuid:e9f10f83-ddec-4729-8491-32d32c069b76> | CC-MAIN-2021-31 | https://slingshotcollective.org/1968/12/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-31/segments/1627046152112.54/warc/CC-MAIN-20210806020121-20210806050121-00145.warc.gz | en | 0.953987 | 3,834 | 2.53125 | 3 |
This year, the ‘Zwanenbroeders van de Illustre Lieve Vrouwe Broederschap‘ celebrates its 700th anniversary. Dutch King Willem-Alexander is a member of this brotherhood. So he recently opened the exhibition about these ‘swan-brothers’ at the Noordbrabants Museum in ‘s Hertogenbosch (Den Bosch).
This exclusive brotherhood, devoted to Maria (our Dear Lady means Lieve Vrouwe and refers to Maria) was founded during the Middle Ages. At first, only monks, were invited to join. From 1371, non-religious members, male and female, could become members as well. The brotherhood focused on devotion, friendship, charity.
From 1384, swans were served at meals of the sworn members. People who donated swans, mainly aristocrats, were called Swan Brothers or ‘Zwanenbroeders‘. This name later referred to all members.
Once a week, members celebrated a special mass at the Cathedral of ‘s Hertogenbosch. Their richly decorated chapel can still be seen there.
The exhibition displays many items on long tables. This refers to the brotherhood’s joint meals. The first exhibition room contains old manuscripts with religious music. Such music could be heard during weekly masses in the cathedral. Some of the manuscripts show musical chores created by famous medieval composers.
Later on, the brotherhood made money by printing ‘aflaten‘. Several examples of indulgences are displayed. It is this ‘trade’ in indulgences, which irked Luther and other Protestants.
After protestant troops conquered catholic ‘s Hertogenbosch, the brotherhood was allowed to continue to exist. Likely, because William of Orange had been a member. By then, the brotherhood’s size, importance and influence had diminished.
Catholic and Protestant members
By 1642, the brotherhood was forced to accept protestant members. A compromise, linked to William the Taciturn having been a member. His personal tankard is among a group of similar ones – though his is exhibited slightly higher than the rest.
Since 1642, the brotherhood numbers 18 catholic and 18 protestant members. Its aims also slightly changed. Charity is still important, but tolerance between religions and the protection of cultural heritage have been added.
Members have always been invited to join. No need to try and apply! Members also usually have prominent social positions.
The title sworn ‘Zwanenbroeder‘ is now reserved for male and female members of the Dutch Royal Family. Visitors can check this on the membership list hanging on a wall in one of the exhibition rooms.
The exhibition also shows objects from similar brotherhoods; not just Dutch, but also German and Belgian ones.
One of the most important items displayed, is a special crown. On special occasions, this ‘Jubelkroon‘, belonging to the Antwerp Guild ‘Onze Lieve Vrouwe Lof,‘ crowns a Maria statue. The Noordbrabants Museum points out, this precious object is hardly ever allowed to leave Antwerp Cathedral.
From the last exhibition room, visitors can wander to other exhibitions, including a permanent one on Vincent van Gogh. The ‘Zwanenbroeders‘ exhibition runs till the 3rd of June 2018. Kate Den 28th February 2018
Photos of an indulgence with ten bishops’ seals courtesy NoordBrabants Museum, Den Bosch | <urn:uuid:5ea71d94-535e-4e26-afe3-464010ef97db> | CC-MAIN-2023-50 | https://artstalkmagazine.nl/the-swan-brothers-of-den-bosch-at-noordbrabants-museum-s-hertogenbosch/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-50/segments/1700679100651.34/warc/CC-MAIN-20231207090036-20231207120036-00042.warc.gz | en | 0.951229 | 752 | 3.5 | 4 |
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