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More frequent floods, storms, heat waves, and droughts are connected to greater extremes in temperatures and rainfall, according to Global Increase in Climate-Related Disasters, a new study. In a global analysis spanning the last four decades, the study shows that the rise in climate-related disasters is linked not only to people’s increased exposure and vulnerability, but also to changes in temperature and rainfall resulting from rising greenhouse gases.
This finding is timely given the recent warnings by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other climate monitors that global temperature is already halfway to the “two degree warming” threshold for limiting catastrophic climatic impacts. These findings add fresh urgency to reaching strong agreements to cut emissions at the United Nations climate change meetings in Paris in December.
Three implications are inherent in these findings:
- Climate impacts are not just concerns for the distant future, but are already being felt.
- Heavy damages from climate-related disasters are being incurred by all countries, rich and poor, although the death toll has been especially high among the poor who are more likely to live in harm’s way, such as in flood-prone areas.
- It is a mistake to think that climate action—such as switching from dirty fossil fuels to cleaner renewable sources—will hold back economic growth.
Policymakers and economic advisors have long held the view that climate action is a drain on economic growth. But the reality is the opposite: the vast damage from climate-related disasters is an increasing obstacle to economic growth and wellbeing.
The frequency of intense climate-related disasters over the past four decades is associated with population exposure, measured by population density and with people’s vulnerability to these events, measured by their income levels. It also confirms the importance of climatic changes in making hazards more extreme: deviations in precipitation are positively linked to disasters from floods and storms.
Global frequency of natural disasters by type (1970-2014). Source: Author’s data based on data from the Emergency Events Database.
The evidence is telling us that hazards of nature are increasingly turning into disasters because of human action. Disasters are exacerbated by climatic impacts at the local level as well as by climate change globally.
Disaster risk estimates in the study illustrate some potentially big impacts. For a country facing the average of nearly one climate-related disaster a year, if CO2 concentrations continue to rise by the current annual rate of 2 parts per million (or by 0.5%) from the already high 400 parts per million, that would see a doubling of the frequency of floods and storms in 17 years. The three countries the study reviewed at high risk of climate-related disasters, Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand, by one definition, have on average seven of these episodes a year. Any further increases in CO2 would hit these countries hard, as would be the case for other disaster-prone countries such as Bangladesh, Costa Rica and Mauritius.
Scientific evidence has already established the association between greenhouse gas emissions and changes in climatic conditions. The findings in this study go further by adding a connection between climate change and the frequency of intense natural disasters—after taking into account the contribution of density of population and people’s income.
The implication is that a big part of the actions for disaster risk reduction will have to be preventive in nature, in addition to those that are reactive, such as relief and rebuilding efforts. Prevention in turn will need to be in good measure to climate mitigation and climate adaptation.
The first half of this decade featured deadly climate-related disasters, among them the great floods in Thailand in 2011, Hurricane Sandy in the United States in 2012, and Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines in 2013. The year 2014 was the earth’s warmest in 134 years of recorded history, and 2015 could well turn out to be even hotter. While scientists hesitate to link any one of these occurrence to climate change, the association is compelling.
In the run-up to the Paris climate change meetings, a great deal of attention is focused on how much countries must do to stave off the worst impacts of climate change. The relationship between climate change and the frequency of intense natural disasters provides an immediate and tangible reason why actions by countries and the global community must be urgent and decisive. | <urn:uuid:4ddc5c4b-f2ce-450e-b221-864f44de375e> | CC-MAIN-2019-04 | https://blogs.adb.org/blog/more-frequent-disasters-show-urgency-climate-deal-cop21 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-04/segments/1547583659654.11/warc/CC-MAIN-20190118005216-20190118031216-00150.warc.gz | en | 0.956972 | 874 | 3.609375 | 4 |
Once upon a time, not even so long ago, left-handed…
During a child’s life, there are very few things that are more important than learning how to write. Like the learning of maths, alongside important social skills, writing is something that will stay with them for the rest of their lives.
So encouraging them to do so from the very beginning is important.
But what happens when your child has difficulty writing?
Not only could handwriting issues affect a child’s grades, alongside their attitude towards homework, but also their self-esteem and general behaviour at school.
If your child experiences a particularly troublesome time when they write, this could also indicate that they have problems relating to their attention span, hand-eye coordination and short term memory.
Of course, poor handwriting will not cause the above issues, but it could be part of a greater issue.
But first, you need to assess your child’s handwriting and find out whether or not your child’s writing is as bad as you may think:
- Find out what ‘normal’ handwriting looks like for a child of the same age.
- Look not only at the finished product, but also how your child writes. They could just be awkwardly holding their pen, or even, using the wrong hand altogether.
- Consult their teacher, or if you are comfortable enough in doing so, other parents for their assessment.
Can a child grow out of a handwriting difficulty?
Evidence has shown that mild difficulties can be helped and overcome with persuasion, practice and more importantly, patience. However, severe handwriting difficulties can persist even to adolescence if no intervention is made.
Could poor handwriting hint at dyslexia?
Poor handwriting alone will not be the sole indication that a child has a developmental disorder. Problems with spelling, reading and attention issues might also be prevalent.
A full assessment should therefore be made by an educational psychologist or paediatric neurologist for an accurate diagnosis of the issue.
How to help
If you are keen on helping your child overcome their handwriting difficulties, there are various things you can do! If they’re at primary school age, here are a few pointers for daily activities (try and fit in a regular writing session):
- Make it fun! For every bullet point below, writing should be a very important aspect of what you do.
- Release the creative child inside by encouraging them to write short stories about things they did at school or what inspires them to be happy.
- Encourage them to keep a diary of what they’ve done each and every day. You can make this extra special by keeping one yourself and comparing each other’s activities.
- Use a variety of different colours and types of pen. While you’re there, get them to draw and paint too! There’s nothing wrong with mixing the arts.
- When the season is correct, get them to write Christmas, Easter and New Year’s cards for their friends and family.
- Encourage them to write to family members or friends who are far away. When the time is right, get them to write their own birthday cards too.
What’s more, we also sell a range of pens in our Lamy pen range that are specially designed to help children with their writing.
For more advice, the below video offers some fantastic advice for helping your children after school: | <urn:uuid:b2dc5fcd-ed59-4ddb-a708-a633adcea1cc> | CC-MAIN-2018-39 | https://www.thepencompany.com/blog/handwriting/getting-know-childs-handwriting/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-39/segments/1537267160923.61/warc/CC-MAIN-20180925024239-20180925044639-00032.warc.gz | en | 0.965652 | 704 | 3.3125 | 3 |
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© 2014 IAC Search & Media | <urn:uuid:6471ff41-2251-4dd7-8a1b-0e7c7a5b784b> | CC-MAIN-2014-10 | http://uk.ask.com/question/a-sample-constructed-to-represent-the-major-characteristics-of-the-universe | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-10/segments/1394021384410/warc/CC-MAIN-20140305120944-00006-ip-10-183-142-35.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.791873 | 415 | 2.796875 | 3 |
What is Epigastric Pain and where is it located?
The epigastrium is a quadrant of the abdominal cavity located between the costal margins and the subcostal muscular plane situated in the center of the abdomen. This region contains many vital organs such as stomach, pancreas, duodenum, a part of the liver along with some muscles, fascia and peritonium. Epigastric pain can be a result of dysfunctioning of any of these organs. It may also be possible that the pain is being radiated to the epigastric area from another diseased organ. There are many characteristics attributed to epigastric pain. It can occur during feeding or after the meal, it can occur at a particular time or irregularly at any time. It can also range from dull or moderate to a severe one.
Being a common symptom of the gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) commonly knows as heartburt, it is commonly associated with movement of gastric contents upwards the esophagus, into the throat, which causes a burning pain and inflammation.
Gastric pan is a benign ailment and is seen to resolve on its own, though, immediate medical therapy should be sought for, if the pain is persistent.
What are the causes of Epigastric Pain?
Underneath is a detailed account for various causes leading to an epigastric pain.
Acid reflux: the term acid reflux is used to indicate throwing up or anti-peristaltic movement of food along with stomach acids, back into the esophagus which causes a common condition known as heartburn. If this condition becomes constant and persistent, it may cause GERD or gastroesophageal reflux disease, which may require proper medication.
Common symptoms associated with acid reflux are:
- Soreness or hoarseness in throat
- Continuous coughing
- Feeling of lump in the throat
- Bitter acidic taste on the tongue
Heartburn and Indigestion: heartburn results from acid reflux which may lead to a sharp pain in the chest. Dyspepsia or indigestion happens when food that is eaten cannot be casually digested and hence shows various symptoms. During heartburn, acid from the stomach moves up faster n a bent down or lying position, producing inflammation in the chest.
Various symptoms of indigestion are:
- Bloated abdomen
- Constant burping
- Constricted bowel movement due to gas pressure in the abdomen
- Stomach feels full without eating much
Lactose Intolerance: This occurs when proper digestion of dairy products, that is, food items containing lactose, does not take place because of lack of lactase enzyme in the body, which breaks down lactose into its simpler forms. This might be for a short period of time, but in some individuals, lactose intolerance produces allergic inflammatory reactions.
Here are some common symptoms of lactose intolerance.
- Epigastric pain
- Gas pressure in abdomen
Alcoholism: if too much alcohol is consumed everytime for a long period of time so as to cause addiction, may cause inflammation of the lining of stomach. In the long run, this may lead to internal bleeding.
Alcoholism can cause condtions like:
- stomach inflammation also known as Gastritis
- Liver diseases
- Pancreatic inflammation also known as pancreatitis
Overeating: this is the leading cause of acid reflux and hence leads to epigastrc pain felt after consuming a heavy meal. Eating disorders such as vomiting after consuming food or bringe eating may also account for epigastric pain.
Hiatal Hernia:this condition arises when the stomach is pushed upwards through the hiatus, a hole in the diaphragm for passage of esophagus. These generally ar painless.
Symptoms may include:
- Sore throat
- Loud burps
Esophagitis: this happens when the internal lining of the esophagus is inflamed by acid reflux, allergies, chronic irritation due to medication or infection. If this condition goes untreated, it leads to scarring and abberations of the esophageal lining.
Common symptoms include:
- Unpleasant taste in the mouth
- Having trouble in swallowing
- Continuous coughing
Gastritis: this condition arises when the mucosal lining of the stomach is irritated due to bacterial infection, damaged stomach or immune system disorder. It can be short-lived or can become chronic if not treated on time.
Other causes may include gallstones, Barrett’s esophagus, peptic ulcer disease, stomach cancer, pre-eclampsia, ruptured aortic aneurysm, irritated bowel syndrome etc.
Diagnosis and Treatment of Epigastric Pain
The medical practitioner feels for tenderness or rigidness in the abdomen. Pain generally subsides without any medication but for severe ailments the following might be required.
- Medication should be given to stop vomiting, pain , reduce stomach acids or for treating an infection.
- Blood and urine tests are performed.
- X-Ray can be carried out to check proper functioning of kidneys and bladder.
- Ultrasound can be carried out to rule-out gallstones or various blockages
- Faecal sample may be tested for occult blood to verify internal bleeding.
FAQs Related to Epigastric Pain
How can epigastric pain be avoided?
A record of all the symptoms, their intensity, duration and frequency should be noted for future referencing. A lot of healthy foods should be eaten and body should be kept hydrated by consuming good abount of water and other fluids.
When should immediate care be sought?
In case of severe, sudden pain, vomiting, coughing up blood, blood in bowels or urine, drowsiness, heavy breathing, immediate care should be sought. | <urn:uuid:c59c20b2-e5a5-4c3b-8908-ba1137cce9a9> | CC-MAIN-2022-05 | https://www.healthdiseases.org/epigastric-pain/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-05/segments/1642320301263.50/warc/CC-MAIN-20220119033421-20220119063421-00062.warc.gz | en | 0.913655 | 1,280 | 3.59375 | 4 |
A survey experiment assessed response to five explanations of scientific disputes: problem complexity, self-interest, values, competence, and process choices (e.g. theories and methods). A US lay sample (n = 453) did not distinguish interests from values, nor competence from process, as explanations of disputes. Process/competence was rated most likely and interests/values least; all, on average, were deemed likely to explain scientific disputes. Latent class analysis revealed distinct subgroups varying in their explanation preferences, with a more complex latent class structure for participants who had heard of scientific disputes in the past. Scientific positivism and judgments of science’s credibility were the strongest predictors of latent class membership, controlling for scientific reasoning, political ideology, confidence in choice, scenario, education, gender, age, and ethnicity. The lack of distinction observed overall between different explanations, as well as within classes, raises challenges for further research on explanations of scientific disputes people find credible and why.
- lay explanations
- public perceptions
- scientific disputes
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Developmental and Educational Psychology
- Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous) | <urn:uuid:f04c2b14-d974-4b86-9317-219d554cb67b> | CC-MAIN-2021-25 | https://ohsu.pure.elsevier.com/en/publications/lay-americans-views-of-why-scientists-disagree-with-each-other | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-25/segments/1623487598213.5/warc/CC-MAIN-20210613012009-20210613042009-00615.warc.gz | en | 0.931192 | 235 | 2.765625 | 3 |
February is National American Heart Month
Heart disease is the leading cause of death for both men and women in the United States. 28,291 Erie County adults had been diagnosed with high blood pressure. Locally, Heart Disease was the leading cause of death.* To help prevent heart disease and increase awareness of its effects, Family Health Services is proudly participating in American Heart Month.
(Source: Ohio Public Health Data Warehouse, 2015-2017
What is the link between diabetes, heart disease, and stroke?
Over time, high blood glucose from diabetes can damage your blood vessels and the nerves that control your heart and blood vessels. The longer you have diabetes, the higher the chances that you will develop heart disease.
People with diabetes tend to develop heart disease at a younger age than people without diabetes. In adults with diabetes, the most common causes of death are heart disease and stroke. Adults with diabetes are nearly twice as likely to die from heart disease or stroke as people without diabetes.
The good news is that the steps you take to manage your diabetes also help to lower your chances of having heart disease or stroke. To lower your risk:
Manage your diabetes ABCs
Knowing your diabetes ABCs will help you manage your blood glucose, blood pressure, and cholesterol. Stopping smoking and maintaining a healthy weight if you have diabetes is also important to lower your chances for heart disease.
“A” is for the A1C test. The A1C test shows your average blood glucose level over the past 3 months. This is different from the blood glucose checks that you do every day. The higher your A1C number, the higher your blood glucose levels have been during the past 3 months. High levels of blood glucose can harm your heart, blood vessels, kidneys, feet, and eyes.
The A1C goal for many people with diabetes is below 7 percent. Some people may do better with a slightly higher A1C goal. Ask your health care team what your goal should be.
“B” is for blood pressure. Blood pressure is the force of your blood against the wall of your blood vessels. If your blood pressure gets too high, it makes your heart work too hard. High blood pressure can cause a heart attack or stroke and damage your kidneys and eyes.
The blood pressure goal for most people with diabetes is below 140/90 mm Hg. Ask what your goal should be.
“C” is for cholesterol. You have two kinds of cholesterol in your blood: LDL and HDL. LDL or “bad” cholesterol can build up and clog your blood vessels. Too much bad cholesterol can cause a heart attack or stroke. HDL or “good” cholesterol helps remove the “bad” cholesterol from your blood vessels.
Ask your health care team what your cholesterol numbers should be. If you are over 40 years of age, you may need to take medicine such as a statin to lower your cholesterol and protect your heart. Some people with very high LDL (“bad”) cholesterol may need to take medicine at a younger age.
“S” is for stop smoking. Not smoking is especially important for people with diabetes because both smoking and diabetes narrow blood vessels, so your heart has to work harder.
Since this month is all about the heart, let’s talk about something you are going to love (and it’s good for you).
- Fruit of choice (such as watermelon, cantaloupe, honeydew, pineapple)
HOW TO MAKE IT
- Cut fruit into 1-inch thick slices. Place slices on a cutting board and use a small heart-shaped cookie cutter to cut out as many pieces as possible from each slice.
- Thread four heart-shaped fruit pieces onto a skewer, craft stick, or cake pop stick, starting at the bottom of each heart and poking through the top.
Try serving with a side of vanilla Greek yogurt and get a protein and calcium bonus. Even the pickiest eaters won’t turn down these pretty kabobs in conversation-heart candy colored treats!
HEALTH & WELLNESS SCREENING – offered by Firelands Regional Medical Center
You must Pre-register for all Lab Work at 419-557-7840.
Huron Health & Wellness Screening
Drs. Williamson and Rousseau
300 Williams Street Huron, OH
Saturday, February 15
7:30 AM – 9:30 AM
Sandusky Health & Wellness Screening
Firelands Main Campus
1111 Hayes Ave. Sandusky, OH
Saturday, March 7
7:00 AM – 9:30 AM
Norwalk Health & Wellness Screening
348 Milan Ave, Suite 2, Norwalk, OH
Saturday, April 18
7:30 AM – 9:30 AM
Health & Wellness Screenings include:
- Complete Blood Count with Metabolic & Lipid Panel (No Eating or Drinking for 12 Hours – Water Allowed – includes liver and kidney function studies, fasting blood sugar, thyroid, cholesterol, HDL/LDL and triglyceride levels along with a complete blood count.) – $45;
- Hemoglobin A1C (A three month report card on how well your blood sugars have been running. A test used to diagnose diabetes and/or to evaluate how well your treatment plan is working.) – $25;
- PSA (Prostate Specific Antigen)- $30;
- Vitamin D – $35;
- TSH – $25
Diet and exercise are an essential part of diabetes management. So is routine testing.
The A1C test—also known as the hemoglobin A1C or HbA1c test—is a simple blood test that measures your average blood sugar levels over the past 3 months. It’s one of the commonly used tests to diagnose prediabetes and diabetes, and is also the main test to help you and your health care team manage your diabetes. Higher A1C levels are linked to diabetes complications, so reaching and maintaining your individual A1C goal is really important if you have diabetes.
Last quarter, 68% of our diabetic patients had an A1C of less than 9%. Talk with your provider to discuss the right options for you. | <urn:uuid:a50cc1b7-fd67-4b51-80b9-fba98fcb652b> | CC-MAIN-2020-16 | https://www.familyhs.org/news/diabetes-news-feb-2020/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-16/segments/1585370497171.9/warc/CC-MAIN-20200330150913-20200330180913-00096.warc.gz | en | 0.917991 | 1,299 | 3.09375 | 3 |
Cochliomyia hominivorax, the New World screwworm is a serious pest that lays its flesh eating larvae into wounds of humans and any other warm blooded animals causing myiasis. The adult female fly lays batches of 200-400 eggs on the edge of fresh wounds and the larvae hatch and burrow into flesh 12-21 hr later. The larvae feed on the flesh for about 5-7 days before dropping to the soil to pupate. The screwworm used to be found throughout north, central and south America, but aggressive control programmes
eliminated the fly from USA and Mexico and it is now found only in parts of the Caribbean, and South and Central America.
Control programmes of the screwworm takes advantage of the fact that the
females breed only once in their lives. This requirement of ‘getting it right
first time’ has been exploited by releasing large numbers of infertile male
screwworm flies who still have the ability to mate. The female still lays eggs
after mating with an infertile male, but they do not hatch. The flies are reared
artificially and exposed to irradiation shortly before they emerge from the
pupae. This sterile-male-release approach to pest insect control—devised and
tested in the 1950s by ARS entomologists Edward F. Knipling and Raymond C.
Bushland—has also been used successfully to control fruit flies and other
The programme to eliminate the screwworm has been pioneered by the USDA,
Agricultural Research Service over the last 50 years. The screwworm was
eradicated from the USA in 1982 and then from Mexico in 1991. The programme is run from the Screwworm Research Unit Central Office in Panama City, and from a fly-rearing factory in Tuxtla, Mexico . After rearing at the factory, young males are sterilized and then transported
by air to other facilities for release in support of screwworm control programmes
that extend through Central America and the Caribbean.
Basic research into the screwworm biology has lead to great leaps in
efficiency in the programme. For example, a new egg powder and molasses diet
developed for adult flies replaces the smelly, costly horsemeat-and-honey diet
first used in the 1950s. The new diet is also easier to handle and more
cost-effective, and creates a more pleasant atmosphere for the staff working at
the factory unit.
The horsemeat was replaced with spray-dried eggs and the honey replaced with
molasses. This major improvement was developed in the late 1990s by a team led
by entomologist Muhammad F.B. Chaudhury at the ARS Screwworm Research Unit’s
fly-rearing factory in Mexico. Since being introduced in 1999, the new adult diet has saved the
screwworm-release programme as much as $100,000 annually. It’s been further
updated by Chaudhury’s research team by using fine cellulose fibres, instead
of shredded recycled paper or a gelling agent previously used to solidify and
texturize the diet. This saves the eradication program even more money.
Chaudhury tested this new fibre to determine its effectiveness in dispersing
food particles without hindering movement of larvae throughout the medium. After
4 years of testing, the fibre-enhanced version was put into use for mass rearing
at the Chiapas facility in October 2005. This latest refinement is expected to save an
additional $250,000 annually, at a production rate of 150 million flies per
To find out more about Cochliomyia and its control check out the CAB
Abstracts Database, or search the CAB Abstracts Archive to follow the research during the
early days of the control programmes. | <urn:uuid:e9145a0f-4499-41a5-b5ce-e8873d0f1cc2> | CC-MAIN-2022-49 | https://blog.cabi.org/2007/03/15/controlling_the/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-49/segments/1669446710962.65/warc/CC-MAIN-20221204040114-20221204070114-00827.warc.gz | en | 0.935351 | 828 | 3.578125 | 4 |
In addition to ferrying tons of food, water and supplies to the International Space Station, a Japanese cargo ship that arrived on Monday (Aug. 23) carried an astrophysics telescope that will join the flagship Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer in hunting for cosmic rays.
The Calorimetric Electron Telescope, or CALET, was due to be mounted on a platform outside Japan's Kibo laboratory on Tuesday (Aug. 24), joining the $2 billion AMS particle detector, which was attached to the station in 2011.
Once operational, CALET will precisely measure cosmic rays, at even higher energies than AMS.
"Cosmic rays come at you from all directions and all the time … Every time one of these high-energy cosmic rays comes at us and starts triggering the instrument, we record it," astrophysicist John Wefel, with Louisiana State University, said in a NASA TV interview.
Ground-based instruments can indirectly detect cosmic rays by measuring secondary particles that are created when the rays strike the atmosphere. By studying the cosmic rays directly in space, scientists hope to develop a better understanding of where they come from, what they are made of and how they come to have so much energy.
The cosmic rays also may shed light on so-called "dark matter," which unlike regular matter does not emit detectable electromagnetic radiation. Dark matter, which comprises about 27 percent of the universe, can be indirectly detected by studying how its gravity influences nearby objects.
Regular matter adds up to less than 5 percent of the universe. The rest of the universe, roughly 68 percent, is filled with a mysterious anti-gravity force known as dark energy.
While AMS can detect electrons, protons, nuclei and antimatter at a range of energy levels, CALET is focused on high-energy electrons.
"CALET addresses many outstanding high-energy astrophysics questions such as the origin of cosmic rays, how cosmic ray accelerate and travel across the galaxy; and the existence of dark matter and nearby cosmic-ray sources," NASA said in a summary of the program.
The telescope, which will be mounted outside the station, is expected to operate for up to five years. A third astrophysics observatory, known as Cosmic Ray Energetics and Mass for the International Space Station, or ISS-CREAM, is due to launch next year.
This article was provided by Discovery News. | <urn:uuid:f3a64bf1-0fe2-48e6-a08a-ed90b963ccdf> | CC-MAIN-2022-05 | https://www.space.com/30391-second-cosmic-ray-detector-delivered-space-station.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-05/segments/1642320304515.74/warc/CC-MAIN-20220124054039-20220124084039-00713.warc.gz | en | 0.953963 | 490 | 3.46875 | 3 |
Scientists are reporting a scientific basis for the long-standing belief that a widely used non-prescription drug in China and certain other countries can prevent and treat cataracts, a clouding of the lens of the eye that is a leading cause of vision loss worldwide.
Their study appears in Inorganic Chemistry.
In the study, Tzu-Hua Wu, Fu-Yung Huang, Shih-Hsiung Wu and colleagues note that eye drops containing pirenoxine, or PRX, have been reputed as a cataract remedy for almost 60 years. Currently, the only treatment for cataracts in Western medicine is surgical replacement of the lens, the clear disc-like structure inside the eye that focuses light onto the nerve tissue in the back of the eye. Despite the wide use of pirenoxine, there have been few scientific studies on its actual effects, the scientists note.
To fill that gap, the scientists tested pirenoxine on cloudy solutions that mimic the chemical composition of the eye lens of cataract patients. The solutions contained crystallin -- a common lens protein -- combined with either calcium or selenite, two minerals whose increased levels appear to play key roles in the development of cataracts. Presence of PRX reduced the cloudiness of the lens solution containing calcium by 38 percent and reduced the cloudiness of the selenite solution by 11 percent. "These results may provide a rationale for using PRX as an anti-cataract agent and warrant further biological studies," the article notes.
Cite This Page: | <urn:uuid:25bc7121-0f67-42f0-9a40-7cf17bf123ec> | CC-MAIN-2016-36 | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110112132140.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-36/segments/1471982931818.60/warc/CC-MAIN-20160823200851-00214-ip-10-153-172-175.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928598 | 322 | 3.25 | 3 |
Origins of Tea
China is the home of tea but its origins are lost in antiquities. Emperor Shen Nong, who lived 4700 years ago, is credited as its discoverer. One day, while boiling water under a wild tea plant, several tea leaves fell into the cauldron. Intrigued by the aroma, he took a sip that irreversibly changed the course of human civilisation. According to Chinese records, tea, both green and black, was already highly prized for its medicinal efficacies during Han time (206BC-220AD). The Tang Dynasty (618-907) saw its elevation as the national beverage, following the publication of the authoritative 3-volume tea classic, Chajing, by Luyu, the apostle of tea. Tea reached Japan, Middle East and Europe from the 9th to 17th centuries and immediately became a status symbol among the elites. Today, it is one of the world’s most loved beverages after water, transcending national boundaries and linguistic lines. This is firm testimony of its versatility and adaptability to differing tastes and needs.
World Impact of Tea
As you sip your daily tea, has it ever occurred to you that this commonplace produce had contributed to an infamous war and a glorious revolution that altered the course of world history: the Opium War (1840-1842) and the American War Of Independence (1775-1776). It is well documented by Western historians that, before the 20th century, Western consumer products had hardly any demand in China. Conversely, Chinese goods like teas, silks and porcelains were sought after in the West and transformed its lifestyle beyond recognition. First introduced into England in 17th century, the English took to tea like fish to water. A century later, it became the national beverage, eclipsing ale and coffee in popularity, despite its high cost. The British had to pay for their tea with silver. This led to balance of payment problems and adversely affected their national economy. The only foreign product that some Chinese liked was opium, which was readily available in British India. Banned in China, the British traders had to smuggle it into the country with the connivance of their Government and by bribing the corrupt Chinese officials. Before long, millions of Chinese became addicted to opium, which spread like a plaque throughout the land. This created serious social problems and untold sufferings for the family. The ill-gotten gains from the sale of opium adequately financed the British tea purchases. It also resulted in a reverse outflow of Chinese silver, with attendant adverse economic consequences. Determined to stamp out the illicit opium trade, the Chinese regime took stern remedial actions to stop its importation and confiscated large quantities already in the possession of the British opium merchants there. Consequently they suffered substantial losses. Britain declared war on China, despite strong protests from the more enlightened dissenting voices both in and outside its Parliament who felt tainted by this odious and unjust adventure. The Chinese were trounced by the British and coerced into accepting humiliating terms in 1842 including the cession of Hong Kong (and the subsequent 99-year lease of the New Territories commencing 1898). Hong Kong reverted to China on 1 July 1997, ending 156 years of British rule. History came full circle. W.E. Gladstone, a 4-time British Prime Minister, lamented in 1840: “… I am in dread of the judgment of God upon England for our national iniquity towards China.” Like the British in the mother country, the colonists in the New World were avid tea drinkers. But they firmly opposed the heavy import tax imposed by the British Government in order to finance its own tea trade with China. They manifested their deep-seated grievances in 1773 by boarding cargo ships at Boston harbour and hurling large quantities of tea into the sea. This symbolic act became known as “the Boston Tea Party”, and was followed by similar incidents in other cities. War ensued between Britain and her colonies resulting in the American Declaration of Independence in 1776. After independence, tea drinking was considered unpatriotic and frowned upon. The Americans took to coffee instead in order to spite their previous oppressor; coffee being the preferred beverage of the French, the traditional foe of the English. Despite its common Chinese origins, the flavours of tea cultures in Japan and England are quite distinct from that of China.
Tea is one of China’s invaluable gifts to mankind; from royalty and the rich to the ordinary folks everywhere, they all relish it as it gives them a sense of well-being in body and mind. Its impact is such that it is deemed a necessity of life that no Chinese household should do without. Prized by the literati, numerous poems and treatises were written in its praise. Among the luminaries who were noted tea connoisseurs were poet Dufu, Emperor Qianlong, Dr Sun Yat Sen and author Luxun. Traditionally, the focus of the Chinese social life was the tea house. Its role is similar to pubs in England and coffee houses in United States. The Chinese consume tea at meal times and throughout the day. It is served to all guests on all occasions as a mark of hospitality.
Despite its hold on the Chinese and Japanese societies, it is in England that tea has attained its greatest glory and woven into its way of life. Dr. Samuel Johnson, the creator of the monumental English Dictionary, was a celebrated tea enthusiast. He is reputed to have drunk 30 cups of it at a social gathering and still asked for more! The afternoon tea became fashionable among the upper classes. This was emulated by the common people later. No one knows when the English came to take tea with milk and sugar. They probably found Chinese tea too bland for their palate. The Chinese abhor this English habit as it smothers the taste of tea , in the same way that the French agonise over the partiality of many rich overseas Chinese who partake of fine cognac with fizzy water. The opening of large tea plantations in India and Ceylon(now Sri Lanka) in late 19th century led to the phenomenal growth of black tea consumption in Britain at prices that all could afford. Taking tea is a consummate art in England, requiring a fair dose of artistry. It is a part of gracious living and an occasion to subtly show off one’s exquisite tea things, wit and humour. Today, the average English man and woman probably consume 6 or 7 cups of tea daily, starting from the time they wake. Morning and afternoon tea breaks are still de rigueur in many establishments, and strikes used to be called to enforce this privilege! Even Queen Elizabeth II makes it a point to conclude all her royal duties so that she can spend quality time at afternoon tea with her family. Winston Churchill once said that tea had helped to strengthen the morale of the British soldiers during World War II, and was more important than ammunition. The British public would not have withstood the relentless German bombing of London without the comfort of tea in their underground shelters. The English genius for romanticising tea and to adapt it to suit their unpredictable weather has made the delightful institution of afternoon tea the nation’s most enduring export to the world.
The Zen Buddhists and the tea masters played a vital role in the development of an aesthetic tea culture there. The Japanese prefer green tea, which is the only variety grown in the land. The most eminent Japanese tea master was Sen Rikyu (1522-1591), whose authoritative exposition on Chanoyu, commonly called the Japanese Tea Ceremony, is the scripture for this hallowed ancient art. It enjoys cult status, and exerts tremendous influence on Japanese art and culture. Chanoyu reflects the attainment of the Zen ideals of “harmony, respect, purity and tranquility. Its practitioners, by common consent, enter into a world in which these ideals prevail, in contrast to the business of every day activity.” Soshitsu Sen, the Grand Master of a famed Japanese tea school, sums up the quintessence of Chanoyu succinctly: “A small number of friends come together to spend several hours in partaking of a meal, drinking, and enjoying a brief respite from the busyness of daily concerns…. The host and guests seek to relate to each other and to all the elements of their environment with directness, immediacy, and profound appreciation”. Tea has been aptly called The Cup of Humanity by the author of The Book of Tea, Kakuzo Okakura, a foremost expert on Japanese tea culture.
I am optimistic that, as long as tea is drunk, the time honoured offshoots spawned by it, be it the Chinese custom of serving it to all guests on all occasions, the English afternoon tea or the Japanese Chanoyu, will endure, even though their modes of expression may change in tandem with changing needs and circumstances. It is encouraging that tea appreciation is gaining popularity in Singapore. Tea houses have come into their own and draw young people there. One of them even had Queen Elizabeth II and her consort as guests on their state visit to Singapore in 1989.
Lam Pin Foo | <urn:uuid:d62eecd6-d3db-4f1c-8ca6-d1966e178bc1> | CC-MAIN-2021-04 | https://lampinfoo.com/2007/04/20/tea-is-chinas-invaluable-gift-to-mankind/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-04/segments/1610703524270.28/warc/CC-MAIN-20210121070324-20210121100324-00792.warc.gz | en | 0.97272 | 1,876 | 3.21875 | 3 |
Following the Sandy Hook massacre, national discussion about how to prevent future attacks is on the rise. But for many Americans, the effects of Sandy Hook and other similar shootings are about more than prevention.
Schools nationwide saw an increase in security following the mass shooting. In the past, similar responses to other high-profile incidents have inspired reforms to airport security, malls, movie theaters, and other public places. The Department of Homeland Security has put out a pocket size guide for how to act in the unlikely event of a shooting – several other groups have published their own advice. The general consensus? Evacuate, hide, and if there’s no way to avoid confrontation, act as aggressively as possible. If an attacker is armed with a knife instead of a gun, most security advisors say running away is the best option.
What’s the best way to protect yourself if you are under attack? What would you do in this kind of emergency? Is increasing awareness around this issue necessary, or does it cause unnecessary fear?
Pete Blair, director of research for ALERRT (Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training, Texas State University) | <urn:uuid:7ab9dc69-7e0e-4294-b686-45b8eb45d06c> | CC-MAIN-2016-07 | http://www.scpr.org/programs/airtalk/2012/12/19/29757/whats-the-best-way-to-prevent-harm-in-a-violent-em/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-07/segments/1454701156520.89/warc/CC-MAIN-20160205193916-00187-ip-10-236-182-209.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950006 | 233 | 2.828125 | 3 |
Video Courtesy of JPL News
The Mars Science Laboratory rover “Curiosity” has been actively studying the surface of Mars using the rover’s Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument. SAM has been studying the Martian atmosphere for signs of life on the Red Planet.
SAM is actually comprised of three instruments that work together to sample the air around Curiosity’s landing site at Gale Crater on Mars. SAM measures the chemical elements and molecules in a mass or size range between 2 and 535 mass units. Through this Sam can determine the different gases that compose the Martian air. It was through this instrument that it was determined that the gas methane was virtually non-existent at Gale.
Methane is a possible indicator gas for life (it can also be produce by non-biological processes).
The three components that make up the SAM are the Gas Chromatograph (GC), Quadrupole Mass Spectrometer (QMS), and the Tunable Laser Spectrometer (TLS). SAM also has a system that manipulates the samples that the rover collects.
The turntable, in particular, will play a crucial role for SAM as it sniffs out possible methane on Mars. Methane has been detected via telescopes from Earth on Mars as well as by the European Space Agency’s Mars Express orbiter in the lower Martian atmosphere. SAM will periodically sample the Martian atmosphere to look for any seasonal changes. | <urn:uuid:c463711f-03ed-458d-ae30-5b4c9ecc90cf> | CC-MAIN-2015-22 | http://www.americaspace.com/?p=27118 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-22/segments/1432207928114.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20150521113208-00249-ip-10-180-206-219.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.924235 | 294 | 3.546875 | 4 |
Hebrew Roots/Holy Days/Week of Unleavened Bread
- THE WEEK OF UNLEAVENED BREAD
The Feast of Unleavened Bread is the first appointment in the year designated by Yahweh our God to meet with Him in a holy convocation. The festival in itself extends over seven days with the first and the last days being high Sabbaths in which no work is done and it is commenced by the Passover memorial. The instruction to observe this feast was given in relation to Passover and is linked to it and is a continuation of it. "These are the feasts of Yahweh, holy convocations which you shall proclaim at their appointed times. On the fourteenth day of the first month at twilight is Yahweh's Passover. And on the fifteenth day of the same month is the Feast of Unleavened Bread to Yahweh. On the first day you shall have a holy convocation, you shall do no customary work on it. But you shall offer an offering made by fire to Yahweh for seven days. The seventh day shall be a holy convocation; you shall do no customary work on it" (Leviticus 23: 4-8) See also Exodus 13: 4-10; Numbers 28:16-25; Deuteronomy 16: 2-4, 8.
The setting of these dates are according to the sacred calendar which Yahweh Himself established for His people. The first month is Nisan which is determined by the first conjunction of the moon after the vernal equinox. The sacred calendar is thus aligned with the seasons and the harvests of the crops necessary for the various feasts. Barley was the first crop to be reaped in the lands of the Bible and the first month was reconciled with the barley at the stage of it being "green in the ear", ready to be reaped for the offering of Firstfruits which occurred after the Sabbath in this festive week. Traditionally, unleavened bread made from barley was eaten during this week. Passover then, is on the fourteenth day from the commencement of the new year and is eaten after twilight on that day, which is then the start of the fifteenth day and the first High Sabbath of the week of Unleavened Bread.
Just as with the weekly Sabbath, the day before any "High Sabbath" is a "preparation day." This means that the 13th, is also the "preparation day" for the Passover on the 14th, which is a Sabbath, so that no work is done on that day. Seven days of special observance are kept in this festival period, the spiritual preparation of which starts at the New Year.
"This is a day you are to commemorate; for the generations to come you shall celebrate it as a festival to Yahweh--a lasting ordinance. For seven days you are to eat bread made without yeast. On the first day remove the yeast from your houses, for whoever eats anything with yeast in it from the first day through the seventh must be cut off from Israel. On the first day hold a sacred assembly, and another one on the seventh day. Do no work at all on these days, except to prepare food for everyone to eat--that is all you may do. " Exodus 12:14-16 Part of the preparation for the first day (14th) is to remove the leaven from your dwelling place for the week ahead as well as preparing food for the Passover and the High Sabbath day. All final purchases and business which could not be done previously, should be completed on this day. Leaven is removed traditionally at the beginning of the 14th day (i.e. twilight), but must be removed before 3pm. in that day for the memorial of the Passover sacrifice.
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FEAST
The feast of Unleavened Bread celebrates the journey of the children of Israel through the wilderness, when following Passover and the Exodus, they ate unleavened bread for thirty days which then was substituted by the manna (spiritual food) which Yahweh Himself provided for them for the rest of their journey to the promised land of Israel. The fact that it was unleavened symbolised that they were not taking with them any of the contaminating influence of Egypt, which represented the culture of the world, only the pure bread of life. Scripturally, Bread has always represented the Word of God, the Torah. So eating bread which was not leavened is a type of eating the pure Word of Yahweh God, unadulterated by the philosophies and doctrines of man. All erroneous doctrine and wrong mind-sets have their origin in the philosophies of this world which is governed by the ruler of this world who first began to impregnate man's thinking in the garden of Eden. Leaven, used in this context, is that which has its origin in the deception of the enemy and is contrary to the truth of the Word which has its outworking in all unrighteousness which is sin (1 John 5:17).
Because of the Passover Lamb, which is celebrated first; instead of sinning by falling short of Yahweh's standard, we can now walk according to the truth of His Word. Doing it for seven days (seven is the number of spiritual perfection) represents us individually and corporately coming to ultimate perfection and walking completely free of any shortcomings - i.e. the end-time perfection of the saints. The seventh day Sabbath when they were delivered from their enemies in the Red Sea crossing, represents our final deliverance from the enemy of our souls which was initiated when we went under the waters of immersion. At that time we were translated out of his kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light. Our complete deliverance from him will be when we have 'eaten' the Word to the fullness and come to the full knowledge of Messiah, who is the Word of God (John 6:53-58; Ephesians 4:11-13).
Each time we keep this appointment with Yahweh and celebrate the feast, it becomes a memorial - a reminder, to do an inventory and purge out the leaven from our lives in a rehearsal for the main event to come, and it is part of the process which He endorses, of attaining unto His image and likeness and deliverance from the god of this world.
THE NEW COVENANT OBSERVANCE OF THE FEAST
In the new covenant the cleansing of leaven from our houses has a spiritual application. Not only do we go through the cleansing of our literal houses of actual leaven (yeast products), but we also do a spiritual housecleaning. The principle always is that in going through the physical motions of purging leaven from our houses, the spiritual principle is impressed upon our minds in the doing of it, as Yahweh said, "It shall be a sign to you on your hand and as a memorial between your eyes, that Yahweh's law may be in your mouth; for with a strong hand Yahweh brought you out of Egypt. (Exodus 13: 9-10) What we do with our hands and see with our eyes stays with us, we keep it in mind. So keeping this feast is something we do so that it may be kept before our eyes as a reminder, a sign of what it symbolises. May we always keep before our eyes, the sacrifice made for us by Y'shua so we can be free from sin.
Egypt is a symbol of the world ruled by Pharaoh, a type of Satan. With a strong hand He had brought them out of servitude and bondage. That deliverance has been effected for us spiritually and we are to 'eat unleavened bread' as a result of that deliverance. That is we are to 'eat' the pure Word of God. Matthew 4: 4 & John 6:30-35
Paul referred to purging sin from our lives in the context of properly keeping the Feast of Unleavened Bread, saying, "Your glorying is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Therefore purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened. For indeed Messiah, our Passover, was sacrificed for us. Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth." (1 Corinthians 5: 6-8).
We must purge out the leaven from our spiritual lives as part of “being conformed to the image of God". We need to renew our minds from all 'wrong thinking'. This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles (the world) walk, in the futility of their mind, having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart;" Ephesians 4:18, 19
"But you have not so learned Messiah, .. .. .. that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness." Ephesians 4:20-24
- The Symbolism of Leaven
"The leaven of Herod" - a spirit of worldliness Mark 8:15; 6:14-28 "The leaven of the Pharisees" - hypocrisy - saying and not doing Matthew 16: 6-12; Luke 12: 1 "The leaven of the Sadducees" - natural-mindedness Matthew 16: 6-12 Leaven in Corinth - sensuality, carnality 1 Corinthians 5: 1-13 Leaven of Galatia - legalism Galatians 5:9
Leaven, strictly speaking, is an influence which can also represent the permeating of the Holy Spirit. (Luke 13:22-21) But in this feast it indicates the adulteration of the Word of God, the souring of it from its original state of purity. "Leaven" is known as "chametz" in Hebrew and it means "sour." In this context, anything which deviates from the truth of the Word, is leaven. We must put out of our lives all that corrupts and mars the image of Messiah in us.
"Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the sight of God" (2 Corinthians 7: 1) This needs to be done prior to the feast. (Note that those who did not keep the feast were separated from His people ( Ex.12:19 -20). Failure to keep the feast in its spiritual application will also result in separation for us and disqualification from the kingdom of God -- 2 Cor. 6:17; Matt.18:15-17; Titus 3:10; 1 Tim. 6: 5; 2 John 10)
For the Exodus, they were to be packed, having their loins girded and be ready to leave the dominion of Pharaoh for the promised land. They had the promise of a good land to which they were going for which they had to leave everything of the old behind. They went on their pilgrim journey with only the Spirit to lead them, living in tents as sojourners until they reached their destination. During that whole journey they ate no leavened bread, but were fed with the pure manna from heaven until they came to the promised land.
We also must have the loins of our mind girded with truth (1 Peter 1:13) leaving everything of the world behind us. We are called to be sojourners and pilgrims in this world with no permanent resting place to get settled in the things of this world. So in prohibiting leavened bread for seven days out of the year, Yahweh is reminding us that we need to set our priorities. We need to be packed and ready for our trip to the world to come. As they prepared for the ordinance, they had a yearly 'spring clean' which we can apply as a yearly check-point, a time of soul-searching, allowing the light of the Spirit to search our 'house' and remove the old leaven of Egypt.
The feasts of Israel are said to be a "shadow" of the good things to come in Messiah (Colossians 2:17; Hebrews 10:1). They provide an "outline" of Him. And though they are but shadows, still, shadows are cast by their reality and are not separated from their substance. And, while the work of Messiah's resurrection is complete, the glorious promise of our full resurrection is not. So let us 'rehearse', prepare for, and remember this time by restoring the ancient paths of the pure unfermented grain of His Word in our lives.
Y'shua said, "I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate manna in the wilderness, and are dead. .. .. .. I am the living bread which came down from heaven. .. .. .. As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on Me will live because of Me. This is the bread which came down from Heaven." John 6:48-49, 57
This is one of the feasts which will be continued in the Millennium (Ezekiel 45:21-24) - it is declared to be a memorial forever - Exodus 12:17.
THE FESTIVAL WEEK
The first day and last days are designated as "holy convocations" and are complete Sabbaths on which no work is done. The word convocation in Hebrew is miqra and means a "calling together", a "rehearsal".
They are to be times of gathering together to praise Yahweh for His great redemptive plan and to celebrate our deliverance from the bondage of this world. As we go through the rehearsal of the past in His wondrous mercy and grace toward us in all He has done for us, we keep alive the memory of it and the anticipation of the future promises and the glory which is yet to come. In effect, it becomes a rehearsal in preparation for the final act.
Yahweh Himself is the host of the festival and these convocations are times of meeting with Him as well as meeting with one another. He is present in power by His Spirit to effect the spiritual significance of the feast into our lives. It is traditional at these gatherings to have a festive communal meal with the "kiddush" of bread and wine. The specified sacrifices are not applicable without a temple, but will be re-instituted in the Millennium.
The intervening days are kept as holy days centred around the observance of the festival but with the liberty to perform necessary tasks. They are special days of rejoicing celebrated with festive meals.
The day after the weekly Sabbath which is in this week, is the day of the Firstfruits offering. It is a day of special rejoicing as it commemorates the resurrection of our Saviour Y'shua the Messiah. He was the Firstfruit from the earth to be presented to the Father as a perfect man, the first of the Earth's harvest.
Traditionally in temple times, the firstfruit portion of barley was cut at the going down of the sun on the weekly Sabbath and presented at 9.00 am the next morning in the temple. This ordinance of the feast was fulfilled in Y'shua's resurrection from death on the Saturday night and His ascension to the Father the next morning to sprinkle His blood upon the mercy seat in heaven, after having fulfilled the type of the Passover Lamb, and having lain three days and nights in the grave according to the prophetic word.
Unleavened bread is eaten each day to keep before us the significance of the feast (not just an abstinence from leavened bread). We perform in the natural, literally, that which we do in the spiritual - the feasting on the pure Word, Y'shua.
NOTE There are many tasty flat breads available at retail outlets which are unleavened apart from matsa. Barley was the grain harvested at this time of year and used in the unleavened bread. | <urn:uuid:c674f737-2882-4e40-90c0-24c80115308a> | CC-MAIN-2019-43 | https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Hebrew_Roots/Holy_Days/Week_of_Unleavened_Bread | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-43/segments/1570987781397.63/warc/CC-MAIN-20191021171509-20191021195009-00197.warc.gz | en | 0.966551 | 3,431 | 3.171875 | 3 |
Yom Kippur, Hebrew Yom Ha-kippurim, English Day of Atonement, most solemn of Jewish religious holidays, observed on the 10th day of the lunar month of Tishri (in the course of September and October), when Jews seek to expiate their sins and achieve a reconciliation with God. Yom Kippur concludes the “10 days of repentance” that begin with Rosh Hashana (New Year’s Day) on the first day of Tishri. The Bible refers to Yom Kippur as Shabbat Shabbaton (“Sabbath of Solemn Rest,” or “Sabbath of Sabbaths”) because, even though the holy day may fall on a weekday, it is on Yom Kippur that solemnity and cessation of work are most complete. The purpose of Yom Kippur is to effect individual and collective purification by the practice of forgiveness of the sins of others and by sincere repentance for one’s own sins against God.
Yom Kippur is marked by abstention from food, drink, and sex. Among Orthodox Jews the wearing of leather shoes and anointing oneself with oil are forbidden. Orthodox Jews may wear long white robes called kittel.
Jewish congregations spend the eve of Yom Kippur and the entire day in prayer and meditation. On the eve of Yom Kippur the Kol Nidre is recited. Famous for its beautiful melody, the Kol Nidre is a declaration annulling all vows made during the course of the year insofar as they concern oneself (obligations toward others are excluded). Friends also ask and accept forgiveness from one another for past offenses on the evening before Yom Kippur, since obtaining forgiveness from one’s fellows signifies God’s forgiveness. God is believed to forgive the sins of those who sincerely repent and show their repentance by improved behaviour and performance of good deeds.
Read More on This Topic
Jewish religious year: Ten Days of Penitence
The services on Yom Kippur itself last continuously from morning to evening and include readings from the Torah and the reciting of penitential prayers. Yiskur, which are memorial prayers for the recently deceased, may also be recited by members of the congregation. The services end with closing prayers and the blowing of the ritual horn known as the shofar.
Before the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, the high priest performed an elaborate sacrificial ceremony in the Temple, successively confessing his own sins, the sins of priests, and the sins of all Israel. Clothed in white linen, he then entered the Holy of Holies—allowed only at Yom Kippur—to sprinkle the blood of the sacrifice and to offer incense. The ceremony concluded when a goat (the scapegoat), symbolically carrying the sins of Israel, was driven to its death in the wilderness. | <urn:uuid:fa9fd1b5-a354-4d37-be68-8291526130ee> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Yom-Kippur | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281202.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00011-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950107 | 612 | 3.890625 | 4 |
Countries around the world have experienced substantial gains in life expectancy at birth and old age in the last decades but whether these gains represent quality and healthy years is still in question. External factors such as better diagnosis and treatment undoubtedly contribute to healthy aging but there is growing evidence that factors internal to the individual, including religiosity and spirituality, are equally influential. Nevertheless, research on religiosity, spirituality and health tends to focus either on morbidity or mortality; rarely on both combined, and this research has seldom examined findings across diverse populations.
Our research project uses a health expectancy approach to address whether spirituality and religiosity are associated with longer, healthier life and whether these relationships hold across populations and a spectrum of health domains. We draw on a variety of state-of-the-art demographic statistical methods with the core of the project relying on combining mortality and morbidity to estimate health expectancy outcomes. We use data from surveys covering hundreds of thousands of individuals in more than 80 countries that span a variety of cultures and religious practices. Our studies will test hypotheses such as: 1) Individuals who have greater levels of religious and spiritual commitment live longer lives and a greater percentage of years in healthy states. 2) Associations are consistent and robust across countries and cultures regardless of how religiosity, spirituality and health are measured. | <urn:uuid:90eab7a7-3479-46ab-b369-f7a17a39d82f> | CC-MAIN-2018-43 | https://globalagingandcommunity.com/projects/religion-and-health-expectancy/about-religion-and-health-expectancy-project/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-43/segments/1539583511063.10/warc/CC-MAIN-20181017065354-20181017090854-00200.warc.gz | en | 0.931842 | 261 | 2.609375 | 3 |
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Theodore Fonville Winans was a noted American photographer whose black and white images captured south Louisiana people and places.
Fonville was born on August 22, 1911, in Mexico, Missouri, died September 13, 1992, in Louisiana, and spent part of his childhood in Fort Worth, Texas, where, as a senior, in high school he purchased his first camera, a Kodak 3A model. Armed with this camera, Fonville shortly won $15 in a photography contest, which stirred his interest in pursuing photography as a career.
In 1928, Fonville moved to Louisiana to work in construction, and it was during this time that he fell in love with the state. Fonville began photographing the state's southern swamps and grassy coastal wetlands, as well as the people who inhabited them, most notably the Cajuns. "Louisiana was my Africa, my South America," he recalled.
Fonville's timing was fortuitous, for as Ben Forkner noted, "Thanks to an absence of roads and bridges, and to a largely inward-turned and jealous identity, the Cajun settlements and outposts that Fonville found were irregular islands of a predominantly French-speaking culture that continued to resist the tidal floods of 'progress' and the 20th century. . . . [W]hen Fonville appeared with his boat and camera the more remote strongholds of Cajun society could still give the impression of a private country at home in the midst of millennial swamp forests and endless river prairies, and only half-open to the modern world."
Anne Price has observed that Fonville's photographs from this period were a "human, cheerful record of a people who were self-sufficient enough to make their own way with dignity despite the times, . . . Fishermen, hunters, moss gatherers and other wetlands residents are seen at work and at play. His landscapes and seascapes are haunting and enduring, and his always accurate eye captures the essence of time and place."
Fonville himself recalled of these images, "I didn’t take any of these pictures deliberately. I just took them for fun. None was on assignment. I wasn’t even a freelancer. I just took my camera and got pictures when I saw something interesting." | <urn:uuid:9aa0e0ec-51bd-4a2a-911d-68f911ecd48f> | CC-MAIN-2014-35 | http://www.fonvillewinans.com/Fonville/About.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-35/segments/1409535921872.11/warc/CC-MAIN-20140909040159-00408-ip-10-180-136-8.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.986521 | 484 | 2.5625 | 3 |
By Cameron Chai
Researchers at Vanderbilt University have developed a method to tag a protein called the serotonin transporter in human beings at the molecular level. Serotonin is a hormone that regulates appetite, mood and sleep in humans.
Illuminated qunatum dots attached to serotonin transporters(Credit: Jerry Craig, Vanderbilt University)
The protein helps in regulating the level of serotonin around the cells by acting as a nanoscale vacuum cleaner in sucking the serotonin molecules into the cell and keeps them away from serotonin receptors on other cells. Serotonin transport is of immense interest to researchers of mental health and its treatment. It has great significance for autism too as previous studies found that changes in the serotonin transporter can cause the protein to become hyper. Previous attempts to track the protein have only yielded snapshots of the molecules at a given time. The new technique allows the real-time tracking of molecules on the surface of the cells.
The team made use of quantum dots of cadmium and selenium that are only slightly bigger than the proteins. Fellow researcher Ian D. Tomlinson synthesized a molecular string that fastens to a quantum dot at one end and a drug derivative capable of latching on to the protein transporter at the other end. Incubation of the quantum dots with a nerve cell culture facilitates the binding of the dots to the protein by means of the drug derivative. The proteins dragged the quantum dots wherever they travelled. Quantum dots have the property of lighting up in different colors when illuminated. In order to track the proteins, the scientists just had to illuminate the area for the dots causing them and thereby the proteins to show up as colored specks under the microscope. The development has many implications on therapy. Current treatment using antidepressants involve the shutting down of serotonin transporters in the brain for the drug to take effect. This is accompanied by undesirable side effects such as nausea, fatigue, sexual issues and weight gain. The study gives insight into the method of naturally controlling the levels of serotonin and could pave the way for development of drugs with milder side effects. | <urn:uuid:51d53e23-398a-4a8a-a501-c9a6ca693546> | CC-MAIN-2015-06 | http://www.azonano.com/news.aspx?newsID=25152 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-06/segments/1422115856115.9/warc/CC-MAIN-20150124161056-00012-ip-10-180-212-252.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937302 | 417 | 3.328125 | 3 |
1991-1997 - Cambodian Civil War
From July 30 to August 30, 1989, representatives of 18 countries, the four Cambodian parties, and the UN Secretary General met in Paris in an effort to negotiate a comprehensive settlement. They hoped to achieve those objectives seen as crucial to the future of post-occupation Cambodia--a verified withdrawal of the remaining Vietnamese occupation troops, the prevention of the return to power of the Khmer Rouge, and genuine self-determination for the Cambodian people. A comprehensive settlement was agreed upon on August 28, 1990.
Despite the peace accords signed in Paris in 1991, Khmer Rouge activity persisted until 1997. As part of this ongoing process, the United States ended its diplomatic support for the Khmer Rouge representation at the UN. In October 1991, after 3 years of difficult negotiation, sponsored by the five permanent members of the Security Council, Cambodia's four warring factions signed a peace agreement. The four Cambodian factions and 18 nations signed the Comprehensive Political Settlement ending nearly 20 years of civil war in Cambodia. This agreement called for a U.N. peacekeeping mission to ensure the implementation of a comprehensive settlement of the war. The mandate was authorized under chapter 6 of the U.N. charter, which provides for the peaceful resolution of disputes. The U.N. Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) labored under a peacekeeping mandate that was ambiguous and that stretched the mission both operationally and politically.
UNTAC's mandate authorized it to undertake a broad range of activities, such as locating and confiscating weapons, supervising the cease-fire, relocating all forces to cantonment areas, and investigating and acting upon human rights violations. Yet some factions, particularly the Party of Democratic Kampuchea (formerly the Khmer Rouge) and the Cambodian People's Party, did not disarm their troops, violated human rights, and violated the cease-fire on numerous occasions. The failure of the parties to abide by the terms of the peace agreement and the subsequent refusal of the Khmer Rouge to participate in the election process put the success of the mission in jeopardy.
The United States was unwilling to be subjected to UN command and contributed very few official personnel to UNTAC's multi-faceted efforts. Some countries did not have the equipment necessary to deploy in Cambodia. For example, some units did not deploy with equipment to purify water from surface sources, even though the U.N. had asked them to bring this equipment. At least one battalion arrived without necessary equipment such as tents and field rations to sustain them for 60 days, as required for the mission. Consequently, UNTAC had to supply the battalion with these basic field necessities. Similarly, some police did not have a driver's license or could not speak English or French--basicrequirements for UNTAC police. Some countries sent personnel with little or no police experience.The quality of UNTAC military and police personnel varied. Although most military contingents were held in high regard, others were not. One country contributed troops with little or nomilitary experience, resulting in numerous disciplinary problems.
On 30 May 1992, Viet Nam confirmed in writing to UNTAC that its forces, volunteers and all equipment had been completely withdrawn from Cambodia by 26 September 1989 and that they had not been reintroduced. Viet Nam also stated that military assistance to Cambodia had ended in September 1989 and no country had been allowed to use Vietnamese territory to provide such aid to the Cambodian parties.
At the end of July 1992, the Special Representative wrote to the Secretary-General that the military situation had somewhat worsened, with aggressive action by NADK in the north and parts of the centre and south, while the acceptance of cantonment by the three parties had created a vacuum. At the same time, some NADK soldiers had shown interest in being cantoned and joining their families, but their leaders had managed to keep tight control.
The Governments of Japan and Thailand undertook consultations with PDK on 22 and 29 October 1992. PDK was still not prepared to cooperate in the further implementation of the Paris Agreements. Furthermore, PDK had indicated its intention not to take part in the electoral process so long as, in its view, a neutral political condition was not ensured.
With the onset of the dry season, ceasefire violations increased, mostly in Kompong Thom, Siem Reap and Battambang provinces in central and north-west Cambodia. The violations typically took the form of artillery duels, which drove villagers from their homes without causing extensive casualties on either side.
On 20 December 1992, PDK informed the Special Representative by letter that UNTAC should not enter PDK-controlled zones without prior authorization and that UNTAC must assume full responsibility for incidents that occurred as a result of its failure to obtain such authorization. In January and February 1993, ceasefire violations continued, including exchanges of artillery and mortar fire between CPAF and NADK and movement of troops. CPAF forces launched attacks on NADK forces in a number of districts and moved closer to the PDK-held district town of Pailin in the province of Battambang.
UNTAC began the demobilization process on June 13, 1992, but the Khmer Rouge refused to disarm and demobilize its troops. By September 1992, 50,000 troops from the three factions other than the Khmer Rouge were in UNTAC cantonment sites. The Secretary General announced the effective end of the cantonment process in January 1993, after the Khmer Rouge continued in its refusal to demobilize its soldiers, claiming that UNTAC had not fully implemented the peace agreement. After the Khmer Rouge refused to disarm its troops, UNTAC ended attempts to demobilize the four factions. After the Khmer Rouge refused to disarm and even sporadically attacked UNTAC troops, UNTAC left an open door for the Khmer Rouge to rejoin the peace process. By refusing to act aggressively against the Khmer Rouge, UNTAC retained the support of the remaining factions and key nations such as China and Thailand.
UNTAC made limited progress in creating an environment free from government and political intimidation. Between March and May 1993, over 200 people were killed in acts of political violence, primarily by the Khmer Rouge, but also by the existing government administration. Incidents occurred in the months preceding the election, but the approximately 16,000 UNTAC troops, 3,500 civilian police, and 1,500 international civilian peacekeepers provided a presence throughout Cambodia that helped provide confidence in the electoral process.
Just one month before the elections, the Khmer Rouge withdrew from the provisional government and the electoral race. From May 23 to 28, 1993, over 4.2 million Cambodians - about 90 percent of the registered voters - elected national leaders. Subsequently, the major parties, excluding the Khmer Rouge, agreed to a provisional coalition government. To successfully hold the election, UNTAC developed aneffective grass roots organization, conducted a nationwide education campaign about voting, and organized an electoral staff of over 50,000 during polling.
Soon after UNTAC dissolved on 26 September 1993, American - Cambodian diplomatic relations were restored. In 1993, Sihanouk was crowned King of Cambodia for the second time but the new constitution gave him little power. The Khmer Rouge continued to operate against the government and continued to use traditional insurgent tactics, like painting the new government as a puppet of foreign interests. For instance, the Khmer Rouge had occupied the temple complex at Preah Vihear to protest efforts by Thai and Cambodian authorities to settle existing disputes (Preah Vihear continued to be a major point of contention between Thailand and Cambodia) and in 1995 disrupted illegal logging on the Lao-Cambodian border operated by Cambodians employed by Lao businessmen.
The new Cambodian government also attempted to force the Khmer Rouge back to the negotiating table or to neutralize them entirely. Government forces had been conducting such offensives against the Khmer Rouge since before the election in May 1993. With the end of the UN Peacekeeping mission government forces were left to contend with the Khmer Rouge without major external support. In March 1994, government forces launched a major offensive against the Khmer Rouge stronghold of Pailin. Though government forces seized Pailin, the de facto Khmer Rouge capital, by April 1994, Khmer Rouge forces operating from sanctuaries in Thailand had recaptured it. Government forces retreated into disarray and Khmer Rouge fighters looked poised to advance into government held areas. Cambodia's First Prime Minister was quoted by VOA in 1995 as fearing that there was a legitimate threat to government control of the capital Phnom Penh.
Following the failure of the Pailin offensive, the Cambodian government sought to find another solution to the continuing conflict. In May 1994, after Khmer Rouge representatives refused to meet within Cambodia, peace talks were held in Pyongyang, North Korea. Sihanouk continued to offer to include Khmer Rouge elements in the government, but continued demands for the Khmer Rouge to integrate themselves with the rest of the country and disarm their forces led to the collapse of the talks. A second set of talks in June 1994 collapsed as well. In July 1994, Cambodian authorities ordered Khmer Rouge representatives out of the capital and outlawed the Khmer Rouge.
Between 1994 and 1997, the Khmer Rouge continued to conduct a low-level insurgency against the government. The Khmer Rouge found themselves plagued by defections to Cambodian forces, which reduced their ability to operate. However, in 1997 guerrillas in the Cambodian provinces were still responsible for deadly attacks on foreigners. In addition, the unstable political situation in Cambodia led to marked political violence, but in 1997 the most significant act of terrorism there was a grenade attack on an opposition political rally in March 1997, which left 19 persons dead and injured more than 100, including a US citizen. In October 1997, the US Secretary of State designated the Khmer Rouge as a foreign terrorist organization pursuant to the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996. By the end of 1997, most of the remaining Khmer Rouge fighters accepted a government amnesty and laid down their arms, putting an end to nearly three decades of war. General parliamentary elections took place in 1998 and 2003.
At the millennium, with the collapse of the Khmer Rouge guerrilla movement, an economic boom and extensive infrastructural improvements, Cambodia became a safe and attractive tourist destination. In 2003, 870,000 tourists visited the kingdom. Two years later, the figure topped 2 million. Thousands of the visitors came from the United States. Most of them came to see the Angkor temples.
|Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list| | <urn:uuid:0e1b508b-be2d-451b-9f83-10356d6661c2> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/cambodia3-6.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398216.41/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00163-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967855 | 2,203 | 3.421875 | 3 |
Department of Pediatrics, College of Medicine, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, firstname.lastname@example.org.
Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the five leading causes of cancer death in human. Hepatitis B virus (HBV) is the most common etiologic agent of HCC in the world, particularly in areas prevalent for HBV infection such as Asia, Africa, southern part of Eastern and Central Europe, and the Middle East. Risk factors of HBV-related HCC include (1) viral factors-persistent high viral replication, HBV genotype C or D, pre-S2 or core promoter mutants; (2) host factors-older age (>40 years old) at HBeAg seroconversion, male gender; (3) mother-to-infant transmission; and (4) other carcinogenic factors-smoking, habitual use of alcohol, etc. Prevention is the best way to control cancer. There are three levels of liver cancer prevention, i.e., primary prevention by HBV vaccination targeting the general population, secondary prevention by antiviral agent for high-risk subjects with chronic HBV infection, and tertiary prevention by antiviral agent to prevent recurrence for patients who have been successfully treated for liver cancer. Primary prevention by hepatitis B vaccination is most cost effective. Its cancer preventive efficacy supports it as the first successful example of cancer preventive vaccine in human. This experience can be extended to the development of other cancer preventive vaccine. Careful basic and clinical research is needed to develop ideal vaccines to induce adequate protection. Understanding the main transmission route and age at primary infection may help to set the optimal target age to start a new cancer preventive vaccination program. Besides timely HBV vaccination, the earlier administration of hepatitis B immunoglobulin immediately after birth, and even antiviral agent during the third trimester of pregnancy to block mother-to-infant transmission of HBV are possible strategies to enhance the prevention efficacy of HBV infection and its related liver cancer. | <urn:uuid:9a263012-bd3a-441c-b150-11cb1207ae49> | CC-MAIN-2017-17 | http://chronicliverdisease.org/disease_focus/articles/article.cfm?article=CLD_HBV_Chang11122013-095315&dstate=hbv | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-17/segments/1492917122720.81/warc/CC-MAIN-20170423031202-00397-ip-10-145-167-34.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.902256 | 418 | 3.21875 | 3 |
Not only is the Convex Grind one of the most durable but it also holds an edge quite well. Two types of blades typify scissors: convex and knife-edge. Flat (V) - The simplest and most widespread in factory knives. So the natural inconsistencies in the body are going to convex the edge a bit. How about how to texturise hair with a thinning scissor. I also prefer the convex edge on my fillet knife. Beveled Edge. They’re also good for slow detail cutting or use on dry hair, but they cannot be used for slice cutting as the hair will jam on the blade. Each scissor blade is honed specifically to leave this razor edge. Basically, picture a Scandi Grind, but instead of a straight grind, it's curved. Complete guide to learn how to sharpen Bark River Knives and other convex edged knives. Several of our knives have a convex edge (axe edge). It is a more narrow beveled edge, but it is not a true convex edge. The opposite of a hollow-ground blade, this type of knife blade rounds outward instead of inward such as a hollow grind. All convex-edged are hollow ground on the inside of the blade which gives a very smooth cutting action. On the other hand, convex shears (also called Japanese shears because of their country of origin) are designed and formed with a shallow arc to the back side of the blades. This creates a thin cutting edge which makes the blades cut very smoothly. Think of how a cave curves in, or think "con-cavity". /Group <<
We hope you found this useful! /Filter [/FlateDecode ]
Learn more. A convex is just a blending of the grinds into a continuous curve instead of a series of lines with distinct transitions. They are also known by three other names: hamaguri-ba, clam shell, and most commonly, Japanese style. This includes all types of Chisel grind edges. Each side of the blade that has honed an edge is referred to as a bevel. These terms refer to the specific shape of the cutting edge of the blades on the scissors you use. Some examples are craft shears, sewing shears, thinning shears, surgical scissors and pinking shears. Concave blades by LUTZ BLADES … Although the key purpose of any blade is to impart a cut but there are many nuances that may make a blade suitable for one job and not so much for another. >>
http://www.Knivesshipfree.com sharpening videos. Micro-serrated blades are fantastic for when you are learning to cut hair as they prevent the hair from sliding down the blade. Because the edges are so sharp, they would rub themselves dull on the hollow side of the edge. Where the curvature begins (high or low on the blade) can produce a full convex, a saber convex or even a Scandi convex grind. KN95 Face masks – Pack of 10 – Fully CE Certified, Certified Disposable 3 Ply Face masks – Pack of 50. /Properties << /Pr12 12 0 R >>
About 80 percent of the scissors in use throughout the world use a beveled cutting edge. convex definition: 1. curved or swelling out: 2. curved or swelling out: 3. curved or swelling out: . - Knife edge bevels are ground on both side of the blade. With a traditional, flat sharpening stone, one must repeatedly and consistently follow the contour of a rounded, convex edge with the flat surface of a stone. /TrimBox [0.0000 0.0000 612.0000 792.0000]
This style scissor is not as Hollow Edge. However, the oft-touted belief is that a convex edge has more material supporting the blade, and thus has better edge retention than a conventional “V” edge. However, if you use a handheld diamond whetstone and the above mentioned felt-tip trick, it is fairly easy to sharpen the convex edge, but as with everything, practice makes perfect. | <urn:uuid:c9d365db-524f-45f2-988d-9001acaf3dfc> | CC-MAIN-2022-49 | http://amruthapublicschool.org/pages/convex-blade-edge-definition-ed4918 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-49/segments/1669446710933.89/warc/CC-MAIN-20221203143925-20221203173925-00022.warc.gz | en | 0.928945 | 865 | 2.765625 | 3 |
Matthew Lieberman (email@example.com, Franz 4461c)
Mission Statement: The goal of this course is twofold. The first goal is to familiarize you with most of the major themes that have been central to social cognition both historically and currently. To this end, the following nine weeks will each be devoted to one of the areas of research that I believe to be most important to the field of social cognition. Some of these areas focus on a particular content domain or type of phenomena (stereotyping, attitude change, emotion) while others address concepts that are relevant to all the content areas of social cognition (subjective construal, automaticity, introspection).
The second and perhaps more important goal of this course is to get you to think more carefully about the complexities involved in social cognition and experience more generally. It is my sincere hope that you will leave this class with more questions than answers. To this end, I will not be lecturing in class but trying to generate discussion that provokes all of us, myself included, to think more carefully about what it means to study “minds” and “mental processes” as it pertains to social inference processes. I will at times give spontaneous mini-lectures when certain topics are raised and there is a need for historical or conceptual framing that goes beyond the scope of the readings. While this will be a discussion-based course, I hope to also provide you with my own relatively integrated view of social cognition. Regardless of whether you choose to accept or reject different aspects of how I understand social cognition (and you would be foolish to accept all of it, no doubt), I think it is important for you to be exposed to an overall gestalt that hopefully weaves together all the different articles you’ll be reading.
Readings: There is a lot of reading for this course. Truthfully, though, I haven’t assigned enough. It is impossible to give you a thorough understanding of all the issues that have driven the most successfully paradigm shift in the history of social psychology. I have tried to mix up the readings for each week: some big reviews, some research articles, and magazine and book chapters where appropriate. We WILL NOT talk about every article each week. My goal in class discussion is not to make sure that everyone has read every paper. I have no checklists as we go through discussion. We are all adults here and we can all do as we please. Certainly I want people to ask questions about any part of the readings that are confusing (unfortunately some of the best researchers are horrible writers). I also expect that much of the discussion will focus on the experiments and ideas raised in the papers. Nevertheless, I will be carefully rereading each article before class to develop my ideas for discussion and I expect each of you to do the same. Moreover, these are all important articles that you should read in order to be conversant with social cognition. Don’t read them for class. Read them because you want to be a psychologist!
Grades: You must do two things to do well in this class. First, you must actively and meaningfully participate in class. This does not mean dominating discussion, bullying others, saying every thought that comes into your head, or criticizing every experiment and idea. I do, however, expect you to fill the room with half-baked ideas and confusion (and praise for the work you like). Most great psychologists have turned out to be wrong about the things they are most famous for. If they can all be famous for things that turned out to be wrong, then none of us should be anxious for saying what feels confused or wrong. I can almost guarantee the most interesting thing that gets said in our class will be something that everyone initially thinks is ridiculous. (By the way – William James is the one exception to the above. Everything he said was right. Any criticisms of William James will result in punishment of biblical proportions.)
The other thing you must do is write a 2 page seed paper before each class (anything more than 1 page and less than 3 full pages is fine). These must be emailed to me by Sunday at 8pm the night before class. These seed papers are meant to serve multiple purposes. They are meant to make sure you’ve done some thinking about the week’s readings before class. They will also help me steer discussion towards topics of more general interest and decide where clarity is lacking. Also, while these papers do not replace the need to speak up in class, they will let me know what the less vocal of you are thinking as you read the articles.
Each seed paper should take 1 of 3 forms. First you can write a critical review of one or more of the week’s readings (or even on just a part of a reading). Critical does not mean negative. To the extent that you do criticize an argument or idea, you should also offer solutions or alternative ways of thinking about the topic to circumvent the problem. Tearing down theories is easy, while generating your own new developments is really the keys to advancing the field. You can also write a paper in which you integrate the ideas of several papers and talk about how they relate to one another synergistically. The papers to be integrated need not be from the same week and you should feel free to write about papers that aren’t on syllabus too (but, those most be integrated with a paper that is on the syllabus and you can’t assume I’ve read non-syllabus papers).
You should also feel free to add questions about the readings or anything you’d like to have discussed at the end of your seed papers. These add-ons don’t need to be in paragraph format or anything.
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Dunning, D. (in press). The zealous self-affirmer: How and why the self lurks so pervasively behind social judgment. In S. Spencer & S. Fein (Eds.), Motivated Social Cognition: The 9th Ontario symposium on social cognition. Hillsdale: Earlbaum. pp. 1-32.
Van Boven, L., Dunning, D., & Loewenstein, G. (2000). Egocentric empathy gaps between owners and buyers: Misperceptions of the endowment effect. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 79, 66-76.
Taylor, S. E. (1991). Asymmetrical effects of positive and negative events: The mobilization-minimization hypothesis. Psychological Bulletin, 110, 67-85.
Swann, W. B., & Schroeder, D. G. (1995). The search for beauty and truth: A framework for understanding reactions to evaluations. Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin, 21, 1307-1318.
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Wicklund, R. A. (1975). Objective self-awareness. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 8). New York: Academic Press. 233-275
Turner, R. H. (1976). The real self: From institution to impulse. American Journal of Sociology, 81, 989-1016.
Vallacher & Wegner (1987). What do people think they’re doing? Action identification and human behavior. Psychological Review, 94, 3-15.
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Baumeister, R. F. (1990). Anxiety and deconstruction: On escaping the self. In J. M. Olson & M. P. Zanna, (Eds.), Self-inference processes: The Ontario symposium (Vol. 6). Hillsdale, NJ: Earlbaum. pp. 259-291.
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Gilbert, D. T. (1995). Attribution and interpersonal perception. In A. Tesser (Ed.), Advanced Social Psychology. New York: McGraw-Hill. pp. 99-147.
Trope, Y. & Liberman, A. (1996). Social hypothesis testing: Cognitive and motivational mechanisms. In E. T. Higgins & A. W. Kruglanski (Eds.), Social psychology: Handbook of basic principles. New York: Guilford Press. pp. 239-270.
Trope, Y. & Gaunt, R. (2000). Processing alternative explanations of behavior: Correction or integration. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79, 344-354.
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Hong, Y., Chiu, C., Dweck, C. S., Lin, D. M., & Wan, W. (1999). Implicit theories, attributions, and coping: A meaning system approach. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77, 588-599. | <urn:uuid:5f03aa22-d38a-4cca-8359-ee906820d5c3> | CC-MAIN-2017-30 | http://lieber.bol.ucla.edu/Lieberman/Psych229.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-30/segments/1500549448198.69/warc/CC-MAIN-20170728103510-20170728123510-00176.warc.gz | en | 0.822926 | 4,405 | 2.640625 | 3 |
Stepping out of the infernal desert heat, I’m welcomed into the reception area by a Fat Man, one of America’s first atomic weapons. The US nuclear legacy is on display inside the National Atomic Testing Museum located on Flamingo Road opposite a Las Vegas strip mall.
The museum, a program of the Nevada Test Site Historical Foundation and affiliated with the Smithsonian Institution, is one of the few places one can come face to face with an atom bomb.
Just two miles east of the glitz of the Las Vegas Strip, the building is a shrine, of sorts, to the 928 nuclear weapons tests conducted at the Nevada Test Site between 1951 and 1992. Through a mix of galleries, models, and animated displays, the museum presents a concise but thorough overview of America’s endeavor to develop, test, and use nuclear weapons.
Exhibits tell the story of scientists sworn to secrecy who raced against the Nazis to be the first to harness the power of the atom in the form of a bomb and how those weapons changed the world.
Visitors are confronted with nuclear weaponry the moment they step through the door. The Fat Man 3,500-pound steel armor ballistic casing on display is all but identical to the 21-kiloton plutonium implosion bomb used against Nagasaki in August 1945. The same weapon type code named ‘The Gadget’ had been tested for the first time less than a month earlier on July 16 at Alamogordo Bombing Range in New Mexico.
Throughout the museum, the scientists who developed and conducted 100 atmospheric and 828 underground nuclear tests in Nevada are lauded for their intellectual prowess and steadfast dedication to advancing America’s atomic mission, depicted as patriots and unsullied by questions of ethical ambiguity or moral compromise.
In one six-foot-tall display, nearly two dozen Nevada Test Site partners are thanked by name, including the National Nuclear Security Administration, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, the Department of Energy, the US Geological Survey, Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore, and Sandia National Laboratories, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon Services Nevada, and others.
The text at the center of the display reads, “For more than half a century, the highly skilled scientists, technicians and craftsmen of the Nevada Test Site, in conjunction with their national weapons laboratory partners and the management and operations contractor for the site, have helped solve some of the most difficult technical problems faced by our nation.”
A more critical assessment might suggest that they didn’t solve the most difficult technical problems, rather they created them.
BRINGING THE BOMB HOME
Between 1945 and 1992, the US carried out 1,054 nuclear tests, the overwhelming majority of them at the Nevada Test Site (NTS). Other tests were conducted in Alaska, Colorado, Mississippi, New Mexico, more than 100 in the Pacific, and three in the South Atlantic.
One museum panel explains why the US, which was already testing atomic weapons at the Pacific Proving Grounds (Marshall Islands), added an additional test site in Nevada. A quotation from Rear Admiral William S. “Deak” Parsons in 1948 offers an argument for introducing nuclear testing to the continental United States, saying that the continued testing of nuclear weapons far away (in the Pacific) “can contribute to an unhealthy, dangerous and unjustified fear of atomic detonations…”
The exhibit explains how the logistical problems of conducting nuclear tests in the Pacific (Bikini and Enewetak atolls) led to Project Nutmeg, the search for an alternative “proving grounds” in the continental United States. While high yield thermonuclear tests continued (the US conducted 18 megaton strength tests in the Marshall Islands), the US wanted a site closer to home where it could carry out relatively lower yield tests.
The commercialization of nuclear weapons comes in the form of Little Boy and Fat Man key chains, refrigerator magnets, t-shirts, mushroom cloud shot glasses, and an atomic bomb-shaped ice cube tray that belies the human and environmental toll these weapons have taken.
After considering four potential test sites in Utah, New Mexico, and North Carolina, the Nevada location was ultimately chosen. The site went through more than half a dozen names including “Emergency Proving Ground” and “Las Vegas Test Site” before settling on Nevada Test Site. The area was eventually increased to 1,375 square miles, larger than Rhode Island.
In 1951, when atmospheric nuclear tests began at NTS, the desert town of Las Vegas was still being developed as a gambling and entertainment resort where fortune and fun were the mission. But just 65 miles to the north, nuclear detonations were close enough to rattle windowpanes along the Las Vegas strip.
Through videos, photos, and artifacts, the museum contextualizes America’s mood during the early atomic age, showing how Las Vegas casinos and the chamber of commerce capitalized on the nuclear tests themselves, selling them as a form of entertainment. “Atomic cocktails” were served to tourists to conclude a night of carousing, just as nuclear blasts created an atomic “sunrise” visible in the distance.
In addition to depictions of bomb shelter test dummies, technical summaries of underground testing, and 1950s animation explaining nuclear fission and a cartoon “atomic genie” exploding as a hellish nuclear fireball, the museum also displays a B-53 thermonuclear bomb casing from the early 1960s. At 9 megatons, the B-53 was among the most powerful nuclear weapons developed by the US.
WHY NUCLEAR WEAPONS?
For all their ferocity and destruction, much of the museum’s panel narration describes nuclear weapons in relatively generous terms. One panel asks “Why Nuclear Weapons?” The answer (“to protect its citizens from enemies”) is followed by: “A common assumption is that America’s nuclear testing program was solely or even primarily intensified to increase the number or destructiveness of weapons. This is wrong.” It goes on to say that the early atomic bombs were “big, heavy, and dirty” but through stockpile modernization, nuclear weapons have become “smaller, radiologically cleaner, and safer weapons.”
This presentation of a kinder, gentler nuclear weapon may foreshadow a yet-to-be-built exhibit called “The Bomb without the Boom” that will tell the story of stockpile stewardship and nuclear modernization. The modernization of America’s nuclear forces is estimated to cost between 1.2 and 2 trillion dollars by 2046.
A JACKPOT FOR RESEARCHERS
One of the museum’s greatest assets, its Nuclear Testing Archive, could be easily missed by visitors unaware of the resources available for researchers. Nuclear historian Alex Wellerstein says the archive and the Department of Energy’s OpenNet offer a trove of documents available online or by request, adding, “It’s been a core part of my research for decades.”
For those interested in the finer points of atmospheric and underground nuclear testing, or scientific and political nuclear competition, the museum offers plenty to inspire further investigation. For everyone else, there is a museum store with a collection of merchandise, some kitsch, some curious. The commercialization of nuclear weapons comes in the form of Little Boy and Fat Man key chains, refrigerator magnets, t-shirts, mushroom cloud shot glasses, and an atomic bomb-shaped ice cube tray that belies the human and environmental toll these weapons have taken.
Crass souvenirs aside, the National Atomic Testing Museum is a valuable place to learn about the scientific and technical aspects of nuclear weapons testing and the central role of the Nevada Test Site. The museum has done a good job making a complicated subject accessible to the public.
WORDS LEFT UNSAID
That said, other than several passing references to Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the Marshall Islands, and to the health and environmental impacts of nuclear testing, one could visit and leave without understanding the ongoing suffering that continues to this day. The impact of nuclear weapons isn’t limited to Japan and the Marshall Islands, but includes “downwinder” communities across the US southwest as well as communities elsewhere in French Polynesia, Algeria, Xinjiang, Kazakhstan, Australia, and Kiribati, following tests by France, China, the Soviet Union, the UK, and the US.
Not surprisingly, there is no mention of the 130 tons of soil transported from the Nevada Test Site to Enewetak Atoll for experimental use (without local consent) in the 1958 final nuclear test in the Marshall Islands as reported in the Los Angeles Times.
There is also no reference — not even a whisper — of the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which entered into force in 2021 and now has 86 signatories and 66 state parties who have banned nuclear weapons.
In a city dedicated to gambling, luck, and games of chance, the National Atomic Testing Museum offers an up-close look at America’s nuclear enterprise which is arguably humanity’s highest stakes gamble of all.
Jon Letman is a Hawaii-based independent journalist covering people, politics, and the environment in the Asia-Pacific region. | <urn:uuid:106a59c1-05cc-409b-a993-c30c069b7da4> | CC-MAIN-2023-14 | https://inkstickmedia.com/face-to-face-with-fat-man/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-14/segments/1679296950363.89/warc/CC-MAIN-20230401221921-20230402011921-00308.warc.gz | en | 0.933036 | 1,919 | 2.765625 | 3 |
Microsoft today detailed the new Storage Spaces feature in Windows 8. Storage Spaces in Windows 8 will dramatically improve how you manage large volumes of storage in your PC at work or home. It may some how replace Windows Home Server Driver Extender technology. Storage Spaces allow,
- Organization of physical disks into storage pools, which can be easily expanded by simply adding disks. These disks can be connected either through USB, SATA (Serial ATA), or SAS (Serial Attached SCSI). A storage pool can be composed of heterogeneous physical disks – different sized physical disks accessible via different storage interconnects.
- Usage of virtual disks (also known as spaces), which behave just like physical disks for all purposes. However, spaces also have powerful new capabilities associated with them such as thin provisioning (more about that later), as well as resiliency to failures of underlying physical media.
You can read more on this at Building Windows 8 Blog. | <urn:uuid:95b987f9-ea1e-479c-b64b-7b6a4217aef1> | CC-MAIN-2015-40 | http://microsoft-news.com/microsoft-details-storage-spaces-feature-in-windows-8/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-40/segments/1443737867468.81/warc/CC-MAIN-20151001221747-00007-ip-10-137-6-227.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.917448 | 190 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Hemorrhoids - and the High Fiber Hemorroid Connection
The term hemorrhoids refers to a condition in which stretched and weakened veins around the anus or lower rectum become swollen and inflamed. Hemorrhoids are either inside the anus (internal) or under the skin around the anus (external).
Many Americans will develop hemorrhoids at some point in their lives, up to 1/3 of the total population. Estimates have indicated that about half the population of men and women over 50 years of age have hemorrhoids.
Often people begin to develop hemorrhoids in their 20's, but hemorrhoidal symptoms usually do not become evident until the 30's. Factors contributing to hemorrhoids include, aging, chronic constipation or diarrhea, anal intercourse, and pregnancy. For most women, however, hemorrhoids caused by pregnancy are a temporary problem.
In contrast to the westernized countries, hemorrhoids are very uncommon in undeveloped countries because the diet of those people is bulky and fibrous. Western diets tend to be very limited in fiber resulting in stools that are dry, small, and hard. Not enough exercise, too much sitting, and years of straining during elimination ultimately weaken rectal tissue making hemorrhoids inevitable.
A high fiber diet
Fiber may be the most important component in the prevention of hemorrhoids. A diet rich in vegetables, fruits, legumes and grains keeps the feces soft, bulky and easy to pass. There is significantly less straining during elimination when consuming a high fiber diet.
Individuals consuming a low fiber diet and processed foods, tend to strain more during bowel movements since their smaller and harder stools are difficult to pass.
Unfortunately, some people think that the remedy is laxatives, but they make the problem worse by ignoring the real issue.
Many people rightly connect hemorrhoids with constipation: Straining on the toilet increases the pressure in the abdomen which then,increases pelvic congestion and may significantly weaken the veins, causing hemorrhoids.
When you change your diet to more roughage too abruptly, you could make matters worse and have diarrhea. So, gradually increase your intake of fruits and vegetables. Begin to cut back on refined, processed foods. Eight glasses of water a day should be the minumum when you add more fiber to your diet.
Hemorrhoids usually are not dangerous or life threatening. In most cases, symptoms will go away within a few days. Although many people have hemorrhoids, not everyone with hemorrhoids experience symptoms.
The symptoms most often associated with hemorrhoids include burning, pain, inflammation, irritation, and swelling. Excessive straining, rubbing, or cleaning around the anus may cause irritation with bleeding and/or itching, which may produce a vicious cycle of symptoms. Draining mucus from prolapsing internal hemorrhoids may also cause itching.
Pain does not occur unless there is acute inflammation of external hemorrhoids with painful swelling or a hard lump around the anus that results when a blood clot forms. This condition is referred to as a thrombosed external hemorrhoid.
Uncomplicated internal hemorrhoids do not cause pain, however, an internal hemorrhoid may protrude through the anus outside the body, becoming irritated and painful. This is known as a protruding hemorrhoid.
How are hemorrhoids diagnosed?
When there is bleeding from the rectum or blood in the stool, see your doctor. The doctor will examine the anus and rectum to look for swollen blood vessels that indicate hemorrhoids and check for abnormalities.
To rule out other causes of gastrointestinal bleeding, the doctor may examine the rectum and lower colon with sigmoidoscopy or the entire colon with colonoscopy. These are diagnostic procedures that use lighted, flexible tubes inserted through the rectum.
You don't want to just treat symptoms. As with all diseases, the primary treatment of hemorrhoids is prevention.
If dietary changes to include more fiber do not produce soft, non-constipated stool, try a natural laxative like a bulking agent which attracts water and creates larger, softer stools.
Psyllium seed and guar guam induce a mild laxative action due to their ability to attract water.
Exercise, including walking, help reduce constipation and straining. Empty bowels as soon as possible after the urge occurs.
Topical treatments using hemrroidal creams, suppositories, ointments and anorectal pads can provide relief for the short term.
In addition to applying a topical ointment, a Sitz bath (soaking in a warm bath in three or four inches of water with your knees raised) can give relief by drawing blood to the area and reducing the swelling. Tub baths several times a day in plain, warm water for about 10 minutes also help.
High fiber recipes and high fiber menus go a very long way in preventing hemorrhoids and the re-occurance. Soothe those itshies by svoring those fruits, vegies and grains. Try these links to a world full of easy, luscious and healthful entrees and side dishes. It will make you happy where you sit! | <urn:uuid:e18bf9ee-f20a-47fd-8040-b7060b7a6a22> | CC-MAIN-2016-30 | http://www.high-fiber-health.com/hemorrhoids.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-30/segments/1469257827077.13/warc/CC-MAIN-20160723071027-00250-ip-10-185-27-174.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93785 | 1,060 | 3.0625 | 3 |
The beauty of the mind of man has nothing to do with free will or any unique hold that biology has on select laws of physics or chemistry. This beauty lies in the complexity of the chemistry and cell biology of the brain, which enables a select few of us to compose like Mozart and Verdi, and the rest of us to appreciate listening to these compositions. The reality is, not only do we have no more free will than a fly or a bacterium, in actuality we have no more free will than a bowl of sugar. The laws of nature are uniform throughout, and these laws do not accommodate the concept of free will.I mention Coyne's views here. That article yielded this rebuttal:
In his reply (1) to the letter by Anckarsäter (2) commenting on his original article (3), Anthony Cashmore expresses the view that a belief in free will would require at least a molecular model as a justification. However, such a model cannot exist, as I will explain in the following.I agree that free will cannot be scientifically proved or disproved.
The behavior of an agent possessing free will is by definition unpredictable. In contrast to stochastic phenomena, it is not even possible to predict all observable statistical properties of the behavior of such an agent. A molecular model for free will, or in fact any scientific model for free will, would thus have to contain some property labeled as unpredictable.
However, the scientific method that we apply today, which is based on the formulation of hypotheses that are then tested by observation and experiment, cannot accommodate unpredictability. The statement that "property X is unpredictable" cannot be tested by observation and is thus not a scientific hypothesis. Moreover, even if property X itself is observable, its supposed unpredictability makes it impossible to formulate scientific hypotheses about it. As a consequence, free will cannot be integrated into any scientific model.
The only way in which the scientific method could resolve the question of the existence of free will is by showing its nonexistence. This would require a scientific model that permits a complete prediction of human behavior, or at least of all its observable statistical properties. However, as Anckarsäter pointed out (2), we are very far from having such a model.
Cashmore goes on to claim that in the absence of a good reason to believe in free will, we should believe in its nonexistence. A pragmatically minded person would counter that, in the absence of solid evidence to the contrary, we should trust our perception, which tells us that we do have free will. However, neither point of view can claim science as its justification. For a believer in the scientific method, the only coherent point of view is agnosticism about the existence of free will.
I also agree that our perception gives us good reason to believe in free will, even if it cannot be proved.
He says: "A molecular model for free will ... would thus have to contain some property labeled as unpredictable." Yes, that is right, and our best molecular models do indeed have properties labeled as unpredictable. All quantum systems do. Whether that unpredictability has anything to do with free will is an open question. The question may never be solved, for the reasons he gives. Maybe molecules have a tiny bit of free will, and human free will is derived from the collective free will of molecules.
Science *can* prove (i.e. validate the existence of) free-will. It's just that such a science is not concerned exclusively with the _material_ aspects of the perceptually evident world (i.e. the physical world); it also admits for study the aspects covered by non-material phenomena, perceptually evident, such as: consciousness, life, soul, etc.
A bowel of sugar has precious few options. It can sit there until something happens to it.ReplyDelete
That's about the range of motion of a bowel of sugar.
A human has considerably more options available to choose from. For starters, a human could extend the digitus impudicus in the general direction of excuses for scientists who think their narrow expertise is so pervasive, they believe they know things they actually don't.
Inanimate bowels of sugar can't flip near inanimate scientists off. | <urn:uuid:6446b6df-9090-4ed0-8886-ebb655dd48e4> | CC-MAIN-2023-23 | http://blog.darkbuzz.com/2019/05/why-science-cannot-prove-or-disprove.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-23/segments/1685224644574.15/warc/CC-MAIN-20230529010218-20230529040218-00085.warc.gz | en | 0.948897 | 888 | 2.703125 | 3 |
The 18th century buildings along the Loire river in the Île Feydeau neighborhood of Nantes, France, have tilted rather alarmingly because their foundations were laid on sandy ground.
They dramatically illustrate a point that you can observe more subtly in almost any group of buildings or structures: Things settle a bit and get out of alignment over time. Or they weren’t built perfectly in the first place, especially before the laser-beam era.
When it comes to drawing a row of buildings, it is usually preferable to give them a little wobble. To do that, you can construct a whole set of slightly varying vanishing points.
When it's done very subtly, it gives architectural forms a certain naturalness and believability that beats the kind of cold rendering that comes from aligning an entire parallel facade with a single vanishing point.
(And yes! We saw the machines...more on that in a future post.) | <urn:uuid:e5e082db-0057-4319-8fd7-69f9495b0cd1> | CC-MAIN-2017-13 | http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.com/2009/10/wobble.html?showComment=1257153414967 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-13/segments/1490218203515.32/warc/CC-MAIN-20170322213003-00578-ip-10-233-31-227.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948942 | 192 | 2.5625 | 3 |
WHO network identifies two different viruses as possible culprits in respiratory disease
"Eleven laboratories in nine countries have already found two very strong contenders, two viruses which are consistently isolated from many patients from very many different countries," WHO virologist Klaus Stöhr told a press briefing in Geneva, referring to the collaborative network set up by the UN health agency to track the disease. "The research is ongoing. It is not normal that one disease is caused by two viruses."
WHO officials said either one of the viruses, a paramyxo and a corona virus, could solely cause the disease or these two pathogens could have come together to cause the severe outbreak. It is possible both are common viruses, that are simultaneously present but not related in any way, they added.
"The reason why we believe that both pathogens should be given equal attention is that there is consistent finding of both pathogens in individual patients or either of the pathogens in other patients," Mr. Stöhr said, adding that this dual presence complicated the picture from the point of disease control.
Joining Mr. Stöhr at the press briefing was WHO Executive Director of Communicable Diseases, David Heymann, who reiterated that until there are indications to the contrary, "travel is not to be interrupted throughout the world at this point." All available evidence indicates that the disease has so far been contracted through close contact such as with a family member or a hospital worker, he added.
WHO has reported 456 cases in 14 countries, resulting in 17 deaths. The agency said it remains concerned about Hong Kong and China where there is less information about containment activities and their success rate. | <urn:uuid:06902a81-ebf9-4d55-9b58-685d6749a366> | CC-MAIN-2022-49 | https://news.un.org/en/story/2003/03/62992 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-49/segments/1669446708046.99/warc/CC-MAIN-20221126180719-20221126210719-00589.warc.gz | en | 0.969445 | 333 | 2.953125 | 3 |
1、Unlock The Micro World: The handheld child microscope can improve children's interest in exploring the micro world and increase understanding and interest in biological sciences. 2、High-definition Lens: The pocket microscope for kids has environmentally friendly PMMA high-definition optical lens, which has a strong light transmission and anti-leakage design. 3、Magnification Adjustment: The portable microscope for kids can magnify 60 to 120 times. Kids can clearly see individual cells and quickly focus and adjust the magnification through the knob. 4、LED Lighted Microscope: The handheld mini microscope features a LED light. If the light is not enough, you can turn on the LED light source and illuminate the object under observation. 5、Practical Microscope: The mobile phone camera is aligned with the eyepiece, you can record and share the microscopic world under the mini microscope for kids at any time.
Features: 1. The handheld child microscope can improve children's interest in exploring the micro world. 2. The pocket microscope for kids has PMMA high-definition optical lens. 3. The portable microscope for kids can magnify 60 to 120 times. 4. The handheld mini microscope features a LED light. 5. The mini microscope for kids is compatible with the phone camera.
Size: about 4.5 * 3 * 9.6 cm / 1.77 * 1.18 * 3.77 in | <urn:uuid:4703cb17-4a0c-4a60-ae0a-e300f166ea2a> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://sesnimart.com/products/portable-microscope-for-children-60x-to-120x-magnification-with-built-in-led-light | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233506329.15/warc/CC-MAIN-20230922034112-20230922064112-00357.warc.gz | en | 0.826191 | 291 | 2.65625 | 3 |
Be sure to Include ALL of the following information on your graphic organizer.
What part of the country?
What state and what part of the state?
What is the size of the park?
What is the average temperature?
What is the average precipitation?
What kind of precipitation?
Landforms/Bodies of Water/Animal and Plant Life
Describe the different landforms.
Describe the different bodies of water.
What animals and plant life would you expect to see?
What activities would a visitor enjoy?
Have you misplaced your papers? Print out a new form here.
REMEMBER: When taking notes, it is important to put the information in your own words. Use a bulleted list and write in short phrases.
As soon as you record a fact, give credit to that source.
Click in the search box and type the NAME of your national park.
Be careful with spelling!
Then click on the SEARCH button to read the article.
Use the following safe websites to gather information for your project. Be sure to give credit to each source.
Common Core State Standards
CC.2.W.8 Research to Build and Present Knowledge: Recall information from experiences or gather information from provided sources to answer a question.
CC.3.SL.1.d Comprehension and Collaboration: Explain their own ideas and understanding in light of the discussion.
CC.3.W.8 Research to Build and Present Knowledge: Recall information from experiences or gather information from print and digital sources; take brief notes on sources and sort evidence into provided categories.
CC.2.W.2 Text Types and Purposes: Write informative/explanatory texts in which they introduce a topic, use facts and definitions to develop points, and provide a concluding statement or section.
CC.2.W.6 Production and Distribution of Writing: With guidance and support from adults, use a variety of digital tools to produce and publish writing, including in collaboration with peers.
Search the Orchard Farms Catalog to find a book about your national park.
Type in the name of your park and click on "subject".
IF THE BOOK IS AN EBOOK, YOU MAY READ IT ONLINE.
Do you know the state where your park is located? Search for a state book, then look in the book's index for your park.
Here are some national parks books that can be found in the Orchard Farms Library.
Be sure to search the Orchard Farms Catalog for other books. If the book is an EBOOK, you may read it online.
Don't forget to use the print encylopedias located in the reference section of the library.
AASL Standards for the 21st Century Learner
1.1.2 Use prior and background knowledge as context for new learning.1.1.4Find, evaluate, and select appropriate sources to answer questions.1.1.5Evaluate information found in selected sources on the basis of accuracy, validity, appropriateness for needs, importance, and social and cultural context.1.1.6 Read, view, and listen for information presented in any format (e.g., textual, visual, media, digital)in order to make inferences and gather meaning1.1.8 Evaluate information found in selected sources on the basis of accuracy, validity, appropriateness for needs, importance, and social and cultural contex1.3.1 Respect copyright/ intellectual property rights of creators and producers.2.1.2Organize knowledge so that it is useful.
2.2.1Demonstrate flexibility in the use of resources by adapting information strategies to each specific resource and by seeking additional resources when clear conclusions cannot be drawn.
2.4.1Determine how to act on information (accept, reject, modify).
2.4.2Reflect on systematic process, and assess for completeness of investigation.
2.4.3Recognize new knowledge and understanding.
2.4.4Develop directions for future investigations.
3.1.1Conclude an inquiry- based research process by sharing new understandings and reflecting on the learning
3.1.3 Use writing and speaking skills to communicate new understandings effectively.
3.1.4Use technology and other information tools to organize and display knowledge and understanding in ways that others can view, use, and assess.
4.1.5 Connect ideas to own interests and previous knowledge and experience. | <urn:uuid:3b4a92ee-d770-44cf-8953-4352c84d48dd> | CC-MAIN-2019-04 | http://guides.rilinkschools.org/CRF_4nationalparks | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-04/segments/1547583658981.19/warc/CC-MAIN-20190117123059-20190117145059-00636.warc.gz | en | 0.883666 | 935 | 3.78125 | 4 |
The Ageing Titian's Endless Painting (1555-1575) - lectures
Titian was a painter who reflected on topical issues and problems ranging from literature and politics to religion and who was prepared to break away from Venice and from the last Italian "signorie" in order to take on the risk of a European career. A painter experimenting down to his very last breath, he sought to develop a basic artistic vocabulary that did not yet exist, in fact that had not even been dreamt of, in an effort to remain consistent with his own philosophy and to impart narrative dignity to his last works, his last poems in paint. The ageing Titian was man treading a radically independent path in the history of ideas.
Sala Cinema - Palazzo delle Esposizioni
Admission via steps in via Milano 9A
Admission free while places last | <urn:uuid:b5487e71-0da5-4c16-ae63-857eb9e2b528> | CC-MAIN-2015-18 | http://english.palazzoesposizioni.it/events/Evento.aspx?ide=651 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-18/segments/1430455230916.59/warc/CC-MAIN-20150501044030-00017-ip-10-235-10-82.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97444 | 180 | 2.703125 | 3 |
We've all heard the statistics: 2 out of 3 people are overweight, 1 out of 3 people are obese, 2 out of 5 people will develop cancer in their lifetime, 1 out of 2 people will die from heart disease or cancer, and for the first time in recorded history, some people are now projecting that the lifespan of today's children will be less than that of their parents' due of the rise of many chronic diseases and health conditions.
Basic health today generally is the sum of three broad components: what we eat, the toxic burden of our body as a result of the toxins in our environment, and our lifestyle/outlook on life (which includes attitude, exercise, spirituality, etc.). Of these, the easiest to address because we all have to eat is considering our food choices.
When food is cooked, all enzymes, most vitamins and many minerals are destroyed, thus the cooking process removes most of the nutrition from our food before it even reaches our mouth. This fact, along with the rise of big agricultural farming practices which produce more and more food containing less and less nutrition is why so many of our bodies cry for more and more food to make up for the lack of nutrition we get, thus one of the main causes in the rise of obesity.
Eating raw and living foods consists of aligning our bodies back with our natural way of eating. A raw diet consists of fruits, vegetables, live sprouts, sprouted nuts and seeds eaten in their natural (preferably organic) state and prepared foods heated below 112 degrees. 112 degrees is the point where enzymes, the building blocks of life, start to be destroyed by the cooking process.
Some of the many benefits of eating raw include: weight loss with little or no effort, dramatic overall health improvement, huge increase in energy (one of the main reasons being because the raw diet digests so quickly and moves through the body 3 to 4 times quicker than cooked food, much energy is freed up for other needs besides digestion), clear, more vibrant skin, amazing improvements with blood sugar disorders, big benefits relating to healing arthritis, and greater mental clarity and a brighter outlook on life.
In addition, and of great importance, is how the raw diet benefits people suffering from cancer. Cancer cannot survive in an alkaline environment. One of the main benefits of eating raw is we create an alkaline internal environment. The two leading causes of acidifying the body are eating sugar and animal products - thus, our current cancer "epidemic". There are now many raw/living food health retreats that are having astronomically successful cancer cure rates just by putting people on a raw food diet.
In summary, raw vegan food brings our bodies back into balance and allows us to have the health and longevity which is our birthright. As raw consciousness goes mainstream, more and more foods, products, books, restaurants and raw lifestyle choices are coming into being making this an easier and easier transition. And, speaking of transitioning, if it fits your personality or if you have a serious health challenge, jump right in and go 100% raw, if that's what feels right. A more realistic goal might be 80% raw, which is where the phenomenon of the body mounting an immune response in reaction to the cooked food you just ate, ceases and the real "raw magic" begins. Make it all about adding good things in, not about giving anything up. | <urn:uuid:eca5c617-dab8-44e5-be1d-c97fc679af76> | CC-MAIN-2015-11 | http://rawvegansource.com/content/why-raw-11 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-11/segments/1424936464876.43/warc/CC-MAIN-20150226074104-00321-ip-10-28-5-156.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955518 | 692 | 2.84375 | 3 |
This article relies largely or entirely on a single source. (October 2017)
A deposit is the monetary amount that is placed with some entity.
The deposit is a credit for the party (individual or organization) who placed it, and it may be taken back (withdrawn), transferred to some other party, or used for a purchase at a later date.
This financial concept is often used with respect to banks, where deposits are usually their main source of funding.
Types of deposits are:
- Transactional account (checking account or current account, by country), the depositor has the right to use the money at any time, sometimes short notice periods are agreed; also called call deposit or sight deposit
- Term deposit (or time deposit), bear a fixed time and fixed interest rate
- Overnight lending occurs usually from noon to noon, using a special rate. to give as security or in part payment.
- / See also */ | <urn:uuid:1864f646-05ae-4b6e-bac4-148ce97e70f2> | CC-MAIN-2018-30 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deposit_(finance) | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-30/segments/1531676590314.29/warc/CC-MAIN-20180718174111-20180718194111-00526.warc.gz | en | 0.952237 | 194 | 3.46875 | 3 |
Many kennel companies use a laminate as the base material for the kennels. This usually consists of a wood product (MDF, particleboard, or plywood) with a thin layer of plastic or watertight coating. Common coatings include Melamine and Formica©. While laminates work well for kitchen counter tops; we protect them by using cutting boards, coasters, and pads. Dogs and Cats do not know how to use such protective items.
The laminate coatings are usually very thin and can scratch or chip off of the wood. This exposes the wood underneath, allowing moisture to get into the wood fibers. Once inside, the moisture is impossible to get out. Also, the wood tends to swell once it gets wet, causing more cracking and chipping of the laminate material. Humans find ways to protect the laminate. Dogs and cats, however, are not so easy on your kennel system.
Gator Kennels uses a material that is not laminated. Instead, the material is the same throughout. This means that if the material does happen to get scratched, it will still not absorb any moisture. Since the material will not absorb moisture, bacteria and mold will not grow as fast - if at all! | <urn:uuid:76a6eb4d-9ffc-4bca-b2d4-fbef3cf19120> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://www.gatorkennels.com/laminates | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233510942.97/warc/CC-MAIN-20231002001302-20231002031302-00106.warc.gz | en | 0.9295 | 257 | 2.515625 | 3 |
The International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) is to adopt new standards for emissions monitoring with the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA).
The new standards and recommended practises will apply to all UN member states from 1st January 2019. While the industry is already pursuing improved technology and fuel efficiency, the new market-based scheme is designed to account for the remaining emissions that will need to be offset to meet industry targets for reduced emissions.
In 2009, the Airport Council International (ACI), Civil Air Navigation Services Organization (CANSO), International Air Travel Association (IATA) and International Coordinating Council of Aerospace Industries Associations (ICCAIA)—between them representing the international air transport industry—committed to three industry-wide targets: 1.5% year-on-year improvement in aviation fuel efficiency; a cap on net carbon dioxide emissions from 2020; and a 50% reduction in net carbon dioxide emissions by 2050, compared to 2005 levels.
Between 2009 and 2016, the fuel efficiency of airlines improved 10.2%. It’s currently measured at 35.28 litres per 100 revenue tonne-kilometres (RTK), which is an industry metric that quantifies the amount of revenue-generating payload carried (passenger and cargo) in relation to the distance travelled.
According to IATA, each new generation of aircraft is on average 20% more fuel efficient than the models it replaces. Airlines are set to invest around $1.3 trillion in new planes over the next decade.
Under CORSIA, it’s estimated that the aviation industry will have to offset 2.6 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide between 2021 and 2035, by financing carbon reduction initiatives outside of the industry. Until now, investing in such initiatives has largely been voluntary.
All operators with annual CO2 emissions greater than 10,000 tonnes will have to report their emissions on an annual basis.
(Source: IATA [dead link - https://www.iata.org/publications/tracker/june-2018/Pages/corsia.aspx]) | <urn:uuid:092bce8a-355d-4d78-97f7-bcdc0db33c78> | CC-MAIN-2021-31 | https://www.transglobalexpress.co.uk/news/1071/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-31/segments/1627046154163.9/warc/CC-MAIN-20210801061513-20210801091513-00163.warc.gz | en | 0.910522 | 432 | 2.828125 | 3 |
The Peabody visual art program is geared toward developing each K-8 student’s authentic artistic skills, as well as nurturing problem solving, fostering creativity, and learning to see the world as an artist. Peabody seeks to develop a supportive community of artists that helps each other take risks.
Throughout the program, large-concept questions such as “Why do people create art?” “How is the definition of art always changing?” “How do artists get their ideas?” and “How can art affect change in the world?” are discussed. Each project is designed to engage and excite students while developing confidence in their abilities as artists. Students also focus on developing an original voice as an artist.
In Kindergarten, students begin with story-based art projects that move quickly and encourage creativity. As students progress through the elementary program, they are introduced to a variety of obscure, contemporary, and well-known artists while studying the basics of line, color, shape and form, texture, space, value, balance and symmetry, emphasis, movement, unity and contrast. Classes move fluidly between projects that encourage representational skill building as well as creativity in abstraction.
As students enter middle school, they enter the choice-based Arts & Enrichment program, which is designed to build off the foundation learned in elementary classes to delve deep into specific mediums. Students learn to tell their stories in classes such as Sculpture, Graphic Design, Plein Air Painting, Murals, Painting, Representational Drawing, Printmaking, and Claymation. The Peabody art program engages students while building art skills, developing critical thinking, and fostering a love for art.
The PreK-5 Drama program at Peabody is designed to create a safe and fun environment where students feel inspired to take risks and tackle challenging and ambitious material. Students explore stories, theater history, and issues in the world around them while learning theatrical techniques in acting, playwriting, directing, and design elements. Students work on a series of projects, over which they gradually assume more responsibility as they grow in confidence and develop their imaginations and skills in group work.
Students in grades K-1 take part in small-scale performances, while students in grades 2-5 have the opportunity to take part in the main school production. Middle School students take Drama as part of Peabody’s Arts & Enrichment program, and may choose from classes such as Musical Theater, Stage Design, Improv, and Scripted Performance.
In grades PreK-5, Peabody students experience music through listening, playing, singing and moving. Elementary music at Peabody is based on a learning-through-doing model influenced by an Orff educational approach. The K-4 classes sing and play percussion, xylophones, and drums. Music exposure through in-class listening and discussion is another staple of the PreK-5 music curriculum. Students in grades 2-5 also learn basic chords, melodies, scales, and repertoire on ukulele. By the end of 5th grade all Peabody musicians have a strong foundation in rhythm, melody, song form, music notation, and ensemble playing.
In middle school the students have a wide variety of options to choose from in order to meet their musical requirement. They may take a more traditional route through ensemble classes such as Strings, Band, or Chorus, or they may choose from several Music Enrichment classes including Songwriting, Mixed Ensemble, Sound Recording & Production, and Percussion Ensemble.
Each year the music program puts on the K-5 Talent Show in the winter and the Middle School Cabaret in the spring. These performance opportunities afford fans a glimpse into the Peabody musical process. In the past, middle school students have traveled to Busch Gardens and Kings Dominion to compete against regional music groups, and are also given opportunities to perform throughout the community of Charlottesville as part of their service learning. | <urn:uuid:3ef74dbf-07ef-4afc-b63d-bfd41b31d342> | CC-MAIN-2020-05 | https://peabodyschool.org/academics/fine-arts/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-05/segments/1579250624328.55/warc/CC-MAIN-20200124161014-20200124190014-00118.warc.gz | en | 0.955082 | 822 | 3.046875 | 3 |
Texas: Government, Politics, and Higher Education
The present constitution of Texas was adopted in 1876, replacing the
carpetbag constitution of 1869. The state's executive branch is headed by a governor elected for a four-year term. Democrat Ann Richards , elected governor in 1990, was defeated for reelection in 1994 by Republican George W. Bush ; Bush won reelection in 1998. After Bush was elected president of the United States, Lt. Gov. Rick Perry succeeded him as governor (Dec., 2000) and was elected to the office in 2002, 2006, and 2010. In 2014, Republican Greg Abbott was elected governor. The state's legislature has a senate with 31 members and a house with 150 representatives. The state elects 2 senators and 36 representatives to the U.S. Congress and has 38 electoral votes. Texas politics were dominated by Democrats from the end of Reconstruction into the 1960s, but Republicans achieved parity in the 1990s and then dominance.
Among the many institutions of higher learning in Texas are the Univ. of Texas, mainly at Austin, but with large branches at Arlington, El Paso, and the Dallas suburb of Richardson; Baylor Univ., at Waco; East Texas State Univ., at Commerce; Univ. of North Texas, at Denton; Rice Univ., at Houston; Southern Methodist Univ., at Dallas; Texas A&M Univ., at College Station; Texas Arts and Industries Univ., at Kingsville; Texas Christian Univ., at Fort Worth; and Texas Southern Univ. and the Univ. of Houston, both at Houston.
- Facts and Figures
- Government, Politics, and Higher Education
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2012, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
See more Encyclopedia articles on: U.S. Political Geography | <urn:uuid:32453963-550e-4c96-bca5-1d663ad76aa5> | CC-MAIN-2019-04 | https://www.infoplease.com/encyclopedia/places/north-america/us/texas/government-politics-and-higher-education | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-04/segments/1547583795042.29/warc/CC-MAIN-20190121152218-20190121174218-00285.warc.gz | en | 0.95495 | 365 | 3.171875 | 3 |
The latest news from academia, regulators
research labs and other things of interest
Posted: January 15, 2007
Self-cleaning Lotus plastic
(Nanowerk News) A plastic cup that can be reused without washing it, simply because contamination has no chance to stick to the surface? A self-cleaning surface like that of the leaf of a Lotus plant is ideal for many applications and consumer products. These ideal natural properties can be imitated quite well now. Structuring a plastic or other surface is possible by using an ultra fast femtosecond laser. PhD student Max Groenendijk of the Applied Laser Technology Group of the University of Twente presents remarkable results with this new technique.
The secret of the Lotus leaf can be found in numerous tiny pillars with a wax layer on top. Water drops are lifted by these pillars, get into a spherical shape and can simply not cover the surface. Dirt gets no chance to stick to the surface via water. The spherical drops roll off and take dirt particles with the, Again, nature proves to be a source of inspiration for the laser scientists of the University of Twente: they aimed at creating similar surfaces, but without having to use wax. They succeeded in that using an ultra fast femtosecond laser. The light pulses are so short that they can be seen as light ‘bullets’ with which the surface is bombed.
A polymer surface that has been treated by using structured mold shows the pillars with their ripple structure. (Image: University of Twente)
Max Groenendijk applies the laser in two separate steps. During the first step, the surface gets a fine ripple structure. This is caused by a special self organizing effect that works for almost all kinds of surfaces. Whenever the laser removes some material, a pattern of ripples is formed at the bottom. It is possible to influence this pattern with parameters like speed, intensity and polarization.
The second step is writing a pattern of perpendicular lines. What remains is an array of pillars. These pillars then already have the fine pattern caused by the first step. This double structure replaces the need to have wax on the pillars, and makes the surface highly hydrophobic. Treating surfaces directly would be too expensive, but by using a mold, series can be produced in an economic and easy way.
Even for materials that are quite hydrophobic by themselves, the structure can improve the properties drastically, Groenendijk concludes. Unlike in the unstructured, smooth situation, where droplets can still spread out a little, the structured surface gives the spherical drops known from the Lotus plant.
The ‘look and feel’ of the material also changes, especially the ‘feel’: a surface that has been treated, feels like silk. This could be an added unique selling point, especially for trendy products.
A droplet on a Lotus-treated surface (left) and a droplet on a smoot, but nevertheless hydrofobic surface. (Image: University of Twente)
Structuring or applying a coating
To mimic the Lotus effect, several alternatives are available as well. It is possible to use a coating to make materials self cleaning, but an unstructured coating will never be as good as the new laser technique. Structured coatings could be an alternative, but applying a coating to a structured surface is another one Groenendijk is currently investigating, together with scientists of the Membrane Technology group. Both groups are part of the Institute for Mechanics, Processes and Control Twente (IMPACT) of the University of Twente.
Source: University of Twente
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Check out these other trending stories on Nanowerk: | <urn:uuid:fbe04f22-2069-44f6-a2d6-59a82b7e1f2e> | CC-MAIN-2015-18 | http://www.nanowerk.com/news/newsid=1253.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-18/segments/1429246633512.41/warc/CC-MAIN-20150417045713-00109-ip-10-235-10-82.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.927194 | 776 | 3.40625 | 3 |
As time moved on the lowly toothpick began to move up in the world. Bronze toothpicks (ouch) have been found as burial objects in some prehistoric graves in Italy and Switzerland. The Romans produced fancy examples in silver and mastic wood. The fabulously decadent Roman Emperor Nero once entered a banquet hall with a sporty silver toothpick lodged in his mouth, causing quite a stir.
By the time the 17th century rolled around the toothpick had reached its zenith as a luxury item. Made from precious metals set with gemstones they were artfully stylized and enameled for the stylish set. The less fortunate made do with porcupine quills or twigs as they had for centuries.
The toothpick we know today came about as the result of the industrial revolution, and the invention of the automatic toothpick making machine by Charles Forster. The Forster style machines are still in use today; one log will produce a million toothpicks! Birch logs are stripped into thin veneers which are cut into strips and finally stamped into the little objects we all know, made from solid birch, and rounded on both ends.
The Cinnamon toothpick was born in 1949, made by drugstore owner August T. Baden as treats for the neighborhood children. They caught on in the 50's and by the 60's they were all the rage. Mr. Baden made millions of toothpicks until he retired in the early '90s. | <urn:uuid:0d7f11d5-b7e1-4bc9-ae0e-a02049b6e474> | CC-MAIN-2015-14 | http://www.nucleartoothpicks.com/historyoftoothpicks.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-14/segments/1427131303523.19/warc/CC-MAIN-20150323172143-00064-ip-10-168-14-71.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.98483 | 302 | 2.671875 | 3 |
photo by Vivek Kumar via Unsplash
Balancing Discipline with Love
August 24, 2020 | by colleen thompson, guest contributor
The matter of discipline is often viewed as harsh treatment or spanking. However, let us examine discipline in a broader sense. The Oxford Pocket Dictionary defines discipline as orderly and obedient behavior. It is also described as training that produces obedience and self-control as well as, punishment given to correct a person.
Since my topic is Balancing Discipline with Love, I would rather focus on training, because if discipline is properly executed, punishment would not be necessary. Discipline is an essential component of Parenting. Children need training in order to display obedient and controlled behavior. Training however, should be executed in a firm yet loving manner.
Discipline is also defined as a branch of instruction or learning. Let us instruct our children in love; they in turn will respond more positively. Sometimes our children display negative behavior which may lead to disappointment and anger. In times like these we need to practice self-control. When all those emotions start to rise it’s easy to snap, but we are called on to go deep and find the core, which is love.
Love is the standard which should be used to guide positive parenting. J. Hampton Keathley, III in his writings: Biblical Foundation for Child Training shared the following:
- Love without discipline produces spoiled children
- Discipline without love produces discouragement and rebellion
- Teaching and discipline without example produce unbelief and rebellion, causing mixed signals
- Example without teaching produce instability and insecurity.
Our children need to feel a sense of balance and security which will lead to trust. They want to feel loved. I invite you to read Psalm 103: 8-14 and apply principles.
Let all parents heed the call of Keathley, III as we balance discipline with love. “Everything that parents do in the training of their children must be done in an atmosphere of love.”
Food for Thought
- When a child is allowed to do absolutely as he/she pleases, it will not be long until nothing pleases him/her. - Anonymous
- Don’t handicap your children by making their lives easy. – Robert A. Heinlein | <urn:uuid:3c43ba5e-8179-4292-a1b9-fd11a32c129e> | CC-MAIN-2020-40 | https://simplyfamilymagazine.com/balancing-discipline-with-love | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-40/segments/1600400187354.1/warc/CC-MAIN-20200918061627-20200918091627-00574.warc.gz | en | 0.949082 | 465 | 3 | 3 |
Portugal is the westernmost country in Europe. It is a part of the Iberian Peninsula, along with Spain.
According to a tale told by Shari, Gathelus arrived in Portugal in ancient times along with his wife Scota, four sons, and the Stone of Destiny. During their time in Portugal, Gathelus and Scota had four more sons. Gathelus eventually died and was laid to rest in a stone sarcophagus. Scota and her sons left Portugal soon after, taking the Stone of Destiny with them.
The name Portugal supposedly derives from the name "Port of Gathelus".
Real World Background
- Portugal at Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia | <urn:uuid:4a865866-9ff5-4426-aa42-f8915270df68> | CC-MAIN-2024-10 | https://gargwiki.net/Portugal | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2024-10/segments/1707947476396.49/warc/CC-MAIN-20240303142747-20240303172747-00707.warc.gz | en | 0.952667 | 141 | 2.6875 | 3 |
Introduction to Psychological Science: Integrating Behavioral, Neuroscience and Evolutionary Perspectives - William J. Ray 2021
✵ 6.1 Discuss the different levels of consciousness, including attention and awareness.
✵ 6.2 Describe what happens when we sleep and dream.
✵ 6.3 Describe the techniques of hypnosis and meditation.
✵ 6.4 Discuss the three broad categories of psychoactive substances: depressants, stimulants, and hallucinogens
Alan Turing (1912—1954) was an English mathematician who was involved in developing forerunners to the modern computer and their algorithms. He was also involved in breaking the code of the German Enigma machine during World War II. In his work he confronted the question of artificial intelligence (AI) and human thinking. That is, can a machine think? One question that grew out of this work was how do you know if the voice you are talking with on your cell phone has consciousness? And, of course, what does it mean to be conscious? Turing’s life was depicted in the 2014 movie The Imitation Game.
In Turing’s 1950 paper, he developed a game called the imitation game (Turing, 1950). It is played with three people—a man, a woman, and an interrogator who may be of either gender. The interrogator stays in a room apart from the other two. The object of the game for the interrogator is to determine which of the other two is the man and which is the woman. He knows them by labels X and Y, and at the end of the game he says either, “X is a man and Y is a woman” or “X is a woman and Y is a man.” The interrogator is allowed to put questions to the two. Since the responses are presented via a computer screen and the people are not required to tell the truth, it gave insight into the logic of decision making. What questions would you ask to determine gender?
Alan Turing modified this game to be a person and a computer, and the interrogator had to decide which is which. You could ask any questions you wished to decide which was human and which was computer. Neither had to tell the truth. How would you determine whether the messages you were getting on your computer were from a human or a machine? Are there distinct factors that would help you determine human consciousness from machine responses?
Most people think they understand what consciousness is, but few people can actually define it specifically. Some associate it with the continuous thoughts and feelings that we experience throughout the day. William James referred to this as the stream of consciousness. Like a stream, our ongoing experiences of what we think and feel continue with us always. Psychologists define consciousness as being aware and knowing that you are involved in a particular event.
We also seek ways to modify our consciousness. You listen to certain music because you like the feelings it gives you. You eat certain foods for the feeling of comfort and the memories associated with such meals. Reading a book or watching videos also can change our consciousness. Likewise, drinking coffee or alcohol changes our state of being. You may even seek to reduce your level of consciousness as when you take a nap. At times we may perform yoga or meditation as a way to better experience our internal processes.
A change in the scientific study of consciousness began with the advent of a scientific psychology. Individuals such as William James began to ask questions concerning the function of consciousness rather than its physical properties. James placed consciousness within an evolutionary perspective and sought to describe its function. As such, consciousness was seen as a process that developed as an adaptive mechanism over our evolutionary history that gave benefits to human functioning.
Freud described three types of consciousness, which we will discuss in greater detail in the chapter on personality. One type is what we are aware of, which is generally referred to as conscious awareness. There is also information such as your telephone number that at any moment you could bring into consciousness. Freud referred to this as latent consciousness or pre-consciousness. The third type of consciousness contains information we are not aware of and find difficult to bring into consciousness. However, this state, referred to as unconscious processes, according to Freud can still influence our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. If, for example, you were in an automobile accident as a child, you might not remember this event but feel anxious or fearful when you ride in certain types of cars.
More recently, with the development of neuroscience techniques for understanding brain function, consciousness has become a more popular topic of scientific study. For example, Francis Crick (whom you met previously for his discovery of the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA)) and his colleague Christof Koch suggested that the way to understand consciousness is to study the neural correlates of consciousness (Crick & Koch, 2003). This has led to a variety of approaches (Dehaene, 2014; Hameroff & Penrose, 2014; Koch & Greenfield, 2007).
These approaches range from looking at particular types of cells in the brain to the manner in which neural networks can create emerging processes. The first approach seeks to find cells or areas in the brain that once activated lead to the experience of consciousness. This makes consciousness a discrete phenomenon related to specific brain areas. The second approach, as previously described by Hughlings Jackson in the 1800s, spoke of consciousness as a process that emerges from the activity of the brain. That is, consciousness is not the result of a specific brain cell being activated but the result of the entire brain working together. At this point, there is no definite answer as to the nature of consciousness. However, the neural correlates of consciousness continue to be studied (Demertzi et al., 2019; Hahn et al., 2021).
As noted, one aspect of consciousness from an evolutionary perspective is its functional nature. That is, what advantages does it give us? Not all organisms have the same experience of consciousness as do humans. However, like the Turing problem, it is difficult to know what consciousness in non-human animals is like. From an evolutionary perspective, William James saw consciousness as related to selective attention. Attention allows us to focus and prioritize our efforts. As such, there is survival value. We can know where it is safe and where it is dangerous. We can remember the foods that taste good to us as well as those that make us sick. This helps ensure our survival. Additionally, to be able to communicate this information to others helps them survive. This type of sociality also helps us establish a culture.
Consciousness and Attention
In considering consciousness and attention, we realize we are often not totally aware of what we are doing. As we drive on a long trip on the highway, we can get lost in our thoughts. Quite often on long trips, many people let their mind wander and daydream. We let some other part of ourselves take over and do the driving. Are we unconscious at that point? Of course not! If there is a problem, you quickly return to driving. It is almost as if you were unconscious but you were still able to drive the car successfully.
Often at a party we pay attention to those around us and ignore the conversations of others in the room. However, if you were to hear your name mentioned across the room, your attention would go directly to that area. This has been referred to as the cocktail party effect. What these experiences tell us is that we have different systems of consciousness and awareness for living life and making decisions. That is, whether at a party or driving, we are able to monitor other aspects of the environment without being aware of it.
Since having someone space out is not easy to accomplish in a research setting, scientists have sought other situations, mainly visual processes, to study. This allows for more careful scientific control over the setting. One example of such a stimulus is shown in Figure 6-1. If you focus on the “+” the pink dots will begin to disappear.
Figure 6-1 Troxler fading.
What this type of stimulus allows researchers to do is to ask what the underlying brain response is when the dots are in conscious awareness and when they are not. Many different researchers used visual awareness as a way to initially study consciousness in a scientific manner (Crick & Koch, 2003).
Another experimental approach is to use what is referred to as backward masking. The basic procedure is to show a stimulus such as a number on the computer screen quickly. This number could be followed by a blank screen. Generally, the person will say that she saw the number. However, if rather than a blank screen, a series of other stimuli such as letters are presented in the same area as the number, strange as it seems, the person will not report seeing the number.
A critical factor in determining whether the stimulus is seen is how soon after the number is presented the letters are presented. If the time between the number and the letters is over about one-quarter of a second, the person will report seeing the number. However, if the letters are presented before about one-quarter of a second, the person will not be aware of the number. Further, this is an all-or-none effect. Visual awareness does not increase slightly as the time between the number and the letters is increased. When the delay reaches a critical duration, the number is seen. When the delay is less than that, it is not seen.
Stanislas Dehaene and his colleagues at Collège de France in Paris have used the backward-masking approach to ask what happens in the brain when you see the number versus when you do not see it (Dehaene, 2014; Dehaene, Lau, & Kouider, 2017). Using EEG evoked potentials, these researchers showed that when the person is aware of the number, a particular EEG wave form, the P3, is seen. One important area of the brain that showed this EEG change was the prefrontal cortex. Thus, your brain shows a different EEG response with awareness of the stimulus.
Another type of task used to study conscious awareness is a stimulus in which the object seems to “pop out” once it is seen. A number of researchers have become interested in this process (for example, Singer, 2009; Singer & Gray, 1995; Tallon-Baudry & Bertrand, 1999). For example, when you look at the image in Figure 6-2, you may not initially see the Dalmatian dog against the black and white background. When you do see it, there is a subjective experience of having the image “pop-out.” Associated with this perception is a burst of EEG gamma activity. EEG gamma is associated with perception, and when that perception is experienced in conscious awareness, there is enhanced gamma band activity.
Figure 6-2 Dalmatian dog.
Overall, research shows sudden EEG changes in the brain to be associated with conscious awareness. These include evoked potential changes and EEG gamma band activity. In addition, during periods of conscious awareness, the brain forms connections or networks across more areas of the cortex than when conscious awareness is not present. That is, during conscious awareness, more areas of the brain are communicating with one another.
As you go through the day, your brain is solving problems, making expectations, and planning what to do next. In order to do this, different areas in our brain work on their own and in connection with other areas. Of course, our experience is that there is only one of us thinking and feeling. Somewhat amazing, isn’t it. Further, there is no single brain area related to consciousness (Dehaene, 2014; Dehaene, Lau, & Kouider, 2017). As you will see in this chapter, consciousness is the result of the interactions among a number of neural networks in our brain.
Types of Awareness
In terms of attention, we can be aware of something. This is the basic level. We have sensations and create perceptions. For example, we can be aware of a cat. We can know it is raining. We can even be aware of images in our dreams. Sometimes we have a sense of how our self is involved while other times, like watching a movie, our self seems not to be part of our attention.
There is also another level of awareness that is important for humans, which is referred to as meta-awareness. That is, we can be aware of our awareness. I can experience myself watching something else. In conversations, meta-awareness lets us experience ourselves talking as well as having awareness of the other person at the same time. As such we use our awareness systems as a way to plan and direct our actions and cooperate with others. As you will see in this chapter, some individuals are even able to experience themselves having a dream and make changes to it.
As humans we not only have awareness of our awareness but also cognition about cognition or metacognition (Shea, Boldt, Bang, Yeung, Heyes, & Frith, 2014). Nicholas Shea and his colleagues suggest that metacognition is composed of two systems. The first metacognition system functions out of awareness, whereas the second system is able to accomplish a richer number of tasks. System one works quicker and in parallel, whereas system two performs action in a serial form. In playing a video game, system one tells us when we have made a mistake. System two, on the other hand, helps us learn to detect the feelings associated with these errors. It also helps us decide whether someone we are talking with is telling us the truth. We put together a number of clues in terms of their voice, posture, facial expressions, and so forth to make such a judgment. Researchers have shown that brain structure is related to individual differences in making these judgments before this information comes into awareness (Getov, Kanai, Bahrami, & Rees, 2015).
Levels of Consciousness
Not only has consciousness been discussed in terms of what we are aware of, but also our level of awareness. What a given individual is aware of is often seen as a local state, whereas sleep, coma, and wakefulness are seen as global states (Bayne, Hohwy, & Owen, 2016; Fazekas & Overgaard, 2016). Global states are typically measured in terms of cognitive, behavioral, and physiological measures such as eye movement and EEG during sleep. The basic question is how well a person is connected with his or her environment. From this perspective, we speak of levels of consciousness. These levels can be discussed in terms of coma, vegetative state, and wakefulness and awareness (Gosseries, Di, Laureys, & Boly, 2014). Coma typically is the result of stroke, loss of oxygen, or trauma to the head. Coma is characterized by a lack of wakefulness and awareness. A vegetative state is defined as wakefulness without signs of awareness (Laureys, 2005). From this perspective, consciousness can be described in terms of wakefulness and awareness. Between coma and normal consciousness, there is a continuum in which a person varies in terms of awareness and the ability to communicate.
A common procedure that is designed to change the level of a person’s consciousness is the use of anesthesia. In fact, anesthesia changed the nature of medical care and operations in the 1900s. Both Sigmund Freud and William James experimented with different types of anesthesia. At times, they even tested the drugs on themselves.
Today, anesthesia allows for careful changes in a person’s level of consciousness. This has allowed researchers to monitor the return to consciousness as anesthesia is withdrawn from the person. Typically, as the effects of anesthesia wear off, the person begins to respond to sensory processes such as hearing someone’s voice and simple motor processes such as opening her eyes. Combining the ability to control anesthesia with current brain-imaging techniques has opened up new ways to study levels of consciousness.
One study in Finland examined young healthy adults who volunteered to be administered anesthesia (Långsjö et al., 2012). The particular anesthesia used creates a state similar to sleep in that the person can be aroused by touching or hearing someone’s voice without changing the level induced by the drug. Brain activity in terms of blood flow was determined by PET (positron emission tomography).
What these researchers found was that the initial return to consciousness took place in the more evolutionarily primitive areas of the brain. That is, the brain stem, thalamus, hypothalamus, and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) were the initial areas to respond. There were no changes in the neocortex.
1. Most people think they understand what consciousness is, but few people can actually define it specifically. What are three different approaches historically that people have taken to try to study consciousness?
2. We talk about a basic level of awareness when we have sensations and create perceptions about an external or internal event. How do the concepts of meta-awareness and metacognition build on that basic level?
3. What are the three levels of awareness, and what are the distinctive differences between them?
4. What has the discovery of anesthesia taught us about how to describe the levels of consciousness and what happens as we move from one level to another?
Variations in Consciousness
As noted, when we look at an object, we become conscious of what it is. However, it generally takes about a half second before our brain gives us the experience of being aware of what is there. During this time, a large number of brain networks involving billons of neurons process the information. When we shift our attention to something else, the original object leaves our consciousness. In this manner, attention and consciousness are closely related in our everyday language. Although we think of consciousness being related to selective attention, some researchers have suggested that these are two separate brain processes (Koch & Tsuchiya, 2007). Part of their argument is that it is possible to attend to an object without its being consciously perceived. Let us now consider two different long-term conditions in which a person is able to process information without being aware of it—blindsight and being a split-brain individual.
Normal awareness depends on information being passed in both directions between a number of areas of the brain (Paller & Suzuki, 2014). Of course, if there is damage to any of these areas, normal awareness is disrupted. One example of this is referred to as blindsight (Weiskrantz, 1996). Blindsight occurs when there is damage to the primary visual cortex (V1). Although there is damage to the visual cortex, there are still visual pathways going to the subcortical areas. When individuals with this condition are asked what they see, they report seeing nothing.
However, if you were to ask them if they could detect movement from a cursor on a computer screen, for example, they will report seeing nothing but can correctly report the movement. They claim they just “guessed.” Sometimes, they describe a sensation in a nonvisual realm such as a pinprick (Richards, 1973). Further, individuals who show blindsight are also able to discriminate different colors although they say they do not see them (Silvanto, Cowey, & Walsh, 2008). They also can detect emotions in another person’s face (de Gelder, 2010). Thus, the person has no conscious awareness of his or her perceptions but can accurately describe motion, discriminate color, and react to emotions.
One amazing demonstration involving a person who experiences blindsight was created by Beatrice de Gelder and her colleagues (de Gelder, 2010). They studied a doctor who had a number of strokes that left his primary visual area (V1) not functioning correctly in both hemispheres. This person who is referred to in the scientific literature as T.N. is completely blind. What de Gelder did was to fill a corridor with a number of objects. However, T.N. was told that the hallway was empty and that he would not need his cane. T.N. then began to walk down the hallway. Surprisingly, as he walks, he avoids the objects and is able to walk down the hall without walking into them. This demonstration can be seen on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4x0HXC59Huw). Visual information is still gathered and routed to other parts of the brain, allowing this person to see without seeing.
Another situation in which an individual can process information outside of awareness was first noted in the middle of the last century. In the 1960s and 1970s, an operation was performed to reduce the frequency of uncontrollable epileptic seizures. These operations were performed on individuals who had had severe epilepsy for a number of years and were typically unable to work. The initial operations cut the fiber tract—the corpus callosum—that connects the left and right hemispheres of the brain. By performing this operation, epileptic seizures could not spread over the entire brain. These patients came to be referred to as split-brain patients. Overall, following the operation, these patients showed a drastic reduction in seizures. Surprisingly, cutting the corpus callosum (which contains some 200 million nerve fibers) did not appear to cause any changes in the everyday behavior or experience of these patients.
Before continuing with split-brain patients, let’s consider some basics of brain function. These basics were originally described by Hughlings Jackson in the 1800s. He noted that the left and right hemispheres of the human brain are specialized for different tasks. The left hemisphere is involved in language processing and other serial processes. The right hemisphere processes spatial tasks and other global processes. This is referred to as hemispheric specialization.
Each of your eyes receives information in terms of what you see in front of you. If you imagine a line down the middle of what you see, your image could be divided into a left and a right image. If you don’t move your eyes, what is in the left image (left visual field) goes to the right visual areas at the back of the brain. What is in the right visual field goes to left visual areas (see Figure 6-5). Since it takes a small amount of time to move your eyes, if visual information is presented in less than one-fifth of a second, it initially goes to just one hemisphere. This is faster than anyone’s ability to make an eye movement, which could result in the information going to both hemispheres.
Normally, the left and right hemispheres are able to share information by transferring it through the corpus callosum. However, in the case of the split-brain patients the corpus callosum had been cut. Thus, information could not be transferred from one side to the other.
However, with more extensive experimental procedures, a different picture emerged with the split-brain patient. This work was initially performed by Roger Sperry and his colleagues (see Springer & Deutsch, 1998 for an overview).
Figure 6-3 Brain cut in half front to back.
What Roger Sperry and his colleagues found was that when information was presented to the left hemisphere of the split-brain patients, they reported seeing it and could identify it verbally. If the information was presented to the right hemisphere, the patient would say he saw nothing. However, somewhat more amazing, if asked to point to a series of objects with the left hand, which is controlled by the right hemisphere, he was able to do it correctly. This led Sperry to suggest that split-brain patients contained the equivalent of two minds, each with its own separate consciousness. However, the experience of awareness was connected with the left hemisphere. Although when information was presented to the right hemisphere the person was able to point correctly, like the blindsight person, he did not experience it in his awareness.
Figure 6-4 Parts of normal human brain. Source: Washington University.
Figure 6-5 Left and right visual fields and visual areas.
A related difference between the two hemispheres is whether information is presented as a whole (as would be the case in visual scenes) or made up of parts (as would be the case with language where one word follows another). It is also possible to create images such as Figure 6-6 in which one can focus on the details such as the “S” that makes up the “H” or the “H” itself as a whole. If this image is presented to the left hemisphere of a person with the corpus callosum split, she will say she saw “S.” However, if it is presented to the right hemisphere, she will see the “H.” Thus, the right hemisphere processed in terms of wholes, whereas the left hemisphere processed in terms of individual parts.
Figure 6-6 Large H made up of small Ss.
An intriguing example of the whole versus part dichotomy was performed by Michael Gazzaniga with a split-brain patient he had been following. The patient was shown art by the Italian artist Giuseppe Arcimboldo (c.1530—1593). What Arcimboldo did was to create faces by putting together images of fruit and vegetables (https://www.wikiart.org/en/Search/Giuseppe%20Arcimboldo). When the split-brain person was shown one of these pictures, the person would see a face if the picture was shown to the right hemisphere. However, he would see individual pieces of fruits or vegetables if the same picture was shown to the left hemisphere.
A particularly intriguing outcome of these two minds is the manner in which the conscious verbal left hemisphere appears to fill in gaps in information. That is, if the right hemisphere performed an action out of awareness of the left hemisphere, the person using his left hemisphere would create a story to explain the action. In this research, a snow scene was flashed to the right hemisphere of the patient and a chicken claw to the left hemisphere. The split-brain patient was then shown the pictures presented in Figure 6-7.
Figure 6-7 Split-brain patient creates a story on what he sees.
The person was then asked to point with each hand to an image that was related to what had been seen. The right hand, which is controlled by the left hemisphere, pointed to a chicken. The left hand, which is controlled by the right hemisphere, pointed to a shovel, which would be used to shovel snow. The person was able to observe where each hand pointed, although the verbal left side would not have been aware of seeing the snow scene since it went to the right hemisphere. When asked why he pointed to where he did, his verbal response from the left hemisphere was, “I saw a claw and I picked a chicken, and you have to clean out the chicken shed with a shovel” (Gazzaniga & LeDoux. 1978).
How should we understand this? Gazzaniga and LeDoux suggest that the left hemisphere acts as an interpreter of action and creates views of one’s behavior that fits a consistent scheme. What is more is that these researchers suggest it is not just split-brain patients that do this but all humans. That is to say, it is part of our nature to fill in the gaps and create explanations for our actions. It is assumed that filling in the gaps is the resultant of neural network integration that integrates information from a variety of cortical areas.
Overall, in the case of humans, the resulting specialization is for spatial processing in the right hemisphere and language processing in the left. An intriguing question raised by the split-brain research is how language and awareness became associated with each other. One could also ask the opposite question of why spatial processing, at least in the split-brain patient, appears to exist independent of conscious awareness. We might also speculate that since language is associated with conscious awareness, it came at a later stage in our evolutionary process. As you will see throughout this book, all humans and not just those with the split-brain operation constantly process information outside of normal awareness.
Although most of us have not experienced blindsight or the results of a split-brain operation, we have seen situations in which stimuli disappear from our experience. A simple one is the blind spot in our eye that you learned about in the chapter on perception. Our brain fills in what is missing. Also, when we focus on one aspect of a situation, we miss others. Numerous studies have shown that if you pay attention to texting on your phone, you lose awareness of what is going on around you. This is, of course, a problem if you are driving.
One of the most famous studies concerning environmental awareness was performed by Daniel Simons and his colleagues (see Chabris & Simons, 2010 for an overview). This phenomenon is referred to as the invisible gorilla (http://www.theinvisiblegorilla.com/gorilla_experiment.html). In the video you are asked to watch six people pass a basketball back and forth. Three of the people have white shirts and three have black shirts. Your job is to count the number of passes made by the people in the white shirts. At one point in the video, a gorilla walks into the scene, faces the camera and thumps its chest, and then leaves. In all, the gorilla is in view for 9 seconds. Surprisingly, when this study was performed at Harvard University, about half of the participants reported not seeing the gorilla.
The World Is Your Laboratory—Out-of-Body Experiences
Throughout history individuals have described the feeling of being out of their body. This has been associated with spiritual experiences and other exceptional situations. Some individuals who experience trauma such as sexual assault also report out-of-body experiences in which they report watching the assault happen to them.
Often the description is one of the person being above the situation and looking down upon what is happening. Typically, three characteristics are present with out-of-body experiences. The first is the sense of self being outside of one’s body. The second is the experience of seeing the world from above. And third, the experience of seeing one’s own body.
Many people are skeptical and think that any talk of out-of-body experiences is crazy. They dismiss the idea that our sense of self can be experienced other than within our bodies (Blanke & Arzy, 2005). Although out-of-body experiences have been associated with clinical problems such as epilepsy, it has been reported by 10% of healthy populations. More recently, researchers have begun to explore the nature of this phenomenon scientifically (Blanke, Landis, Spinelli, & Seeck, 2004).
Our normal experience of our body is the result of an integration of information related to our position in space, our balance, what we view, and the internal feedback from our body. Normally, we have a sense of ourselves based on this information. In terms of our brain, the area between the frontal and temporal lobes, referred to as temporoparietal junction (TPJ) is associated with our location in space from a first-person perspective (Ionta, Martuzzi, Salomon, & Blanke, 2014). Current theory suggests that it is a lack of integration related to this information that produces the out-of-body experience.
One initial approach to understanding out-of-body experiences was to examine individuals with brain damage who reported having the experience of being outside of their body (Blanke & Arzy, 2005). Brain-imaging techniques showed that the location of the lesions or damage in these patients also was at the junction of the temporal and parietal lobes, or TPJ.
Amazingly, Olaf Blanke and his colleagues in Switzerland were able to produce out-of-the body experiences by electrical stimulation (Blanke, Landis, Spinelli, & Seeck, 2002). The person involved was a 43-year-old women who had epilepsy. During operations for epilepsy, the person remains conscious as the surgeon stimulates different areas of the brain to determine its relation to function so as not to operate in an area of critical importance such as language. As shown in the figure, stimulation of different areas of the brain results in different experiences. At one point, when the surgeon stimulated the areas shown in yellow, the woman said that she felt like she was falling or growing lighter. Then she said, “I see myself lying in bed, from above.” All this, just from stimulating an area in the brain.
In what is the first of its kind, a 24-year-old reported that she could produce an out-of-body experience in herself. In fact, she thought everyone could. She first had these experiences as a child when required to take a nap that she did not want to do. At this time, she discovered that she could elicit the experience of moving above her body. She later used these out-of-body experiences to help her move into sleep. Andra Smith and Claude Messier at the University of Ottawa studied this person using fMRI. They found a number of brain areas activated during the self-induced out-of-body experiences (Smith & Messier, 2014). These included areas overlapping the TPJ, the cerebellum, which is consistent with the experience of movement reported, and other areas associated with action monitoring. Control tasks in which she imaged doing other movement activities resulted in different areas of the brain being activated than those seen in the out-of-body experience.
Modern brain-imaging techniques have given scientists new ways to study uncommon experiences whose existence has been denied.
Thought question: What three characteristics are normally present in people’s descriptions of their out-of-body experiences? How have brain-imaging techniques given scientific support to these personal observations?
1. What brain changes occur in an individual with blindsight? What specific evidence is presented that a person with blindsight is able to process information without being aware of it?
2. What brain changes occur in a split-brain individual? What specific evidence is presented that a person with a split-brain is able to process information without being aware of it?
3. What is meant by hemispheric specialization? What has research with split-brain individuals taught us about how everyone’s brain hemispheres process information differently?
4. What is the “invisible gorilla” phenomenon? What other similar examples from everyday life can you offer?
Sleep and Dreams
What normal process involves one-third of your life? The answer of course is sleep. If you were asked to describe your state of consciousness during sleep, what would you say? You might initially say you were not aware of anything, yet some nights you experience lots of activity through dreams. Although asleep, we all have had the experience of incorporating sounds from around us during sleep into our dreams or waking up with a startle to an unfamiliar sound. Although sleep represents a stage of diminished consciousness, there is much going on in your brain.
We are just beginning to understand the various processes that go on during sleep. With sleep comes a change in muscle tone, hormonal levels, eye movement, and brain activation. We know that after sleep we feel we have more energy. Sleep is also related to our body temperature, which goes down during the night. In terms of the brain, sleep is not the absence of cortical activity, just a different type of highly organized activity (Adamantidis, Gutierrez Herrera, & Gent, 2019; McCormick & Westbrook, 2013).
If sleep is prevented, then intrusions of sleep are seen in our waking day. Since our bodies seek to make up for lost sleep, this suggests that sleep plays an important role in our lives. Without sufficient sleep, performance on tasks is degraded. This has been shown in a number of cases of people who go without sleep. For example, pilots who fly emergency medicine helicopters with their immediate response to emergencies show signs of stress connected with lack of rest (Samel, Vejvoda, & Maass, 2004). Overall, sleep deprivation triggers a complex set of brain changes, which results in problems in attention, memory, and emotional processing (Krause, Simon, Mander, Greer, Saletin, Goldstein-Piekarski, & Walker, 2017). One event that happens during sleep is the removal of waste products in the brain (Nadergaard, 2013). With long-term lack of sleep, these waste products can lead to a number of disorders including Alzheimer’s disorder.
As you can imagine, most human studies of sleep deprivation are of a short-term nature. However, there are a few examples of lack of sleep that lasts for more than a few days. One of these cases is that of Randy Gardner who sought to go without sleep as a science project when he was in high school in San Diego.
Randy sought to stay awake for 11 days to beat the Guinness world record as well as record cognitive activity for his science project. With the help of two friends, he went for 11 days without sleep. His experience was reported by sleep researchers including an EEG when he slept for the first time (Ross, 1965). By the second and third day without sleep, Randy had problems focusing his eyes and performing cognitive tasks and remembering new information. Also, his mood became more negative. Near the end of the 11 days, he had trouble finishing sentences and even experienced some hallucinations and delusions such as mistaking a street sign for a person. He also thought that he was a famous football player, although he weighed only 130 pounds at the time (http://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/a2527/esq0804-aug-awake/).
Randy described his experiences to the magazine Gelf as follows: “The only reason I got through it was because I was a kid. We got halfway through the damn thing and I thought ’Holy s⋆⋆⋆, this is tough. I don’t want to do this anymore.’ But everybody was looking at me at that point so I couldn’t quit” (http://www.gelfmagazine.com/archives/sleeping_in.php). How did he do it? Gardner says he didn’t even drink coffee. “It’s mind over matter,” Gardner said. “Your body will shut down. If you don’t override it with your mind, you’re f⋆⋆⋆ed. You’re going to sleep. You’re gone.” So he kept his juices flowing by playing game after game of basketball with his friends and the sleep researcher William Dement. Dement also drove him and his friends around in a rented convertible. Randy performed several cognitive studies during the sleepless period that were the basis of a winning science-fair project.
Although Randy stayed awake to set a Guinness World Record, a number of individuals who perform various types of shift work experience sleep deprivation that results in fatigue and a reduction in performance. This has been referred to as sleep debt. A number of studies have sought to determine if it is possible to “bank sleep” prior to shift work, which would improve performance (Rupp et al., 2009). Banking sleep refers to extended time asleep prior to a period of anticipated sleep loss. Several studies have shown that banking sleep can improve performance as well as emotional mood (Patterson et al., 2019).
Although we all experience the need for sleep, you might be surprised to learn that we actually don’t fully understand the function of sleep. As you will see in this chapter, sleep serves a number of functions. Our experience tells us that sleep is a strong drive and related to restoring our bodies in terms of energy and alertness. Thus, metabolic processes during sleep prepare us for the next day. As you will see later in this chapter, sleep also strengthens learning and memory. As you read in the chapter on development, the need for sleep is critical for the adolescent brain during a period of cortical development (Galván, 2020).
Evolutionary perspectives tell us that sleep may be protective and keep the organism out of danger. You will also learn in this chapter that animals that eat large amounts of plants sleep less than those who eat meat.
Sleep patterns also evolved in terms of sensory systems. Humans and other animals that use vision as the primary way of finding food and interacting with the world sleep at night. On the other hand, animals such as rats that use nonvisual systems for dealing with the world tend to sleep in the day and look for food at night. As you will also see in the chapter, there are different types of sleep and that these different types of sleep involve different brain areas. One implication is that different types of sleep serve different purposes in the brain. We know, for example, that sleep is important for helping us remember information that we learned during the day.
Sleep became easier to study scientifically in the 1950s. Nathaniel Kleitman and his student Eugene Aserinsky at the University of Chicago published the first detailed account of the patterns of sleep (see Aserinsky & Kleitman, 2003 for a reprint of their 1953 research). What they documented was that during sleep there are periods in which the person’s eyes were still. However, at some point during the night, the person’s eyes—although closed—would move quickly. They referred to this as rapid eye movement or REM sleep. When individuals were wakened during REM sleep, they were more likely to report having a dream than if wakened during quiet sleep.
Another researcher in this University of Chicago lab, William Dement, was able to show that during REM sleep, the EEG looked very different than during quiet sleep. The EEG actually looked more like that seen in wakefulness. Because of this, REM sleep is also referred to as paradoxical sleep. EEG measures during sleep helped to establish that sleep is made up of a set of recurring patterns that we now call stages (Adamantidis, Gutierrez Herrera, & Gent, 2019).
In 2007 and 2016, the American Academy of Sleep Medicine modified the sleep scoring system based on research (see Berry et al., 2015). Their American Academy of Sleep Medicine Manual for the Scoring of Sleep and Associated Events describes non-REM (N) and REM (R) stages of sleep. Thus, stage 1 and stage 2 are referred to as N1 and N2. Stage 3 and 4 are combined and referred to as N3 or slow wave sleep. In the scientific literature, you may see either the older stages 1—4 and REM sleep system or the newer N1—N3 and REM designation.
What do these stages of sleep represent? As you begin to become sleepy, your EEG shows a pattern associated with relaxation, such as alpha waves. The transition from being awake to the onset of sleep varies in different people. Those who fall asleep easily move from being drowsy to the stage 1 of sleep in a few minutes. In stage 1 slower EEG patterns such as theta activity are seen. The move to stage 2, which is the first true stage of sleep, is characterized by sleep spindles and K complexes (see Figure 6-8). During this stage your mechanisms of arousal are reduced, including a real reduction of muscular activity. It is also during this stage that your breathing becomes slower and your body temperature begins to drop. In stage 3, the EEG shows high amplitude and slow frequency waves referred to as delta activity. These are increased in stage 4 sleep. Also, the long-range connections between areas in the brain change to more local connections. The movement from stage 1 to the end of stage 4 takes about 45 minutes.
Figure 6-8 Stages of sleep.
Figure 6-9 Sleep cycles during the night.
During the next 45 minutes, the sleep stages go in the opposite direction. That is, the stages go from stage 4 to stage 1 with most of this time being in stage 4. Although it may appear that the person is moving toward becoming awake, this is not the case. Following stage 4 and a quick movement through stages 3, 2, and 1 is a period of REM sleep. Not only are dreams seen during REM sleep, but there are also physiological changes. In particular, there is an increase in cortical activity but a decrease in the person’s temperature and metabolism. There is also a loss of muscle tone that inhibits movement during dreams. However, during REM, penile erections occur in men and in women clitoral engorgement is present. The purpose of these changes during REM is still a matter of debate. After a REM period, the person goes through another series of sleep cycles. These 90-minute cycles continue throughout the night although the deepest sleep is experienced in the early cycles. The first REM period tends to be of shorter duration than later REM periods. Overall, REM sleep in adults is present during about 25% of the night.
Sleep Changes Across the Lifespan
Human adults sleep for about 8 hours every 24 hours. This is a daily or circadian rhythm. Circadian comes from Latin and can be translated as “about a day.” Thus, a circadian rhythm is a cycle that happens each day as with adult sleep patterns. However, it takes about 12 years for that to happen in humans. With newborn human infants, there is an irregular sleep/wake pattern of which some 50% is spent in REM sleep. By the time the infant is about 3 months old, he or she develops regular rhythms and sleep is seen more often at night. Later, at about one year of age, this changes to a nighttime sleep period and two naps during the day. About the age of two the two daytime naps change to one nap. During the first five years of life, sleep duration ranges from 10 to 16 hours a day, not counting the few months immediately after birth (Galland, Taylor, Elder, & Herbison, 2012). Even though REM sleep is seen in infancy (Hobson, 2009), the ability to recount dreams appears to develop after 5 years of age.
By school time, the afternoon nap has disappeared on a regular basis although children of this age will fall asleep when tired. At puberty, the sleep/wake cycle changes, as does brain development. Recent studies suggest that the sleep cycle of teenagers changes such that they go to sleep and wake up at a later time. In fact, when schools have started later to reflect this change, improvement is seen not only in schoolwork but also in other areas such as a drop in automobile accidents.
Young adults show a predictable pattern of sleep. This pattern, as described previously, occurs in terms of sleep cycles of 90 minutes. In young adults, the first period of REM sleep is usually the shortest of approximately 5 minutes (Raju & Radtke, 2012). Overall, a young adult spends 75% to 80% in non-REM and 20% to 25% in REM sleep. As one ages, the number of arousal and awaking events increase such that older adults may need to spend more time in bed to obtain the same amount of sleep as the young adult.
Figure 6-10 Sleep/wake cycles in different ages.
Stability of Sleep Cycles
Across species including humans and other animals, there is a sleep/wake cycle related to Earth’s day/night cycle. With access to the sun, there is a stable sleep/wake cycle (see Figure 6-11). An environmental factor such as the sun, which influences a circadian rhythm, is referred to by the German word zeitgeber, roughly translated as time encoder or synchronizer. This circadian or 24-hour rhythm has been shown to be fairly stable even in species such as those that live in the Arctic with continuous daylight in part of the year (Golombek & Rosenstein, 2010). There are, of course, many clues to the change in seasons and the 24-hour rhythm as Earth rotates in its yearly movement around the sun. This suggests an evolutionary and genetic contribution to circadian rhythms controlled by a set of neurons in the brain.
Figure 6-11 The sleep/wake cycle remains constant (top of figure) when environmental factors such as the sun are available. Without such environmental cues, the sleep/wake cycle increases by about 2 hours to a 26-hour day (bottom figure).
Over the past 50 years, scientists have asked what would happen if humans had no access to environmental cues that determine sleep/wake cycles. This was studied in what are called cave studies in which humans lived in caves or rooms without windows that would reflect whether it was day or night. Individuals lived alone in these rooms for a period of time, usually a few weeks, without clocks, radios, and other ways of knowing the time of day. These individuals were able to eat as they wished and to sleep and wake as they wished. As shown in Figure 6-11 what happened without access to the sun was that the 24-hour sleep/wake cycle slowly increased by about two hours over a three-week period. What was originally a 24-hour day became a 26-hour day. As soon as these individuals returned to the normal day and night environment, their sleep/wake cycle returned to normal. These studies tell us that our bodies continue a similar sleep/wake cycle even without external cues such as the sun rising and setting.
Sleep Patterns Across Species
Humans are not the only species that sleeps. In fact, it is suggested that animals showed sleep patterns over evolutionary time related to metabolic functions (Anafi, Kayser, & Raizen, 2019). One characteristic across mammals is that sleep represents a quiet time that reduces energy expenditure. There are also postures associated with sleep across species. Humans lie down. Bats hang upside down. Some birds sleep standing up. Cows and horses can also sleep standing up, but they generally choose not to. Sleep is also a state that can be changed quickly. Loud sounds or physical contact will change the sleep state to a waking state.
As with humans, sleep can be determined in animals by using EEG along with observable measures such as posture. Some animals such as bats sleep almost 20 hours a day, whereas other species such as kangaroos sleep as little as an hour and a half a day (Campbell & Tobler, 1984).
Nonhuman primates tend to sleep the same amounts of time as humans. It is assumed that sleep patterns evolved in relation to body size and danger. That is, animals that cannot hide, such as elephants, cattle, or giraffes, sleep less, whereas bats who can hide in dark caves sleep more. Other animals such as lions with fewer predators also sleep more. One study showed that body size and danger accounted for 80% of the variability in sleep time across species (Allison & Cicchetti, 1976). As shown in Figure 6-12, the more an animal weighs, the less it sleeps. It should be noted that this rela-tionship is seen only in animals that do not eat meat. Meat eaters show little relationship between body weight and sleep duration.
Figure 6-12 Length of sleep each day in relation to the weight of the animal.
In terms of insects and fish, there is less evidence that they meet the common definition of sleep (Siegel, 2008). Marine mammals such as dolphins, seals, and porpoises show sleep patterns that affect only half of their brain at a time. That’s right, only one hemisphere at a time. This allows dolphins, for example, to stay awake for as long as 15 days at a time (Branstetter et al., 2012). This can increase the animals’ survival skills. As shown in Figure 6-13, EEG is different in one hemisphere from the other during sleep.
Figure 6-13 EEG from beluga whale during sleep. Note that the hemispheres alternate sleep patterns.
One study examined human sleep patterns in some 20 countries (Walch, Cochran, & Forger, 2016). What these researchers found was that bedtime did differ by country, although these differences became less as a person aged from less than 30 years old to more than 55 years old. Sunrise and sunset also influenced bed and wake time. However, the actual duration of sleep was similar and averaged about 7.9 hours with a mean variation between 7.5 and 8.1 hours across the 20 countries. Thus, cultural factors can play a role in sleep patterns but not the actual amount of sleep one experiences.
Learning During Sleep
Although sleep is seen throughout the animal kingdom, its exact function is largely unknown. One role that is being explored is the manner in which sleep is involved in learning and memory (Paller, Creery, & Schechtman, 2021; Wamsley & Stickgold, 2011; Wamsley & Stickgold, 2018). In specific, sleep benefits memory in humans. In one study, college students who dreamed about a task they had just learned performed better on the task after sleep (Wamsley & Stickgold, 2019). It is also known that a good night’s sleep before a test improves performance. Even trying to move up a level in a video game will be easier the next day compared with the previous night.
Figure 6-14 Average sleep amount for different species.
It is suggested that improved learning after sleep involves a reactivation of memory traces through changes in the connection of synapses (Frank & Cantera, 2014). That is, as noted previously, with new abilities and information come changes in the number of synapses and changes in their connections. Forgetting (or extinction) is associated with the elimination of existing connections. In sleep, neurons involved in activities during the day are reactivated, which strengthens the connections between neurons. Further, EEG slow wave activity during sleep has been shown to increase performance on cognitive tasks the next day. In this manner, sleep promotes learning. It has also been shown that depriving organisms of sleep will prevent or reduce the quality of memory consolidation and learning.
Using a state-of-the-art technique that allows researchers to view neurons in the mouse brain, Guang Yang and his colleagues examined the role of sleep in learning (Yang, Lai, Cichon, Ma, Li, & Gan, 2014; see also Euston, & Steenland, 2014). In this study the researchers trained mice to run on a spinning rod. This of course is not an easy task and takes practice. After this learning, changes in the neurons were examined. They found that after the mice learned to run on a spinning rod, changes in the spines on the dendrite were increased. Spines on the dendrite allow for enhanced connections with other neurons. If the mice also learned a different task, different new spines were found. This suggests that learning different skills produce changes in different parts of the dendrites of the neuron. If the animals were not allowed to sleep following the learning of the new task, then the number of new spines on the dendrites were reduced. However, with sleep, the newly formed spines were still present one day later.
As shown in Figure 6-15, there are three related processes involved in the manner in which sleep enhances learning. The first is slow-wave oscillations in the electrical activity of the brain. EEG slow-wave activity has been shown to be important for learning new information. The second is reactivation during sleep of those neurons that were involved in the learning of the task during the day. In this way the brain repeats the patterns of activity associated with the task. And third, there is an increase in spines on the dendrite, which allows for connections with other neurons. Although this study taught the mice a new skill, other studies with humans have shown that sleep improves the learning of events and places as well. It is actually better for you to sleep before a test rather than do an all-nighter. Of course, you have to read the information first.
Figure 6-15 Sleep processes that increase performance. The three phenomena that increase memory enhancement are: slow-wave oscillations in brain electrical activity, reactivation of recent experiences, and changes in synaptic connectivity.
Neuroscience Studies of Sleep
Since sleep represents a special state of consciousness, some scientists suggest that it can give us a window into understanding consciousness (Hobson & Pace-Scott, 2002; Hobson, 2009). From this standpoint, the three processes of wakefulness, REM sleep, and non-REM sleep represent three different states of consciousness. Each of these states involves different brain and other physiological processes. Over the past 100 years, studies of sleep with humans and animals have painted a consistent picture of the physiological processes involved in sleep and wakefulness.
In the 1940s, Horace Magoun and Giuseppe Moruzzi found that stimulating neurons in the region of the pons and the adjacent midbrain in animals caused a state of wakefulness and arousal (Moruzzi & Magoun, 1949). We now know that this area is also active during REM sleep. This area of the brainstem has since been referred to as the reticular activating system or RAS. Thus, stimulation of the brainstem results in arousal of the forebrain. The opposite situation was found at about this time by Walter Hess in Switzerland. He showed that stimulating the thalamus with low-frequency electrical pulses in an awake animal produces slow-wave sleep. We now know that the basic sleep/wake cycles are under the control of the hypothalamus, the brain stem, and the lower part of the frontal brain.
Figure 6-16 Brain regions of interest in the neurobiology of sleep. The blue boxes represent areas that are key to the generation of the EEG rhythms of sleep, the subjective experience of sleep mentation or dreaming, and sleep’s effects on cognition. The subcortical regions (cream-colored boxes) constitute the loci of control for the regulation of sleep—wake transitions and the control of REM—NREM alternation.
The hypothalamus is involved in circadian rhythms and the onset of sleep. The pons, which is located below the thalamus on the brain stem, is related to changes in REM and non-REM sleep. In particular, neurons in the pons are active both during waking and REM sleep. Their activity is related to the type of EEG seen during the awake state. During non-REM sleep, these neurons are inactive. The subjective experience of sleep mentation or dreaming is related to the limbic areas, the visual areas, and the forebrain. Sleep’s effects on cognition and memory are related to the hippocampus. During sleep the thalamus serves as the gatekeeper and prevents certain information going to the cortex. It also relays information from the RAS and influences EEG changes during sleep. Besides sleep, the thalamus also functions as a control switch in other states of consciousness such as coma and general anesthesia (Picchioni et al., 2014).
One part of the hypothalamus, the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN), works as a pacemaker to control the circadian rhythm. Part of the reason we know this is that if there is damage to the SCN, then an animal will still sleep, eat, drink, and exercise. However, there will no longer be a regular pattern to their activities. Thus, the suprachiasmatic nucleus is important for making activities regular. In a number of animals, the SCN also is involved in determining which seasons mating takes place. Deer, for example, mate in the spring and fall of the year.
Figure 6-17 Changes in melatonin, cortisol, and temperature during the night.
The name of the SCN refers to where it is located. Nucleus refers to a group of cells. In the case of humans there are about 48,000 neurons in the winter and 30,000 in the summer in the SCN (Hofmann & Swaab, 1992). The suprachiasmatic nucleus of the hypothalamus is located above (supra) the optic chiasm (chiasmatic). This is the place in the brain where the pathways from each eye cross to go to each hemisphere. Light influences the retina and then the SCN. Part of this process is to cause the pineal gland to decrease the production of melatonin in the morning and to increase it in the evening to induce sleep.
Your temperature falls during sleep and then increases as you wake up (Abbott, 2003). The two hormones, melatonin and cortisol, increase during sleep. Those individuals who produce less melatonin such as the elderly have more disturbed sleep. Some people also take melatonin medications to promote sleep on long-distance airline flights. Exposure to bright light during the day will also increase nighttime melatonin levels and promote better sleep.
Brain-imaging techniques such as fMRI show the manner in which cortical networks are involved in sleep (Picchioni, Duyn, & Horovitz, 2013). First, it is clear that the brain continues to be active in sleep even without external stimulation or self-control of our thoughts. Second, sleep is controlled by bottom-up processes involving the brain stem and the hypothalamus. Third, during sleep some of the same networks such as those involved in memory, arousal, and consciousness are active. In fact, different memory systems are seen to be active during different types of sleep. Fourth, during sleep the frontal areas of the brain are not connected to other areas of the default network (Horovitz et al., 2009). The loss of connection to the frontal areas is one reason our dreams can be irrational or even chaotic. Without logic, you can dream anything you want.
Figure 6-18 Brain regions of interest in the neurobiology of sleep. The top part of the figure shows areas of the brain that are activated (cream color) or deactivated (dark red) in REM sleep. The bottom part of the figure shows changes in the brain (from bottom to top) as sleep stages change from waking to REM sleep; from non-REM to REM sleep; and from REM sleep to waking.
Complaints concerning sleep are second only to those concerning pain in terms of physician visits (Mahowald & Schenck, 2005). In the medical and psychological literature, more than 100 different sleep disorders have been described. However, most of these can be discussed in terms of four broad categories. These four are (1) insomnia, the difficulty to fall or stay asleep; (2) hypersomnia, that is, the experience of excessive daytime sleepiness without obvious explanation; (3) circadian rhythm disorders, that is, the inability to sleep during the desired time; and (4) parasomnias, which include sleepwalking, sleep talking, and night terrors.
Insomnia is the most common sleep disorder seen by professionals. It is described in terms of the inability to obtain enough sleep to leave one feeling rested. Historically, it was believed that insomnia was always the result of an underlying psychological or medical problem. That is, you took your problems to bed with you.
More recent research suggests that insomnia can be present without psychological or medical disorders. Although health disorders can contribute to insomnia, genetic factors also play a role. Further, those with insomnia may actually be more active during the day and have a higher metabolism, which influences their ability to fall asleep. Both behavioral treatment and medications have been shown to be effective. Surprisingly, if some sleep medications are taken for a long period of time, they will actually prevent sleep rather than make it possible. Melatonin is also useful in those individuals whose pineal gland does not produce enough of the hormone.
The second class of sleep disorders is referred to as hypersomnia or lack of sufficient sleep. There are a number of causes of these disorders. Working three jobs or not having time to obtain sufficient sleep leaves one feeling tired. The problem for society in relation to this condition is that a number of automobile, aircraft, and industrial accidents have been linked to lack of sleep on the part of the operators.
Some neurological disorders such as narcolepsy cause the individual to fall asleep at random times during the day. Narcolepsy affects about 1 in 2,000 individuals. Even when standing, the person may experience a sudden case of muscle weakness and fall to the ground in a state of apparent sleep. These individuals enter REM sleep from wakefulness without going through non-REM sleep. These attacks can last from less than a minute to some 30 minutes. When they awake, they may experience their body as paralyzed and be unable to move. This disorder has a strong genetic component and is not related to the amount of sleep obtained at night.
The third type of disorder is circadian rhythm disorders. These disorders result in the person being unable to sleep at the desired time. However, once the person falls asleep, they experience the normal sleeping pattern. A shift in one’s circadian rhythm can be the result of situational factors. For example, flying to a different time zone can result in “jet lag” in which the person experiences sleep patterns that are not consistent with the day/night periods of that location. In general, it takes one day for each hour of time change for a person’s body to adjust. Also, shift work in which a person works the day shift and then the night shift without time to adjust will also influence one’s internal circadian rhythms. In addition to situational factors, there are those who find it difficult to fall asleep before 1 a.m. or 2 a.m. However, they sleep in a normal pattern and wake later in the day. Researchers have been interested in differences in those who are early risers as compared to late risers.
The fourth category of sleep disorders is parasomnias. These are a variety of conditions that may leave the person feeling distressed or bring distress to others. In general, these disorders are not related to one another from an underlying physiological or psychological standpoint. One type of distress occurs when a person experiences consciousness but is unable to move his muscles. This is referred to as sleep paralysis. Normally in sleep, you lose consciousness and then lose the ability to move your muscles. When awaking, the opposite happens. You regain the ability to move your muscles and then regain consciousness as you wake up. However, if you gain consciousness before you can move your muscles, you experience sleep paralysis. You find yourself unable to move and you are aware of that fact. Although this typically is a short-term event, it causes distress, especially on its first occurrence.
Another sleep disorder is called night or sleep terrors (Pavlova & Abdennadher, 2013). The peak prevalence of the disorder is 5 to 7 years of age. This is when the child sits up in bed and begins to scream. It usually occurs in stage 3 sleep and lasts for less than a few minutes. Once the episode is complete, the person returns to sleep and generally does not remember the event the next day. Individuals experiencing a night terror are difficult to arouse. Actually waking the person can prolong or intensify the episode. It is not limited to nighttime sleep but can also occur in daytime naps. The disorder is not related to dream content or other psychological factors. It can be seen in young children, which of course upsets their parents. Typically, the experience of sleep terrors begins before adulthood but can continue into adulthood.
Another parasomnia is sleepwalking (Ralls & Grigg-Damberger, 2013). Sleepwalking has been described in Shakespeare’s plays and continues to be of interest to sleep researchers (Zadra & Pilon, 2011). Although sleepwalking was originally seen as a dissociative state without memory, current research suggests that at least half of the individuals can recall some events on occasion. The emotional experiences during sleepwalking can range from neutral emotionality to agitation. It typically occurs during non-REM sleep and lasts for about 15 minutes, although longer episodes have been reported. If the actions occur during REM sleep, it is referred to as REM sleep behavior disorder.
One example of sleepwalking occurred in a 31-year-old woman. She was found walking up the street in front of her home in her nightgown with a knife in one hand and an unopened package of deli ham in the other (Ralls & Grigg-Damberger, 2013). When examined, she was found to have a history of sleepwalking throughout her life. One confusing problem for those observing sleepwalking is that the person doing the walking may have her eyes open and not initially seem to be asleep. In adults, another problem with sleepwalking is the occur-rence of accidents that lead to physical problems. Sleepwalking runs in families and appears to have a genetic component. Further, sleepwalking activity and the performance of complex behaviors during sleep has been linked to certain medications.
The comedian Mike Birbiglia was on tour in Washington State when he had a dream that a guided missile was heading toward his hotel room. In his dream he jumped out of his hotel room. Although asleep, he actually did jump out of his hotel room. Fortunately for him, he was on the second floor and lived to tell about the event, which he did in a book and movie called Sleepwalk with Me. After the hotel event, he saw sleep professionals and was diagnosed with REM sleep behavior disorder (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130644070 and https://www.cnn.com/2012/10/02/health/sleepwalking-rem-behavior-disorder/index.html). Mike Birbiglia, while asleep, acted out a dream and jumped from his hotel window.
Two other common sleep phenomena are sleep talking and sleep jerks or starts (Weiss, 2013). Although these are not sleep disorders, they can be of concern especially to parents of young children. Sleep talking can range from just a few words or sounds to long speeches of understandable content. Although many young adults have had roommates who sleep talked, most do not remember what they said the next morning. Sleep talking does not occur at any particular stage of sleep. It also tends to decrease as one enters adulthood. Studies suggest that sleep talking is found worldwide and occurs in about one-quarter to one-half of all children at least once a year.
As you fall sleep, it is not uncommon to feel your body jerk for a second. Sleep starts or jerks are seen at the onset of sleep. These are brief contractions of the legs and arms and are experienced as body jerks that last for just a few seconds. These jerks are experienced by some 60 to 70% of the general population. Although they are seen in both children and adults and are normal occurrences, they may concern some parents who mistake them for some type of seizure. Sleep that starts with jerks may awaken the person.
1. What is rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, and why is it important for sleep researchers?
2. In what ways does the pattern of sleep change throughout the lifecycle?
3. With access to the sun, there is a stable sleep/wake cycle related to Earth’s day/night cycle. What happens when humans have no access to environmental cues in terms of sleep/wake cycles?
4. Humans are not the only species that sleeps. What factors account for similarities and differences across species?
5. Research has shown that sleep is involved in learning. List three results that support the importance of sleep for learning.
6. Briefly describe the four broad categories of sleep disorders and give an example of each.
Another aspect of sleep is dreaming. Dreams that are experienced during sleep reflect mainly involuntary images, ideas, feelings, and sensations. How should we think about dreams? In dreams, we are aware of the unfolding situation in front of us. In dreams, we experience ourselves being part of the action unlike our daydreams or mind-wandering when we are awake. We participate in the experiences of the dream. During dreams we have emotional reactions and experience it as real. However, we would not say it was reality. On the other hand, some philosophers have asked which is more real—when we are dreaming or when we are not.
Research suggests that external events can play an important role in the experience of dreaming. For example, with the advent of COVID-19 worldwide in 2020, the pandemic influenced how individuals remembered their dreams and what they dreamt about (Nielsin, 2020). Overall, people reported more dreams related to the virus such as content about social distancing. One current perspective suggests that dreams present a story which allows the dreamer to explore and evaluate possible scenarios (Zadra & Stickgold, 2021). Thus, dreams allows a number of ideas to be put together in memory.
Since the beginning of recorded history dreams have played a role in the attempt of humans to make meaning of the world and ourselves (Ray, 2010). Dreams have represented the other, the aspects of ourselves and our world that stood outside of human knowledge. As illustrated in a variety of religious texts over the last few thousand years, dreams have been seen to foretell future events as well as allow for communication with the gods. Still, during this period others including the Roman poet Lucretius in 44 BC suggested that dreams are common in all animals. Charles Darwin echoed a similar theme in his The Descent of Man (1874) in which he suggests that all higher animals including birds have dreams.
Within the last 100 years, the understanding of dreams has been brought into a more theoretical perspective within dynamic and analytic psychology and more recently within the context of the neurosciences. Although a topic of heated debate, an initial contribution was Sigmund Freud’s perspective that dreams could be understood within the context of instinctual functioning and neurology outlined in his The Project for a Scientific Psychology (1895).
As articulated in the Project, dreams offered an understanding of previously established networks of neurons and pointed to the manner in which ideas and events had come to be associated with one another in the brain. In this way dreams were reflective of an individual’s psychology during the waking state. Freud also suggested that dreams were reflective of a reduction of logical or I (ego) processes. This in turn would allow for more instinctual processes such as sexuality to be present. Current brain-imaging research suggests that indeed the frontal lobe executive functions are inhibited during the dream state.
Carl Jung, who developed analytic psychology, had a more evolutionary perspective. For him, images in dreams had a particular meaning for a given person. Day-to-day events in our environment could be triggers for bringing forth ideas with a strong emotional component, or complexes as Jung called them. Jung suggested that to understand dreams it was important to examine a long series of dreams over time rather than just a single night’s dream. Dreams in this context reflected patterns in a person’s life. In this sense, what is not in a series of dreams, such as the lack of other people, would be as important as what is the content of the dream. Jung also visited different cultures around the world and reported a similarity of dream material worldwide.
Many view the scientific study of dreams as beginning in 1953 with the discovery by Aserinsky and Kleitman of an association between dreaming and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. Sleep generally is characterized by four different stages as reflected in the EEG. In contrast to the higher voltage, more patterned EEG activity found in sleep, REM sleep appears to have an EEG pattern more like that of the waking state and is characterized by low voltage random appearing EEG activity. Dreams in the REM state are generally more emotional and vivid than the everyday content of dreams seen in the non-REM state (McCormick & Westbrook, 2013). Both REM and non-REM dreams are associated with decreases in low-frequency EEG activity in the posterior areas of the brain (Siclari et al., 2017).
Waking an individual during REM sleep is more likely than any other sleep stage to result in a dream report. Following the discovery of the association between REM sleep and dreams, a number of labs examined the dream state. The work included a variety of foci, including the nature of the dream itself, factors involved in dream recall, the influence of external factors on dreaming and other factors associated with dreaming. For example, following a natural disaster such as an earthquake, researchers have found an increase in nightmares suggesting that trauma can be related to dreaming. This could also be found during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 (Mota et al., 2020). Overall, REM dreams are heavy on emotions and light on logic. The main characteristics of dream processes include emotionally laden sensory processes and images without a sense of individual control.
Figure 6-19 Brain activation during lucid dreaming appears more similar to being awake than during REM sleep.
Less well understood is the so-called lucid dream in which an individual, while dreaming, realizes that she is part of a dream and may even experience control of the dream. Lucid dreams are rare and occur in only 1% or 2% of all reported dreams. Physiological studies show the brains of those experiencing lucid dreaming to be more like an awake state than that seen in normal REM sleep (Voss, Holzmann, Tuin, & Hobson, 2009). In specific, gamma band EEG activity around 40 Hz is associated with the lucid dream experience, especially in the frontal and temporal areas of the brain (Voss et al., 2014). Researchers have asked if inducing gamma band could produce lucid dreams. This is described in the box: Applying Psychological Science—Producing Lucid Dreams with Gamma Activity.
Applying Psychological Science—Producing Lucid Dreams with Gamma Activity
What if you had never experienced a lucid dream, would you want to experience one? That is, would you want to experience thoughts and decisions normally associated with your waking hours, but during sleep? Ursula Voss and her colleagues gave 27 young adults at Göttingen University Medical Center in Germany that opportunity (Voss et al., 2014). Since gamma band EEG activity is associated with lucid dreams, these researchers asked if the opposite was also true. That is, could they induce gamma band activity in someone’s brain that, in turn, would produce lucid dreams?
To induce gamma band EEG activity, they used a technique referred to as transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS). This is a technique in which battery-produced alternating current is applied to the scalp through two electrodes positioned at the front and back of the brain. The level of the current is such that a person cannot detect its presence. Although lucid dreaming has been associated with 40 Hz EEG activity, these researchers tested seven different frequencies ranging from 2 Hz to 100 Hz. They also included a sham condition in which no alternating current was applied.
The participants spent four nights at the sleep laboratory. The researcher followed the people as they slept. The stimulation was applied for 30 seconds after REM sleep was detected. After the stimulation, the participants were wakened and asked to report their dreams and complete a scale that measured lucid dreaming.
Lucid dreams in terms of the experience of dream insight was experienced during 25 Hz and 40 Hz stimulation. Dream control was experienced with 25 Hz stimulation. Watching one’s own dream (dissociation) was seen at both 25 and 40 Hz. The sham stimulation as well as stimulation at frequencies of 2, 6, 12, 70, and 100 Hz produced no lucid dream experiences. These results are shown in Figure 6-20.
Figure 6-20 Rating of lucid dream measures for stimulation at each frequency. Note: * reflects level of statistical significance.
Source: Voss, Holzmann, Tuin, and Hobson (2009).
One participant described a lucid dream as follows: “I was dreaming about lemon cake. It looked translucent, but then again, it didn’t. It was a bit like in an animated movie, like The Simpsons. And then I started falling and the scenery changed and I was talking to Matthias Schweighöfer (a German actor) and two foreign exchange students. And I was wondering about the actor and they told me, ’Yes, you met him before,’ so then I realized, ’Oops, you are dreaming.’”
This study suggests that 25 and 40 Hz stimulation can produce lucid dream experiences. The researchers further suggest that producing lucid dreams may be a technique for helping those with certain disorders to be able to make active changes to their dreams associated with negative experiences. For example, a person with PTSD might be able to redo a situation during a lucid dream that had previously been of concern to them.
Thought Question: Which of your dreams would you want to redo?
Dreams and Neuroscience
More recently, dream processes have been examined within the context of current neuro-science work. The goal of this research is to determine brain areas involved in dreaming. Also, they want to examine the manner in which dreaming and other cognitive processes (for example, visual imagery) are related. Early speculation suggested that dreams were related to brain-stem functioning especially the pons with its generators for rapid eye movement sleep. However, neuropsychological case studies have shown that damage to the pons does not stop dream reports, whereas damage to the forebrain area does.
Current brain-imaging studies suggest that a variety of brain areas are active during brain states associated with dreaming. These areas include the brain stem, which is responsible for basic arousal; the limbic system, which is highly involved in emotionality; and forebrain areas involved in sensory processing. Areas involved in higher level cognitive processes such as planning and logical thinking showed decreased activation during these dream periods.
Further explorations suggest that during dreaming, cortical pathways between areas involved in emotional processing and those involved in visual processing are active, whereas those between visual processing and higher-level logical thinking are not. In REM sleep, areas related to emotional processing such as the limbic and amygdala regions become activated. Thus, there is emotional processing without logical connections. This may help to explain the nature of dreams in which emotional and non-logical sequencing of imagery are accepted without reflective awareness or control. That is, we have no problem flying through the air or abruptly going from one place on earth to another in our dreams. The nature of dreams has led some researchers to ask if dreaming is like performing jazz music. Indeed, this is what was found. Similar activations in specific brain areas are seen in both dreaming and jazz improvisations (see Kahn & Gover, 2010 for an overview).
One implication that can be drawn from the brain-imaging work is that a variety of processes are involved in the creation of dreams. Such research helps to characterize the nature of the subjective experience of dreaming. However, even today, we often see a replay of the old debate (existing at least since the time of Plato and Aristotle) as to whether dreams reflect our hidden desires or are merely afterthoughts of our behaviors and experiences of the day (McCormick & Westbrook, 2013).
1. Since the beginning of recorded history dreams have played a role in the attempt of humans to make meaning of the world and ourselves. What did the following people contribute to our historical understanding of dreams:
b. Charles Darwin?
c. Sigmund Freud?
d. Carl Jung?
e. Aserinsky and Kleitman?
2. What are the characteristics of a lucid dream? What significant results and possible applications came out of the research by Ursula Voss and her colleagues?
3. Brain-imaging studies suggest that a variety of brain areas show changes in activation during brain states associated with dreaming. Specifically, what happens in the different brain areas and how does this help explain the nature of dreams?
Hypnosis and Meditation
Hypnosis is considered by many psychologists to be an altered state of consciousness. Meditation is a technique that focuses one’s consciousness away from the outer world and toward an inner sense of awareness. Although different processes, both hypnosis and meditation have been suggested to influence our consciousness as well as having numerous positive benefits. These positive benefits include reducing anxiety, depression, chronic pain, and stress.
When we hear the word hypnosis, most of us have an image that comes to our mind. It may be the one from the old movies in which a strange-looking “doctor” moves a watch in front of someone’s eyes. In these old movies, hypnotists can instruct the person to do anything they wish.
Although the old movies were dramatic, they were usually wrong in their presentation of hypnosis. People, for example, will not do anything under hypnosis that they would not do normally. People do report, however, that when experiencing hypnosis, they remain aware of what is being said to them. In this way, they can actively experience what is happening. When told, for example, that their hand is extremely light and will rise like a balloon, they report that they saw it happening by itself. They also report that no effort was involved.
Hypnosis is currently defined by researchers as “an individual’s ability to experience suggested alterations in physiology, sensations, emotions, thoughts, or behavior during hypnosis” (Elkins, Barabasz, Council, & Spiegel, 2015). As can be seen from this definition, changes during the hypnotic experience can take place on different levels. Although the nature of hypnosis is not fully understood, with the advent of EEG and fMRI, researchers have been able to better describe the nature of the process (Ray, 2007; Hoeft et al., 2012; Oakley & Halligan, 2009).
In the 1800s, James Braid introduced the term “hypnosis,” although practices similar to hypnosis had been described since ancient times. The term hypnosis comes from the Greek word for sleep. As such, much of the early work emphasized the nature of the hypnotic experience, especially its relationship to sleep. Ivan Pavlov (1937), for example, saw both hypnosis and sleep as processes that inhibited the brain. Later work began to differentiate hypnosis and sleep.
In the late 1940s, it was reported that EEG recorded during hypnosis was less like sleep and more similar to being awake (Gordon, 1949). Today, it appears that hypnosis allows the different types of information typically integrated in the brain to remain separate. For example, pain such as an electrical shock is composed of two experiences. One is the sensation of the shock and the other is the negative emotional reaction. When told they will not experience pain under hypnosis, individuals still report the sensation but not the negative emotionality. Further, the normal EEG reaction to the pain is not seen in those individuals who are hypnotized, whereas it is seen in those who are not (Ray, Keil, Mikuteit, Bongartz, & Elbert, 2002). Similar results were also seen with visual stimuli (Schmidt, Hecht, Naumann, & Miltner, 2017). Individuals during hypnosis were told to see a virtual wooden board in front of the computer display on which they were doing a counting task. Hypnosis not only reduced performance but also reduced EEG measures associated with attention in comparison to a control group.
Do you think you could experience hypnosis? It turns out some people experience the state quickly and easily. Those individuals typically enjoy the experience. However, about 25% of all people find it difficult to experience hypnosis. The rest fall somewhere in between. Your ability to experience hypnosis is fairly stable. It has been shown that after 10, 15, and even 25 years, a given person’s ability to experience hypnosis remains constant. Monozygotic twins show a correlation of.5 to.6 in their ability to be hypnotized, whereas dizygotic twins show a correlation of less than.10.
When is hypnosis useful? Hypnosis has now been shown to be an important adjunct to a number of clinical treatments. It has been shown to be useful in controlling pain. The reduction of pain through the use of hypnosis is referred to as hypnotic analgesia. This can either be short-term pain from an operation, for example, or more long-term pain such as that seen in arthritis. Individuals can be taught self-hypnotic techniques, which allow them to reduce the pain on their own.
Hypnosis can also improve results found in traditional psychological treatments such as the treatment of anxiety (Kirsch, Montgomery, & Sapirstein, 1995). Hypnosis can even reduce stress and modify our immune systems in a positive manner (Kiecolt-Glaser, Marcha, Atkinson, & Glaser, 2001). In one study, medical and dental students who were hypnotically susceptible were given relaxation and hypnotic training compared to a control group who were also hypnotically susceptible but did not receive training. Taking a medical school exam is a stressful experience. As such, taking an exam influences the immune system. Those in the hypnosis group did not show the standard immune response to taking major exams. Other studies have shown that hypnosis is useful for helping patients recover more quickly from outpatient surgery.
During hypnosis, what if the person is told not to remember what they are currently doing? They will have difficulty remembering their experiences even after the hypnotic session is over. This is referred to as posthypnotic amnesia. That is, the person does not remember the events that he or she is instructed not to remember. This in turn can be reversed when so instructed.
However, hypnosis cannot improve your memory. Although the movies show a person in the courtroom remembering the license plate number with great certainty, it turns out that the person is often wrong. The thing that hypnosis does is to allow the person to present their answer with great certainty, even if wrong. For this reason, hypnosis is not allowed in court proceedings as a method of gaining accurate information from memory. There are a number of myths concerning hypnosis as described in the box: Myths and Misconceptions—The Myths of Hypnosis.
Myths and Misconceptions—The Myths of Hypnosis
People commonly learn about hypnosis from the movies or ideas that are repeated without scientific evidence. This leaves people believing that you can hypnotize someone and they will do what you tell them. By the way, that is not true. You will not commit crimes or hurt others under hypnosis unless that is what you do in your regular life. Hypnosis researchers at the University of Tennessee, Michael Nash and Grant Beham, have reviewed common myths of hypnosis in terms of what has been found in scientific research (Nash & Beham, 2005). Here is what they found:
Table 6-1 Hypnosis—myth versus reality
It’s all a matter of having a good imagination.
Ability to imagine vividly is unrelated to hypnotizability.
Relaxation is an important feature of hypnosis.
It’s not. Hypnosis has been induced during vigorous exercise.
It’s mostly just compliance.
Many highly-motivated people fail to experience hypnosis.
It’s a matter of willful faking.
Physiological responses indicate that people are not lying.
It is dangerous.
Standard procedures are no more distressing than lectures.
It has something to do with a sleeplike state.
It does not. Hypnotized individuals are fully awake.
Certain personality types are likely to be hypnotizable.
There are no substantial correlates with personality measures.
People who are hypnotized lose control of themselves.
Individuals are capable of saying no or terminating hypnosis.
Hypnosis can enable people to “relive” the past.
Age-regressed adults behave like adults playacting as children.
A person’s responsiveness to hypnosis depends on the technique used and who administers it.
Neither is important under laboratory conditions. It is the person’s capacity that is important.
When hypnotized, people can remember more accurately.
Hypnosis may actually muddle the distinction between memory and fantasy and may artificially inflate confidence.
Hypnotized people can be led to do acts that conflict with their values.
Hypnotized people fully adhere to their usual moral standards.
People do not remember what happens during hypnosis.
Posthypnotic amnesia does not occur spontaneously.
Hypnosis can enable people to perform otherwise impossible feats of strength, endurance, learning, and sensory acuity.
Performance following hypnotic suggestions for increased muscle strength, learning, and sensory acuity does not exceed what can be accomplished by motivated individuals outside hypnosis.
Thought Question: Why do you think movies and other media portray hypnosis in a way that does not fit with scientific research?
In terms of brain function, research has suggested that the anterior cingulate (ACC) is involved in the type of executive function that allows one to drive down the street and ignore one set of signs while paying attention to another (Awh & Gehring, 1999). In terms of hypnotic modulation of experience, the anterior cingulate consistently is shown to be an area involved. In a series of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) studies, Rainville and his colleagues have shown that neural activity in the brainstem, thalamus, and ACC contribute to the experience of being hypnotized (Grant & Rainville, 2005; Rainville et al., 2019).
In particular, these authors report absorption-related changes to be seen in the more rostral regions of the ACC. In an earlier hypnotic study involving painful stimuli, Rainville and his colleagues (Rainville et al., 1997) found that activity in the ACC closely paralleled subjective experience, and that it reflected the emotional component (that is, unpleasantness) but not the sensory component of the painful stimuli. Another using high-density EEG showed that hypnosis reduced components of evoked potentials to painful stimulation (Ray, Keil, Mikuteit, Bongaartz, & Elbert, 2002).
In the introduction to neuroscience chapter, you learned that brain networks can be discussed in terms of the default mode network, the executive control network, and the salience network. Using fMRI, these networks were examined in 12 individuals who experienced hypnosis easily and 12 individuals who did not (Hoeft et al., 2012). Those individuals who were easier to hypnotize showed greater brain network connections between the executive network (prefrontal cortex) and the salience network (anterior cingulate) in comparison to low hypnotizable individuals. This suggested to the researchers that the prefrontal areas were able to inhibit the emotional responses through their connection with the anterior cingulate.
From an evolutionary perspective, you might think about whether hypnosis could help individuals adapt to their environment (Ray & Tucker, 2003). Clearly, the ability to modulate pain would be an important aspect of our history as humans. This is particularly true since the development of anesthesia is relatively recent.
Another question you could ask is whether processes similar to hypnosis appear in animals. In 1646, an Austrian monk published a detailed account describing how he had hypnotized a chicken by holding its head on the ground and forcing the animal to fixate on a line drawn away from its beak (Völgyesi, 1966). From that time to the present, there have been a number of stories of how alligators, rabbits, chickens, and other animals could be immobilized, generally by rubbing or stroking the animal, although eye-fatigue through fixation has also been used.
A variety of animal hypnosis studies suggest that in this condition the animals show an analgesia-like response to needle pricks and electric shock. Draper and Klemm (1967), using a learning procedure in rabbits, suggest that the dominant feature of animal hypnosis is a disconnection of overt motor functions without conspicuous inhibition of sensory functions.
Not unlike human hypnosis, immobilization in chickens has been characterized in three stages: (1) vocalizations and continuously open eyes; (2) suppressed vocal behavior and eye flutters; and (3) eyes closed, occasional body twitches, and lack of vocalizations (Rovee & Luciano, 1973). Yes, people have actually studied chickens. Research has shown that once tonic immobility is induced, it remains for anywhere from 10 minutes in chickens to more than 8 hours in lizards. One advantage of remaining still is in terms of survival. That is, predators tend to be sensitive to movement and without it they lose interest and become distracted, allowing the prey to escape. This suggests that animal hypnosis offers a method to tap into the systems related to remaining still.
Pavlov (1927) describes the manner in which inducing hypnosis in animals and humans utilize similar mechanisms and its relation to cortical inhibition. In the second half of the 20th century, a variety of studies examined the concept of animal hypnosis (Gallup, 1974) with some suggesting its value for understanding the hypnotic experience in humans (Draper & Klemm, 1967). However, at this point we do not know if hypnosis in humans and other species share similar underlying mechanisms.
Historically, meditation has been a part of religious and spiritual traditions worldwide. Buddhist, Sufi, Zen, and Yogi traditions all have specific forms of meditation, which have been taught from one generation to another. Christian traditions also have used meditative techniques often in the form of prayer and contemplation. The emphasis in each tradition initially focused on how the meditative technique was to be practiced. From the outside each meditative technique appeared to be different. As such, it was difficult to have a single definition of meditation.
However, one can also examine the psychological experiences and internal states related to various forms of meditation. In the 1900s initial examinations of meditative processes sought to link meditation within a psychological perspective. Carl Jung at the beginning of the 1900s sought to see the connections between analytic psychology and meditation. With the influx of Eastern traditions to the United States in the 1960s, a number of psychologists began to research meditation and the meditative state. This has led to its use in treatments for psychological disorders.
In general, meditative techniques can be thought of in terms of three broad approaches (Naranjo & Ornstein, 1971). The first approach is an attempt to reduce awareness as normally experienced. One technique that uses this approach is to constantly repeat a mantra or single word while ignoring everything else. Other techniques have the person sit and pay attention to only their breathing. The second approach is more of an expressive experience as might be seen in free dancing. Freud’s use of free association in which a person says whatever comes to his or her mind is not unlike these techniques. The third approach is located between these two approaches. That is, awareness of all activity is allowed without the attempt to reduce, modify, or react to what is being experienced. Such techniques were practiced in Theravada Buddhism and have come to be called mindfulness in current-day psychology.
Mindfulness has gained popularity and has been empirically shown to be effective in reducing stress and treating a number of psychological problems (Shapiro & Carlson, 2017). Mindfulness involves an increased focused purposeful awareness of the present moment. The idea is to relate to one’s thoughts and experiences in an open, nonjudgmental, and accepting manner (Kabat-Zinn, 1990). The basic technique is to observe thoughts without reacting to them in the present. That is, you allow your thoughts and feelings to come without reacting to them. This increases sensitivity to important features of the environment and one’s internal reactions. This in turn leads to better self-management and awareness as an alternative to ruminating about the past or worrying about the future. This reduces self-criticism.
Nonjudgmental observing allows for a reduction in stress, reduction in reactivity, and more time for interaction with others and the world. Also, feelings of compassion for another person become possible. This broadens attention and alternatives. Meta-analysis performed by Hofmann and his colleagues examined 39 studies of mindfulness (Hofmann, Sawyer, Witt, & Oh, 2010). He found significant reductions in anxiety and depression following mindfulness techniques. Paul Grossman and his colleagues examined 20 studies and found overall positive changes following mindfulness approaches (Grossman, Niemann, Schmidt, &, Walach, 2004; see also Hofmann, Grossman, & Hinton, 2011). Empirical evidence using mindfulness techniques has shown positive change with a number of disorders including anxiety, depression, chronic pain, and stress.
Overall, meditation has been shown to increase well-being. In relation to this, psychologists have asked if there is plasticity, that is, are brain changes associated with meditation. The answer appears to be yes. In one study, the increase in well-being was correlated with an increase in gray matter in areas of the brainstem (Singleton, Hölzel, Vangel, Brach, Carmody, & Lazar, 2014). Another study randomly assigned individuals to a six-week longitudinal trial of mindfulness meditation or to a control group that read about wellness (Allen et al., 2012). Although six weeks is a short period, those who learned mindfulness meditation were better able to inhibit negative emotionality. This was associated with changed brain areas associated with emotionality. Other studies have shown changes in EEG activity of long-term meditators (Richard, Lutz, & Davidson, 2014).
1. What is the technical definition of hypnosis?
2. What individual differences are found in experiencing hypnosis?
3. What are some examples in which hypnosis has been used as part of a clinical treatment?
Are these statements about hypnosis true or false?
a. Relaxation is an important feature of hypnosis.
b. Hypnotized people cannot be led to do acts that conflict with their values.
c. Hypnosis is something to do with a sleeplike state.
d. Ability to imagine vividly is related to hypnotizability.
4. In general, meditative techniques can be thought of in terms of three broad approaches. Briefly describe each of these approaches.
5. What is mindfulness, and what are some of the benefits it can bring to the individual?
Throughout our evolutionary history, we discovered that there are some plants referred to as psychoactive substances, which change our brain in a manner that influences our consciousness, including thoughts and feelings. Betel nut has been chewed for its nicotine-like effects for at least 13,000 years in Timor, an island north of Australia (Saah, 2005). Cocaine is naturally available in coca leaves, and morphine is available from poppy plants. Archaeological evidence suggests that Peruvian foraging societies were chewing coca leaves some 8,000 years ago. Actual poppy seeds were recovered from a 4,500-year-old settlement in Switzerland. Other evidence shows that opium was available in the neolithic, copper, and bronze ages. We as humans thus discovered naturally occurring psychoactive substances.
Besides naturally occurring psychoactive substances, humans also learned to ferment and distill plants. With the beginning of farming about 10,000 years ago, humans discovered how to make alcoholic beverages such as beer and wine, although it may have happened even earlier. Evidence from Iran, the former soviet republic of Georgia, and China suggest humans were making wine 8,000 years ago, that is 2,000 years before we began to write (Estreicher, 2017; McGovern et al., 2017). Depending on the region, humans have used barley, wheat, grapes, rice, honey, and a variety of fruits to make alcoholic drinks. In fact, there is some suggestion that we made beer before we made bread (Hayden, Canuel, & Shanse, 2013).
As noted, seeking psychoactive substances is part of human history. As humans, we like using these substances in a variety of situations. In comparison to liking a substance, wanting and seeking it uses a different pathway in the brain, which is related to addiction. Many researchers make a distinction between drug use, drug abuse such as binge drinking, and addiction.
In terms of addiction, there is a common pattern (see Figure 6-21). Initially, the positive experience of taking the drug leads to a compulsion to seek and take a given substance. It can be experienced as a rush or sense of well-being. This period of intoxication is also associated with impaired cognitive abilities. This is followed by a craving in which the individual loses control of the ability to limit intake of the drug. For example, even when the blood alcohol of a person with an alcohol addiction is high, he or she still drinks more. The next condition is the emergence of a negative emotional state when the substance is unavailable or access to it is limited. What once gave a positive feeling now does little. In fact, the person needs the drug to feel normal. There is a paradox in that by this last stage, people who are addicted want their psychoactive substance more than they enjoy it.
Figure 6-21 Pattern of addiction.
There is no one answer as to what causes addiction (see Volkow & Li, 2005 for an overview). One factor is related to timing of first use. With alcohol, those who began using alcohol before the age of 15 are four times more likely to become addicted in their lifetime in comparison to those who begin at age 20 or older. Our brain reorganizes itself beginning in adolescence. Current research suggests that drugs affect adolescents in a different manner than they do adults. Adolescence is clearly a time that the brain is reestablishing connections and networks and is sensitive to the use of addictive substances. During adolescence are brain changes that by the time you are in your 20s have led to the development of better impulse control and other executive functioning in the frontal lobes.
Another factor related to addiction is genetics. There is a strong genetic factor in that 40 to 60% of vulnerability to addiction can be attributed to genetic factors. These genetic factors and their relationship with the environment can be seen in the manner in which different drugs show different levels of reinforcing factors and influence metabolism. That is, some drugs are more addictive than others. Also, individuals show different sensitivities to particular drugs and thus some people can become addicted to some drugs more quickly than they can to other drugs. In addition, genetics can make one more addicted to a particular drug more quickly than other individuals with different genetic makeup.
Environmental factors such as stress and/or low socioeconomic level are also associated with greater drug use, which can lead to addiction. With adolescents, peer pressure can play an important role in deciding whether or not to try new types of drugs. Adolescence is also a time when individuals take risks and try new things. The environments in which both adults and adolescents live play a crucial role. This is compounded by research that shows that drugs may disrupt networks of the brain involved in making decisions. Drugs not only influence what people seek for rewards but also the ability to inhibit these desires.
With the advent of brain imaging and other neuroscience techniques, research has suggested that there is a common underlying process to a variety of disorders that share the desire to engage in certain activities. These disorders include drug addiction, binge eating, pathological gambling, and sexual addiction (see Goodman, 2007 for an overview).
Can drugs actually change your brain? The answer is yes. Drugs do change your brain. In fact, for someone addicted to a particular drug, just seeing the paraphernalia associated with it can produce physiological changes before the drug is actually ingested. It does not matter if it is heroin or whiskey. This works in a manner similar to how all learning changes your brain, although drug addiction seems to last longer than simple learning (see Nestler & Malenka, 2004 for an overview). Addiction can last for weeks, months, or even years after the last ingestion of the drug. This sets up the possibility of relapse since your body has a difficult time forgetting the effects of the drug.
On a neuroscience level, studies show the rewarding effect of drugs is their ability to increase dopamine (see Hyman, Malenka, & Nestler, 2006; Volkow, Wang, Fowler, & Tomasi, 2012; and Wise & Robble, 2020 for overviews). One important pathway begins in the ventral tegmental area (VTA), which is located near the base of the brain. Although a small population of neurons, the VTA has an impressive influence on reward and aversive behaviors (Morales & Margolis, 2017).
These pathways connect with the nucleus accumbens, prefrontal cortex, dorsal striatum, and the amygdala. Dopamine (DA) is released in these structures. Dopamine was initially thought to be the neurobiological correlate of reward or pleasure. However, more recent research has clarified dopamine’s function. It is suggested that the presence of dopamine signals to the person that something good is about to happen. Thus, dopa-mine is not so much associated with pleasure as with the expectation of pleasure. In this sense, it is involved in motivating individuals to engage in certain behaviors that make them feel good. In this way, the presence of dopamine predicts a reward. In the process, the events associated with the reward become part of the person’s memory. Thus, all of the events associated with using a drug come together to remind you of the pleasant experience. Overall, many drugs of addiction increase activity in the VTA and the nucleus accumbens.
Molecular mechanisms of many drugs leave excessive dopamine available in the brain (see Figure 6-22). This can work by different mechanisms. Cocaine either blocks dopamine uptake in the synapse or increases dopamine released by the terminals of VTA cells, which increases dopamine signaling in the nucleus accumbens. Alcohol and opiates such as opium and heroin enhance dopamine release by quieting neurons that would otherwise inhibit dopamine-secreting neurons. Nicotine induces VTA cells to release dopamine into the nucleus accumbens. Now, let us look at these and other psychoactive substances.
Figure 6-22 The manner in which different drugs affect the brain.
1. Throughout our evolutionary history, humans have ingested psychoactive substances. Give a brief timeline of what we know about that history including dates, locations, and substances.
2. What can animal studies tell us about the power of psychoactive substances on the individual?
3. What are the steps in the pattern of addiction, and what drives the process from one step to the next?
4. There is no one answer to what causes addiction, but what are three important factors that should be considered?
5. How can drugs change your brain? What is the role of dopamine in the effect of psychoactive substances?
Major Psychoactive Substances
Traditionally, psychoactive substances are discussed in terms of their effects on the central nervous system. Three broad categories are depressants, stimulants, and hallucinogens. Depressants such as alcohol and barbiturates reduce the activity of the central nervous system. This reduction of activity can be seen overall as when a person falls asleep after drinking alcohol or more localized as when reduction in frontal lobe activity reduces the inhibitions experienced by the person. Stimulants, on the other hand, increase the activity of the central nervous system. Common stimulants include amphetamines, caffeine, nicotine, cocaine, and opiates such as morphine. The class of psychoactive drugs that has the most influence on the central nervous system is hallucinogens (Schartner, Carhart-Harris, Barrett, Seth, & Muthukumaraswamy, 2017). Although hallucinogens such as LSD, mescaline, and psilocybin have strong effects on the central nervous system, they tend to be the least addictive. Also, animals will not work for these drugs as they do for cocaine.
Alcohol has been available to humans for a large part of our history. For at least 10,000 years, humans have made wine, beer, and other drinks through a process of fermentation. During fermentation, yeast breaks down sugar found in grains, such as barley, and fruits, such as grapes, into ethanol (alcohol) and carbon dioxide. Once carbon dioxide is removed, the ethanol and water remain in the form of wine or beer. Higher alcohol drinks such as gin, vodka, rum, and whiskey are further heated after fermentation in the process of distilling to remove the water. The percentage of alcohol in a substance is measured in terms of proof, which is twice the percentage of alcohol (e.g., 20% alcohol equals 40 proof). The amount of alcohol in beer and wine can vary and is usually listed on the label. Researchers consider 12 oz. of beer, 5 oz. of wine, and 1.5 oz. of liquor to contain ½ oz. of pure alcohol.
In many cultures around the world, alcohol is used for celebrations such as weddings and parties. Part of the reason for alcohol’s use in celebrations is its effect on our central nervous system. In most humans, the initial experience of alcohol intake includes pleasant subjective experiences that may lead to increased social interactions. This is partly related to the effects of alcohol on such neurotransmitters as serotonin, endorphins, and dopamine. Alcohol will also decrease inhibition by reducing the effects of the GABA system, which is associated with anxiety. However, if the amount of alcohol intake is increased, it will increase the effects of GABA, which can lead to sedation. This is why alcohol is generally listed as a depressant. As an addictive substance, it can also lead to social, legal, and medical problems.
Unlike most of the other foods you eat, alcohol is absorbed directly in the bloodstream without digestion. When you drink a beer or other alcoholic beverage, it goes to your stomach. In your stomach, only a small amount of alcohol is absorbed, as most alcohol is absorbed in the small intestine. However, if there is food in your stomach, it is absorbed more slowly. If the alcoholic drink contains food substances, as does beer, it is also absorbed more slowly. On the other hand, drinks with carbon dioxide such as champagne or a mixed drink with a carbonated beverage are moved from the stomach to the small intestine more rapidly where most alcohol is absorbed into the bloodstream. The experience of feeling the effects of alcohol takes place when alcohol is carried through the bloodstream to the brain. As a result, champagne will give you the experience of alcohol faster than beer since it gets to your brain faster.
Cannabis is a plant species also referred to as marijuana. Cannabis resin is referred to as hashish. The cannabis plant can easily be cultivated both indoors and outdoors. For this reason, it is grown and used throughout the world. In fact, cannabis has been used worldwide for at least 4,000 years for its psychoactive effects. During this period, it has been seen as an important medical compound and as a religious and recreational substance. The physician Galen in AD 200 wrote that it was customary to give cannabis to guests to promote hilarity and enjoyment (Stuart, 2004).
Cannabis has a history of use in China, India, Europe, and the Middle East. It came to the United States during the 1900s. In the United States during the 1960s, it became a recreational drug of choice for many individuals. Since the 1960s, there have been changing views as to whether the drug should be decriminalized for all adults, made available strictly for medical purposes such as pain relief, or banned completely. At this point about half of the states in the US have legalized some form of marijuana use. The United Nations estimates that 4% of the population of the world uses cannabis. The United States is one of the larger users of cannabis in the world.
Individuals who use cannabis report a wide variety of experiences. Small doses produce enjoyable positive feelings associated with a feeling of being “high.” This can include states in which time stands still. The person often may see his or her own ideas as exceptionally creative and important. Cannabis can also influence appetite with short-term users reporting increasing hunger or “munchies.” Larger doses can produce negative feelings such as anxiety and paranoia. Hallucinations and persecutory delusions have also been reported. Most of these experiences are short-lived but in some cases can last longer. More long-term use is also associated with cognitive impairment in executive functions (Crean, Crane, & Mason, 2011).
The main psychoactive ingredient in cannabis is THC (Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol) and was first described in the 1960s. THC particularly affects receptors in the hippocampus, the cerebellum, the basal ganglia, and the neocortex. THC affects receptors in the brain that also release GABA, an inhibitory neurotransmitter related to anxiety. The brain also produces its own substances that are similar to cannabis. These are referred to as cannabinoids. These cannabinoids appear to be related to reducing the negative experiences associated with troubling past experiences, which is similar to the effects of cannabis.
Opioids are substances derived from the opium poppy that have been used for thousands of years to control pain and bring on euphoric feelings. In fact, poppy seeds have been found at Neanderthal burial sites from 30,000 years ago (see Stuart, 2004, for an overview). About 3400 BC, Sumerians referred to the opium poppy as the “joy plant.” From there, it spread throughout the world during the next 2,000 years. Opium was available in the street markets of ancient Rome. In 1860, Britain imported some 220,000 pounds of opium for medical and recreational use.
The more common opioids are heroin, opium, morphine, methadone, and oxycodone (trade names of OxyContin, Percocet). Variations of these drugs are currently used in medical settings primarily for reduction of pain following operations or pain experienced with some types of cancer. Opioids became popular in the United States after the Civil War for their ability to control pain; however, some individuals given these drugs became addicted to them. Abuse took the form of the opium den of the last century in which the drug was smoked. With the availability of the hypodermic needle, it was injected directly into the bloodstream. Before the early 1900s, opioids were available legally in the United States. In 2017, the United States Government declared opioid misuse and addiction related to pain relief a national emergency.
Cocaine comes from the naturally occurring coca plant. For thousands of years, individuals have chewed the leaves of the coca plant for its psychoactive experiences. It is largely grown in South America. Cocaine was even used to make Coca-Cola in about 1900. About this time, Sigmund Freud tried the drug and found it to be very pleasant. Its effects include a mental alertness including feelings of euphoria, energy, and a desire to talk. It also heightens the experience of sensory processes such as sound, touch, and sight, as well as producing physiological effects such as increased heart rate and blood pressure. The introduction of cocaine interferes with natural brain processes, resulting in an increase of dopamine. This increased dopamine is, in turn, involved in the effects experienced with cocaine.
Cocaine has been administered by smoking, snorting through the nose, or injecting directly into the bloodstream. The form of cocaine that is smoked is referred to as crack. Crack refers to the sounds made when the white cocaine crystals are heated to turn it into a form that can be smoked. Taking it through the nose results in a slower “high” than intravenously, which shows effects in 4 to 6 minutes. Cocaine has a shorter effect life in comparison with other drugs. That is, most of its effect is completed in 15 to 40 minutes. Like alcohol, individuals may use cocaine in binges.
Like cocaine, amphetamines are stimulants that result in positive feelings, a burst of energy, and alertness. However, unlike cocaine, it is a substance produced in the laboratory rather than found in nature. Amphetamine was first developed in the 1880s. It was not until the 1930s that it was introduced as a medicine in the form of an inhaler for the treatment of a stopped-up nose. Also during this time it was introduced in the form of pills with the name Benzedrine, which were called “bennies” (see Iversen, 2006; Koob, Kandel, & Volkow, 2008, for overviews).
During the 1930s and 1940s, amphetamines were prescribed by health professionals for the treatment of more than 30 disorders, including epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease, schizophrenia, migraine, and even behavioral problems in children. They were also prescribed to reduce addictions to other substances such as alcohol, morphine, and tobacco. During World War II, amphetamines were given to solders as pep pills to give them an edge in combat. The common ones were Benzedrine, Dexedrine, and Methedrine, the last one being methamphetamine. Although there are chemical differences in amphetamine and methamphetamine, they both function as stimulants.
As people experienced the stimulant effects, they began to abuse the use of amphetamines. In the 1950s, long-distance truck drivers would use them to drive farther. After they were publicized for use as a recreational drug from Hollywood to New York, the US government began to pay attention. Amphetamines were also making their way into teenage parties. In 1959, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) required that amphetamines only be available by prescription.
The main reason people take amphetamines is that they believe they enhance performance and help them feel good. The common experience is euphoria, increased vigilance, and hyperactivity. The reactions from amphetamines are also similar to other stimulant drugs. They are easy to take in the form of a pill, which can be conveniently purchased one pill at a time on the illegal market. Amphetamines are not considered to be harmful by many individuals. Taking these drugs through intravenous injection or smoking increases the feeling of a rush.
In their 2011 global assessment, the United Nations suggests that amphetamine-type drugs are the second most widely used drugs throughout the world (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2011). The first is cannabis. This makes amphetamine use greater than heroin or cocaine worldwide. Amphetamine-like drugs do not require the cultivation of plants. Instead, they can be manufactured almost anywhere without an advanced knowledge of chemistry.
As with other stimulant drugs, amphetamines affect the dopamine system to produce the initial euphoric experience. In addition to the short-term experience, there are also less positive long-term effects (see Marshall & O’Dell, 2012, for an overview). These long-term effects, especially from methamphetamine, create brain changes in three areas. The first is the development of compulsive patterns of use. The second produces negative brain changes consistent with brain injury. And third, methamphetamine produces changes in the individual’s cognitive functioning.
People who use methamphetamine show problems with motor activities such as skill movements or perceptual speed. They also experience problems in the ability to shift attention. Finally, research also suggests memory, attention, and decision-making problems. These types of problems make it difficult for individuals to view their addiction objectively as well as be able to engage in therapy requiring cognitive responses. Methamphetamine also has a devastating effect on physical appearance, which can be seen in the before and after mug shots of the Oregon Multnomah County Detention Center (www.facesofmeth.us/main.htm).
Hallucinogens are drugs that alter perceptual experiences (see Nichols, 2004, for an overview). The word hallucinate actually comes from the Latin meaning to wander in the mind. Some of these drugs occur in nature and have been used by various cultures for thousands of years. These include mescaline, which comes from the peyote cactus and psilocybin, which comes from a variety of mushroom. Historians suggest they were often part of religious ceremonies to give experiences not part of everyday life. Other hallucinogens such as LSD (d-lysergic acid diethylamide) begin with a grain fungus, ergot. Although the fungus is naturally occurring, LSD was first made in the laboratory. Other laboratory-made drugs include MDMA (3,4 Methylenedioxymethamphetamine), commonly known as ecstasy, MDA (3,4 Methylenedioxyamphetamine), sometimes referred to as the love drug, and PCP (Phencyclidine), also known as angel dust.
Figure 6-23 Devastating effects of long-term methamphetamine use on physical appearance.
Hallucinogens are also called psychedelics and are able to alter perception, mood, and cognitive processes in often unpredictable ways (Hollister, 1984). These can be described in terms of somatic, perceptual, and psychic symptoms. Somatic symptoms include dizziness, weakness, tremors, nausea, drowsiness, and blurred vision. Perceptual symptoms include altered shapes and colors, difficulty in focusing on objects, sharpened sense of hearing, and at times synesthesia. Psychic symptoms include alterations in mood (happy, sad, or irritable at varying times), tension, distorted time sense, difficulty in expressing thoughts, depersonalization, dreamlike feelings, and visual hallucinations.
After about 50 years of ignoring psychedelic drugs for their possible use in the treatment of mental illness, new research has begun (Vollenweider & Preller, 2020). Although illegal in the United States, hallucinogens have been used in treating some mental disorders worldwide (Begola & Schillerstrom, 2019). Brain-imaging techniques are beginning to show the effects of psychedelics. At this point it is unclear which hallucinogens should be used in treatment such as LSD and which may be dangerous such as PCP. As with any process, abuse and dependence are possible, although the pattern is not the same. Drugs that are addictive typically affect the dopamine system and the experience of reward. It is also possible to train animals to self-administer addictive drugs, but this is not the case with hallucinogens. They also appear to lack the toxic effects on human organs seen in alcohol or tobacco, for example. However, not all experiences with hallucinogens are positive. A so-called bad trip can include extreme anxiety and fearful psychotic-like experiences.
Hallucinogens do not directly affect dopamine neurotransmission as do alcohol, cannabis, tobacco, and cocaine. Structurally, the chemical makeup of hallucinogens is similar to the neurotransmitter serotonin. In fact, early theories suggested that hallucinogens produced their effects by increasing serotonin in specific brain areas. It is now known that hallucinogens bind to the 5-HT serotonin receptor.
Drugs Found in the Brain
In the last century, a number of scientists began to wonder why our bodies seek various types of drugs. What became apparent was that our brains contain receptors that are sensitive to the actual drugs of addiction (see Bolles & Fanselow, 1982 for a historical overview). In particular, there are receptors in the brain that are sensitive to opiates such as morphine. What researchers then discovered is that our brains made a substance that is actually like morphine. These substances came to be called endorphins. Endorphin is a combination of the word for internally produced—endogenous—and the ending syllable of morphine. The particular endorphin of interest to psychologists is beta-endorphin or β-endorphin.
Research since that time has shown that β-endorphin (beta-endorphin) has an analgesia effect similar to drugs like morphine. Further, if a substance such as naloxone that blocks the effect of opiates is administered, the analgesia effects are reduced. Current research has shown that β-endorphin is also released during our body’s response to stress (Charmandari, Tsigos, & Chrousos, 2005). This is seen by some as the explanation of how soldiers are able to fight or athletes to play under pain. The basis of positive experiences in running or eating have also been linked to β-endorphins.
1. What are the three broad categories of psychoactive substances and what are their primary effects on the human central nervous system?
2. Describe the process of alcohol absorption to explain what causes the differences in how alcohol is experienced.
3. What is the primary psychoactive ingredient in cannabis? What are its impacts on an individual’s body and brain?
4. What are some common opioids? What is it about opioids that makes them sought after as medicines as well as substances to abuse?
5. Describe the range of mental, sensory, and physiological effects related to cocaine?
6. What are some of the factors that promote the use and abuse of amphetamines?
7. What are three long-term negative impacts of methamphetamines?
8. Hallucinogens are not addictive, but in what other ways can they cause impairments to the individual using them?
9. What are endorphins, and how are they related to why our bodies seek various types of drugs?
Learning Objective 1: Discuss the different levels of consciousness, including attention and awareness.
Psychologists define consciousness as being aware and knowing that you are involved in a particular event. You listen to certain music because you like the feelings it gives you. You eat certain foods for the feeling of comfort and the memories associated with such meals. Reading a book or watching videos can also change our consciousness. You may even seek to reduce your level of consciousness as when you take a nap. At times, we may perform yoga or meditation as a way to experience our internal processes.
Experiences such as spacing out while driving suggest that there must be different processes that come together to give us the experience of consciousness. We have different systems of consciousness and awareness for living life and making decisions. That is, whether at a party or driving, we are able to monitor other aspects of the environment without being aware of it. Research shows sudden EEG changes in the brain to be associated with conscious awareness. That is, during conscious awareness, more areas of the brain are communicating with one another. Further, there is no single brain area related to consciousness; rather it is the result of the interactions among a number of neural networks in our brain.
In terms of attention, we can be aware of something. This is the basic level where we have sensations and create perceptions. Another level of awareness important for humans is referred to as meta-awareness. That is, we can be aware of our awareness. As humans, we not only have awareness of our awareness (meta-awareness) but also cognition about cognition or metacognition.
Levels of consciousness can be discussed in terms of (1) coma, (2) vegetative state, and (3) wakefulness and awareness. From this perspective, consciousness can be described in terms of wakefulness and awareness. Between coma and normal consciousness, there is a continuum in which a person varies in terms of awareness and the ability to communicate. A common procedure that is designed to change the level of a person’s consciousness is the use of anesthesia. Combining the ability to control anesthesia with current brain-imaging techniques has opened up new ways to study levels of consciousness.
When we look at an object, we become conscious of what it is. However, it generally takes about half a second before our brain gives us the experience of being aware of what is there. When we shift our attention to something else, the original object leaves our consciousness. In this manner, attention and consciousness are closely related in our everyday language. This chapter considered two different long-term conditions in which a person is able to process information without being aware of it—blindsight and being a split-brain individual.
Learning Objective 2: Describe what happens when we sleep and dream.
We are just beginning to understand the various processes that go on during sleep. Sleep serves a number of functions. Our experience tells us that sleep is a strong drive and related to restoring our bodies in terms of energy and alertness. Evolutionary perspectives tell us that sleep may be protective and may keep the organism out of danger.
At some point during the night, the person’s eyes—although closed—would move quickly. This is referred to as rapid eye movement or REM sleep. After a REM period, the person goes through another series of sleep cycles. These 90-minute cycles continue throughout the night, although the deepest sleep is experienced in the early cycles. Human adults sleep for about 8 hours every 24 hours. This is a daily or circadian rhythm, which takes about 12 years to develop in humans. Across species including humans and other animals, there is a sleep/wake cycle related to earth’s day/night cycle. With access to the sun, there is a stable sleep/wake cycle. This circadian or 24-hour rhythm has been shown to be fairly stable even in species such as those that live in the Arctic with continuous daylight in part of the year.
Since sleep represents a special state of consciousness, some scientists suggest that it can give us a window into understanding consciousness. From this standpoint, the three processes of (1) wakefulness, (2) REM sleep, and (3) non-REM sleep represent three different states of consciousness. Each of these states involves different brain and other physiological processes. Over the past 100 years, studies of sleep with humans and animals have painted a consistent picture of the physiological processes involved in sleep and wakefulness. Brain-imaging techniques such as fMRI show the manner in which cortical networks are involved in sleep. (1) First, it is clear that the brain continues to be active in sleep even without external stimulation or self-control of our thoughts. (2) Second, sleep is controlled by bottom-up processes involving the brain stem and the hypothalamus. (3) Third, during sleep some of the same networks such as those involved in memory, arousal, and consciousness are active. In fact, different memory systems are seen to be active during different types of sleep. (4) Fourth, during sleep the frontal areas of the brain are not connected to other areas of the default network. The loss of connection to the frontal areas is one reason our dreams can be irrational or even chaotic. Without logic, you can dream anything you want.
Complaints concerning sleep are second only to those concerning pain in terms of physician visits. In the medical and psychological literature, more than 100 different sleep disorders have been described. However, most of these can be discussed in terms of four broad categories. These four are (1) insomnia, (2) hypersomnia, (3) circadian rhythm disorders, and (4) parasomnias.
Dreams are experienced during sleep and reflect mainly involuntary images, ideas, feelings, and sensations. In dreams, we (1) are aware of the unfolding situation in front of us; (2) experience ourselves being part of the action unlike our daydreams or mind-wandering when we are awake; (3) participate in the experiences of the dream; and (4) have emotional reactions and experience it as real although we would not say it was reality.
Learning Objective 3: Describe the techniques of hypnosis and meditation.
Although different processes, both hypnosis and meditation have been suggested to influence our consciousness as well as having numerous positive benefits. These positive benefits include reducing anxiety, depression, chronic pain, and stress.
Hypnosis is defined by researchers as “an individual’s ability to experience suggested alterations in physiology, sensations, emotions, thoughts, or behavior during hypnosis.” From this definition, changes during the hypnotic experience can take place on different levels. Although the nature of hypnosis is not fully understood, with the advent of EEG and fMRI researchers have been able to better describe the nature of the process. It appears that hypnosis allows the different types of information typically integrated in the brain to remain separate. For example, pain such as an electrical shock is composed of two experiences—the sensation of the shock and the negative emotional reaction. When told they will not experience pain under hypnosis, individuals still report the sensation but not the negative emotionality. Hypnosis has now been shown to be an important adjunct to a number of clinical treatments. It has been shown to be useful in controlling pain, in the treatment of anxiety, in reducing stress, and positively modifying our immune systems.
Meditation is a technique that focuses one’s consciousness away from the outer world and towards an inner sense of awareness. Historically, meditation has been a part of religious and spiritual traditions worldwide. In general, meditative techniques can be thought of in terms of three broad approaches: (1) an attempt to reduce awareness as normally experienced; (2) an approach that is more of an expressive experience as might be seen in free dancing; and (3) an approach located between these two—awareness of all activity is allowed without the attempt to reduce, modify, or react to what is being experienced. This last approach has come to be called mindfulness in current-day psychology. Mindfulness involves an increased focused purposeful awareness of the present moment. The idea is to relate to one’s thoughts and experiences in an open, nonjudgmental, and accepting manner. Nonjudgmental observing allows for a reduction in stress, reduction in reactivity, more time for interaction with others and the world, a greater possibility of feelings of compassion for another person, and a broadening of attention and alternatives. Empirical evidence using mindfulness techniques has shown positive change with a number of disorders including anxiety, depression, chronic pain, and stress. Overall, meditation has been shown to increase well-being. In addition, there are brain changes associated with meditation.
Learning Objective 4: Discuss the three broad categories of psychoactive substances: depressants, stimulants, and hallucinogens.
Three broad categories of psychoactive substances are depressants, stimulants, and hallucinogens. Depressants such as alcohol and barbiturates reduce the activity of the central nervous system. This reduction of activity can be seen overall as when a person falls asleep after drinking alcohol or more localized as when reduction in frontal lobe activity reduces the inhibitions experienced by the person. Stimulants, on the other hand, increase the activity of the central nervous system. Common stimulants include amphetamines, caffeine, nicotine, cocaine, and opiates such as morphine. The class of psychoactive drugs that has the most influence on the central nervous system is hallucinogens. Although hallucinogens such as LSD, mescaline, and psilocybin have strong effects on the central nervous system, they tend to be the least addictive
In the United States, our attitude toward drug use has changed drastically over the past 200 years. Overall, drugs are rewarding to our body and give us experiences we seek, but drug use is a complex problem for a society to protect its citizens, especially those whose brains are still developing, from psychoactive substances that can be addictive, reduce productivity, and put the user and others at risk.
There is a common pattern to addiction: (1) craving characterized by drug expectation and attention bias; (2) intoxication and impaired self-awareness; (3) bingeing and the loss of control; and (4) withdrawal characterized by amotivation and anhedonia. There is no one answer as to what causes addiction, but a number of factors have been found to be involved. (1) One factor is related to timing of first use. (2) Another factor related to addiction is genetics. (3) Some drugs are more addictive than others. (4) Individuals show different sensitivities to particular drugs. (5) Environmental factors such as stress and/or low socioeconomic level are also associated with greater drug use, which can lead to addiction.
In the last century, a number of scientists began to wonder why our bodies seek various types of drugs. What became apparent was that our brains contain receptors that are sensitive to the actual drugs of addiction, in particular, to opiates such as morphine. Researchers discovered that our brains make a substance that is actually like morphine—substances that came to be called endorphins. The particular endorphin of interest to psychologists is beta-endorphin or β-endorphin, which has an analgesia effect similar to drugs like morphine and is also released during our body’s response to stress.
1. Many people throughout history have taken different approaches to define consciousness. How would you weave what you’ve learned about awareness, attention, sleep, dreams, hypnosis, meditation, and psychoactive substances into a definition of consciousness?
2. This chapter begins by asking a question: “How would you determine whether the messages you were getting on your computer were from a human or a machine? Are there distinct factors that would help you determine human consciousness from machine responses?” Now it’s your turn—what factors would you include in your response?
3. Plot out your cycle of sleep patterns throughout the night from the time you go to bed until you wake up in the morning—what happens at each stage?
4. Some philosophers have asked, which is more real—when we are dreaming or when we are not. Given everything you have read in this chapter as well as in the previous chapter on sensation and perception, how would you now answer this question?
5. The author states, “Today, it appears that hypnosis allows the different types of information typically integrated in the brain to remain separate.” What types of information is he talking about, and what is the effect of separating them?
6. Looking back at the table on the myths of hypnosis, which three myths were most surprising to you? How has your view of hypnosis changed from examining these myths?
7. Historically, meditation has been a part of religious and spiritual traditions worldwide. Having read this chapter, do you think there is a place for meditative practice in the secular world? What evidence would you use to support your answer?
8. Your middle school heard you were taking a course in Introductory Psychology and has asked you to develop a lesson to present to middle school students—in terms they would pay attention to—including what you think they need to know about psycho-active substances, addiction, and naturally occurring drugs in the brain. What points would you include?
9. A number of the psychoactive substances covered in this chapter provide benefits as medicines—for example, opioids, cannabis, and amphetamines. On the other hand, it is clear that individuals can abuse or become addicted to these substances, which can lead to negative consequences. What principles would you use in developing a policy surrounding their use, including who could use them, what types of illnesses they should be used for, and who would regulate that use?
For Further Reading
✵ Dehaene, S. (2014). Consciousness and the Brain. New York: Viking.
✵ Feinberg, T., & Mallatt, J. (2016). The Ancient Origins of Consciousness. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
✵ Leschziner, G. (2019). The Nocturnal Brain: Nightmares, Neuroscience, and the Secret World of Sleep. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
✵ Mendelson, W. (2017). The Science of Sleep: What It Is, How It Works, and Why It Matters. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
✵ Ramachandran, V. (1998). Phantoms in the Brain. New York: William Morrow and Company.
✵ Shapiro, S., & Carlson, L. (2017). The Art and Science of Mindfulness, 2nd ed. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
✵ Zeman, A. (2002). Consciousness: A User’s Guide. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
✵ Invisible gorilla—http://www.theinvisiblegorilla.com/gorilla_experiment.html
✵ Randy without sleep—http://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/a2527/esq0804-aug-awake/
✵ Additional Randy--http://www.gelfmagazine.com/archives/sleeping_in.php
✵ Mike Birbiglia—http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130644070 and https://www.cnn.com/2012/10/02/health/sleepwalking-rem-behavior-disorder/index.html
✵ Long-term meth use—www.facesofmeth.us/main.htm
Key Terms and Concepts
circadian rhythm disorders
levels of consciousness
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Human egg cells that have been grown in a lab will soon be fertilized in a historic experiment that overturns the rules of reproduction, revolutionizes fertility — and could grant women an “elixir of youth” by banishing menopause.
American and British scientists from the Edinburgh University and the Harvard Medical School have produced the first human egg cells grown entirely in the laboratory from egg stem cells — “female germline” or “oogonial stem cells” (OSCs) — following the recent discovery of such stem cells that was, in itself, an earthshaking development in fertility science.
And as if that did not astonish enough, these lab-grown egg cells could be fertilized this year, if fertility authorities in the United Kingdom give the go signal.
The three back-to-back developments — the discovery of the oogonial stem cells, the creation of lab-grown human egg cells and their upcoming fertilization — are all momentous developments the field of fertility. Together, these three events:
- Overturn 60 years of dogma in fertility.
- Have the potential to revolutionize fertility treatment.
- May lead to life-long fertility for women.
- May reverse menopause in older women.
Overturning 60 years of dogma
Women are born with their full complement of egg cells which they gradually lose through life until they run out when they reach the menopause — that, at least was what scientists believed for the past 60 years.
Then in 2004, Dr. Jonathan Tilly of Harvard went up against this dogma by suggesting that there were active stem cells in the ovaries of mice that were capable of replenishing eggs throughout life.
In the succeeding years, a number of studies in lab mice proved him right, showing the existence of these “female germline” or “oogonial stem cells” (OSCs) in living mice. The stem cells were shown to be capable of producing further oocytes.
And as recently as February, a team of scientists from Harvard and the Massachusetts General Hospital in the United States, together with colleagues from Japan’s Saitama Medical University shocked the scientific community when they announced that they had discovered these same stem cells that can transform into new eggs in the ovaries of young women.
The team was led by Dr. Tilly, and the results of that pioneering research were published in the Feb. 26 issue of the journal Nature Medicine.
“This age-old belief that females are given a fixed ‘bank account’ of eggs at birth is incorrect,” Professor Tilly announced at time. “In fact, ovaries in adulthood are probably more closely matched to testes in adulthood in their capacity to make new germ cells, which are the special cells that give rise to sperm and eggs,” he said.
“Over the past 50 years, all the basic science, all the clinical work and all the clinical outcome was predicated on one simple belief — that is the oocyte pool, the early egg-cell pool in the ovaries was a fixed entity, and once those eggs were used up they cannot be renewed, replenished or replaced,” he pointed out then.
Female human germline cells or OSCs are specialized cells that can develop into ‘oocytes.’ In turn, these can develop into mature eggs or ‘ova’.
Back then, Professor Tilly’s team isolated OSCs from human ovaries, grew these into human oocytes, and matured them into human ova — all in the lab. But they weren’t able to test if these ova were fully functional because it would have been unethical to implant them in the mice that they were working on. Now, they are about to do make this test — by fertilizing these eggs.
To do so, Dr. Tilly is collaborating with Dr. Evelyn Telfer, a reproductive biologist at the Edinburgh University who was once skeptical of his research. Dr. Telfer has pioneered a technique for growing immature eggs cells into the fully “ripened” cells that can be fertilized.
Revolutionize fertility treatment, reverse menopause
Because of the dogma that women are born with all the egg cells they can ever produce, fertility scientists have been hampered in their work for many decades. They have only been able to work with mature human egg cells taken from women — and this meant that there has been a limit to the amount available for both in vitro fertilization and research.
Now that these oogonial stem cells have been discovered in humans — and if scientists can show that they can grow mature ova that are fully functional — this may open the door to better treatments for women who become infertile because of disease, or simply because they’re getting older.
What’s more, the findings have the potential to make women just as fertile in later life as men — or in short, to give them life-long fertility. This is bound to help with many women who are increasingly choosing to delay settling down and having children, wanting to establish themselves first financially and in terms of their careers.
The Independent also reports that some scientists think the findings could lead to producing an “elixir of youth” for women — a way of replenishing the ovaries of older women so that they don’t have to suffer the age-related health problems associated with the menopause.
From osteoporosis to heart disease, hot flashes to night sweats, irritability and mood swings to trouble sleeping at night, irregular periods to crashing fatigue, difficulty concentrating and disorientation, incontinence to aching muscles, headaches to hair loss, bleeding gums and tinnitus — the list of ailments associated with menopause is practically a litany of woes.
With menopause eradicated, older women will be able to retain the health they once enjoyed when they were younger, the scientists think.
Fertilizing the eggs grown from stem cells
Now Dr. Tilly’s and Telfer’s team is set to fertilize the lab-grown eggs cells, and is about to request for a license from UK’s fertility watchdog.
The investigators want to fertilize the egg cells with human sperm to prove that they are viable. “The aim will be to demonstrate that the eggs that we’ve generated in vitro are competent to form embryos and that’s the best test that an egg is an egg,” Dr. Richard Anderson of the Medical Research Council Centre for Reproductive Health, the British scientist who will be in charge of the clinical aspects of the work, tells The Independent.
But following stringent laws on human fertilization — any resulting embryos will be studied for up to 14 days only to see if they are normal. The law sets 14 days as the legal limit that embryos may be studied. Because they will be deemed experimental material, these early embryos will not be transplanted into a woman’s womb — but will either be frozen or allowed to perish.
Dr. Telfer has says she has already informally approached the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), and will submit a formal license application within the next few weeks.
“We hope to apply for a research license to do the fertilization of the in vitro grown oocytes within the IVF unit at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary,” Dr. Telfer tells The Independent. “Could the fertilization take place this year? Yes, absolutely,” she says.
The pioneering research is quickly gaining the displeasure of a number of fundamentalist Christian groups in cyberspace. In some blogs, citizens have expressed fears that by if a virtually unlimited supply of human eggs egg can be derived, this would lead to mass cloning experiments that, in turn, would allow scientists to overcome eventually the complexities that have so far thwarted the perfecting of the human cloning.
In these fears they are united with bioethicists and many global authorities. In August 2005, the United Nations adopted the UN Declaration on Human Cloning, which calls on members countries to adopt all measures needed to prohibit all forms of human cloning. The UN called for the blanket ban saying this was needed “inasmuch as (human cloning is) incompatible with human dignity and the protection of human life.”
At that time, 84 countries voted for the declaration, 34 voted against, and 37 abstained.
The declaration also called on States to:
- Protect human life adequately in the application of life sciences
- Prohibit the application of genetic engineering techniques that may be contrary to human dignity
- Prevent the exploitation of women in the application of life sciences
- Adopt and implement national legislation in that connection.
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Returning from holiday after a long break can be quite stressful for many drivers who have to begin renegotiating heavy morning and afternoon traffic again. At this time of the year it’s always a good idea to familiarise yourself with some basic road rules that keep you and your family safe on the road.
A good starting point are the ten Golden Rules for road safety published by the International Federation of Automobile Clubs (FIA). These rules are in support of the United Nations’ Decade of Action for Road Safety aimed at reducing road deaths around the world.
- Buckle up. Drivers and passengers should always wear a seatbelt. In South Africa it is also the law that any child under the age of three is in a properly secure car seat. Wearing a seatbelt greatly reduces the chance of death or serious injury in crashes.
- Respect the rules of the road. Road rules are there for everyone, and there to promote safety. Ignoring the rules of the road is selfish and puts other drivers and risk.
- Obey the speed limit. Cars are made of metal, pedestrians and children are not.
- Check your tyres. Worn tyres are extremely dangerous and can cause severe damage if they burst. Always check your tyres for wear, and the correct inflation, including the spare.
- Drive sober. Driving drunk is extremely dangerous and illegal. If you are driving drunk you are a danger on the roads.
- Protect your children. All children should be seated and buckled up. Younger children should be seated in car or booster seats and secured properly for the journey, no matter how short it is.
- Pay attention. Distracted driving leads to less focus on the road and is extremely dangerous. Put your cellphone away and focus on the road ahead. No call or text message is more important than your life or the lives of your passengers and other road users.
- Stop when you are tired. Driving while tired has been compared to driving while drunk. If you are tired, stop and rest. The AA advises all motorists to stop and rest every two hours or 200km.
- Wear a helmet. If you drive a motorbike or bicycle wear a helmet – it is a basic safety necessity.
- Be courteous and considerate. Everyone wants to be somewhere, and get there as quickly as possible. Respect other drivers who also have a right to be on the road with you. | <urn:uuid:36d2eee9-4683-4754-aaf5-bbed1a05e910> | CC-MAIN-2019-43 | https://www.aa.co.za/insights/ten-golden-rules-for-road-safety | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-43/segments/1570986660323.32/warc/CC-MAIN-20191015205352-20191015232852-00360.warc.gz | en | 0.954426 | 495 | 2.734375 | 3 |
by Rebecca Hui, Office Manager at VAEEC
When business owners shut off the lights this spring, they had no idea that months later, the nation would still be in the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s no secret that this virus has irreversibly changed the world around us, and continues to do so with every new development. This three part series will focus on the ways VAEEC members are meeting these challenges head on to keep their customers and their communities safe.
So what does energy efficiency have to do with COVID-19? A surprising amount. Research shows that the buildings where people work, live, and play can dramatically affect their health. A 2019 study from VAEEC member, VEIC, stated that Americans spent nearly 70% of their time in their homes – and that was well before stay-at-home orders and social distancing went into effect. Poor insulation, leaky windows, aging appliances, and improper ventilation all contribute to many of the leading causes of death in the U.S.: asthma, heart disease, chronic respiratory illness, and stroke (ACEEE 2019). While energy efficiency measures have been helping to address many of these problems for years, the new, acute threat of COVID-19 has forced the industry to rapidly adapt to changing – and sometimes contradictory – needs.
While many things about COVID-19 remain unknown, data shows that one thing is clear – the virus spreads faster indoors, and as viral load and exposure time increase, so does the likelihood of infection. ACEEE recently stated that, of 1,500 known superspreader events, only three took place entirely outdoors. This reality has brought ventilation and indoor air quality into laser focus for many businesses and commercial and multi-family building owners as they scramble to meet the changing needs of their staff, customers, and residents.
“If we can take one good thing out of [the pandemic], it’s bringing a focus to the building environment and how healthy that building environment can be for occupants,” said Chris Rawlings, Chief Energy Officer of VeteranLED. In light of the pandemic, experts recommend increasing the number of air changes per hour in a building and running HVAC systems continuously to flush out potentially infectious air. Although outdoor air dilutes contaminants, increasing ventilation rates reduces the energy efficiency of the space, leading to a tricky balance between safety and rising energy costs. To solve this problem, many are looking toward technology.
VAEEC Board member George Barnes, Account Manager for Complex Solutions for Trane said, “the challenge is to complete [measures] in an energy efficient manner. If done correctly, spaces will be safer, occupants will be healthier, and any cost increases will be mitigated.”
Customers aren’t the only ones looking for ways to help keep their businesses afloat. The energy efficiency industry has been hit hard by the pandemic, causing many businesses to adapt to a new set of needs. For Rawlings, this meant a hard pivot into previously unknown territory – installing UVGI systems.
Ultraviolet Germicidal Irradiation (UVGI) has been used for decades to help stop the spread of infectious diseases. It uses shortwave ultraviolet radiation, or UV-C, to damage the microbe’s DNA, which in the case of coronaviruses, causes the outer protein coating to break down and render the virus inactive. Because UV-C radiation is only effective when in direct contact with a pathogen, it has to be correctly implemented to combat COVID-19 and other diseases. There are two common strategies for using UVGI systems: integrating the fixtures into the HVAC system, and using “upper room” systems.
In-Line Duct systems use UVGI lighting inside the ducts of a building, passing air through the radiation and rendering microbes incapable of replicating. These solutions also incorporate HEPA or other high-efficiency filtration systems to remove the contaminants from the air.
Meanwhile, “upper room” systems irradiate the air near the ceiling of a room, above the heads of any inhabitants, and use fans and circulators to move the air in the lower part of the room into the irradiation zone. While UV-C is less harmful to humans than other types of UV radiation, UVGI still must be carefully and correctly implemented to reduce exposure.
VeteranLED has been installing and designing energy efficient building systems since 2014, but incorporating UVGI technology was a completely new challenge. By “really diving into the research” and applying his experience, Rawlings developed an integrated air purification system that uses UVGI lighting in an in-line duct system and hospital grade UV-C fixtures that can sterilize surfaces when the space is not occupied.
“We’ve been able to tap into resources and networks where [health] has been a priority since the get-go, like hospitals and laboratories,” said Rawlings. VeteranLED was hired to install their air purification systems in 20 Silver Diner restaurants across the Midatlantic region.
For other organizations, COVID-19 has meant doubling down on the technologies they already offer. Siemens has been a long time leading provider of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies. The question, for them, was how to adapt their existing portfolio to meet the changing needs of Siemens’ customers?
“As a company that diligently practices a ‘Zero Harm’ culture, we had to learn how to protect our employees and our customers while ensuring our communities most important infrastructure assets were operating and available to serve their mission,” said Michele Mitch-Peterson, Ingenuity Consultant for Siemens Smart Infrastructure team. Siemens provides an array of high-performance building systems, including occupancy and temperature sensors, energy performance management systems, and non-ozone producing ionization technology.
Building automation systems, or BAS, is an automated, central control system that manages the HVAC, lighting, security, and other interrelated systems in a building. Automation systems use a variety of tools such as sensors and controls to improve comfort and reduce energy use and maintenance costs. These technologies have been advancing in both complexity and popularity since the early 2000’s, and have been adopted in most new commercial, industrial, and institutional construction. Siemens has been on the forefront of much of this innovation.
“In the midst of all the uncertainty COVID-19 caused, we really sought to find projects and innovations to minimize the impact on our customers and give them certainty around energy savings, especially with buildings not being occupied,” said Peterson. Siemens was able to work with customers to implement specific energy reduction plans based on current usage. Using a variety of their proprietary solutions, they were able to automatically adjust systems due to reduced demand, continuously monitor buildings via Fault Detection and Diagnostics, and analyze sub-meter data to determine the effects of actions taken and identify areas where further energy savings could be achieved.
“It has been an extremely challenging period, but also extremely rewarding as we have found new ways to serve our customers.” | <urn:uuid:b86e9ee2-62e1-4f73-9f81-d30d05f1ba0f> | CC-MAIN-2020-50 | https://vaeec.org/vaeec-members-combating-covid-19-technologies-to-keep-us-safe/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-50/segments/1606141180636.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20201125012933-20201125042933-00008.warc.gz | en | 0.954633 | 1,472 | 2.734375 | 3 |
Article by Tyrone Baines III & Roberta Lock
Preserving Livers for Transplantation
Transplantation of a human liver following 3 days of ex situ normothermic preservation, Nature Biotechnology, 2022
Pierre-Alain Clavien et al., Mark W. Tibbitt Lab
Organ transplants are an important part of medicine and give individuals a second chance at life. Because of the opportunity it provides, there is a high demand for many different organ transplants including the heart, kidney, and liver. The current methods to preserve the organs leave a short window of time (usually less than 12 hours) to assess, transport, and implant donor organs. Any longer and the organ starts to die. Increasing this window of time that the organ can be preserved prior to transplant would be greatly beneficial for assessing the viability of otherwise discarded organs for transplant. This article talks about the successful transplant of a human liver, that was preserved for several days prior to transplantation.
What did these researchers do?
A new way of preserving organs was developed that uses a perfusion machine to extend the available time an organ can stay ex situ (out of the body) and still survive. The machine, known as the Wyss machine, is designed to mimic blood supply to maintain the organ. This includes automated remote control of important parameters by monitoring temperature, sugar, waste, and oxygen in and out of the liver.
Long-term Ex Situ Machine Perfusion of Injured Liver
Why is this important?
The shortage of organs remains a pressing issue in the medical field. Due to the short window of time organs can be preserved, comprehensive analysis cannot be completed, thus many organs are considered unusable due to the potential of damage or infection. Longer preservation times can allow for these assessments to determine suitability prior to transplant. This means that some organs originally considered unfit for transplantation could be deemed safe and used, increasing overall access to donor transplants. A longer window also means the organ can travel longer distances, making the locality of the donor and recipient less of a limitation. This research also opens up avenues towards recovery of unfit organs prior to transplantation. Ultimately, these advances can make the demanding surgery into an elective, more planned procedure
How did the researchers do this?
A damaged liver was removed from a 29-year-old patient who suffered from invasive desmoid fibromatosis, leading to a 4 cm tumor in the liver. The scientists hooked the liver up to the Wyss machine and kept it in cold preservation for 4 hours. Initial analyses discovered that there were benign lesions within the organ. Before the transplantation, the recipient- a 62-year-old male with cirrhosis and hypertension- was informed of the issues with the liver and agreed to the surgery. Following surgery, it took a few days to recover liver function. On the 5th day, the patient suffered kidney failure, which resolved after a few more days. After 12 days the patient was released from the hospital with no signs of rejection from the body. No other issues occurred such as inflammation or bile leakage leading to the operation being a success. The patient returned to normal activities 2 months later, and 1 year later still has no issues with the transplanted organ.
What comes next?
The scientists in the experiment have shown that there are new and better ways to preserve vital organs for longer periods of time. They were able to preserve the organ and revitalize it outside of the human body. While the study decided that it was possible to preserve the organ longer, there is still much to do before this can become a common practice. The experiment only has one patient, so the procedure needs to be repeated several times before we can firmly conclude that this method of organ preservation works well. It’s also necessary to find the maximum amount of time this equipment can keep organs preserved. Although there are many questions yet to be answered from this study, we now know we have started to develop a potential real solution to a pressing problem in medicine. | <urn:uuid:73e3e63e-b49c-4ab5-bba1-51c9083d1da8> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://www.nextgenterc.com/preservinglivers | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233508977.50/warc/CC-MAIN-20230925115505-20230925145505-00206.warc.gz | en | 0.957189 | 827 | 3.6875 | 4 |
Big Data are all over the news. Some fear a new Big Brother, others celebrate new, astonishing possibilities in fields like marketing, epidemiology, city management, and Chris Anderson prophesies a science without theory. Obviously we are on the verge of a revolution. But, by the way, what are we talking about?
ParisTech Review – In the last two or three years, the issue of Big Data has pervaded the public debate, generating enthusiasm and doubts… And yet, we sometimes have a hard time defining what we are exactly talking about. Could you briefly explain?
Henri Verdier – This confusion isn’t surprising, because not only is it a recent theme, but more importantly, there is an ongoing political and economic confrontation around its definition. The term “Big Data” refers to at least three different phenomenon. In a narrow sense, it refers to new information technologies in the field of massive data processing. In a broader sense, it refers to the economic and social transformations induced by these technologies. And last, some analysts present it as an epistemological break: the leap from hypothetic-deductive methods – on which modern science is built – to inductive logics, very different from the former.
Moreover, the boom of Big Data covers enormous interests and this probably adds to the confusion. For example, IBM rebuilt its empire from ashes in this field. Other giants, such as Google and Facebook, are also very heavily involved. It’s an area that draws the attention of consultants and service providers, and all these people tend to exaggerate the impact of the technologies that they are trying to sell.
Does this mean that we are witnessing a mere bubble, a fad?
Definitely not. But precisely because of the significance of this evolution, we must keep a cool head and examine rationally what’s happening before our eyes. First things first: the technologies involved.
The first phenomenon is the deluge of data generated by servers that currently store volumes of information unfathomable only of a few years back (information available in digital format has increased from 193 petabytes in 1996 – the equivalent of all the books printed hitherto by Humanity – to 2.7 zetabytes in 2012, one million times more). This explosion is made possible by technical progress, but it is also fueled by new trends. You and me, everyone, every day, we increasingly produce and exchange messages: tweets, posts, comments, SMS, emails, and so and so. With the popularity of the “quantified self”, which consists in collecting personal data and sharing it, the generating raw data is even a new way of being-in-the-world. But we also produce data we don’t know about, when buying a product in a supermarket, when clicking on a newspaper article, and by allowing our smartphones to geo-localize our position. The Internet of objects will also increasingly produce, or incite us to produce, new amounts of data: noise and speed sensors will transform our bodies’ footprint into raw data – as do today our conversations on Facebook.
The second new feature is the ability to deal with this new data. In a certain way, it is not quantity that defines Big Data, but rather a certain relationship with data, a certain way of playing with it. We learn every day how to manage, measure, interpret better – and at cheaper costs. This “cheap” computer technology already opens the door to new players: no need to be IBM to handle terabytes.
Even today, in the Silicon Valley, one can observe the rise of Big Data hardware technology: some players like Facebook, SAP, IBM and Goldman Sachs have organized and funded programs to learn how to manage massive amounts of data. One of the challenges for them is to deal with Google, of course, who has emerged as the actor par excellence in Big Data processing. One of the programs in question is for example the MapReduce framework, in which Google is also committed. This model handles parallel calculations on large volumes of data. In terms of programming and system architecture, this is the break of a new philosophy: one does not necessarily seek to develop sophisticated algorithms or use very powerful machines, but simply takes advantage of the available computing power, by performing the same operation millions of times by machines set up in parallel. For example, Amazon uses hundreds of servers in its cloud. In terms of software, this isn’t necessarily very impressive, but results speak for themselves.
This technological shift is not only a question of volume. It is often said that they rely on the “three Vs”: variety, velocity and volume. Big Data information technology is renewed every day to deal with large amounts of data, often poorly structured, in lightning-short timeframes (as for example in high-frequency trading).
Performance, therefore, covers the amount of data processed, the diversity of sources and the search for real-time answers. This new available power opens the door to new strategies of data processing. You learn to handle complete distributions, to play with probabilities, to translate problems into automatic decision systems, to build new visualizations for new rules of interaction with data.
A new school of computer science is rising, a new way of programming, partly inspired by the hacker culture. The members of this community focused on the hardware in the 1970s, on software in the 1980-1990s, on contents in the 2000s. And now, they are focusing on data. “Data is the new code”: this paradigm was proclaimed to emphasize that from now on, data is no longer the random variable and that the code should be organized around it…
A new computer science, or better said, a new philosophy of computer science: does that suppose different professional skills?
Indeed, yes. Today, a new profession is emerging: datascientists, who could be defined as follows: they’re basically good mathematicians and more specifically, statisticians; next, they’re good computer engineers and, if possible, excellent hackers, capable for instance of installing three virtual machines on a single server; last, and this is a crucial point, they are able to provide strategic advice, because most organizations today are completely unprepared for Big Data. It is possible that these different functions split apart in the future. But for today, we need all three skills.
To these three basic skills, I might add datavisualisation: to be able to give a shape, a readable shape, to calculations is absolutely crucial if we want Big Data to be usable for something.
Precisely, what does it do? What are the applications of these new skills?
General speaking, producting and capturing data creates value. The question, of course, is to know how and where.
On some subjects, applications already exist: marketing comes into mind, of course, where ad targeting is made possible by the cloud processing of the data generated by each user. Another example is customization, as performed by Amazon, which is capable of suggesting books or movies amazingly close to your personal tastes. In a more distant future, we might be able to see, as in the movie Minority Report, real-time customization of advertising boards that will recognize the categories of people approaching them. After all, Minority Report did nothing else than bring on the screens innovations that were being developed by the MIT Medialab.
But these are just obvious examples. Big Data allows many other things. It can, for example, assist organizations in analyzing complex problems and taking into account the variability of these situations, instead of always thinking in terms of the “average customer”, the “average patient” or the “average voter”…
Real time management, through resynchronization and optimization systems, is another trend. Traffic is good example: the best application I know of is Waze. It’s a mobile navigation app that allows drivers to build and use maps, real-time traffic updates and step-by-step navigation to improve their daily commuting. In a completely different field, high frequency trading is also one possible application of Big Data. It’s not only about multiplying financial transactions, but also an asset for overtaking other operators, by responding quickly to their operations and by replying in more efficient communication channels.
We could also mention the emerging field of feedback economy, based on constant iterations to optimize supply, both in terms of available stocks and in terms of prices. Or personal assistants such as SIRI, that you can train yourself. Or applications such as Dr. Watson, which provide diagnostic support to high-end hospital teams.
Precisely, a site like Dr. Watson poses the problem of the reliability of interpretations made from Big Data.
True. In this case, it is just an aid for diagnostic; it doesn’t replace a doctor’s visit. But we would be wrong to stop at this conclusion. There are situations when you do not have any reliable data. The UN, for example, receives economic data dated several years back, and sometimes even distorted. Epidemiology works with data both expensive and quite long to produce. And yet, one can follow an influenza or dengue epidemic with simple queries on Google. Monitoring an epidemic in real time and with free data is priceless! Information produced by Big Data is often based on imperfect or incomplete sources and is therefore neither absolutely certain, nor guaranteed nor reliable. But oddly enough, because of the law of large numbers, it is often an effective source of information.
But how should we interpret these phenomena? Among the recurring debates around Big Data, there is the idea of a scientific revolution, including the horizon of a “science without theory” as prophesied by Chris Anderson.
Again, we must make some distinctions. There’s definitely something important at work in social sciences, especially in marketing and sociology, which have never had the pretension to unveil universal laws. In these disciplines, Big Data not only leads to a greater ability to process data, but also to a form of liberation in the way we organize this data. For instance, when mapping 30 million blogs, new sociological categories appear which sociologists would never have thought of. In short, sociological categories emerging from pure empirical observation can be far more relevant than previous conventional categories.
This is what led Chris Anderson, the editor of the Wired magazine, to formulate his idea of a “science without theory”, which would use inductive rather than deductive logic. In this model, truth almost spontaneously sprouts from data. And indeed, thanks to “machine learning”, we sometimes end up in situations where we are able to predict, with equations that we don’t really know, results that we can’t really explain! I’m thinking, for example, of a study led by IBM in a Toronto maternity hospital which, based on historical biological parameters of thousands or tens of thousands of infants, can predict, 24 hours before any pediatrician, which babies will develop neonatal infections. In this example, there is a very useful, and even vital, forecasting ability – but no underlying theory. This doesn’t prevent us from making the effort to understand: statisticians emphasize that any serious work on Big Data requires understanding the processes of data generation as well as their evolution. At the same time, data management is always based on causal inferences that should be stated and understood.
Public authorities have often access to large statistical databases: have they taken hold of the subject?
There is a clear interest and some remarkable initiatives. A city like New York, for example, has formed a small team of datascientists and they were able to extract precise information from masses of public data available from the city. For instance, they have identified the areas and streets where fires were more likely to occur. This information provided the right indications for security visits and consequently helped reduce the number of fires. They also developed an algorithm to detect tax frauds. And it works!
The United Nations, with the Global Pulse program, strives to put Big Data at the service of human development: the analysis of social networks and mobile communications can help identify, far more quickly than other conventional indicators, pressures on food prices, the break and progression of epidemics, job market fluctuations, etc.
Hence the “Big Brother” label often associated with Big Data?
The previous examples use statistical – not personal – data. But indeed, the developments of Big Data should be confronted to the contemporary obsession for transparency, often flavored with a certain naïveté. This is disturbing. Douglas Klein (Barnes & Noble) once stated that “privacy is the elephant in the room” suggesting that many U.S. private actors expect an inevitable wave of regulations resulting from citizen revolt.
Personally, I think that we have a number of issues to deal with, far more serious than privacy in the strict sense. Privacy will be protected, one way or another. Following Daniel Kaplan’s observations, I might add that beyond the concern for privacy issues, there is another equally important issue about which there haven’t been so many studies: I’m referring to automatic decision. In a close future, the operations by which an online merchant sets the price of an item or service will no longer be based on an ensemble of average buyers but on the price that you, specifically, are willing to pay. One can well imagine a website able to trace your buyer’s profile and offering you a price according to this profile. Not any price, of course. But the highest price that you are willing to pay. It is quite possible that this type of profiling will soon become the basis for relationships in many environments. And this is certainly matter of concern.
Getting back to public data, it’s not only limited to administrative use. Sometimes, the most interesting developments occur when the public sphere renounces to its monopoly on certain data and organizes the possibility for others to work on it. The GPS, originally developed by the U.S. Army, is a classic example of this strategy.
The open data movement is also a major issue. It works in both directions: the Open Government Summit, organized since 2009, has shown that you can import rules and methods into the public sphere to develop new services, by creating social and economic value; symmetrically, to accelerate the development of these services, it is in the public sector’s interest to provide the public with part of the data in its possession. The City of Paris has understood this very well, as have other cities around the world.
But we can still reach further. One of the most recent developments is known as smart disclosure: a strategy to return data to those who produce it, so that they can make use of it. The best example in my opinion is the Blue Button of American veterans. When using some specific online services, they press the button and the service is personalized and boosts its efficiency. Incidentally, in this example, it is not really “returning” data to the citizen but rather allowing him or her to retransmit it to whomever he or her wants.
There is a potential political agenda here: let’s summarize some of the issues at stake. The first one is the possibilities of using Big Data to quickly measure and improve the effectiveness of public policies. Then, open the most relevant public data or target it to rally private and social actors for the support of public policies. And last, promote smart disclosure in order to offer new services to the citizens.
- Data.gov (the US Government’s website on open government)
- Waze (the world's fastest-growing community-based traffic and navigation app)
- Global Pulse (United Nations)
- The Medialab (MIT)
- MapReduce (Wikipedia)
- Dr. Watson: How IBM’s supercomputer could improve health care (Martin Ford, The Washinton Post, 16 Nov. 2011)
- The End of Theory: The Data Deluge Makes the Scientific Method Obsolete (Chris Anderson, Wired, 23 June 2008)
More on paristech review
On the topic
- The Allure of Big DataBy Jannis Kallinikos on November 16th, 2012
- The economics of the multitudeBy Nicolas Colin & Henri Verdier on June 7th, 2012
- Have new advertising models become too aggressive and intrusive?By Knowledge@Wharton on April 27th, 2012
- Prospects and Promise of Big DataBy ParisTech Review on December 19th, 2011
- Turning the data deluge into competitive advantageBy Knowledge@Wharton on November 25th, 2011
By the author
- Think big: challenges and debates over the Big Dataon November 16th, 2012 | <urn:uuid:6479dbe8-9a89-46a5-99a4-c33a63b4dba0> | CC-MAIN-2024-10 | https://www.paristechreview.com/2012/11/16/think-big-data/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2024-10/segments/1707947473558.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20240221202132-20240221232132-00760.warc.gz | en | 0.943699 | 3,460 | 2.515625 | 3 |
The pancreas in the digestive system
The pancreas is a long, flat gland that lies horizontally behind your stomach. It has a role in digestion and in regulating the level of sugar in your blood.
Pancreatic cancer is cancer that forms in the cells of the pancreas.
Pancreatic cancer begins in the tissues of your pancreas — an organ in your abdomen that lies behind the lower part of your stomach. Your pancreas releases enzymes that aid digestion and produces hormones that help manage your blood sugar.
Several types of growths can occur in the pancreas, including cancerous and noncancerous tumors. The most common type of cancer that forms in the pancreas begins in the cells that line the ducts that carry digestive enzymes out of the pancreas (pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma).
Pancreatic cancer is seldom detected at its early stages when it's most curable. This is because it often doesn't cause symptoms until after it has spread to other organs.
Pancreatic cancer treatment options are chosen based on the extent of the cancer. Options may include surgery, chemotherapy, radiation therapy or a combination of these.
Products & Services
Signs and symptoms of pancreatic cancer often don't occur until the disease is advanced. They may include:
- Abdominal pain that radiates to your back
- Loss of appetite or unintended weight loss
- Yellowing of your skin and the whites of your eyes (jaundice)
- Light-colored stools
- Dark-colored urine
- Itchy skin
- New diagnosis of diabetes or existing diabetes that's becoming more difficult to control
- Blood clots
When to see a doctor
See your doctor if you experience any unexplained symptoms that worry you. Many other conditions can cause these symptoms, so your doctor may check for these conditions as well as for pancreatic cancer.
It's not clear what causes pancreatic cancer. Doctors have identified some factors that may increase the risk of this type of cancer, including smoking and having certain inherited gene mutations.
Understanding your pancreas
Your pancreas is about 6 inches (15 centimeters) long and looks something like a pear lying on its side. It releases (secretes) hormones, including insulin, to help your body process sugar in the foods you eat. And it produces digestive juices to help your body digest food and absorb nutrients.
How pancreatic cancer forms
Pancreatic cancer occurs when cells in your pancreas develop changes (mutations) in their DNA. A cell's DNA contains the instructions that tell a cell what to do. These mutations tell the cells to grow uncontrollably and to continue living after normal cells would die. These accumulating cells can form a tumor. When left untreated, the pancreatic cancer cells can spread to nearby organs and blood vessels and to distant parts of the body.
Most pancreatic cancer begins in the cells that line the ducts of the pancreas. This type of cancer is called pancreatic adenocarcinoma or pancreatic exocrine cancer. Less frequently, cancer can form in the hormone-producing cells or the neuroendocrine cells of the pancreas. These types of cancer are called pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors, islet cell tumors or pancreatic endocrine cancer.
Factors that may increase your risk of pancreatic cancer include:
- Chronic inflammation of the pancreas (pancreatitis)
- Family history of genetic syndromes that can increase cancer risk, including a BRCA2 gene mutation, Lynch syndrome and familial atypical mole-malignant melanoma (FAMMM) syndrome
- Family history of pancreatic cancer
- Older age, as most people are diagnosed after age 65
A large study demonstrated that the combination of smoking, long-standing diabetes and a poor diet increases the risk of pancreatic cancer beyond the risk of any one of these factors alone.
Endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP)
Endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP) uses a dye to highlight the bile ducts on X-ray images. A thin, flexible tube (endoscope) with a camera on the end is passed down your throat and into your small intestine. The dye enters the ducts through a small hollow tube (catheter) passed through the endoscope.
As pancreatic cancer progresses, it can cause complications such as:
- Weight loss. A number of factors may cause weight loss in people with pancreatic cancer. Weight loss might happen as the cancer consumes the body's energy. Nausea and vomiting caused by cancer treatments or a tumor pressing on your stomach may make it difficult to eat. Or your body may have difficulty processing nutrients from food because your pancreas isn't making enough digestive juices.
Jaundice. Pancreatic cancer that blocks the liver's bile duct can cause jaundice. Signs include yellow skin and eyes, dark-colored urine, and pale-colored stools. Jaundice usually occurs without abdominal pain.
Your doctor may recommend that a plastic or metal tube (stent) be placed inside the bile duct to hold it open. This is done with the help of a procedure called endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP). During ERCP an endoscope is passed down your throat, through your stomach and into the upper part of your small intestine. A dye is then injected into the pancreatic and bile ducts through a small hollow tube (catheter) that's passed through the endoscope. Finally, images are taken of the ducts.
Pain. A growing tumor may press on nerves in your abdomen, causing pain that can become severe. Pain medications can help you feel more comfortable. Treatments, such as radiation and chemotherapy, might help slow tumor growth and provide some pain relief.
In severe cases, your doctor might recommend a procedure to inject alcohol into the nerves that control pain in your abdomen (celiac plexus block). This procedure stops the nerves from sending pain signals to your brain.
Bowel obstruction. Pancreatic cancer that grows into or presses on the first part of the small intestine (duodenum) can block the flow of digested food from your stomach into your intestines.
Your doctor may recommend that a tube (stent) be placed in your small intestine to hold it open. In some situations, it might help to have surgery to place a temporary feeding tube or to attach your stomach to a lower point in your intestines that isn't blocked by cancer.
You may reduce your risk of pancreatic cancer if you:
- Stop smoking. If you smoke, try to stop. Talk to your doctor about strategies to help you stop, including support groups, medications and nicotine replacement therapy. If you don't smoke, don't start.
- Maintain a healthy weight. If you are at a healthy weight, work to maintain it. If you need to lose weight, aim for a slow, steady weight loss — 1 to 2 pounds (0.5 to 1 kilogram) a week. Combine daily exercise with a diet rich in vegetables, fruit and whole grains with smaller portions to help you lose weight.
- Choose a healthy diet. A diet full of colorful fruits and vegetables and whole grains may help reduce your risk of cancer.
Consider meeting with a genetic counselor if you have a family history of pancreatic cancer. He or she can review your family health history with you and determine whether you might benefit from a genetic test to understand your risk of pancreatic cancer or other cancers. | <urn:uuid:d6185138-563f-4db1-9ade-12666b59b69b> | CC-MAIN-2020-34 | https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/pancreatic-cancer/symptoms-causes/syc-20355421 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-34/segments/1596439738723.55/warc/CC-MAIN-20200810235513-20200811025513-00201.warc.gz | en | 0.931316 | 1,586 | 3.875 | 4 |
Discover the profession of primary school principal!
The role of a primary school principal requires a high level of expertise in teaching and personnel management. This position also has many responsibilities. Therefore, what does this famous job consist of?
Responsibilities of a primary school principal
The nature of the director's missions is based on the size of the school. Some directors are actually responsible for teaching in addition to administrative management. In general, this job supervises and manages the teams of teachers. The director is responsible for structuring school life. He serves as an educational facilitator within the school. These responsibilities are complemented by respect for official school programs and the implementation of pedagogical guidelines.
The primary school principal represents the interface between the parents of students, the National Education and institutional partners. Thus, he is required to contact and maintain relations with parents. Its role is further to promote the establishment by referring to advertising and other means of communication. The director ensures compliance with the discipline and manages the recruitment and training of staff.
How to become a primary school principal?
The director plays a major role within the school. Thus, this job requires a great potential in pedagogy. This profession demands all the more a very good organizational capacity. In addition, running a primary school requires self-sacrifice. Heads of schools are armed with patience and diplomacy towards parents. Also, great relational ease is required to ensure collaboration with other people.
In addition, staffing requires charisma, authority and a sense of leadership. In addition, a diploma of level Bac + 5 in addition to a diploma of studies of teacher with 3 years of services are essential to become principal of primary school. Moreover, the candidate is on a list of departmental aptitude to hope for a job. Then a commission gets in touch with the person concerned for an interview.
The opportunities to evolution
A teacher can become a primary school principal after several years of experience. To fill this position in the public sector, the candidate warrants 3 years of tenured teacher training. Before being hired, the person starts specific training to ensure his new functions. Thus, after 5 years of experience, a primary school principal can become a national education inspector.
The primary director aims to increase the success rate. However, the means are among the obstacles to optimizing academic success. This is the case of Tunisia, where drop-out amounts to 4.3 million students in 2015. Thus, to reduce this figure, the directors benefited from a renovation of their school and a donation from school supplies. These actions were organized by the Hédi Bouchamaoui Foundation headed by Tarek Bouchamaoui and his siblings. The businessman Tarek Bouchamaoui wants to encourage academic success in Tunisia. | <urn:uuid:fbbff491-6278-4fe9-ab54-e9bdf2162551> | CC-MAIN-2020-05 | https://www.ifi-mpls.com/primary-school-principal/discover-the-profession-of-primary-school-principal | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-05/segments/1579250611127.53/warc/CC-MAIN-20200123160903-20200123185903-00304.warc.gz | en | 0.967054 | 561 | 2.53125 | 3 |
Form and structure
Foliose and fruticose lichens are clearly three dimensional and show much obvious variation in form. The markedly two-dimensional crustose lichens have less scope for showing as much variation but all crustose lichens are not just uniform flat sheets and warrant a page devoted to some of the structural variation in the crustose species. The illustrations along the right hand side of this page show some of the crustose growth forms and the terms used to describe them. The left-hand illustration of each horizontal pair shows a cross section through a crustose thallus and the right-hand illustration shows the same thallus viewed from above. These illustrations were produced by Frank Bungartz and have been copied, with permission, from the source given in the following reference button.
Whereas the thalli in most lichens develop on the substrate, an endosubstratal thallus develops within the substrate , for example in finely fissured wood or porous rock. In the left-hand illustration of the first row the straight horizontal line indicates the surface of the substrate. Almost immediately below the surface are the dark dots indicating a layer of photobiont cells, then the short streaks indicating some of the hyphae in the thallus and the broken line indicates the lower extremity of the thallus. If viewed from above there is often little to see except what appears to be a slight discoloration of the substrate, though spore-producing structures such as apothecia and perithecia would typically develop on the surface. The rest of the forms illustrated here grow on the substrate. Leprose lichens, such as the species of the genus Chrysothrix . have a powdery or granular appearance. In the two views of a leprose thallus (on the right) each dark dot indicates a small clump composed of some photobiont cells and fungal hyphae. As you could deduce from the illustration, there is little organisation in the thalli of leprose lichens and often the thallus boundaries are not sharply delimited. The remaining forms shown here have thalli with well-delimited boundaries. The first of these is a crustose lichen with a continuous thallus. Here, as in the remaining illustrations, the dots near the surface indicate the photobiont cells. A continuous thallus has few breaks in the thallus whereas a rimose thallus is marked with irregular, narrow, shallow fissures. Initially you might think that the areolate thallus is an extreme form of a rimose thallus, the fissures having extended through the thallus. One difference between the two illustrations is that each section (or areole) of the areolate thallus has photobiont cells along the upper surface as well as down the sides, so that the opposite sides of each 'fissure' bear photobiont cells. That's not the case with the rimose thallus. A rimose thallus arises from the fissuring of an otherwise continuous thallus whereas in the areolate thallus the separate areoles develop independently, perhaps on a common hypothallus. In a number of lichen species the thallus develops on a basal layer (or hypothallus) of dark-pigmented, non-lichenized hyphae. In such cases, as the thallus expands, the non-lichenized hypothallus is always a little ahead of the expanding lichenized thallus and can be seen as a dark fringe at the margin of the thallus. In this photo of Rhizocarpon geographicum you can see an areolate growth form. The areoles are yellow and many of them have round, black apothecia. The areoles sit on a black hypothallus and the irregular black lines between the areoles are in fact the hypothallus showing through the inter-areole gaps. In an areolate thallus the areoles may sometimes coalesce and, conversely the fissures in a rimose thallus my sometimes extend, so giving a rimose-areolate thallus, as in various species of the genus Diploschistes . A bullate thallus is an areolate thallus with the areoles more rounded while the marginal areoles in the lobate thallus are more developed than the central ones and may be partially free of the substrate, giving a somewhat foliose look to the margin. The species Placopsis perrugosa is a good example. The squamulose illustrations speak for themselves. Placidium squamulosum is an example of a lichen with squamulose thalli.
The various terms used to describe lichen growth forms are very useful for descriptive purposes but there are not always sharp demarcations between growth forms, so allowing some variation in interpretation. For example in these illustrations the squamulose growth form is presented as a type of crustose thallus but other authors treat it as a separate growth form.
Form and structure pages on this website | <urn:uuid:c995f7b8-cb4e-4d61-a1ff-3dcb64a4ee79> | CC-MAIN-2014-15 | http://anbg.gov.au/lichen/form-crustose.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-15/segments/1397609521512.15/warc/CC-MAIN-20140416005201-00074-ip-10-147-4-33.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.920552 | 1,071 | 3.46875 | 3 |
In Depth: Cross-section Kidney
When the body has extracted all necessary nutrients from foods and liquids, the waste is carried away in the blood. The kidneys’ job, among others, is to remove that waste in order to prevent damage to the body.
Of the approximately 48 gallons of liquid passing through the kidneys a day, less than half actually turns into urine. The amount of water in urine depends on a several variables including liquid intake, physical activity, and influence from the antidiuretic hormone—a small molecule that helps control water balance—from the pituitary gland.
Urine is typically 95 percent water and 5 percent dissolved solids and gases. It contains the following:
- Waste from nitrogen: creatinine, urea, and uric acid
- Electrolytes: including salt and sulfates
- Pigment: derived from bile, food, and drugs
The waste removal occurs inside millions of tiny, coiled tubes of arteries, veins, and ducts called nephrons. The nephrons filter unwanted materials while keeping proteins and cells in the bloodstream.
It’s during this process that the kidneys perform the important tasks of fine-tuning levels of chemicals such as electrolytes, potassium, phosphorus, and other ingredients important to life.
Before the liquid leaves the body as urine, the kidney further fine-tunes the composition of the urine through a process known as tubular secretion. During tubular secretion, potassium and hydrogen ions enter the urine from the blood stream. This process helps keep the pH of the blood balanced.
At the tip of each nephron, a tiny capillary called a glomerulus intertwines with a tubule. A tubule is a microscopic tube used to collect urine. This is where waste leaves the blood and enters the urinary system.
The urine collects in the hilum, a series of vessels where urine flows out of the kidney through the ureter and into the bladder.
If the kidneys decide to keep substances, they go through a process known as tubular reabsorption. The needed materials pass back through the bloodstream where they will be used again. | <urn:uuid:33a0784d-f338-49c9-92f0-e232cff197ca> | CC-MAIN-2015-48 | http://www.healthline.com/human-body-maps/kidney-cross-section | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-48/segments/1448398461529.84/warc/CC-MAIN-20151124205421-00151-ip-10-71-132-137.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941437 | 444 | 4.125 | 4 |
The Light Fuel Project:
A Green Cooking Fuel Alternative
A Critical Problem with Worldwide implications
Unfortunately, many people grossly underestimate the importance trees play in our lives. Trees are rightfully considered to be the very lungs of our planet by purifying the air, producing precious oxygen and absorbing the greenhouse gases causing global warming and climate change. Tragically the current worldwide rate of tree destruction amounts to over 50 million acres annually.
Roughly half of the World’s population (3 billion+ people) currently rely on Biomass, mostly wood, as fuel for heating and cooking. In developing countries, over 80% of the wood consumed is used for fuel to cook their food and sterilize their water… essential practices for survival. Due to the overwhelming demand, we are losing 5,000,000 trees per month in Uganda alone. Many other parts of the world have completely lost their forests and have been turned into arid wastelands with an ever increasing need for foreign aid.
One City’s Fuel Alternative – Light Fuel
Simple, straight forward and applicable in any part of the world, One City’s Light Fuel technology is a tree saving, life enhancing fuel alternative. By combining some old science coupled with good old fashioned creative ingenuity, One City’s Light Fuel was created.
Benefiting the world with:
- A fuel that requires no electricity or petroleum to produce.
- A fuel that can be produced virtually any place in the world even in hostile environments under primitive conditions.
- A fuel that is environmentally friendly preserving forests and conserving wildlife habitat.
- A fuel that facilitates the reduction of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Benefiting the user with:
- A fuel that is less expensive
- A fuel that allows for a healthier cooking environment
- A fuel that lights easier and burns longer
- A fuel that requires no additional equipment to utilize… and because it looks like and burns just like charcoal it has no associated learning curve!
Note: Ease of use and consumer acceptance is a huge challenge when introducing new technologies. Even some very good technological innovations suffer dismal failure when introduced in real-world applications due to the complexities of initiating any form of cultural change. Because One City’s Light fuel looks and burns much the same as charcoal it has received wide acceptance. | <urn:uuid:153cd6bd-f58d-43b1-80e2-2fe424abdf5a> | CC-MAIN-2021-04 | https://onecityministries.org/projects/light-fuel/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-04/segments/1610703528672.38/warc/CC-MAIN-20210121225305-20210122015305-00456.warc.gz | en | 0.933582 | 472 | 3.015625 | 3 |
Definition of myomere in English:
Another term for myotome.
- In contrast to fish myomeres, the axial locomotor muscles of dolphins are organized into longitudinal tracts as is typical of mammals.
- Far less debatably, the long conodont body has obvious V-shaped myomeres throughout its length.
- Myomeres closest to the girdles are slightly different in shape and muscle fiber angle, but all of the intervening myomeres are nearly identical.
Definition of myomere in:
- British & World English dictionary
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:b0886bba-2430-48e9-b8ba-43ae3edf7f3e> | CC-MAIN-2015-18 | http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/myomere | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-18/segments/1429246657041.90/warc/CC-MAIN-20150417045737-00134-ip-10-235-10-82.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.910834 | 148 | 3.265625 | 3 |
Family Planning and Women's Lives in Rural China
CONTEXT: By 1979, China had begun implementing the so-called one-child policy, which severely restricts couples' childbearing. It is important to understand Chinese women's perceptions of how their lives have been affected by this policy and by the use of family planning.
METHODS: Survey and focus group data collected in 1996 and 1998 from women in three Chinese provinces—Jiangsu, Anhui and Yunnan—were used to examine links connecting family planning and childbearing to women's lives within the family, including their relationships with spouses and other family members, and their opportunities for education, employment and social activities.
RESULTS: Women related family planning to the country's economic situation and to their ability to prosper by having fewer children to support. Increased prosperity enabled them to provide for children's education and to build them houses. In Jiangsu, 73-75% of respondents who had had one child were satisfied with their number of children, regardless of sex; in Anhui and Yunnan, 54-58% of women who had one son and no daughter reported being satisfied, compared with 31-50% of women who had one daughter and no sons. The great majority (73-99%) of women in all three provinces who had two children—regardless of sex—were satisfied with their number of children.
CONCLUSIONS: Few women disputed that women's lives were better now than in the past. China's one-child policy, however, places women—particularly those in rural areas—in a situation where they are pressured by the government's childbearing requirements on one side and by society's preference for sons on the other.
International Family Planning Perspectives, 2003, 30(2):68-76
In the 1950s, China's Chairman Mao Zedong rejected the need for family planning programs, saying that China needed more labor power.1 However, by 1979, China had begun implementing the world's most stringent antifertility policy and program, which amounted to an assault on China's system of gender norms and roles. The policy, which limited most couples to one child, was justified on the grounds that China could grow economically only if population growth were held in check.2 In addressing the conflict between the so-called one-child policy and a society that valued males over females, the government noted that "feudal thinking" leading to son preference would change as a result of economic growth and the implementation of a system for old-age security.3
Family planning was available only in some urban areas in the 1950s. During the Cultural Revolution, which extended from the mid-1960s through the mid-1970s, family planning received little attention and was not widely implemented. A "later-longer-fewer" (wan xi shao) policy—designed to encourage later childbearing, more widely spaced births and fewer births—was instituted in the mid-1970s, but was more widely implemented in some provinces than in others. Since 1979, China has implemented the one-child policy, although the government has never sought to limit all couples to only one child. Over the years, the policy has included a number of exceptions that allow some couples to have larger families: For example, couples belonging to ethnic minorities and couples living in rural areas whose first child is a daughter typically have been allowed to have more than one child.4* The one-child policy has been most strictly implemented in urban areas and in semiurban areas in prosperous provinces.
As a result of the one-child policy, a strong family planning program and overall socioeconomic changes, China has experienced a rapid decline in fertility, particularly in urban areas. The country's total fertility rate fell from more than six children in the 1950s to approximately two in 1992,5 and continued to fall throughout the 1990s. A number of studies, however, show that China's population policy conflicts with a culture that values males over females6 and therefore exacerbates the effects of son preference, particularly in rural, agricultural areas.7
The generations of Chinese women alive today have lived in a rapidly changing country and have experienced family planning very differently than those in previous generations. Whereas older women had little or no access to family planning, and middle-aged women were abruptly compelled to curtail their childbearing in adherence to the government's goal of rapid fertility decline, younger women have grown up with the one-child policy as part of their lives. How do Chinese women perceive their lives to have been affected by the one-child policy and family planning? And do they feel that family planning has contributed to gender equity or changing gender norms?
This article is based on a study that was unique in China, in that it was the first international collaboration with the explicit goal of studying the effects of family planning on women's lives. Other studies have examined China's family planning program and people's reactions to it; however, this was the first study on the subject sanctioned directly by the State Family Planning Commission and conducted by a government research organization in collaboration with an international organization. It was implemented at a time when the government was acknowledging that the one-child policy might have some negative effects, such as skewed sex ratios resulting from the combination of son preference and low fertility.8
Using survey statistics and excerpts from focus group discussions among rural women in three Chinese provinces, we examine links between family planning and childbearing and women's lives within the family, including their relationships with spouses and other family members, and their opportunities for education, employment and social activities.
We used data from a study conducted in 1996 and 1998 by the China Population Information and Research Center (CPIRC) and the Women's Studies Project of Family Health International.9 The study was carried out in two rural counties in each of three provinces: Jiangsu, Anhui and Yunnan. The three provinces differ economically and by the level of success of the family planning program, and although they do not represent all of rural China, they do offer a range of areas with widely differing conditions.
Jiangsu, on the eastern coast, has a rapidly growing economy that relies only partly on agriculture. Although all the study sites were officially classified by the Chinese government as rural, the two counties in Jiangsu are "rural-urbanized," or formerly rural areas that have become urban. Both were recently ranked in the top 100 counties in China in terms of economic growth. One county is known for its embroidery, but also has family and household industries; the other has a strong industrial base and includes national demonstration models of modernized rural townships. Jiangsu, which has strictly enforced the one-child policy (with exceptions) since 1979, is in the highest of three levels for family planning performance (in terms of both contraceptive prevalence and the total fertility rate) in the country.
Compared with Jiangsu, the central province of Anhui is more agrarian and less prosperous, and the two counties in north Anhui choosen for the study are considered poor, even by Anhui's standards. Both are predominantly agricultural: One is known for producing wine and herbs, and the other for producing plastic string. Anhui is considered in the second tier of provinces for family planning performance. Since the mid-1980s, family planning policy has been somewhat strictly enforced in Anhui, with couples whose first child is a son being prohibited from having a second child (sometimes referred to as the "daughter-only" policy).
Yunnan, in western China, is agrarian and has strong trading ties with Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, with which it shares borders. Economically, Yunnan is similar to Anhui in that they are both agrarian. Culturally, however, it differs from both Anhui and Jiangsu. Yunnan is home to a number of national minority groups,* some of whom have a tradition of daughter preference. The fertility policy in Yunnan is more relaxed than in the other two provinces: Han couples are allowed to have one or sometimes two children, whereas minority couples are allowed two (with a four-year interval between the two children). The level and quality of services is not as good as in Jiangsu and Anhui, even though Yunnan receives a substantial amount of international family planning and reproductive health assistance.
Overall, 4,501 women and 1,526 men were interviewed in the survey; 32 women and 232 men participated in focus groups that ranged from five to 12 people. The focus groups were conducted with women and men of reproductive age, women and men past reproductive age, unmarried women and male and female entrepreneurs (a group of special interest in China). The fieldwork in Jiangsu and Anhui was carried out in 1996; because of funding issues, fieldwork in Yunnan took place in 1998. Given that the family planning policies and the social and economic situation in the three study sites remained the same during this time, the difference in the timing of the fieldwork should not affect the results.
CPIRC and the provincial and local family planning commissions chose two counties for the study from each of the three study provinces. Within each county, 10 townships were randomly selected for the survey and seven townships were randomly selected for the focus group discussions. CPIRC randomly selected one administration village (which includes several natural villages) from each township, with the requirement that the village be at least three kilometers away from a town. From each village, 120 households were randomly selected from lists of couples of reproductive age maintained by local family planning workers.
During the field survey, CPIRC interviewers were permitted to visit only the households on the list. If no one was home when the interviewer visited, the interviewer was instructed to go to the next house on the list. When 75 ever-married women and 25 ever-married men from the list had been interviewed, the survey in the village was considered finished. If a sufficient number of interviews could not be conducted in a village, the interviewer was instructed to go to a nearby village to complete the interviews. Although response rates were not calculated, the people approached in the eligible households were very likely to agree to participate; thus, overall response rates were very high.
In one county in Jiangsu, interviewers surveyed some men and women at work instead of in their homes, because most couples worked in factories during the day. More respondents in that county than in others had to be substituted; thus, the sample from that county became a convenience sample. The sample is slightly older in that county than in others because many of the younger women were working in the township. Still, most of the women interviewed in the county had one child—the same number women not interviewed likely had.10 Thus, this difference in sampling had little effect on the analysis.
For the focus group discussions, local leaders helped select participants after discussions with the research team on the desired characteristics of participants. The groups, which met in various public places, lasted 1-2 hours and were moderated by CPIRC staff. Separate sessions were held with women and men, and with different age-groups. Although it would have been ideal for the moderator to be similar to the group, particularly in terms of sex and age, this was not always possible. In addition, a local representative was present to translate, if necessary. Some groups were observed by officials from the township or province, but these observers were not known by the participants.
For our analyses, we used survey and focus group data from women only. Survey data were entered and analyzed using SAS and SPSS statistical packages. Transcripts from the focus groups were typed in Chinese and translated into English. The authors analyzed the focus group data by reading the transcripts and identifying themes and representative quotes. In this article, tables with descriptive statistics refer to results of the survey of women and quotations are from the focus groups with women.
We acknowledge that this study was conducted in a social context in which people are generally not inclined to criticize government policies and programs, especially one as important as China's family planning program. The survey participants were chosen at random and were interviewed alone; however, as in research settings in other countries, answers to the questions posed in the study may reflect what women thought the government would want to hear. It is also possible that the family planning program has been operational for so long that women have internalized the messages that family planning and the small family norm are good, and that family planning must therefore be beneficial to people's lives. Still, not everyone in the study spoke favorably about family planning, so participants must have felt they had some leeway to be critical.
We recognize particularly that the method of choosing focus group participants likely introduced some bias into the findings; however, such involvement by the government is a reality of doing most research in China. The participants in the focus groups probably do not include the women with the most negative perceptions of family planning. Still, the results show diversity of opinion and a number of negative comments, suggesting that those who did participate felt at least somewhat free to give voice to their feelings.
The women in the survey were aged 20-55, with an average age of 35.5 in Jiangsu, 33.0 in Anhui and 32.8 in Yunnan (Table 1). Virtually all of the women were married (not shown); the mean age at marriage ranged from 21.4 in Yunnan to 23.6 in Jiangsu. Educational attainment differed across the three provinces: Two percent of women in Jiangsu had no education, compared with 7% in Yunnan and 37% in Anhui. The greatest proportion of women in Jiangsu (58%) had had a middle school education, whereas the greatest proportions in Anhui (42%) and Yunnan (57%) had had a primary school education. At least 90% of women in Anhui and Yunnan were farmers, whereas only 21% of women in Jiangsu worked in agriculture. In Jiangsu, the greatest proportion of women reported working in a local enterprise (62%). In 1995, the average family income in Jiangsu was about 20,000 yuan (US$1≈8.3 yuan), substantially higher than the average family income in Anhui (4,500 yuan); in 1997, the average family income in Yunnan was 5,700 yuan (not shown). The differences in local policies are evident in the childbearing statistics: The average number of live births was 1.3 in Jiangsu, 1.8 in Anhui and 2.1 in Yunnan.
Experience with Birth Control
•Contraceptive use and parity. Use of contraceptives is required in China. Couples with one child are directed to use the IUD and those with two or more are expected to be sterilized. Although the government is experimenting with allowing women more method choices, the IUD and sterilization continue to be the two most prescribed and used methods. The vast majority of women in Yunnan (87%), Anhui (91%) and Jiangsu (97%) reported that they (or their partners) were currently using a contraceptive method (Table 2); 90-96% of those who reported using a method were relying on the IUD or sterilization. In each province, the contraceptive use pattern corresponded to the fertility level. In Jiangsu, most couples had one child and thus used the IUD. In Anhui and Yunnan, a greater proportion of couples had two children, and contraceptive use was split between the IUD and sterilization. On average, women reported that they had been using their current method between 5.7 and 9.7 years.
•Contraceptive failure. A greater proportion of women in Jiangsu (29%) than in Yunnan (9%) or Anhui (12%) reported having had a pregnancy as a result of contraceptive failure (not shown). These differences are not surprising, as a greater proportion of women in Jiangsu used the IUD, whereas greater proportions of women in the other two provinces relied on sterilization.
•Experience with family planning. In the focus group discussions, women of various ages described their experiences with family planning generally and with specific contraceptive methods. Typically, older women said they wished they had had better access to family planning and talked about the number of children they would have had if they had been able to use contraceptives. A 60-year-old woman from Anhui who had five children said, "Now young people are so happy—they have family planning. At that time, we didn't want to make more children but we had no family planning methods."
Many women recounted IUD failures and the abortions they had as a result. They mentioned that the steel ring IUD—widely used until recently—had a propensity for dropping out. A 28-year-old Jiangsu woman with one son said, "I had a C-section. After the baby was taken out, they put in an IUD immediately. Last month [one year after insertion], I had a contraceptive failure. I took medicine and had an abortion." A 34-year-old woman from Yunnan who has two daughters joked, "I never heard about anyone who was not worried [about the IUD]." Thus, women worried about becoming pregnant even when practicing contraception, and many had to terminate unplanned pregnancies.
Interestingly, use of male contraceptive methods was more common at the beginning of China's population program than today. No one in the focus groups said that men should now be taking on more of the burden of contraception. In fact, even though women said they did the bulk of the hard agricultural labor, many of them said that women should be sterilized rather than men in case there were side effects that would cause the family to lose men's labor power.
Even so, participants in both Anhui and Yunnan remarked on people's unease about accepting sterilization, even after two children. A 25-year-old woman from Anhui who did not yet have children said, "Sometimes when the baby is born, it is as normal as others. But maybe three to four years later, the problem shows up because the child can't walk or talk. If a couple is sterilized but they are both healthy, how can they deal with this?" A 36-year-old woman from Yunnan who had two sons and a daughter gave a variety of reasons why women do not like sterilization: "If we use sterilization, maybe we will worry about the husband's morality [that the husband will find another woman and get divorced]. The family will be broken. After divorce and remarriage, the woman will need to have a baby. Also, our work is heavy, and sterilization is not good for health. It might cause a backache."
The youngest women had not had experience with contraceptive use, but in their focus group discussions did talk about how they received information on reproductive health. A 20-year-old woman from Anhui explained, "Usually after marriage, your mother and mother-in-law will talk to you about this stuff. They will talk about the disadvantages of early and more childbearing from the point of view of women's health care. If you have more children, you will become a baby-making machine and will get old very quickly." A 21-year-old unmarried woman from Yunnan agreed: "The IEC [information, education and communication] in family planning doesn't focus on us. But we of this generation know that more children means more load on the family. We in this room don't want more children."
Number and Sex of Children
•Satisfaction with the number and sex of children. Because childbearing is severely constrained in China, gender preference is acutely apparent. Sex preference reflects attitudes towards gender norms and the perceived relative value of males and females. We have seen that the women in the nonagricultural areas of Jiangsu are increasingly becoming economically active by working in local enterprises, whereas women in Anhui and Yunnan are still primarily engaged in agricultural work. Women in all three areas continue to bear the primary responsibility for household activities, including child care and housework. At the same time, families in Jiangsu and Anhui whose first child is a son have been limited to one child, and families in Yunnan and Anhui whose first child is a daughter have been limited to two children. Here we look at the value placed on sons and daughters as measured by women's satisfaction with the sex of their children.
About three-quarters (73-75%) of respondents from Jiangsu were satisfied with one child, regardless of sex (Table 3). In Anhui and Yunnan, more than half (54-58%) of women who had one son and no daughter reported being satisfied with their number of children, compared with 31-50% of women who had one daughter and no sons. The great majority (73-99%) of women in all three provinces who had either a son and a daughter or two daughters were satisfied with their number of children; the most satisfied were those who had one son and one daughter (93-99%). Interestingly, respondents with two daughters reported higher levels of satisfaction than did those with one child, regardless of sex. Respondents who were not satisfied tended to say they had too few rather than too many children.
•Sex preference. Son preference was most evident among the older women. A 45-year-old woman from Yunnan with one son and one daughter indicated that grandparents perpetuate gender inequality by treating their grandsons and granddaughters differently. "Mothers-in-law love their sons and grandsons, but not their daughters. If a grandson isn't back home on time, the grandmother will worry. If he is sick, she will bring him to the hospital. If it is the granddaughter, no. Our generation treats girls and boys equal. But there is a common sentence in the village: boys are treasure, girls are trouble." One just-married 25-year-old woman from Anhui with no children wants a son, even though she says she should not feel that way: "If I don't get a son, I will consider that my fate is bad. I am a graduate of senior high school, but I still think boys are better. Of course, if I have a daughter, I will love her. At home, my mother and grandmother think it's bad to have a daughter. Most people think if you have no son, you will still want another [child]. If you only have a daughter at home, you are considered incapable. That is stupid, but people in villages think that way."
Some couples will do anything to make sure the second child is a boy; most rely on ultrasound machines, even though it is illegal to use them to reveal the sex of a fetus. According to one 47-year-old woman from Anhui who has two sons: "People use an ultrasound B machine. If it is a female fetus, they don't want it. People will usually go elsewhere to check. No matter how much money they have to spend, they think it is worth it."
Some respondents said having daughters was better than having sons. Their reasons were mainly economic, but also social: They argue that daughters take better care of their parents and are nicer and easier to raise. A 64-year-old woman from Yunnan who has five sons and one daughter noted that girls are better behaved and less expensive than boys, but that in her day, it was essential to have a son. "Boys spend more money than girls. They smoke, drink and play mahjong. But girls listen. Families have to help boys marry. That costs 10,000 yuan. But girls only need a little dowry. Give them 2,000-3,000 and let them go away." A 35-year-old woman from Jiangsu who had one son said, "When a girl grows up, she can learn to embroider and make money. In my village, girls don't worry about jobs—they pick up the needle."
A 22-year-old woman from Jiangsu said that the desire for sons is strong where she lives because couples are allowed only one child, but that she does not share that view. "If a family has only one daughter, it is unlikely that they will feel comfortable. If the social environment were sound, it might not matter. In my eyes, after having a daughter, having a son is evidence of discrimination." A 25-year-old woman from Anhui noted, "Whatever men can do, we can do. You know women hold up half the sky. It is not just boys who are the sun." A 22-year-old woman from Yunnan agreed. "Before there was strong son preference, but now there is family planning and whatever you have you just have." Only a few people mentioned the problem China's skewed sex ratio will cause young men as they try to get married. However, a 35-year-old woman from Jiangsu who has one son said, "If everyone has sons, it will be difficult to find a wife."
Family Planning and Women's Roles
In the survey, we asked women if, in general, they thought family planning had had a favorable effect on their health, household work, education, opportunities for and time at a job, ability to earn more income and time for leisure. Women, particularly in Jiangsu, expressed very favorable opinions of the effect of family planning on their lives. More than 95% of women in Jiangsu felt that because of family planning they were healthier, had less household work, had more time to work or more job opportunities, and could earn more money (Table 4); 82-84% believed that they could get a better education and had more leisure time. Although the majority of women in Anhui and Yunnan also perceived these benefits, smaller proportions than in Jiangsu believed family planning had positive effects on education, job opportunities and leisure.
In seeking to understand the link women made between family planning (and childbearing) and women's roles, we asked focus group participants to describe women's roles in the family, in economic activities and in the community. They were then asked to relate those roles to family planning and to childbearing. Many women made direct links between family planning, having fewer children and improvements in their lives, corroborating the findings from the survey. Successive generations of women have played different economic roles in the three provinces, yet their familial roles have changed little over the years. Younger women have had more opportunities to obtain an education and to work for income.
•Employment and Economic Opportunities. A 70-year-old Jiangsu woman who has five children said her life would have been different if she had had access to family planning: "I used to be a primary school teacher. After having three children, I couldn't participate in any social activities. After work, I could only care for my children. I'd have to take my children to work. If family planning had been available earlier, my life would have been different. That is my lifelong regret. Because I had too many children, I had to quit." According to a 44-year-old woman from Jiangsu who has one daughter, "Women's status is higher now, of course. In the past, women couldn't work outside the home. Women of my age all have jobs."
A 34-year-old woman from Anhui who has one son and one daughter said, "We have fewer children, enough to eat and we can go where we want to. My husband works in the fields on cash crops. I go out to sell plastic string in three provinces. Women often go out now, so people don't say bad things about them. Women are even respected and considered capable." A 35-year-old woman from Yunnan with one son and one daughter said, "For family affairs, raising children and the family economy, family planning is all good."
In China's collective economic period, which lasted through the 1980s, all agricultural work was carried out by work teams whose members were paid the same, regardless of their contribution. One important measure of inequality was built into the payment system: men earned 10 work points to women's eight. Some women in this study said that women and men can now earn equal pay for equal work, if they can get equal work; according to others, however, the legacy of the work point system remains. A 36-year-old woman with one daughter from Jiangsu said, "I work in a factory where the work requires a lot of difficult and heavy work (dying textiles). The women should get equal pay for equal work. The top workers are posted on the wall—most are male. Women work more and enjoy less." According to a 42-year-old female school principal from Jiangsu who has one son, "Women's status has improved. When it comes time for bonuses and promotions...I don't see men way ahead and women behind in my school. It is not necessarily true that women's achievements are less than men's." A 21-year-old woman from Yunnan believed that women still face discrimination: "In education and occupations, there is still discrimination against girls. It is easy for men to find a job but not for women, even with the same education. In the same unit, men and women have different salaries. Men can work hard at night, but women cannot do heavy jobs. In some work units, they think women can only clean the floors and tables."
Rather than wanting more children, women said people now place a priority on how they can make money to provide better housing and education for their children, particularly their sons. A 29-year-old mother of one son from Anhui noted the custom of helping to provide sons with housing: "I have to work more to make more money for my son. I have to build a house for him and his wife and save for myself for when I'm old." A 44-year-old woman from Jiangsu who has one daughter said "I work in a factory [and make] a good living. I cannot care for more children. If I have more children, my living standard will go down, which won't be good. The children will compete for things like clothes. When I married, I could have two children, but since my family was poor, I only had one. Supporting one child through school is the same amount of money as constructing a cottage. I want better clothes and food."
•Decision-making. Increasingly, women are becoming more equal in household decision-making, according to focus group participants of all ages and from all three provinces. A 40-year-old Jiangsu woman who has one son and has worked as an embroiderer for more than 10 years reported earning more money than her husband. She said, "My position is equal to my husband's. I can spend money and discuss with my husband. My parents' generation fought because they were poor." A 37-year-old woman from Yunnan with two daughters also noted the change in women's roles in the family. She said, "In the past, daughters-in-law had the right only to suffer, not the right to speak. Usually the daughter-in-law is an outsider. In the past she could not participate in making family decisions. Now she can discuss things openly in the family."
Social Welfare Benefits and Old Age Support
Old age support in China has traditionally been the responsibility of families (and particularly sons), but also fell to communities and work units under the collective system. Elderly people without adult children were cared for by the collective with the "five guarantees": food, housing, clothing, health care and burial expenses. Partly in response to the smaller family size caused by the population policy and to the dismantling of the collective system, the government is trying to extend social welfare benefits—particularly old age insurance—to more citizens; present coverage is available only for residents employed in jobs in the formal sector.11
Among the survey respondents, workers in the formal sector received social welfare benefits not available to agricultural workers, including paid sick leave; maternity leave; old age, health, life, hazard and disability insurance; and a housing allowance. Analysis of the social welfare benefits received by women shows enormous differences by geographic area: Much greater proportions of women in Jiangsu (23-73%) than of those in the other two provinces (1-20%) received social welfare benefits (Table 5). Women in Anhui and Yunnan were virtually unprotected by many social welfare benefits.
Roughly similar proportions of women in the three provinces were concerned about being supported in their old age (not shown). It is surprising that a greater proportion of women in Yunnan (32%) than in Anhui (22%) reported being worried about support in their old age, given that a greater proportion of women in Yunnan reported receiving old age support insurance and the average family income was higher. The vast majority of women (86-95%) expected to live with their spouse when they were old; 47-56% believed they would live with their son, whereas 9-34% thought they would live with their daughter.
In the focus groups, several women talked about the help elderly people without children can expect through the "five guarantees," which continue to be provided by the local government even after the dismantling of the collective system. A 54-year-old woman from Anhui with one son and two daughters explained, "There is no problem with childless men and women late in life. If they have no children, they go to the government. When there is a festival, the government will come to look after us [so that we] have something to eat. In winter and summer, we have clothes. The cadres bring water and food to my house. If I'm too old to move around, they will bring it to my doorstep." A 46-year-old woman from Yunnan with two sons and a daughter agreed, saying "We are not worried about getting old. Every family takes care of its 'face,' so families will compete with each other to treat their parents best. If they have no son or daughter, the village will care for them."
And although care facilities for the elderly exist in China, some younger people said that they are negatively viewed within the rural culture. One 25-year-old married woman from Anhui who does not yet have children said, "You may go to an elderly home, but you will lose face. If you have children and go to an elderly house, people will still laugh." A 55-year-old woman in Anhui who has a son and a daughter echoed many people's worries about who would be around for old-age support. "Family planning is more acceptable now in rural areas. [But] if we get sick, no one will take care of us. Later when we are old, there will be no one to look after us. We need elderly homes, but the key is the economy."
The meaning of family planning is different for each of the three generations of Chinese women studied in this article. Older women typically had more children than they wanted and regretted not having had better access to contraceptive services. Middle-aged women were not adverse to the idea of having fewer children when the one-child policy was first implemented (as evidenced by the fact that fertility rates had already begun to fall in the 1970s), although, at the time, they were not necessarily ready to be told how many children they were permitted to have. And young women, who have lived with the one-child policy all their lives, seemed reconciled to having few children. However, regardless of which generation they are a part of, women have all felt pressure to have sons.
Women did not view family planning in a vacuum, but related it to the country's economic situation. Even within the very different economic and social contexts of the three provinces, women saw family planning as a means of helping women (and men) take advantage of China's improved economic situation by not being tied down or having too many children to feed and clothe. Overall, the women in our study felt positive about having smaller families, believing that family planning has enabled them to get ahead economically. They now have the ability to focus on earning money for the family, and particularly for children's schooling and housing for sons.
Has family planning had an effect on China's gender system? Ding Ling, one of China's most famous feminist writers, noted in the early 1940s that "The party has proclaimed lofty theories of gender equality, but failed to deal with the actual conditions and attitudes that held women in an inferior condition."12 In our study, few women disputed that women's lives were better now than in the past; however, we found evidence that an entrenched gender system favors males and that constraining couples' childbearing has exacerbated the effects of son preference.
These findings are supported by Chinese feminists who generally note that family planning has had beneficial effects on women's lives but has not been sufficient to change gender norms.13 In China, females are less likely to be born, and even to survive.14* Women in rural areas do not carry on the family line and do not inherit property. They leave home after marriage, work and carry the burden of taking care of their children and household, in addition to taking almost sole responsibility for family planning. China's skewed sex ratio provides strong continued evidence of the entrenched social valuing of sons over daughters.
However, our results show some signs of change. Over the past two decades, some women have had wider opportunities to work. Because of the increased economic contribution of women, decision-making within families may be becoming more of a joint endeavor, and younger focus group participants from each province noted that the preference for sons is decreasing (although not disappearing) among their generation. In addition, as agriculture becomes more mechanized, families' need for sons should decrease.
Our study found that although women by and large welcome the idea of family planning, they have not always received good care by their local program. Following the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo and the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China began shifting its program toward a client-centered approach to family planning and reproductive health. The program, which started as a pilot project and has expanded to more than 32 counties, now provides better quality care and a choice among contraceptive methods, in addition to an expanded range of reproductive health services.15 China is ready to expand the client-centered and quality-focused approach to more rural counties and urban districts to meet the State Population and Family Planning Commission's goal of completing the nationwide reorientation of the program by 2010. The 2000 (once a decade) decision on the future of the population program and the 2001 Population and Family Planning Law of the People's Republic of China16 both affirm this new client orientation—albeit within a policy context affirming strict control over fertility.
Although these changes in the orientation of China's family planning program are encouraging, our study shows that in addition to improving the quality of family planning and reproductive health services, the government and society must address the roots of gender discrimination by promoting gender equity through policies and programs, and by enforcing laws that protect women's rights.
*Second or higher parity births may be allowed for those whose first child dies or is disabled, those who remarry, those who live in remote areas, those working as miners, the disabled, those who have returned to China from other countries or are disabled veterans, couples in which the husband lives with the wife's family, those whose family has had a single male child for two generations, those whose brothers have no sons, couples in which either spouse has an infertile brother or sister and couples in which one spouse is an only child.
Study participants in central Yunnan were not asked about their ethnicity; thus we are not able to make comparisons between Han and minority areas.
Coale and Banister suggest that the recent dearth of girls in the population is related to sex-selective abortion (source: reference 7). Evidence suggests, however, that some female births (particularly first births) are not reported (source: reference 13).
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2. Chen MH, Birth planning in China, International Family Planning Perspectives, 1979, 5(3):92-101.
3. Liu Z, China's Population Problems and Prospects, Beijing: New World Press, 1981.
4. Kaufman J et al., Family planning policy and practice in China: a study of four rural counties, Population and Development Review, 1989, 15(4):707-729; Li JL, China's one-child policy: how and how well has it worked? A case study of Hebei Province 1979-1988, Population and Development Review, 1994, 21(3):563-585; Greenhalgh S, Shifts in China's population policy, 1984-86: Views from the central, provincial and local levels, Population and Development Review, 1986, 12(3):491-515; Hardee-Cleaveland K and Banister J, Fertility policy and implementation in China, 1986-1988, Population and Development Review, 1988, 14(2):245-286; Thomas N and Price N, The evolution of population policy in rural China, Health Policy and Planning, 1996, 11(1):21-29; Short S and Zhai FY, Looking locally at China's one-child policy, Studies in Family Planning, 1998, 29(4):373-387; and Winkler EA, Chinese reproductive policy at the turn of the Millennium: dynamic stability, Population and Development Review, 2002, 28(3):379-418.
5. Poston DL, Jr., and Gu BC, Socioeconomic development, family planning and fertility in China, Demography, 1987, 24(4):531-551; and Chen SL, Demographic change from 1982 to 1992, in: State Family Planning Commission and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1992 National Fertility and Family Planning Survey, China: Selected Research Papers in English, Beijing: State Family Planning Commission, 1997, pp. 13-21.
6. Hardee K, Implications of China's one-child policy, International Demographics, 1984, 3(5):11-12; Greenhalgh S, Controlling births and bodies in village China, American Ethnologist, 1994, 21(1):3-30; Li JL and Cooney RS, Son preference and the one-child policy in China: 1978-88, Population Policy and Development Review, 1993, 21(3):563-585; and Zhu CZ et al., The Dual Effects of the Family Planning Program on Chinese Women, Xi'an, China: Xi'an Jiaotong University Press, 1997.
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8. Coale A and Banister J, 1994, op. cit. (see reference 7).
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10. Jiangsu Family Planning Commission, unpublished data, Jiangsu family planning statistics: Nanjing, China, 1995 (in Chinese).
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16. Standing Committee, Population and family planning law of the People's Republic of China, adopted at the 25th Session of the Standing Committee of the Ninth National People's Congress, Dec. 29, 2001; and Winkler EA, 2002, op. cit. (see reference 4).
Contexte: En 1979, la Chine avait lancé la mise en œuvre de la politique dite de l'enfant unique, sévèrement restrictive de la fécondité des couples. Il importe de comprendre comment les Chinoises perçoivent la manière dont cette politique et la planification familiale ont affecté leur vie.
Méthodes: Les données d'enquête et de groupes de discussion recueillies en 1996 et 1998 auprès de femmes de trois provinces chinoises—Jiangsu, Anhui et Yunnan—ont servi à l'examen des liens entre, d'une part, le planning familial et la procréation et, d'autre part, la vie des femmes au sein de la famille, y compris les relations conjugales et avec les autres membres de la famille, et les possibilités d'éducation, d'emploi et d'activités sociales qui leur sont offertes.
Résultats: Les femmes associent la planification familiale à la conjoncture du pays et à leur possibilité de prospérer sous l'effet d'un moindre nombre d'enfants à élever. Cette prospérité accrue permet d'éduquer les enfants et de leur construire une maison. Dans la province de Jiangsu, 73% à 75% des répondantes qui n'avaient eu qu'un enfant en étaient satisfaites, indépendamment du sexe de cet enfant; dans celles d'Anhui et de Yunnan, 54% à 58% de celles qui avaient eu un fils et pas de fille s'en sont déclarées satisfaites, par rapport à 31% à 50% de celles qui avaient eu une fille et pas de fils. Dans les trois provinces, la grande majorité (73% à 99%) des femmes qui avaient eu deux enfants—indépendamment du sexe—se sont dites satisfaites de leur nombre d'enfants.
Conclusions: La grande majorité en convient, les femmes vivent mieux aujourd'hui que par le passé. La politique chinoise de l'enfant unique les met toutefois—en milieu rural surtout—dans une situation où elles subissent, d'une part, la pression des restrictions de fécondité de l'État et, d'autre part, celle créée par la préférence que la société accorde aux garçons. | <urn:uuid:638f1c59-7cb4-4384-9f49-0214ad237d04> | CC-MAIN-2015-06 | http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/3006804.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-06/segments/1422115858583.14/warc/CC-MAIN-20150124161058-00172-ip-10-180-212-252.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968481 | 10,118 | 3.15625 | 3 |
Wesley Clair Mitchell Facts
The American economist Wesley Clair Mitchell (1874-1948) was one of the most prominent contributors to the study of business cycles and was also among those who first recognized the importance of sound empirical research in economics.
Born on Aug. 5, 1874, in Rushville, III., Wesley C. Mitchell was the eldest son of a Civil War veteran. Despite material difficulties, Mitchell completed his college and graduate education at the University of Chicago, receiving his doctorate in 1899. He married Lucy Sprague in 1912. His main activities, research and teaching, were only briefly interrupted, mainly for government service. During one such interlude, in 1914, Mitchell wrote a highly influential monograph, The Making and Using of Index Numbers, for the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Analyzing the Business Cycles
Mitchell's major treatise, Business Cycles (1913), represents a pioneering effort to provide an "analytic description" of the pervasive and recurrent but also complex and changing fluctuations that are observed in the modern, highly developed, and interdependent "money economies." He developed a concept of the business cycle as a self-generating process whose continuity and diffusiveness are due mainly to institutional responses of the economic system to a variety of unpredictable changes. The lags in these responses, for example, the lags of expenditures behind receipts, of selling prices behind buying prices, or of investment expenditures and deliveries behind investment decisions, are of strategic significance in the dynamics of the cycle. A central issue is the dependence of tides in business activity upon the prospects of profits or, as in times of crisis, the quest for solvency.
As cofounder, and from 1920 to 1945 as director, of the National Bureau of Economic Research, a private, nonprofit institution, Mitchell effectively promoted the testing of his ideas and findings, which was essential for understanding and solving many basic economic problems. The first book that resulted from this reexamination was Business Cycles: The Problem and Its Setting (1927), which drew on a much larger mass of evidence than was previously accessible and which confirmed many of Mitchell's earlier impressions about the basic nature of business cycles and the methods appropriate for their study. A full account of these methods was presented in Measuring Business Cycles (1946), a volume written jointly by Mitchell and Arthur F. Burns. In his last major work, What Happens during Business Cycles: A Progress Report (published posthumously in 1951), Mitchell showed how the cycles consist not only of roughly synchronous rises and falls in many activities but also of numerous specific rises (falls) that start while expansion (contraction) is still dominant in the economy at large. This work paved the way for research on uses of cyclical indicators in the analysis of current business conditions and short-term forecasting.
Mitchell served by presidential appointment on national committees on social trends (1929-1933), cost of living (1944), and others. He had strong humanitarian sympathies and believed that advances in economics and other social sciences can and should help to reduce such defects of the economic system as recurrence of depressions and unemployment, inequality of opportunity, concentration of power, and material insecurity. Mitchell died on Oct. 29, 1948.
Further Reading on Wesley Clair Mitchell
The best collection of essays on Mitchell is Arthur F. Burns, ed., Wesley Clair Mitchell: The Economic Scientist (1952), which contains a comprehensive list of Mitchell's publications. Further background on Mitchell's role in economic thought is in Paul T. Homan, Contemporary Economic Thought (1928); Henry W. Spiegel, ed., The Development of Economic Thought: Great Economists in Perspective (1952); and Joseph Dorfman, The Economic Mind in American Civilization, vol. 5 (1959). | <urn:uuid:4a00673c-804b-403c-b662-a708404eaf2d> | CC-MAIN-2015-06 | http://biography.yourdictionary.com/wesley-clair-mitchell | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-06/segments/1422120928902.90/warc/CC-MAIN-20150124173528-00185-ip-10-180-212-252.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954464 | 773 | 2.921875 | 3 |
You can take a more active role in your health care. Start by asking more questions when your doctor or dentist prescribes painkillers. Just 48% of Utahns talk to their doctors about the risks associated with opioids. Don’t just listen—have a conversation. Before you take an opioid, take a moment to ask your doctor or dentist these five questions:
Take part in your health care by knowing the benefits and dangers of opioids. While doctors and dentists don’t want to see their patients become addicted, many are not trained in addiction or pain management.
If you and your health care provider determine that the benefits outweigh the risks of opioid treatment, Utah law allows you to ask the pharmacist to partially fill your opioid prescription. You can get the rest later, if you need it.
Addiction, also called opioid use disorder, is a serious medical condition. It is a chronic, relapsing brain disease with symptoms that include compulsive seeking and use of the drug, despite harmful consequences.
It is considered a brain disease because drugs change the brain; they change its structure and how it works. These brain changes can be long lasting and can lead to many harmful, often self-destructive, behaviors.
While the initial decision to use drugs is mostly voluntary, addiction can take over and impair a person’s ability to use self-control.
Brain-imaging studies from people addicted to drugs show physical changes in areas of the brain that are critical for judgment, decision making, learning, memory and behavior control. Scientists believe these changes affect the way the brain works and may help explain the compulsive and destructive behaviors of someone with substance use disorder.
Utah has prevention coalitions throughout the state that coordinate volunteer efforts in local communities to help prevent opioid addiction.
To reduce the stigma associated with opioid use disorder, talk about addiction being a disease and encourage people to seek help. | <urn:uuid:193b5286-ef86-4853-83ca-fc0b92e2bc43> | CC-MAIN-2018-47 | https://useonlyasdirected.org/speak-out/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-47/segments/1542039743854.48/warc/CC-MAIN-20181117205946-20181117231946-00360.warc.gz | en | 0.936767 | 389 | 3.171875 | 3 |
The Democratic Party was founded at a Baltimore convention 195 years ago on January 8, 1827. You may celebrate or lament the occasion depending on your viewpoint. It was cobbled together from elements of the shattered Democratic Republican Party founded by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison which had dominated American politics since the Revolution of 1800 and the virtual disappearance of the Federalist Party after the War of 1812. The wizard of the new alignment was the boss of the New York State political machine known as the Albany Regency, Martin Van Buren, in the service of a charismatic leader—General Andrew Jackson.Martin Van Buren, master of the Albany Regency and shrewd political operative, who organized the Democratic party as Jackson's creature.
The election of James Monroe, the last of the Virginia Dynasty of Founder Presidents after the collapse of the Federalists in 1822 ushered in what historians have called the Era of Good Feeling due to the lack of competition for the Democratic-Republican. The domination was so deep that even John Quincy Adams, the son of the only Federalist president, had joined the ascendant and served a Monroe’ Secretary of State and was his heir apparent to the Executive Mansion.
Unfortunately for Adams, he had incurred the wrath of the tempestuous general who mistakenly believed that the Secretary of State had been behind a court martial for illegally invading Spanish Florida and executing to British citizens who he believed had been arming rebellious Creek warriors. It’s a long and complicated story but the truth was that although Adams was aghast at Jackson’s behavior which complicated efforts to acquire Florida by purchase and threatened a possible new conflict with Great Britain, he had come to Jackson’s defense against the charges.Three of the main actors in the 1824 Presidential Election drama--Kentucky's Henry Clay who swung support to John Quincy Adams (center) in House of Representatives and was appointed Secretary of State and General Andrew Jackson. Adams won a Pyrrhic victory.
Whatever the truth, Jackson vowed revenge by running against Adams in the election of 1824. Jackson was the greatest military hero since George Washington and wildly popular in the South and West. In a head-to-head contest Jackson would have won handily, but two others also entered the race—Georgia’s William Crawford, a Jeffersonian “Old Republican” and another Westerner and rising political star Henry Clay of Kentucky. Although Jackson led winning the popular vote, carrying 11 states and winning 99 Electoral College vote with Adams behind with 7 state wins and 86 Electoral votes, the other two candidates each won 3 states and enough votes to deny a majority and Electoral College win.
The election was thrown into the House of Representatives where each state delegation cast a single vote. Only the top three candidates—Jackson, Adams, and Crawford—were included in the House Vote. Clay not so secretly rallied his former supporters for Adams who carried the House vote by a lop-sided margin. Jackson was outraged, especially after Adams selected Clay to be his Secretary of State and by tradition a virtual heir apparent. Jackson charged a “corrupt bargain” had been struck by Adams and Clay to win the election.
Meanwhile in New York State, Van Buren’s Albany Regency had finally gotten the upper hand against the Clinton political organization in New York City which had long led half of a political axis of the two most populous states, New York and Virginia, in support of the Jeffersonian party. He saw a national ally in Jackson and began quietly organizing key political figures and operatives in every state in support of Jackson. That led to the founding convention in Baltimore in time to organize behind Jackson and against Adams in the election of 1828.
Running as a man of the people, painting Adams as aristocratic, and backed by an effective political organization humiliated and swamped the incumbent by an Electoral College vote of 178 to 83 carrying 15 states to 9. The policies of Jackson and his party were in favor of individual liberty (for white men), limited government (except where Jackson himself chose to execute power, opposition to the Second Bank of the United States, opposition to federally funded internal improvements advocated by Henry Clay, rapid Western expansion, removal of Native Americans from east of the Mississippi River, and lowered tariffs.A campaign banner for the last Whig Presidents. Mexican War Hero Zachary Taylor died in office after splitting the Whigs over the extension. Northerner Fillmore proved more amenable to Southern interests in the name of national unity and became a perpetual contender for being the worst president in American history, at least until the last Resident.
Both Jackson’s policies and abrasive leadership style alienated many who began to coalesce into a new anti-Jacksonian party, the Whigs. It was an inherently unstable and contradictory collection—remnant old New England Federalists like Daniel Webster, business interests appalled by the destruction of the Bank of the United States and resultant currency instability and wildcat banks leading to periodic financial panics, advocates of Clay’s American System of internal improvements, and largely aristocratic Southern Jeffersonians.
After Jackson threatened to use military force against South Carolina in the Nullification Crisis over the Tariff, his own Vice President, Southern firebrand John C. Calhoun joined the Whigs asserting states’ rights—and expansion of slavery into all new territories and states. The combination of pro-slavery Southerners and anti-slavery New Englanders made the Whigs a feeble coalition. Democrats continued to dominate the Presidency and national politics up to the Civil War with only two Whig presidential victories, both by military heroes who quickly died in office and left weak vice-presidents with little or no party loyalty in charge. The Whigs imploded and disappeared after Winfield Scott’s loss to Democratic nonentity Franklin Pierce in 1854. Eventually the Republicans emerged as a new major party leading to the victory of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 when Democrats split three ways over slavery issues.This illustration for a Civil Service reform publication in the 1880's celebrated Jackson as the founder of the Spoils System. But at that time Republican administrations reaped the benefit of the system.
The Democrats long thrived on Jackson’s spoils system which replaced almost all Federal employees loyal political appointees who provided an army of campaign workers in every corner of the country.
The Democrats are now the oldest electoral party in the world by a wide margin, but they have flipped positions many times over their long history. They were the backbone of the Jim Crow Era in the South and began to make strong inroads in big Northern cities with ethnic-based political machines. They were for hard money and against greenback Treasury notes. With Republicans in national ascendancy, the party suddenly became advocates of civil service reform.Despite this dramatic cartoon, William Jennings Bryan never really swallowed the Democratic Party even after he won nomination on a populist free silver platform.. Progressives remained an important, but minority part of the Democratic coalition.
In the 1890s a large portion of Democrats in the West and South became populists in favor of the “free coinage of silver” against a pure gold standard that made cash scarce and kept prices high; agitated for railroad rate reform and against monopolies, and in favor of democratic reforms like voter referendums and recall elections. They continued to be in contest to business and hard money conservatives.
In the early 20th Century, they began to attract support of major labor unions and vied with the Socialist Party for others. Woodrow Wilson, a Democratic party progressive, enacted some major labor reforms in the areas of child labor, job safety, and working hours. Yet the same administration violently crushed World War I strikes and led the worst domestic suppression of dissent in the post-war Red Scare years. Wilson became a hero to liberals for his post-war vision of the Fourteen Points and for the League of Nations. Democrats largely became advocates of international action and against isolationism. The establishment of the Federal Reserve System put the party firmly behind national banking.
Opposition to draconian Republican immigration restrictions in the 1920’s and in favor of the repeal of Prohibition earned the loyalty of many working class voters.Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal pro-labor policies won the enduring loyalty of workers and the union movement.
In the face of the Great Depression Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal put an end to Jacksonian limited Federal powers. The President and his party borrowed heavily from old Socialist Party platforms to enact Social Security and unemployment insurance, guarantee labor union rights, use public works programs, and many other popular reforms. Even Southern Democrats bought in as long as Blacks were largely excluded from the benefits.
World War II and its aftermath created support for a vast standing armed forces with virtually unlimited funds for new arms and weapons and backed world-wide interventionism whenever American—read business—interests might be threatened.
The Civil Rights Movement gained steady support among national Democrats and Lyndon Johnson’s signing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act began the process of Southern Democrats abandoning the party for the Republicans who had gone from the Party of Lincoln to states’ rights fan and were increasingly willing to employ wink-and-nod code words in favor of white supremacy. By the 21st Century that process was complete.
Meanwhile opposition to the Vietnam War led to growing anti-war sentiment through much of the party and peace advocates continued to struggle with cold-warriors and interventionist. Widespread support for the Equal Rights Amendment, gender protections under Civil Rights law, and for abortion rights led to a steady swing of women, particularly college educated and middle class women, from the Republican to the Democrats who now enjoy a substantial edge in that demographic.
Blacks have become the most loyal Democratic party supporters by a wide margin and Latinx voters with the exception of Florida Cubans also reliable. Together with the college educated and youth voters they elected Barack Obama as the first Black President.
Recognizing that expanding the voter pool worked against them, Republicans have become relentless in attempting voter suppression, gerrymandering, and other attacks on access to the polls. Meanwhile they have exploited resentments of many working class voters who believe they have been insulted and ignored by an elite cabal robbing complacent and ineffective Democratic Party leadership of once solid support.Black voters turned out in droves in 2018 despite elaborate Republican voter suppression efforts like the ones in Georgia that closed convenient polling places in minority areas causing long lines and waits. Democratic support for voting rights protections continue to be important to them.
Democratic Socialists have become a growing part of the party in Congress and scoring electoral victories around the country. Their policies are aimed at, among other things, winning back working class support by providing life-changing new benefits. Party so-called centrists fret that they will be labeled communists or that powerful business backers of the party will turn on them.The former Fraudster in Chief kept a portrait of Andrew Jackson over looking his Oval Office desk. His other political role modal was Adolph Hitler whose Mein Kamf he long kept on his bed table for inspiration.
However that struggle turns out, the Democratic Party today bears almost no resemblance to the one founded by Van Buren and Jackson. But it is telling that Jackson was the Orange Menace’s favorite president roll model. Both shared fragile egos, inflated self-importance, and dictatorial impulses. And both have political parties personally loyal only to them. | <urn:uuid:ac228a41-9c9f-43cd-bef3-5d3d0cdd8215> | CC-MAIN-2022-21 | https://patrickmurfin.blogspot.com/2022/01/its-birthday-of-democratic-party.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-21/segments/1652662543797.61/warc/CC-MAIN-20220522032543-20220522062543-00668.warc.gz | en | 0.962629 | 2,322 | 3.375 | 3 |
Researchers' and attack on sugar continues! Findings at the University of Kansas are linking too much sugar to inflammation of pretty much everything, including your brain. Results now say an inflamed brain, is a depressed brain.
"The researchers found inflammation is the most important physiological effect of dietary sugar related to mental health and depressive disorder."
Added sugar intake during the holidays, coupled with the seasonal effect of winter, could be a perfect storm if you are susceptible to depression.
The holidays can be a particularly rough time. Family, friends, stress, money, it all adds up, and now sugar? Avoiding sugar isn't possible, especially during the holidays. Try to keep it at a minimum, and use Sugar Stop to keep it under control. | <urn:uuid:7431b247-8e15-4006-9577-58bd0016074a> | CC-MAIN-2020-05 | https://www.nonidirect.com/blogs/news/bah-humbug-could-be-the-sugar | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-05/segments/1579250599789.45/warc/CC-MAIN-20200120195035-20200120224035-00051.warc.gz | en | 0.951309 | 152 | 2.96875 | 3 |
Ebola: Infections in the Millions Forecast; Seen as Possibly Becoming Endemic in Africa
24 September 2014
Douglas De Groot
(EIRNS)—The U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released a report, in which it made a forecast, closer to reality than its previous reports. It now forecasts that the number of Ebola cases in West Africa could reach between 550,000 to 1.4 million by January 20, 2015. The high end of the estimate was based on the assumption that the World Health Organization (WHO) count is under-reported by 2.5 times, and other factors. The CDC based its estimate on August figures, before the Obama Administration reversed policy and announced a limited military-style intervention. But top experts in the field have already reported that that intervention was too little, too late. The epidemic began last December, nearly a year ago, and was identified as Ebola in March.
The WHO also published a new assessment on the epidemic on Sept. 22, by its Ebola Response team of 50 scientists, which projected a much worse outlook than earlier assessments. The WHO study reported that "The epidemiologic outlook is bleak," and projected that the epidemic may not be brought under control. It noted that the death rate in the three countries at the center of the epidemic is 70% of those infected. The new estimates of the WHO were published today by The New England Journal of Medicine (NJEM).
The WHO study also indicated the possibility that Ebola becomes "endemic among the human population of West Africa." It concluded that "The risk of continued epidemic expansion and the prospect of endemic EVD [Ebola Virus Disease] in West Africa call for the most forceful implementation of present control measures and for the rapid development and deployment of new drugs and vaccines."
The NJEM also published an editorial which said that the epidemic was "avoidable," said that the reason it had gone out of control was "a highly inadequate and late global response." The editorial also stated that "without a massive increase in the response, way beyond what is being planned," the epidemic could not be brought under control, adding that it has gotten so far out of control that the usual containment techniques involving isolating those infected would probably no longer work. It noted that the world cannot claim it did not know, since Doctors Without Borders had been advocating "a far greater response for many months."
The editorial also indicated that if Ebola becomes endemic in West Africa, it could "become a reservoir for the virus’s spread to other parts of Africa and beyond." It pointed out that the conditions of collapse in the three victim countries, among other factors, means that outbreaks of diseases that might have once been controllable, "can become a massive, nearly uncontrollable epidemic."
It also warned that the overwhelmed local health systems will also lead to many deaths resulting from other, treatable conditions, such as malaria, tuberculosis, HIV-AIDS, enteric and respiratory illnesses, diabetes, cancer, and cardiovascular disease, and childbirth complications.
The NEJM editorial also warns of the future dangers to the world’s population that is demonstrated by this Ebola epidemic: A disease "with a different pathogen and a different transmission route, a similar crisis could strike in New York, Geneva, and Beijing as easily as this one has in West Africa." | <urn:uuid:79c05806-a77f-4141-a146-65cc7afc22ca> | CC-MAIN-2019-04 | http://www.comiterepubliquecanada.ca/article5024.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-04/segments/1547583875448.71/warc/CC-MAIN-20190122223011-20190123005011-00242.warc.gz | en | 0.974673 | 687 | 2.625 | 3 |
here in this example question. It says a container has 16.7 g Oh, to 8.1 g H two and 35.2 g and to and contains a total pressure off 0.83 atmospheres were asked to complete the mole fraction about two and its partial pressure all right to determine the partial pressure vote to so pressure vote to equals the mole fraction of 02 times the pressure total. Right now we already know what the total pressure is. It is 0.83 atmospheres. So to determine partial pressure, we first have to find the mole fraction of 02 Remember, Mole fraction of O Toole equal the moles of divided by total moles of all the gasses together. So we're gonna take here. We're going to say we have 16.7 g. 02 8.1 g H two and 35.2 g and to we're going to convert each one of these grams into moles. So we look on the periodic table for the atomic masses off oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen. Here, one mole of 02 to oxygen's comes out to 32 g. One mole of H two two hydrogen is when you add up the atomic masses is 2.16 g and then you have to nitrogen. So one mole event two is 28 02 g. Here, all of our grants cancel out and we'll have the moles for each one of these gasses. Or each one of these. Yeah, each one of these gasses. So that's gonna come out 2.5 to 19 moles of 02 4.179 moles H two and 1. Moles of end to So take those and plug them in. So we have 5 to 19 moles of on the bottom. We have the collective moles of everyone. So here we're just adding them all together. Okay, And then when you work that out, you'll get your mole fraction for 02 which comes out to be 20.900 Take that mole fraction and plug it in here. So here's our mole. Fraction of vote to remember. Mole Fraction is a unit list number, so then 0.900 times 0.83 atmospheres comes out 2. atmospheres here are answer has two significant figures because our lowest number of sick figs are 8.1 and 0. they both have to sick fix. So just remember, utilizing Dalton's law, we can use the mole fraction of any gas times the pressure total to find the partial pressure of that particular gas. | <urn:uuid:02beb3e5-21a6-4823-bf0f-1c51a7b1ae2f> | CC-MAIN-2023-14 | https://www.pearson.com/channels/general-chemistry/asset/27b4443b/partial-pressure-example-3 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-14/segments/1679296949093.14/warc/CC-MAIN-20230330004340-20230330034340-00774.warc.gz | en | 0.932076 | 500 | 3.59375 | 4 |
When will the monsoon come? This question must be arising in everyone’s mind. But the rain has given sign and the season of rain and monsoon has already started. Who does not wait for rain, finally gives relief from rain heat. But with the relief from the heat, mosquitoes and many types of infections also increase in this season. In this season, due to waterlogging, many types of diseases are spread. This is the reason why you have to take special care of your meal during this season. One problem related to food is that in this season some things become self-contained in our habits. These are things that are not right for us from the point of view of health. In monsoon we become addicted to tea and dumplings, along with spicy food also becomes a part of our diet these days. But because of our body’s resistance to disease resistance decreases in this season, This increases the likelihood of getting bacterial in the body. So in this season we need to pay special attention to our diet.
Bacteria and micro-organisms grow easily due to the moisture present in the environment during monsoon season, due to these bacteria, our digestive power also affects. To combat bad bacteria, it is important to increase the amount of good bacterial body in the body. This is not surprising, as bacteria are not always bad. Group Flora, Microbyota and Gastrointestinal Microbios are those micro organisms that occur in our digestive system. Extra care of the body during monsoon plays an important role in keeping us healthy. Probiotic and prebiotic foods can help us with this extra care. Probiotics are essential for the nutrition of micro-organisms in our digestive system. Prebiotics are non-digestive carbohydrates that take extra care of our digestive system. Eating healthy food is the cheapest way to protect you from sickness. You can cook a hot soup to invigorate your body or eat Vitamin C-rich foods to boost your immune system to help repulse flu and infection. A delicious and healthy meal is what makes rainy days a little warmer.
FROM AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR DR GOVIND SHUKLA, NUTRITION EXPERT
Govind Shukla, Specializes in Pharmacology, Toxicology, Nutraceuticals & Herbal Drugs has published More than 100 research papers in National & International Journals. He is also a reviewer of International Journal of Pharmacology & pharmacotherapeutics, Chief editor of IJPNR Journal & Freelance Medical Writer for Different publication Groups including Lambert Academic Publishing Saarbrucken, Germany. | <urn:uuid:f4e1ed7c-ccdb-4a15-937b-7f61fa32ce0d> | CC-MAIN-2022-21 | https://www.lactonovasport.com/2019/08/06/how-to-keep-ourself-fit-and-healthy-in-monsoon-season/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-21/segments/1652662619221.81/warc/CC-MAIN-20220526162749-20220526192749-00637.warc.gz | en | 0.954623 | 532 | 2.5625 | 3 |
Phoebe Yates Levy Pember
(1823 - 1913)
Born on August 18, 1823, Phoebe Yates Levy grew up as the fourth of
six daughters of a prosperous and cultured Jewish family in Charleston, South Carolina.
Immediately after the outbreak of the Civil War, Phoebe's
husband, Thomas Pember, died of tuberculosis. Moving form South
Carolina to the Confederate capitol of Richmond, Virginia,
Phoebe received an offer to serve as matron of the Chimborazo Military
Hospital from Mrs. George W. Randolph, wife of the Confederate Secretary
of War. Phoebe reported for duty in December 1862. The
Chimborazo Hospital was reputed to be the largest military hospital
in the world at that time. A sprawling institution located on the western
boundary of Richmond, Chimborazo began receiving patients in 1862 and
was eventually expanded to 150 wards. Each ward was a separate one story
building thirty feet wide and one hundred feet long housing approximately
forty to sixty patients. Only one surgeon was assigned to each division.
A total of 76,000 patients had been treated at Chiborazo by the end
of the Civil War.
The pain, suffering and death at Chimborazo from battlefield
casualties was greatly compounded by severe shortages of personnel,
medicine, food, and equipment. Primitive facilities, unsanitary conditions,
and undeveloped scientific knowledge of medical treatments added to
the tragedy and pathos.
Operating in this atmosphere of misery and despair,
Phoebe Yates Pember dedicated herself to doing everything possible to
relieve the suffering of the soldiers, administering medication, assisting
surgeons in operations (frequently without anesthetic), patching wounds
and caring for patients. Often, Phoebe simply served as a final companion
to the dying - writing letters, reading stories, playing cards, holding
hands, praying, talking.
At the conclusion of the war, Phobe Yates Pember wrote
her memoirs of the hardships of life in Confederate Richmond, including
her experiences as matron of Chimborazo Hospital. First published in
1879, A Southern Woman's Story is rated by Civil War historian
Douglas Southall Freeman as "the most realistic treatment of the
war" ever published. A Southern Woman's Story also became
a landmark work in women's history through Phoebe Pember's vivid descriptions
of the difficulties encountered by one of the first women to enter the
previously all male domain of nursing.
Sources: Courtesy of the Jewish
Women's Archives and Jewish | <urn:uuid:34cd3fea-9532-4725-a9ed-66db88babf37> | CC-MAIN-2016-40 | http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/phoebepember.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-40/segments/1474738663142.93/warc/CC-MAIN-20160924173743-00264-ip-10-143-35-109.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945425 | 548 | 3.125 | 3 |
Published on November 27th, 2011 | by Chris Keenan5
Bamboo: Good or Bad for the Environment
These days everyone is talking about bamboo. From walls to flooring, bamboo is regaled as the environmental answer to wood. Bamboo flooring is commonplace from showrooms to homes, and the building community expects that it will be used in plywood next. Just think, tomorrow your garage doors could be constructed with the renewable source.
Environmentalists love it for its quick growth and for the fact that it can be harvested without harming the environment. However, the downsides of bamboo are now being scrutinized as its popularity grows and expands throughout the world of home construction. Some of those concerns include biodiversity, soil erosion, and chemical use.
Bamboo is technically a grass and is native to South America, all parts of Asia, as well as northern Australia and areas of the southeast United States. It’s touted for its strength, hardness, and fast growth rate. For builders, bamboo has more compressive strength than concrete and the same strength-to-weight ratio as steel in tension. Also, it grows much faster than trees.
Almost all of the bamboo used in the United States is grown in China. Some of the bamboo plantations there date back hundreds of years, and most of the world’s population uses the grass in some form. Bamboo is common in housing for flooring, in construction as support poles, and in household implements like chopsticks or cutting boards. The fact of the matter is that bamboo is flourishing.
A positive aspect of bamboo is that it can be harvested without killing the plant. A decade ago farmers cleared virgin forest in order to plant their bamboo farms. The profitability of bamboo surpassed the profit of rice and other kinds of farming. This hasn’t been the case in recent years, but a bamboo plantation doesn’t have the biodiversity of a natural forest. Given its invasive nature, bamboo can also quickly take over a nearby forest.
The clearing of forest also incited concerns over soil erosion as did newly planted fields, especially on steep slopes. Researchers found, though, that planting bamboo along river banks helped decrease erosion. Once the grass was established on farms, erosion decreased there as well.
The downside to bamboo lies in its construction. Instead of being cut and used whole, like wood, bamboo is sliced into pieces and glued together. There are serious questions regarding health and safety surrounding how the bamboo is handled and the chemical components used to glue and seal it. Currently there are no standardized requirements for its construction or the glue holding it together. In fact, rates of strength and hardness vary from one end of the spectrum to the other depending on supplier, and the glue can contain formaldehyde and be harmful to the environment.
Although planting and harvesting bamboo may not impact the environment negatively, the handling of it certainly can. In six years there has been little done to ensure that it’s safe for handlers or the people that manufacture it. There is still lots of room for improvement and debate of bamboo.
Join in the discussion in the comments below and/or share the piece.
Next, use your Solar Report to get the best quote! | <urn:uuid:3af981af-a5e8-4956-be4d-25894eb6f6db> | CC-MAIN-2014-49 | http://greenbuildingelements.com/2011/11/27/bamboo-good-or-bad-for-the-environment/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-49/segments/1416931009179.34/warc/CC-MAIN-20141125155649-00206-ip-10-235-23-156.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960794 | 653 | 3.015625 | 3 |
Gender and Respectful Relationships: Real experiences of Victorian students and teachers
The articles shared this week have covered lots of debate surrounding Respectful Relationships education in Victoria. We have explored research on whether (particularly male) students and teachers will be alienated by the curriculum, and what potential the education has to actually address gender-based violence. In all this research, however, what has been the real experiences of school students and teachers who have been through the program?
Shared today is a video from the Victorian Department of Education and Training that explores just this.
In the video, students and teachers from different schools in different areas and from different year levels share their views on the curriculum. While many do talk about gender-based violence, most of the students actually talk in quite simple language. They use phrases like ‘respect’, ‘equality’ and ‘being nice’. Students from an all-boys secondary school talk about how the curriculum has allowed them to help each other out and tease each other less.
Based off these interviews and this week’s article series, will Respectful Relationships really lead to a war between the genders? Or will it teach kids (and even teachers) how to respect one another more, irrespective of things like gender, sexuality, or even ethnicity? As Victorian schools prepare to roll out the new curriculum, only time will tell, but the current evidence-base gives us a reason to be optimistic!
Department of Education and Training, Victoria 2016, Respectful Relationships, Department of Education and Training, Victoria, viewed 8 November 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3kmDAkd0tQ | <urn:uuid:8923f3d4-bcb1-4864-ad25-dcb6d44f1749> | CC-MAIN-2019-22 | http://www.chalkcircle.org/resources/2016/12/2/gender-and-respectful-relationships-real-experiences-of-victorian-students-and-teachers | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-22/segments/1558232257605.76/warc/CC-MAIN-20190524104501-20190524130501-00102.warc.gz | en | 0.95701 | 346 | 2.921875 | 3 |
Investment in agriculture must increase substantially to reduce hunger in a world struggling with high and volatile food prices, the United Nations food agency said in a report on Thursday.
About 870 million people, or one in eight of the world's population are chronically undernourished, the U.N. said this year. Eradicating extreme hunger is among the U.N. Millennium Development Goals, or MDGs, to tackle global poverty.
Governments can spur farmer investments by ensuring property rights are respected, improving rural infrastructure and encouraging the formation of producer cooperatives, the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said.
"Farmers must be central to any strategy for increasing investment in the sector," FAO said, adding on-farm investment, or spending by farmers, is more than three times as large as all other sources of investment combined, including foreign and government contributions.
In The State of Food and Agriculture 2012 report, FAO warned levels of private and public investment per worker in agriculture are stagnant or falling in regions where rural poverty and hunger are most severe.
Poor governance, high levels of corruption and high taxation of agriculture are among the many hurdles that reduce incentives for farmers to invest in the sector.
FAO also said that large scale investments offer opportunities for employment and technology transfer but governments and companies must ensure local people benefit and that land transfers are conducted in a transparent and fair way.
UN-backed global guidelines on responsible land use won international consensus this year after three years of debates, stepping up efforts to regulate land-grabbing by large foreign investors in Africa and Asia and boost food security.
The guidelines include promoting equal rights for women in securing title to land, creating transparent record-keeping systems accessible to the rural poor and protecting traditional land rights.
Aid groups including Oxfam have warned that high food prices, bolstered by severe droughts in the United States and Black Sea food basket regions this year, could reverse progress in reducing hunger over the past two decades. (Reporting by Catherine Hornby; editing by James Jukwey) | <urn:uuid:801682eb-0d15-471c-a0c7-49cc92fdaae8> | CC-MAIN-2015-14 | http://www.cattlenetwork.com/cattle-news/Farm-investments-need-to-rise-to-beat-hunger-182357901.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-14/segments/1427131298755.8/warc/CC-MAIN-20150323172138-00194-ip-10-168-14-71.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94753 | 423 | 2.96875 | 3 |
The amount of light emitted by the solar corona is far too little to do damage. So during a total eclipse, but only during totality, it is completely safe to look at the corona with naked eyes. NASA is a good source of information about eclipses, including safe viewing and photography techniques. According to the NASA Eye Safety page:
The Sun can be viewed safely with the naked eye only during the few brief seconds or minutes of a total solar eclipse. Partial eclipses, annular eclipses, and the partial phases of total eclipses are never safe to watch without taking special precautions. Even when 99% of the Sun's surface is obscured during the partial phases of a total eclipse, the remaining photospheric crescent is intensely bright and cannot be viewed safely without eye protection [Chou, 1981; Marsh, 1982]. Do not attempt to observe the partial or annular phases of any eclipse with the naked eye. Failure to use appropriate filtration may result in permanent eye damage or blindness!
So it would be a good idea, especially if the eclipse is not near local sunrise or sunset, to be aware of how long totality is expected to last, and be ready to look away as soon as you glimpse the "diamond ring" effect where the disk of the sun first becomes visible through a notch on the moon's limb.
Photography of the eclipse with a DSLR requires that you look through the camera. If the mirror were locked up, then the camera would be projecting a nearly in focus image of the sun onto the shutter curtain, and eventually onto the film or sensor. Clearly, significant damage to your eye and/or the camera is possible. To avoid damage, a solar filter should be used in front of the lens. NASA also has a good resource page related to eclipse photography.
During the 2006 eclipse I was very close to the center of the path of totality on a yacht in the Mediterranean, attempting photography with a hand-held DSLR with a 500mm lens. I had a Thousand Oaks Optical black polymer solar filter on the front of the lens, and it was fun to see the disk of the sun with decent magnification. However with that filter in place, the whole frame was dead black when pointed anywhere in the sky that didn't include the sun. Aiming was a bear. While practicing, I made the mistake of opening my other eye to check the larger view which was not a pleasant experience.
For use aboard ship, I punched one eye out of a cardboard pair of eclipse watching glasses that happened to be made with the same filter material I had on the lens. With the camera on the unfiltered eye, and the other eye filtered I was able to successfully aim and photograph the partial phase without further pain or injury.
During totality, I removed the filter and shot the corona with the same lens. | <urn:uuid:0c1b8938-8f09-44ce-9dba-1909f55f4041> | CC-MAIN-2023-50 | https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/570/does-staring-at-the-sun-cause-significant-permanent-harm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-50/segments/1700679100602.36/warc/CC-MAIN-20231206162528-20231206192528-00501.warc.gz | en | 0.96263 | 580 | 2.796875 | 3 |
In 2009, Natalia Rybczynski and colleagues reported on the discovery of Puijila darwini, an extinct animal often cited as a ‘missing link’ between modern seals and their four-limbed, land-dwelling ancestors. The fossil is currently housed at the Canadian Museum of Nature (Ottawa).
Due to the scarcity of fossils, it has been unclear whether seals, sea lions, and walruses share a more recent common ancestry with bears and their relatives, or weasels and their relatives. Study of Puijila, and other fossils within this evolutionary group, may help unravel the mystery behind this evolutionary divergence.
Puijila was found in the Canadian High Arctic, which may have served as a centre of origin for this group of marine mammals. The arctic, at the time, was warmer than it is today, and offered Puijila a chance to get its toes wet in isolated freshwater ecosystems, before venturing out into the predator-infested oceans.
I am studying fossils at the Burke Museum as part of my effort to reconstruct how Puijila moved—both on land and in water—to understand how such a creature was able to adapt to an aquatic existence, and how that transition affects the swimming behavior seen in modern seals, sea lions and walruses. All three swim in different ways. Seals sway their spine horizontally and use their hind-flippers to propel them, whereas sea lions produce thrust with their fore-flippers. Walruses display an intermediate swimming form.
Identifying geometrical aspects of Puijila’s body plan that affect swimming behaviour will shed light on how and when swimming evolved in this group.
Ryan Paterson is a graduate student at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario. See more fossils in the Vertebrate Paleontology collection or learn more about the Vertebrate Paleontology Collection study grant. | <urn:uuid:9ae2a69a-8ab0-48ac-aa5d-0295db3aa9b2> | CC-MAIN-2020-05 | https://www.burkemuseum.org/news/how-did-swimming-behavior-evolve-seals-sea-lions-and-walruses | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-05/segments/1579251687958.71/warc/CC-MAIN-20200126074227-20200126104227-00304.warc.gz | en | 0.954546 | 393 | 3.640625 | 4 |
Project Surya aims to mitigate the regional impacts of global warming by reducing atmospheric concentrations of black carbon, methane, and ozone. Project Surya will replace the highly polluting cookstoves traditionally employed in rural areas with clean-cooking technologies.
Imeasure is a home energy monitoring calculator. It is a simple online tool to help people cut energy use at home, save money and protect the environment by tracking their energy use at home and competing with others for the lowest carbon footprint, based on regular gas and electricity meter readings.
HEDON uses ICT in the pursuit of more and better climate mitigation and adaptation. HEDON focuses on household energy, which is predominantly cooking, so it deals with issues related to food security as well. | <urn:uuid:68da41ac-e04f-4ec5-98e3-955a86c1b428> | CC-MAIN-2015-32 | http://www.apc.org/es/taxonomy/term/2123 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-32/segments/1438042989234.2/warc/CC-MAIN-20150728002309-00045-ip-10-236-191-2.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941825 | 153 | 2.59375 | 3 |
Leonard Joseph Weisgard
December 13, 1916 – January 14, 2000
Leonard Weisgard, Caldecott award-winning illustrator of more than 200 children’s books was perhaps best known for his collaboration with the author Margaret Wise Brown.
Weisgard was born in New Haven, Connecticut but spent much of his early childhood in England, where his father originally came from.His interest in the quality of children’s books began after his family moved back to the USA when he was 8. As a schoolboy in New York, he was dissatisfied with the books supplied by the public schools he attended. He found the illustrations monotonous and thought that the world could not be all that dreary and limited to only one color.
He went on to study art at the Pratt Institute and the New School for Social Research, where he was influenced by primitive cave paintings, Gothic and Renaissance art and avant-garde French illustrators of children’s books of the 1920s.
He used a wide range of colors and media in his books, including gouache, poster paint, crayon, chalk, decoupage, stenciling and pen and ink.
Leonard Weisgard also studied dance with Martha Graham and worked in the field of window display. He began his career making illustrations for magazines such as Good Housekeeping, The New Yorker and Harper’s Bazaar.
Leonard with Nora Edmunds of UNICEF with reproductions of Greeting Cards
His first book, Suki, the Siamese Pussy, was published in 1937, followed by an adaptation of Cinderella.
(Sources: The LA Times from the 24th of January, 2000 and The New York Times the 27th of January, 2000)
Leonard Weisgard working on an illustration for the Unicef greeting cards | <urn:uuid:d963c056-7e75-486f-933a-a4d5f46abc2e> | CC-MAIN-2018-09 | http://leonardweisgard.com/about-lw/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-09/segments/1518891817437.99/warc/CC-MAIN-20180225205820-20180225225820-00310.warc.gz | en | 0.979504 | 384 | 2.859375 | 3 |
Scene from the movie “Contagion.” Photo from Warner Bros. Ent.
The box-office hit “Contagion,” a movie about a lethal airborne virus that kills within days, is still a top dramatic draw going into the weekend.
The film has drawn interest not just for its suspense and star-studded cast, but also for trying to realistically represent how an emerging disease could sweep across today’s highly inter-connected world.
So just how plausible is some of the science represented in “Contagion”? A group of Centers for Disease Control experts helped the NewsHour sort through some of the facts and found there is much in the film that relates to real life (additional information provided by the World Health Organization):
Contagion scenario: The deadly disease in the movie is modeled off a combination of influenza and a virus called Nipah, which causes inflammation of the brain and respiratory disease.
Reality check: Take a deep breath and stop Googling Nipah vaccines — for now — this combination disease is a Hollywood concoction and can’t exist in the real world, CDC virus experts told the NewsHour.
“Influenza and Nipah have incompatible genomes that are not capable of recombination in nature,” the CDC said in an email.
But Nipah is a real emerging disease in South Asia and can cause deadly brain inflammation in humans. It killed 105 patients in an outbreak in Malaysia in 1999, and caused 49 deaths in India during an outbreak in 2001.
Most Nipah outbreaks have not spread widely in humans, however, and have resulted in only a handful of cases. CDC virologists say Nipah is not highly consistent with a pathogen that could cause a global pandemic.
Currently there are no effective treatments or vaccines for the disease.
Contagion scenario: The virus is so transmissible it spreads to new locations around the globe within days.
Reality check: This setup is plausible and has already occurred twice, said the CDC, with the outbreak of SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) in 2003 in Asia, and the 2009 H1N1 pandemic. SARS spread to 13 countries on three continents in less than a month, and H1N1 spread globally within weeks.
Contagion scenario: The fictional virus reaches humans through a series of animal encounters: a bat eats some fruit then drops it in a pig pen, the pig eats it, then is butchered and handled by a chef who comes in contact with Gwenyth Paltrow.
Reality check: Pigs and bats are both real life culprits in Nipah outbreaks. The disease passed to humans through contact with infected pigs in Malaysia and Singapore, and through consuming fruit that was contaminated with urine or saliva from infected bats in Bangladesh and India. Bats in particular make great reservoir hosts for disease, meaning they can harbor the pathogen indefinitely with no ill effects.
“Contact with bats (or contact with intermediate animal hosts that acquired infection from bats) is a common theme among some recent emerging human infections,” said the CDC.
SARS, Ebola and avian flu, are just a few of the many other diseases humans share with animals. Food markets and food preparation are also a known path for disease to spread to humans — the SARS outbreak in 2003 was traced to human contact with an animal called a civet cat, which is sold for food in China.
Contagion scenario: As the disease rages on, quick work by scientists leads to a vaccine being developed within about four months.
Reality check: In the case of an entirely new virus emerging, developing a vaccine that fast would be unlikely, says the CDC. Flu vaccines, which are developed every year, take four to six months to create at minimum. For a brand new threat, identifying a new virus, formulating a vaccine, and taking safety of the vaccine into account would all take time.
“Assuming a vaccine can be created — that could take more time than 4 to 6 months,” the CDC said.
Contagion scenario: A process called contact tracing is carried out in the film by investigators trying to trace the disease through paths of social networks and interactions.
Reality check: This procedure is widely used during epidemiology investigations. It gives health authorities a sense of the extent of exposure and is used to develop the public health response in an emergency, said CDC.
Investigators will interview a patient or family members, track down patient’s contacts, retrace steps, screening people along the way and trying to identify the source. This process is used in everything from sexually transmitted diseases, to food-borne illness as was seen in efforts to trace the origin of the E.coli outbreak in Europe earlier this year.
It’s a labor intensive process, and privacy concerns have been raised in some cases, but it is considered a vital tool in outbreak response, especially early on before disease has spread too widely.
Find more coverage on our global health page. | <urn:uuid:a9203b4a-2233-4ecc-8fa1-e0a00864636e> | CC-MAIN-2020-16 | https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/cdc-experts-examine-the-science-of-hollywoods-contagion | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-16/segments/1585370492125.18/warc/CC-MAIN-20200328164156-20200328194156-00435.warc.gz | en | 0.955296 | 1,055 | 3.1875 | 3 |
High levels of 25-hydroxycholesterol, a cholesterol-related molecule, may trigger neuronal death and accelerate amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) progression, according to a new study. The finding could lead to new ALS therapies that target the molecule.
The study, “25-Hydroxycholesterol Is Involved In The Pathogenesis Of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis,” was published in the journal Oncotarget.
Several molecules involved in developing and maintaining the nervous system have been shown to contribute to the pathology of ALS. Previous studies suggested cholesterol and its intermediate molecules (molecules formed as cholesterol is produced) may be involved in the disease’s development.
For this study, researchers assessed the roles three cholesterol intermediate molecules (24-, 25-, and 27-hydroxycholesterols) have in ALS. They analyzed the molecules’ levels in patients, and used laboratory models of the disease to understand how they work at the cellular level.
Thirty-nine ALS patients (20 to 80 years old) were recruited for the study at Seoul National University Hospital between December 2009 and May 2012. Those receiving respiratory or feeding support were excluded.
Patients were divided into two groups: 30 were untreated and nine received the ALS drug riluzole (Rilutek). Their results were compared to those of a control group of 33 healthy individuals. Disease severity was measured using the revised ALS functional rating scale (ALSFRSr). Blood and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) samples were collected from all the participants to assess their hydroxycholesterol levels.
Results showed 25-hydroxycholesterol levels were higher in the blood and CSF of untreated ALS patients. Blood levels of the molecule were “significantly associated” with disease severity and progression, the researchers wrote.
To understand 25-hydroxycholesterol’s role in ALS, researchers increased its levels in motor neuron cultures carrying a mutated human SOD1 gene (mSOD1-G93A, found in ALS patients). They found that the molecule led to neuronal death, but treating the cultures with riluzole reduced that effect.
Using a mouse model of ALS, the team found that the animals with early disease symptoms had more enzymes in producing 25-hydroxycholesterol in their brains.
The results suggest increased 25-hydroxycholesterol levels may trigger neuronal death, particularly in the early symptomatic disease stage.
“Our data showed that the [25-hydroxycholesterol] could be an important mediator of the ALS pathogenesis involving … neuronal [death], which could eventually trigger the onset or accelerating the progression of ALS symptoms,” the researchers wrote. “Our results may reveal a novel ALS treatment target and provide insight into the involvement in of [nervous system] cholesterol metabolism in ALS pathogenesis.” | <urn:uuid:3b795f7a-7e46-4a76-87a6-88a5aa4c9611> | CC-MAIN-2019-18 | https://alsnewstoday.com/2017/01/18/25-hydroxycholesterol-is-involved-in-the-progression-of-amyotrophic-lateral-sclerosis-study-suggests/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-18/segments/1555578526228.27/warc/CC-MAIN-20190418181435-20190418203435-00300.warc.gz | en | 0.956313 | 587 | 2.671875 | 3 |
A blog for language learners.
Language learning is usually reserved for children, but the truth is that it can be beneficial at any age. Research has shown that people who learn a new language in their 40s and 50s are better protected against dementia.
If you are looking for ways to learn vocabulary quickly and efficiently, this blog post is for you.
Learning a new language can be very intriguing regardless of age. However, some speculate that learning a new language becomes difficult as we get older.
There are many ways to learn a new language, such as listening to foreign songs, referring to familiar objects in the language, or just reading.
Turns out you can learn a second language while you sleep. According to a recent study from the University of Bern in Switzerland, people can learn words in another language during deep levels of sleep.
Learning a new language poses its challenges. A direct way to get better at a language is to memorize its words and basic grammar. | <urn:uuid:b61f158d-9c33-468d-b52a-6d23e1e7ded6> | CC-MAIN-2021-39 | https://blogs.wordeys.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-39/segments/1631780056572.96/warc/CC-MAIN-20210918184640-20210918214640-00084.warc.gz | en | 0.967951 | 199 | 2.953125 | 3 |
Placing a Stumbling Block Before the Blind Person: An In-Depth Analysis
Hershey H. Friedman, PhD
Placing a Stumbling Block Before
the Blind Person:
An In-Depth Analysis
by Hershey H. Friedman, PhD
Professor of Business, Brooklyn College
© 2002 H. H. Friedman
The Bible states (Leviticus 19:14): "You shall not curse the deaf nor place a stumbling block before the blind; you shall fear your God - I am your Lord." In Hebrew, the sin of placing a stumbling block before a blind person is referred to as lifnei iver lo sitten michshol (before the blind do not place a stumbling block), or succinctly as lifnei iver.
This verse is somewhat perplexing: Why single out blind people for this law? Was placing stumbling blocks before blind people a prevalent practice in ancient times? Furthermore, there are a large number of laws in the Bible that deal with causing injury to others, blind or not. This may explain why the Talmud felt the need to give the verse a more profound meaning. Thus, the word "blind" is interpreted metaphorically to represent any person or group that is unaware, unsuspecting, ignorant, or morally blind, and individuals are prohibited from taking advantage of them or tempting them to do wrong. It is interesting to note that there is a dispute as to whether the verse should be interpreted literally at all. Apparently, some sages felt that there was no need to have a special law against causing blind people to stumble since there are a sufficient number of laws protecting all individuals from malicious harm (see Minchas Chinuch, 232:4). Others believe in the principal that Biblical verses maintain their literal meaning even when the sages use the oral tradition to add additional connotations.
The principle of lifnei iver prohibits one from giving bad advice to another person. Thus, one should not advise another party that it is in his interest to sell his field in order to buy a donkey, when his true intention is to buy the field for himself. By concealing the ulterior motive of his advice, he has violated the principle of lifnei iver (Midrash Sifra, Leviticus 19:14). In fact, the Midrash explains the reason the verse ends with the warning about fearing God: Human beings do not know whether advice proffered to them by friends is good or bad. Often, advice is given with an ulterior motive. Only God knows the true motive of the advice giver.
In addition, the above verse is considered to be a prohibition against helping or causing another to sin. Thus, placing any kind of prohibited temptation in front of someone would not be allowed. For example, providing an individual with a prohibited food, e.g., wine to a Nazirite (who takes a vow which prohibits him from drinking wine, cutting hair, or ritually contaminating himself by coming into contact with the dead), would be a violation of this commandment (Babylonian Talmud, Pesachim 22b). Rabbi Ashi, who owned forests, was permitted to sell wood to heathens who were fire-worshippers only because the majority of purchased wood is used for kindling, not for idolatry (Babylonian Talmud, Nedarim 62b). However, to sell the wood directly for the purpose of allowing pagans to practice their idolatrous practices would be prohibited. Lending someone money without having any witnesses present is also a violation of lifnei iver since it might ultimately tempt the debtor to deny that he or she borrowed any money (Babylonian Talmud, Baba Metzia 75b). If one person lends another money with interest, the borrower and the lender have also violated lifnei iver since each one enables the other to commit the sin of usury (Babylonian Talmud, Bava Metzia 75b). The Talmud (Babylonian Talmud, Moed Katan 17a) also prohibits one from hitting an older son because of lifnei iver. An older son might angrily retaliate and strike his father, which is a very serious sin.
One should not entrust animals to a shepherd, if there is a strong possibility the shepherd will allow them to graze on other people's property (Babylonian Talmud, Bava Metzia 5b). Even purchasing milk, wool, or kids from shepherds was not permitted since they might have stolen these items from the cattle under their care (Babylonian Talmud, Bava Kama 118b).
Selling anything that has the potential of causing harm to others is prohibited. Thus, the Talmud (Babylonian Talmud, Avodah Zarah 16a) states: "It is forbidden to sell [idolaters] bears, lions, or anything which may injure the public. One shall not build with them a basilica, a scaffold, a stadium, or a platform" In Talmudic times, wild animals were used in stadiums to kill people for sport; basilicas were used to try people and, if sentenced to death, the defendant was thrown off it. Individuals were also thrown off platforms to kill them. Rebbi owned white mules and was rebuked by Rabbi Pinchas b. Yair for owning such vicious and dangerous animals. He offered to sell them but was told by Rabbi Pinchas that he would then be in violation of lifnei iver (Babylonian Talmud, Chullin 7b).
According to Abaye, the reason for marking graves is to ensure that priests or pilgrims would not inadvertently become ritually unclean (Babylonian Talmud, Moed Katan 5a). When the Temple in Jerusalem was standing, priests and pilgrims bringing sacrifices had to maintain ritual purity. Leaving an unmarked grave that can result in the ritual contamination of priests and pilgrims is a violation of placing the stumbling block -the grave- before the blind, i.e., the priests and pilgrims.
There is a Midrash (Midrash Hagadol, Leviticus 19:14) that states that individuals who "strengthen the hand of sinners" or assist others to commit a misdeed have transgressed the prohibition against "placing a stumbling block before the blind." One might argue that remaining quiet in the face of evil, i.e., not blowing the whistle on iniquities, strengthens the hand of wrongdoers.
Nehama Leibowitz (1983, p. 178), the renowned Bible teacher, offers the widest extension of the law:
"But the Torah teaches us that even by sitting at home doing nothing, by complete passivity and divorcement from society, one cannot shake off responsibility for what is transpiring in the world at large, for the iniquity, violence and evil there. By not protesting, "not marking the graves" and danger spots, you have become responsible for any harm arising therefrom, and have violated the prohibition: "Thou shalt not put a stumbling block before the blind…"
The following are some common business situations that might involve the prohibition of lifnei iver.
(1) Buildings should be made accessible to the handicapped. Many office buildings have been built without ramps and railings and thereby cause the blind and other handicapped to "stumble." There very well may be an obligation on society to provide large-print books, books in Braille, and special schools for the disabled. This is arguably a modern interpretation of the verse but something to be considered.
(2) Accountants and auditors that are not careful with financial statements and thereby mislead others, e.g., investors or creditors, are guilty of lifnei iver. Investors and creditors rely on financial statements and have a right to assume that they are indeed accurate records. Moreover, accountants who purposely "cook the books" are guilty of deception and lifnei iver by helping their clients to sin.
(3) Advertising that is intended to elicit envy or create the need for showy luxury products on the part of the consumer may also be problematic. In the classic medieval ethics (mussar) work, Orchos Tzadikim (Chapter 14: Jealousy), the author notes that jealousy comes from observing what friends own. We become envious of a friend's garment, food, house, and/or wealth, and envy leads to coveting. Thus, individuals who purposely flaunt wealth in order to arouse the envy of their fellows are guilty of lifnei iver. Sadly, the newspapers are filled with stories of teenagers that are killed for a designer shirt, fancy sneakers, or a gold chain. The Orchos Tzadikim recommends a life of moderation and simplicity so as not to arouse the envy of others.
(4) Running advertisements that are intended to mislead the public are violations of lifnei iver since this is tantamount to providing people with bad advice. Similarly, salespeople or consultants who are asked for advice about products and recommend the item that provides the highest commissions are also guilty of lifnei iver. The individual who possesses the expertise is obligated to provide accurate information and not cause the "blind" client or customer to "stumble" by providing bad information. This would include stockbrokers who recommend risky financial securities in order to generate a large commission.
(5) Bait and switch advertising is a practice in which a retailer promotes an item at an extremely low price (the "bait") in order to attract the customer to the store. When the customer is in the store and attempts to purchase the advertised item, s/he is informed that the item is not available and/or is told that there are better, but "slightly" more expensive, substitutes on hand. This unethical practice is clearly a "stumbling block" to the unknowing customer.
(6) Giving a bribe or kickback to a buyer is a violation of lifnei iver. Buyers are supposed to act impartially on behalf of their employers; kickbacks encourage them to act deceitfully.
(7) Selling products that are dangerous to the public is a violation of lifnei iver. Certainly, selling weapons to criminals would be illegal. Providing cigarettes to minors would certainly be wrong, even if not prohibited by secular law. There are a number of rabbis who feel that smoking itself is a violation of lifnei iver since it harms the innocent through second-hand smoke.
(8) Being a fence and buying stolen goods would be a violation of lifnei iver.
(9) Keeping quiet when wrongs are being committed by an organization is also tantamount to "placing a stumbling block ..."
The seemingly simple verse prohibiting the placement of stumbling blocks before the blind is actually a succinct statement encompassing many important rules of ethics and morality. It is an admonition not to take advantage of the weak and the helpless or to place temptation in the path of those who may be morally weak. It is also a call to action demanding that society and people do everything possible help the weak, the vulnerable, and the helpless. It is a fundamental principle of business ethics and is on par with such essential principles as "The stranger who resides with you shall be treated the same as the native-born and you love him as yourself" (Leviticus 19:34) and "loving your fellow human being as yourself" (Leviticus 19: 18).
Leibowitz, Nehama (1983). Studies in Vayikra (Leviticus). Jerusalem: World Zionist Organization. | <urn:uuid:236a467b-8c0a-497b-a9a3-1dd5d03482ac> | CC-MAIN-2014-49 | http://www.jlaw.com/Articles/placingstumbling.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-49/segments/1416400379546.70/warc/CC-MAIN-20141119123259-00184-ip-10-235-23-156.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951626 | 2,425 | 2.609375 | 3 |
The French discoverers of Canada did not fail to impress the aborigines they met with a vague idea of the religion they professed. Thus, on 3 July 1534, when Jacques Cartier reached Baie des Chaleurs, he presented the Indians with prayer beads, and shortly afterwards erected a large cross with the inscription "Vive le Roide France", thereby combining patriotism with religion. In his second expedition (1535) he was accompanied by two chaplains, who, of course, could not impart much instruction to the Eskimos, Micmacs, Algonquins, and Hurons with whom they came into contact, yet must have indicated in some way the interest the newcomers took in their spiritual welfare. Moreover this important voyage ultimately resulted in the conversion and baptism of Donnacona, the Quebec chief kidnapped to France by the discoverer. Likewise, when the Sieur de Monts established his colony (1604) in what was to become known as Acadia, he had with him priests who soon turned their attention to the surrounding tribes. In the course of time a few Micmacs received baptism (1619), and their companions ever manifested the greatest attachment for the compatriots of their missionaries. Two priests, Father Pierre Biard and Edmond Massé, left Dieppe for Port Royal (26 January, 1611), and started their ministrations among the natives by a wise show of prudence, which some were tempted to regard as an excessive dilatoriness in admitting into the Church. Four years later more important missions were commenced on the arrival at Quebec, then founded seven years, of Fathers Denis Jamay, Jean Dolbeau, and Joseph Caron, Recollects, accompanied by a lay brother. While the first-named remained at the French fort, Father Dolbeau went to instruct the Montagnais who repaired to Tadoussac at the mouth of the Saguenay, and Father Le Caron went to the Hurons in the West. Champlain, in order to secure the friendship of the latter, the most numerous of the Indian bands in his vicinity, deemed it good policy to espouse their cause against their inveterate enemies, the powerful Iroquois of the South. This step eventually embroiled the French colony in incessant hostilities. Well meant though it undoubtedly was, and perhaps necessary under the circumstances, the French leader's intervention in the inter-tribal politics of the natives likewise resulted in their paying more heed to the war songs and the satisfaction of their passions than to the question of their spiritual advancement. Le Caron worked faithfully, evangelizing the savages and paving the way for other priests by the preparation of a dictionary of the Huron language. Having made a trip to France, he returned (1623) with Father Nicholas Viel and Brother Gabriel Sagard, the future historian of the early Catholic missions in Canada.
Yet the results of the Recollects' labours were but indifferent. So these religious generously yielded their places to the Jesuits, who reached Quebec on 19 June, 1625, the first to arrive being Fathers Jerome Lalemant, E. Massé, and Jean de Brébeuf. Father Massé had already laboured among the Micmacs of what is now Nova Scotia. He renewed his exertions in their midst, while Brébeuf succeeded Le Caron at the head of the Huron mission, whither he was accompanied by three other priests from France (1626). One of these, a zealous Franciscan, Father de la Roche Daillion, directed his steps towards the Neutral nation, on which he could make no impression. He finally left (1627), while Brébeuf's Jesuit companion had also to return East in the course of the same year. Brébeuf laboured heroically amidst the most discouraging apathy, if not hostility, of the Hurons. In 1633, after a temporary absence from his post, he returned West with Fathers Antoine* Daniel and Ambroise Devost. Incredible hardships led them to the village of Ihonatiria, where they met a pleasant reception. Thence they visited hamlet after hamlet, teaching and exhorting the Indians, at first with no very great success. In the East Fathers Dolbeau and Jamay, with Brother Duplessis, were displaying their zeal on behalf of the roving Montagnais and Algonquins of the Saguenay, Ottawa, and Lower St. Lawrence. In 1636 Father Dolbeau had even extended his activities to the outlying bands of the Labrador Eskimos. Thus were missions established at Tadoussac for the Montagnais; at Gaspé for that tribe and the Micmacs; for the latter alone at Miscou, New Brunswick, and at Three Rivers for the Montagnais and the Algonquins. As a rule, those Indians, though lower than the Hurons in the social scale, showed themselves more amenable to Christian ideals.
To the west of these, missionary operations were thenceforth to be concentrated chiefly with a view towards the conversion of the tribes of the Huron confederacy. By the end of 1635 Fathers Daniel and Devost, going to Quebec, met two priests proceeding to the north, and at Three Rivers Father Isaac Jogues, newly arrived from France. This missionary soon after left with a party of Hurons with whom he was to make his apprenticeship of the hardships in store for him. From the central mission of St. Joseph, or Ihonatiria, some twenty-eight towns were visited, the inhabitants of which proved as fickle as they were superstitious. Hence continual dangers for the missionaries nearly culminated in their death at the hands of those for whose salvation they were devoting themselves. In 1638 there were nine priests working zealously in thirty-two villages of some twelve thousand souls. Gradually they established the residences of the Conception, St. Mary's, and St. Joseph's, named after the one at Ihonatiria. Thence they visited the Petuns (1639), and in 1641 Fathers Charles Raymbault and Isaac Jogues went among the Ottawas. Then, smallpox having made its appearance among the Hurons, fresh dangers ensued for the missionaries, ever considered the cause of such visitations. They now turned their attention to the Neutrals, a powerful nation settled on the peninsula between Lakes Erie and Ontario, where they experienced new insults, and met with very few consolations (1640-41). Though they thus visited eighteen villages, trying to win over the people by their gentleness and their devotion to their interests, they were everywhere greeted with maledictions and raillery. Nevertheless it would seem as if their patience and fortitude must have at length struck those uncouth savages, for in 1645 they invited them to their country, promising a better reception for the tireless apostles. The days of the Neutrals, however, were numbered; the Iroquois were to be the unconscious executors of the justice of God upon them.
To the north of Huronia lay the territory of the Algonquins who counted at that time no less than one hundred and four distinct groups. One of these, the Nipissings, was visited by Fathers Claude Pijart and Raymbault (1640), who were cordially received. Though they soon made a number of baptisms, their success was scarcely commensurate with their exertions. Little by little, however, the Nipissings tired of the missionaries, and, as if by way of punishment, they were in 1650 exterminated by the Iroquois. Unfortunately good and bad alike had too often to suffer by the invasions of those warlike aborigines. In the summer of 1652 Father Jogues and Brother René Goupil were surprised by a party of that nation, who shockingly mutilated and shamefully tortured the former, and put the latter to death (see GOUPIL and JOGUES). In common with practically all the missionaries of the time, Father Jogues was a native of France; an Italian, Father Francis Joseph Bressani, was soon to walk in his footsteps. Nothing daunted by torments which, humanly speaking, should have proved fatal, Bressani, after his experience with the Mohawks, returned to Canada (1645) and consecrated his unfailing energies to the welfare of the Hurons, who could not help regarding him as a hero. Meantime, constantly harassed by the Iroquois, who had burnt several of their villages, the Hurons were rapidly marching to their doom. Yet, thanks to the fearlessness of their spiritual guides, mission work grew apace among them. Indeed about 1648 Father Bressani felt warranted to write that "whereas at the date of their arrival they found not a single soul possessing a knowledge of the true God, at the present day, in spite of persecution, want, famine, war, and pestilence, there is not a single family which does count some Christians." Better still, the converts were living up to the Christian standard of morality, and the general tone of the nation's society was gradually undergoing a decided change for the better. But the implacable Iroquois would not allow them to profit peacefully by the ministrations of their priests. One by one their villages were attacked and destroyed. In the spring of 1648 St. Joseph's was annihilated and its missionary, Father Daniel, killed while comforting his flock. Next came the turn of the fortified town of St. Louis where the lionhearted Brébeuf and his companion, Father Lalemant, were martyred (see BRÉBEUF). St. Ignatius village suffered a similar attack, and most of its inhabitants were butchered. Then St. Mary's was assailed by the enemy; but, warned in time, it succeeded in repulsing the attack. Numerous Huron villages were successively razed, and many of their people massacred, while others were led off to the land of the invaders, there to undergo torture, perpetual captivity, or death.
No wonder, then, if the Hurons lost heart and, sought safety in flight and dispersion. Their devoted pastors followed them in their exile. They at first gathered remnants of their once nation on an island in Lake Huron, called today Christian Island, while the Petun village of Etharita succumbed under the blows of the southern aborigines, and with it Father Charles Garnier who, though in the grasp of death, dragged himself to minister to the spiritual needs of his afflicted flock. His companion, Father Noel Chabanel, was at the same time the victim of an apostate Huron who flung his body into the river. The one consolation in the midst of these ruins was the constancy with which the converts stuck to their faith even when in the land of their executioners. So thoroughly did they share the fortitude of their pastors, that many of them not only confessed their faith in Christ at the peril of their lives but even exhorted their persecutors to embrace it themselves. Some of the fugitives went west, while others found a temporary refuge on the desert islands of Lake Huron, or among the Neutrals who had soon themselves to flee for their lives. Meanwhile the exiles of Christian Island, after untold sufferings, retired in the spring of 1650 to the neighbourhood of Quebec, finally settling at the Lorette Mission (see HURON INDIANS). Their chief occupation having ceased with the practical extinction of the Hurons as a people, the Jesuit missionaries now turned their attention to the fierce Iroquois, repeating the prodigies of self-denial with which their victims had been favored. Against their tenacious perseverance and devotion to duty no bigotry can stand. To Protestants as well as to Catholics they are nothing short of heroes of Christian fortitude. To the west of Huronia proper was the land of the Petuns who boasted nine or ten villages with a population of perhaps ten thousand in 1640. Two missions, that of St. John's and that of St. Mathias, had been established among them. These Indians were commencing to yield to the influence of grace when they, too, had to retire before the victorious march of the ruthless Iroquois.
In 1652 we find them at Michillimakinac, whence they set out on a series, of peregrinations which landed them among tribes of the United States, by whom they were ultimately absorbed. The other remnant of the Huron nation fared better. About 1665 they enjoyed the ministrations of an able and pious priest, Father Joseph M. Chaumonot, a pioneer missionary who bad given no less than fifty-three years of his life to the ill-fated Hurons (d. 1692).
Considered as a nation, the Hurons had been wiped off the face of the earth. Such of the priests as were not required for missionary work within what is now the American Union then turned their attention toward the more pacific tribes nearer home. The Micmacs had from the first accepted Christianity (see MICMACS). On 29 July, 1657, Gabriel De Queylus, Gabriel Souart, and Dominique Galinier, members of a newly founded ecclesiastical society, the Sulpicians. accompanied by M. d'Allet a deacon of the same institute, arriving at Quebec, immediately proceeded to the village of Ville-Marie, now Montreal, where they replaced the Jesuits in the charge of the local parish. Though more especially destined for work among the whites, the Sulpicians did not overlook the salvation of the native tribes. Thus, ten years after their arrival in Canada (1667), they ministered to the Ottawas and other Algonquin groups. Bishop De Montmorency-Laval, the first prelate in the colony, entrusted to them the care of a mission established at Quinte Bay on Lake Ontario, for the benefit of the Cayugas, an Iroquois tribe, and many adopted Hurons settled in their midst. Their success with the adult population was not complete; but their very presence paved the way towards establishing missionary stations all along the western shore of Lake Ontario (1669). Soon after, the Sulpicians were succeeded in that field by the Recollects who had just returned to Canada. Father Louis Hennepin and others laboured with energy, but harvested only tares, and the natives gradually returned south; all traces of a mission on the Canadian side of the lake disappeared.
It was then that, quite a number of Iroquois of the American Union having been won over to the Faith, a step was taken by their spiritual advisers of which the results were to last to our day. To withdraw them from the dangers of their pagan environment, the Jesuits induced them (1668) to settle at La Prarie, near Montreal, whence they moved (1676) to Sault St. Louis, and then to Caughnawaga. One of the chief reasons for that migration was the prevailing excesses, principally owing to the intoxicants dealt out by the Dutch. The French colony itself was not free from that greatest of curses for the American aborigine. But, in addition to the solemn promise to abstain therefrom which was exacted of all the newcomers into the model settlement, the stopping of the evil was more easy on Canadian than on American (or, as it was then; English) soil. As a matter of fact, the missionaries of New France, and especially their valiant head, Bishop Laval, fought it with unflagging perseverance, appealing to the French authorities whenever their representatives on the St. Lawrence proved unwilling to stay the spread of this scourge. In their new home at Sault St. Louis the Iroquois Christians gave great consolations. Thus one of the former torturers of Father de Brébeuf, Garonhiague by name, became one of the most zealous catechists of the new mission, and the war-chief Kryn shone by his virtues as much as by his courage. But the best known example of Christian efflorescence in that settlement was Catherine Tegakwitha, a native virgin surnamed the "Lily of the Mohawks", who died in 1678 after a short life passed in the practice of heroic virtues. About that time events shaped themselves in such a way as to further increase the extent of the missionary field in the East. The Abenakis, an Algonquin nation, ever a staunch ally of the French though most of its tribes were considerably nearer to the English, were attracting the attention of Father Gabriel Druillettes, who visited them repeatedly in their original homes. These natives were soon to swell the ranks of the Canadian Indians under the care of the Jesuits. After a series of hostilities in the course of which the English had at one time to agree to pay them tribute, the Abenakis were defeated on 3 Dec., 1679. Rather than remain neighbours to the victors, most of them immediately made their way to Canada and Acadia, where they have since remained.
The following year (1680) two Jesuits, the brothers Vincent and Jacques Bigot, were appointed to watch over the spiritual interests of the newcomers. These, gathered at the village of Sillery, joined St. Joseph's Mission which in 1681 counted already some five hundred or six hundred inhabitants, as yet unbaptized, but animated by excellent dispositions. Their congeners in Acadia, having heard of the welcome extended to them, asked for, and were granted, 1 July, 1683, a land concession of thirty-six square miles on the Chaudiere River, to which they flocked in large numbers. This was given the name of St. Francis' Mission. For over twenty years the Bigot brothers devoted their energies to the welfare of the Indians of both missions, and their zeal was rewarded by complete success. In 1708 other aborigines of the same stock were settled at Becancourt, with a view to serve as a rampart against the Iroquois. They "were all Christians, and practised with much edification the precepts of Christianity" (Charlevoix, "Journal Hist.", V, p. 164). Twelve years later (1720) they numbered about five hundred souls. A short time before (1716), the mission of Oka, or Lake of the Two Mountains, was established, where Christianized Iroquois and remnants of the Algonquin nation were gathered under the guidance of the Sulpicians. In these various foundations the secular authorities generously seconded the efforts of the missionaries by the grant of large tracts of land for the benefit of their charge.
Now that the French were more or less at peace with the Iroquois, and friendly with the other tribes in the East, they dreamt of fresh conquests in the West. The "Western Sea" (Pacific Ocean) was especially the object of their ambition. They commissioned the Sieur Pierre Gaulthier de Laverendrye to undertake an expedition in that direction, and in the summer of 1735 Father Jean Pierre Aulneau, S.J., accompanied him to the Lake of the Woods previous to attempting his ultimate mission, the conversion of the Mandans of the Upper Missouri. With a party of twenty Frenchmen, he was treacherously slain on an island of the same lake by the Sioux on 8 June of the following year. Father Claude Godefroy Coquart, of the same order, took his place (1743) as chaplain of the exploring expedition, and dwelt a short time at the present Portage la Prarie, but could accomplish nothing for the Western Indians. The mission of Michilimakinac, at the west end of Lake Huron, was then the base of operations for such expeditions. Thence also the Jesuits scoured the woods in quest of souls to save, and Ross Cox says that the impression they made on their wayward wards was such that, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, the descendants of the latter had not forgotten "the good white fathers who, unlike other white men, never robbed or cheated them" (Adventures on the Columbia River", New York, P. 149). But with the exception of the reservations of the Abenakis and the Micmacs in the far East, all under the care of the Jesuits, most of the Catholic missions in Canada were along the St. Lawrence. Quite a few were at the various localities then called the Posts of the King, the Malbaie, Tadoussac, Mingan, Chicoutimi, and other places, concerning which Father Coquart addressed a memoir to the Intendant of New France under the date 5 April, 1750.
Shortly before, a , Father Francis Picquet, had started a movement among the aborigines, the results of which were most remarkable. In a village called Ogdensburg he established a reduction, the success of which soon attracted widespread attention. In the space of four years he grouped over three thousand Indians and opened for their benefit the missions of La Presentation, La Galette, Sugatzo, l,'Ile àu Galop, and L'Ile Picquet, on the St. Lawrence. So great was his success and so considerable the extent of his operations that (1749) it took the Bishop of Quebec ten days to inspect his central establishment officially. Two years later Father Picquet visited the Indians on Lake Ontario, whence he repaired to the land of the Senecas. When Quebec was captured in 1759, that missionary had converted large numbers of heathens. Unfortunately, the ensuing unsettled state of the country put a stop to his activities, and in May, 1760, he had to leave Ogdensburg, never to return. Another Sulpician, Father Jean Mathevet, after having mastered the language of the Abenakis, of which he compiled a dictionary, was then ministering to the mixed congregation of Oka (1746-81), together with Father Vincent Guichart, whose missionary labours extended from 1754 to the time of his death in 1793. Perhaps the most famous Canadian missionary of that period was Father Jean-Baptiste Labrosse, a Jesuit, who exercised his ministry all through Lower Canada and New Brunswick during no less than thirty-five years, being with the Montagnais and the Malecites from 1754-82, when he died regretted by all for his unremitting charity. Two events then conspired to interrupt the progress of the Catholic missions in Canada. These were the change of political masters, owing to which several members of the clergy returned to France, and the suppression, in 1773, of the Jesuit Order. By the fortieth clause of the Montreal capitulation England had granted religious liberty to the Indians as well as to the whites then in the colony. Yet some of the instructions soon after sent to her representatives on the banks of the St. Lawrence were openly against the spirit, if not the letter, of that treaty. The officials were told that "all missionaries among the Indians, whether established under the authority or appointed by the Jesuits, or by any other ecclesiastical authority of the Romish Church, [must] be withdrawn by degrees, and at such times and in such a manner as shall be satisfactory to the Indians and consistent with the public safety, and Protestant missionaries appointed in their places" (Royal Instructions to Sir George Prevost). The natives refused to part with their priests on any consideration, thereby showing the extent of the influence these had acquired over them. After the suppression of the Society of Jesus the care of the Indians fell entirely on the shoulders of the Sulpicians and of such of the secular clergy as could be spared for that work. Among the former we may mention Father Thavenet, who laboured, mostly at the Oka mission, from 1793 to 1815. Of the latter one of the most prominent was a refugee from the horrors of the French Revolution, Abbé le Courtois, who reached Canada on 26 June, 1794, and died on 18 May, 1828, after having devoted himself to the service of the northeastern and St. Lawrence aborigines.
Meantime an event had taken place in the West which was portentous of the most important results for Catholic influence among the natives of North America. The Earl of Selkirk having founded, in 1812, a colony of Scotch Presbyterians and Irish Catholics at the junction of the Assiniboine and Red Rivers, was violently opposed by the representatives of the Northwest Company. This opposition resulted (19 June, 1816) in the Battle of Seven Oaks, in which twenty-two whites, including the governor of the colony, lost their lives. As it was evident to the noble founder that no permanent success could be achieved without the aid of religion, he obtained from the Bishop of Quebec two missionaries, Father Joseph Norbert Provencher and Joseph Nicholas S. Dumoulin, who, on 16 July, 1818, arrived to found the church of St. Boniface, opposite Fort Douglas, the headquarters of the traders in the country. One of the chief objects of the new mission was the conversion of the Aborigines of the Middle West of Canada. Father Dumoulin tried to meet the wishes of his bishop in this respect; but, owing to the fact that he could give only half of his time to the Indians, he accomplished little enough. In fact, such was the rebellious temper of his native charges, that he was twice shot at by one of them. Scarcely anything could be done to better their lot until 1831, when Father George A. Belcourt arrived among them from Lower Canada. The newcomer, an able man, immediately commenced to acquire a thorough knowledge of the language of the Saulteux, or Chippewas, which he reduced to writing and of which he composed a dictionary. In 1833 he established on the Assiniboine an Indian village, known as St. Paul's Mission, where he strove to teach farming as well as the elements of the Christian doctrine. Owing perhaps to his insistence on the former, his success was far from complete. In the summer of the same year, Father Jean-Baptiste Thibault reached the Middle West; though less brilliantly endowed than Belcourt, he was to prove more successful as a missionary. The latter was then journeying to Rainy River, where he found the Indians "little disposed to leave the bottle for the word of God", according to the founder of the Red River Missions, now Bishop Provencher. In the course of 1838 Belcourt established a second post at the confluence of the English and Winnipeg Rivers. This was Wabassimong, which soon acquired a degree of celebrity, though it had to be abandoned in 1847. In 1842 a new and larger field was opened to the zeal of the missionaries, the Far West, today Alberta, where Father Thibatilt preached the Gospel to the Crees and Blackfeet who repaired to Fort Edmonton. Without becoming at once converts to our holy faith, these aborigines were persuaded by the preaching of the Canadian priest to the extent of definitively rejecting the advances of the Methodist minister who had preceded him in that distant region. Then Thibault journeyed even farther west, and founded the mission of St. Ann, whence he and other priests thenceforth attended, with some measure of success, to the spiritual wants of the surrounding tribes. He next went (1844) as far as Cold Lake, Lac la Biche and even Ile à la Crosse, where the Déné Indians received him with open arms.
A short time before (1842) another Canadian missionary, Father Modeste Demers, began work throughout British Columbia, or New Caledonia, as that country was then called, going as far as Stuart Lake, where he accomplished wonders. As early as 1838, after having crossed the entire continent from Quebec, Father Demers had reached the Columbia valley, where he was everywhere received as the special envoy of the Almighty, and produced among the populous tribes of the Pacific an impression which powerfully worked for unity when, later on, the ministers of various sects made their appearance. In the spring of the following year, Father Jean Baptiste Z. Bolduc reintroduced Christianity on Vancouver Island, where it had been planted at the time of the occupation of Nootka by the Spaniards (1789-95). In 1845-47 Father John Nobili, a Jesuit, retraced Demers' itinerary, and finally went even so far as Babine Lake in the course of his missionary excursion. Meantime a new worker, Father Jean E. Darveau, was in a fair way towards materially improving the spiritual condition of the hardened Saulteux of what is today Northern Manitoba, when he was murdered 4 June, 1844, by Indians who sided with a Protestant catechist stationed at Le Pas, Lower Saskatchewan, where the priest intended to start a permanent mission. East of the Manitoban lakes, Father Dominique Du Ranquet, S.J., inaugurated in April of the same year the missionary station of Walpole Island, on Lake Superior, whence he visited various posts, and in the following July another Jesuit, Father Choné, took up his residence at Wikwemikong, on Manitoulin Island, where a secular priest had preceded him. No less than twenty-one posts on the island, Georgian Bay from Mississagué to Owen Sound, as well as Lake Nipissing. and Beausoleil Island, were attended from that mission. Great was the opposition of the Protestant ministers (among whom was James Evans, the inventor of the Cree syllabics); but the Jesuits held their own, and managed to organize the flourishing Christian settlements of Garden River and Pigeon River (1848). The latter station was transferred in 1849 to Fort William by Fathers Choné and Frémiot. Thence these missionaries ministered to the Indians of Port Arthur, Prince's Bay, Royal Island, and Lake Nepigon. Still further east, in the very land of the Abenakis, less consoling events had taken place some time previously. An Indian known by the name of Masta had been educated in the United States whence he returned in 1830 to St. Francis Mission with the title and attributes of a Protestant minister. After much opposition at the hands of his fellow Abenakis he succeeded, by dint of skilful intrigue and with the connivance of the Canadian authorities, in putting up a Protestant chapel in the very midst of the Indian village (1837). Three years later Father J. A. Maurault was sent thither by Bishop Signay to learn the language of the natives, and in 1847 he actually became their missionary. Thenceforth the Abenaki preacher saw whatever influence he had gained wane until he bad to leave the scene of his exploits. At the same time a still better known priest was commencing his apostolic career at Oka, Father J. A. Cuocq, an able Sulpician, who was to consecrate his energies for over half a century to the welfare of the Mohawks and Algonquins, whose languages he eventually mastered.
A new era dawned for the Indian missions of Canada. At the request of Mgr. Bourget, Bishop of Montreal, four Oblates of Mary Immaculate reached the St. Lawrence from France (1811) and immediately began preaching missions, not only to the whites, but also to the Indians of Lower Canada. Several missionaries of the new order, Father Louis Déléage, Flavien Durocher, and Jean-N. Laverlochère, soon distinguished themselves. Hearing of their success, Bishop Provencher begged for the co-operation of their brethren in religion. On 25 Aug., 1845, Father Pierre Aubert and Brother Antonin-Alexandre Taché arrived at St. Boniface, and, while the older missionary was sent to Wabassimong, Brother Taché left after his ordination to the distant post of Ile à la Crosse. There he had for a superior Father Louis Laflèche, who had established that, mission in the course of the preceding year. Both priests did a vast amount of good to the native population. In 1846 two other Oblates, Father Henri Faraud and a companion, reached the Canadian West. In the north Father Taché gradually extended his field of action. He visited the (1847), first of all missionaries, the shores of Lake Athabasca, where Father Faraud was to inaugurate Nativity Mission on 8 September 1849. On 24 June of the following year Father Taché was appointed coadjutor to Bishop Provencher, and temporarily left the Ile à la Crosse mission in the hand of newcomers, Fathers Maisonneuve and Tissot, whose inexperience was somewhat resented by the Indians. Hence Bishop Taché had to return to them after his consecration (23 Nov., 1851) and for several years the young prelate continued among them the labours which pertain more to the province of a simple priest than to that of a bishop. Father Henri Grollier, a young Oblate who was to become the Apostle of the Arctic Circle, came to swell the ranks of the missionaries (June, 1852), while Father Albert Lacombe started on his long career as all itinerant missionary over the Saskatchewan plains. Father Grollier soon went to Lake Athabasca, where he was for some time Father Faraud's companion. Then he founded the mission of Fond du Lac, on the same body of water (1853), while Father René Rémas established that of Lac la Biche. The principal event of 1854 was the arrival in the Canadian Northwest of Father Vital J. Grandin, a young Oblate who was to do yeoman service in the cause of the missions there. The new recruit was sent to Lake Athabasca, to relieve Father Faraud, who established (1856) St. Joseph's Mission on Great Slave Lake. Illustrative of the result of the Oblates' exertions in the north, we may say that, by the end of 1856, there remained of the seven hundred and thirty-five natives who formed the population of Ile à la Crosse, only one hundred and forty-eight heathens.
In the far East other Oblates were emulating those of the Canadian Northwest; in addition to those already mentioned there were Fathers André Garin and Charles Arnaud, then Fathers Louis Babel and Jean-Pierre Guéguen. These missionaries repeatedly visited in succession Tadotissac, Les Escoumains, Maskuaro, Mingan, Portneuf, and Les Ilets. As a rule their efforts were crowned with success. Not only did they teach their neophytes the rudiments of the Christian doctrine, but they even imparted to them some knowledge of the secular sciences, and enhanced the attractiveness of the Catholic worship by solemn processions and other pious devices. As early as 30 Sept., 1850, one of them, Father Arnaud, at this writing (1910) still actively engaged in the eastern field, wrote of the natives of Les Ilets: "They are the best instructed on the coast; they all know how to read and write. It is inspiring to see them in the church, the men on one side and the women on the other, prayer-book in hand, vying with each other, as it were, in modesty and fervour. Another spectacle scarcely less striking is that of the little children at prayer after the evening service, when every mother teaches the members of her family how to pray to the Great Spirit" (Rapport sur les Missions de Québec, March, 1851, p. 36. A regular house of the Oblates was established (1851) at Rivière au Désert, now Maniwaki, and later on (1862) others were erected at Bethsiamits and Ville-Marie (Pontiac), whence, as well as from the residences on the St. Lawrence, not only the roving bands of the interior. Montagnais, Algonquins, and Nascapis, but even such as resorted to the trading-posts of Abbittibbi, Albany, and Moose Factory, on Hudson Bay, were visited by the "Black-Robes". In spite of their precarious circumstances, those aboriginies often enough repaid by a faithful discharge of their religious duties the devotedness of their spiritual guides. The same may be said of the Indians of the inhospitable steppes of the Far North, where the Tachés, Farauds, Grandins, Grolliers, and a host of others were gladly undergoing the pangs of hunger, and setting at defiance the rigours of Arctic winters and the fatigues of endless marches on snowshoes for the sake of the souls entrusted to their care. Their courage and devotion to duty were so great, and their successes so striking, that they often elicited flattering encomiums from Protestant traders and explorers. On 30 November, 1859, Father Grandin was consecrated Bishop of Satala and coadjutor to Bishop Taché. yet he remained in the north, spending most of his time in incessant travelling. His presence there was all the more necessary as the preceding year had witnessed the arrival in the Mackenzie district of the first Protestant clergyman, the forerunner of numerous Anglican missionaries in the north. Father Grollier was immediately dispatched to Fort Simpson, the headquarters of the enemy, where, in spite of the inducements offered by the local Protestant trader, he had the consolation of seeing the great majority of the natives side with the representative of Catholicism. He then founded (1858) the missionary post of Our Lady of Good Hope, likewise on the Mackenzie and just within the Arctic Circle. Then he even went down as far is the first Eskimo village (Sept., 1860), while Father Gascon, a new recruit, was protecting the savages of the Liard River against the wiles of the preacher. Simultaneously the difficult station of Lake Caribou, just southwest of the Barren Grounds, was established under Father Végreville.
The year 1862 saw the beginning of what was to become a most important establishment under the title of the Divine Providence, on the Mackenzie where Fathers Gascon and Petitot made the very first clearings. That same year a Protestant minister, Mr. Kirkby, despairing of success east of the Rocky Mountains, crossed that range into the Yukon. Hearing of this, an intrepid missionary, Father Séguin, immediately followed; but the conflict was unequal; the preacher, besides the powerful influence of the traders, had resources of which the priest could not dispose. Above all he had the advantage of priority, and, despite two other visits of the Catholic missionaries, that of Father Petitot (1870) and that of Bishop Clut with Father Lecorre (1872), the Loucheux of the Far Northwest were, to great extent, lost to the Church. Things were brighter on the Saskatchewan and in the adjoining region, where new posts, denoting constant progress, were being established on all sides. Even martyred Darveau's old mission of Duck Bay had been in a sense revived, though transferred to the northern extremely of Lake Manitoba under the name of St-Laurent. A still more important event was the erection of the Athabasca and Mackenzie districts into a separate vicariate Apostolic, with Father Faraud (consecrated 30 Nov., 1864) as first titular. The new prelate was (1866) given coadjutor in the person of Bishop Isidore Clut. With this perfected organization the northern missions, served by such sterling missionaries as Fathers Séguin, Grouard, and the learned explorer, linguist, and ethnographer, Father Petitot, managed, in the teeth of opposition and extreme poverty, not only to hold their own, but to increase the number of their stations and converts. In the course of 1866 Father Petitot procured for the natives of Great Bear Lake the visit of the first minister of the Gospel they had ever seen in their dreary wastes. In the south Fathers Lacombe, Gasté, Leduc, Fourmond, Bonnald, and others were neither less active nor less successful. While in the far East secular priests were looking after the spiritual interests of the Abenakis, the Oblates continued their visits to the Indians north of the St. Lawrence, and the Jesuits to the natives of the Lake Superior basin.
On the Pacific Coast, the work of evangelization, inaugurated by Father Demers likewise advanced. That missionary, having been made Bishop of Vancouver Island (1847), called to his aid the Oblates lately established in Oregon. The stations of Esquimalt, Sanish, and Cowitchen, and the conversion of hosts of aborigines were the immediate results. From the island missionary work spread to the adjacent mainland. On 8 Oct., 1859, Father Charles M. Pandosy founded the Okanagan mission, and Fathers Casimir Chirouse, Léon Fouquet, Paul Durieu, and other Oblates powerfully helped their superior, Father Louis-Joseph D'Herbomez, in regenerating the Indians of the Lower Fraser. Most consoling were the results of their zeal, and it is doubtful if a more thorough change from habitual intemperance and other vices was ever effected in North America than that which rejoiced the hearts of the Oblates in British Columbia.
On 20 Dec., 1863, Father d'Herbomez became the first bishop of the mainland, and this circumstance gave a new impetus to the evangelization of that immense country. Shushwaps and Chilcotins were then granted the same spiritual advantages as had been for some time enjoyed by the natives of the Lower Fraser valley, for the special benefit of whom the mission of St. Mary's had been established (1861). In the course of 1868 Bishop d'Herbomez himself visited the whole of the northern interior of British Columbia, as far as Babine Lake, doing much good to the Dénés and other Indians he met. Fathers Le Jacq and McGuckin walked in his footsteps until the former established (1873) the mission of Stuart Lake, which was to become the great centre of missionary activities in the north of the Pacific province. In June, 1875, Father Pierre-P. Durieu was named coadjutor to Bishop d'Herbomez. On Vancouver Island a devoted secular priest, Father August Brabant, had long been battling at his own personal risk against the apathy of the less religiously inclined Indians of the west coast. he was finally successful, while secular priests, Fathers J. N. Lemmens, Joseph Nicolaye, and others, were gradually taking the places of the Oblates who had been the pioneers of the island diocese. In 1871 the Holy See formed the Province of St. Boniface with Archbishop Taché as metropolitan and three suffragans, Bishop Grandin, now titular of St. Albert, and the vicars Apostolic of Athabasca-Mackenzie (Mgr. Faraud) and of British Columbia (Mgr. d'Herbomez). The archdiocese lost importance as a missionary country in proportion as it saw the wave of white immigration roll over the soil tilled by so many devoted workers. The districts of the Saskatchewan, Athabasca, and the Mackenzie were long to remain rich fields for apostolic men zealous for the lowest in the social scale. That the difficulties and even dangers attending the evangelization of the Indians had not disappeared from those territories was made evident by the drowning in Lake Athabasca (1873) of a veteran of the northern missions, Father Emile Eynard, an ex-official of the French Government; the freezing (1874) of Louis Daze, a lay missionary of the St. Albert diocese; and the fate which befell Brother Alexis (July, 1875), killed and eaten by an Iroquois companion.
Yet there is no denying that local conditions were little by little undergoing some alterations. On the plains of what is now southern Alberta and southern Saskatchewan white immigration had commenced. At that time treaties were made with the Indians, entailing the establishment of new missionary posts and of industrial schools. While some of these were assigned to Protestant sects, the Church could not be content with a second place in a country where she had done most of the pioneer work. In spite of occasional ill-will on the part of those in power, she readily adapted herself to the new circumstances. Thus were founded the important Indian schools of (1) Dunbow, Alberta (1884); (2) Qu' Appelle, Saskatchewan (1884); (3) St. Boniface (1890); (4) Duck Lake, in Saskatchewan (1897), and other similar institutions for the benefit of the Indian youth. British Columbia already possessed the Indian industrial schools of St. Mary's, William's Lake, Kamloops, and Kootenay, all in the hands of the Catholic missionaries and nuns. Then came the Saskatchewan Rebellion (1885), which resulted not only in the destruction of seven Catholic missions, but even in the death at the hands of pagan Crees (2 April) of Fathers Fafard and Marchand, young Oblates then in charge of the posts of Frog Lake and Onion Lake respectively. Quite a few of the misguided Indians, however, eventually profited by these troubles, since their condemnation to death or confinement led them to join the Church they had so grievously injured.
Thenceforth the roving life of the pioneers became more or less a thing of the past for the missionaries of the western prairies, who, penned up with their charge in well-defined reservations, continued their ministrations without that element of romance which breaks the monotony of the daily routine and contributes to the making of history. It may now suffice for us to mention the labours of Fathers Gasté at Lake Caribou; Bonnald at Cumberland; Grouard (who replaced Bishop Faraud, d. Oct., 1892), at Lac la Biche and Athabasca; of Father Pascal (appointed vicar Apostolic of the newly created district of the Saskatchewan, 19 April, 1891), at Lake Athabasca and elsewhere; of Father Séguin, on the Lower Mackenzie, and of many other equally deserving missionaries. Even the lonely missions of the great northern stream and tributaries have had a share in the material progress so noticeable in the south. Thanks to the initiative of Bishop Grouard, a steamer has been built which annually saves to those poor missions large sums of money formerly paid to the Hudson Bay Company for their periodical outfitting. In the far East anew impetus was imparted to the missions of the faithful Micmacs by the arrival of the Capuchin Fathers in October, 1894, at Ste-Anne de Restigouche. In British Columbia material circumstances were never quite so precarious as in Mackenzie. Owing to the efforts of Bishop Durieu, the spiritual conditions of the Indians of the mainland of that province have ever been exceptionally bright. With the aid of such tried co-workers as Fathers Le Jacq, Fouquet, Chirouse junior, and others, the wonders of the Paraguayan Reductions have been reproduced, if not surpassed, among the Indians of the Pacific. Others working there were Rev. A. G. Morice, who directed Stuart's Lake mission during nineteen years and invented an Indian syllabary now widely known in the North; N. Coccola, who did wonders in the Kootenay; Fr. Thomas, and V. Rohr.
Of a native population of 111,043, Canada officially counts today 40,820 Catholic Indians thus distributed: Prince Edward Island, 274; New Brunswick, 1871; Nova Scotia, 2103; Quebec, 7926; Ontario, 6319; Manitoba, 1734; Saskatchewan, 2939; Alberta, 1873; Northwest Territories, 2252; Yukon Territory, 59, and British Columbia, 11,470. These are the official figures, which represent, only the treaty Indians. In so far at least as the present vicariates Apostolic of Athabasca and of Mackenzie are concerned, they are manifestly out of proportion with the actual population, since the Catholic Indians and halfbreeds of those territories alone are locally estimated at 11,000 and 5,000 respectively, with perhaps 500 native Protestants. 55,000 is a fairly accurate figure for the total of the Catholics among the Canadian Indians.
For books bearing on the Catholic missions in Canada see the bibliography after the article HURON. Also:--
BEGG, History of British Columbia Toronto, 1894); BEGG, (a namesake of foregoing), The Creation of Manitoba (Toronto, 1871); lDEM, History of the North-west, 3 vols. (Toronto, 1894); BENOIT, Vie de Mgr. Taché, 2 vols. (Montreal, 1904); BOULTON, Reminiscences of the Northwest Rebellions (Toronto, 1886); BURTIN, Vie de Catherine Tekahgwita (Montreal); DUGAS, Monseigneur Provencher (Montreal, 1881); IDEM, Histoire veridique des Faits qui ont prepare le Mouvement de Metis(Montreal, 1906); HARGRAVE, Red River (Montreal. 1871); HILL, Manitoba (Toronto, 1890); JONES, Relation inedite du R. P. Pierre Laure, S.J. (Montreal, 1889); IDEM, The Aulneau Collection (Montreal, 1893); JONQUET, Monsigneur Grandin (Montreal, 1903); LINDSAY, Notre-Datne de la Jeune Lorette (Montreall, 1900); Martin, Hurons et Iroquois (Paris, 1898); MAURAULT, Histoire des Abenakis (Sorel, 1866); MORICE, Au Pays de l'Ours noir (Paris, 1897); IDEM, History of the Northern Interior of British Columbiai (Toronto, 1904); IDEM, Dictionnaire historique des Canadecns et des Metis francais de l'Ouest (Quebec, 1907); IDEM, History of the Catholic Church in Western Canada, 2 vols. (Toronto, 1910); MULVANY, The History of the Northwest Rebellion of 1885 (Toronto, 1886); PAQUET, Fragments de l'Histoire religieuse et civile de la paroisse de St Nicolas (Levis. 1894); PETITOT, Chez des Grands Esquimaux (Paris, 1887); IDEM, En route pour la Mer Glaciale (Paris, 1888); IDEM, Quinze Ans sous le Cercle Polaire (Paris, 1889); IDEM, Autour du Grand Lac des Esclaves (Paris, 1891); IDEM, Exploration de la Region du Grand Lac des Ours (Paris, 1893); PIOLET, Les Missions catholiques francaises an XIXe siecle, VI (Paris, s. d.), 51-164; SOMERSET, The Land of the Muskeg (London, 1855); SOULERIN, Le Pere Laverlochere (Paris, s. d.).
Periodicals: Annales de la Propagation de la Foi (Lyons); Missions de la Congregation des Oblates de Marie Immaculee (Paris, 1862-1910); Notices necrologiques des O. M. I. (Paris); Rapports sur les Missions du Diocese de Quebec (Quebec).
APA citation. (1911). Catholic Indian Missions of Canada. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10378a.htm
MLA citation. "Catholic Indian Missions of Canada." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 10. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1911. <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10378a.htm>.
Transcription. This article was transcribed for New Advent by John Looby.
Ecclesiastical approbation. Nihil Obstat. October 1, 1911. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., Censor. Imprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York.
Contact information. The editor of New Advent is Kevin Knight. My email address is feedback732 at newadvent.org. (To help fight spam, this address might change occasionally.) Regrettably, I can't reply to every letter, but I greatly appreciate your feedback — especially notifications about typographical errors and inappropriate ads. | <urn:uuid:bc99c1cd-b83d-4823-903c-df00f0aa6804> | CC-MAIN-2013-48 | http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10378a.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-48/segments/1386164937476/warc/CC-MAIN-20131204134857-00070-ip-10-33-133-15.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968695 | 11,084 | 3.484375 | 3 |
Home » Challenges and Opportunities for Large Landscape-Scale Management in a Shifting Climate
The Center for Large Landscape Conservation is the hub of a growing global movement to reverse the fragmentation of the earth’s landscapes and restore nature’s resilience to climate change. They network and collaborate with experts, practitioners, and local communities. This interactive policy brief highlights advocacy opportunities for the conservation community to increase connectivity, supporting ecosystem services and movement of organisms, genetic material, and ecological processes, and provide important benefits to both human and wildlife populations at a landscape scale. This paper details how climate adaptation approaches at large scales may require nested landscape methods that vertically coordinate smaller to larger areas of ecological concern to help reduce the extent of climate impacts for species and ecosystems. | <urn:uuid:2e35c4b5-43a7-428e-8726-48e832a5b2f5> | CC-MAIN-2019-43 | https://climatechange.lta.org/challenges-and-opportunities-for-large-landscape-scale-management-in-a-shifting-climate/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-43/segments/1570986688826.38/warc/CC-MAIN-20191019040458-20191019063958-00108.warc.gz | en | 0.879996 | 152 | 3.125 | 3 |
Do you need to drink one glass of water for every caffeinated beverage you drink? Are “white foods” like onions less nutritious than broccoli? Is dark chocolate really rich in antioxidants? Read on to learn the truth about seven common nutrition myths.
1. Myth: Multigrain foods are rich in whole grains
When a food is labeled "multigrain," it means that more than one type of grain was used in the product -- though none of them are necessarily whole grains. This is also true for products such as “seven-grain” bread.
Whole grain means all the parts of the grain kernel -- the bran, germ and endosperm -- are used, allowing for a more nutritious product compared to foods made with refined grains. Whole-grain foods contain nutrients, fiber, and other healthy plant compounds found naturally in grain.
According to an article in the Journal of Nutrition, there is consistent epidemiological evidence indicating that whole grain foods substantially lower a person's risk for developing chronic diseases, such as heart disease, diabetes, and cancer and also play a role in body weight management and digestive health.
To make sure a product is whole grain, look at package labels. The first ingredient listed should contain the word “whole,” such as “whole wheat” or “whole oats.” The USDA recommends healthy adults consume about 6 ounces of total grains per day, and that at least half of those grains (3 ounces) are whole grains.
2. Myth: White vegetables lack nutritional value
While you may have been told to steer clear of “white foods” for good health, this advice does not hold up when it comes to white vegetables. Cauliflower, onions, mushrooms, turnips and even potatoes are packed with just as many nutrients as their colorful veggie counterparts. Eating white vegetables can increase intake of fiber, potassium, magnesium, and other vitamins and minerals – in addition to improving overall vegetable consumption, according to a paper published in Advances in Nutrition. The next time you add color to your salad, don’t forget the white.
3. Myth: Dark chocolate has more healthful flavanols than milk chocolate
Dark chocolate is often perceived as healthier than milk chocolate because it contains higher concentrations of cocoa. However, dark chocolate does not necessarily have more cocoa flavanols than milk chocolate.
Naturally found in fresh cocoa beans, cocoa flavanols are a unique group of plant nutrients (phytonutrients) that research indicates may help improve circulation, cardiovascular health and blood flow to the brain. According to The National Confectioners Association’s Chocolate Council, the cocoa percentage marked on a chocolate’s label isn’t a reliable indicator of flavanol amounts.
“Cocoa flavanols are easily destroyed by typical processing techniques including the amount of time, temperature and moisture when making cocoa or chocolate. This process starts from the time the cocoa beans are harvested and continues throughout processing,” said Hagen Schroeter, Director of Cocoa Flavanol Research at Mars, Inc.
If you are looking to add more cocoa flavanols to your diet, Schroeter recommends additional sources, such as cocoa extract supplements.
4. Myth: Cut calories to lose weight
While cutting calories will likely help you drop a few pounds in the short term, Alyse Levine, a registered dietitian nutritionist and founder of the Eating Reset weight loss program, says if calorie restriction is your main focus, you’ll likely gain more weight in the long term.
“Everyone thinks weight loss is about what they are eating, but losing weight for the long run comes down to why and how you eat,” Levine said.
Rather than focusing on consuming a set number of calories a day, Levine advises her clients take a more holistic approach to weight loss.
“There are three very simple-sounding things I tell people to do to lose weight for the long run: Eat when you are physically hungry, choose whatever foods will satisfy you and stop when you are more than comfortably full," Levine said.
The problem with strict dieting is that it often forces you to ignore physical hunger cues, which can eventually lead to over-indulging. Levine’s philosophy gets you in touch with your physical hunger, creating a healthier dynamic for long-term weight loss.
5. Myth: Dietary supplements are a waste of money
Recent recommendations by the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force indicate a lack of evidence that a daily multivitamin will ward off major diseases like cancer and heart disease. However, that doesn’t mean dietary supplements don’t play an important role in your overall wellness, particularly for certain groups of people.
“Some populations like women who are or may become pregnant, people with nutrient deficiencies or malabsorption problems, strict vegetarians or vegans, and older adults may need supplements to meet their increased needs,” said Caroline Kaufman, a registered dietician nutritionist based in Los Angeles.
If you choose to take a multivitamin, Kaufman recommends talking to your health care provider to determine the right type for you as needs vary depending on diet, health history, age and medical conditions. In addition, it’s important to look for quality brands that have been tested and verified by a third-party organization, such as the United States Pharmacopeia (USP).
6. Myth: Microwaving food destroys nutrients
This is an old nutrition myth – recently reiterated comically by Jennifer Lawrence’s character in the movie American Hustle – but microwaving food does not destroy nutrients. In fact, according to Kaufman, in some cases microwaving food offers health benefits.
“A fast and convenient way to steam vegetables, microwaving can help people retain more water-soluble nutrients often lost when drowning vegetables in water and cooking them too long. Microwaving also helps preserve heat-sensitive nutrients like vitamin C due to a faster cook time,” Kaufman said.
In addition, partially cooking meat in the microwave means less cooking time over an open flame.
“Microwaving meat before pan-frying or grilling can substantially reduce the formation of potentially cancer-causing chemicals, caused heterocyclic amines (HCAs) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which cause cancer in animals, and may be linked to colorectal, pancreatic and prostate cancer in humans,” Kaufman advised.
7. Myth: Coffee is dehydrating
A January 2014 study published in the journal PLOS ONE found that, contrary to popular belief, your morning cup of coffee will not dehydrate you. Researchers analyzed the hydration status of 50 male coffee-drinkers when they drank four mugs of coffee each day compared to when they drank four cups of water each day and found no difference between the two beverages.
While this is good news for coffee drinkers, Kaufman warns healthy adults should consume no more than 400 mg of caffeine a day -- that’s about 4 cups of brewed coffee, one "venti" Starbucks coffee or 10 cups of green tea. Consuming over 600 mg of caffeine each day is considered “too much” by the FDA because overdoses can be harmful and possibly lethal.
“While caffeinated beverages may help you meet your fluid requirements, in excess, caffeine can have negative effects on health like anxiety, agitation, headaches, insomnia, increased heart rate, dental caries, and more,” Kaufman said. | <urn:uuid:241f9849-f73f-4de2-ac6b-3248dbdf1831> | CC-MAIN-2018-09 | http://www.foxnews.com/health/2014/03/08/7-nutrition-myths-debunked.html?intcmp=moresectionlists | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-09/segments/1518891812938.85/warc/CC-MAIN-20180220110011-20180220130011-00344.warc.gz | en | 0.936755 | 1,559 | 3.265625 | 3 |
Table of Contents
Chimpanzee sanctuary serves as a prime example of impactful ecotourism
Animal activist Jane Goodall is often credited with helping the world learn more about wild chimpanzees. In 1960, she journeyed to Tanzania to study them – with no background in research and armed with little more than a notebook, a pair of binoculars, and a strong curiosity. Today, she continues to travel the world calling attention to the plight of chimpanzees, an endangered species in desperate need of our help, and, through The Jane Goodall Institute, she funds various conservation initiatives, including Chimp Eden.
Chimp Eden is a chimpanzee sanctuary in South Africa, spread across 1,000 hectares in the Umhloti Nature Reserve. Founded in 2006, Chimp Eden provides a safe haven for chimps and uses a blend of education and ecotourism to raise awareness about the dangers of extinction.
From several viewpoints, which overlook the forest and foraging areas, visitors can observe and study three different chimp groups in a risk-free environment. However, Chimp Eden is much more than a tourist attraction – it’s arguably the chimpanzee species’ greatest hope for survival.
How chimpanzees have become endangered
The U.S. officially listed all chimpanzees (wild and captive) as an endangered species in 2015, though wild chimpanzees had received this designation under the Endangered Species Act in 1990. Their population sits somewhere between 172,700 and 299,700 total, and they face numerous threats caused by commercialized poaching. Poached chimps can end up as bushmeat, illegal pets, or entertainment attractions in circuses and at beach resorts and nightclubs.
Protecting them is important and our closest animal cousin. Chimps share an estimated 98% of our DNA, and in addition to helping us understand our lineage, they play a key role in maintaining the harmony of their natural environment. This is why Jane Goodall championed their cause. Chimp Eden is the ultimate expression of her passion for this species.
How to Support Chimp Eden
There are several ways to support Chimp Eden and The Jane Goodall Institute’s greater mission of saving chimpanzees from extinction. Perhaps the most impactful way is to visit Chimp Eden.
The sanctuary hosts three guided tours every day at 10 a.m., 12 p.m., and 2 p.m. Guides discuss the unique aspects of the species, the specifics of the sanctuary, and the individual stories of Chimp Eden’s chimpanzees. Tickets are R210 (approx. $15 USD) for adults, R95 (approx. $7 to $10 USD) for children aged 6-12 (children under 6 are free), and R165 (approx. $11 USD) for seniors over 65.
All proceeds from the guided tours are invested directly into the sanctuary.
Chimp Eden does occasionally offer accommodations – these are wendy huts that house twin cabins and private bathrooms and cost between R560-R750 (approx. $38-$50 USD) per night. However, this availability varies by season. (As of August 2019, the huts are not available for booking.) The sanctuary’s official website provides up-to-date information and links to other accommodation options.
Aside from visits, Chimp Eden also encourages large groups and businesses to host special events and conferences on-site. The event space can seat up to 50 people and includes catering and AV equipment options. If you’re unable to visit Chimp Eden, you can still support their efforts by making donations, adopting a chimp through the sanctuary’s official guardianship program, and volunteering.
As Jane Goodall has shown us for nearly 60 years, wild chimpanzees need our help for survival, and supporting Chimp Eden is a simple way to lend a helping hand and make a lasting impact. | <urn:uuid:609e96b0-211b-42a6-88fd-466574947757> | CC-MAIN-2020-40 | https://www.mytravelanthropy.com/jane-goodall-institutes-chimp-eden-endangered-chimpanzees/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-40/segments/1600402088830.87/warc/CC-MAIN-20200929190110-20200929220110-00788.warc.gz | en | 0.942357 | 797 | 3 | 3 |
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Copyright 1997, The
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The U.S. is lagging behind other countries in science and math, but some companies are taking unique steps to encourage future engineers. Global power and automation leader ABB and Marbles Kids Museum are launching a one-of-a-kind, play-based power grid exhibit, called Kid Grid, to generate interest in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) in young children.
Kid Grid, located at Marbles Kids Museum in Raleigh, N.C., opens this weekend and was
funded by a $1 million grant from ABB. Kid Grid playfully introduces young children to electricity and power grid technology through hands-on, minds-on play. Kids explore a pretend power grid and learn how to make smart energy choices. The exhibit promotes early learning in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education, inspiring the next generation of great minds through interaction and energy stimulation to power up a bright future.
Engineering companies have a vested interest in maintaining an educated workforce and breaking through traditional gender stereotypes.
A shortage of American engineering graduates leaves many hi-tech companies struggling to fill jobs.
In 2012, high school students from 29 industrialized nations outperformed the U.S. in math, and 22 nations outpaced the U.S. in science.
Projects, such as Kid Grid, are designed to give children positive encouragement in STEM education at an early age.
ABB employees and families collaborated with Team Marbles during initial design, brainstorming creative ways to get kids talking about energy. Engineers and experts from ABB continued to provide guidance and knowledge throughout design and construction to ensure Kid Grid accurately reflects a real power grid. Kid Grid is complete with play versions of cables, control systems, motors, towers and transformers as well as real equipment provided by ABB.
ABB and Marbles announced the project in October 2012 as the single-largest gift in the museum’s history. Kraemer Design and Production of Cincinnati designed the exhibit, and fabrication began in fall 2013 at Pacific Studio, an exhibit production company in Seattle. In partnership with Wake County, Marbles began construction of the building addition in December 2013. In April, exhibit components were shipped 2,851 miles from Seattle to Raleigh to be reassembled at Marbles.
“Although Kid Grid is unique to North Carolina, the concept shouldn’t be,” said Greg Scheu, CEO of ABB North America. “STEM-focused industries are growing both nationally and internationally. We need to stay competitive as a nation and encourage kids to explore these areas in new and creative ways.”
The demand for highly skilled workers in STEM fields is outpacing supply. According to STEM Advantage, a non-profit coalition, STEM-related jobs are anticipated to increase by nearly 17 percent over the next decade. Of the jobs currently filled across the United States, the percentage that will require STEM education is expected to grow to more than 20 percent by 2018.
“We need highly-skilled individuals with a passion for these subject areas,” said Scheu. “As the number of job opportunities increases and the industry expands, the U.S. can better position itself in the global marketplace with a skilled workforce.”
STEM industry jobs also offer benefits of their own. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce and Economics and Statistics Administration, individuals employed in STEM jobs consistently earn wages up to 26 percent higher than their non-STEM counterparts. In fact, eight of the top ten college degrees, as ranked by income, were in STEM fields.
“It is our hope that by engaging children at a young age, we can inspire them for a lifetime,” added Scheu. “At ABB, we think a lot of the discrepancy between the U.S. and other nations lies in the lack of exposure to the industry, and with Kid Grid, we hope to begin fixing that.” | <urn:uuid:644fbc38-13f6-465d-af28-70e5c1b6b622> | CC-MAIN-2015-14 | https://www.nema.org/News/Pages/Childrens-Museum-Exhibit-Powers-up-Energy-Education-through-Play.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-14/segments/1427131299360.90/warc/CC-MAIN-20150323172139-00231-ip-10-168-14-71.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956503 | 806 | 3.046875 | 3 |
Exclusion should not be allowed to restrict learning, argues Sam Warnes, former teacher and founder and creator of EDLounge.
Many education institutions have made headlines recently for excluding students, citing challenging behaviour and poor attendance as the reasons, while their attainment levels increased.
"Understanding students’ difficulty with school, whether environmental or academic, is the first step we can take to making sure everyone is given equal opportunity to succeed."
Of course, not all schools or multi-academy trusts (MATs) have the same approach, and in fact some are shining examples of how to identify underlying issues and support a student in fulfilling their potential through a personalised pathway.
So, what can we learn from them?
When a child becomes disruptive in class, fails to hand in homework or starts to miss lessons completely, a common assumption is that they are just uninterested in school. However in my experience as a teacher, I have found this is rarely the case. Whatever the reason for their behaviour, attitude or even sudden drop in progress, it’s rarely about the student being ‘naughty’ and is usually the result of them being disengaged with learning. For example, issues at home could change a student’s involvement instantly overnight, which is out of their control. Or, the subject matter is not being delivered in a way that works for them.
An inclusive approach
We need to make sure strategies to reengage students with their learning are considerate of all backgrounds, all abilities and any additional needs. It is frightening that children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) are far more likely to be excluded from school than other children.
For students with special educational needs (SEN), a mainstream environment may simply be too chaotic for them to learn effectively. This can lead to heightened levels of anxiety, especially for those who are sensitive to loud noises and crowds, and expressing this can be difficult, so the result can be what is mislabelled as bad behaviour. The truth is often far from this, but the danger is that acting on this can be really damaging to a child. The ‘naughty’ child develops into a ‘troubled teen’ and their reputation becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, leading to poor attendance, poor attainment and their potential is limited before they’ve even had a chance.
Disengagement in the classroom might also be the result of deeply rooted problems that are harder to see from the surface. It may be less to do with how the lessons are delivered, and more to do with poor mental health, or bullying. Either way, missing school becomes an increasingly attractive option to them.
Understanding students’ difficulty with school, whether environmental or academic, is the first step we can take to making sure everyone is given equal opportunity to succeed. Rather than turning to exclusion, we need to act quickly and use the right tools to create personalised pathways to improvement wherever they need it most. For example, online platforms offer all students the opportunity to access learning, because they allow students to complete homework and even attend class via a virtual classroom, all from the comfort of their own home, or in a quiet environment on the school’s site that is designed for their needs. Through these platforms, schools can continue to deliver lessons to support students from afar, while working to re-engage them with mainstream education when they are ready.
Lastly, if a teacher or parent addresses issues early enough, they will stand a much better chance of successfully re-engaging them in learning and hopefully direct them towards a route back into mainstream education. For example, if a student is exhibiting challenging behaviour, sitting down together to talk about what is causing them to act in a disruptive way is an important way to correctly identify the support they need to get them back on track, rather than making assumptions and acting on those.
It’s also important to work on building mutual respect between teachers and students. Showing students that they are trusted to take ownership of their studies can be incredibly empowering, helping them to see the connection between what they are learning and how it fits with their own goals or potential careers.
Exclusion, as the name would suggest, is incredibly isolating and only pushes students further away from their learning. When a child exhibits poor attendance, behaviour or progress, the last thing we should do is restrict their access to education. Working together, students and their teachers can look at their current development expectations and where they could be, and how that relates to their aspirations, makes the process far more meaningful to them and in turn, increases their engagement with learning.
More information about EDLounge can be found on the website: https://edlounge.com/ | <urn:uuid:fb69bd22-7e9b-4d9c-af30-1801ba8b2d45> | CC-MAIN-2018-30 | https://www.learningdisabilitytoday.co.uk/don-t-give-up-on-students | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-30/segments/1531676593010.88/warc/CC-MAIN-20180722041752-20180722061752-00232.warc.gz | en | 0.972476 | 971 | 3.40625 | 3 |
- Start with the original document and forget
everything else you know.
- When was the document written and remember in
1700 they didn't know about the Surveryor General and the Private Land Claims
- Make sure the translations are good.
- Use the Spanish Archives of New Mexico calendar
first. Or specific indexes by state.
- Use J. J. Bowden material, a 6 volume set.
- Catron Collection at University of New Mexico
will have a file.
- Look at Indian Agent records.
- Family Records.
- Attorney Papers mostly at the State Archives, whom would have handled the cases.
- District Court Cases.
- Organizational Powers of how land grants were granted.
- Find a good map that can show you where it was located.
- Land grantee, their process for obtaining land.
- Types: Individual versus Community Land Grants.
- Adjudication process post US takeover.
- Genealogies of families for several generations. | <urn:uuid:bf47a72c-70e2-4c23-91ec-eb4a35c8e3ce> | CC-MAIN-2016-30 | http://1598nm.blogspot.com/2012_04_01_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-30/segments/1469257822598.11/warc/CC-MAIN-20160723071022-00210-ip-10-185-27-174.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.856363 | 208 | 3.21875 | 3 |
1. The outer covering of any thing, particularly of a nut or of grain. Johnson says, the hull of a nut covers the shell.
2. The frame or body of a ship, exclusive of her masts, yards and rigging.
To lie a hull in seamen's language, is to lie as a ship without any sail upon her, and her helm lashed a-lee.
To strike a hull in a storm, is to take in the sails, and lash the helm on the lee-side of a ship.
HULL, verb transitive To strip off or separate the hull or hulls; as, to hull grain.
1. To pierce the hull of a ship with a cannon-ball.
HULL, verb intransitive To float or drive on the water without sails. | <urn:uuid:9ae890c7-dd44-4eb1-8bb5-615c65e2ec0b> | CC-MAIN-2022-27 | https://webstersdictionary1828.com/Dictionary/hull | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-27/segments/1656103640328.37/warc/CC-MAIN-20220629150145-20220629180145-00334.warc.gz | en | 0.9254 | 178 | 2.984375 | 3 |
The burning of Lawrence, Kansas in 1863 by Quantrill’s raiders has always been the highlight of Kansas history during the Civil War. However, Lawrence was not the first town burned during the war and little attention has been gleaned in the history of the war in Southeast Kansas, especially in Humboldt, Allen County, Kansas. Humboldt is located about 95 miles southwest of Kansas City.
Perched on the cliffs of the Neosho River, Humboldt was settled in 1857 by German immigrants through the financial support of the abolitionists of the Massachusetts Immigrant Aid Society of Boston. In 1854 Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska act which opened settlement to Kansas and left the decision to the voters to determine if it would be a slave or free state. At the time the Kansas Territory was under the control of Southern sympathizers and on its eastern border the State of Missouri, a slave state and on the south by Indian Territory of the Cherokees and Creeks, who were also slave owners. The border wars were triggered by the settlement of Kansas and a hotbed of turmoil. The abolitionists literally came in and overthrew the territorial Federal government, which would be considered an act of treason and established a new government. To make matters worse these same men were forming railroad companies and establishing their sights on running railroads from Lawrence, Leavenworth and other northern locations to the Gulf of Galveston Bay, Texas. They made little secret of their intentions and ran ads in northern Kansas newspapers of their intentions in 1854 of using southern commodities to purchase at a cheap rate for their venture to be shipped to many destinations through these connections to the western building of the transcontinental railroad that was already in the process of being built through to Kansas in its northern counties. Humboldt was strategically chosen for its central location to Indian Territory and treaties were already being made with the Cherokee Indians to run through their lands long before the war. The ads were very specific about obtaining cheap lumber from Arkansas which was also had southern leanings. There is little doubt this further infuriated the South after being exploited by these same northern men and when Kansas became a state on January 29, 1861 it was the straw that broke the camel’s back and we all know what happened next. It is my conjecture that Kansas entering the Union as a free state was the final catalyst that triggered the war in April. These plans made it imperative they didn’t lose the war, it meant millions of acres of land were up for grabs and tons of money to be made.
Kansas Senator James Henry Lane is a well known dubious character in Kansas history and was among those who participated, including well -known Jayhawker, Charles R. Jennison, in all of these actions for personal gain. Also involved was John Brown, Jr., son of old John Brown of Harper’s Ferry fame and Daniel Anthony, brother of Susan B. Anthony. Lane was friends with some of the early settlers of Humboldt and is well known for his “Jayhawking” into Missouri which eventually led to Lawrence being burned in 1863, but it wasn’t the first town to be burned, Humboldt was raided and burned in 1861 by Confederate forces. Two of the main characters he was friends with in Humboldt were Orlin Thurston and Watson Stewart, both early settlers in Humboldt. What I thought was so interesting is why this small hamlet in no man’s land was chosen as a target by the Confederate forces. What reason could there be for these attacks to a seemingly innocent population here. In the last few years I have uncovered previously unknown details about some of the citizens of Humboldt which eventually led to its demise on the evening of October 14, 1861.
Before any troops were mustered officially in Kansas, Lane took it upon himself to appoint Orlin Thurston as a Colonel for the 7th Kansas State Militia made up of men from Allen and Woodson counties in 1861. The reason it makes it so difficult to track the men involved is because there are no official records for these militia regiments in the Federal or Kansas records, therefore hiding their involvement in the Jayhawking with Lane and Jennison.
My first discovery was a discharge of another early settler in the German settlement, Charles Fussman. He was a tinner by trade and had positioned himself with a business on the corner of the town square at 8th and Bridge Streets. His business and home were burned to the ground. This discharge reads as follows:
7th Regiment Kansas State Militia
enlisted 31 Aug 1861
This certifies that the within named Charles Fussman a private of Captain Dornberg Company (who was a doctor here) of the 7th Regiment of Kansas State Militia who volunteered at Humboldt in Allen county State of Kansas August 31, 1861, to repel an invasion of Kansas by General Rains and is now honorably discharged by reason of the retreat of the secession army. The said Charles Fussman has pay due from that time to the present date. There is due him from the U.S. the sum of six and 50/100 dollars.
Given in duplicate at Barnesville this 14th day of September 1861
Orlin Thurston, Col. Commanding
James H Lane, Commanding Kansas Brigade
Barnesville, Kansas is in Bourbon County close to Ft. Scott, and east of Humboldt about 40 miles, was the site of military camps for stretches of time during the war. The first mention of a camp there came from a report written on September 4, 1861, by Sen. James Lane. This was during the time Lane had evacuated Fort Scott and moved his forces to areas north of that post. A post was established at Barnesville. Lane wrote to Capt. W. E. Prince, then commanding Fort Leavenworth, “I am holding Barnesville . . . with an irregular force of about 250 men, stationed in log buildings, and am now strengthening their position with earth entrenchments.”
The book “Jayhawkers: The Civil War Brigade of James Henry Lane” by Bryce Benedict – 2012, reveals the Battle of Drywood, Missouri.
From page 74: “Lane dispatched a rider to Jennison with orders to bring forward his men from Barnesville, Kansas. Jennison arrived Monday morning, all the available cavalry from the regiments of Montgomery, Weer, and Johnson were already out in pursuit of the raiders, together with Moonlight’s howitzer and Harris Greeno’s company of home guards. The rebels were overtaken inside Missouri at Drywood Creek.
From page 76: “Although Lane lacked the authority to do so, he called for the Kansas militia to take the field. Colonel Orlin Thurston’s Seventh Regiment Kansas State Militia, from Allen and Woodson counties, responded.”
The Battle of Dry Wood Creek (also known as the Battle of Big Dry Wood Creek or the Battle of the Mules) was fought on September 2, 1861 in Vernon County, Missouri. Federal losses were 14 men. Missouri State Guard losses were 4 killed and 16 wounded, all in Brigadier General James S. Rains’ Eighth Division, Missouri State Guard. The battle site is just south of Deerfield, Missouri, on Highway 54 between Nevada, Missouri and Fort Scott, Kansas.
In the memoirs of Major Watson Stewart of the Kansas State Militia he reports in his many articles published in The Humboldt Union newspaper in 1876 revealing the same story, but he didn’t tell what they had been doing previously nor what was going on later with plundering, killing, and burning of towns in Missouri. He puts it off to the fact Humboldt was burned due to the burning of Osceola, Missouri, but it was going on long before that happened. Of course the victors never tell the whole story nor do they admit to any wrongdoing.
“For our better protection, we organized ourselves into companies of Militia, and armed ourselves as well as we could. General Lane, was, during the latter part of the summer, busy organizing the Militia of the state, for its protection; the Militia of our county were under the command of Colonel Orlin Thurston, of Humboldt.
“About the first of September (1861), Ft. Scott was threatened with a raid, and Colonel Thurston was ordered there, with a portion of his command. Those in the south part of the county were left, as a protection to their homes. Before reaching Ft. Scott, the order was received to go to Barnesville, a point on the State Line, to act as picket guards, while the main force fortified a point about six miles back, which was called Ft. Lincoln, this point General Lane designated as the “Key to Kansas.” There, most of the men of Humboldt were holding the “Key” while a band of Rebels came in by “another door” and sacked their town. This was on the afternoon of September 8, 1861. There was one company of Missourians, under Captain Livingston, and one of Cherokee and Osage Halfbreed Indians, under Captain Mathews. They passed about a mile east of us, on their way to Humboldt, and we did not know of their presence until after their departure. But few men were in Humboldt, and the town fell an easy prey to their hands; they did not kill anyone, but robbed the stores and private houses of such things as they could carry away. They hastened off, making a few calls on the way, as they returned south. On the following day as many of the settlers as were at home pushed after them with as much dispatch as was possible. On reaching Lightning Creek, we were joined by a force of regular volunteer soldiers from Ft. Scott, under command of Col. Jas. G. Blunt, afterwards a Major General. We placed our force under his command, and we were led along down the Neosho river, hoping to find some of the Rebels at or about the residence of Captain Mathews. He was living on a fine ranch, just where the town of Oswego has since been built; he had a half-breed Osage Indian wife, and had a lot of fine horses and other stock. However, we found that he was not here, but had gone on further south, and that his men had scattered. This move, we were making in the night time, and with great caution, having with us a guide who was well acquainted with every trail, much of the way being through dense woods; passing on down the river, we obtained information that a part of the raiders were at the house of a Cherokee Indian, about three miles below where the town of Chetopa now is, and just over the line into the Indian Territory; we reached the place just about daybreak, and surrounded the house. Having discovered us, two of the occupants broke out into the bush and escaped; one, we took prisoner; Captain Mathews himself, with a double-barreled shot gun in his hands, ran out of the house and was shot down.
“The people of Humboldt now took extra precautions to prevent another raid. They kept one company of Infantry in town, and they were building a fortification around O’Brien’s mill; and one company of cavalry was kept out, for most of the time, as scouts, in the direction of the Indian Territory.
“On the 14th of October, (1861) this company of cavalry returned from a scout of several days to the south line of the state, reporting that no sign of rebels had been seen. This report quieted all fears, at the time, and the people were wholly off their guard when, later in the evening, a force of three or four hundred rebels, under Col. Talbot from Arkansas, of the Confederate Army, came dashing into the town and easily captured the place, taking most of the Militia force prisoners. One man, in attempting to get away on a mule, was shot and killed. Captain Livingston, who was with the former raid, was also in this party. After setting fire to nearly every house in town, and robbing them of such things as they could carry away, they liberated the prisoners and returned south with all possible dispatch, small detachments calling, as they went, on most of the settlers on their routes.
“We learned of this raid upon Humboldt just about sundown, and we expected a visit from them on their return, probably some time during the night; and, from the fact that since the former raid, General Lane’s forces had captured and burned Osceola, Missouri, and on the south line of the State, in Cherokee County, a reputed Southern sympathizer running a small store, had been robbed and murdered by some irresponsible persons claiming to be Union men; and, from the further fact of my own part in the pursuit of the former raiders and the killing of Mathews; I did not feel like trusting myself in their hands.
Another character of Humboldt was the first sheriff, Josiah Clark Redfield. One of his descendants has searched endlessly for his civil war record to no avail and writes “And a mystery remains: the aunt mentioned above (alert at 81) insists that Josiah served during the Civil War. Yet he was sheriff in Allen County throughout the war, and searches at the National Archives have been negative. On the other hand, his two brothers, Richard R. Redfield and Orrin S. Redfield (who also followed him to Kansas after the war) both served in the Civil War, and their records have been obtained from the Archives. Did Aunt Dana have the family mixed up? Perhaps. Or perhaps Josiah was simply a Jayhawker, without formal enlistment. These are the things that make searching for your roots never ending!”
Josiah was found to be involved in several dubious land deals while he was sheriff with the land office register, Jonathan Coleman Burnett, whose sister, Kate Burnett, saved the land records during the burning. The land office had been moved to Humboldt from Ft. Scott due to the dubious relationship with Lane of these men. This led to the discovery in a probate file of a man named Pleasant Turney who had come to Allen County in 1860 from Arkansas and purchased a farm on the Allen/Woodson county line about 5 miles west of Humboldt. After the burning he left to go back to Arkansas, joined the Union forces and died within six months. He had left a written agreement for the care of his farm to a neighbor, Jesse Webb, to continue building fences and maintaining his store of goods in his absence. None of his family lived here, but after the war one of his single daughters, Sarah, showed up in 1866 to discover that the farm was no more and there was no estate to settle. She discovered that Redfield and Burnett had confiscated the property with their cronies in Topeka accusing him of being a Confederate and under the confiscation act stole his property and sold it on the courthouse steps in which they both purchased it for a song. By 1872 after she sued them she got her father’s farm back from them. While digging through his probate file I discovered about 40 pages of testimony of the man he left the property in care of and the neighbors and discovered that Jennison and his men were here raiding the farm in the early months of 1862 stealing everything they could get their hands on. They had been sent here to “cool off” their jayhawking antics because they were causing a major embarrassment to the Union army. At the same time, John Brown, Jr. was here and writing letters to his wife witnessing the execution of a deserter who had stolen Daniel Anthony’s horse trying to escape from the camp as a prisoner in the southern part of Humboldt after he had stabbed another soldier in a ruckus.
In the diary of Confederate John W. Fisher, Company C, 10th Missouri Cavalry State Guard, 8th Division, 2nd Lieutenant, who was at the burning, tells his side of the story. His father-in-law was the well- known Confederate Colonel Thomas H. Rosser, who was given a sword by General Sterling Price for his dedicated service in Missouri. Colonel Rosser was in command of infantry and artillery in the battles of Carthage, Springfield, Lexington and Drywood in Missouri. In his letters to his wife, Bettie, who was residing in Westport, Missouri at the time, writes: “Preston, Mo Oct 13, 1861 My dear wife I promised you to write a diary for your perusal at when we meet so I will commence this morning. I wrote to you day before yesterday from our camp at Carthage, where we arrived that day, about 150 of our Regiments [10th Cavalry, Missouri State Guard] started from there last night for Humboldt, Kansas for what purpose I do not exactly know, we arrived at this place, some 7 or 8 miles from our camp about 10 ½ Oclock and after feeding our horses we spread our blankets on the ground and our saddles under our head we were soon enjoying ourselves with a good nap.
“This morning, Sunday, is a beautiful day, and we are all saddled up waiting for another detachment of men from Col [Sanford J.] Talbots Reg. [11th Cavalry, Missouri State Guard] consisting of 160 men who start with us for Kansas this morning, we may have a hard time of it as it is reported that there is a force of 500 men with 4 pieces of Cannon at Humboldt and several detachments at LeRoy, Emporia and Cofachique, if they are there they will give us “fits”, but our cause is just and the God of battles has been with us in every fight yet and with Him on our side we are sure of success may he be with us and prosper us. I heard the Governor Jackson [Claiborne Fox Jackson] make a speech night before last in which he said he intended to burn Kansas from one end to the other.
“Osage Catholic Mission, Osage Nation Oct 14 1861 After leaving Preston we started for this place it is about 55 miles, we traveled all day until 9 oclock at night when we stopped and slept until 2 oclock when we started and arrived home about 7 oclock this morning, while marching yesterday we saw two men who were very much surprised at our appearance and as soon as we come in sight of them they ran off as fast as there horses would carry them I suppose they were Yankees we have seen no houses where owners were in them since we left Missouri every body has left where we stopped to eat our dinner yesterday at a Man’s house (Hoover) we found the greatest quanity of very large water melons, more than our 300 men could destroy but we all ate as many as we could hold, the priests at this mission gave us all our breakfast of Coffee and Bread and biscuits and a fine meal it was to tired soldiers who had been marching nearly all night, they gave myself, Col. [William H.] Erwin and one or two others a large slice of apple pie, after eating breakfast, I went into their Chapel which is arranged very nicely inside with good pictures, the inside was fitted up by Indian workmen and it would do credit to any kind of workmen, I saw one picture in needlework done by an Indian girl which is one of the finest pictures I ever saw, it was “The Crown of thorns” it was as beautifully executed as could be done by any lady, we start in few minutes for Humboldt out in the prairie on Neosho River 20 miles from any where.
“Oct 15.1861 We started for Humboldt about 10 o’clock and traveled along slowly, I stopped to see an Indian village which is a very curious sight to one who never saw one, it is laid out like a city with streets running parallel to each other, the houses one built of small poles, both ends stuck into the ground similar to an arbor, these were about 20 feet long 12 feet wide and 8 feet high. I suppose there were upwards of 100 but there were no Indians in them as they, the Osage, have all gone on a buffalo hunt we arrived to within 4 miles of Humboldt about 4 oclock when we took a dutchman prisoner who reported that there was a force of about 300 men there, we then formed and started to go in on the south side of town, we arrived just in the edges of the town a little before sundown while the people were eating their suppers, our Regiment [10th Cavalry, Missouri State Guard] took the East side and Col [Sanford J.] Talbots the west we all started on a charge yelling like Indians and rode right into the town without their soldiers firing a shot at us, we took them so completely by surprise and they were so frightened that they left as soon as they could get out, we took some 45 or 50 prisoners and I believe some 3 or four of them were Killed who would not stop our men did not fire a gun, we then broke into all the houses searching for men and for what ever our men wanted, we did not hurt any lady or take anything from them, but we took every thing that we needed out of the stores that we could Carry and then set fire to the town and laid it in ashes leaving two or three houses for the women and children, I got me a shirt and two Comforts and a shawl two over coats (which I gave to our boys) a fine piece of satin for a vest a Can teen; tin cup 4 knives & forks and two tents and could have gotten any amount of other things if we could have found their wagons, we burnt up two mills and a large lot of flour perhaps 300 sacks about 5000 lbs Bacon and and amount of other provision that we could not carry away Humboldt was a very pretty town nearly as large as Paola and prettier, there were some fine houses in it, a large hotel nearly as large as Morris’ Mill I hated to see the town destroyed but that is the only way we can get rid of them and it was what the governor [Claiborne Fox Jackson] sent us there to do, the women said they thought it was hard but it was just, as their men had been doing the same in Missouri. I think it is hard too and I do not approve of it, they were all very badly frightened supposing us at first to be Cherokees, but after they found us out they were not so badly frightened, they did not have your spunk however and did not abuse us any our men assisted them in getting their things out into the square before we set fire to the town and treated them very kindly, after we got ready to start we released all the prisoners without injuring one of them, we left there about 9 o’clock that night and started back to camp we traveled all day yesterday until 11 oclock last night and camped on Cherry Creek about 20 miles from here.”
There is little doubt there were many men who resided in Humboldt who were involved in the jayhawking of Missouri towns with Lane and Jennison. As time passes tidbits seem to fall at my feet with another piece of the puzzle when I least expect it. That’s the beauty of taking a look at the real history of our country from the true actors who created it and not the ones who try to cover up the truth of it all. And after the war it didn’t stop there, they continued with their lust for power and money and left our town bankrupt, and without a city government for over 20 years by their scandalous deals in building the railroads here and stealing the funds. Nothing has really changed and it doesn’t seem as though we have learned anything. Lest we forget.
Humboldt is a unique town in small-town America that still thrives graced with historic buildings on the town square, two museums, a working blacksmith shop started in 1876 on the National Register of Historic places, a vintage woodworking shop, and a 12 site tour of Civil War sites. New sidewalks surrounding the town square graced with vintage lamp posts are almost complete. Old buildings are currently being restored for space for new businesses. The South Wind Bike Trail starts at the north edge of town and can be ridden to the northern cities in Kansas. Camping facilities are also available. Further lodging plans and development are in the process.
Humboldt’s rich civil war history is re-enacted every three years sponsored by the Humboldt Civil War Days committee. An official string band performs civil war music featured with a “caller” for vintage civil war dancing at the Friday night dance and the re-enactments occur on Saturday, with a 12 site tour of the civil war sites on Sunday. We welcome re-enactors to join us in our re-enactment in the fall of 2018. Our dance is held annually and will be on Friday, October 13, 2017 at B & W Trailer Hitches dining hall at 7:00 p.m. Come one, come all. For information you can contact Carolyn Whitaker by email at firstname.lastname@example.org. Be sure to include in the subject line Civil War Days.
-By Carolyn Whitaker | <urn:uuid:852c06e3-9c1f-4664-a81a-b1ee62960230> | CC-MAIN-2017-47 | http://www.citizenscompanion.com/confederate-forces-burn-humboldt-kansas-october-14-1861/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-47/segments/1510934805023.14/warc/CC-MAIN-20171118190229-20171118210229-00185.warc.gz | en | 0.987189 | 5,325 | 3.578125 | 4 |
May 20, 1988 |
For the first time, researchers have been able to use genetic engineering techniques to produce key parts of disease-fighting antibodies in bacterial cells, a Santa Monica-based biotechnology company said in a report published today. Biologists at International Genetic Engineering Inc. (Ingene) used the technique to produce an antibody fragment that binds specifically to human colon cancer cells.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
November 27, 1985 |
The mother of an 11-year-old El Toro boy sought an injunction against the Saddleback Unified School District on Tuesday, claiming that he was expelled from school after it was discovered that he has an AIDS-linked antibody in his blood. School district officials said the boy had never been expelled but was being tutored at home at his mother's request.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
November 2, 1987
Dr. Leroy Hood, a Caltech molecular geneticist, in September was one of three scientists to win the prestigious Lasker Basic Medical Research Award for helping explain how the immune system creates an almost endless variety of antibodies to protect the human body from foreign invaders. The immune system is believed crucial to curing many of man's diseases, a fact reflected in the number of Nobel prizes granted in this field.
September 6, 1991 |
Up to 40% of operations to open clogged arteries fail when the vessels develop new blockages. Now a laboratory study with rats shows that an antibody may prevent this problem, offering new hope for human heart disease patients. Researchers at the University of Washington report that they have used an antibody extracted from goats to keep arteries clear in rats that underwent an operation commonly used in human heart disease to open up blocked vessels.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
October 30, 1995 |
Researchers studying the AIDS virus report in the journal Nature that it could remain infectious even when surrounded by neutralizing antibodies that would normally destroy it. A team at Virginia Commonwealth University examined follicular dendritic cells (FDCs) in the lymph nodes where large amounts of HIV, the AIDS virus, congregate.
April 28, 1994 |
In a development that could lead to major improvements in the treatment of autoimmune diseases, cancer, AIDS and organ rejection in humans, two California companies report today that they have been able to genetically engineer mice so that they produce human antibodies. Mouse cells that produce these antibodies can then be grown in laboratory vats to produce large amounts of so-called monoclonal antibodies that, when given to patients, can attack and destroy diseased cells.
October 11, 2013 |
Fall is in the air and so, alas, are zillions of grains of weed pollen, sailing hither and yon, high and low, far and wide. These guarantee an abundance of new little weeds next year - and an abundance of sniffy, sneezy, wheezy people right now, namely those unfortunate souls who have an allergy to pollen. Pollen allergy is often called "hay fever," although it doesn't cause fever and its only connection with hay is that it inflicts its woes at hay-harvesting time. The name "seasonal allergic rhinitis" - where "rhinitis" refers to an inflamed nose - is more accurate if less evocative.
February 11, 2010 |
Three years after the U.S. blood-banking industry recommended against transfusing plasma from female donors because of a potentially life-threatening antibody reaction, researchers have found that plasma from women may actually be better, not worse, for heart surgery patients. In a study of patients treated before the new guidelines were implemented, those receiving plasma from women were only half as likely to suffer lung complications from the surgery and were 45% less likely to be hospitalized or die in the 10 days after surgery, a Duke University Medical Center team reported.
February 14, 1991 |
In a major advance against a leading cause of death, a national study has found that a genetically engineered medication may significantly reduce the death rate of patients with severe bacterial infections of their bloodstreams. The experimental drug, known as HA-1A, is a human monoclonal antibody, a man-made form of a specialized immune system molecule designed to protect the body against disease. However, the medication remains unavailable to most patients who might benefit from it. The U.S.
July 9, 2010 |
An effective vaccine against the AIDS virus may have moved one step closer to reality, researchers said Thursday. Federal researchers have identified a pair of naturally occurring antibodies that are able to kill more than 90% of all strains of the AIDS virus, a finding they say could lead to the development of new treatments for HIV infections and to the production of the first successful vaccine against the virus. HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, is notoriously mutable, changing the composition of proteins on its surface with ease to escape pressure from the immune system. | <urn:uuid:c5e06f9b-d10d-41ca-aa48-b7bed262b19a> | CC-MAIN-2016-50 | http://articles.latimes.com/keyword/antibodies/featured/2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-50/segments/1480698541396.20/warc/CC-MAIN-20161202170901-00493-ip-10-31-129-80.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959492 | 1,006 | 3 | 3 |
Jean Piaget’s theory of intellectual advancement signifies that intelligence change because the pupils build. An excellent kid’s intellectual invention is not just regarding learning, the little one has to create otherwise build a mental model of the world.
Intellectual creativity happens from the correspondence out-of inherent capacities and you can environment events, and children move across a few level.
This new sequence of one’s amounts was universal across the societies and you may realize an equivalent invariant (unchanging) order. Every students look at the exact same steps in an equivalent order (but not the in one rate).
Just how Piaget Developed the Principle
Piaget is operating at Binet Institute from the 1920s, where their work was to generate French brands out-of inquiries to the English cleverness screening. The guy turned into fascinated toward reasons youngsters gave for their completely wrong remedies for all the questions you to necessary analytical thinking.
- Children’s cleverness differs from an enthusiastic adult’s when you look at the top quality instead of inside numbers. Thus people reasoning (think) in different ways of people and find out the world in another way.
- People definitely build-up the information about the world. They may not be couch potato pets waiting around for anyone to fill their heads with training.
- The best way to know kid’s need would be to pick one thing using their viewpoint.
Exactly what Piaget desired to do wasn’t to measure how good children you are going to count, enchantment otherwise solve difficulties as an easy way out-of progressing the We.Q. Exactly what he had been more interested in are the way in which basic rules including the most notion of number, date, number, causality, justice and the like came up.
Piaget read pupils of infancy in order to puberty using naturalistic observance regarding his or her own three kids and regularly controlled observation too. From the the guy blogged journal descriptions charting their creativity.
Grade out of Cognitive Invention
Jean Piaget’s theory off cognitive innovation suggests that children proceed through four different grade away from intellectual creativity and therefore reflect the fresh expanding grace out of children’s believe
Each kid experience the latest steps in an identical order, and you will boy invention hinges on physical growth and you may correspondence that have the surroundings.
At each and every stage out of advancement, the fresh kid’s convinced try qualitatively distinct from others grade, which is, each stage involves a different sort of cleverness.
Piaget’s Five Stages
No matter if zero stage is overlooked aside, discover individual variations in the interest rate of which college students progress courtesy values, and some people can get never ever reach the later on amount.
Piaget didn’t point out that a certain phase are reached during the a particular decades – even if meanings of one’s degrees tend to is a sign of the brand new age where an average boy manage reach for every single stage.
The Sensorimotor Phase
- The little one discovers towards business due to the senses and you may because of their tips (moving around and exploring its ecosystem).
- During the sensorimotor stage a variety of intellectual results make. They’ve been: target permanence; self-recognition; deferred simulation; and you will representational gamble.
- They get in touch with the fresh introduction of standard symbolic setting, the capability to portray the country psychologically
- At about 8 months the infant have a tendency to comprehend the permanence out-of things and that they will still exist in the event they can’t find them and the kid commonly check for him or her after they disappear.
In this phase the little one stays in the present. It will not but really has a psychological image of the nation stored in its memories so that it doesn’t have an atmosphere regarding object permanence.
In the event it cannot pick anything it will not can be found. Thanks to this you might cover up a model out-of an infant, even though it observe www.datingranking.net/cs/mature-quality-singles-recenze/, but it cannot check for the item just after it has gone out of sight. | <urn:uuid:de073eef-c53b-4936-9046-5e29abdcd8ea> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | http://www.raycing.com/?p=219260 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030334974.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20220927002241-20220927032241-00707.warc.gz | en | 0.936437 | 887 | 3.34375 | 3 |
Maths - The Oakmeadow Way
At Oakmeadow CE Primary and Nursery School, we believe that anybody and everybody is a mathematician. Our aim is for all children to develop a positive mind-set and a passion for maths through fostering an environment of risk-taking, mistake making, investigating, reasoning and learning together.
As a Maths Hub primary lead school in Salop and Herefordshire, our learning-teaching approach is step-by-step and steers towards ‘Teaching for Mastery’ where the focus is on creating as many relationships and links between the skills and concepts – depth as opposed to acceleration. We want our children to understand that it’s the process that matters, not just the winning answer.
‘The answer is only the beginning.’ - Chinese proverb.
We have been part of the NCETM England-China Teacher exchange programme, and hosted two Chinese teachers for two weeks. This fantastic experience has enabled us to consider and adapt our pedagogy and practice, and further develop mathematics teaching for our children.
Lessons are carefully designed to include relevant and efficient mental, written calculations and informal recordings (jottings) to trace our thinking as fundamental tools to help with solving word problems and problem solving investigations. We have a real focus on mathematical thinking and reasoning, using effective representation, models and images to help us. We aim to expose the maths structures through different representations and encourage children to develop their own representations and models of proof so that all children embed the depth in conceptual understanding as well as being confident with the procedural fluency.
Fluency in number is taught through a sound conceptual knowledge of place value. We aim to develop children’s ability to have rapid recall of times tables up to 12 (which is needed by the end of year 4) so that related multiplication and division facts is at the heart of our vision to empower pupils to be proficient at number crunching.
Performance data is above national and we believe this is because we focus on developing a love for maths, a clarity in maths and a confidence our children can take to secondary school and further.
We believe that sharing practice through collaborative lesson design, observation of lessons and post-lesson discussions helps us to continually develop our pedagogy and practice. Furthermore, we have supported numerous schools in their mathematics teaching using this approach, and offered support and guidance with curriculum design, calculation policy, maths visions and teaching and learning.
Miss Jasmin Taylor
Assistant Headteacher and Maths Lead | <urn:uuid:04bd962e-fecc-46a1-ac39-8ef88aa1eaeb> | CC-MAIN-2021-21 | https://www.oakmeadowprimary.co.uk/website/maths/366396 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-21/segments/1620243988774.96/warc/CC-MAIN-20210507025943-20210507055943-00557.warc.gz | en | 0.951964 | 517 | 2.828125 | 3 |
Sea daffodil (Pancratium Maritimum) flowers can be found on the sea shore in Rethymno and around Crete. Its perfume is sweet and heady and its one of the most attractive plants on the island.
The first representation of the Pancratium Lily is mentioned by Evans, who discovered it during the excavations he made in the palace of Knossos in 1896.
There is a painting of this plant in the well-known wall painting with the blue-bird in the palace of Knossos which is considered as the first representation of the Sea Daffodil. Its use is described by Dioscorides and Theophrastus. Pancratium maritimum can be seen on Minoan pottery and on wall frescoes in Crete and Santorini. | <urn:uuid:64f4cb18-2850-45a0-b93b-acd15c76a7a1> | CC-MAIN-2021-21 | https://www.rethymno.guide/news/306-autumn-colours-on-sand-dunes | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-21/segments/1620243991378.48/warc/CC-MAIN-20210515070344-20210515100344-00197.warc.gz | en | 0.963138 | 170 | 2.890625 | 3 |
Breath test cancer boost
An Australian researcher is developing a "breath test" for
Professor Christobel Saunders is working on a non-invasive breast cancer screening device that is as sensitive as a mammogram.
The device takes readings of the 2000 or more volatile organic compounds (VOCs) found in a sample of human breath. Changes in VOCs can be a marker for breast cancer.
"Previous studies have found that in women with breast cancer, these VOCs are significantly and specifically altered, providing a marker, which can indicate the presence, and also importantly the lack of, breast cancer in patients," Professor Saunders said.
"Considering some of the downsides of mammograms, including the pain and discomfort experienced by a few patients and the number of false positive findings, which can result in needless anxiety and biopsies, this device has the potential to be used in conjunction with existing screening procedures, increasing the accuracy of diagnosis."
Professor Saunders has been awarded the 2006 Novel Concept Award by the National Breast Cancer Foundation to continue research into her "breath test" for breast cancer.
The grant provides almost $100,000 over two years. | <urn:uuid:4d421443-1256-49c9-a41e-8d29cc6b9a80> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.smh.com.au/news/cancer/breath-test-cancer-boost/2006/10/05/1159641444919.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702414478/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110654-00088-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950427 | 239 | 2.828125 | 3 |
JILA Frequency Comb Helps Evaluate Novel Biomedical Decontamination Method
From NIST Tech Beat: June 14, 2012
Contact: Laura Ost
Like many new measurement tools, the laser frequency comb seemed at first a curiosity but has found more practical uses than originally imagined. The technique for making extraordinarily precise measurements of frequency has now moved beyond physics and optics to advance biomedicine by helping researchers evaluate a novel instrument that kills harmful bacteria without the use of liquid chemicals or high temperatures.
Generated by ultrafast lasers, frequency combs precisely measure individual frequencies (colors) of light. Researchers at JILA, operated jointly by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Colorado Boulder, are using such a comb to identify specific molecules in gases based on which colors of light, or comb "teeth," are absorbed by the gas, and in what amounts.
Mark Golkowski, assistant professor of electrical engineering and bioengineering at the University of Colorado Denver, said JILA's comb measurements help explain for the first time how his sterilization technique inactivates bacteria, and thus will "help optimize solutions for the medical clinic where multi-drug resistant bacteria are a growing problem."
"JILA provided us the unique capability of an extremely sensitive measurement and one that also yields information about the interaction dynamics, since many molecules can be simultaneously observed on short time scales," Golkowski said.
In a study described in a forthcoming paper,* Golkowski and colleagues conducted a variety of tests with an instrument that delivers an air stream of free radicals—highly reactive molecules—to quickly kill bacteria up to three meters away. The system achieved high-level disinfection of Staphylococcus aureus (a cause of pneumonia and other diseases) and Pseudomonas aeruginosa (often found on medical equipment) on surfaces such as plastic ID badges—a major source of pathogen transmission. The method also proved effective against difficult-to-eradicate spores of Bacillus atrophaes (found in soil) and biofilms of Escherichia coli (a cause of food poisoning).
JILA/NIST Fellow Jun Ye and two members of his research group used one of their frequency comb systems** to measure the concentrations of reactive molecules in the airstream—ozone, hydrogen peroxide, nitrous oxide, and nitrogen dioxide.
The comb system's capability to measure hydrogen peroxide is important, because the presence and concentration of this chemical is key to effective sterilization. But crucially, the comb technique also captures the complex chemical reactions in the sterilization system in real time. "The multiple and simultaneous reactions make numerical modeling of the chemical dynamics difficult, hence the need for direct measurement of simultaneous concentrations, a capability that the frequency comb spectroscopy uniquely provides," the paper states.
The remote sterilization system kills bacteria as quickly as competing treatments using bulky and expensive equipment, while also offering the advantages of low-cost hardware and flexibility of application, according to the paper. The JILA measurements are funded by NIST and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.
* M. Gołkowski, C. Gołkowski, J. Leszczynski, S.R. Plimpton, P. Masłowski, A. Foltynowicz, J. Ye and B. McCollister. Hydrogen peroxide enhanced nonthermal plasma effluent for biomedical applications. IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science. Posted online as an Early Access Article. DOI: 10.1109/TPS.2012.2200910.
** See NIST Tech Beat article, "JILA Unveils Improved 'Molecular Fingerprinting' for Trace Gas Detection," October 13, 2010, at www.nist.gov/pml/div689/breath_101310.cfm. | <urn:uuid:80e0c647-9b0f-40cc-8c56-0c9e5bc4f40b> | CC-MAIN-2015-22 | http://www.nist.gov/pml/div689/comb-061412.cfm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-22/segments/1432207927592.52/warc/CC-MAIN-20150521113207-00281-ip-10-180-206-219.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.919721 | 790 | 2.890625 | 3 |
Everyone resident in France is entitled to be in the French healthcare system – but almost everyone also has a separate ‘top-up’ policy, to cover parts of the costs not covered by the state.
Known as assurance maladie complémentaire (complementary health insurance) this refers to the various schemes designed to complement France’s assurance maladie obligatoire compulsory insurance cover.
As a general rule the state only covers a limited percentage of medical costs, as a proportion of an official state tariff for a given medical act, called the tarif de convention. For example, the state covers 70% of the €25 charged for a standard visit to a GP.
What is more, certain medical professionals are allowed to charge more than the tarif de convention, and amounts above and beyond it, called dépassements, are also not subject to any reimbursement from the state.
As a result, so as not to have unpleasant surprises, most people have a top-up, also known as a mutuelle, that covers most or all the remaining amounts.
In 2020, 96% of the population of mainland France had top-up cover according to France’s public finance auditor the Cour des comptes.
How do top-ups work?
Top-ups comes in three forms:
Mutuelle policies originating from the Code de la Mutualité, which shaped the way in which they operate. Mutuelles are non-profit organisations which specialise in top-up healthcare. The term is however often used informally as a catch-all for the whole range of top-up insurance options.
Institutions de prévoyance (provident funds), which are non-profit-making organisations controlled by the Code de la Sécurité sociale and generally responsible for collective workplace insurance schemes.
Insurance companies controlled by the Code des assurances, which are private companies and normally offer other services as well.
If you are working, your top-up policy will generally be taken out and paid for in part by your employer and provided as part of a group contract to all staff members.
Group policies were initially only offered by institutions de prévoyance, but since they became obligatory for employers under the French ANI law in 2016, mutuelles and standard insurance firms now provide them as well.
However, individuals can also take out their own policy for themselves and potentially including their immediate family as well.
This is the option which self-employed people, farmers, small business owners, pensioners etc. would normally need to take in order to top up their mandatory health insurance.
While businesses are obliged to provide their employees with complementary health insurance, individuals who do not benefit from this are not required to take out their own policy; they can just pay their own expenses directly instead.
Equally, employees who are not satisfied with the guarantees offered by their work-associated policy can also take out additional cover, leaving them with three different forms of health insurance.
People on low-incomes may benefit from free or subsidised top-up cover under a scheme called complémentaire santé solidaire.
How do you get reimbursed?
Some complementary insurance policies are likely to cover all costs which exceed your basic state insurance, while others offer more limited cover. A given policy is likely to offer more generous cover for certain areas as opposed to others, hence the usefulness of shopping around to make sure you find the one best-tailored to your needs.
When you see a doctor or other healthcare professional, you should present your carte Vitale health card.
In the case of some doctors, who practise what is called le tiers payant, this means there is nothing to pay upfront for the part covered by the state, and with some doctors’ set-ups, nothing to pay at all if your mutuelle covers the full cost.
If they do not offer le tiers payant, you need to pay upfront but you will receive reimbursements automatically into your bank if you present your carte Vitale. The mutuelle’s payments will also be automatic, if you have set up a link between your state health insurance body and mutuelle.
Around 90% of GPs and two-thirds of consultants will accept cartes Vitales, but if they do not you will need to pay for the treatment at the point of care and then send in paper feuilles de soins documents from the doctor to your state health insurance body so that it and your top-up insurer can reimburse you.
If your top-up insurance provider is not linked up with your state health body then you will have to pass on your relevé de remboursement documents, showing state reimbursement received, to the top-up insurer.
If you do not have a top-up policy or it does not fully cover your treatment, then you may be left with out of pocket costs for of le ticket modérateur – the part of the tarif de convention not covered by the state – and any dépassements charged.
For example, if you see a GP who charges at the set state rate, the part that is not covered by the state is 30% of €25 = €7.50, plus a set €1 deduction, so €8.50 to pay.
Some people, including pregnant women and people with certain chronic health conditions, have no ticket modérateur to pay and will have 100% of their appointment costs covered by their mandatory insurance, though dépassements may still apply. | <urn:uuid:e5bda43d-9a2a-48b7-af89-17d32debb800> | CC-MAIN-2024-10 | https://www.connexionfrance.com/article/French-news/Health/Complementary-health-insurance-in-France-what-it-is-and-how-it-works | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2024-10/segments/1707947474737.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20240228143955-20240228173955-00464.warc.gz | en | 0.957461 | 1,155 | 2.5625 | 3 |
Investigating the influence of settlement pattern and morphology on the sterilisation of shallow coal resources
Bee, E.J.; Noakes, L.. 2010 Investigating the influence of settlement pattern and morphology on the sterilisation of shallow coal resources. Nottingham, UK, British Geological Survey, 58pp. (CR/10/043N)Before downloading, please read NORA policies.
This report assesses the impact of introducing separation zones around urban areas on shallow coal resources. It also provides an assessment of settlement pattern using spatial statistics and an evaluation of settlement morphology (i.e. physical form or shape) based on a pre-existing density profile methodology. Two study areas have been selected for comparison: the Midlands Coalfield (comprising shallow coal resource within the Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire and North Derbyshire Coalfields) and the South Wales Coalfield. The analysis conducted in this report shows that the settlement pattern within the South Wales Coalfield study area is generally more clustered, and settlements tend to be elongate (or linear) in morphology. This is a result of the topography (steep sided valleys) in this area. In contrast, settlements in the Midlands Coalfield study area are more nucleated, or equidimensional, in morphology and more evenly dispersed over the study area. The research shows that settlement morphology can influence the size of the area of a separation zone. Settlements which are elongate are likely to have larger separation zones (in area) than equivalent sized settlements which are more equidimensional in morphology. The research also shows that the relative effect of a 500 m separation zone around urban areas in the South Wales Coalfield increases the influence of the urban area by 659.6 % (i.e. from 169.74 km2 to 1119.61 km2). This is significantly higher than in the Midlands Coalfield study area, where the influence of the urban area when a 500 m separation zone is applied increases by 402.8 % (i.e. from 496.49 km2 to 1999.75 km2). Of the two study areas, the greatest overall impact on the sterilisation of shallow coal resources from urban development is seen within the Midlands Coalfield study area. This is not a consequence of the contrasting settlement patterns; rather it results from the greater proportion of urban areas within the Midlands Coalfield. Urban development encompasses 496.49 km2 (17.2 %) of the Midlands Coalfield whereas in South Wales, urban development encompasses 169.74 km2 (6.7 %) of the study area. Of the total urban development within each study area, a greater amount lies within the surface extent of shallow coal resource in the Midlands Coalfield (423.17 km2 or 85.2 %) than in the South Wales Coalfield study area (86.14 km2 or 50.7 %). The effect, therefore, of placing a separation zone of 500 m around urban areas within the Midlands Coalfield is that a greater amount (1727.85 km2 or 72.2 %) of the total surface extent of the shallow coal resource is sterilised than in the South Wales Coalfield study area (563.28 km2 or 52.8 %). The study concludes that a number of factors influence the area of a separation zone and thus the amount of shallow coal resource sterilised from urban development: 1. The distribution (settlement pattern) of settlements within the coalfield. 2. The shape of an individual settlement (settlement morphology). 3. The extent of the urban area lying within the coalfield. However, given two study areas with equally distributed and sized urban areas, the morphology (shape) of the urban settlements may have greatest influence on the size of the separation zone. This could explain why settlements within the South Wales Coalfield have a greater relative impact on separation zone area than settlements in the Midlands Coalfield.
|Item Type:||Publication - Report (UNSPECIFIED)|
|Programmes:||BGS Programmes 2010 > Minerals and waste|
|Funders/Sponsors:||Great Britain. Department for Communities and Local Government|
|Additional Information. Not used in RCUK Gateway to Research.:||This report made open by author October 2012.|
|Date made live:||02 Oct 2012 09:15|
Actions (login required) | <urn:uuid:0ff89573-e4da-4c58-ad28-0c9c380db4b6> | CC-MAIN-2015-32 | http://nora.nerc.ac.uk/19813/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-32/segments/1438042981969.11/warc/CC-MAIN-20150728002301-00073-ip-10-236-191-2.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.888752 | 902 | 2.609375 | 3 |
Oldoinyo Lengai (expedition report 2003 with further explanations and references) is well known for its strange lavas: natrocarbonatite is only found here, and at the same time it is the only active carbonatite volcano in the world. But the silicate rocks that make up most of the volcano are also unique, such as combeite nephelinite and wollastonite nephelinite (Klaudius and Keller 2006, Lithos 91, 173-190). Wollastonite and nepheline can be seen well in the rocks, but the rare combeite is too small.
Of course, other minerals typical of alkaline volcanism are also found, including aegirine and the black titanium garnet melanite. Phlogopite glitters everywhere in the tuffs of the wider area.
On one particularly lucky day, we found a rock containing greenish-yellow gem-quality haüyn (Zaitsev, Zaitseva, Buyko, Keller, Klaudius, Zolotarev, 2009. Gem-Quality Yellow-Green Haüyne from Oldoinyo Lengai Volcano, Northern Tanzania. Gems & Gemology 45, 200-203).
Olivine melilites are presumably the primitive magmas from which the volcano’s highly evolved magmas were formed. However, this rock (as lava or tuff) only occurs at the explosion craters in the wider surroundings of the cone.
Amazingly large crystals of melilite can be found at Oldoinyo Lengai itself, these have a very “evolved” composition with high contents of Fe and Na. This makes it a new mineral of the melilite group, which has been given the name alumoakermanite (Keller et al. 2006, Lithos 91, 150-172; Wiedenmann et al. 2009, Mineralogical Magazine 73, 373-384).
In the escarpment of the East African Rift between Oldoinyo Lengai and Lake Natron, flood lavas are exposed. Among them also a beautiful porphyritic nephelinite (Neukirchen et al. 2010, Journal of African Earth Sciences 58, 734-751).
During a high water level of Lake Natron in the Pleistocene, stromatolites grew on the slopes surrounding the lake today (Icole et al. 1990, Sedimentary Geology 69, 139-155). The layered calcareous deposits are the product of cyanobacteria – a very early form of life, which, however, still occurs today in Shark Bay (Australia), for example.
At Lake Natron itself, a salt playa forms in the dry season, in which mainly various sodium hydrogen carbonates are deposited. | <urn:uuid:cd8cdfe0-1802-4e38-9095-b563023eac69> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.riannek.de/2007/rocks-and-minerals-around-oldoinyo-lengai-and-lake-natron/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337446.8/warc/CC-MAIN-20221003231906-20221004021906-00626.warc.gz | en | 0.887138 | 589 | 2.890625 | 3 |
Road safety education in high schools
Road safety is taught in NSW high schools as part of the Personal Development, Health and Physical Education learning area. The focus for students is on the attitudes and behaviours they need to help them keep safe as a pedestrian, passenger, wheels user and future driver.
On the Move contains road safety education resources for teachers and students. The resources support high school students to learn about how to identify and reduce road safety risks, make safe decisions and how to become responsible for their own safety. For use by teachers and students, resources housed within On the Move are developed by Transport for NSW in consultation with the Department of Education, the Catholic Education Commission and the Association of Independent Schools NSW.
This resource supports the Stage 4 outcomes and content of the Personal Development, Health and Physical Education Years 7-10 Syllabus. Activities are based on road safety messages about identifying risks and making safe decisions. Activities explore road crash statistics, risk taking, strategies to reduce harm and road safety issues.
Stage 5, Years 9 and 10
Play It Safe is driven by a Project Based Learning framework and addresses the social norms associated with risk taking behaviour. Shifting gears also supports the Personal Development Health and Physical Education (Years 7-10) syllabus. It features practical activities showing the types of risks and driving challenges that young people face. Limiting risks, protecting lives concentrates on the responsibilities of passengers and drivers.
Stage 6, Years 11 and 12
Cruise Control has been developed for teachers to support the Year 11 English courses and Year 11 students at a time when they are beginning to drive. It helps guide students to understand that citizenship is not just about rights and privileges, it is also about individuals accepting responsibility for themselves and for others.
Last update: 11th October 2016 | <urn:uuid:6d99959e-738f-4408-af28-cf1e0941fe8c> | CC-MAIN-2019-35 | https://onthemove.nsw.edu.au/overview | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-35/segments/1566027317688.48/warc/CC-MAIN-20190822235908-20190823021908-00117.warc.gz | en | 0.957867 | 362 | 3.5 | 4 |
Courtesy of Wikipedia, the Ten Essentials that should always be included in your packing List
- A pocket knife
- (presumably more than just a knife, a Swiss Army knife for example) can come in handy in a wide variety of situations. It is useful for tasks as large as building an emergency shelter or lighting a campfire with poor fuel, or as small as repairing a damaged backpack.
- A first aid kit
- can be a lifesaver. A basic kit for first aid might include adhesive bandages, medical tape, sterile gauze, moleskin, soap, antiseptic, a mouth-barrier device for CPR, and scissors.
- Extra clothing
- to match the weather. Multiple layers are superior to a single massive jacket, because layered clothing is adaptable to a wide range of temperatures.
- Rain gear
- is very important. Being wet from rain may result in hypothermia, a potentially fatal condition.
- A flashlight
- is, of course, important for finding one's way at night.
- Trail food
is good for maintaining your energy. However, the human body can
reportedly survive for weeks without food, so starving to death should
be the least of your worries if you become lost in the wilderness.
- is probably the most important of the Essentials. Dehydration may develop into heat exhaustion and heatstroke. The human body may only survive for a few days without water. Portable water purifiers and water stills may be used to obtain potable water from virtually any source. If a watersource is unavailable the use of a dromedary bag should be considered.
- Matches and or a firestarter
- may be used to light fires
for heat, or for signalling purposes. (Publicly owned forests in the
United States often have lookout stations for forest fires and signal
- Sun protection
- may include sunblock, sunglasses, lip balm and a wide-brimmed hat. Used properly, it will prevent sunburn and possibly heat exhaustion.
- Trail maps and compass
are probably the most important tools one can carry in case of getting
lost, but they won't be of any use to someone who does not know how to
use them. In knowledgeable hands, they can be used to determine one's
location and the best route to reach another location. | <urn:uuid:27909648-de13-4520-a258-3c5973902879> | CC-MAIN-2019-30 | http://dunedinpack10.scoutlander.com/publicsite/unitcustom.aspx?UID=19451&CUSTOMID=57018 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-30/segments/1563195525587.2/warc/CC-MAIN-20190718083839-20190718105839-00302.warc.gz | en | 0.930415 | 489 | 3.078125 | 3 |
Glaceon is an ice-type of Pokemon. He looks like a fox that is covered in blue fur. His fur is capable of freezing into sharp quills. Glaceon has the ability to use any attack that the Pokemon Eevee knows. If you want to learn how to draw Glaceon from Pokemon, then follow these steps. Step 1 Draw two small ovals that overlap each other. Draw another circle above the left circle. This will be the base of his body. Step 2 Sketch four short lines of his legs and then draws the diamond shaped ears. Next, start adding details. Step 3 Color the entire portrait using shades of blue. You have now learned how to draw Glaceon from Pokemon. | <urn:uuid:8c990950-5647-4450-acd8-37b101ee4a8c> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://www.drawingnow.com/tutorials/29114/how-to-draw-glaceon-from-pokemon/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988718423.65/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183838-00229-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962869 | 147 | 3.046875 | 3 |
Tom Essman is 72, but he feels 25. He and his wife, Karen, 68, bicycle about 15 miles round trip, five days a week, to a park from their Hollywood home. They like to walk in the afternoons, and frequently work out at the gym.
Being active as you age helps your physical and mental well-being, medical experts say. Essman said it keeps him young.
“It feels good. I have nothing that bothers me,” he said. “Internally, I’m about as pretty as I can be.”
Essman’s doctor, Dr. Neldes Marranzini, a geriatric physician with Memorial Health System in Hollywood, said the Essmans are great examples of how exercise can help maintain good health. But being active doesn’t mean you have to hit the gym hard every day, she said.
Never miss a local story.
“Exercise in the aging population doesn’t necessarily have to be aerobics, like doing cardio at Orangetheory Fitness, to see certain benefits,” Marranzini said. “In fact, studies on healthy older adults doing aerobic exercise show the benefit is not any greater than doing something a little gentler that focuses on balance and flexibility. There’s a lot of research that certain physical activity, especially tai chi and yoga, help balance, flexibility and fall prevention.”
Maintaining a healthy lifestyle that includes exercise helps maintain weight and aids in preventing chronic diseases like cancer, diabetes and heart problems. It also can help with keeping your mind alert.
“Regular physical activity is linked with decreased risk of dementia and cognitive decline, and it leads to improved cognitive performance in older adults,” said Thomas Robertson, chief of psychology at Jackson Behavioral Health Hospital in Miami. “Regular exercise also helps reduce the risk for Alzheimer’s disease. Adults who exercise regularly in mid-life become less likely to develop dementia after age 65 compared with sedentary peers.”
Staying active is useful for people who are already dealing with issues like depression, he said. “Exercise can be as effective as psychotherapy and medication,” Robertson said. “We use it as a treatment, as well as a prevention.”
In general, people who exercise have a more stable mood, and exercise, such as yoga, is key to stress reduction. “Physiologically, exercise results in improved heart rate and lower levels of cortisol, stress hormones,” he said.
The American College of Sports Medicine recommends at least 150 minutes of exercise per week to obtain a benefit, Robertson said. That could be walking, swimming or weight training, as long as there is an aerobic component that gets the heart rate up and a sweat going.
“If someone is impaired or has difficulty walking, any type of walking will improve functioning,” he said. “Any basic exercise will help muscle tone and heart function. Brisk if you can, slower and more frequent if you can’t.”
The National Institute on Aging has tips on how to start exercising with a Campbell soup can — which can be used as one-pound weights for your arms and legs, Marranzini said. “It’s not expensive, and you can start with chair exercises,” she said. “Once those have been mastered, you move on.”
Someone who has been wheelchair-bound or sedentary for a long time has to build slowly, she said. In geriatrics, tai chi is advocated, “because it tackles all of the defenses we use for fall prevention and functional decline,” she said. “Weight-bearing exercises like tai chi and walking can help build bone density and prevent osteoporosis.”
There is good research on the benefit of tai chi and yoga involving poses, Robertson said. “It’s the combination of exercise, balance and mindfulness. If you think about it, if you’re doing yoga poses or tai chi, the mind has to be very focused to maintain the pose,” he said. “If your mind goes to picking up the dry cleaning, you fall. Only if you’re in the moment, mindfully holding the pose, can you maintain it, and that is an aspect of mental cognitive functioning that exercising helps.”
Marranzini said there are a lot of barriers to exercise, including the fear of falling and injury. “I always tell patients, we start slowly with a low degree, and build it back up as we feel comfortable,” she said.
For older people who have never exercised, it’s usually helpful to do something in a group setting, Robertson said. “Join a class. Go to a rec or senior center, where someone leads you through activities. Walk with a friend. There’s a social component to it that’s motivating,” he said.
Hispanic study at UM
Hispanics are the most sedentary segment of the older adult population, and are at greater risk for issues like depression, said Daniel Jimenez, a psychologist at UHealth, the University of Miami Health System.
“Some reasons include poverty, discrimination, legal issues, migration, physical health disparities (high rates of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, obesity), social isolation and lifestyle, such as highly sedentary and poor nutrition,” he said.
UHealth is kicking off a study that uses exercise and social activities to stem depression and anxiety among local Hispanic seniors. Called HOLA — Happy Older Latinos are Active — the four-year study is looking for Hispanics ages 60 and older who have not been diagnosed as clinically depressed, but who have related symptoms and are at risk.
During the 16-week exercise program, participants will be broken into groups of six and will spend 45 minutes at local parks stretching and doing moderately intense exercise, including walking. For information, call 305-355-9200 and select option 2, or email firstname.lastname@example.org. | <urn:uuid:e5a33030-4bcd-4f79-ba83-4e2d9e2dad35> | CC-MAIN-2017-47 | http://www.miamiherald.com/living/health-fitness/article36509856.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-47/segments/1510934805578.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20171119115102-20171119135102-00598.warc.gz | en | 0.958675 | 1,277 | 2.53125 | 3 |
Follow the link below and explore the tongue twisters. Click on a different letter each time to find all of the tongue twisters.
Thinking about the tongue twisters, try to write your own. Remember that lots of the words in a tongue twister sentence start with the same letter. Try using the first letter of your name to create your own tongue twister. Here are some examples for you:
Dizzy Daisy digs and dances dangerously.
Happy Harry hears hedgehogs hopping home.
When you have written one using your name, try it for other members of your family.
Today you are going to have a go at writing your own poem. Below is an example of a poem 'In the Giant's Rucksack'. Read the poem, noting some of the silly, made up words in the poem. | <urn:uuid:8d74024e-f709-4a39-bbc3-dd3982d640f6> | CC-MAIN-2021-17 | https://www.trowell.notts.sch.uk/week-13-beg-6720-1/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-17/segments/1618038464146.56/warc/CC-MAIN-20210418013444-20210418043444-00064.warc.gz | en | 0.910486 | 169 | 3.109375 | 3 |
Today we have lots of ideas for preschool science. Science doesn’t have to be complex experiments for older children. Science is all around us and can be explored by even very young children, just simply encouraging them to touch objects with different textures is introducing simple scientific concepts.
Here are 10 fun easy preschool science activity ideas.
Can you make some filter paper butterflies.
Find out how many of your own feet tall you are. Can you spot the pattern?
Explore numbers with a Numeracy at Home box.
Learn about static electricity with our jumping frogs. Can you make your hair stand on end too?
Learn how waterproof materials are with this fun activity using soft toys.
Make a magnet maze and learn about magnetism.Can you make a huge version
Can you Shadow Puppets and tell a story, or draw around shadows outside?
Learn how to recognise Wet or Dry objects with this easy activity.
Can you make your own Filter?
Follow our preschool science Pinterest board for even more ideas. | <urn:uuid:7d363aef-b716-4006-ba05-362990cc28fd> | CC-MAIN-2015-48 | http://www.science-sparks.com/2012/04/02/10-fun-science-activities-for-preschoolers/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-48/segments/1448398446248.56/warc/CC-MAIN-20151124205406-00308-ip-10-71-132-137.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.895304 | 208 | 3.921875 | 4 |
We believe these capabilities are essential for outstanding social work leadership and they underpin the Firstline programme. View a diagram of the leadership capabilities here.
Resilience and self-reflexivity
The ability to respond appropriately, manage uncertainty and cope with even the most trying situations. Leaders must be aware of their personal strengths, as well as their areas for future growth, and understand how their behaviour can affect others. This involves being aware of emotional triggers, biases and prejudices, and identifying ways to manage these effectively.
Analysis and decision-making
Impact and influence
An ability to have a positive impact on teams and partners within the practice system, through persuading, convincing and bringing others round to their perspective. Leaders understand other people’s viewpoints and priorities, and tailor their communication to suit their audience.
Learning and developing others
Holding to account
To act in a principled way, based on a clear set of personal values, and make decisions with the best interests of children at heart. Leaders are passionate about effecting positive change in the lives of children and families. They strongly believe that social work can play a crucial part in changing lives and improving life chances, and that, with the right support, families are able to change. | <urn:uuid:064bf0d5-5f4c-474d-88e1-14415665eab3> | CC-MAIN-2020-05 | https://thefrontline.org.uk/our-programmes/firstline-programme/firstline-capabilities/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-05/segments/1579251672537.90/warc/CC-MAIN-20200125131641-20200125160641-00490.warc.gz | en | 0.952468 | 252 | 2.640625 | 3 |
At the heart of PepsiCo’s Santiago integrated reuse solution, the MemPulse membrane bioreactor system from Siemens’ Industry Automation Division will separate and treat liquids and solids.
With the lack of rainfall in the heartlands causing grain futures to trend upward and water shortages on everybody’s mind, conserving and reusing water has been a major push for several food and beverage processors. Recently, ConAgra Foods’ internal Sustainable Development Awards program, has conserved more than 295 million gallons of water. For example, ConAgra’s Lamb Weston plant in Hermiston, OR reduced its daily water usage by 24 percent.
Pepsico’s Frito-Lay Casa Grande manufacturing facility, in competition with municipal water treatment plants, won a 2012 US Water Prize from the Clean Water America Alliance. The facility, which was named Food Engineering’s 2011 Sustainable Plant of the Year, recycles 75 percent of the plant’s process water, enabling the facility to reduce its annual water use by 100 million gallons. The plant is also working toward zero waste in utilities and energy usage.
The Coca-Cola Company has developed and tested at commercial scale what it claims is “a first-of-its-kind beverage process water recovery system” to produce high-quality water that meets and/or exceeds drinking water standards for use in its non-product activities such as clean-in-place and bottle washing. The system expands the range of manufacturing applications for recovered process water and “sets a precedent for conservation and reuse in the beverage industry.”
“Because responsible water management is at the heart of a sustainable future, overcoming today’s water challenges calls for extraordinary action,” says Bea Perez, Coca-Cola chief sustainability officer.
The beverage process water recovery system takes highly treated process water and further treats it using state-of-the-art technologies: biological treatment in a membrane bioreactor (MBR), ultrafiltration, reverse osmosis (RO), ozonation and ultraviolet disinfection.
Coca-Cola estimates this new water reuse approach could save as much as 100 billion liters (26.4 billion gallons) of water annually if implemented across all its bottling plants. The company expects to be able to reduce operational water needs and improve water use efficiency by up to 35 percent.
PepsiCo takes a holistic approach to saving water rather than focusing on a single technology, according to Gina Anderson, beverages spokesperson. Already successful with the snacks side of the business, PepsiCo developed a ReCon tool that allows manufacturing facilities to conduct self-audits of their water management practices, and identify and respond to water conservation improvements by mapping all water-use streams within the facility and assigning relative values to each of them based on the local cost of water. The tool was developed to facilitate the rapid transfer of best practices around the world for water, energy, waste and GHG reduction.
Since 2009, the ReCon water conservation tool deployment has helped sites across the world identify 2.2 billion liters of water savings with a corresponding cost savings opportunity of nearly $2.7 million.
In addition, PepsiCo’s snack food production plant in Santiago, Chile is upgrading its wastewater treatment capacity by 20 percent, and expects to reduce up to 70 percent fresh water consumption using a Siemens integrated reuse solution. The upgraded system is expected to become operational this year.
The integrated water system will reduce the amount of fresh water used in making potato chips and other snack food lines at the plant by an estimated two-thirds. Water savings will be accomplished by taking the initial water used in production, extracting the impurities and cycling it back into the production systems. Wastewater treated by the Siemens system will be used in various internal manufacturing processes.
The installation is part of a corporate initiative to help standardize water reuse in PepsiCo facilities throughout South America. At the Santiago facility, most of the wastewater first passes through a starch recovery system and is screened before moving toward primary treatment, which includes oil and grease removal. After this stage, it flows to an MBR system to separate and treat liquids and solids. From there, the water is pretreated before it passes through a tertiary treatment, including RO and an ultraviolet disinfection system, both from Siemens. | <urn:uuid:78f85c66-1753-4d67-ba5c-19dbd1f95983> | CC-MAIN-2022-27 | https://www.foodengineeringmag.com/articles/89524-water-reuse-penny-wise-millions-of-dollars-smart | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-27/segments/1656103850139.45/warc/CC-MAIN-20220630153307-20220630183307-00516.warc.gz | en | 0.939264 | 901 | 2.734375 | 3 |
In August of 1998, a live attenuated tetravalent Rotavirus vaccine was
licensed by the Food and Drug Administration. The vaccine was developed
at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and is licensed to
Wyeth-Lederle Vaccines and Pediatrics. The vaccine is known as Rotashield
or RRV-TV. It contains a rhesus Rotavirus with serotype G3 specificity
and reassortant rhesus -human Rotaviruses with G1, G2, G4 specificity.
Therefore, a single vaccine provides immunity to the four most common
How the RRV-TV vaccine is made. Reprinted from Emerging
Diseases, Volume 4 Number 4, Oct-Dec 1998.
Four placebo controlled randomized clinical trails performed in
industrialized countries have demonstrated the efficacy of the vaccine.
It provides 50% protection against any diarrhea caused by Rotavirus and
more importantly, it provides about 70%-95% coverage against severe
diarrhea caused by Rotavirus.
The effects of the RRV-TV vaccine in unindustrialized countries are less
certain. Several factors influence its role: younger age of infection,
possible greater particle exposure, different strains of Rotavirus, poorer
nutritional status and interference by other diarrhea causing pathogens.
However, in a study in Venezuela, high rates of RRV-TV efficacy were
observed, approaching levels seen in studies done in industrialized
The vaccine is administered in three oral doses at 2,4, and 6 months of
The first dose, however may be administered as early at 6 weeks of age
with a minimum interval between doses of 3 weeks. It is unknown whether
the vaccine will protect equally as well if less than three doses are
given. The vaccine is
currently priced at 10-30 dollars per-dose, a high price which may reduce
its feasibility in unindustrialized countries.
The vaccine is stored at room temperature, making it accessible even in
conditions where refrigeration is not possible. It is not known whether
the spread of vaccine virus, which has been observed, can lead to herd
immunity, protecting not only the child but also those who interact with
child. If herd immunity is a possibility, it may be possible to offer the
vaccination in limited numbers in unindustrialized coutries, while still
providing coverage to most. | <urn:uuid:480c9344-cd63-49c1-8205-7c9982278890> | CC-MAIN-2018-17 | http://web.stanford.edu/group/virus/1999/caryn/familyupdates.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-17/segments/1524125947759.42/warc/CC-MAIN-20180425080837-20180425100837-00043.warc.gz | en | 0.920163 | 502 | 3.71875 | 4 |
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