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Instant and easy connectivity for mobile devices is often taken for granted, but modern cellular networks are tied to cell towers. How do you make a call when cell towers are not available?
To answer this question, teams from the Air Force Research Laboratory's Information Directorate, the United States Navy and Lockheed Martin came together to design, build and test the Mobile User Objective System (MUOS), a satellite communications system designed to be a large cell tower in the sky which would improve and provide more communications capability for U.S. forces on the ground.
The basic design works like a typical cellphone system, except that the tower is not on the ground but instead is on a geosynchronous satellite 22,000 miles above the earth. There are four satellites to give global coverage. The original design of the 3G signal was modified so that it could connect to the satellite. The satellite beams the call signal down to a control station on the ground to connect to the network and complete the call.
User's need a MUOS "phone" to use the system. At this time, the "phone" looks like a typical tactical radio, but new MOUS radios will get smaller as the system matures.
One of the tests for the system took place in Antarctica.
Members of the team were able to catch a ride with the 62nd Airlift Wing which was responsible for Operation Deep Freeze, the annual resupply mission of the National Science Foundation (NSF), McMurdo and Amundsen-Scott Stations in Antarctica.
Within 20 minutes of arriving in Antarctica the team was able to send out the first ever voice and data communications from the Continent.
During the trip they were able to gather data that would be used to improve MUOS as it matures to full operation capability.
Michael Gudaitis, AFRL team lead said that tests demonstrated 3G- cellular quality voice, text, and data calls in a place where no cellphones exist.
"Think about how you feel when you don't have cellphone coverage, especially when you need it most," said Gudaitis. "In Antarctica, with the MUOS system we were able to demonstrate calls from places where no other radio or cellphone would work."
Gudaitis said there are commercial applications to the system.
"On an airline flight you can't use your cell phone except in 'airplane mode,'" he said. "But with MUOS you can stay connected at all times." | <urn:uuid:aa928c3b-b4ef-41c0-97f1-55d244cf7de1> | CC-MAIN-2021-39 | https://www.iconnect007.com/index.php/article/92128/afrl-team-helps-solve-cellphone-communication-challenges/92131/?skin=ein | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-39/segments/1631780056974.30/warc/CC-MAIN-20210920010331-20210920040331-00270.warc.gz | en | 0.951983 | 509 | 3.09375 | 3 |
After 11 years and $110 million, the Tundra Mine remediation project in the Northwest Territories has cleared all remaining ore residue at the former gold mine located some 240 kilometres northeast of Yellowknife.
Tailings at the mine — which began operations in 1964 and ceased in the mid-1980s — have been consolidated and covered by a geomembrane liner and gravel. The Tundra Mine is one of three mines that reverted to the Government of Canada in 1999 when the owner, Royal Oak Mines Inc., went into receivership.
“This project provided important training opportunities for local community members that enabled them to participate in the local economy and manage their land,” announced Dominic LeBlanc, Minister of Intergovernmental and Northern Affairs and Internal Trade. “With remediation and revegetation work completed, risks to health and the environment have been reduced so that Dene and Métis people can once again use the land for traditional purposes,” he added.
The federal government flew out about 20 representatives from the territorial government, Yellowknives Dene First Nation, North Slave Métis Alliance, and the Tlicho government to attend a remediation wrap-up celebration at the mine site last week.
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The contract for Phase 2 of the remediation was awarded to a joint venture between Tlicho Environmental Engineering Services Ltd. and Aboriginal Engineering Ltd.
Although full remediation of the Tundra site began in 2011, officials spent more than a decade prepping the site. This work initially included dam repairs, landfill repairs, geotechnical inspections of dams, water management and water quality monitoring. Later, officials progressed to the removal of buildings and hazardous waste, construction of a non-hazardous landfill, and the capping of mine openings. Lastly, water treatment was carried out on-site to treat the water in the tailings containment area, according to federal project documents.
When full remediation kicked off, site workers treated hydrocarbon-contaminated soil, decommissioned dams at the former gold mine, and started some regrading work.
For the next five years, Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada will actively monitor the site through an adaptive management phase. This includes remote monitoring assisted by cameras and sensors, as well as visits to site to take samples and measurements. The project will then move into the monitoring phase.
During its life cycle, the Tundra Mine produced some 3,250 kg of gold from 187,714 tons of ore. | <urn:uuid:d2f84e9e-c5c2-4b2c-a87e-8feaf24d2c3f> | CC-MAIN-2021-49 | https://esemag.com/hazmat-remediation/end-of-11-year-tundra-mine-remediation/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-49/segments/1637964358153.33/warc/CC-MAIN-20211127073536-20211127103536-00572.warc.gz | en | 0.951192 | 538 | 2.78125 | 3 |
Japanese researchers have investigated the effect of acupuncture on the human immune system. They measured CD-positive cell counts and cytokine expression levels in the peripheral blood of fifteen healthy volunteers before and after acupuncture, to determine the activity of T cells, B cells, macrophages and natural killer (NK) cells. There was a statistically significant increase in the number of CD2(+), CD4(+), CD8(+), CD11b(+), CD16(+), CD19(+), CD56(+) cells as well as IL-4, IL-1beta and IFN-gamma levels in the cells after stimulation of acupuncture points. These observations indicate that acupuncture may regulate the immune system and promote the activities of humoral and cellular immunity as well as NK cell activity. (Acupuncture Regulates Leukocyte Subpopulations in Human Peripheral Blood. Evid Based Complement Alternat Med. 2007 Dec;4(4):447-453). | <urn:uuid:1c6c02c8-9662-4ce6-904a-85148f4cefcf> | CC-MAIN-2019-22 | https://heatonacupuncture.co.uk/acupuncture-benefits-immunity-journal-of-chinese-medicine-jun-2008/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-22/segments/1558232255944.3/warc/CC-MAIN-20190520121941-20190520143941-00141.warc.gz | en | 0.889832 | 199 | 2.640625 | 3 |
Internet data is packaged and transported in small pieces of data. The flow of these small pieces of data directly affects a user’s internet experience. When data packets arrive in a smooth and timely manner the user sees a continuous flow of data; if data packets arrive with large and variable delays between packets the user’s experience is degraded.
What Is Latency?
According to Wikipedia, latency is a time delay between the moment something is initiated, and the moment one of its effects begins or becomes detectable. The word derives from the fact that during the period of latency the effects of an action are latent, meaning potential or not yet observed. Most people understand that it takes time for web pages to load and for emails to get from your outbox to the destination inbox and yes, this is a form of latency.
In order to understand why this happens, we need to think about latency at a lower level: Latency is a time delay imparted by each element involved in the transmission of data.
Its important to understand the basic elements of networking to properly grasp the latency issue. Early networking engineers anticipated the need to be able to handle thousands to millions of users on one cohesive network, and thus the TCP/IP networking model was developed.
The key design feature of the TCP/IP networking model is the concept of encapsulation, which is the idea of taking data and wrapping it in a common container for shipping. The container that was developed is called the IP Datagram, also known as an IP Packet.
The IP Packet is a simple thing: a header, followed by data. The Header contains information used for routing the packet to the destination. The data can be any information that needs to be transported such as a snippet of streaming music or a portion of email traffic. The exact construct of the data portion of an IP Packet is defined by the data protocol that is being carried. Data protocols will be discussed later. To understand exactly where latency occurs, its valuable to know how this most basic unit of networking data is built and transported. For this we turn to the OSI Model:
The OSI model was created to describe the process of turning your application data into something that can be transported on the Internet. The upper layers of the OSI model describe things that happen within the applications that are running on the computer. These applications are web browsers, email programs, and so on. The lower layers are where information to and from applications are turned into data for transport on a network. This is where data encapsulation occurs and our basic networking data element the IP Datagram or packet is built.
This diagram shows the encapsulation process in whats known as the TCP/IP Stack. The precise workings of the TCP/IP stack can be different between various computer operating systems. These differences may seem trivial as long as the protocols are implemented properly but when seeking the absolute highest levels of performance its important to know that the network stack implementation can be a significant cause of networking performance variability.
The transport of network data is a three step process:
- Data from a source application is passed down through the stack. During this process the application data is wrapped into IP Datagrams which are commonly called packets. Packets are then transmitted by the sending computer in the network.
- Packets are passed along the network (purple line) until they reach the destination computer.
- Packets are received from the network by the destination computer and are passed up through the stack. During this process the application data is extracted and then passed along to the destination application.
Layer 1 is the physical network medium connection. This layer handles the conversion of the layer 2 bits into electrical, optical, or radio signals that can be transported. The network interface, often called the NIC or Network Interface Card, can be fiber-optic, copper wire, or a wireless radio interface.
What Causes Latency?
As described above there are many logical, electrical, and physical elements involved in computer networking. The OSI model identifies each of these elements with regard to specific functionality and delays, another name for latency, occur at every stage of the process.
Application Layer Latency
Layer 7, 6, 5 are the upper “application layers”. Regardless of the speed of the processor or the efficiency of the software, it takes a finite amount of time to manipulate and present data.
Whether the application is a web page showing the latest news, or a live camera shot showing a traffic jam, there are many ways in which an application can be affected by latency. One common source of application latency is the need to read and write data to a disk. There are also hardware limitations that affect application performance such as the amount of memory.
The encapsulation of data, which occurs at the Transport Layers (1 though 4), is called serialization. Serialization takes a finite amount of time and is calculated as follows:
- Serialization of a 1500 byte packet used on a 56K modem link will take 214 milliseconds Serialization of the same 1500 byte packet on a 100 MBps LAN will take 120 microseconds
- Serialization can represent a significant delay on links that operate a lower transmission rates, but for most links this delay is a tiny fraction of the overall latency when compared to the other contributors.
- Higher modem data rates cause the modem to occupy more radio bandwidth
- Lower modem data rates will let the modem occupy less radio bandwidth
- A 10 MBps copper LAN cannot sustain traffic flowing at a higher rate than 10 megabits every second
- A satellite link using modems operating at a 600 MBps rate cannot flow any more than 600 megabits every second
- connection based
- Establish the connection
- Send the data
- Close the collection
- Establishing the connection requires 3 packets... the client sends a connect request SYN (synchronize) packet to the server
- the server replies with a SYN-ACK (synchronize acknowledge) packet
- the client confirms the receipt of the SYN-ACK by sending back an ACK (acknowledge)
Data Protocols + Latency
Protocols which operate in the transport layers range from simple to advanced. Many transport protocols use information obtained from the timing of the data flow to ascertain link performance and attempt to adapt to specific conditions present on the network. This is a key issue and will be addressed later in this article.
Routing + Switching Latencies
For a network to do its job packets have to be passed from Point A to Point B. This would be simple if the Internet was just two computers and two locations, but this is certainly not the case. In IP networks such as the Internet, IP packets are forwarded from source to destination through a series of IP routers or switches that are interconnected by links such as circuits. The IP routers use the destination address in the IP header to determine the next router in the path from source to destination. The IP routers utilize routing algorithms to continuously update their decision about which router is the best one to get the packet to its destination.
A router or circuit going down, or congestion along the path, can change the routing. Managing the wealth of Internet traffic induces delays (latencies) caused by the routing and switching process.
This refers to the amount of processing time for a router or switch to receive a packet, process it and transmit it on its way. Modern IP hardware interfaces have delays on the order of a few nanoseconds and are generally negligible when compared to network propagation delays which are discussed in the next section. High performance IP routers and switches each add approximately 200us (microseconds) of latency to the link due to processing and forwarding. If we assume that the average IP backbone router spacing is 800 km, the 200us of routing/switching delay is equivalent to the amount of latency induced by 40km of fiber. Therefore routing/switching latency tends to contribute only 5 percent of the end to end delay for the average Internet link.
Queuing + Buffer Management Another issue which occurs within the transport layers is called “queuing latency”. This refers to the amount of time an IP packet spends sitting in a queue awaiting transmission due to over-use of the outgoing link after the switching delay has been completed. While over-utilization of high-speed Internet backbone links tends to be rare, instances of congestion are common on lower speed access circuits.
When congestion occurs, routers use sophisticated data queue management algorithms such as WRED (Weighted Random Early Detection) to minimize data loss. Congestion can cause queuing delays to become infinite since packets are dropped when router buffers become full. Queuing algorithms use a variety of packet management schemes to ensure queuing latency is minimized; best common practice WRED configurations typically bound queuing latency at 20ms.
What Is Propagation Delay?
Propagation delay is a phenomenon in which the physical properties of the medium cause the transmitted information to slow down. The amount of slowing caused by the medium is called the velocity factor (VF). Most people are surprised to learn that copper wire and fiber-optic cables have similar velocity factors. Fiber optic cables typically measure around 70 percent of the speed of light, whereas copper cable varies from 40 to 80 percent, depending on the construct.
Coaxial cable is commonly used and many types have a VF of 66 percent. Satellite communication links use electromagnetic waves to propagate information. The information is converted from electrical signals to radio signals using a modem (modulator/demodulator). Once these radio signals leave the antenna, they travel at the speed of light. Let’s calculate how long it will take an email to travel from New York to London assuming that we are the only user on a private communications’ channel.
Ignoring the actual routes taken by undersea cables due to the ocean’s floor, let’s assume the path from New York to London is the great circle distance of 5458 km. These are the latencies caused only by propagation delays in the transmission medium. If you were the only one sending one single data bit and you had unlimited bandwidth available, the speed of the packet would still be delayed by the propagation delay. This delay happens without regard for the amount of data being transmitted, the transmission rate, the protocol being used, or any link impairment.
These are the latencies caused only by propagation delays in the transmission medium. If you were the only one sending one single data bit and you had unlimited bandwidth available, the speed of the packet would still be delayed by the propagation delay. This delay happens without regard for the amount of data being transmitted, the transmission rate, the protocol being used, or any link impairment.
Transmission Rate + Bandwidth
Transmission Rate is a term used to describe the nuMBer of bits which can be extracted from the medium. Transmission rate is commonly measured as the nuMBer of bits measured over a period of one second. The “maximum transmission rate” describes the fundamental limitation of a network medium — if the medium is a copper Local Area Network, maximum transmission rates are commonly 10, 100, or 1000 Megabits per second. These rates are primarily limited by the properties and construction of the copper wires but the capabilities of the network interface card are also a factor. Even the most inexpensive LAN cables can handle transmission rates of 100 MBps, but if the NIC only supports 10 MBps then the link will be rate limited to 10 MBps.
Fiber-optic transmission rates range from around 50 MBps up to 10 Gbps. While 10 Gbps is the highest existing standard, work is being done to extend fiber transmission rates to 100 Gbps. Unlike copper networks, the primary factor limiting fiber-optic transmission rates is the electronics which operates at each end of the fiber.
Wireless LANs and satellite links use a modem (modulator/demodulator) to convert the bits into a modulated waveform, and then on the other end a demodulator will then convert the signal back into bits. The limiting factor in radio-based links is the fact the signal which carries the data must occupy a limited bandwidth when compared to wire or fiber links.
Radio Bandwidth Signals transmitted using radio waves occupy radio spectrum. Radio spectrum is not an unlimited resource and as such must be shared. To prevent radio interference between users the use of radio spectrum is controlled by nearly every government on the planet. The amount of radio spectrum occupied by any given radio signal is called its bandwidth.
The nature of radio spectrum use is beyond this paper but it’s important to understand that generally the occupied radio spectrum of a modem signal will increase with the data rate:
Data Bandwidth In data transmission, the data bandwidth is synonymous to the transmission rate being used. Bandwidth is important because it defines the maximum capacity of a data link.
Latency + TCP/IP The final detail required for understanding why latency is important is an understanding what is going on in the transport layer. Recall that the transport layer is the process of encapsulating application data into IP Packets suitable for transport. The protocol used in “data” portion of the IP packet defines the type of data exchange that is taking place. There are two types of network data exchanges:
The transport protocol commonly used for connectionless traffic is called User Datagram Protocol or UDP. This protocol is popular as there is no overhead or connection management — the data is just sent along. There is no retransmission of lost packets because having them arrive late is not useful for voice or video that is being played out in real-time by the receiving computer. Connection based data exchanges are far more complicated. These data exchanges rely on the establishment of a “connection” which manages every packet which is transmitted. The reason for this is that both the sending and receiving computer applications are very interested in ensuring the integrity of every piece of data being exchanged. The transport protocol commonly used for connect-based traffic is called the Transmission Control Protocol, or TCP. TCP provides error free sequenced delivery of packets. If packets arrive out of order the TCP layer puts them back in order. If packets are missing, TCP asks for retransmission. The TCP protocol makes the Internet reliable.
To support the additional connection management features, TCP packets contain additional information in the header as well as many different packet “types”. TCP packet types are used throughout the establishment of the connection and are the key to providing control of the connection. TCP connections use a client/server model to describe the sender and receiver of data. The use of the term “server” does not necessarily mean a computer performing server duties, rather it’s a computer that is listening for TCP connections. TCP connections have three phases:
Once the link is established, the data transfer can start. During the TCP data exchanges, ACK (acknowledge) and NACK (negative acknowledge) packet types are used to tell the sender that packets have been properly received. If a packet is not received or it contains a bit error, the transmission of the exact same packet is repeated.
Upon completion of the data transport session, the connection will be closed by the following 3 packet exchange...
- the closing initiator sends a FIN (finish) packet the other side of the link replies with a ACK
- the closing initiator send a coMBination FIN/ACK to end the connection
- Sequence NuMBers
- Flow Control
- Congestion Control
An example of this behavior is the way TCP responds to congestion control. The TCP congestion control process uses timers to examine the data flow and subsequent ACK/NACK responses. When TCP detects that ACK/NACKs are taking longer than normal to respond, TCP assumes that the link is being congested somewhere and will slow down the release of packets using flow control. This vital step helps reduce the impact of congestion at routing and switching buffers as well as receiving computer data processing limitations.
Congestion control is generally a valid response to a lethargic network as slow response does often indicate that a portion of the link has a data bottleneck.
A Fictional Data Download
Let’s examine the details of downloading a digital image which is 4 megabytes in size. For calculation purposes we need to use bits, so our 4 megabytes (4 MB) is actually 32 megabits (32 MB).
Our downlink will use TCP/IP but we cannot simply create a 32 MB packet to transport our image; such a large packet would be a very cuMBersome to deal with. Internet traffic is made up of packets of variable sizes, but the Maximum Transport Unit (MTU) is generally only around 1500 bytes. Packets larger than 1500 bytes are considered “JuMBo” packets, but handling these is not yet commonplace for many parts of the Internet. To ensure our image file makes it, we’ll stick with 1500 byte packets.
Our 1500 byte TCP packet has a header, which is required for transportation but not useful image data. The size of the header can vary in length from 20 bytes to 60 bytes depending on TCP packet options. If we assume that our header is a full 60 bytes in length, this leaves only 1440 bytes for our image file data. Based on the amount of data payload available, the maximum amount of image file data that can be transported is 11520 bits per packet. Even this nuMBer can be a little lower depending on upper layer formatting of the data, but for this exercise we’ll assume that the entire TCP payload is useful image data.
Our total file size divided by this maximum packet size tells us that transporting our entire image file will take 2777.7 packets. The last packet would normally become shortened instead of our full MTU but to keep the math easy we’ll round up to 2778. Our assumptions:
- We are downloading the file from a local computer using a 10 Mbps LAN
- There is no other traffic on that 10 Mbps LAN — we get the whole pipe
- The link is operating perfectly, no need to repeat any data during this transmission
- There is no appreciable latency. This is a copper LAN and a relatively short cable run which is not adding any appreciable propagation delay
Now that we have the number of bits transmitted, we need to calculate how long that should take.
This is simple...
- 34.6 Mb/10 Mbps = 3.46 seconds
The Real World
We’ve made four assumptions in the above analysis which do not mimic the real world Internet at all.
- Assumption 1: The file you want is available on a local computer.
- Reality 1: The file is more likely to be some physical distance away. This is not necessarily a problem, but it means we need to traverse a much more complicated network path to get to our data.
- Assumption 2: We get the whole 10 Mbps to ourselves.
- Reality 2: This is feasible only for the local LAN. It is a certainty that once your little 1500 byte TCP/IP packet reaches the Internet backbone, it will be joined with millions of other packets working their way through the Internet. Your image file packets are going to be mixed in with other traffic such as emails, streaming music files, and so on. You simply don’t get the Internet all to yourself.
- Assumption 3: The link is operating perfectly.
- Reality 3: Internet traffic is routed through an extremely complex collection of hardware which is scattered all over the Earth. The reality is that sometimes a fiber or copper cable is cut or is mistakenly disconnected. A piece of networking equipment such as a router or a switch can break, leaving some other path to pick up and route the extra traffic. When this happens, Internet traffic can start to fill up queues and bottlenecks occur. As mentioned earlier, queuing delays can become significant when the network is operating through a bottleneck.
- Assumption 4: There is no appreciable latency present in our network.
- Reality 4: The reality is that all of the earlier discussed sources of latency are genuine factors in real-world networks. The impact of latency starts to become noticeable when the latency is significantly longer than the transmission time for the data.
- Bit transmission time = 1/(bits per second)
The following plots were made using a TCP/IP packet capture utility. These plots show the packet bit rate on the y-axis and time of day on the x-axis. The data being transmitted was the un-cached web-page reload of the content from the CNN web page. The only condition changed during was the delay between packets — the transmission rate remained the same.
As you can see, the added network latency and its affect on the flow of TCP data spread the web page load over time.
- The 50 ms latency link took 3 sec
- The 150 ms latency link took 5 sec
- The 300 ms latency link took 11 sec
- The 600 ms latency link tool 17 sec
It’s this “spreading over time” behavior of high latency networks which becomes noticeable to the user and creates the impression that a link is not operating at a high speed.
O3b recently conducted another demonstration of real-world effects of latency using the time to load a web page. This is a very common activity and clearly shows users that latency directly affects the way a user obtains data from the Internet.
The following plots show the effects of latency on the time to load the Wall Street Journal web page...
Satellite Link Latencies
Now that we know the effects of latency on real-world traffic, we’ll discuss the latency differences in two satellite technologies. Satellite links can introduce larger latencies than most terrestrial networking segments due to long distances from the ground stations to the satellite. The table on the next page shows the latency caused by propagation delays from two types of satellite configurations...
- The O3b Networks MEO orbit constellation at an altitude of 8063 Kilometers
- A geosynchronous satellite at 35,786 Kilometers
The table above shows that a ground station in Lagos, Nigeria using an O3b Networks MEO satellite to connect to a teleport in Almeria, Spain, will experience round trip time (RTT) ranging from 122 to 133 milliseconds. If we add in the average internet latency from the Almeria teleport to most Internet destinations in Europe (60 ms), we end up with an overall latency from Lagos to a European internet site of 183 to 193 milliseconds. This range of latency is caused by the change in distance to the ground sites relative to the moving O3b Satellites. The AOS is the Acquisition of Signal, and the LOS is the point at which the O3b system will perform the handover to the next rising satellite. The Maximum Elevation is the point at which the satellite is closest to the customer ground station which explains why this point has the lowest latency.
By comparison, the same Lagos customer site using a geosynchronous satellite to a European internet site using will have to see latencies of 552 milliseconds. The last column in the chart shows the time required to make a data request and to start receiving the requested data. This data request time includes...
- The request packet from the user to the web server
- The web server acknowledging the request
- The web server pushing to requested data to the user
- The data arriving at the user’s computer
- TCP also includes a returned ACK packet from the user to the web server but this time is not counted in the Data Request Cycle.
Geosynchronous satellite users must wait almost 1 second before they start getting data, whereas the lower latency O3b satellite link will receive it nearly 3x sooner.
When looking at the basic latency numbers, it’s easy to see that the O3b Satellite constellation will offer users a noticeably better Internet experience with more immediate feedback and quicker access to data.
We have described the structure of IP-based packet switched networks, the functions of the various protocol layers, and the causes of latency in packet switched data networks, such as the Internet.
Latency and overall throughput is dominated by two factors, the length of the route that the packets have to take between sender and receiver and the interaction between the TCP reliability and congestion control protocols and this path length. The O3b Networks satellite constellation in a much lower MEO orbit has significantly lower path length and therefore significantly lower latency than traditional geosynchronous satellites. Therefore, O3b’s network latency and throughput approximate and, in some cases, exceed that of fiber based terrestrial networks. | <urn:uuid:b5a33ce7-8ed0-47a5-9d7a-348c754027fd> | CC-MAIN-2020-34 | http://satmagazine.com/story.php?number=1342678280 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-34/segments/1596439738562.5/warc/CC-MAIN-20200809162458-20200809192458-00396.warc.gz | en | 0.928842 | 5,071 | 3.953125 | 4 |
|Study Casts Doubt on Lung Treatment
for Preterm Infants
Contrary to an earlier finding, inhaled nitric oxide
therapy (a treatment for lung problems in premature
infants) does not reduce the infant’s chances for death
or further lung problems, according to a study by the
National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
of the National Institutes of Health. The study appears
in the July 7 New England Journal of Medicine.
“Premature infants weighing less than 1500 grams should
not receive inhaled nitric oxide therapy unless they
are part of a research study,” said NICHD Director Duane
Inhaled nitric oxide therapy is effective for treating
full term infants with lung complications. In term infants,
whose lungs are fully formed, these complications typically
result from lung infection. For the treatment, nitric
oxide gas is mixed with oxygen and given to an infant
through a breathing apparatus. The treatment makes the
blood vessels in the lung tissue relax, allowing the
lungs to absorb oxygen more easily.
Because the treatment works well for term infants,
researchers had been interested in its possible use
to treat lung complications in preterm infants. Earlier
research in preterm infants treated with inhaled nitric
oxide therapy showed varied results.
A team of researchers with NICHD’s Neonatal Research
Network enrolled 420 infants born at less than 34 weeks’ gestation,
weighing between 401 to 1500 grams (14 ounces to 3 pounds,
2 ounces). All infants required assisted ventilation
and had a diagnosis of respiratory distress syndrome,
sepsis or pneumonia, or other severe breathing problems.
The infants were randomly assigned to receive either
inhaled nitric oxide or a placebo.
The researchers found that there was no difference
between the infants who received the inhaled nitric
oxide and those who did not: 60 percent of the infants
who received it and 68 percent of those who did not,
developed bronchopulmonary dysplasia, a serious lung
condition involving lung inflammation and scarring.
Both groups also had high death rates (52 percent in
the inhaled nitric oxide group and 44 percent in the
While earlier research on the use of inhaled nitric
oxide on premature infants with breathing problems showed
potential benefits of the therapy, the infants in that
research study were larger and less critically ill than
those in the current study.
“Contrary to our hopes as neonatologists, inhaled nitric
oxide treatment did not reduce the incidence of death
or further lung problems,” said one of the study’s authors,
Rosemary Higgins, M.D., of the NICHD’s Pregnancy and
Perinatology Branch. “The smallest and sickest infants
were not helped by this treatment.”
Dr. Higgins added that the smaller infants presumable
were unable to benefit from inhaled nitric oxide therapy
because their lungs were not sufficiently developed.
After the study was completed, the researchers took
a closer look at the data. Such after-the-fact analyses,
conducted after a study has taken place, typically need
to be confirmed by further research. This second look
at the data revealed information about various subgroups
of the study. The researchers found that infant weight
affected the outcome among infants receiving inhaled
nitric oxide. Infants in this group weighing between
1000 and 1500 grams had a significantly lower death
rate than infants in the placebo group. Infants weighing
less than 1000 grams in this group had a higher death
rate than those in the placebo group.
In addition, infants receiving inhaled nitric oxide
through conventional mechanical ventilation had a higher
mortality rate than those receiving the therapy through
high-frequency ventilation. Conventional mechanical
ventilation resembles the inhaling and exhaling motion
of normal breathing. In contrast, high frequency ventilation
consists of numerous soft pulses delivered to the lungs.
One of the main concerns in the past of using inhaled
nitric oxide to treat premature infants who have lung
problems is that this treatment may trigger intracranial
bleeding — bleeding inside the brain. Data analysis after
the study showed that the smaller premature infants
in the treatment group — a subset of those weighing less
than 1000 grams — had a higher rate of intracranial bleeding
than infants in the placebo group.
“We have more work to do to better understand how to
best help premature infants with severe lung problems,” Dr.
The NICHD is part of the National Institutes of Health
(NIH), the biomedical research arm of the federal government.
NIH is an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and
Human Services. The NICHD sponsors research on development,
before and after birth; maternal, child, and family
health; reproductive biology and population issues;
and medical rehabilitation.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) The
Nation's Medical Research Agency is comprised
of 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of
the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services.
It is the primary Federal agency for conducting and
supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical
research, and investigates the causes, treatments,
and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more
information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov. | <urn:uuid:2bd418ef-89d1-40db-98d5-5d974aa21557> | CC-MAIN-2015-18 | http://www.nih.gov/news/pr/jul2005/nichd-06.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-18/segments/1429246647589.15/warc/CC-MAIN-20150417045727-00296-ip-10-235-10-82.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.92948 | 1,147 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Saint Peter (r. AD 30; died between AD 64 and 68) also known as Simon Peter, Simeon, Simon, Cephas, or Peter the Apostle, was one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus Christ, and one of the first leaders of the early Church. According to Christian tradition, Peter was crucified in Rome under Emperor Nero. He is traditionally counted as the first bishop of Rome—or pope—and also by Eastern Christian tradition as the first patriarch of Antioch.
Pompeo Girolamo Batoni (25 January 1708 – 4 February 1787) was an Italian painter who displayed a solid technical knowledge in his portrait work and in his numerous allegorical and mythological pictures. The high number of foreign visitors travelling throughout Italy and reaching Rome during their "Grand Tour" made the artist specialize in portraits. Batoni won international fame largely thanks to his customers, mostly British of noble origin, whom he portrayed, often with famous Italian landscapes in the background. | <urn:uuid:ad9025ba-26cc-4005-92f3-4cecf7088f88> | CC-MAIN-2021-21 | https://sdcason.com/saint-peter-by-pompeo-batoni-18th-century-public-domain-catholic-painting/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-21/segments/1620243989614.9/warc/CC-MAIN-20210511122905-20210511152905-00256.warc.gz | en | 0.98381 | 201 | 3 | 3 |
The tudor architectural style is the final development of medieval architecture in england, and also the tentative introduction of renaissance architecture. 8 images about this staircase idea makes old risers look like art | architectural digest : This staircase idea makes old risers look like art | architectural digest. Known as the french eclectic style, french provincial or french chateau, the style was fashionable in the 1920s and 1930s.
Residential architectural house style of Phoenix, Arizona Types of
Guide to architectural styles in buildings coolguides Architectural Styles Guide Architectural Styles A Visual Guide Pdf
If Buying An Existing Home, I’d.
The style was utilized most often in residential. A style may include such elements as form, method of. In this way, the gothic style is the direct descendant of.
Here, We Introduce Some Of The Most Familiar.
The latter brought their own unique spin with the great revival architectural styles such as tudor, spanish colonial, georgian, prairie style, italian renaissance, art deco, and pueblo. Though it's hard to classify architectural styles, when it comes to decorating, it's crucial to know what style best fits your home's layout. Www.architecturaldigest.com savannah guthrie architectural architecture :
Began In England As A Reaction To Formal Classical Ideals That Had Dominated.
Modeled after an architect’s plein air sketchbook, the volume. We dig into the following architectural styles: This architectural language flourished from about 1830 to 1850 when it was seen as a national style.
Homes And Buildings Constructed In This Architectural Style Typically Include Flat Planes, Geometric Lines, Large Windows, Walls Of Glass,.
To mark the event, we have compiled a guide to the unique architectural styles of period homes from the 18 th to the 20 th century. Architectural styles is an incomparable guide to architectural styles across the centuries and around the world. You can use this document to identify the features and materials that define your.
This Design Is Known For Its Simplicity.
Here’s a snapshot of the 5 most popular house architectural styles based on monthly search volume: January 2011 kaveshal.blogspot.com architecture painful designing architectural needed though skills ever. An architectural style is characterized by the features that make a building or other structure notable and historically identifiable.
Gothic Buildings Are Characterized By Intricate Stonework, Flying Buttresses, Pointed Arches, And Vaulted Columns.
This architectural style guide is a reference tool for owners and managers of historic craftsman buildings. | <urn:uuid:7471f74d-efef-4332-a96c-36ec7c64a953> | CC-MAIN-2024-10 | https://setyouroom.com/Architecture/architectural-style-guide.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2024-10/segments/1707947474595.59/warc/CC-MAIN-20240225103506-20240225133506-00781.warc.gz | en | 0.888244 | 548 | 2.765625 | 3 |
Last month's devastating earthquake in China has severely damaged the country's agricultural supply, resulting in $6bn (€3.8bn) worth of damage in the Sichuan province.
The Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) said thousands of hectares of farmland were destroyed, millions of farm animals died, grain stores collapsed and thousands of pieces of agricultural machinery were damaged in the quake, which measured 7.8 on the Richter scale.
While the FAO said it could not yet produce any information on how this could affect trade of agricultural produce and food production machinery, China's position as a leading global exporter could mean the shortages could feed into global supply.
"In addition to the human tragedy caused by the disaster - mainly the loss of family members - many rural communities in Sichuan province have lost their means to produce food and create income," said Rajendra Aryal, FAO senior regional emergency coordinator.
EU trade with China
China is the world's third largest exporter, and trade with the EU has increased dramatically in recent years.
According to the European Commission, China is now the EU's largest source of imports making it Europe's second trading partner behind the US.
The country exported €230.8bn worth of goods to the EU in 2007. While the majority of this was industrial goods, Europe also sources a substantial amount of agricultural goods and ingredients from China.
According to forecasts made by the FAO in its annual Agricultural Outlook for 2008 to 2018, global agriculture and trade for most commodities are set to centre on emerging markets, like countries such as China and India, over the next 10 years.
For example, rice production is expected to increase by around 10 per cent over the outlook period, mainly due to larger crops from Asian and South Asian countries.
And oilseed consumption in developing countries will increase by some 50 per cent by 2017, compared to 2005-7 the baseline, with China and its livestock sector accounting for around half of this growth, the outlook said.
The earthquake was China's worst for 50 years. Major seed growing areas in the Sichuan province, which produce up to 20 per cent of China's rice seeds, were badly hit, damaging more than 20,000 hectares.
The earthquake also caused rice fields to dry up because of disruptions to irrigation systems, and a "significant proportion" of wheat crops could not be harvested, according to the FAO assessment.
Additionally, over 3m pigs were killed, and some villages lost up to 70 per cent of their livestock, causing damage of about $2bn.
The FAO also said there are current shortages of pesticides and fertilisers are jeopardising future food production.
"Urgent provision of fertilisers, pesticides, farm tools and machinery, livestock and reclaiming damaged fields will be the main challenge for the next six months," Aryal said. | <urn:uuid:06dbca35-ec60-4e27-9d43-c4d7bc045ccc> | CC-MAIN-2013-48 | http://www.foodnavigator.com/Financial-Industry/China-earthquake-caused-6bn-damage-to-Sichuan-agriculture | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-48/segments/1386164018354/warc/CC-MAIN-20131204133338-00014-ip-10-33-133-15.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959188 | 584 | 3.140625 | 3 |
Interactive Traffic Simulation
Traffic and congestion phenomena belong to our everyday experience. In our simulation, you have the possibility to control traffic and create your own traffic jam. Find out how to trigger a traffic breakdown and how to resolve it. Observe how traffic jams can be seen as collective phenomena with waves propagating backwards from the bottleneck.
In our starting scenario, the ring road, you experience how a traffic jam develops “out of the blue” by so-called traffic-flow instabilities: whenever a vehicle brakes a little bit, the follower takes a little time to adapt his or her speed to that of the leader. During this time, the gap may become smaller than the safety distance and the follower needs to brake even more to re-obtain it. This starts a “vicious cycle” eventually leading to a traffic wave propagating backwards.
- Play with the density slider to create even more waves at a higher density while no breakdown appears at lower densities.
- Make the drivers more responsive by increasing the maximum acceleration and observe how the traffic jam disappears. Are there some lessions learnt for your own driving style?
- Drag and drop an obstacle onto the road and notice how the moving traffic wave transforms into a standing one located at the newly created bottleneck.
In contrast to the ring road, the other scenarios are more realistic open systems with inflow and outflow. There, you can investigate the “three ingredients to make a (traffic) jam”: High traffic demand, a bottleneck on the road, and a final disturbance of the flow, e. g., by an abrupt lane change. The scenarios provide typical examples of bottlenecks like on-ramps, off-ramps, road-work sites, uphill sections, and a combination thereof.
Observe how a traffic jam forms at the bottleneck. You can accelerate its formation by clicking several times in the bottleneck zone creating additional flow disturbances. Upstream, the traffic jam will emit traffic waves while downstream, the congested region is fixed by the beginning of the bottleneck. Now imagine you are one of the drivers approaching the bottleneck (you can mark them by clicking): The driver encounters several traffic waves before reaching the bottleneck. Since the driver typically cannot see the bottleneck when encountering the first wave, he or she might think that there is a “phantom traffic jam”. However, you know better: The waves are emitted by the congestion formed at the bottleneck a while ago.
Finally, in the “deviation scenario”, you can play a game. Send some of the vehicles onto the deviation route in order to avoid or delay the traffic flow breakdown on the main route, but don’t do too much. Who can bring all of the vehicles through the simulation the fastest? | <urn:uuid:dc2775c0-5ba5-4501-8613-5eb7f0ee7f74> | CC-MAIN-2020-34 | https://imaginary.org/fr/node/1271?page=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-34/segments/1596439736902.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20200806091418-20200806121418-00085.warc.gz | en | 0.934601 | 573 | 2.9375 | 3 |
This October the students in Mrs. Reed's PreK classroom got the opportunity to visit a local pumpkin patch. This gave the students first hand knowledge of where and how pumpkins are grown. They explored the pumpkin patch noticing the vines, the insects, and the variety of shapes and sizes of pumpkins. They even got to pick their very own pumpkin for home! The only rule was they had to be able to carry it back to the bus. Some students started with large pumpkins and traded for smaller pumpkins. When back in the classroom the students had the chance to use all of their senses to explore what was inside the pumpkin and even painted a pumpkin for our classroom.
MtVES Pre-K visits the Pumpkin Patch
Wednesday, October 30, 2019 | <urn:uuid:5b0acccf-663d-4214-aaf2-53437e51f10f> | CC-MAIN-2020-16 | https://mtves.maranacook.org/article/154022?org=mt-vernon | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-16/segments/1585370508367.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20200402204908-20200402234908-00027.warc.gz | en | 0.984926 | 155 | 2.9375 | 3 |
What is human trafficking?
Human trafficking is often referred to as “modern day slavery.” It exploits people for the purpose of commercial sex and/or labor through the use of force, fraud, or coercion. According to the U.S. State Department, there is an estimated 27 million men, women, and children enslaved in the world currently.
Human trafficking is extremely lucrative. It has grown into a world wide $150 billion industry and is one of the largest criminal enterprises in the world, second only to drugs. This may be surprising, but consider this: drugs can only be sold one time; however, humans can be sold over and over and over. In this context, they become a reusable commodity. The one commonality between victims of human trafficking is vulnerability. Those who are not educated or aware of this issue are vulnerable, and therefore, are more likely to become a victim of human trafficking.
The State of our State
North Carolina is a top state for human trafficking, yet struggles to help the most vulnerable victims in need of assistance due to a severe lack of coordinated services and resources across the state. As an east-coast hub for national transit, a leader in military bases, an agriculturally dependent state, and a prosperous resettlement location for immigrants, it comes as no surprise that North Carolina consistently ranks within the top ten states for human trafficking, according to the Polaris Project. It is a unique state which holds both a high demand for cheap sex and cheap labor, and a large supply of vulnerable individuals. Law enforcement has uncovered brothels and major sex rings across the state, including an investigation which led to 40 human trafficking arrests.
Despite the growing issue, the need to address human trafficking in North Carolina remains vastly under-met. Victims from all age ranges, genders, and demographics are at risk of never being identified or not getting connected with proper resources to help them regain stability in their lives.
The Salvation Army's Role
In 2011, The Salvation Army of Wake County initially set out to address this problem through the establishment of a comprehensive case management program, Project FIGHT (Freeing Individuals Gripped by Human Trafficking) and was overwhelmed by the results. Without data to predict the potential number of victims across the state, Project FIGHT was established to handle 12 cases over two years, but by the second month alone, those 12 cases were opened. In just the two and a half year time period since its establishment, Project FIGHT has opened over 91 cases of both labor and sex trafficking and assisted 143 individuals, and the case load has increased each year. In 2011 Project FIGHT saw 30 clients, 38 in 2012, and 42 in 2013. As of August 2016, Project FIGHT has experienced 127 cases of human trafficking through which they provided resources to over 250 men, women and children. These numbers are staggering, considering the general lack of awareness about human trafficking in the state.
Since this time, Project FIGHT been able to build the right relationships across the state with law enforcement, medical professionals, sexual assault agencies, refugee services, employment programs, other anti-human trafficking organizations and legal services to promote their actions in order to correctly identify victims and provide the services they need. To coordinate these efforts, Project FIGHT sits on the executive committee of the North Carolina Coalition Against Human Trafficking and is the local area coordinator for the Rapid Response Team of the Triangle.
So who is Project FIGHT?
Project FIGHT is currently located in five different locations across the state:
- New Bern
Six case managers, one lead case manager, and a coordinator compile this team of Salvation Army employees. Together they:
- Provide comprehensive trauma-informed case management for survivors of human trafficking
- Assist with follow needs: safety, legal, housing, medical, mental health, education, employment
- Coordinate and sit on Rapid Response Teams across the state to comprehensively assist victims upon identification
- Collaboratively work with with variety of partner agencies to meet the needs of clients
- Offer training and education to community groups, schools, professionals, and service providers
- Build community awareness through events
- Conduct outreach to potential victims of human trafficking
- Over 60 referrals/cases
- Received 2 two year grants to expand statewide response
- Hired Program Coordinator
- Events: JustArt, Brewers Against Brothels
- Held first ever Survivor Workshop for survivors of human trafficking
- Expanded Statewide Response to include two additional locations: Charlotte & New Bern
- Hired 3 new case managers for Project FIGHT
- Built Area Rapid Response Teams
- Increased Partnerships statewide
- Celebrated assisting over 100 survivors of human trafficking
- Expanded Statewide Response to include two additional locations: Asheville & Greenville
- Hired 2 new case managers for Project FIGHT
- Created and hired lead case manager position for Project FIGHT
- Collectively trained over 4,500 professionals and community members
- Referals increased over 64%, reaching 318 referrals to Project FIGHT
- Explore option of drop in center
- Strengthen sponsorship and engagement opportunities for survivors
- Offer more tangible ways for people to volunteer
- Identify and assist more victims of trafficking
- Begin housing assistance programs for victims of human trafficking | <urn:uuid:574ff9cc-3e1f-4cb5-8e4e-e28c9489dd71> | CC-MAIN-2017-13 | https://www.salvationarmycarolinas.org/wakecounty/programs/social-ministries/project-fight/project-fight-learn-more/project-fight-what-we-do-2017 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-13/segments/1490218194601.22/warc/CC-MAIN-20170322212954-00286-ip-10-233-31-227.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936264 | 1,055 | 2.640625 | 3 |
Northern White Cedar has long been the preferred choice in logs and lumber for building everything from canoes and fence posts to cozy cabins and luxury homes. But why? Well, here’s the story of Northern White Cedar in America.
The Canoe Conifer
Native Americans of the Great Lakes region recognized the great durability and insect resistance of Northern White Cedar. They valued this wood so much that they used it to make their canoe ribs and slats. They even used the oils extracted from the twigs to make chest decongestants.
When timbermen arrived in the region in the late 1800’s, these new pioneers used Northern White Cedar to make and panel their bunk homes. Several of these old White Cedar log homes still stand as a testament to this wood’s longevity.
It wasn’t until the early 1900’s that Northern White Cedar lumber was harvested in large quantities to support a growing demand for products made from this superior wood. Today, annual production has grown to over 100 million board feet per year. Second timber products are now in demand for fence posts, poles, boats, decks, Cedar siding, and log homes.
Heartwood Mills has proven the integrity of building products made from Northern White Cedar logs and lumber for more than 60 years. White Cedar log homes constructed from our log home paneling and siding products has lasted for generations. We recommend Northern White Cedar for both Northern and Southern log home building climates. Here’s why….
Insect and decay resistance
This is a prime reason White Cedar is considered by the United States Department of Agriculture as the wood to use where a high degree of durability and resistance to the elements is necessary. It’s also why Northern White Cedar half and quarter log siding and has become the preferred choice of lumber for log cabins and homes.
Heartwood last for generations
Sapwood easily decays and discolors. Northern White Cedar has a minimal amount of sapwood (approximately ¾ inch on a 10 inch diameter log). Through our sawing, shaping and peeling processes all sapwood is removed. Sapwood in logs is the reason why you will see a black discolorant in log homes supplied from our competitors especially in Pine structures. Pine logs have a large sap ring that makes it almost impossible to remove and dictates annual maintenance. In addition, Pine logs tend to bleed sap when exposed to sunlight that must be continuously removed and restained. This is not a problem with our kiln-dried Northern White Cedar logs and lumber.
Closed cell structure
The cell structure of white cedar resembles that of cork. This cell structure combined with the natural oil provides protection against internal mold and mildew. This is also important in that if properly kiln-dried, white cedar will resist the absorption of moisture from the environment. The process of absorbing moisture from rain, air etc. and then the resulting drying effect from wind and sun, is a key component of “checking” and deterioration.
The insulation factor of Northern White Cedar logs and lumber is among the highest of any wood. Rated at over 1.4 R-factor per inch, Northern White Cedar log home siding and paneling products provide additional protection and comfort.
White Cedar, due to its slow growth characteristic and tight growth rings, is dimensionally very stable. If kiln-dried properly, it will not twist, warp or shrink. This helps to reduce or eliminate any additional checking after it has been applied. Checking is often a problem with Pine log siding products.
Check out this direct comparison between White Cedar logs and Pine.
White cedar image and article are property of Heartwood Mills. This post originally appeared on the Heartwood Mills website. | <urn:uuid:2a0e5307-2a9b-462e-9256-ecb5e8d656f1> | CC-MAIN-2022-27 | https://www.lelandscabins.com/about-northern-white-cedar/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-27/segments/1656103322581.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20220626222503-20220627012503-00007.warc.gz | en | 0.936152 | 777 | 2.828125 | 3 |
What Makes A Leader?
Leaders can have many different styles — just compare President Donald Trump to Malala Yousafzai to your boss or the coach of your kid's soccer team.
But a study published Thursday suggests that people who end up in leadership roles of various sorts all share one key trait: Leaders make decisions for a group in the same way that they make decisions for themselves. They don't change their decision-making behavior, even when other people's welfare is at stake.
That may come as a bit of surprise, given that most lists of key leadership qualities focus on things like charisma and communication skills.
"Previous research has mostly focused on these kinds of either personality characteristics of a leader, or situations where individuals are likely to lead," says Micah Edelson, a neuroscientist at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. "But we don't know much about the cognitive or neurobiological process that is happening when you are choosing to lead or follow — when you're faced with this choice to lead or follow."
He notes that the decisions of leaders can affect the lives of many others. "It's not always that easy to make such a choice, and it's something that could be even a little bit aversive to you, to make a choice that impacts other people," says Edelson. "And there are some people that seem to be able to do it; some people don't. So we were interested in looking at that."
He and his colleagues had volunteers come to the lab, and gave them questionnaires that are widely used to predict whether someone is likely to be in a position of leadership. They also collected information about people's real-world leadership experience, such as what rank they'd achieved in the military (which is compulsory for men in Switzerland) or in the popular Swiss Scouts organization.
Then they put the participants into small groups and had them play a series of games in which individuals had to make choices about whether to take a risky action to get a reward.
"These are choices about uncertain gambles that have some probability of success and potential gains and losses," Edelson explains.
The player could choose to either make the choice alone, or defer the decision to a majority vote.
The games were played under two conditions: Sometimes the decision affected only the individual player's winnings and other times the decision affected what the entire group received.
What the researchers found is that people in general tended to avoid taking responsibility for what happens to others; deferral rates were the highest when decisions affected other people's pocketbooks.
But the people who changed their decision-making behavior the least were the ones who generally served as leaders in the real-world and scored high on leadership questionnaires. Unlike others, they did not require more certainty before being ready to personally make a decision that would affect the whole group.
"On average, people tend to increase the certainty threshold when the choices affect the entire group. But higher-scoring leaders just keep their thresholds almost constant," says Edelson, who says preliminary work using MRI brain scanning supports the idea that leaders and followers differ in how their brains process information about gains, losses, and risk in the context of thinking about others.
Other neuroscientists say the work, published in the journal Science, is fascinating.
"It seems a very reasonable finding," says Tali Sharot, a cognitive neuroscientist at University College London. "It works with our intuition, but in the same way it's not something that you'd necessarily think about that distinguishes leadership."
Sharot cautions that it's not clear whether this decision-making behavior is what led people to their leadership position, or if they've developed it as a result of real-world leadership experience.
And this study doesn't say anything about who ends up being a "good" leader, either.
But Sharot says the researchers have identified something about leadership that can hold true regardless of a leader's style.
"You can have authoritarian leaders who like to have the ultimate control," she says. "You can have democratic leaders who want to lead according to the will of the people. You have leaders who are risk-takers, leaders who are risk-adverse and conservative and so on."
But what's really interesting about this work, she says, is that these different types of leaders' decision-making behavior stays the same regardless of whether the outcome affects only themselves or other people. "What this paper shows is that all these types of individuals, all these types of leaders, have something in common."
Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | <urn:uuid:1e2cd56c-14cb-461f-acd2-54716bc1a062> | CC-MAIN-2021-25 | https://www.wqcs.org/2018-08-02/what-makes-a-leader | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-25/segments/1623487611089.19/warc/CC-MAIN-20210613222907-20210614012907-00414.warc.gz | en | 0.977293 | 950 | 3.046875 | 3 |
My first reaction was that the Alliance to Save Energy was stretching a bit by titling its October 6 talk: “Is energy efficiency the key to recovery from the recession?”
But after hearing David Goldstein’s presentation, I must admit I’m thinking about energy efficiency in a whole different way. Goldstein, author of the book, “Invisible Energy: Strategies to Rescue the Economy and Save the Planet” crunched the numbers to show the enormous economic relief efficiency could bring to both the average homeowner and the US government.
He went as far as to suggest we may have averted the mortgage meltdown had we instituted more efficiency over the last few decades. Sound extreme? Consider this.
The average suburban home now costs $175,000. When banks evaluate a homeowner’s ability to pay a mortgage, they look only at that figure. They do not consider the cost to pay utilities, which adds another $75,000 over the life of the mortgage. Nor do they consider the cost to drive back and forth from work to the house, another $300,000.
These energy costs have gone up over the years, while worker income has stagnated since 1973. When energy costs are added to mortgage costs, suddenly homeowners are paying as much as 62% of their gross income to live in their homes. It is not surprising that the lending system went wrong, he said, given that banks looked only at the $175,000 commitment and not the accompanying $375,000.
“Would you invest in a mortgage like that? That is what we are doing every day,” Goldstein added.
How much of a difference can energy efficiency make? Goldstein calculated that green building and transportation costs could chop that $375,000 by half.
Because efficiency reduces utility and transportation costs, it frees up consumer spending power. As a result it could ease several of the nation’s other financial woes, among them our low savings rate, weak consumer spending, trade deficit, inflation risk and joblessness. Efficiency also could take a big chunk out of the federal deficit, given that government is the largest energy user in the nation, he said.
“This recession did not just occur randomly. It is largely a predicted result of fundamental problems,” he said. “Weak energy efficiency policy is at the heart of many of them and is related to all of them.”
How much energy can we save through efficiency measures? More than we think, Goldstein said. Conventional studies indicate the US economy can wring out about 30% savings, but these are cautious estimates, biased toward the low end since no one ever loses their job for underestimating energy efficiency potential. But they might if they over-estimate and as a result the lights go out somewhere because we built too few power plants, he said.
Goldstein suggested that instead of relying on forecasts of energy efficiency potential, we set goals: “We best discover the size of the resource by going out and acquiring it.”
Elisa Wood is a long-time energy writer whose work appears in many of the industry’s top magazines and newsletters. She is publisher of the Energy Efficiency Markets podcast and newsletter. | <urn:uuid:a510e6c3-ae3a-4ac2-933d-9585e0058772> | CC-MAIN-2015-27 | http://cleantechies.com/2010/10/08/energy-efficiency-cure-for-mortgage-meltdown/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-27/segments/1435375095270.70/warc/CC-MAIN-20150627031815-00161-ip-10-179-60-89.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969481 | 662 | 2.515625 | 3 |
The cornerstone of the multibillion-dollar system of federal farm subsidies is an iconic image of the struggling family farmer: small, powerless against Mother Nature, tied to the land by blood.But it wouldn't make such a stirring argument if politicians started talking about how we needed to give more federal subsidies to giant agricultural corporations.
Without generous government help, farm-state politicians say, thousands of these hardworking families would fail, threatening the nation's abundant food supply.
"In today's fast-paced, interconnected world, there are few industries where sons and daughters can work side-by-side with moms and dads, grandmas and grandpas," Rep. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) said last year. "But we still find that today in agriculture. . . . It is a celebration of what too many in our country have forgotten, an endangered way of life that we must work each and every day to preserve."
This imagery secures billions annually in what one grower called "empathy payments" for farmers. But it is misleading.
Today, most of the nation's food is produced by modern family farms that are large operations using state-of-the-art computers, marketing consultants and technologies that cut labor, time and costs. The owners are frequently college graduates who are as comfortable with a spreadsheet as with a tractor. They cover more acres and produce more crops with fewer workers than ever before.
The very policies touted by Congress as a way to save small family farms are instead helping to accelerate their demise, economists, analysts and farmers say. That's because owners of large farms receive the largest share of government subsidies. They often use the money to acquire more land, pushing aside small and medium-size farms as well as young farmers starting out.
"Historically, when you think of family farms, you think of Mom and Dad and three generations working a small or mid-sized farm. It gives you a warm and fuzzy feeling," said Alex White, a professor of agricultural economics at Virginia Tech. "In the real world, it might be a mid-sized farm. But it also might be a huge farm. It might be a corporation."
Large family farms, defined as those with revenue of more than $250,000, account for nearly 60 percent of all agricultural production but just 7 percent of all farms. They receive more than 54 percent of government subsidies. And their share of federal payments is growing -- more than doubling over the past decade for the biggest farms.
This Washington Post story follows one a week and a half ago by the same journalists in the Post about how politicians from both parties have been rewarding dairy lobbyists to stop one dairy farmer from, heaven forfend!, charging lower prices for his milk. I often bash the press, but these two stories by Gilbert M. Gaul, Sarah Cohen and Dan Morgan are excellent examples of what the media can do - examine some decades-long accepted practice and expose how government is spending taxpayer money and actually harming the people they're claiming to help: consumers and the small, individual farmers. | <urn:uuid:3e04d083-2744-4764-b071-da8f57a8e037> | CC-MAIN-2014-41 | http://betsyspage.blogspot.com/2006/12/truth-about-small-farmers.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-41/segments/1410657140890.97/warc/CC-MAIN-20140914011220-00161-ip-10-234-18-248.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965531 | 623 | 2.78125 | 3 |
January 10: St. William
St. William came from a wealthy French family. Even as a boy, he did not waste time fooling around or being idle. He spent time praying every day. When he joined the Cistercian order, he tried to be a good monk. His fellow monks admired him, even though he was not trying to impress anybody.
St. William had a great devotion to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. He practiced penance without showing how hard it was. He always seemed to be happy. When he was made abbot of the community, he remained humble. He was just himself. When the archbishop of Bourges died, William was chosen to take his place. He was grateful to be consecrated a bishop, but unhappy because of all the attention he would receive. He kept humble by performing penances for his own soul and for the conversion of sinners.
Although William loved to be alone with God in the Blessed Sacrament, he knew it was his duty as archbishop to travel all over his diocese willingly. He celebrated the Eucharist and preached the faith. He visited the poor and sick, to console them and bring them to Christ.
Archbishop William died on January 10, 1209. He was buried in the cathedral of Bourges. Miracles were reported by people who prayed at his tomb. William was proclaimed a saint in 1218 by Pope Honorius III.
How do I respond to the attention and praise I receive? Do I usually give credit to myself or do I thank God for what he has done through me? | <urn:uuid:03542d6c-0a4b-4c22-985c-adff1ea840a9> | CC-MAIN-2015-22 | http://www.holyspiritinteractive.net/dailysaint/january/0110.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-22/segments/1432207932596.84/warc/CC-MAIN-20150521113212-00331-ip-10-180-206-219.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.99386 | 323 | 3.453125 | 3 |
There’s nothing we like better than making a new discovery on the reserve. In this case, our new discovery dated from 1949 – a ten page booklet titled ‘The Palatability of the Eggs of Birds’, signed by the author Hugh B Cott.
Hugh was a Cambridge oologist (another discovery…it means someone who studies bird eggs) and he carried out an investigation into the differing tastes of the eggs of 123 species. Each had their eggs scrambled, eaten and rated on a scale of 2 (inedible) to 10 (ideal).
Volunteer Allan Dawson was given the pamphlet by 97 year old Eileen Petty, the widow of climmer, Jack Petty. Unusually, Jack wasn’t a local lad, he lived in Hull and worked as an architect for the council. He was also a talented musician playing violin in the Hull Philharmonic.
So how did someone from the city end up climbing the cliffs for seabird eggs? Jack came from a relatively wealthy family and his parents were fond of taking cruises. When they went off to sunnier climes, Jack stayed with his grand-parents in Bempton and became fascinated by the climmers, one of whom took him under his wing and, literally, taught him the ropes.
Collecting seabird eggs became illegal in the 1950’s but there are still folk in the village who were brought up on them and remember their unique flavour.
And if you’re dying to know which eggs came out best in the taste tests well, kittiwakes scored highly with an 8.2. Barn Owl and Little Bittern eggs also did well and were described as ‘as sweet and mild as cream’. Just don’t tell Heston Blumenthal. | <urn:uuid:b775dc2c-2798-4d33-bcf0-7f5621342cc4> | CC-MAIN-2015-35 | https://www.rspb.org.uk/community/placestovisit/bemptoncliffs/b/bemptoncliffs-blog/archive/2013/11/25/don-39-t-try-this-at-home.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-35/segments/1440644064538.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20150827025424-00125-ip-10-171-96-226.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.988198 | 370 | 2.890625 | 3 |
Proponents of transforming elder care focus on the words we use, and often suggest new language choices for much of our terminology. This is not merely a matter of semantics, or some empty interpretation of political correctness. There are real consequences to these language choices—they affect how we see those around us and also affect the ways in which we care for and respond to them.
Advocates for better approaches to people living with dementia are no exception here. Many such language guidelines have been put forth in recent years. Examples include Alzheimer’s Disease International and the US Dementia Action Alliance.
A perfect example is the outmoded term “behavior problem.” When this is used to describe someone, it contains a very strong connotation that the person is the source of the problem, thus ignoring a host of unmet needs and environmental and relational factors that would make any of us distressed. Therefore, this term makes us see the person in a negative light, and also prevents our critical thinking around the many causes of distress that are more about how we are supporting the person than the about person herself.
So “words make worlds,” as Eden Alternative advocates say, and the wrong words are as much an impediment to high-quality care as a restraint or an inappropriate drug. But it’s not enough to train our professional care partners in this regard.
Government inspectors visit nursing homes and many other elder communities regularly to determine the quality of care. Likewise, there is a new trend to create consultants to come to the communities and advise the teams about how to respond to challenging situations. Examples include BSO (Behavioural Supports Ontario) in Canada, and the DBMAS (Dementia Behaviour Management Advisory Service) in Australia.
[Of course, since we are talking about language, I could comment on the names of these consultants. If I came up to you and said I was here to “manage your behaviour,” would you think I cared about you? And would you think I was acting in your best interest, or someone else’s??]
But assuming that I don’t have the power to change titles of government agencies half a world away, let’s get back to specific language choices around dementia. Concerns have been raised with me from several countries that in spite of an organization’s hard work to improve their view of the person, inspectors or consultants often come into their community using outdated and stigmatizing language. This threatens to undo the attitudinal shift that their care partners have navigated, and to negatively impact those they serve.
In my talks on culture change, I always stress, “Culture change is for everyone.” That means that those who support and regulate long-term living environments also need to evolve, so as not to do more harm than good. I have heard instances where such regulators feel that we need to conform to their language. Bollocks! If you do not learn the most up-to-date concepts around enlightened care, you become part of the problem. And it starts with language.
Here is what I recommend to communities that have experienced these struggles: Make a glossary of terminology. List all of your new word choices, along with the old ones they have replaced, and the reason why your wording is preferred. Make several copies, laminate them, spread them around the community, and hand a copy to those who come in to inspect or consult. Politely but firmly ask that when they speak to the people who work and live in your community, they conform to your language and use the glossary as their guide, so as not to undo your progress.
Words matter. If we want what’s best for those we serve, we all must watch our language! | <urn:uuid:7330b561-40c7-4e06-ad73-3aac3c51139a> | CC-MAIN-2019-18 | https://changingaging.org/blog/watch-your-language/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-18/segments/1555578529813.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20190420120902-20190420142902-00478.warc.gz | en | 0.967166 | 776 | 2.640625 | 3 |
Poplar (populus) is a deciduous tree exhibiting an extravagant show of fall colors. Europeans use the bark to create tanning acid for leathers. These trees are among the largest in North America. The average trunk width for the poplar is 5 feet around. They reach massive heights up to 150 feet tall.
Popular trees yield between 4 to 10 tons of paper annually per planted acre, according to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Paper manufacturers can take the bark of this tree to produce very thin paper. According to historical records, the bark of this tree was made into the canvas on which Leonardo DaVinci created the Mona Lisa. Many types of woodworking projects use poplar bark strips. Poplar pulp makes copious quantities of paper. Bark near the tree trunk is a source of medicinal teas and home remedies.
Poplar tree bark provides several medicinal qualities for users seeking holistic remedies to common ailments.The bark contains anti-inflammatory properties, advises David Parke. For example, arthritis suffers may benefit from these properties to reduce pain and discomfort. It is also believed that the poplar bark provides relief for stomach upset, heartburn and indigestion. According to Herbs200, the common dosage is a couple of teaspoons of white popular bark steeped in 1 cup of hot water to use a medicinal tea.
The bark of a poplar tree is very distinguishable and easy to identify. It grows in rectangular layers. These layers form on top of each other. They are gray and white. Use a sharp, sterile blade to cut the top 1/2-inch layer of the bark to remove it for use.
Preventing tree damage is important for poplar tree bark removal. Avoid cutting too deeply into the tree. All trees require a layer of bark for trunk protection. Only cut or remove bark while the tree is ready for new growth in the spring.
Allow fallen or cut poplar trees to completely dry. The bark layers will dry as well. Simply pull, cut and pick the bark off to retrieve the desired amount. The bark should come off the tree in long strips. | <urn:uuid:749444b2-f6d6-4369-83e7-f4ed646285c7> | CC-MAIN-2018-34 | https://www.gardenguides.com/137751-poplar-tree-bark-removal.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-34/segments/1534221215075.58/warc/CC-MAIN-20180819090604-20180819110604-00718.warc.gz | en | 0.92324 | 434 | 3.125 | 3 |
Flashcards in Transport in animals (Blood and lymph) Deck (20):
What is an open circulatory system?
- An open circulatory system is where the blood fills the body cavity and directly bathes all cells and tissue, as opposed to being restricted into vessels.
- All insects have open circulatory systems.
- Some rely on muscular movement to circulate the heart while others have a heart-like pumping organ just under the dorsal that directs blood flow towards important parts of the body such as the head and legs.
What is a closed circulatory system?
- A closed circulatory system is where the blood is restricted into vessels and is pumped always pumped around the body on a set path of vessels.
- Blood flow is restricted and therefore blood pressure is high.
- All fish, birds, mammals... big organisms have closed circulatory systems.
Why do large animals have closed circulatory systems?
- Blood in an open circulatory system is at very low pressure. Insects are small, so blood doesn't travel far. However, in larger organisms, this would mean blood being pumped around at a very slow rate.
- Insects have a separate transport system for oxygen and carbon dioxide whereas larger organisms rely on blood for this task.
- The slow rate would mean that an open circulatory system in larger animals would not deliver enough nutrients and oxygen to tissue cells at a rate which the cells require them. This may lead to the cells dying.
What are the structural features of arteries?
- Lumen is narrow to maintain high blood pressure.
- Thick collagen walls in order to withstand high blood pressure.
- Elastic tissue in walls allows expansion and recoil during systole and diastole.
- Smooth muscles that contract to restrict blood flow. These can limit blood flow to certain organs and direct blood flow to others.
- Endothelium can fold and unfold.
What are the structural features of veins?
- Lumen is wide to maximise blood flow.
- Thin layers of collagen, elastic tissue and smooth muscles as they don't need to withstand high pressure; stretch or recoil and restrict blood flow.
- Valves are present to prevent the back flow of blood.
- Veins can be easily flattened by surrounding muscles to squeeze blood along veins, back to heart.
What are the structural features of capillaries?
- One cell tick wall of squamous epithelial cells to reduce diffusion distance.
- Thin lumen wide enough to fit one red blood cell. This means that red blood cells are close to the capillary walls and diffusion distance is reduced for oxygen.
What does blood consist of?
- Erythrocytes (red blood cells), leucocytes (white blood cells) and thrombocytes (platelets).
- Hormones and plasma proteins.
- Some fats in the form of lipoproteins.
- 80-120 mg/100cm^3 glucose concentration.
- More amino acids and oxygen.
- Less carbon dioxide.
What does tissue fluid consist of?
- Some white blood cells.
- Hormones and proteins secreted by cells.
- Some glucose (most absorbed by cells).
- Some amino acids and oxygen (most absorbed by cells).
- Lots of carbon dioxide.
What does lymph consist of?
- Lymphocytes (white blood cells).
- Some proteins.
- More lipids than blood.
- Some glucose, amino acids and oxygen.
- Lots of carbon dioxide.
How is tissue fluid formed?
1. Blood initially enters the capillaries at high pressure from the arteries.
2. Hydrostatic pressure is high, so small molecules are forced out of capillaries by ultrafiltration.
3. Only water, ions, oxygen, glucose and amino acids are small enough to leave capillaries. Blood cells and plasma proteins remain in blood
4. Water potential is lower in capillaries, so water also enters by osmosis. However, ultrafiltration outweighs the effects of osmosis and net movement of water is out of capillaries.
5. Exchange of nutrients occur between tissue fluid and bathed cells.
6. Hydrostatic pressure decreases along the capillaries and blood water potential becomes lower. Osmosis into capillaries is greater and outweighs ultrafiltration. Net movement of water is into capillaries. Tissue fluid also has some hydrostatic pressure.
7. Waste materials enter capillaries by diffusion.
What is lymph?
- Lymph is very similar to tissue fluid in composition, but also contains lots of lymphocytes.
- Lymph is made from tissue fluid draining into the lymph vessels.
- Lymph is then circulated around the body past the lymph nodes where it is filtered for any bacteria/pathogens that are destroyed by the lymphocytes.
How is oxygen transported in blood?
- Oxygen is transported in erythrocytes in the blood.
- Erythrocytes are filled with proteins called haemoglobin that are made out of 4 subunit polypeptide chains that each have a prosthetic haem group attached.
- The haem group contains a iron (II) ion which bonds to the oxygen molecule.
- Each haemoglobin binds 4 oxygen molecules.
What are the features of the oxyhaemoglobin dissociation curve?
The curve is a sigmoid shape curve, which means that it is relatively difficult for haemoglobin to take up oxygen at low pressures, but is easier at high pressures.
What mechanism is responsible for the sigmoid shape of the oxyhaemoglobin dissociation curve?
When the haemoglobin is not saturated with any oxygen molecules at low oxygen concentrations, it has a very low affinity. However, as the oxygen level rises in the surroundings and the haemoglobin binds onto 1 oxygen molecule, its 3D structure slightly changes and increases its oxygen affinity. The haemoglobin then acquires more oxygen molecules which increases its oxygen affinity even further, this is called conformational change. However, once the haemoglobin is saturated with 3 oxygen molecules, its shape changes to decrease the oxygen affinity so the curve slowly levels out and it is difficult to achieve 100% oxygen saturation.
Why is the oxyhaemoglobin dissociation curve important?
The lungs have high oxygen levels which are sufficient for haemoglobin to achieve almost 100% oxygen saturation. However, the tissue environment has a low enough oxygen level for the haemoglobin to release the oxygen into the tissue fluid.
Why does foetal haemoglobin have a higher oxygen affinity?
The foetus needs to pick up oxygen in an environment where normal haemoglobin would release oxygen, the blood in tissue. In order for the foetal blood to obtain enough oxygen from the mother's blood, its haemoglobin needs to have a higher oxygen affinity than the mothers.
How is carbon dioxide transported in the blood?
- 5% dissolves into plasma fluid.
- 10% combines with haemoglobin to form carbaminohaeoglobin.
- 85% is transported as hydrogencarbonate ions.
How are hydrogen carbonate ions formed?
1. Carbon dioxide is released by cells into tissue fluid that eventually enter the plasma of erythrocytes.
2. Carbon dioxide combines with water to form carbonic acid, a reaction which is catalysed by the enzyme carbonic anhydrase.
3. The carbonic acid dissociates into H+ ions and hydrogen carbonate ions.
4. To maintain a constant pH, the H+ ions combine with haemoglobin to form haemoglobinic acid.
5. Hydrogen carbonate ion concentration increases in erythrocytes and a diffusion gradient is set up, hydrogen carbonate ions diffuse out of erythrocytes and into plasma.
6. Mass outflow of hydrogen carbonate ions changes the electric neutrality of erythrocytes. This effect is countered by the inward diffusion of Cl- ions. This is called the chloride shift.
How does carbon dioxide leave the blood?
At the lungs, there is a higher oxygen concentration, so oxygen competes with H+ ions to combine with haemoglobin. This results in H+ ions being released into erythrocytic cytoplasm and the whole hydrogen carbonate formation process being reversed, releasing carbon dioxide into plasma which diffuses into the alveoli. | <urn:uuid:c8c11a44-3215-4571-a781-6fd04be85015> | CC-MAIN-2019-13 | https://www.brainscape.com/flashcards/transport-in-animals-blood-and-lymph-2207116/packs/3864404 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-13/segments/1552912202125.41/warc/CC-MAIN-20190319183735-20190319205735-00255.warc.gz | en | 0.929891 | 1,750 | 3.78125 | 4 |
What Is the Golden Mean?
The Golden Mean is simply a manner of behaving where your life is balanced and virtuous. You find this balance by acting in a virtuous manner given certain situations. Many thinkers have sought to define it and share how to attain it. Read on to find out why you should seek the Golden Mean.
Aristotle defines the mean as the proper way of being between two extremes in great detail in his Nicomachean Ethics. Confucius defines this idea of the mean in terms of balance in his work Doctrine of the Mean. And, Lao Tzu discusses it as a path, calling it “the Way” or “the Tao.” Even C. S. Lewis in Abolition of Man, talks about it and what it is, describing it as a way of being that is discoverable through reason. Here’s what Aristotle has to say about how this Golden Mean leads you to excellence:
"Excellence, then, is a state concerned with choice, lying in a mean, relative to us, this being determined by reason and in the way in which the man of practical wisdom would determine it."-Aristotle
The Golden Mean is a middle road between the extremes that is proper to the situation. What Aristotle said here is pretty tough to beat. I think what is important is that he points out it is a choice. The mean is about ethics, which is morality in action.
It not enough to know what is best, but you have to actually do what is best. And, that is hard when you have to use wisdom and prudence to assess the particular situation and make the choice. There is no instruction manual, just guiding principles. So, you have to be able to evaluate your situation and know what is proper.
What Would Jesus Say?
We don’t have to wonder what he would say, because he said a lot. In the Gospel, Jesus says “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me.” What he's saying there is, he’s the way forward. His example is the proper path. In this passage, Jesus shows that he knows we need guidance down the right path. He calls us to action, to have faith in him and follow him. Through that initial step, he offers the fullness of truth that laid out of reach of other thinkers. And living in that truth gives us an abundance of life and joy.
He offers us real Truth, the right Way, and the fullness of Life. He is God who knows everything, who is altogether wise. The life Jesus lived was perfect, always choosing the highest good available to him. That is what we strive for, and what the thinkers like Aristotle, Confucius and Lao Tzu were lacking. They were incredibly wise, and able to show us a virtuous path forward. But, they couldn’t compare to God incarnate - and I’m sure they’d agree.
Lao Tzu, Confucius and the Tao
I've talked a little bit about Lao Tzu and Confucius so far, but not everyone is as familiar with their work. They have a tremendous philosophy on ethics, and I think it's correct in many ways. The Tao Te Ching is a beautiful work of literature that feels very much like what a lot of Eastern Orthodox or Eastern Catholics would love. It has this mystery to it, and a humility about how much can actually be known.
This reminds me of how the Eastern Church Fathers would discuss some of the mysteries. Rather than categorizing, defining, and describing ideas with these complex definitions, the Eastern Fathers would often submit to the mystery. They would relfect and meditate on it, rather than parse it out and debate it. That is how Lao Tzu approaches the Tao. It is clear that he thinks we can't fully understand the reality that's behind this ethical way of living.
And then, if you like the literary form of the Gospels or the works of Plato, where he has Socrates and dialogue with people, you’ll enjoy Confucius. If you like that style of philosophy and teaching, where the teacher is being questioned by his student, then read Confucius’s Analects and the Doctrine of the Mean. It reminds me of when the scribes and Pharisees would question Jesus. Or, when different philosophers and politicians would question Socrates. While the format is different on this work, Confucius’s ideas on the Golden Mean are consonant with Aristotle’s and Lao Tzu’s.
The Mean is a Balance and a Path
Confucius and Aristotle have this idea, that you find the mean when you’re able to balance things. They show the mean as choosing the middle option between the two extremes. They call for prudence and weighing your options. You have to stay in between two extremes, and I like that aspect as well because I think we are at a culture of extremes. Instead of being united as a society on the proper path, we often have a choice between one extreme and the other. We have sexual libertinism and total puritanism, Bible Fundamentalism and Evolutionary Materialism. There is a lot of unoccupied space in the middle for us to find and discuss.
Another great way of explaining the mean is to describe it as a journey. It's a path for you in life, and it's something that you have to do, a journey you must undergo. Lao Tzu seems to take this approach. He sees the moral principles as a road map leading you to the destination, and the path under your feet as a guide. This taps into our sense of adventure, and our yearning for that Hero’s Journey. Each of us can decide to take up our burden and go on this journey toward a better way of living and a life of virtue.
Know What’s Proper for You - How to Seek the Golden Mean
What is proper for you will depend on your talents and abilities. If you’re an intelligent person, but you’re 5’ 9” and not super athletic, the NBA may not be what’s proper. Maybe using your intelligence and leaning into that talent is what is best. What is proper for LeBron James or Tom Brady? As two incredibly talented athletes, they should seek to share those talents. It is proper for those guys to achieve as highly as they can in their sport, using their gifts to do that. Could they have done other things? Sure. But is that a great way for them to use their talents?
So, you have to understand your limitations and your abilities, your talents and your weaknesses, to find the path that is proper for you. That's what it's all about. Know who you are and what you have to offer. Know where you fall short and should seek help from people who’s skills complement yours. Now that you know what the Golden Mean is and why the Golden Mean is important, it’s your time to choose what to do. Will you take up the task and seek the Golden Mean?
Now, Go Seek the Golden Mean
Finding the Golden Mean for yourself is not easy, but with Practical Wisdom, you can learn to do that. And, because I’ve written on that idea, I’ll let you check out my article on Practical Wisdom which will pick up where I leave off here. This post was also published on the Vital Masculinity Journal, where you can learn a lot more about how to seek the Golden Mean in your life. | <urn:uuid:f5621452-d15b-42f0-9265-df96d48666ef> | CC-MAIN-2022-21 | https://conversationofourgeneration.com/2021/02/22/why-you-should-seek-the-golden-mean/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-21/segments/1652662543797.61/warc/CC-MAIN-20220522032543-20220522062543-00162.warc.gz | en | 0.969986 | 1,595 | 2.65625 | 3 |
Snakebite, which is a neglected public health concern, causes nearly 50,000 deaths in India every year
Commonly used anti-venoms are not effective in the case of South Indian kraits, as they carry some noxious proteins that the medication do not recognise and are unable to neutralise, according to a study.
The venomous snake species, also known as common krait or blue krait, is among the four snake varieties — Indian Cobra, Russel’s viper, saw-scaled viper — responsible for most snakebite deaths in the country. Snakebite, which is a neglected public health concern, causes nearly 50,000 deaths in India every year.
In the study, scientists from Tezpur University in Assam profiled the venom of South Indian common krait (B. caeruleus) .
“Determination of the composition of venom of a specific species of snake at a particular geographical location is necessaryfor a better understanding of the variation in venom composition and its correlation with symptoms of snakebite as well for designing region-specific anti-venoms,” explained Ashis K. Mukherjee, leader of the research team, while speaking to India Science Wire.
For the study, published in the journal Expert Review in Proteomics, the scientists used venom pooled from four krait snakes of South India. They found that it had 57 large and small proteins.
The neurotoxic effect of the venom was due to two large proteins — beta-bungarotoxin, and κ-bungarotoxin. The scientists also found that South India Krait has cytotoxins in its venom, which is absent in kraits from Sri Lanka, which again emphasises that venom composition differs with geographical location.
The researchers then tested the ability of commercial anti-venoms to neutralize the large and small proteins in the venom. They found that although anti-venoms were able to bind and neutralise larger proteins, they were unable to do so with smaller proteins like phospholipase A2 (PLA2) and three finger toxins (3FTxs), which are present in copious amounts (up to 85 per cent) in South Indian Krait venom.
“This insight will help anti-venom manufacturers to re-design their production facilities to come up with anti-venom for against South Indian Krait. We are already working in collaboration with an anti-venom manufacturing company,” added Mukherjee. (India Science Wire)
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Comments are moderated and will be published only after the site moderator’s approval. Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name. Selected comments may also be used in the ‘Letters’ section of the Down To Earth print edition. | <urn:uuid:317c8c98-d324-43f1-83d6-8389fa1b4cff> | CC-MAIN-2019-51 | https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/wildlife-and-biodiversity/india-needs-specific-anti-venom-for-snakebites-in-different-regions-64717 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-51/segments/1575540545146.75/warc/CC-MAIN-20191212181310-20191212205310-00424.warc.gz | en | 0.951103 | 637 | 3.25 | 3 |
Some of the widespread forms of Management Data Systems include process management methods, human resource management programs, sales and advertising and marketing programs, inventory management methods, office automation techniques, enterprise useful resource planning systems, accounting and finance methods and management reporting methods. 1 : steering or supervision of action or conduct : management working underneath the path of the doctor. Some organizations have experimented with different methods (akin to worker-voting models) of choosing or reviewing managers, however that is rare. The autocratic management kinds are types of management that is run by autocratic managers. They offer mid and decrease-level managers a good suggestion of the long run plans for each department in a company.
Some front-line managers can also present career planning for employees who intention to rise within the organization. Board definition: 1. a skinny, flat piece of reduce wood or different onerous material, often used for a particular … Read More | <urn:uuid:fbbef957-b399-46e0-b04b-720c34c94a94> | CC-MAIN-2021-17 | https://www.raholavidal.com/tag/management | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-17/segments/1618038067400.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20210412113508-20210412143508-00458.warc.gz | en | 0.93017 | 183 | 2.53125 | 3 |
More Women Are Pursuing Fields In STEM
SYKESVILLE, Md. (WJZ)— When it comes to science, technology, engineering and math, it seems girls rule. Like never before, these fields are attracting more and more young women into the field.
Mary Bubala reports many are getting their start in high school.
Students at Century High School in Carroll County built a robot. At the controls is Michelle Cady— a senior who has her heart set on becoming an engineer someday.
“I am on the robotics team and it’s a lot of fun to show off our robots,” Cady said. “It’s our first year and everything.”
Cady is one of seven girls at Century who organized a huge fair focused on science, technology, engineering and math.
There is one boy on the executive board.
In the past decade, the number of women going to college for engineering, science, medicine and agriculture has more than doubled.
“I am interested in the science aspect of STEM,” said Jenna Sheldon, Century High School student. “I want to do something with neurology eventually.”
“I am thinking of majoring in agricultural biotechnology and then possibly working in the Environmental Protection Agency. It would be my dream job,” said Deanna Krouse, Century High School student.
“I am interested in art and math and I was like ‘Wow, architecture combines both together,’” said Serena Deshpande, Century High School student.
“I am looking at environmental science and geology kind of as a major next year,” said Hailee Griesmar, Century High School student.
The young women are focused and their school is opening doors and their minds.
“To see more women getting involved is great,” said Daniel Rosewag, Century High School teacher. “Three of our career presenters today . . . we actually only allowed our female students to sign up for, so that we could directly promote women in the STEM industry.”
Century High School even has its own academy that focuses on STEM courses. | <urn:uuid:8e566f88-6e4f-49be-b56e-70f27dd80c96> | CC-MAIN-2015-32 | http://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2011/03/18/more-women-are-going-to-college-for-stem/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-32/segments/1438042990112.50/warc/CC-MAIN-20150728002310-00216-ip-10-236-191-2.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958595 | 457 | 2.515625 | 3 |
The Bible relates that King Solomon was known as the wisest of men. One verse suggests that he was able to converse about–the more-than-human world:
יְדַבֵּר֮ עַל־הָֽעֵצִים֒ מִן־הָאֶ֙רֶז֙ אֲשֶׁ֣ר בַּלְּבָנ֔וֹן וְעַד֙ הָאֵז֔וֹב אֲשֶׁ֥ר יֹצֵ֖א בַּקִּ֑יר וַיְדַבֵּר֙ עַל־הַבְּהֵמָ֣ה וְעַל־הָע֔וֹף וְעַל־הָרֶ֖מֶשׂ וְעַל־הַדָּגִֽים׃
He [King Solomon] discoursed about trees, from the cedar in Lebanon to the hyssop that grows out of the wall; and he discoursed about the beasts, the birds, the creeping things, and the fishes.
Although most commentators insisted that King Solomon’s communications were about nature, the Aggadah, Jewish legendary tradition, took it more literally: the King Solomon, in his great wisdom, could actually speak to the animals and plants in their own languages.
Solomon was able to draw moral instruction from the vegetable and animal kingdoms (Midrash Yalkut), or, according to Rashi, he knew their characteristics and medicinal properties. Jewish tradition credits him with the ability to converse in the language of every beast, fowl, fish, plant, and demons.
–I Kings, Soncino Edition
(This tradition led to some delightful folktales, including a children’s favorite about a young bee who helps the king pass a test by showing him the real flowers among scores of well-crafted artificial bouquets.)
We may not have the wisdom of a Solomon, but it seems imperative in our current ecological crisis for human beings to establish better communication with other species, not so much by talking about them, or even to them, but by listening to them. And if we lack the expertise to truly listen, then we can listen to the listeners. Here are a few:
I love the book, Listening to a Continent Sing, by ornithologist Prof. Donald Kroodsma. He describes a cross-country (USA) bicycling trip with his adult son, during which they observed and recorded bird songs from coast to coast. As you read the book, you can listen to and learn from recordings of the birds on a free website: listeningtoacontinentsing.com.
Carl Safina, author of Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel, spent time with elephants, wolves, and killer whales, revealing the similarities “between human and nonhuman consciousness, self-awareness, and empathy.”
I’ve also been absorbed in the writing and teachings of Native American botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer, about the intelligence and communications among plants, and even between moss and rocks. As a scientist and as a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, Prof. Kimmerer looks at plants and animals as our oldest teachers:
I can’t think of a single scientific study in the last few decades that has demonstrated that plants or animals are dumber than we think. It’s always the opposite, right? What we’re revealing is the fact that they have extraordinary capacities, which are so unlike our own, but we dismiss them because, well, if they don’t do it like animals do it, then they must not be doing anything, when, in fact, they’re sensing their environment, responding to their environment in incredibly sophisticated ways. The science which is showing that plants have capacity to learn, to have memory, we’re at the edge of a wonderful revolution in really understanding the sentience of other beings.
– Prof. Robin Wall Kimmerer
Artists as well as scientists find ways to communicate with animals. Musician, philosopher, and naturalist David Rothenberg has made music with birds, reindeer, whales, and insects. You can learn more about him and watch his videos on his website.
One modern day Christian pastor writes about King Solomon’s wisdom as being a keen observer of the environment. In order to preserve our environment, it’s time for people of all faiths and traditions to unite in our common care and concern for this precious planet we were given “to serve and to guard” (a literal translation of Genesis 2:15). We are understandably focused today on climate change. But another aspect of the Anthropocene–the period of significant human impact on the planet’s ecosystems–is the destruction of species, habitats and the loss of biodiversity. We are surrounded by other species, all part of the web of life on our planet, a web to which we all belong. But too often, we ignore or exploit the non-human species. By stopping to listen, to look, and to value the animals and plants that surround us, we will all have a better chance at preserving this Garden of Eden that we were given. We will be a little more like King Solomon.
Featured image: Deer wading and feeding among the lily pads at Rockefeller State Park Preserve, Rabbi Julie H. Danan
Return to the Gateway of Holy Land. | <urn:uuid:3203722b-909e-4b19-a0de-6c6e6ba133e2> | CC-MAIN-2021-10 | http://wellspringsofwisdom.com/talk-animals-listen-nature/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-10/segments/1614178357984.22/warc/CC-MAIN-20210226205107-20210226235107-00380.warc.gz | en | 0.94896 | 1,272 | 3.046875 | 3 |
Philip Yancey’s book, The Bible Jesus Read, was a helpful and inspiring guide for me when I began reading the Bible and found myself struggling to engage with the Old Testament. His reflections helped me find a foothold to begin reading the prophets and wisdom literature. One of the most remarkable insights I gained was also one of the simplest. Yancey helped me to see that the Psalms really are a book of poetry. That was exciting because I had already gained some experience trying to read and write poems. It gave me a new way to begin to understand and explore the book.
The book of Psalms is the blazing, nuanced heart of the Bible’s poetry, but there is poetry scattered throughout Scripture. Adam’s first words about Eve (Genesis 2:23) are poetry, the book of Job is almost entirely poetry, and the first half of the first chapter of John’s Gospel (John 1:1-14) is a stunning poem. Reading poetry might not excite you the way it does me, but it is good to have some basic tools for reading it, because reading a poem isn’t quite like reading anything else.
One of the obvious and most recognizable features of poetry is metaphor. You may remember learning somewhere along the way that a metaphor is a comparison. Metaphors talk about one thing in terms of another by directly saying X is Y. The psalmist writes of God:
You are a strong tower,
where I am safe
from my enemies. (Psalm 61:3)
Metaphors compare something that is hard to know or encompass in our thinking with something that is more comprehensible. As modern readers, we may not understand the importance of building a fortified tower as a part of our city’s defenses, but still, we understand more about towers than we do about God.
When you find a metaphor in your reading, stop and take time to savor the language. This is key to reading poetry. Think about the things being compared and ask yourself, “Why is X being called Y?” There is often an immediate and obvious reason, but other, more subtle reasons, are waiting to be discovered.
As we wonder about the comparison, we may be drawn into a deeper and more personal engagement with the writer, the text, and the Spirit. Good metaphors engage our imaginations: we may picture things we have never seen or experienced. They also engage our reasoning, and we must work out for ourselves how and why the writer would think these two things are comparable.
Many of the images and metaphors the writers of the Bible used are no longer common for many contemporary readers. The psalmist David famously writes:
You, LORD, are my shepherd. (Psalm 23:1)
For those of us who are far removed from agricultural and rural life, the image and idea of a shepherd might not help to deepen our understanding and appreciation of who the Lord is for the writer. We have some idea of what a shepherd is - that they are responsible for caring for and protecting the flock - but the power of the metaphor is limited by our shallow understanding and lack of immediate experience of sheep or shepherds.
As readers we can overcome this, to some extent, by further reading, research, and meditation. We can’t transport ourselves to ancient Israel and know firsthand about the dangers of wild beasts, thieves, sickness, and drought that the psalmist would have known about deeply. We can read about it, though, and find images and films and art that depict the shepherd’s life. We can peer into the lives of present-day shepherds, through documentaries and travel.
It is also hard to overestimate the level of understanding that can come through exercising our imaginations in contemplation and meditation. Would you like to try a small experiment? Close your eyes and spend a minute trying to see, in your mind, the hills of cropped grass wavering in the afternoon heat. Hold on to that picture and now try to smell the strong stink of the sheep. See if you can feel the shade you’re sitting in from the one tree in sight that is large enough to shelter you. Linger over the loneliness of that life as you imagine it, even for a few moments, and experience how it can transform your reading and understanding of David’s expression and strengthen your connection with the Scriptures.
We will never live long enough to see, hear, or taste all that the Bible’s poetry contains. Returning, over and over, to the images and ideas of the Bible’s metaphors will continually surprise, confront, and comfort us. Psalm 23 is one of the most well-known passages in all of Scripture, but as we read it at different stages of our lives, the significance of the Lord being a shepherd to the psalmist—and to us—will change. The Spirit makes the Bible come alive to us, and in us, and poetry has a unique role to play in that ongoing process.
If you would like to learn more about the Bible’s poetry and how to engage with it, I recommend Robert Alter’s book, The Art of Biblical Poetry.
To learn more about poetry generally, and how it works, consider reading the most beautifully written textbook I have ever found on any subject: Western Wind, by David Mason and John Frederick Nims.
Thanks to the support of our faithful financial partners, American Bible Society has been engaging people with the life-changing message of God’s Word for more than 200 years.
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- An OGTT is a way to measure your body’s ability to use glucose.
- Ask your health care provider to go over how to prepare for the test.
- Plan on being at the lab or doctor’s office for a few hours.
If you’re getting ready to have an oral glucose tolerance test, you might be wondering about how to prepare for the test and what the results might mean. The test can help your health care provider (HCP) figure out whether you have a high risk of developing diabetes.
What is Glucose?
Glucose is a type of sugar and the main source of energy used by your body. The glucose that your body uses for energy comes from many kinds of foods called carbohydrates, such as cereal, bread, rice, pasta, and other grains, not just sugary foods. Dairy products, fruits, and vegetables all contain carbohydrates as well. Your body uses the glucose it needs and then stores the rest as “glycogen” in your liver and muscles.
What is an Oral Glucose Tolerance Test (OGTT)?
An OGTT is a way to measure your body’s ability to use glucose. Your pancreas (a gland located behind the stomach) makes a hormone called insulin, which helps your body use the glucose in your blood. If your pancreas doesn’t make enough insulin or if your body is unable to use the insulin it makes, you may have a high blood glucose level. The OGTT involves fasting overnight and then having your blood checked early in the morning. You will then drink a special glucose drink and have your blood tested again after 2 hours. Sometimes blood sugar levels are also checked at other times such as 1 hour, 3 hours, or 4 hours after the glucose drink.
What if my blood glucose level is high?
If the OGTT shows that your blood glucose levels are higher than normal, your health care provider may tell you that you have “impaired glucose tolerance”. This often means that you are at risk for developing diabetes. Rarely, diabetes is diagnosed after an OGTT. Diabetes is an illness that can develop if your body does not make enough insulin, or when your body has trouble using the insulin that it does make. Your health care provider may suggest a fasting glucose level, an A1C, or another oral glucose test. Depending on the results, these tests are often repeated every few years.
What do I need to do before the OGTT?
Your health care provider will most likely give you either a glucose drink to take home or a prescription to bring to your pharmacy or the lab. Some tests are done in a health care provider’s office, but most often the test is done in a lab at a hospital or clinic. The test takes several hours (most of it is waiting between blood tests), so you’ll need to plan on being at the lab or your HCP’s office for most of the morning. If you need to fill a prescription, be sure you call your pharmacy ahead of time to see if they have the glucose drink in stock, because some pharmacies may not carry this item, or they may need to order it.
Do I need to eat anything special before the test?
3 DAYS BEFORE THE OGTT: Plan on eating three healthy meals and snacks for 3 days before the test. You do not need to buy special food, but you do need to make sure you have healthy foods to eat. Your meals should be balanced with plenty of carbohydrates.
Foods containing carbohydrates include:
- Starchy vegetables (corn/peas/carrots)
12 HOURS BEFORE THE OGTT: DO NOT eat, smoke, or do heavy exercise 12 hours before the test. (For example: If your test is scheduled for first thing in the morning, at 8 AM—Do not eat, smoke, or do heavy exercise after 8pm the night before). You may drink plain, NOT flavored, water.
What happens on the morning of the test?
When you are ready to leave your home to have your test done, be sure to remember to bring:
- Your laboratory slips
- Your glucose drink (unless the lab provides it)
- Reading material/book/magazine
- Earbuds if you want to listen to music while you’re waiting (optional)
VERY IMPORTANT! DO NOT DRINK the glucose drink until you arrive at the lab. The lab technician will tell you when to drink the glucose drink.
AT THE LAB:
First: A fasting blood glucose test is done. This is a simple blood test that checks your blood sugar before you drink the glucose drink.
Next: The lab technician will tell you to drink the glucose drink. It will taste very sweet. It’s important to drink the whole amount fairly quickly.
Waiting: After you finish drinking all of the glucose drink, you’ll be asked to sit until it’s time for your next blood test (about 2 hours later). You may read, listen to music, talk, or do another quiet activity while you are waiting.
VERY IMPORTANT! DO NOT EAT or DRINK anything except plain water while you’re waiting.
AFTER THE OGTT: Once your tests are done and the lab technician gives you permission to leave, you may go about your normal daily activities. You can go back to school or work, eat, drink, and do the regular exercise that you normally do.
When can I expect to get my test results?
The lab will usually send your results to your health care provider within a few days. You may already have a follow–up appointment scheduled or your health care provider may call you or email you to review your results and let you know if there are any concerns.
What do the results mean?
The first test or “baseline” glucose test is your blood glucose level before you drank the glucose drink. Normal fasting blood glucose levels are less than 100 mg/dl. Your health care provider may also check your insulin level. A high level of insulin means that your body does not use insulin well (even if your glucose levels are normal). The second result of your 2–hour blood glucose test measures your glucose two hours after you drank the glucose drink. This level should be less than 140mg/dl. Normal levels of glucose mean that your body is able to use glucose the way it’s supposed to. Higher than normal levels of glucose mean that you have impaired glucose tolerance (IGT). This means that your body has a hard time using glucose, and puts you at risk for diabetes. If your glucose levels continue to be very high, it could mean that you may be developing diabetes. Your HCP will talk to you more about what this means for you and if treatment is needed. | <urn:uuid:4a9d7ab2-8a58-4636-aa36-0cc5696d16a0> | CC-MAIN-2022-05 | https://youngwomenshealth.org/2021/08/26/oral-glucose-tolerance-test-ogtt/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-05/segments/1642320302715.38/warc/CC-MAIN-20220121010736-20220121040736-00644.warc.gz | en | 0.932001 | 1,448 | 3.328125 | 3 |
Today’s BBC news features the wonderful painting Danseuse Bleue et Contrebasses, which was once considered to be one of the greatest works painted by Edgar Degas. The small oil painting depicting a ballet dancer on stage, was bought as a Degas from a reputable London dealer in 1945, but failed to make the official record of the catalogue raisonne. The painting was declared a fake by a leading Degas expert in the 1950s, after it was deemed that the dancer’s features and composition, was atypical of Degas’ unique painting style.
According to reports on BBC news, cutting edge forensic techniques have now made it possible to establish the authenticity of the work, in a way that was never possible before. As a result, paintings by some of the greatest artists that were either unknown, or considered fakes, are now being re-evaluated.
The once ‘dubious Degas’, Danseuse Bleue et Contrebasses, has since been declared authentic after tests found the paint contained lead (consistant with paint used during Degas’ day), and did not contain titanium white – a constituent of paint used after Degas’ time. Modern photographs were also taken of dancers at the Paris Opera, to evaluate the body composition and the reality of the dancer’s position.
The fascinating investigation of the painting’s authenticity will feature in the second series of BBC One’s ‘Fake Or Fortune?’ which begins tomorrow on Sunday 16 September.
I will be looking forward to watching the programme on iPlayer. | <urn:uuid:fe495d0b-ded2-4d8f-8dc3-a7156e418cfc> | CC-MAIN-2019-04 | https://livingonaslipperyslope.com/2012/09/15/a-dubious-degas-danseuse-bleue-et-contrebasses/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-04/segments/1547584350539.86/warc/CC-MAIN-20190123193004-20190123215004-00306.warc.gz | en | 0.966559 | 331 | 2.53125 | 3 |
Surface or Air? The Great Debate Continues
By WILLIAM K. STEVENS
Published: February 29, 2000
When the debate over global warming burst into prominence more than a decade ago, scientists based their assessment that the earth's temperature was rising on a single set of observations, those at the planet's surface. Dr. John R. Christy and Dr. Roy W. Spencer were troubled by that.
Both had been weather observers, and both knew that the surface temperature readings were subject to multiple kinds of distortion -- including poor placement of thermometers, spotty coverage of some regions and the heat emitted by the concrete of cities. So Dr. Christy and Dr. Spencer, atmospheric scientists at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, respectively, began wondering: could global temperatures be measured by earth satellite? If so, the problem of distorted data might be eliminated.
They decided to find out, and discovered that in some ways the satellite and surface trends roughly matched. Both sets of measurements found substantial warming over Northern Hemisphere continents, for instance, and the timing of year-to-year temperature fluctuations was about the same in both. But unlike the surface record, the satellites revealed no underlying warming trend for much of the free atmosphere, up to about five miles, mainly in the tropics. In fact, the raw numbers showed a cooling there.
It was this disclosure on which skeptics seized in their efforts to use the satellite record to cast doubt on the idea of global warming. Later, the satellite record was adjusted to filter out the effects of natural, short-term climate fluctuations like the El Nino phenomenon and temporary cooling produced by sun-blocking haze from volcanic eruptions. Later still, the record was corrected to eliminate distortions caused by the movements of the satellites.
Now the satellite record showed a slight warming, but one much smaller than the apparent surface warming.
Other analysts had for some time been examining the surface record and trying to eliminate or compensate for some of the imperfections that had originally concerned Dr. Spencer and Dr. Christy.
Enter the National Research Council, the research arm of the National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Christy and Dr. Spencer were members of the panel. In January, it published its analysis of the disparity.
It found that the remaining margin of error in the surface measurements was now probably about one-tenth as large as the observed trend over the last century, and that the surface warming over the 20-year period of the satellite measurements, from 1979 to 1998, was ''undoubtedly real.'' That warming, it reported, was equal to 2.25 degrees to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit per century -- ''substantially greater'' than the surface warming over the preceding century as a whole.
By contrast, the study panel found that over the same 20-year period, the satellite record showed an average global warming rate in the lower to middle free atmosphere of zero degrees to 1.8 degrees per century.
How real was the discrepancy? The research council's panel of scientists found that the level of uncertainty inherent in obtaining and analyzing temperature observations was almost as large as the disparity, so it was difficult to know.
To the extent the disparity exists, what has caused it? The panel said this was also unclear. Errors in measurement and analysis of data could account for some of the difference, the group said, but concluded that some of the apparent disparity was probably real.
It noted that surface temperatures and temperatures aloft were subject to different influences and were often ''decoupled'' from one another; that is, the surface and the upper air do not necessarily behave alike. For example, the group said, sun-blocking haze from volcanic eruptions is believed to cool the upper air more than the surface. In 1991 there was an eruption, the biggest of the century from a climatic standpoint.
Short-term effects like these should probably wash out over the long run, the panel said. Therefore, it cautioned, a 20-year temperature record is ''not necessarily indicative of the long-term behavior of the climate system.'' (That is true not only of the satellite record but also of the unusually sharp spike in surface temperatures over the two decades.)
In fact, said the study panel's chairman, Dr. John Michael Wallace of the University of Washington in Seattle, weather balloons confirm the disparity between the surface and the upper air over the last 20 years, but show an upper-air warming comparable to that of the surface over a longer period of the last 40 years.
''The very likely possibility,'' Dr. Wallace said, ''is that in the next decade we might see a different behavior'' than what has been revealed over the last two decades.
But for now, the great satellite debate remains at least partly unsettled. | <urn:uuid:21a20ec0-0870-4323-a052-faff5fe4b670> | CC-MAIN-2016-36 | http://www.nytimes.com/2000/02/29/science/surface-or-air-the-great-debate-continues.html?pagewanted=2&src=pm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-36/segments/1471982292887.6/warc/CC-MAIN-20160823195812-00132-ip-10-153-172-175.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96268 | 978 | 3.25 | 3 |
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1.Describe three ways in which the Federal Reserve can change the money supply.
2.If the Federal Reserve is going to adjust all of these tools during an economy that is growing too quickly, what changes would they make?
3.If the Federal Reserve is going to adjust all of these tools during an economic recession, what changes would they make?
4.What changes, if any, to the current condition of these tools would you make at the next meeting of the Federal Reserve? Explain why and the benefits/drawbacks of this strategy.
1. State the three ways in which the Federal Reserve can change the money supply and explain clearly how each approach is expected to work in changing money supply.
1a. Tool 1 and how it works in affecting money supply.
1b. Tool 2 and how it works in affecting money supply.
1c. Tool 3 and how it works in affecting money supply.
Parts 2 and 3 in table
Tool 2.Proposed change by Fed when economy growing too quickly 3. Proposed change by Fed in economic recession
4A What is the current condition of these tools (in our present day economy (cite sources of information)?
4B What changes, if any, would you make at the next meeting of the Federal Reserve?
4C. Explain why you would make the changes (or not make any) as stated in 4B and the benefits/drawbacks of this strategy.
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How the Fed controls the money supply and why it pursues different policies at different times.
The Fed uses open market operations, adjustment of the federal funds rate, and changes to reserve requirements, which is the percentage of deposits that banks must keep on hand, rather than loaning out.
To slow an overheated economy, the Fed needs to make money less available. It sells bonds which lowers the money available at lending institutions. It increases the federal funds rate, which makes banks less likely to borrow, and it also could increase reserve requirements which ...
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Quiz will help you to review some basics of microeconomics and macroeconomics which are often not understood.
Discussion about various pricing techniques of profit-seeking firms.
This quiz provides a review of the basic microeconomic concepts. Students can test their understanding of major economic issues.
The quiz tests the basic concepts of demand, supply, and equilibrium in a free market.
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|The Very Highest Quality Diamond Information...|
|Diamonds - The 4 C's - Clarity|
What Are Inclusions?
Geologically, an inclusion is "a solid fragment, liquid globule, or pocket of gas enclosed in a mineral or rock."
In gemmology, this definition is usually extended to include any other feature of the gemstone which impedes the free passage of light through the stone. This includes changes in crystal growth direction (e.g. twinning), and external features, such as fissures which run from the surface into the stone, naats , trigons, and zones of colour absorption (e.g. the very common colour banding seen in sapphire).
Are All Inclusions Visible?
No, not all inclusions are visible either with the naked eye, or under the standard 10 times magnification used by gemmologists. Many consumers believe that inclusions are things which are visible to the naked eye, and that if no inclusions can be seen, then the stone is perfect. Some stones contain many areas of "twinning", where the growth direction of the crystal has changed during its formation, and these areas can absorb or refract light in such a manner as to reduce the brilliance of the stone. Other stones contain large numbers of small inclusions, some visible under 10x magnification, others not, because they are too small. These clouds of microscopic inclusions can reduce the passage of light through a stone so severely that the stone looks "dead", with no brilliance or fire whatsoever. Such stones usually have a slightly cloudy look to the naked eye.
What Are Carbon Spots?
A common belief, shared by some jewellery shop staff, is that any black marks visible in diamonds are composed of carbon. Diamonds are composed purely of carbon. While it is possible that some inclusions may be of graphite, the commonest form of carbon, or amorphous carbon, such inclusions are quite rare. Dark inclusions in diamond can include other diamonds, olivine, garnet, diopside, pyrrhotite, pentlandite, pyrite, ilmenite, rutile, silica, bronzite, spinel, serpentine, biotite, phlogopite, chlorite, calcite, haematite, goethite, and iron oxides.
In recent decades, the GIA, Gemmological Institute of America, has influenced other gemstone grading bodies, such as CIBJO, throughout the world, and most countries now use the same standards as the GIA for diamond clarity, so that the GIA scale has become virtually an international standard. There still remain vast differences between commercial grading and laboratory grading.
De Beers supply leaflets and showcards for diamond clarity grading, but as their aim is undoubtedly to increase demand for higher quality diamonds at higher prices, the De Beers charts contain some distortion. They typically graphically represent the higher grade bands as wider than the lower grades, whereas in reality it should be the other way round, and the grades below P3 are not even mentioned, as though they do not exist.
We present the following table of diamond clarity grades:-
|GIA||UK / CIBJO||Description||Clarity||Our Comments|
|IF||Loupe Clean||Internally Flawless||Internally Flawless|
|VVS1||VVS1||Very Very Small Inclusions||No Visible Inclusions|
|VVS2||VVS2||Very Very Small Inclusions||No Visible Inclusions|
|VS1||VS1||Very Small Inclusions||No Visible Inclusions|
|VS2||VS2||Very Small Inclusions||No Visible Inclusions|
|SI1||SI1||Small Inclusions||No Visible Inclusions|
|SI2||SI2||Small Inclusions||No Visible Inclusions|
|I1||P1 - Piqué1||SI3||Barely Visible Inclusions|
|I1||P1 - Piqué1||First Piqué||Barely Visible Inclusions|
|I2||P2 - Piqué2||Second Piqué||Easily Visible Inclusions|
|I3||P3 - Piqué3||Third Piqué||Very Easily Visible Inclusions|
|Heavily Spotted||Very Heavily Included|
Comments On Our Chart
The clarity bands from IF to VS could be described as unnecessarily good, or luxury grades. In these grades, diamonds suffer no noticeable loss of brilliance through lack of clarity. Any diamond in these grades should be very bright and sparkly. Inclusions are difficult to see when using a 10x magnification in good light, and are not visible to the naked eye.
In SI1 and SI2, the same comments apply, except that the inclusions are fairly easy to see under 10x magnification, and there may be some, barely discernable lack of brilliance.
SI3 is a relatively recently invented grade. It is not recognised by the GIA or many other laboratories, but is in fairly common commercial use, and is intended to imply that the diamond is better than P1, but logically, it means that the diamond is below SI2, and therefore should apply to stones which are almost SI2. We include it in our table because it does have practical use.
Diamonds which fall into the Piqué bracket have inclusions which are visible to the naked eye. In our opinion, the dividing line between SI2 and P1 is a very important one. The word Piqué is French, and means "pricked".
In P1 stones the inclusions should be difficult to see, or very minor.
P2 stones would have inclusions which were more easily seen. P3 stones would have very easily visible inclusion.
All stones graded P1 to P3 should still be bright and attractive.
Laboratories are not often asked to grade diamonds lower than P3, so they do not have grades below P3. There are many attractive and valuable diamonds which fall into lower grades, and the traditional terms for these are shown. Diamonds described as "Spotted" or "Heavily Spotted" can be expected to have more, or larger, inclusions than those graded P3, but will still retain some brilliance, and be reasonably attractive.
Diamonds falling into the "Rejection" or "Near Gem" category will have very limited, if any, brilliance, and could be considered as "fun" diamonds. They have little commercial value, and often sell for less than their cutting cost.
The blank "Clarity" column is reserved for a graphical representation which will follow shortly.
Diamond 4C's Tour - Next Stop - Carat Weight
Diamond Glossary - An A to Z of Diamonds
|...at the Lowest Possible Price|
32 - 36 Harrowside, Blackpool, Lancashire, FY4 1RJ, England.|
Telephone (44) - (0) 1253 - 343081; Fax 408058; E-mail:
The URL for our main page is: http://www.24carat.co.uk/index.html
|Web Design by Snoop| | <urn:uuid:4f797dbf-9ffd-4502-8644-5c7a0a489821> | CC-MAIN-2018-47 | http://whitegold.co.uk/diamondsclarity.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-47/segments/1542039743960.44/warc/CC-MAIN-20181118011216-20181118033216-00193.warc.gz | en | 0.910422 | 1,531 | 3.5 | 4 |
Symmetrically opposite from the town’s Parrish Church was the City Hall. The cornerstone for the building was laid in 1716. The first construction phase was finished in 1721 using Johann Michael Ludwig Rohrer’s design.
Peter Ernst Rohrer built a one story extension on the back of the building in 1750, which was used as a jail. The five axis wide gable end is pointed in direction of the square between the church and the city hall. The main floor was originally an open hall and where there are walled in arcades today, it was accessible from all sides. An old, still functioning clockwork mechanism from the St. Alexander Town Church can be seen there today
In 1899, a new city hall extension was built. Next to the administrative offices of the office of the mayor is the chamber of the municipal council today, with the window fitted in 1962/63 according to the design by Georg Meistermann (1911 to 1990).
Children discover Rastatt:
During the time of the margraves, the mayor had his office in the city hall. However, the sovereign was the absolute ruler in the baroque period and he made all of the decisions. Even the mayor had to do what he was told.
The city hall used to have no walls on the ground floor and was used as a market hall during bad weather. The people in Rastatt ate bread, meat, fish, poultry and eggs and first and foremost anything that could be made from grains. They also had fruits and vegetables in the summer
You can see a wine- or cart ladder in the coat of arms at the gable of the city hall. This was put there to make it easier to unload barrels from transport carts with. The wine ladder shows us that Rastatt was already an important wine trading place more than 500 years ago. Salt, which was very precious and extreme expensive was also traded in Rastatt.. The chef of the Palace kitchen also bought his supplies at the Rastatt market.
Farmers came with their carts from the entire surrounding region to offer vegetables and fruit in addition to grains; they also sold pots, dishes, shoes, pants and shirts as well as work tools for use in the fields and in the house. | <urn:uuid:3a7a0c8a-1b79-4ab0-b588-45a73c2bf949> | CC-MAIN-2024-10 | https://rastatt.de/,Len/2704641_2713070_2787922_2999648_2910558 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2024-10/segments/1707947475833.51/warc/CC-MAIN-20240302152131-20240302182131-00805.warc.gz | en | 0.985865 | 467 | 2.8125 | 3 |
Slave trade opposition
Sultan said became increasingly concerned that British attempts to abolish the slave trade would weaken his power in the region. In 1842 he sent his envoy Ali Bin Nasur to London on the ship el-sultani to plead his case. Said's gifts for Queen Victoria included emeralds, cashmere shawls, pearl necklaces and ten Arab horses.
In reply, the British government told the Zanzibari ruler that it wished to abolish the slave trade to Arabia, Oman, Persia and the Red Sea. To soften the blow Queen Victoria gave Said a state coach and a silver-gilt tea service. (The state coach arrived in pieces and had to be assembled. It was still unused a year later, as Zanzibar had no roads. The tea service was considered too ornate to use and was taken to the British consulate for safe keeping.)
Britain continued putting restrictions on the slave trade. In October 1845 Said was virtually forced by Captain Hamerton to sign another anti-slavery treaty, which allowed slave transport only between lines of latitude 1° 57" S and 9° 20" S (between Lamu and Kilwa, the northern and southern limits of Said's dominions on the coast). This meant slaves could still be imported into Zanzibar but could no longer be exported to Oman.
Ships from the British navy were employed to help enforce the treaty by capturing any dhows carrying slaves. When a dhow was captured, it was set on fire and the slaves were taken to Aden, India, or a free-slave community on the mainland coast, such as English Point in Mombasa. However, with only four ships to patrol a huge area of sea, the British navy found it hard to enforce the treaty, so the slave dhows continued to sail. Ships from France, Germany, Spain, Portugal and America also continued to carry slaves, as there were still huge profits to be made. And on the mainland slave traders continued to push further into the interior. | <urn:uuid:6a6032e6-c72d-4d2f-93bd-b657782acd11> | CC-MAIN-2018-26 | http://www.zanzibar-travel-guide.com/bradt_guide.asp?bradt=1595 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-26/segments/1529267863463.3/warc/CC-MAIN-20180620050428-20180620070428-00120.warc.gz | en | 0.98251 | 417 | 3.78125 | 4 |
Practice this breathing exercise with your child. The playful poses teach the younger children to breathe properly and to control their breath. Breathing is the basis of several athletic and artistic activities; such as singing or running. In our every day life, breathing enables us to control our emotions. Breathing is necessary to our yoga practice because each component of a yoga pose corresponds to an inhale or an exhale. Breathing sessions can be practiced anywhere, anytime.
Breathing and emotions interact: feelings affect breathing and vice-versa.
- Sit on your heels, with your legs bent.
- Bring your palms together above your head.
- Go as far down as you can, and place your hands away from you.
- You are going to envision yourself as a snake and hiss just like one. Place your tongue against your palate. Slowly raise your head while inhaling, letting the air flow between your tongue and your palate.
- When your arms are vertical, bring your head back down as you exhale while letting air out and hissing continually. You become a snake hissing to protect itself.
- You can repeat this exercise several times, calmly. | <urn:uuid:73e73a39-06ba-4f63-a18d-9841edd793fb> | CC-MAIN-2022-27 | https://free-finally.com/2022/06/15/beginners-yoga-for-children-breathing-snake-samasana/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-27/segments/1656103984681.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20220702040603-20220702070603-00274.warc.gz | en | 0.941106 | 241 | 3.21875 | 3 |
Did you know that a group of butterflies is known as a 'flutter' or sometimes a 'kaleidoscope'? This is one of our most detailed circle colouring pages, and we think the end results will be stunning...
Butterfly Colouring Pages
Here are some printable butterfly colouring pages - one simple colouring page that can be coloured in as is, or used as an outline for adding detail, and another showing a girl catching butterflies with plenty of detail for older kids.
Kids can colour in the butterflies scene on this lovely colouring card and give it to someone special...
This is a lovely colouring page for older children, who will enjoy colouring in all the details on the two butterflies.
Butterflies are a true wonder of nature, and you can make this one even more fantastic by colouring it in with some colourful pens or crayons and making it bright and beautiful!
We have quite a few pretty butterfly colouring pages to choose from just like this one, so why not colour in a few different butterflies then display them together?
This fancy butterfly looks quite pretty already, but it'll look even better once the kids have used some bright crayons or pens to colour it in!
Butterflies make a perfect subject for colouring pages, as they're so beautiful and colourful in real life - and the kids can use lots of different colours on this butterfly colouring page.
Learn about nature and have some colouring fun too with our butterfly life cycle colouring page. Choose from two versions below: labelled, or blank.
This colouring page illustrates the life cycle of a butterfly, starting with eggs on the left and progressing through larva / caterpillar and chrysalis.
Teach the kids about the life cycle of the butterfly with these lovely colouring pages. There are 4 pages in this set, and you can choose from a ready labelled version, or blank so they can add their own labels.
This is one of our trickier maths facts colouring pages, but the kids will be rewarded with a beautiful butterfly if they solve the sums correctly.
Before children colour in our butterfly they have the added challenge of tracing the dotty lines on our cute butterfly tracing page.
This catching butterflies colouring card feels full of the joys of summer making it perfect for a summer birthday.
Encourage the kids to let their imagination go wild with this design a butterfly colouring page - or use the blank to study real butterflies and capture their markings.
We've provided the outlines of lots of pretty butterflies. Now all the kids need to do is draw on some symmetrical designs and then colour them in!
These lovely outlines - of a bird and butterfly - are excellent for doodling around! Younger children could choose one pattern for the inside and another for the background, while older kids can sub-divide the shapes and get as intricate as they like.
This pretty summer fairy is surrounded by butterflies and flowers and is a delight for little girls to colour in. | <urn:uuid:1601d30d-e4e1-4a2a-a07b-567a3eecc16f> | CC-MAIN-2021-04 | https://www.activityvillage.co.uk/butterfly-colouring-pages | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-04/segments/1610703527850.55/warc/CC-MAIN-20210121194330-20210121224330-00388.warc.gz | en | 0.919376 | 622 | 2.921875 | 3 |
Abnormal menstrual bleeding can mean different things to different women, in terms of the amount of bleeding per period, the length of a monthly cycle, the number of days of bleeding, amount of cramping or pain experienced, type of discharge and various other factors. It is important for each woman to know what is normal for her, so that she can quickly detect when things are not normal.
While for one woman it may be perfectly normal to have a 35 day cycle with 4 days of bleeding, for another woman it may be as normal to have a 25 day cycle with 6 days of bleeding (though the ‘average’ is supposed to be a 28 day cycle with 5 days of bleeding). Similarly one woman may bleed comparatively heavily and have a longer period whereas another may have only light spotting and have only 3 days of bleeding.
So ‘abnormal’ here means abnormal for a given woman; or a change (increase, decrease, frequency, etc.) of any sort in a woman’s monthly cycle or things like mid-cycle bleeding.
Abnormal menstrual bleeding could be due to various causes. Here are some of the major ones.
1. Hormonal Imbalance
This could be experienced at the beginning of a female’s reproductive life (puberty) or at the end (menopause). The fluctuations in hormonal levels experienced at these junctures of life are normal and in a majority of cases will settle and normalize in time and without significant intervention. However, other hormonal imbalances should always be checked out and treatment, if any required should be started.
2. Birth Control
Any hormonal form of birth control will cause some changes in a woman cycle in terms of amount or frequency of bleeding. While some intrauterine devices increase bleeding somewhat, others reduce it and may even eliminate it. The oral pill also tends to reduce bleeding slightly and menstrual cramps very considerably.
Implantation bleeding is normal in many women and occurs about 10 days after conception. However if the bleeding is caused by a miscarriage or by an ectopic pregnancy, this needs emergency medical attention.
4. Gynecological Conditions
There are various conditions that may cause abnormal bleeding – polyps, fibroids, endometriosis, benign (non-malignant) or malignant (cancerous) tumors, certain infections such as pelvic inflammatory disease or lupus, and so on.
It is best to have any abnormal menstrual bleeding investigated to try finding the underlying cause. Whereas some may be perfectly innocuous, other conditions could be life threatening. | <urn:uuid:bfbf01dd-d401-4420-8c80-edae5c19e612> | CC-MAIN-2023-06 | http://www.womenhealthjournal.com/abnormal-menstrual-bleeding-what-could-be-the-causes | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-06/segments/1674764499934.48/warc/CC-MAIN-20230201112816-20230201142816-00106.warc.gz | en | 0.911944 | 530 | 3.203125 | 3 |
Back to school is an exciting time for high school students— but it can also produce school anxiety for many young people.
The season reunites teens with best friends and favorite teachers, as well as means a return to highly anticipated dances and fun-filled sporting events.
Of course, there is also plenty of frenzied studying, late nights writing endless essays, and double shot Starbucks espressos. If your student is high school senior applying to college, add college applications and scholarship to the mix.
The combination can lead to anxiety… lots of it.
“Given the array of changes and uncertainties facing a normal teenager, anxiety often hums along like background noise. For some teenagers, anxiety becomes a chronic, highpitched state, interfering with their ability to attend school and to perform up to their academic potential. Participating in extracurricular activities, making and keeping friends, and maintaining a supportive, flexible relationship within the family become difficult. Sometimes anxiety is limited to generalized, free-floating feelings of uneasiness. At other times, it develops into panic attacks and phobias,” says the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry.
Is your teen suffering from anxiety?
For parents, the difference between general “senior stress” and acute anxiety may be difficult to determine. However, symptoms may include:
- excessive fears and worries,
- feelings of inner restlessness, and
- a tendency to be excessively wary and vigilant.
Even in the absence of an actual threat, some teenagers feel nervousness, restlessness, or feelings of anxiousness.
Stress affects more than just your teen’s mood
Stress produces a physiological reaction in the body. Specifically, hormones are released which can slow down digestion, induce shaking, tunnel vision, accelerated breathing and heart rate. This is commonly referred to as the “fight or flight response.”
The fight or flight response, explains Dr. Tian Dayton in the Huffington Post, “was designed to be used in times of danger, not throughout the day. But the body can’t tell the difference between real and fabricated fears, between the stress of a bad phone call, a traffic jam and an elephant charging — it will react to all with the same highly-geared stress response evolved by early man. Our stress response is inextricably tied up with our survival system, which is triggered into action through fear.”
While fear of a poor Calculus grade and fear of being eaten by a tiger are not the same, the body simply can’t tell the difference.
How parents can help teens deal with stress and anxiety
- Stop overscheduling. Kids are expected to pay attention in school for seven hours, excel at extracurricular activities and sports, come home, finish homework, and go to bed, then do it all again the next day with no downtime.
- Play! Younger kids will do this naturally, but older kids may forget how to simply play. Some ideas include: riding your bikes, throwing around the baseball, wrestling and hiking.
- Catch up on the ZZZs. Sleep is vital for everyone, regardless of age. Proper rest helps minimize stress, boost moods, and even improve school performance. Creating a restful bedroom environment (no electronics!) is crucial.
- Manage parental stress. Stress really is contagious!
- Start the morning off right. Disorganization is a major contributor to stress levels for everyone in the house. Prepare the night before for the next day. Lay out clothes and shoes, pack backpacks, prepare lunch and pop in the fridge, sign all papers, notes, and permission slips, and make sure there is a healthy breakfast available.
Augustine Hills School: Where every student can succeed
At Augustine Hills School in Wilmington, Delaware, success is a learned behavior. The 1:1 teacher to student ratio means that your child can listen without distraction. They can speak and ask questions without fear. They can try and fail. Then, they can try again.
This revolutionary style of learning emphasizes academic success, mentoring relationships, and social remediation, if necessary. The personalized curriculum, combined with a nurturing and supportive environment, inspire a true love for learning.
Contact us to schedule a no-obligation school tour. Augustine Hills School is open M-F, 8:30-5:00 for tours and informational meetings. | <urn:uuid:d257873b-841a-402c-abc4-6d34f178701c> | CC-MAIN-2023-14 | https://augustinehills.com/resources/anxiety/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-14/segments/1679296949689.58/warc/CC-MAIN-20230331210803-20230401000803-00676.warc.gz | en | 0.938761 | 913 | 2.765625 | 3 |
This mechanical engineer resume will give you tips on resume writing. A mechanical engineer deals with all types of machines. They work with air conditioners, elevators, printing presses etc. They are concerned with the mechanism which converts, transmit or uses power. A mechanical engineer has to co-ordinate with other engineers also and thus needs to have a good command over his communication skills. To be a mechanical engineer, you should have a bachelor's degree in engineering. A master's degree in mechanical engineering is always preferred.
When exploring mechanical engineering resume examples, you need to be very aware of the many differences in information content requirements for different jobs. When writing your resume, consider the information needs of the employers in detail.
Mechanical Engineering resumes | Indeed Resume Search
Mechanical engineers research, design, develop, manufacture, and test tools, engines, machines, and other mechanical devices. Mechanical engineering is one of the broadest engineering disciplines. Engineers in this discipline work on power-producing machines such as electric generators, internal combustion engines, and steam and gas turbines. They also work on power-using machines, such as refrigeration and air-conditioning equipment, machine tools, material handling systems, elevators and escalators, industrial production equipment, and robots used in manufacturing. Mechanical engineers also design tools that other engineers need for their work. In addition, mechanical engineers work in manufacturing or agriculture production, maintenance, or technical sales, and many become administrators or managers. | <urn:uuid:e0c650ff-9f8f-428c-b4ae-e5dec0dd1215> | CC-MAIN-2018-13 | http://cv.tcdhalls.com/mechanical-engineering-resume.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-13/segments/1521257647777.59/warc/CC-MAIN-20180322053608-20180322073608-00257.warc.gz | en | 0.949232 | 295 | 2.609375 | 3 |
The cranberry, native to North America, has long been hailed as a cure and preventative for urinary tract infections but how much truth is there in this?
In the past, cranberries were linked to UTIs and cystitis for two reasons: firstly because of their acidity (cranberries contain a range of acids: citric, malic, benzoic, quinic) which was thought kill off bacteria, and secondly because they contain high levels of Proanthocyanidins and Flavonols (thought to decrease adherence of E-coli with fimbriae to the cell walls).
We now know that many strains of bacteria, including strains of E.coli (the bacterium which causes of the vast majority of UTI’s), actually thrive in an acid environment. Also, studies have shown that, whilst Proanthocyanidins and Flavonols do increase the levels of energy that E-Coli needs to expend to attach to cells, they are not able to prevent bacteria from multiplying. They have been shown to be successful, to some degree, in protecting against Streptococcus mutans and H-Pylori bacteria but the European Food Safety Authority in 2011 found claims about Proanthocyanidins in relation to E-Coli in UTIs to be unsubstantiated.
Nonetheless, testing of the properties of cranberries in relation to UTIs found a component that could in fact be more helpful: D-Mannose.
D-Mannose occurs naturally, in small amounts, in cranberries but needs to be taken in larger quantities to be effective against E.coli. In order to gain any effectiveness from drinking cranberry juice as a preventative for UTIs, you would have to drink two 220ml glasses of cranberry juice three times a day (or take a cranberry extract 300-400mg twice a day) for a number of months (Lynch, 2006). Though studies have shown that even at this level of consumption cranberries may only prevent a maximum of 50% of UTIs from occurring (Jepson et al, 2012).
Following the application made by Ocean Spray related to their cranberry products, theEFSA Panel concluded in 2009 "the evidence provided is not sufficient to establish a cause and effect relationship between the consumption of O S cranberry products and the reduction f the risk of UTI in women by inhibiting the adhesion of certain bacteria in the urinary tract." The full Summary of Opinion given by EFSA is given on their website:
Sweet Cures ’ Anna talks about her battle with cystitis. Read More | <urn:uuid:d493d679-b352-44c3-b40d-189b6f571553> | CC-MAIN-2020-16 | https://www.sweet-cures.com/research/bladder-health/cranberry-juice-for-uti-and-cystitis.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-16/segments/1585371611051.77/warc/CC-MAIN-20200405213008-20200406003508-00324.warc.gz | en | 0.955815 | 541 | 3.34375 | 3 |
Project Foundry is an online project based learning (PBL) management system that allows students to design projects, keep track of deadlines and communicate with advisors and their parents what they have been working on throughout the day. Project Foundry is used by PBL schools throughout the country. Designed and built by practitioners who understand the project process, NLCS students can more easily keep on top of what academic requirements they must complete, how much credit they’ve earned, and access their transcripts, graduation standards, and projects.
Any given day, an NLCS student will use Project Foundry to:
- Develop a project proposal for a new project.
- Explain what she/he worked on through the day by logging about what he/she completed in a specific project.
- Write a journal entry to his/her advisor
- Examine what graduation standards still need to be completed.
Advisors, students, and even parents can have Project Foundry accounts to track progress! Email Nick at firstname.lastname@example.org to request a parent account. Please include your first and last name, your email address, and your student’s first and last name. Basically, students use Project Foundry to log at least hours every day, every week, and every year to stay on track. These hours turn into credits when students finalize projects or finish seminars with a passing grade.
Check out http://www.projectfoundry.org/ for more information on Project Foundry. | <urn:uuid:7b6efc91-c4cd-45dd-b2c3-0104aed60925> | CC-MAIN-2018-39 | http://nlcschool.org/academics/project-foundry/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-39/segments/1537267156524.34/warc/CC-MAIN-20180920155933-20180920180333-00494.warc.gz | en | 0.956059 | 306 | 2.65625 | 3 |
Everyone seeks good health, peace and happiness in the holiday season. To that end, the SoFHA medical team wishes to highlight three common pitfalls that people sometimes ignore. Keep these in mind as you prepare for and partake in holiday festivities and seasonal travel.
Pitfall ONE: Be mindful of harmful food-borne bacteria that could be present at holiday buffets and meals.
Remember to apply two basic rules when serving or partaking in seasonal food fare:
- Always keep hot foods hot and cold foods cold. Bacteria can double every 20 minutes in food at room temperature. Hot foods should be maintained at a temperature of 140 °F in slow cookers or chafing dishes. Keep cold foods at 40 °F or colder by putting them in dishes nested in ice.
- Remember the two-hour rule: Don’t leave perishable food at room temperature for more than two hours, or bacteria can start to grow. If you can’t recall how long the apple salad (made with mayonnaise) has been out, don’t risk making your guests sick: Throw it out.
Pitfall TWO: Make sound electrical decisions when decorating your home.
Don’t put your home and family members at risk by being more interested in sparkle and glitz than in heeding good common-sense electrical safety. One good example: Outdoor electric lights and decorations should be plugged into circuits protected by ground fault circuit interrupters.
- The Electrical Safety Foundation International, based in Arlington, Virginia, has posted a downloadable flyer online that lists the 10 most important safety rules to follow when decorating. Click on “In The Right Light – Decorate Your Home Safely During the Holidays” to review. It could save your life or the lives of family members.
Pitfall THREE: Don’t forget to protect yourself from germs during air travel.
The problem areas on airplanes are the chair upholstery, the tray table, the armrests and the toilet handle, where bacteria such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and E. coli can live for up to a week if aircraft cabins aren’t properly cleaned. This is what microbiologists and engineers at Auburn University (Alabama) uncovered after conducting a two-year study in 2014. Take the following precautions when flying so you’ll be less likely to come into contact with dangerous bacteria:
- Always carry alcohol-based hand sanitizers and disinfectant wipes. Take time to decontaminate where you’re sitting by using a disinfectant wipe to clean the armrest and tray table.
- Use a tissue or a paper towel to open bathroom doorknobs and touch toilet handles.
- Avoid touching your hands to your face at all times, particularly your eyes, as tear ducts are a fast route for germs to the nose and throat.
Have a beautiful holiday season everyone! | <urn:uuid:59463357-e28c-4db6-b007-4e0b1200cddc> | CC-MAIN-2018-26 | http://sofha.net/health-tips/avoiding-3-common-holiday-pitfalls | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-26/segments/1529267864546.30/warc/CC-MAIN-20180622143142-20180622163142-00046.warc.gz | en | 0.912414 | 614 | 2.578125 | 3 |
Citizenship and the Armed Forces:
Why Repealing of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Was Critical for LGBTQ Equality
An address to the American Legion Kenneth H. Nash Post 8, Washington D.C. on Veterans Day, 2021:
I would like to reflect on how inclusion strengthens our nation as we mark the tenth anniversary of the repeal of “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” the law enacted in 1993 that banned lesbian, gay and bisexual service members from coming out to anyone, anywhere, anytime, including one’s parents, clergy, colleagues, friends, and doctors.
Today, as we honor those who are serving or have served our nation, I would like you to consider this — that the repeal of “Don’t ask, don’t tell” allowed gay Americans, for the first time, to be embraced as full citizens. Historically, citizenship has been tied directly to military service.
When our country was founded, only white males had the right to vote, own property, and serve in elected office. In 1792, Congress enacted a statute that required every “free, able-bodied white male citizen” to join the militia. Blacks were not considered citizens and not allowed to join.
In the infamous Dred Scott case in 1857, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney ruled that slaves could not be citizens, even those who had been freed and lived in free states, in part because the 1792 statute denied them the opportunity to serve.
Civil war ensued. At first, even the Union Army refused the service of freedmen. As the need grew, the Union relented and recruited black men to join the Army in segregated units.
In 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation not only freed the slaves, it expressly granted them the right to serve. By the end of the war, almost 200,000 black soldiers and sailors had fought for the Union. “Nothing else made Negro citizenship conceivable, but the record of the Negro soldier as a fighter,” said noted scholar W.E.B. DuBois at the time.
The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, repudiated Dred Scott. “All persons born or naturalized in the United States…are citizens of the United States,” the Amendment says. It also provides that no state shall deprive any person due process or equal protection under the law. The Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection and due process is firmly rooted in a history that connects military service to citizenship.
African Americans continued to distinguish themselves militarily in World War II. The Tuskegee Airmen were among the bravest of fighter pilots in our nation’s history. Yet, segregation persisted until, in 1948, President Harry Truman issued Executive Order 9981 requiring integration.
This was before Brown v. Board of Education. It was before the desegregation of busses, water fountains, swimming pools, and hotels. The military led the way.
The civil rights struggle for African Americans isn’t the same as the fight for LGBTQ civil rights. There are important differences. Both histories, though, raise important parallels connecting military service, citizenship, and equality.
“Don’t ask, don’t tell” denied lesbian, gay and bisexual service members their fundamental rights as American citizens. The Pentagon discharged 14,000 servicemembers for being gay under “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” a rate of 2–4 every day.
Marine Corporal Kevin Blaesing was turned in by his psychologist. Senior Airman Brandi Grijalva was turned in by a chaplain’s assistant. West Point cadet Nikki Galvan was disenrolled because of what she had written in a personal diary. A father showed up to his daughter’s base and outed her to her commander. Fortunately, he was yelling in Korean and no one knew what he had said.
The clients I represented faced harassment, threats, and assault. Private First Class Barry Winchell was murdered by fellow soldiers at Fort Campbell, Kentucky in 1999 because they thought he was gay. Under “Don’t ask, don’t tell” one couldn’t report the harassment because doing so might expose that you were in fact gay, leading to one’s discharge. Over time, we demonstrated to the public, the Pentagon and Congress that it was not the gay service member, it was “Don’t ask, don’t tell” that created an environment inimical to good order, discipline and morale.
There was no other law in America that prohibited citizens from identifying themselves and speaking up on their own behalf. “Don’t ask, don’t tell” rendered 60,000 LGBT troops invisible and left deep wounds for our one million LGBT veterans.
Don’t ask, don’t tell was repealed ten years ago with bipartisan support in Congress thanks to the leadership of Admiral Mike Mullen and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Senators Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins, Iraq veteran Representative Patrick Murphy, the Commander-in-Chief President Barack Obama, and so many more. The repeal did not happen overnight. If you would like to understand the 17-year strategy I implemented that led to repeal, I encourage you to read my book Mission Possible. It is about the consequences of a government that tries to muzzle its citizens, and a triumphant story of coming out and building a movement of good will and bipartisanship.
In an editorial after Congress voted for repeal, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel captured the significance of the moment:“When Obama signs a bill repealing the military’s ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ rule,” it said, “it will be an event as significant for gay rights as President Harry Truman’s order integrating the United States military was for black Americans.”
In the years that have followed repeal, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of marriage equality and against LGBT employment discrimination. Eric Fanning became the first openly gay Army Secretary. Pete Buttigieg, an Afghanistan war vet, became the first Senate-confirmed openly gay Cabinet member after being the first openly gay man to win a Presidential nomination contest in Iowa. Now retired Major General Tammy Smith became the first open lesbian to be nominated and confirmed as a flag officer. The lesson is this: when the barriers to full opportunity fall, extraordinary individuals emerge to make our nation a better place. That is the story of what full citizenship promises. | <urn:uuid:5d569612-6f61-4f7f-888a-707e8047e897> | CC-MAIN-2023-14 | https://cdixonosburn.medium.com/citizenship-and-the-armed-forces-6753c4520a42?source=user_profile---------3---------------------------- | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-14/segments/1679296945282.33/warc/CC-MAIN-20230324113500-20230324143500-00167.warc.gz | en | 0.960351 | 1,380 | 3.140625 | 3 |
Post traumatic stress disorder more commonly known as PTSD. According to the http://www.ptsd.va.gov/public/PTSD-overview/basics/what-is-ptsd.asp PTSD is a disorder that tends to occur when someone doesn’t recover from a traumatic event such as war, rape, abuse. Along with the disorder a series of symptoms come such as agitation, irritability, hostility, hypervigilance, self-destructive behavior, or social isolation, as well as other symptoms. Throughout the play we see a string of characters that present with possibility of having PTSD no more than our main character Macbeth. Macbeth weakened through war and an abusive wife caused him to suffer from PTSD.
Paranoia with a Side of Hallucinations Picture living in a world where it was impossible to separate imagination from reality; Where seeing did not always mean believing. It would be living in an inconceivable hell, incapable to remember what was real and what was dreams. This is what it is like everyday to live with paranoid schizophrenia. Paranoid schizophrenia is a subset of schizophrenia, in which victims suffer from hallucinations that others are plotting against them. Schizophrenia typically originates from biological factors; however, environmental factors can manipulate someone into falling victim to this horrendous disease.
Bryanna E. McCool Mrs. Dean British Literature 25 January 2018 Mental Illness in Shakespeare’s Macbeth The Tragedy of Macbeth by William Shakespeare, a play wrought with prophecies, deception, guilt, and death, brings light to the symptoms of mental illnesses and their effects on the human brain’s ability to reason, trust, and act in times of pressure. Both Macbeth and his lady are plagued by mental illness, and the effects of their illness only grow as the play evolves. Macbeth’s symptoms of schizophrenia and anxiety, as well as Lady Macbeth’s anxiety as well as hallucinations that eventually push her to suicide prove that not only can mental illness alter the way a person sees a situation, but it can also drive them to harm others and themselves.
Macbeth, a tragedy written by William Shakespeare, tells of the events in Scotland that led to the death of Duncan, the king, and events that followed afterward. Duncan was killed by Macbeth, but it was his wife that suffered for it, due to her involvement and insistence in the crime. Lady Macbeth suffers from schizophrenia and obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) throughout the play as displayed by her obsessively washing her hands in her sleep, her paranoia, and aggressive tendencies.
Lady Macbeth is unable to deal with the moral implications of murder and therefore has her husband kill the king. We further see Lady Macbeth dissociate herself from her husband in act III, during the murder of Banquo and in act IV, after the murder of Macduff’s family, which she disagreed with entirely: Lady Macbeth, without the support of her husband and dealing with the overwhelming burden of guilt, promptly commits suicide. Unlike Lady Macbeth, Macbeth is able to dissociate himself from his actions due to his nature as a psychopath. In response to his wife’s death, one would assume that Macbeth would be grief stricken and depressed. However, He is indifferent, stoic if you will.
There are some threads, that, once pulled, will unravel the whole sweater. In a similar sense, there are some events that can trigger the mind to unravel itself into insanity. In William Shakespeare’s tragedy Macbeth, a Scottish general by the name of Macbeth, stumbles upon three witches, while walking with a man named Banquo, who foretell his ascent to the throne. Driven by the prophecies of the witches, the influence of his wife, and his own ambitions, Macbeth kills King Duncan and becomes king. Eventually, Macbeth, ridden with guilt, fear, and paranoia, commits even more murders in an attempt to secure his power; instead, he is overthrown and killed by Macduff. The downfall of the Macbeth is caused by the pulling of a thread — his first interaction with the witches — and the unraveling of his mind into insanity which is shown through his loss of empathy, his increased hostility and paranoia, and his delirious hallucinations.
All humans express these qualities to some degree, but Macbeth let them completely control him. Once Macbeth became king he was paranoid because he did not want to lose all the power he had just gained. Macbeth's feelings caused him to make bad decisions that ended up harming him in the
When he gets over ambitious about wanting to be the king. That is a sign of bipolar disorder Macbeth shows a lot of signs that he has the disorder in the story. He even starts to hallucinate he thinks he sees Banquo’s ghost. Macbeth gets extremely violent worse than before; he murders Macduff’s family. His mental disorder leads him to become a crazy murderer.
Macbeth was strongly driven by his pride; once he knew that being king was supposedly in his future he wanted it immediately. Macbeth killed Duncan in one of the most dishonorable ways one could, when someone is a guest in your home. Macbeth and his wife were suppose to protect Duncan while he was in their home but instead they murdered him thus showing his loss of honor. For Macbeth killing Duncan and becoming king was not enough, instead Macbeth decided he wanted Fleance and Banquo dead so that his unborn sons could be king. This shows that Macbeth's ambition and pride driven motivation is getting out of control.
One of Shakespeare’s superlative examples of a troubled mind is located in Macbeth. The impertinent character Lady Macbeth exhibited many symptoms of depression and antisocial personality disorder. While mental illness is generally developed through an accumulation of several events, as it was in Lady Macbeth’s case, it was definitely more profound after the murder of King Duncan. Prior to killing the king, Lady Macbeth unveiled sociopathic behavior through her negligence of others.
He was so scared and greedy to stay King that he killed his best friend. That really shows how much a person has changed, how could someone go through with killing their best friend. It didn't faze Macbeth because he was too worried about staying king. Macbeth also sends his army to kill Macduff but he wasn't there so the army kills his family (4.2). Lady Macbeth realizes how much he has changed and is also scared of him becoming a monster.
Macbeth and Madness Imagine the President of the United States admitting to having mental instability. This scenario may rattle some, but it clearly plays out in William Shakespeare’s tragedy, Macbeth. The play’s title character uses violence to maintain power but gradually plummets into mental illness. Before Macbeth and his wife, Lady Macbeth, conspire to murder his cousin Duncan, the King of Scotland, in order to attain authority, Macbeth foreshadows the possible repercussions; afterward, he experiences an immediate sense of remorse. The subsequent murder of a friend displays his progressive unsteadiness, but the massacre of an entire family demonstrates his transformation from instability to deviance.
The first signs of Macbeth developing PTSD appear in act 2.1, right before almost while he murders Duncan. In fact, murdering Duncan in act 2.1 is the event that creates his PTSD. One can claim this for several reasons. First and foremost, according to the article Who Develops Posttraumatic Stress Disorder?, “Peritraumatic dissociation refers to unusual experiences during and immediately after the traumatic event, such as a sense that things are not real, the experience of time stretching out, and an altered sense of self. Feeling that one is watching oneself in a movie or play as the event unfolds is a common description of the experience of dissociation.”
What seemed like a fearless soldier soon would have his life turned around by his own innocent ambition that furthermore evolved into blinding greed, need for power, and selfishness. This soldier was Macbeth, he didn 't realize the toll this had on his mental health and others. Macbeth had many distinct layers to him that he personally didn 't know he acquired over the course of time. This is what you 'd call a complex character, one who can 't be cognized yet till you fully get to know their mindset and thoughts. Traditionally this would be a great way to describe Macbeth, throughout this book readers slowly started to comprehend his intentions and actions .
Macduff went to England to find Malcolm, King Duncan’s son, who fled Scotland so he would not be killed like his father. Macbeth no longer considers Macduff loyal to him and becomes apprehensive. Macbeth consorts with the murderers again to kill Macduff’s family, “give to the edge o’ the sword his wife, babes, and all unfortunate souls that trace him in his line” (Act 4, Scene 1). When a messenger comes to deliver the news to Macduff, he becomes sad but Malcolm tells him “… Let grief convert to anger…” (Act 4, Scene 3). | <urn:uuid:5fa235c8-2c6d-4d26-8808-3c23c491fa1e> | CC-MAIN-2023-06 | https://www.ipl.org/essay/Examples-Of-Hallucinations-In-Macbeth-PCGJN7GXK6G | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-06/segments/1674764500273.30/warc/CC-MAIN-20230205161658-20230205191658-00353.warc.gz | en | 0.980923 | 1,957 | 3.40625 | 3 |
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We openly acknowledge the use of information from other sites including Wikipedia, artbiogs.co.uk and Tate.org and other public domains. We are grateful for the use of this information and we openly invite any comments on how to improve the accuracy of what we have posted.
Printmaker, illustrator, painter and teacher, born and lived in London, son of the painter Thomas Matthews Rooke. After education partly in Chartres, France, Rooke studied at Slade School of Fine Art under Fred Brown, Philip Wilson Steer and Henry Tonks, 1899-1903, then at the Central School of Arts and Crafts with Edward Johnston and W R Lethaby. This set him up well to hold the position of head of book production at the Central, 1930-46. In addition, Rooke was president of the Double Crown Club, chairman of the NS and was a founder-member of SWE. Exhibited RE, NS, NEAC and abroad. He was a noted engraver on wood. whose work appeared in the Print Collectors’ Quarterly. being held by the British Museum.
Rooke;Noel; ( 1872 – 1953 )
Noel Rooke was
born in Bedford Park, London, where he lived all his life. His father
was the watercolourist Thomas Matthews Rooke, who had acted as studio
assistant to Edward Burne-Jones. In 1899, aged 18, he was employed by
William Lethaby in the school holidays to make drawings of the Chapter
House at Westminster Abbey. From then until 1903 he attended part-time
art classes at the Slade School, and in 1904 joined R. J. Beedham’s
classes at the LCC School of Photoengraving and Lithography at Bolt
Court. Dissatisfied with photo-mechanical process as a means of
artistic expression, he resorted to wood engraving, having been
encouraged by Lucien Pissarro to experiment with techniques including
‘graduated’ printing, woodcutting on the side-grain of boxwood, and
colour printing. Since late 1899 he had been attending, with Eric Gill
among others, Edward Johnston’s revolutionary Writing and Illumination
class at the Central School, and it was Johnston’s principles of
calligraphy which inspired him to make wood engravings on the same
basis, in terms of the nature of the tools used. As a teacher he was
largely responsible for raising the status of wood engraving as an
independent graphic medium, but only after some opposition from within
the School. From 1905 he was only able to teach woodcutting and wood
engraving within book illustration classes, although in 1912 he was
allowed to teach lettering and wood engraving in the Day Technical
School. Despite being appointed Head of the School of Book Production,
he was only finally able to establish a specific woodcutting and wood
engraving class in 1920. He retired from the School in 1947.
Rooke’s campaign to revive the medium on ‘autographic’ principles
provided the impetus to the modern wood engraving movement. He made a
lasting impression on his pupils. In particular he played a vital role
in encouraging them to break into the world of publishing and in
persuading commercial publishers to recognize the value of the medium.
As a result of his efforts, his own output was comparatively small,
consisting of line drawn, watercolour, and wood-engraved illustration
to a few books, and various individual prints and posters, several of
which reflect his passion for mountains.
He was a founder member of the Society of Wood Engravers in 1920 and in
the same year was elected an Associate of the Royal Society of
Painter-Etchers and Engravers. He was also Honorary Secretary of the
Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society. In 1932 he married one of his
pupils, Celia Fiennes. | <urn:uuid:053bd24c-21ec-4302-b886-79a0003be4de> | CC-MAIN-2024-10 | https://modernbritishartgallery.com/artwork/portrait-of-the-artists-wife-celia-fiennes/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2024-10/segments/1707947473824.13/warc/CC-MAIN-20240222161802-20240222191802-00449.warc.gz | en | 0.966254 | 874 | 2.578125 | 3 |
We can be gullible In the standard economic model, individuals are savvy enough to take into account the incentives of an information provider when deciding whether the information is believable. In reality, we tend not to fully notice that the information provider may have goals other than to tell us the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth
We can be gullible This neglect of the information provider’s incentives can lead to excess impact of the beliefs of the information provider. This is persuasion
Experiment The subjects are paid for the precision of the estimates of the number of coins in a jar.
Experiment Since the subjects see the jar only from a distance, they have to rely on the advice of a second group of subjects, the advisors, who inspect the jar from up close.
Experiment: advisors’ incentives Two experimental treatments are used to vary the incentives for the advisors.
Experiment: advisors’ incentives In a first experiment, advisors are paid for how closely the person they advised guesses the number of coins. In a second experiment, advisors are paid for how high the guess of the person they advised is.
Experiment: advisors’ incentives In a first experiment, advisors are paid for how closely the person they advised guesses the number of coins. In a second experiment, advisors are paid for how high the guess of the person they advised is. Will the subjects’ estimates be swayed by the advisors’ incentives? Or will the subjects adjust the advice they receive in light of the advisors’ incentives?
Experiment: advisors’ incentives In a first experiment, advisors are paid for how closely the person they advised guesses the number of coins. In a second experiment, advisors are paid for how high the guess of the person they advised is. Despite the fact that the advisors’ incentives are known to all … … the estimate of the subjects is 28 percent higher in the second experiment.
Experiment: advisors’ incentives We see that the participants in the experiment do not make adjustments for the conflict of incentives of the advisors.
Financial advice In a financial setting, behavioral economists have analyzed how small and large investors respond to recommendations by financial analysts.
Financial advice Forecasts by Wall Street analysts are notoriously bullish (biased upward) 94.5 percent of recommendations are Hold, Buy, or Strong Buy Will investors take this advice with a grain of salt?
Financial advice: large investors It turns out that large investors are savvy about the incentives of financial advisors They take into account advisors’ biases and discount the information they provide For example, they respond to a Hold recommendation by selling the shares of a company, and they discount heavily positive recommendations by affiliated analysts.
Financial advice: small investors Small investors—unfortunately—are subject to persuasion. They follow the financial advisors’ recommendations literally for example they hold a stock in response to a Hold recommendation They do not make adjustments for the additional distortions due to analyst affiliation. In other words, small investors are gullible
Solomon Asch and Stanley Milgram These two psychologists did the key experiments to show that the beliefs of others tend to have excessive effects on us because we can’t resist the pressure to conform
Solomon Asch’s experiment The subjects are shown two large white cards with lines drawn on them: the first card has three lines of substantially differing length on them, while the second card has only one line. The subjects are asked which of the lines in the second card is closest in length to the line in the first card.
Solomon Asch’s experiment In a control treatment, the subjects perform the task in isolation and achieve 98 percent accuracy.
Solomon Asch’s experiment In the high-social-pressure treatment, the subjects choose the line of comparable length after four to eight subjects (who, unbeknownst to them, are confederates) unanimously choose the wrong answer. On average, over a third of subjects give the wrong answer to avoid disagreeing with the unanimous judgment of the other participants. video
Stanley Milgram’s experiment In Milgram’s experiment, a group of subjects is told that their task is to monitor the learning of another subject (a confederate) and to inflict electric shocks on this subject when he makes an error. Video 1, 2.12
Stanley Milgram’s experiment Encouraged by the experimenter, 62 percent of the subjects escalate the electric shocks up to a level of 450 volts, despite hearing the subject scream in pain.
Stanley Milgram’s experiment This proneness to obedience comes as a surprise to the subjects themselves. When a different group of forty subjects is provided with a description of the experiment and asked to predict how far subjects would go in inflicting shocks, no one predicts that 450 volts would be reached.
Soccer referees: home team gets an advantage Behavioral economists measured the length of extra time that referees assign at the end of a game of soccer; in the extra time the teams can score goals. They found that referees on average give twice as much extra time (four minutes versus two minutes) when the extra time is bound to help the local team (one goal behind) than when it is bound to hurt it (one goal ahead).
Soccer referees: home team gets an advantage The effect is larger when stakes are higher (toward the end of the season) and when the social pressure is larger (larger attendance at the game). Referees respond significantly to pressure by the local public, despite official rules on what determines the length of extra time.
High-productivity cashiers in a supermarket chain increase the productivity of coworkers that are present in the same shift. The effect is not due to exchange of information, such as on a price tag. The positive peer effect occurs only when the more productive coworker is behind and therefore can observe the other worker’s productivity.
Cashiers in a supermarket “We find that when more productive workers arrive at shifts, they induce a productivity increase only in workers who are in their line of vision. We find no effect on workers who are not in their line of vision. … We interpret these findings as consistent with the notion that productivity spillovers are due to social pressure.” – Mas, Alexandre, and Enrico Moretti. 2009. "Peers at Work." American Economic Review, 99(1): 112–45.
Cashiers in a supermarket Social pressure reduces shirking in business settings
Conclusion Peer effects are real They occur because of – We can be easily swayed by others because we often ignore others’ desire to sway us, and – We are vulnerable to social pressure
Video Social Influence, Brain Games, National Geographic, YouTube, April 30, 2014 Social Influence | <urn:uuid:ddc22e72-d646-4133-8b63-710e86ec09bf> | CC-MAIN-2017-43 | http://slideplayer.com/slide/3730065/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-43/segments/1508187825264.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20171022132026-20171022152026-00606.warc.gz | en | 0.937865 | 1,381 | 2.890625 | 3 |
EN CE Helmet StandardsA "CE" marking indicates that a helmet fulfills the requirements of the European Economic Community (EEC) Directive (89/686/EEC). This is a mandatory directive, thus helmets must be CE-marked if they are to be sold anywhere in Europe. Since 1994, SP Technical Research Institute of Sweden has performed and certified tests for CE-marking. A common feature of all types of helmets is that they must protect the head against impact and distribute the force applied to the helmet in the event of an accident. In addition to good performance in an accident and a long life in normal use, helmets must remain safely in position during an accident. Among the CE markings for action sports helmets are:
- EN 1077 Ski helmets
- EN 1078 Bicycle helmets
- EN 1080 Impact protection helmets for young children
EN CE testing typically includes tests for:
- shock absorption
- retention systems (chin strap and buckle)
EN 1077:2007: Ski and snowboard helmets
The tester inserts a head form into the helmet (to simulate a human head) and the head form is dropped from a height of 1.5 meters onto a fixed anvil. In order to pass the test, on impact, peak acceleration imparted to the head form cannot exceed 250 Gs. In addition, ski helmets are tested to ensure they offer sufficient protection against sharp or pointed objects. EN 1077 also subjects the chin strap to high resistance; the helmet fails if it is pulled off the head form. All of these processes test the helmets in different environments (heat, cold, etc.). EN 1077:2007 tests ski/snowboard helmets for shock absorption, penetration and retention systems.
Tests also include a number of design requirements, such as area of coverage, field of vision, and clearance between the head and the shell. There are two classes to EN 1077: Class A protects a larger area of the head and ofers a higher degree of protection from penetration, while Class B offers more ventilation and better hearing but slightly less protection.
EN 1080: Helmets for young children
EN 1080 is a derived standard designed to address problems associated with the strangulation of children playing while wearing helmets.
What If My Helmet Doesn't Meet EN CE Safety Standards?
Most (not all) ski/snowboard helmets meet both EN 1077 and ASTM 2040 safety standards. The testing procedure for both standards is similar except that the EN 1077 testing process includes a penetration/puncture test. | <urn:uuid:636da547-3070-4016-b24b-7b054cac7fa2> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.xsportsprotective.com/blogs/snow-tech-talk/125768131-en-ce-helmet-safety-standards-explained-snow-helmets | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281746.82/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00043-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.915796 | 515 | 2.875 | 3 |
Has the U.S. ever minted a mill coin?
Dimes, nickels, and pennies I've seen--but how about a mill? They get plugged on Green Stamps and box tops a lot. Are they extinct?
No mills have ever been minted. Defined by the 1786 law that established U.S. coinage as "the lowest money of accompt, of which 1,000 shall be equal to the federal dollar, or money unit," the mill has been the bastard child of the system since its beginning. Even in those pre-inflation days, the smallest coint ever issued was the half-cent. At one time, some states issued "mill tokens" that were used in collecting sales taxes, which, in 1935, prompted Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau to ask Congress for a license to make a coin to replace the states' homemade substitutes. Unfortunately, they thought he was kidding. | <urn:uuid:36ac2d32-70ff-4af6-93c3-22666ef53c56> | CC-MAIN-2013-48 | http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/304/has-the-u-s-ever-minted-a-mill-coin | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-48/segments/1386164580976/warc/CC-MAIN-20131204134300-00055-ip-10-33-133-15.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973843 | 196 | 3.015625 | 3 |
Considered as one of the oldest spices ever known to men, parsley is used in the form of fresh leaves or seeds for various purposes. It has the capacity to kill microbes and germs, thus making it potent for a wide range of uses. Parsley seed, in particular has other uses, and benefits that are worth taking note of. It can be used to stimulate appetite, lower blood pressure, and treat frequent urination. Here are things you must particularly know about the seeds of this plant.
Origins of Parsley Seed
Parsley originated from the Mediterranean region of western Asia and southern Europe. An ancient Greek legend says that this actually sprang from the blood of Archemerus, a fallen hero who was eaten by serpents. Due to this history, Greeks regard the plant as sacred, the reason behind why it was never placed for display on their tables. The seed, being part of the parsley plant, originated from these places as well.
Popular Uses of Parsley Seed
Parsley, in general, is taken by mouth for a host of bladder infections, and other GI disorders. It can also be applied on the skin to treat cracked or chapped skin, bruises, and insect bites, as well as to deal with dark patches on the face. Women take parsley to cause an abortion, or to start menstrual flow.
Parsley seed, on the other hand, is popular for use in decreasing colic pain and flatulence. This is a tradition that is still being practiced up to this day due to the seed’s carminative effect. When transformed into essential oil, parsley seeds become useful in manufacturing cosmetics, perfumes, and soaps. Note that there are also different uses for the parsley leaf essential oil.
Health Benefits of Parsley Seed
Parsley seeds have antimicrobial properties that make it great for protecting the body from a number of infections. It is also good for treating rheumatism and arthritis because it detoxifies and purifies the body as it accelerates toxin elimination. As an antiseptic, it can help clean wounds, and prevent bacteria from bothering the skin, thus keeping microbes at bay. It likewise relieves contractions in the gums, skin, and muscles. Due to its spicy aroma, parsley seeds can trigger appetite and stimulate digestion, after.
A Look at Parsley Seed Essential Oils
Parsley seed essential oil is noted for having a diuretic capability, thus shrinking blood vessels. It can also be added to herb blends, and due to its aroma, it can be enjoyed or diluted with other essential oils before enjoying the scent for aromatherapy purposes. Take note, however, that like other essential oils that need to be handled with care, special precautions must also be undertaken in order to enjoy the health benefits of parsley seed essential oils.
At Plant Guru, we have a wonderful selection of pure parsley seed essential oil. We sell these products at affordable prices that will suit your budget. Just use a few drops of the oil or mix it with other essential oils to get that maximum effect for a specific concern. Make sure to take this with extra care, though, to prevent any adverse effects from its consumption. | <urn:uuid:44625362-aac4-4450-ae77-8c1fd5346208> | CC-MAIN-2021-25 | https://www.theplantguru.com/page/ingredient-spotlight-parsley-seed/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-25/segments/1623487623596.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20210616093937-20210616123937-00288.warc.gz | en | 0.95819 | 663 | 2.609375 | 3 |
|Subdivision of the Neogene Period
according to the IUGS, [v2014/02].
The Miocene (pronunciation: //; symbol MI) is the first geological epoch of the Neogene Period and extends from about (Ma). The Miocene was named by Sir Charles Lyell. Its name comes from the Greek words μείων (meiōn, “less”) and καινός (kainos, “new”) and means "less recent" because it has 18% fewer modern sea invertebrates than the Pliocene. The Miocene follows the Oligocene Epoch and is followed by the Pliocene Epoch.
The earth went from the Oligocene through the Miocene and into the Pliocene, with the climate slowly cooling towards a series of ice ages. The Miocene boundaries are not marked by a single distinct global event but consist rather of regional boundaries between the warmer Oligocene and the cooler Pliocene.
The apes arose and diversified during the Miocene, becoming widespread in the Old World. By the end of this epoch, the ancestors of humans had split away from the ancestors of the chimpanzees to follow their own evolutionary path. As in the Oligocene before it, grasslands continued to expand and forests to dwindle in extent. In the Miocene seas, kelp forests made their first appearance and soon became one of Earth's most productive ecosystems. The plants and animals of the Miocene were fairly modern. Mammals and birds were well-established. Whales, seals, and kelp spread. The Miocene is of particular interest to geologists and palaeoclimatologists as major phases of the Himalayan orogeny had occurred during the Miocene affecting monsoonal patterns in Asia, which were interlinked with glaciations in the northern hemisphere.
Two subdivisions each form the lower, middle and late Miocene. Regionally, other systems are used.
Continents continued to drift toward their present positions. Of the modern geologic features, only the land bridge between South America and North America was absent, although South America was approaching the western subduction zone in the Pacific Ocean, causing both the rise of the Andes and a southward extension of the Meso-American peninsula.
Mountain building took place in western North America, Europe, and East Asia. Both continental and marine Miocene deposits are common worldwide with marine outcrops common near modern shorelines. Well studied continental exposures occur in the North American Great Plains and in Argentina.
India continued to collide with Asia, creating dramatic new mountain ranges. The Tethys Seaway continued to shrink and then disappeared as Africa collided with Eurasia in the Turkish–Arabian region between 19 and 12 Ma. The subsequent uplift of mountains in the western Mediterranean region and a global fall in sea levels combined to cause a temporary drying up of the Mediterranean Sea (known as the Messinian salinity crisis) near the end of the Miocene.
The global trend was towards increasing aridity caused primarily by global cooling reducing the ability of the atmosphere to absorb moisture. Uplift of East Africa in the late Miocene was partly responsible for the shrinking of tropical rain forests in that region, and Australia got drier as it entered a zone of low rainfall in the Late Miocene.
Although a long-term cooling trend was well underway, there is evidence of a warm period during the Miocene when the global climate rivalled that of the Oligocene. The Miocene warming began 21 million years ago and continued until 14 million years ago, when global temperatures took a sharp drop—the Middle Miocene Climate Transition (MMCT). By 8 million years ago, temperatures dropped sharply once again, and the Antarctic ice sheet was already approaching its present-day size and thickness. Greenland may have begun to have large glaciers as early as 7 to 8 million years ago, although the climate for the most part remained warm enough to support forests there well into the Pliocene.
Life during the Miocene Epoch was mostly supported by the two newly formed biomes, kelp forests and grasslands. This allows for more grazers, such as horses, rhinoceroses,and hippos. Ninety five percent of modern plants existed by the end of this epoch.
The coevolution of gritty, fibrous, fire-tolerant grasses and long-legged gregarious ungulates with high-crowned teeth, led to a major expansion of grass-grazer ecosystems, with roaming herds of large, swift grazers pursued by predators across broad sweeps of open grasslands, displacing desert, woodland, and browsers. The higher organic content and water retention of the deeper and richer grassland soils, with long term burial of carbon in sediments, produced a carbon and water vapor sink. This, combined with higher surface albedo and lower evapotranspiration of grassland, contributed to a cooler, drier climate. C4 grasses, which are able to assimilate carbon dioxide and water more efficiently than C3 grasses, expanded to become ecologically significant near the end of the Miocene between 6 and 7 million years ago. The expansion of grasslands and radiations among terrestrial herbivores correlates to fluctuations in CO2.
Both marine and continental fauna were fairly modern, although marine mammals were less numerous. Only in isolated South America and Australia did widely divergent fauna exist.
In the Early Miocene, several Oligocene groups were still diverse, including nimravids, entelodonts, and three-toed equids. Like in the previous Oligocene epoch, oreodonts were still diverse, only to disappear in the earliest Pliocene. During the later Miocene mammals were more modern, with easily recognizable canids, bears, procyonids, equids, beavers, deer, camelids, and whales, along with now extinct groups like borophagine canids, certain gomphotheres, three-toed horses, and semiaquatic and hornless rhinos like Teleoceras and Aphelops. Islands began to form between South and North America in the Late Miocene, allowing ground sloths like Thinobadistes to island-hop to North America. The expansion of silica-rich C4 grasses led to worldwide extinctions of herbivorous species without high-crowned teeth.
Unequivocally recognizable dabbling ducks, plovers, typical owls, cockatoos and crows appear during the Miocene. By the epoch's end, all or almost all modern bird groups are believed to have been present; the few post-Miocene bird fossils which cannot be placed in the evolutionary tree with full confidence are simply too badly preserved, rather than too equivocal in character. Marine birds reached their highest diversity ever in the course of this epoch.
Approximately 100 species of apes lived during this time, ranging throughout Africa, Asia and Europe and varying widely in size, diet, and anatomy. Due to scanty fossil evidence it is unclear which ape or apes contributed to the modern hominid clade, but molecular evidence indicates this ape lived between 7 and 8 million years ago. The first hominins (bipedal apes of the human lineage) appeared in Africa at the very end of the Miocene, including Sahelanthropus, Orrorin, and an early form of Ardipithecus (A. kadabba).
Cetaceans attained their greatest diversity during the Miocene, with over 20 recognized genera in comparison to only six living genera. This diversification correlates with emergence of gigantic macro-predators such as megatoothed sharks and raptorial sperm whales. Prominent examples are C. megalodon and L. melvillei. Other notable large sharks were C. chubutensis, Isurus hastalis, and Hemipristis serra.
Crocodilians also showed signs of diversification during Miocene. The largest form among them was a gigantic caiman Purussaurus which inhabited South America. Another gigantic form was a false gharial Rhamphosuchus, which inhabited modern age India. A strange form, Mourasuchus also thrived alongside Purussaurus. This species developed a specialized filter-feeding mechanism, and it likely preyed upon small fauna despite its gigantic size.
The pinnipeds, which appeared near the end of the Oligocene, became more aquatic. Prominent genus was Allodesmus. A ferocious walrus, Pelagiarctos may have preyed upon other species of pinnipeds including Allodesmus.
There is evidence from oxygen isotopes at Deep Sea Drilling Program sites that ice began to build up in Antarctica about 36 Ma during the Eocene. Further marked decreases in temperature during the Middle Miocene at 15 Ma probably reflect increased ice growth in Antarctica. It can therefore be assumed that East Antarctica had some glaciers during the early to mid Miocene (23–15 Ma). Oceans cooled partly due to the formation of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, and about 15 million years ago the ice cap in the southern hemisphere started to grow to its present form. The Greenland ice cap developed later, in the Middle Pliocene time, about 3 million years ago.
Middle Miocene disruption
The "Middle Miocene disruption" refers to a wave of extinctions of terrestrial and aquatic life forms that occurred following the Miocene Climatic Optimum (18 to 16 Ma), around 14.8 to 14.5 million years ago, during the Langhian stage of the mid-Miocene. A major and permanent cooling step occurred between 14.8 and 14.1 Ma, associated with increased production of cold Antarctic deep waters and a major growth of the East Antarctic ice sheet. A Middle Miocene δ18O increase, that is, a relative increase in the heavier isotope of oxygen, has been noted in the Pacific, the Southern Ocean and the South Atlantic.
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- Robert A. Rohde (2005). "GeoWhen Database". Retrieved March 8, 2011.
- Attorre, F.; Francesconi, F.; Taleb, N.; Scholte, P.; Saed, A.; Alfo, M.; Bruno, F. (2007). "Will dragonblood survive the next period of climate change? Current and future potential distribution of Dracaena cinnabari (Socotra, Yemen)". Biological Conservation 138 (3–4): 430. doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2007.05.009.
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- Osborne, C.P.; Beerling, D.J. (2006). "Nature's green revolution: the remarkable evolutionary rise of C4 plants". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 361 (1465): 173–194. doi:10.1098/rstb.2005.1737. PMC 1626541. PMID 16553316.
- Wolfram M. Kürschner, Zlatko Kvacek & David L. Dilcher (2008). "The impact of Miocene atmospheric carbon dioxide fluctuations on climate and the evolution of terrestrial ecosystems". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105 (2): 449–53. Bibcode:2008PNAS..105..449K. doi:10.1073/pnas.0708588105.
- Susanne S. Renner (2011). "Living fossil younger than thought". Science 334 (6057): 766–767. Bibcode:2011Sci...334..766R. doi:10.1126/science.1214649. PMID 22076366.
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- Yirka, Bob (August 15, 2012). "New genetic data shows humans and great apes diverged earlier than thought". phys.org.
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- Olivier Lambert, Giovanni Bianucci, Klaas Post, Christian de Muizon, Rodolfo Salas-Gismondi, Mario Urbina & Jelle Reumer (2010). "The giant bite of a new raptorial sperm whale from the Miocene epoch of Peru". Nature 466 (7302): 105–108. Bibcode:2010Natur.466..105L. doi:10.1038/nature09067. PMID 20596020.
- Orangel A. Aguilera, Douglas Riff & Jean Bocquentin-Villanueva (2006). "A new giant Pusussaurus (Crocodyliformes, Alligatoridae) from the Upper Miocene Urumaco Formation, Venezuela" (PDF). Journal of Systematic Palaeontology 4 (3): 221–232. doi:10.1017/S147720190600188X.
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- Kenneth G. Miller & Richard G. Fairbanks (1983). "Evidence for Oligocene−Middle Miocene abyssal circulation changes in the western North Atlantic". Nature 306 (5940): 250–253. Bibcode:1983Natur.306..250M. doi:10.1038/306250a0.
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- Ogg, Jim (2004): Overview of Global Boundary Stratotype Sections and Points (GSSP's). Retrieved 2006-04-30.
|Wikimedia Commons has media related to Miocene.|
|Wikisource has original works on the topic: Cenozoic#Neogene|
- PBS Deep Time: Miocene
- UCMP Berkeley Miocene Epoch Page
- Miocene Microfossils: 200+ images of Miocene Foraminifera
|Aquitanian | Burdigalian
Langhian | Serravallian
Tortonian | Messinian
|Zanclean | Piacenzian| | <urn:uuid:06186f23-b2b5-4f00-87f6-3b27cbf73864> | CC-MAIN-2016-30 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miocene | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-30/segments/1469257827077.13/warc/CC-MAIN-20160723071027-00131-ip-10-185-27-174.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.871677 | 3,410 | 3.53125 | 4 |
What is High Fructose Corn Syrup?
High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) is a widely used sweetener in the United States. As corn prices plummeted in the 1970s, HFCS was developed to make use of the corn crop in other products. It’s used in an increasingly wide variety of products in the last three decades, from soft drinks to baked goods. It is often one of the largest ingredients in sweet products, frequently taking the first to third place on the food products ingredients labels mandated in the United States.
You might think that such a widely used product with a 30+ year track record would be safe. The HFCS manufacturers in the United States have been running a campaign to convince the public that’s the case. You can take a look at the web-based portion of this campaign at HFCSfacts.com: You’re in for a Sweet Surprise.
HFCS May Be Implicated in the US Obesity and Diabetes Epidemics
The reality is that HFCS has for years been suspected to be involved in the epidemic rise of obesity and diabetes in the United States. Numerous studies have found indications that the increasing use of HFCS may correlate with the increase in obesity and diabetes over a similar period of time. Unsurprisingly, HFCS manufacturers refute this, claiming that there is no credible scientific evidence to support such conclusions.
HFCS is Often Contaminated with Mercury
However, much more alarming news about HFCS was announced in January 2009. Recent testing of samples of HFCS and food products containing it in the United States conducted via two studies found that between 31% and 45% of the samples contained mercury. Mercury is toxic in even small quantities. For years, there have been suspicions that mercury used in vaccines may be related to the rise in autism in the United States. But this mercury contamination issue is much bigger and affects common foods widespread throughout the nation’s food supply. Products tested from big-name manufacturers such as Minute Maid, Coca-Cola, Hershey’s, Quaker, Hunt’s, Manwich, Smucker’s, Kraft, Nutri-Grain, and Yoplait had detectable levels of mercury.
Even more alarming, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) knew about this mercury contamination problem since 2005 but suppressed the information. The 2005 study which found 45% of the samples had mercury contamination was conducted by the FDA. But the agency kept it quiet and did nothing to correct the situation even behind the scenes! In March 2008, former FDA scientist Renee Dufault retired. As a researcher on that study, she was later able to go public with the news of the HFCS mercury contamination.
“Mercury is toxic in all its forms,” said IATP’s David Wallinga, M.D., and a co-author in both studies. “Given how much high fructose corn syrup is consumed by children, it could be a significant additional source of mercury never before considered. We are calling for immediate changes by industry and the FDA to help stop this avoidable mercury contamination of the food supply.”
How Does Mercury Get Into HFCS?
HFCS is manufactured using a complex chemical process. Parts of this process involve caustic soda, commonly called sodium hydroxide or lye, and other chemicals produced in industrial chlorine plants. Many of these plants are still using 19th century technology that involves mercury in the production process. Newer technology using membranes and no mercury is readily available, less expensive to operate, and less environmentally damaging. The obstacle to converting to newer technology is the millions of dollars required to replace the mercury cells with membrane systems.
The chlorine plants make more than just chlorine and sodium hydroxide. They also make sodium hypochlorite (bleach) and hydrochloric acid. These are common ingredients in many other household products, including soaps, shampoos, toilet paper, clothes cleaning products, and even toothpaste. So this begs the question of whether far more than our food supply has been contaminated with mercury.
Stopping Mercury Contamination in HFCS
Shutting down the mercury-cell using plants and then converting them to mercury-free technology would mean they could produce chemicals for HFCS production and other household products that would not have mercury contamination. We believe that this would be a wise move. However, more than 90% of these plants in the US have already converted. Only four chlorine plants in the US still use mercury cells. Outside the US, many more chlorine plants are operating using mercury cells. In Europe, for instance, it is estimated that about 60% of their chlorine plants are still using mercury cells. Therefore cleaning up this problem is a global issue, not something that the US can do alone. The US government could, however, make it illegal to use mercury-grade chlorine products in foods made or imported into the United States. This may indirectly force mercury-cell plants to switch to mercury-free technology because their products will be devalued if they are no longer usable by food manufacturers.
Health Impact of Mercury
Mercury causes nervous, cardiovascular, endocrine, immune, gastrointestinal, reproductive, and uninary dysfunctions. In short, it is a major threat to health.
Consumers have been warned in recent years of mercury contamination in certain fish products. Pregnant women and children are warned to avoid eating certain types of fish and to restrict their consumption of other types based upon the likelihood of mercury contamination. Other adults are advised to limit consumption of fish commonly contaminated with mercury, but are believed to not be as sensitive to mercury as children and fetuses. The levels recommended for upper limits are based upon methylmercury, a different form of mercury than founds in HFCS and products made using it. Guidelines for fish consumption can be found in the document Minnesota Smart Fish Guide.
It is unclear how the mercury levels in food containing contaminated HFCS can be compared in health effect to fish and their related methylmercury recommended upper limits. Methylmercury is believed to be more toxic and readily absorbed by the human body than many other forms of mercury. However, based upon the estimated typical rate of consumption of HFCS in foods and beverages of 50 grams per day and the levels of mercury contamination found, it appears that the average person could be consuming several times the upper recommended amounts of mercury in fish products.
In June 2007, the US FDA cautioned against the use of mercury amalgam dental fillings in pregnant women and children. There is significant research which suggests that mercury from the fillings is absorbed into the body and causes long-term buildup of mercury levels. For example, the University of Calgary did a study that found participants who have amalgam fillings had mercury vapor levels in their mouths that were nine times higher than those without such fillings. When those who had the mercury fillings chewed gum for 10 minutes, the mercury vapor levels rose to six times their earlier levels. the American Dental Association still claims that mercury amalgam fillings are safe, however. Their compatriots in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden apparently don’t agree as those countries in early 2008 banned all new mercury amalgam fillings.
Suggestions to Protect Yourself from Mercury in HFCS
So what can you do about protecting yourself from the mercury in our food supply? Here are some simple steps you can do right away:
Read food labels and avoid products that contain high amounts of HFCS, in particular those with HFCS in the first four ingredients listed.
If you eat fish, keep your consumption under the suggested limits for the types of fish you eat. Guidelines for fish consumption can be found in the document Minnesota Smart Fish Guide.
Take dietary supplements such as N-Acetylcysteine (NAC), Alpha Lipoic Acid (ALA), Selenium (SE), Vitamin C, multivitamins with zinc and copper (which mercury depletes), and Chlorella. These will help reduce the amount of mercury in your body and offset the health effects it creates.
Season your food with cilantro or coriander or take supplements containing them. Cilantro has been found to help chelate mercury in people poisoned by dental amalgam fillings.
In extreme cases of mercury contamination or poisoning, see a doctor immediately and request chelation therapy to help remove the mercury from your body.
These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. The products mentioned in this post and on this website are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. The information presented here is for educational purposes and does not constitute medical advice. Please obtain medical advice from qualified healthcare providers. Pursuant to FTC regulations, please be aware some of the links herein may be affiliate iinks. If you click on them and complete a purchase, this website may earn a commission. | <urn:uuid:1deeae63-da0c-46ce-97a0-8d9446952b2c> | CC-MAIN-2016-18 | http://emediahealth.com/2009/01/28/high-fructose-corn-syrup-is-dangerous-for-many-reasons/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-18/segments/1461860118807.54/warc/CC-MAIN-20160428161518-00101-ip-10-239-7-51.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95314 | 1,846 | 3.03125 | 3 |
A Finnish organisation that specialises in training animals in scent detection, Wise Nose, is training a total of 16 dogs for the project, 10 of which are eventually expected to be able to work at the airport. Working in shifts of two, four of them – ET, Kossi, Miina and Valo – started on Wednesday.
After collecting their luggage, arriving international passengers are asked to dab their skin with a wipe. In a separate booth, the beaker containing the wipe is then placed next to others containing different control scents – and the dog starts sniffing.
If it indicates it has detected the virus – usually by yelping, pawing or lying down – the passenger is advised to take a free standard polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test, using a nasal swab, to verify the dog’s verdict.
Dogs are also able to identify Covid-19 from a much smaller molecular sample than PCR tests (said Helsinski Airport) needing only 10-100 molecules to detect the presence of the virus compared with the 18m needed by laboratory equipment.
Although Covid-19 is known to infect mink and cats, dogs do not have the receptors necessary for the virus to readily gain a foothold and do not appear to be easily infected (Hielm-Bjorkman).There is no evidence that they can transmit the virus to people or other animals.
Researchers in countries including Australia, France, Germany and Britain are reportedly working on similar projects but Finland is the first country in Europe to put dogs to work sniffing out the coronavirus. A similar trial started at Dubai international airport last month. | <urn:uuid:c2345a3f-8480-4f09-a0ba-cd251484980c> | CC-MAIN-2021-25 | https://palmerranchvet.com/blog | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-25/segments/1623487634616.65/warc/CC-MAIN-20210618013013-20210618043013-00398.warc.gz | en | 0.950489 | 337 | 2.578125 | 3 |
Councils across Victoria will receive extra encouragement to introduce smoke-free outdoor policies this week, with toolkits being sent to local governments detailing how they can implement smoke-free zones in areas like parks, playgrounds and outdoor dining areas.
The information packs, devised by the Heart Foundation (Victoria) and Quit, outline why outdoor smoke-free areas are important and provide practical advice on how to develop, implement, and communicate smoke-free policies within local government areas.
Smoking is taking a heavy toll on Victorians, especially on those from local government areas with higher smoking rates; such as Greater Shepparton, Hume and Knox, to name a few. (To see a full listing of individual local government area smoking rates and the number of deaths caused by smoking go to Page 70 of this report http://www.health.vic.gov.au/healthstatus/downloads/2008_ch02_01.pdf and http://www.quit.org.au/thebigkill/)
Heart Foundation (Victoria) CEO Kathy Bell said momentum was growing for councils to make smoke-free outdoor areas a reality.
"We know the majority of Victorians want smoke-free alfresco dining areas, playgrounds and beaches. Several councils already have outdoor smoke-free areas in place while numerous others have signalled they're interested in introducing the policy."
"Smoke-free outdoor areas are already the norm in other parts of the country and it's only a matter of time before that happens in Victoria as well."
Quit Executive Director Fiona Sharkie said smoke-free outdoor areas were one way to address the toll smoking is taking on local communities in Victoria and bring down smoking rates.
"Smoke-free areas give smokers a reason not to light up, helping many to cut their tobacco consumption and eventually stop smoking for good. Smoke-free areas also help to de-normalise smoking for children, so that they're less likely to take up the habit later in life."
In NSW, the number of councils implementing smoking bans in outdoor areas has almost tripled to 77 since the Heart Foundation started a similar local government project there in 2007. That's 50% of all councils in NSW.
Additionally, late last year, Brisbane City Council announced its pedestrian mall would become smoke-free following the lead of smoke-free malls in Hobart, Tasmania and Frankston, Victoria.
ph: (03) 9635 5498
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Cancer Council Victoria research shows:
- Over three-quarters (77%) of Victorians (smokers and non-smokers combined) believe smoking shouldn't be allowed in outdoor areas where children are present
- Seven out of 10 (71%) Victorians believe smoking shouldn't be allowed in outdoor restaurant dining areas
- Six out of ten (63%) Victorians believe smoking shouldn't be allowed on beaches
Councils that have outdoor smoke-free policies in place in Victoria include Monash, Moonee Valley and Moreland City Councils in children's playgrounds, Frankston City Council in its outdoor mall in the city centre and the City of Port Phillip and Surf Coast Shire on beaches. Monash City Council is considering extending its existing bans on smoking in outdoor areas | <urn:uuid:ce64b69d-547c-4048-b3ae-3400b2df6930> | CC-MAIN-2017-13 | http://www.quit.org.au/media/article.aspx?ContentID=11_jan_201101&ContainerID=media-january-201011 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-13/segments/1490218187717.19/warc/CC-MAIN-20170322212947-00203-ip-10-233-31-227.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953252 | 665 | 2.5625 | 3 |
Paul A. Meglitsh
Squid, any of a large group of marine mollusks that have a greatly reduced shell, a cylindrical body, and a well-developed head to which ten arms are attached. Two of these arms have long tentacles bearing suction cups near their tips. Below the head, the squid body is covered by a conical muscular mantle that is equipped with lateral fins. The characteristic mollusk shell typically consists only of a horny "pen" or gladius entirely embedded in the mantle. Squids vary in size from about 2 inches (5 cm) to the giant squid Architeuthis, which reaches a length of up to 20 feet (6 meters) and is the largest of all invertebrates. They are widely distributed throughout the world, near the surface and at great depths.
Squids are classified in the order Teuthoidea, class Cephalopoda, phylum Mollusca. They can be distinguished from octupuses by their ten arms, more elongate form, and pelagic habits, and from cuttlefishes and other ten-armed mollusks by their greatly reduced shell.
Circulatory, Excretory, and Nervous Systems
Squids have a complex circulatory system with an extensive set of arteries and veins and relatively few open lacunar spaces. Flowing to the heart, the blood passes through capillaries in a pair of large gills located in the mantle cavity. Here, oxygen is absorbed with the aid of a respiratory pigment, hemocyanin. Two kidneys, closely associated with the pericardial cavity and circulatory system, open through excretory pores into the mantle cavity. Ammonia is the chief excretory product.
Squids have a large brain protected by cartilagelike shields in the head. The brain is formed by the concentration of ganglia, which are separate in most other mollusks. The brain is complex, containing a number of definite centers for the control of specific body parts or activities and a relatively well-developed associational center. An interesting feature of the nervous system is a set of giant neurons that provide fast coordination of the mantle musculature and arms. The huge nerve cells of the squid have been popular subjects for neurophysiological research. The excellent sense organs and complex brain of the squid are reflected in rather complex behavior patterns.Internal Anatomy of a Squid
Water enters the squid's mantle cavity through spaces between the mantle and head. When the mantle is contracted, these spaces are closed. Water then is ejected forcibly through a siphon, propelling the squid through the water. Many squids are powerful swimmers, capable of capturing fish and other aquatic animals with ease. The strongest swimmers are the so-called flying squids (family Onycoteuthidae), which have a slender body, relatively short arms, and large terminal fins. They achieve high speeds and are able to leap 10 feet (3 meters) or more above the surface of the sea.
Feeding and Digestion
Squids grasp their prey with the suction cups on their arms, bring it to the mouth, and attack it with their strong, horny jaws. The food is further fragmented by the radula, a toothed, tonguelike organ in the mouth cavity. The stomach opens into the intestine and a cecum. Skeletal remains and larger hard parts pass directly into the intestine, while smaller fragments enter the cecum. Flat, leaflike plates in the cecum serve as sorting surfaces. Ciliary currents carry rejected particles into the intestine. Food is digested and absorbed in the cecum and perhaps in the digestive gland.
Ink glands, forming a black or (in some deep-sea squids) a luminescent fluid, are located near the anus. When attacked, the squid ejects this ink to confuse the predator.
In squids the sexes are separate. Males store sperm in intricate spermatophores. One of the male's arms is modified into a hectocotylus, which the male uses to pluck out stored spermatophores and insert them into the female mantle cavity near the gonopore. An ejaculatory organ in the spermatophore pushes the sperm into the female's mantle cavity. The eggs, which are fertilized internally, are surrounded by an albuminous mass that hardens when it is later extruded and touches seawater. Many squids deposit their eggs singly, but Loligo produces egg strings. The young squids hatch at a relatively advanced stage, looking much like diminutive adults.
Squids are prized as seafood in the Mediterranean area and on the coasts of Asia, where they are of considerable economic importance. Squid are also an important part of the marine food chain. Giant squids, for example, are important food organisms for sperm whales. | <urn:uuid:fb9f4119-451c-4c1c-b167-f152fd648e6b> | CC-MAIN-2014-35 | http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/explorations/squid/libraryarticle.asp?ItemID=215&SubjectID=120&categoryID=5 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-35/segments/1409535924501.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20140909013112-00363-ip-10-180-136-8.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946326 | 1,010 | 3.6875 | 4 |
Aflatoxins are highly toxic carcinogens produced by several species of Aspergillus fungi. But not all Aspergillus produce aflatoxin. Some, in fact, are considered beneficial. One such strain, dubbed K49, is now being recruited to battle these harmful Aspergillus relatives, preventing them from contaminating host crops like corn with the carcinogen.
In collaboration with University of Bologna (UB) scientists in Italy, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists Hamed Abbas and Bob Zablotowicz (retired) have devised a new method of applying K49 as a frontline defense against aflatoxin contamination in corn, which causes an estimated $200 million annually in U.S. losses alone.
K49 is known as non-toxigenic (atoxigenic) because it cannot produce aflatoxin, unlike toxigenic strains of A. flavus and A. parasiticus that do. However, K49 is adept at excluding these aflatoxin-producing (toxigenic) "cousins" from ecological niches and resources that both need to survive. Exploiting this rivalry, called bio-competitive exclusion, offers an effective way to diminish aflatoxin levels in soil and in corn kernels.
Abbas is a plant pathologist and lead scientist with the Biological Control of Pests Research Unit, operated in Stoneville, Miss., by the Agricultural Research Service (ARS), USDA's chief intramural scientific research agency. This research supports the USDA priority of ensuring food safety.
Unlike the wheat and barley grains now used as carriers to apply commercial strains of biocompetitive Aspergillus molds, Abbas and UB colleague Cesare Accinelli encapsulated K49 in bioplastic granules made of corn starch and other environmentally friendly ingredients.
According to Abbas, the bioplastic granules improve the beneficial mold's storage life and viability once applied. And because wheat and barley grains are not used as carriers, seed-hungry animals like rats and birds avoid eating the bioplastic granules, giving K49 a chance to release its spores for dispersal to corn plants via wind or insect activity.
In tests, applications of the bioplastic-coated K49 reduced aflatoxin levels by 65 to 97 percent. The scientists' research was published in 2011 in the journal Crop Protection. The technology may also prove useful in delivering other beneficial fungi used to safeguard crops from disease, adds Abbas.
Read more about this research in the October 2012 issue of Agricultural Research magazine. | <urn:uuid:139ce360-0bfa-4613-9970-a48181d62194> | CC-MAIN-2014-23 | http://deltafarmpress.com/print/corn/beneficial-k49-mold-recruited-fight-aflatoxin | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-23/segments/1404776400583.60/warc/CC-MAIN-20140707234000-00089-ip-10-180-212-248.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932552 | 530 | 3.359375 | 3 |
This study used the 2001 California Health Interview Survey (CHIS) to examine relationships between household food insecurity and the delay or absence of primary and secondary preventive medical care. Instances of prescribed care included prescription drugs, recommended medical tests, and other medical treatments among adults with certain diagnosed chronic diseases that require ongoing management (diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, asthma, and arthritis). The study hypothesized that food insecurity would be associated with low rates of utilization of preventive health services for adults with chronic diseases, i.e., poorer disease management as indexed by postponement or failure to get needed care. It was further hypothesized that these relationships would be stronger for adults in households with children, and that health insurance and participation in food assistance programs would mitigate these relationships.
It is well established that some types of preventive medical services reduce morbidity and save health care costs. Particularly for individuals with chronic disease, effective preventive services have been shown to markedly improve outcomes. For the individual with a chronic disease that requires ongoing medical, nutritional, or pharmacological management, foregoing or postponing medical care or the purchase of necessary drugs and supplies may result in increased rates of complications and poorer outcomes. There is now considerable descriptive literature on food insecurity at the household level, indicating that the management of scarce resources in the face of food insecurity and hunger often results in sacrificing or postponing other basic needs. To date, little attention has been given to food insecurity in relation to use of medical care although recent research suggests that food insufficiency—a measure of household difficulty in acquiring food that antedates the current food security measure—is associated with higher complication rates, poorer disease management, and increased medical care utilization among adult diabetics.
CHIS is the largest State health survey conducted in the United States. It is the only large database in the Nation that incorporates both a measure of household food security and extensive data on the preventive medical services, health insurance status, and participation in food assistance programs and other public assistance programs. The 2001 survey collected data from 55,428 households. Individual interviews were completed with one adult per household, with one adolescent (age 12-17) if present, and with a parent on behalf of one child under 11 years if present, resulting in 55,428 adult interviews, 5,801 adolescent interviews, and 12,592 parent interviews on behalf of children under 11 years. The food security measure used in the study is the 6-item screener derived from the 18-item Federal instrument. Food security questions were only asked of adults residing in households with per capita incomes below 200 percent of the federal poverty level. The author examined distributions and bivariate relationships; multivariate logistic regression analysis was utilized to examine predictors of key dependent variables.
Food insecurity among this population of low-income adults was 28.3 percent, while 8.3 percent reported food insecurity with hunger. More than one-quarter (28.9 percent) had no current health insurance, and for nonelderly adults (<65 years of age), the figure exceeded one-third (35.6 percent). Food stamp participation was only 10.2 percent among individuals in households with incomes below 130 percent of poverty. WIC participation was higher, with 58.5 percent of income-eligible (<185 percent of poverty) pregnant women reporting their own or their child's participation.
Contrary to the hypothesis, there was no consistent relationship between living in a food-insecure household and several basic preventive indicators, including having had a flu shot in the last year, and several screening indicators including mammograms, Pap smears, stool blood tests, and bone density screening. There was a significant association of food insecurity with never having had a blood cholesterol check or an endoscopic colon cancer screening for both men and women, or having had a prostate-specific antigen test (which helps detects prostate cancer) in men over 40.
Food-insecure adults reported significantly higher utilization of medical care, including number of doctor visits and use of an emergency room in the previous year. On the other hand, adults in households reporting hunger were more likely to have had their last dental visit more than 5 years ago than adults in food-secure households.
Among adults with diagnosed chronic disease, there was a striking and consistent relationship between food insecurity, particularly food insecurity with hunger, and the likelihood of postponing or failing to acquire prescriptions or obtaining recommended care or treatment for the disease. There was also a clear and significant relationship, across all diseases examined, between food insecurity and an emergency room visit for complications of the disease in the previous year. In multivariate models, the relationships remained significant when controlling for income, age, gender, ethnicity, family type, and health insurance, with food-insecure individuals two to five times more likely to have postponed or foregone needed care. Lack of health insurance coverage was the strongest predictor of failure to obtain or postpone care, but food insecurity remained independently predictive, in models controlled for income.
Based on these preliminary analyses, it appears that food insecurity, particularly food insecurity with hunger, is associated with postponing or foregoing medical care, including prescription drugs, for low-income adults independent of other contributing factors. An association was also found for higher medical care utilization, including the likelihood of seeking emergency room care for the disease in the previous year. These relationships are strikingly consistent across all chronic conditions examined. | <urn:uuid:7df49289-5e61-4689-bf55-846a187bc67d> | CC-MAIN-2015-27 | http://ers.usda.gov/data-products/food-and-nutrition-assistance-research-database/ridge-project-summaries.aspx?type=2&summaryId=104 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-27/segments/1435375094634.87/warc/CC-MAIN-20150627031814-00033-ip-10-179-60-89.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962535 | 1,084 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Applications - What can ALLVAR Alloys do for you?
Temperature changes can detrimentally affect an optic’s performance due to the lens elements’ changes in radius of curvature, thickness, and index of refraction. For infrared lens materials, combinations of these changes often produce a decrease in focus with increasing temperature.
A common solution to passively compensate for the thermal focus shift problem is to use dissimilar materials in the optic housing to match the thermal defocus of the particular optic design. However this poses a problem for infrared lens materials as the thermal defocus values are usually negative.
ALLVAR Alloy 30 can decrease the overall length of a re-entrant system up to 38% by replacing Aluminum in the commonly used Aluminum and Acetal re-entrant design. Using ALLVAR Alloy 30 in Infrared optics systems that are commonly used for head-mounted applications, including augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) and military optics, provides advantages for improved size, weight, image stability, and focus under widely varying temperature conditions.
Athermalization of Telescopes, Satellites and Spacecraft
ALLVAR Alloys has a long history of working with NASA through a series of SBIR Grants to develop Ultra-Stable Telescope Structures. These instruments require precise stability - down to a picometer - over several hours, regardless of thermal effects in the space craft. Currently available materials are brittle or exhibit too much expansion to be considered for telescope thermalization.
ALLVAR has developed structures that are paired with a base alloy with known thermal expansion rates. The ALLVAR Alloy-30 is created to a length that, through negative thermal expansion, nearly negates any change from the base alloy for a near zero thermal expansion regardless of thermal conditions. Similarly, sensitive optical or photonic detection systems mounted on rails or rods can be created in much the same way for nearly flawless alignment regardless of thermal conditions encountered in space exploration.
Weather stations, remote research stations and even cargo transport ships can experience large temperature swings throughout the course of the day, or endure extreme cold or heat for months on end. The thermal expansion or contraction of critical elements can erode their reliability over time.
Thermal stress caused by the different expansion and contraction of dissimilar materials can lead to failure. Bolted joints can lose their pre-load as temperature shift, reducing reliability, and effecting performance of assemblies. For example, within cryostats and cryocoolers, fastened items may lose their force load and become unfastened, losing alignment or positioning of valuable equipment or seals. Can a simple washer help? One that exhibits negative thermal expansion can counteract the temperature extremes.
Energy and Petrochemical
The Energy and Petrochemical industries are constantly battling with the effects thermal cycling has on valves and pumps in a variety of applications. Harsh environments, high pressures, and drastic temperature cycles are challenges when trying to keep a line sealed and safe. What if there was a simple washer or seal ring that could help?
Yes. ALLVAR Alloys offers a wide range of spacers, seal rings or washers that expand when everything else is contracting, and contract when everything else is expanding. Stop those leaks with ALLVAR.
Optical and Laser Alignment
Free space optics systems rely on precise alignment and focus of both the transmitter and receiver. Many of these communication systems are located outdoors in harsh environments such as desert heat or arctic cold. Precise alignment in all conditions is critical to staying in touch.
ALLVAR Alloys offers a range of products that maintain precise laser alignment. Whether your system is rail mounted or screwed down, ALLVAR can provide you with athermal components that will virtually eliminate any slip of alignment due to excess heat or cold, and maintain your laser's tight alignment.
Industrial Seals and Pre-Loaded Bolts
If your factory or workplace relies on high temperature or cryogenic transport of gas or liquids, chances are you're doing a lot of maintenance on these systems. Thermal mismatches between stainless steel housings and the bolts that hold them tight can cause rapid deterioration around the connector and the seal.
A simple negative thermal expansion washer from ALLVAR can help. These washers expand when cold, and contract when hot, countering the thermal actions of the joint to bring the net thermal change to nearly zero. This added safety is essential for facilities operating at capacity to avoid unintended downtime.
UAV reconnaissance missions take place with high quality optics with long range lenses at extremely high altitude to avoid detection and missile strikes.
The extreme cold of the upper atmosphere compared to the heat of the earth's surface causes a rapid temperature change upon take off and landing. Optics that were solid and well focused on the ground can lose that focus when cold air causes the housing and mounting to contract.
ALLVAR's unique negative thermal expansion alloys are designed to counter extreme and rapid temperature changes to maintain proper alignment and focus - and in many cases it can provide solutions that offer more tensile strength and lighter weight. Ask us how.
Liquid Natural Gas Transport
Natural gas is liquified for efficient transport and transfer to storage facilities. Liquid gas must be cooled to a temperature of -160°C and requires an extensive insulation system making LNG pipes significantly more expensive than gas pipes.
The extreme contrast between liquid temperature and environment can cause critical bolts or rings to fail due to excessive thermal expansion mismatch. ALLVAR Alloys manufactures washers and spacers to mitigate any extreme expansion or contraction caused by temperature differences between the pipes and any ambient temperature. Keep your cargo and crew safe by reducing the chances of a leak with ALLVAR Alloys. | <urn:uuid:376a7d75-876d-4815-aa28-0c873523d2d8> | CC-MAIN-2020-40 | https://allvaralloys.com/applications-2/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-40/segments/1600400189928.2/warc/CC-MAIN-20200919013135-20200919043135-00713.warc.gz | en | 0.923162 | 1,164 | 2.625 | 3 |
Thanks to the anti-abortion movement, abortions can be associated with negative mental health consequences and regret. In some states, women seeking abortions are first required to see a counselor and learn of abortion’s “negative psychological effects.” A new study, organized by the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health at UC San Francisco’s School of Medicine and published in the journal PLOS ONE, once and for all debunks these myths. According to the researchers’ survey of 670 women, the opposite is true: 95% of women don’t regret their abortions.
According to Time, the researchers regularly surveyed the women about their abortions over the course of three years. Among the sample group, reasons for abortion were diverse: 40 percent cited financial considerations; 36 percent said it was “not the right time;” 26 percent of women found the decision very or somewhat easy; 53 percent found it very or somewhat difficult.
The differences among the sample group make the researchers’ conclusion all the more powerful: that the “overwhelming majority” of women in the study felt the abortion had been the right decision, both immediately following and over the three-year study period.
The study distinguishes between any emotions the women may feel and regretting the abortion over all, unlike the anti-abortion crusaders who use regret as an excuse. The study measured “decreasing emotional intensity over time” in the women, and recommended emotional support for those who have trouble deciding. Ultimately, the study notes, even three years later the overwhelming feeling is relief for women who choose abortion.
Sadly, women were more likely to report negative emotions if they perceived high abortion stigma and lower social support in their communities. This hammers on the importance of support, instead of telling women they’re going to have mental health issues for making a decision that feels right.
“Certainly, experiencing feelings of guilt or regret in the short-term after an abortion is not a mental health problem; in fact, such emotions are a normal part of making a life decision that many women in this study found to be difficult,” said the study. “Our results of declining emotional intensity… [find] steady or improving levels of self-esteem, life satisfaction, stress, social support, stress, substance use, and symptoms of depression and anxiety over time post-abortion.” | <urn:uuid:b0331403-181e-4848-8700-152ea3390439> | CC-MAIN-2022-05 | https://www.youbeauty.com/life/abortion-regret-study/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-05/segments/1642320300624.10/warc/CC-MAIN-20220117212242-20220118002242-00300.warc.gz | en | 0.95364 | 491 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Bertrand Russell famously argued in defence of idleness, depicting work as a necessary evil. It had no intrinsic value. Instead, we should look at what we produce for its own sake: literature, art and philosophy. The value of these achievements is revealed in their very uselessness and it is only when we have adequate leisure that we can turn to their creation (Russell, In Praise of Idleness, 1935).
But Russell’s view can be resisted. There is value, too, in what Russell dismissed as mere useful work. Russell’s argument reveals an aristocratic view of what counts as work and unreasonably relegates the value of certain forms of human activity to worthlessness.
Work is a necessity, Russell argues, only because nature is unkind to us, failing to provide easily all that we need in order to survive, bringing the occasional famine too. Even so, it is still up to us what social arrangements are put in place to ensure such work as is necessary is properly conducted and rationally apportioned.
Here, we have failed to deliver a happy solution. Most people are doing far more work than they fairly should have to, while at the same time, and not merely by coincidence, we support a leisured aristocracy. Furthermore, some are worked near to death while others are unemployed and starving. If instead we all worked just four hours a day, not only would there be work for everyone but there would also be equal leisure time in which we all could contribute to human knowledge and culture, enhancing the development of civilisation. It is this that Russell really values. Thus far, everything that we call civilisation has had to come from those fortunate leisured few. Imagine, though, how much the sciences, arts and humanities would develop if everyone had the free time to fulfil their potential in that respect.
"If we all worked just four hours a day, not only would there be work for everyone but there would also be equal leisure time in which we all could contribute to human knowledge and culture, enhancing the development of civilisation."
Was Russell right, however, to claim that all work is bad? Doesn’t that depict us all as fools or victims for doing it, especially when we perform work willingly?
To answer this, we need to understand what Russell took work to be. Fortunately, he offered us a clear definition. ‘Work is of two kinds’, said Russell, ‘first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth’s surface relatively to other such matter; second, telling other people to do so. The first kind is unpleasant and ill paid; the second is pleasant and highly paid.’ Specifically, he did not take novelists, historians or physicists to be engaged in work. Theirs were activities of a higher order. They were advancing civilisation, not merely conducting the necessary evil.
We can challenge Russell’s division from two directions. First, is one really not engaged in work when one is contributing to civilisation? Try telling that to the beleaguered academic scientist or philosopher, or a writer who slaves for a meagre royalty, and see what a reply you will receive. Second, is what Russell calls work really devoid of intrinsic value?
On the first point, I will dwell little further except to wonder whether Russell separates from work the very indulgencies that he and his class had the good fortune to monopolise. Notwithstanding this speculation, though, I have little doubt that Russell worked, and worked hard, producing his popular books and journalism, conducting arduous lectures tours, even more rapidly when he had children and numerous alimonies to support.
"Who is to say that feeling useful is not a deep human need, reflecting a nature of activity and dynamism? All the more tragic, then, if we have an economic system that makes us resent exercising those abilities in the interest of capital."
The second point raises more interesting metaphysical questions. Initially, Russell’s view seems correct. Workers typically have little interest in what they do and are willing to execute their tasks only in exchange for pay. People want a job so that they can feed, clothe and house themselves and their families but would gladly forego those labours were such needs not an issue - for instance, if they won the lottery. Yet it also seems possible to explain away such depressing facts as a contingency of current economic arrangements. We are alienated from the product of our labour, as Marxists would say. We have neither ownership nor interest in the goods we produce in return for wages.
Such unjust circumstances might well hide a deeper truth concerning the place of work in our lives. This truth reveals that there is a natural pleasure and satisfaction to be gained from exercising our mental and physical capacities. We enjoy doing things. This drive may well be exhibited most acutely in ‘useless’ activities, such as the arts, sport and play. Nevertheless, there can still be such pleasure in the exercise of abilities that are also useful. Consider, for example, crafts such as basket making and pottery. These hobbies are satisfying not just because they produce something that can be used – although that might well be a precondition of such activities being pleasurable – but they are satisfying also in their execution. To have learnt a skill, acquiring physical and mental powers, and then manifesting such a skill expertly, makes us feel capable: in control of our immediate environment and not at its mercy. What we do might be useful – yes – but who is to say that feeling useful is not a deep human need, reflecting a nature of activity and dynamism? All the more tragic, then, if we have an economic system that makes us resent exercising those abilities in the interest of capital.
We like to be productive. Russell knew that. He was one of the most productive of us all. To say that what you produce is of value, but what others produce is not, sounds unfair, uncaring and self-important. Life is not just being; it should also be a doing. We do because we can. We do because we want to. And many things that we do can qualify as work, including activities that we do wholly for ourselves. But even those things that we do for others, given that right circumstances, can also be valuable, useful and pleasurable. | <urn:uuid:66250151-9fbb-4a2a-8275-8676aa120f50> | CC-MAIN-2019-47 | https://iai.tv/articles/can-our-jobs-make-us-happy-auid-1073 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-47/segments/1573496665575.34/warc/CC-MAIN-20191112151954-20191112175954-00053.warc.gz | en | 0.973648 | 1,295 | 3.0625 | 3 |
Present your views on the statement that "it is the job of the police to catch criminals, and they know from experience who is likely to be an offender." Specifically examine racial profiling in your response.
It is the job of the police to respond to criminal behavior witnessed by society or by police and to arrest those suspected of engaging in criminal activity, but it is not the job of police to be the judge, jury, and executioner. Police are only supposed to be the first arm of the justice system only responsible for arresting those either witnessed or suspected with probable cause of engaging in criminal behavior that is unlawful. The ...
This solution argues against racial profiling and against the reasons proponents of the pracitice give for its usage. | <urn:uuid:fb527231-5b3a-4351-a958-662c1136dabd> | CC-MAIN-2017-22 | https://brainmass.com/law/criminal-law-and-justice/should-police-use-racial-profiling-474867 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-22/segments/1495463608642.30/warc/CC-MAIN-20170526051657-20170526071657-00277.warc.gz | en | 0.969743 | 148 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Learn about the relationship between art and identity from Larrakia (Darwin) elder June Mills. From screen-printing to traditional techniques and materials, June Mills explains how every nation has its own stories, designs, and ways of sharing knowledge.
Mister Maker takes a trip back in time to learn about Italian painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo, known for his imaginative portraiture that used different fish, meats, fruits and vegetables to represent the subject.
Drawn to colour, fun and working creativity, Anna Papadopoulos shares her journey into the world of makeup. From individual dreams to the runway, learn about what it takes to be a makeup artist and all the rewarding moments along the way.
Getting crafty in the classroom today? Check out some of our favourite arty ideas from Play School, Mister Maker and Art Attack for DIY minibeasts, monsters, puppets and more. (ACAVAM107,ACAVAM111,ACAVAM115,VCAVAV022,VCAVAV026)
Space inspires our greatest scientific and creative minds. Take to the stars with NASA, or hop aboard Millennium Falcon in the best of space fact and fiction. (ACSSU188,ACSSU189,VCSSU127,VCSSU128,VCSSU129) | <urn:uuid:6323e4f0-bd65-47d2-8bac-a2cd5d998093> | CC-MAIN-2018-30 | https://www.enhancetv.com.au/search?classifications%5B%5D=G&subjects%5B%5D=Visual+arts | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-30/segments/1531676591837.34/warc/CC-MAIN-20180720213434-20180720233434-00386.warc.gz | en | 0.918639 | 270 | 2.734375 | 3 |
When Dickens began his literary career in the 1830s, the celebration of Christmas was in decline in England. A number of nostalgic stories and memories of Christmas appear in his early works, but the 19 December 1843 publication of A Christmas Carol broke new ground. Its depiction of a contemporary Christmas among the working poor renewed enthusiasm for the holiday. A lavish production suitable for gift-giving, it had gone through seven printings by May 1844. The Carol became synonymous with the holiday, with countless adaptations and appropriations of its characters and plot (see the 20th-century billboard shown here.) Dickens wrote four more successful “Christmas Books” in the 1840s: The Chimes (1844), The Cricket on the Hearth (1845), The Battle of Life (1846), and The Haunted Man (1848). These works continued the Carol's incorporation of the supernatural, its emphasis on the joys of domestic life, and its focus on compassion and selflessness as the meaning of the holiday.
Rare Book Room Hallway Gallery
Duke University, Durham, NC
On display February 1-April 1, 2012 | <urn:uuid:b0386713-eb69-49b7-9767-4ed037230a97> | CC-MAIN-2014-15 | http://exhibits.library.duke.edu/exhibits/show/dickens200/intro/christmas | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-15/segments/1397609533308.11/warc/CC-MAIN-20140416005213-00088-ip-10-147-4-33.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967453 | 226 | 3.84375 | 4 |
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is evidenced based form of therapy used by our team of Brisbane Psychologists. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is an evidence-based therapy which focuses mostly on the way people think about things (including their attitudes and beliefs) and the way they behave. CBT is based on the understanding that thinking negatively is a habit, and, like any other bad habit, it can be modified. It helps people identify where their thoughts and actions are negative, and then to replace these “bad habits” with more helpful thoughts and responses.
CBT utilises both cognitive therapy and behaviour therapy. Cognitive therapy aims to identify and evaluate the unhelpful thoughts (or cognitions) that lead to negative feelings (e.g. depression, anxiety) and behaviours (e.g. avoiding friends). The treatment focuses on questioning thoughts and restructuring these with positive ways to think about difficult situations. Behaviour therapy is goal-oriented and aims to help people change unhealthy or unhelpful behaviours that cause them to suffer or lower their quality and enjoyment of life. For example, people who are depressed often enjoy fewer pleasurable activities and so your psychologist would work with you to identify pleasurable activities and develop a plan to increase your participation in them.
Finally, CBT not only helps you to understand, manage and challenge thought and behaviour patterns, but can also provide you with a range of useful and practical strategies to enhance your productivity, well-being and your ability to cope with various situations in everyday life.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy to treat Drug and Alcohol Addiction
Research suggests that Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is proving to increase the chances of long term sobriety, lessening the chance of relapse. The question psychologists pose when treating a client using cognitive behavioural therapy, is what drives the compulsion to use drugs or alcohol in the first place? Focusing on the underlying issue rather than the physical dependence, CBT looks at thinking and behavioural patterns, replacing negative or unhelpful behaviours or habits with positive, healthy alternatives.
CBT is about understanding why a person abuses drugs and alcohol and addresses the underlying need, providing long term strategies to change habits. Individuals applying cognitive behavioural strategies learn to recognise unhelpful thinking and behaviour and correct it by applying tactics that stop drug or alcohol abuse and the problematic behavior that goes with it.
Central to CBT is developing a higher state of awareness, predicting negative behavior and enhancing client’s self-control with effective coping strategies. More specifically, exploring the negative consequences of long term drug and alcohol abuse and managing long term change.
Many of the Clinical Psychologists at Psychology Consultants are trained specifically in treating drug addiction using cognitive behavioural therapy. To view the full team of psychologists, visit the Brisbane Psychologist page.
NIDA (2012). Principles of Drug Addiction Treatment: A Research-Based Guide (Third Edition). Retrieved January 16, 2017, from https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/principles-drug-addiction-treatment-research-based-guide-third-edition | <urn:uuid:c1f5d3e8-279e-426f-b70c-dd491dc5ac27> | CC-MAIN-2019-39 | https://psychologyconsultants.com.au/mental-health-topics/cognitive-behavioural-therapy/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-39/segments/1568514571651.9/warc/CC-MAIN-20190915155225-20190915181225-00333.warc.gz | en | 0.922619 | 637 | 2.984375 | 3 |
TW Viewpoint | What's In a Name?February 7, 2018 | Winston Gosse
What's in a name? Juliet asked this of her beloved Romeo in Shakespeare's most famous work? What about your name? Do you have a good reputation?
Juliet was telling Romeo that a name itself is an "artificial and
meaningless convention", and that the name did not make the man! But a
name is certainly important in the context of reputation and daily
choices. As Warren Buffet said, "It takes 20 years to build a reputation
and five minutes to ruin it."
So how important is your reputation and what determines it? How much is your reputation or name worth to you?
An ancient Proverb states "a good name is better than riches" and "better than precious ointment" Do you agree with that?
How is a good name or reputation built? In life there are generally three significant decisions we need to make. These decisions include marriage, our career path, whether or not to have a child. There are other decisions of course, but these are among the most important.
While it's true that these major choices are important, it is often the day to day choices that define us, who we really are as a person. And these every day decisions are how we define, build and establish our character, which in turn establishes our reputation.
So what do you want your reputation to be? What kind of choices are you making daily which impacts your life and who you really are as a person?
A defining aspect of character is the ability to make courageous choices at any given time. Do we choose based on convenience or conviction, principle or pressure? Most people rarely find the inner strength and fortitude to make the best choices, sometimes afraid of making the tough decisions which life can demand. This often leads to a life of "if onlys" a life of remorse and regret.
We must be making hundreds of meaningful choices every day. These small decisions require reservoirs of strength, faith, and clarity. Every moment we're given two paths to follow and we're challenged with a chance to either impact and elevate our lives and those around us or not. Remember a choice not taken is still a choice.
Sometimes one quick split-second decision defines us, and might even determine how well we'll be remembered. All of us have seen examples in the political sphere and other spheres that a reputation that is built over a lifetime, can be destroyed by one careless action and moral indiscretion.
Thousands of years before the internet and social media, the ethics found in the 'Chapters of the Fathers' taught, "Do not say something we do not want to be heard, for in the end it will be heard." - Pirkei Avot (Chapters of the Fathers)
No action is private and every choice reflects our past and determines our future of who we really are.
As Frank Outlaw founder of Bi-Lo grocery chain in the US once said: "Watch your thoughts; for they become words. Watch your words; for they become actions. Watch your actions; for they become habits. Watch your habits; for they become character. Watch your character for it will become your destiny."
And Dwight L. Moody stated: "If I take care of my character, my character will take care of me."
Only when you know your values can you live them. Our lives are constituted by the choices we make every day, which in turn helps to determine our reputation, our character, our name and who we really are!
So who are you? What are the values that define you? In your name lies your reputation! Be strong and of good courage and make the right decisions every day!
I am Winston Gosse for Tomorrow's World Viewpoint.
To access articles, telecasts and booklets from Tomorrow's World visit our website TWCanada.org. | <urn:uuid:1774a949-82ba-4695-81ca-77aa5346928d> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.lcgcanada.org/viewpoint/whats-in-a-name.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573760.75/warc/CC-MAIN-20220819191655-20220819221655-00197.warc.gz | en | 0.95769 | 803 | 2.734375 | 3 |
5 March 2009 – The United Nations’ top human rights official said today that combating discrimination against women, indigenous people, minorities, migrants and other vulnerable groups was the top priority for her office.
“I wish to underscore once again that discrimination is all too often at the root of other human rights abuses,” UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said, as she introduced her wide-ranging annual report to the Geneva-based Human Rights Council.
She also drew attention to the impact of the successive food, energy and financial crises, which was being felt “most particularly by those individuals and groups in society who were already marginalized and discriminated against,” particularly migrants.
The High Commissioner told the assembled government delegates that discrimination against women triggers violence which has “reached the proportions of a pandemic.”
“Although at its most brutal in times of war, violence against women often stems from stereotypes, prejudices, and the lack of equality that had condoned such violence all along,” she said. “Rendering justice to the victims is, therefore, not only a moral imperative, but also a legal obligation.”
The report noted some important advances in the international effort to support the rights of indigenous peoples, but added that it was crucial for states to incorporate the recently agreed UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples into their national legal and institutional systems.
Summarizing the sections of the report focused on combating impunity and preventing genocide, the High Commissioner spoke of her experience as a judge on international courts, she said that “As a trial judge and the President of the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, I came to know first-hand how the fire of hatred can be stoked to ignite genocide.”
“International justice has come a long way in punishing this heinous crime. We need, however, to better understand how to prevent it from recurring.” Ms. Pillay noted that her office had recently convoked a seminar of world-renowned experts on the prevention of genocide, and said the results of their discussion would be published in the near future.
When States are unwilling or unable to genuinely investigate and prosecute genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, international justice mechanisms must be engaged.”
For this reason, she said, “States should strengthen their cooperation with the International Criminal Court and respect its independence.”
The High Commissioner commended States for the progress so far in the new Human Rights Council system known as the Universal Periodic Review (UPR), which began last April.
So far, the rights records of 64 States have been reviewed. All 192 UN Member States will pass through the system once every four years.
Ms. Pillay noted that a number of the countries reviewed so far had “firmly pledged to strengthen implementation at the national level, as well as their cooperation with the special procedures,” saying that some had announced an intention to ratify human rights instruments, accept optional procedures, and comply with outstanding reporting obligations.
She suggested that at the end of the first UPR cycle it would be useful to discuss how independent experts could enhance the process.
Ms. Pillay also suggested that in addition to the Special Sessions it holds on emergencies, the Council might consider broadening its attention to chronic human rights conditions. | <urn:uuid:71a1a418-3e64-4203-a3fb-6aefea7c5427> | CC-MAIN-2024-10 | https://hrtmcc.org/news/combat-against-discrimination-is-top-priority-un-human-rights-chief-says/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2024-10/segments/1707947475238.84/warc/CC-MAIN-20240301093751-20240301123751-00264.warc.gz | en | 0.971713 | 684 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Turning off Putin’s dollar tap
Russia is dependent on its oil income. In 2021, about a quarter of Russia’s budget revenue came from oil related taxes and duties. In December 2021, Russia sold about five million barrels of crude oil per day. With an average price of USD 100, that makes 500 million dollars flowing to Russia every day.[i] The whole free world should impose a war tariff on Russian oil to further strangle the Russian economy. That could be achieved by using an import tariff of, for example, 80 dollars per barrel.
Thus, oil refineries in the west could still buy Russian oil if they paid, in addition to the price the producer demands, an import tariff of 80 dollars. That would lead to a situation, where Russian producers should have to sell their oil for almost 80 dollars lower price than the global market price for oil is. So, Russia loses 80 dollars per barrel, whereas western countries receive those 80 dollars as tax revenue. This mechanism has been suggested by Ricardo Hausmann, a professor at the Harvard University. [ii]
Why would China pay a full price for the oil, when Russia is forced to sell, but China can buy from somewhere else as well?
The oil producers would bear the economic burden of the tariff, and the global oil price would not be significantly affected. That is because the demand for oil is very elastic, as consumers care little if at all about the origins of the oil. The buyer is ignorant of whether the oil is from the North Sea, the Gulf or from Siberia, in normal times. When an import tariff is added to the Russian oil, the buyers will buy their oil from somewhere else. Russia must lower the price of its oil if it wants to sell it.
The production on the other hand, is very inelastic in the short term. As the production cost for Russian oil is low, it is still profitable to produce oil when it is sold for 20 dollars per barrel. Thus, when the buyer is flexible and ready to get its oil from somewhere else, the tariff is almost entirely paid by the producer. The producer is ready to produce as much as it did before, even though its revenue is much lower.
Some countries will undoubtedly remain out of this tariff arrangement. For example, China might be ready to buy more oil from Russia. But why would it pay a full price for the oil, when Russia is forced to sell, but China can buy from somewhere else as well? In any case Russia will lose a big part of its oil income, and Putin’s war chest will continue to shrink.
Russia will run out of money only if we manage to turn off its continuous inflow of dollars.
References and sources
Finnish Business and Policy Forum EVA is a pro-market think tank – Aiming to promote the long-term success of the Finnish society
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Founded in 1974, EVA is a non-profit association. The members of Elinkeinoelämän valtuuskunta EVA ry (Finnish Business and Policy Forum EVA) are the Confederation of Finnish Industries (EK), the Confederation of Finnish Industry and Employers (TT) Fund, Finance Finland, the Finnish Commerce Federation, Finnish Forest Industries, and Technology Industries of Finland. EVA works in close cooperation with ETLA Economic Research. | <urn:uuid:976b88a7-58db-4e83-997f-a28c84a00c82> | CC-MAIN-2022-27 | https://www.eva.fi/en/blog/2022/03/11/turning-off-putins-dollar-tap/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-27/segments/1656104244535.68/warc/CC-MAIN-20220703134535-20220703164535-00315.warc.gz | en | 0.955987 | 811 | 2.65625 | 3 |
Mini Review ARTICLE
The Pro-inflammatory Effects of Glucocorticoids in the Brain
- Department of Pharmacology, Institute of Biomedical Science, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil
Glucocorticoids are a class of steroid hormones derived from cholesterol. Their actions are mediated by the glucocorticoid and mineralocorticoid receptors, members of the superfamily of nuclear receptors, which, once bound to their ligands, act as transcription factors that can directly modulate gene expression. Through protein–protein interactions with other transcription factors, they can also regulate the activity of many genes in a composite or tethering way. Rapid non-genomic signaling was also demonstrated since glucocorticoids can act through membrane receptors and activate signal transduction pathways, such as protein kinases cascades, to modulate other transcriptions factors and activate or repress various target genes. By all these different mechanisms, glucocorticoids regulate numerous important functions in a large variety of cells, not only in the peripheral organs but also in the central nervous system during development and adulthood. In general, glucocorticoids are considered anti-inflammatory and protective agents due to their ability to inhibit gene expression of pro-inflammatory mediators and other possible damaging molecules. Nonetheless, recent studies have uncovered situations in which these hormones can act as pro-inflammatory agents depending on the dose, chronicity of exposure, and the structure/organ analyzed. In this review, we will provide an overview of the conditions under which these phenomena occur, a discussion that will serve as a basis for exploring the mechanistic foundation of glucocorticoids pro-inflammatory gene regulation in the brain.
Inflammation and Glucocorticoids
Inflammation is described as a response to infection or injury. The cells of innate immunity, such as neutrophils and macrophages in the periphery (1) and microglia (2) in the CNS, express receptors called pattern recognition receptors (PRRs) (3, 4) that are able to recognize parts of conserved evolutionarily microbial molecules called pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs) (5). They also can recognize endogenous molecules called alarmins or danger-associated molecular patterns (DAMPs), which are host-derived proteins released from cells following tissue injury (1, 6). It has been greatly demonstrated that chronic inflammation is associated with several pathologies, such as obesity (7), cardiovascular diseases (8), rheumatoid arthritis (9), inflammatory bowel disease (10, 11), asthma (12, 13), diabetes (14, 15), neurodegenerative diseases (16), and cancer (17). These diseases are mostly characterized by a dysregulated inflammatory response, when the normally protective role of inflammation becomes detrimental as the response becomes excessive in magnitude or duration.
Glucocorticoids (GCs, cortisol in primates and corticosterone – CORT – in rodents) are steroid hormones that essentially regulate a variety of physiological processes, including embryonic development, metabolism of carbohydrates, lipids, and proteins, the stress response, and the resolution of inflammation (6). GCs have potent anti-inflammatory and immunosuppressive action, reflecting the fact that they are the most widely prescribed drug for the treatment of a variety of inflammatory and autoimmune diseases (18). They are mainly synthetized in the suprarenal cortex as result of the activation of the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis (HPA axis).
In general, GCs are considered anti-inflammatory and protective agents, since they inhibit gene expression of pro-inflammatory mediators and other possible damaging molecules, e.g., reactive oxygen species (ROS), in peripheral organs and in the CNS. Despite the primary anti-inflammatory actions of GCs to resolve inflammatory process and restore homeostasis, it is becoming increasingly common studies, suggesting that GCs are not uniformly anti-inflammatory and in some cases may even increase certain parameters of the inflammatory response, mainly in the CNS (19), depending on the dose, chronicity of exposure, and structure/organ analyzed.
In this review, we will provide an overview of the conditions under which these phenomena occur, a discussion that will serve as a basis for exploring the mechanistic foundation of glucocorticoid potentiation of pro-inflammatory gene regulation.
As other steroids, GCs are lipophilic molecules that easily reach the cytoplasm of target cells via peripheral circulation, where they are bound to carrier proteins and then diffuse promptly through cell membranes to modulate gene transcription through their two different nuclear receptors: the mineralocorticoid receptor (MR) or the glucocorticoid receptor (GR) (20, 21). The affinity of CORT for MR is 10-fold higher than for GR, consequently, MR is heavily occupied by basal CORT levels, being mainly responsible for the physiological effects of GCs, and GR is only heavily occupied during pharmacological levels of CORT or during peak secretion of this hormone, commonly observed in stressful situations (22).
The GR molecular structure consists of three functional domains: (1) the N-terminal amino domain (NTD) that contains one of the main transactivation domain, called the activation function 1 (AF1). This domain is functionally important, since it is required for transcriptional activity of steroid hormones; (2) the DNA-binding domain (DBD), which binds to the glucocorticoid responsive elements (GRE) sites in the promoter region of target genes; and (3) ligand-binding domain (LBD) that contains the binding domain to glucocorticoids as well as important sequences for interaction with coregulators, whether coactivators and/or corepressors (23).
Two human isoforms of GR have been identified, GRα and GRβ, which are originated by alternative splicing of the primary transcript GR. The GRα is the predominant isoform of the receptor, and it is the one that transduces GCs signal (23). The GRβ differs from GRα in the carboxy terminal sequence, where the last 50 amino acids are replaced by a sequence of 15 non-homologous amino acids, making GRβ non-responsive to GCs (23, 24), with no transcription of target genes when GCs binds to GRβ through a mechanism involving the formation of heterodimers GRα–GRβ (23). The GRβ has been described in some cells, especially inflammatory cells, such as lymphocytes and macrophages, and related with GCs resistance in diseases, such as asthma (12) and chronic lymphocytic leukemia (25). Recently, GRβ was reported in liver of mice (26) and rats (27) with a role in metabolism control by insulin.
Glucocorticoid receptor isoforms are subject to various posttranslational alterations that further modulate receptor activity. After binding to GC, the conformational changes make them susceptible to modifications, i.e., phosphorylation, acetylation, ubiquitination, and sumoylation (23, 28–30), which influence DNA-binding complex force, affecting transcription and selection of genes regulated by this complex. The multiple phosphorylation events affecting GR NTD lead to changes in the spectrum of GR target genes and is thought to influence both transcriptional activity and nuclear trafficking (23, 30–32).
In conclusion, gene regulation by GCs is complex. The sequence of the DNA-binding site influences the conformation of the GC–GR, leading to different patterns of gene expression, including the pro-inflammatory ones. In addition, the recruitment of the GC–GR and their regulatory elements, as coactivators and RNA polymerase II to DNA binding, is also dependent on the existence of accessible chromatin, which appears to be cell type specific (29).
Glucocorticoid Signal Transduction
Upon reaching the target tissue, GCs bind to nuclear receptors, classical GRs, in the cytoplasm (33). GR binding promotes their release from a multiprotein complex composed by chaperones, e.g., Hsp70, Hsp90, p23, and immunophilins (FKBP51, FKBP52) (18, 30), allowing the GC–GR complex to interact with other cytosolic proteins, or in most cases, to translocate to the nucleus as a result of the exposure of a nuclear localization domain (18). Upon ligation and translocation, GR dimerizes and binds to DNA at palindromic GRE sites, activating the promoter as a transcription factor (transactivation), altering gene expression of various proteins. The GRE structure is not exclusive for GR binding, as it is also common for other nuclear receptors, such as MR, progesterone, and androgen receptors. For that reason, it is referred from some authors as hormonal response elements (HREs) rather than GRE (34).
The GC–GR complex also acts without dimerization, as a monomeric complex, and binds to DNA together with other transcription factor, in this way cooperatively enhancing gene expression (composite transactivation). In addition, the GC–GR complex can also physically interact with transcription factors without interacting with DNA itself, thereby inhibiting the transcription factor and repressing transcription. This is the predominant transrepression mechanism and is called tethering; it is the mechanism responsible to inhibit the pro-inflammatory transcription factors, NFκB (35, 36) and activator protein 1 (AP-1) (37), and also other transcription factors, such as CREB (38), accounting for the anti-inflammatory and immunosuppressive GCs effects.
In addition to the GR-mediated genomic mechanisms, several rapid non-genomic pathways have also been reported. According to them, GCs can have direct effects on cell membrane, interacting with membrane GR (mGR), as reported in human lymphocytes and monocytes (39), and in skeletal muscle fibers in mice (40). GCs can also interact with classical GRs targeting signaling proteins, such as kinases, and/or with classic GRs translocating into the mitochondria, one of the probable mechanisms of apoptosis induced by GC–GR complex on T cells (41–43). These pathways can result in the induction of downstream signaling cascades, changes in cytoplasmic calcium, sodium, or potassium concentrations, and increase in mitochondrial production of ROS (21, 34, 44).
The Pro-inflammatory Glucocorticoid Effects
The evidence supporting the pro-inflammatory GC effects is very robust and suggests that they occur in specific and very intricate situations. Timing, concentration, and duration of GC exposure are all critical in determining whether these hormones will be immunoactivator or immunosuppressor, but the specific situations leading to each outcome are not well documented.
Munhoz et al. (45, 46) have shown that chronic unpredictable stress (CUS), which chronically augment plasma CORT, and mid-to-high levels of CORT enhance the LPS-induced NFκB activation as well as the expression of pro-inflammatory genes (iNOS, IL-1β, TNF-α), while decrease the expression of classical anti-inflammatory ones (IL-1ra, IL-10, and MKP-1) in the frontal cortex and in a lesser extent in the hippocampus of rats. These pro-inflammatory GCs effects were region-dependent and GR-mediated, since they were not evident in the hypothalamus or heart of rats, and the pretreatment with the RU486 reversed them (45, 46).
Microglia are an important player in the GC endangerment to neurons. Sorrells et al. (47) have shown that the concurrent treatment with minocycline, a microglia inhibitor, but not indomethacin, a non-steroid anti-inflammatory drug, prevented GC endangerment in a model of neuronal death using kainic acid. High GC levels did not substantially affect the levels of the chemokines, CCL2, CINC-1, or baseline NFκB activity, but they did suppress mRNA levels of CX3CL1, CX3CR1, and CD22 in the hippocampus – factors that restrain inflammatory responses – while increased by twofold the IL-1β mRNA expression (47). In another study, using transgenic mice lacking GR expression in myeloid cells (microglia included), the same group showed that GC effects on myeloid cells have detrimental consequences for neuron survival in a kainic acid and transitory MCAO occlusion model (48). Indeed, GCs can activate microglia, putting them in a “primed” state (49–51). The primed microglia can undergo changes such as cell surface upregulation of receptors (e.g., TLRs and NLRs) (52, 53) and myeloid markers (e.g., MHC II) (54, 55), promoting a “sensitized” state without production of inflammatory or anti-inflammatory mediators, but, with further stimulus, can produce exaggerated levels of inflammatory mediators. It has been showed increased plasma levels of TNFα and IL-1β, and IL-1β content in various CNS regions (pituitary, hypothalamus, hippocampus, and cerebellum) shortly after the LPS challenge (56).
Timing is an important variable to determine the outcome of GCs actions. Frank et al. (50, 57) reported that CORT administered acutely before an LPS challenge facilitated the inflammatory response to the challenge, both in the periphery and in the brain. In contrast, CORT administered after the same immune challenge resulted in suppression of the inflammatory response (50). They further demonstrated that prior in vivo administration of CORT potentiated the pro-inflammatory response of isolated hippocampal microglia exposed, ex vivo, to LPS (51), establishing a direct relationship between CORT elevation and sensitizing hippocampal microglia.
Corticosterone is also important in the sensitization of microglia in aging. Aged rats, submitted to an immune challenge, show potentiated and longer inflammatory response. Such potentiation has been associated with impairments in hippocampal synaptic plasticity and in contextual and spatial forms of memory (57–59). Interestingly, these aged rats exhibited higher corticosterone levels in the hippocampus, but not in the plasma, throughout the diurnal inactive phase only. Furthermore, the elevated diurnal hippocampal CORT was associated with an increased expression of hippocampal 11β-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase type 1 (11β-HSD1), the enzyme that catalyzes GCs inactive form, 1-dehydrocorticosterone, to the active one, CORT, and to a greater hippocampal GR activation, also only in the inactive phase of the day. Moreover, nuclear-specific expression of GR during the inactive phase was significantly higher in aged rats (59).
Although the molecular mechanism of GC pro-inflammatory actions is largely unknown, new players have been set in action. GCs upregulate the expression of the TLR2 and TLR4, both involved in the recognition of PAMPS and DAMPS and in the activation of signaling cascades that lead to the synthesis and release of inflammatory mediators (60). In vitro and in vivo studies have demonstrated that GCs can upregulate TLR2 expression by the activation of MAPK phosphatase-1 (MKP-1), which, in turn, inhibits p38 MAPK activity, a negative regulator for TLR2. The increased expression of TLR2 leads to enhanced cytokine expression, such as TNF-α, IL-1β, and IL-8, upon challenge with an inflammatory stimulus. In addition, TNF-α and GCs cooperate to stimulate the promoter for TLR2 and potentially TLR4, increasing receptor expression (57, 61, 62) (Figures 1A,B).
Figure 1. Glucocorticoid-mediated modulation of pro-inflammatory pathways. (A) LPS binds to TLR4 and activates the MAP kinase pathway, activating NFκB and increasing the gene expression of pro-inflammatory cytokines (IL-1β, TNF-α, and IL-6). Elevated and prolonged GC exposure increases and potentiates the pro-inflammatory response related to MAP kinase–NFκB pathway. (B) GR activation regulates the gene and protein expression of TLR2, which recognizes PAMPS. This event recruits intracellular proteins, ultimately leading to the downstream signaling activation of NFκB, increasing the expression of inflammatory cytokines, including IL-6, TNF-α, and IL-1β. (C) GR activation regulates the gene and protein expression of NLRP3, which recognizes DAMPS and regulates the immune system response in a mechanism similar to the proposed in (B). Schematic figures based on Ref. (39, 70).
The scientific literature provides growing information about the recently described new class of intracellular PRRs, the nucleotide-binding domain, leucine-rich repeat-containing (NBD-LRR, referred as NLRs) (63). Of the several NLRs recognized, NLRP1, NLRP3, AIM2, and NLRC4 are able to assemble and form a multiprotein complex known as the inflammasome. This complex regulates the activation of caspase-1 and the subsequent maturation and release of pro-inflammatory cytokines, such as IL-1β and IL-18, in response to a wide variety of intracellular PRRs [for subject review, see Ref. (64)]. NLRP3 could be involved in GCs pro-inflammatory actions, as GCs potentiates the LPS-induced pro-inflammatory cytokine IL-1β (45, 46). Indeed, Busillo et al. (65) demonstrated that NLRP3 is a GC-responsive gene in macrophages, an effect GR-dependent. Glucocorticoid induction of NLRP3 sensitizes macrophages to extracellular ATP, which results in the secretion of pro-inflammatory cytokines, such as IL-1β, TNF-α, and IL-6 (65). Furthermore, GCs have been suggested to induce the expression of the purinergic receptor P2Y2R, which once activated, enhances IL-6 secretion by endothelial cells in response to ATP (66). Therefore, GC-mediated activation of TLR2, NLRP3, P2Y2R, and potentiation of TNF-α- and pro-inflammatory genes provide a potential mechanism by which these hormones exert pro-inflammatory actions (Figure 1C).
In addition, Weber and colleagues reported a new stress-induced pro-inflammatory mediator, the alarmin high-mobility group box-1 protein (HMGB-1) (67). HMGB-1 has been reported to be present in the CNS and to play a role in mediating neuroinflammatory responses to ischemia and other injuries, such as immune disorders and neurodegenerative diseases [extensively reviewed in Ref. (68)]. Severe acute stress increases HMGB-1 protein levels in the hippocampus, specifically in the cytosol of hippocampal microglia isolated from severely acute stressed rats. NLRP3, IKBα, and NFKB proteins levels are also increased immediately after severe acute stress. Interestingly, Box A (a HMGB-1 antagonist) pretreatment blocked the stress-induced increase in microglial IL-1β, IKBα, and NLRP3 mRNA expression in response to a bacterial challenge (67). These results suggest that HMGB-1 participates in stress-inducing NLRP3 priming, adding another mechanism by which GCs could have pro-inflammatory effects in the brain (67, 69).
Aldosterone is the steroidal hormone produced in the cortex of suprarenal gland that specifically binds to the MR. Although aldosterone is the related ligand of the MR, GCs can also bind to this receptor with equivalent affinity. The production and secretion of this hormone are majorly triggered in response to alterations in blood perfusion, perceived by cells in the juxtaglomerular complex. The main goal of this action is to maintain the blood pressure in a normal range in terms of control of water and electrolyte homeostasis (70). Mineralocorticoids can also modulate inflammation. MR expression is observed in cells of the immune system and aldosterone has been associated with pro-inflammatory immune effects, such as the release of pro-inflammatory cytokines, generating oxidative stress and inducing fibrosis (71).
Clinical studies have demonstrated that MR antagonism in cardiovascular diseases can blunt inflammatory damage, an important step in the induction of cardiac fibrosis (72). In vitro studies, using myeloid murine cells, have suggested an important role of mineralocorticoid in inducing changes in macrophages phenotype and, therefore, function.
In response to different inflammatory stimuli, macrophages can undergo classical M1 activation (stimulated by TLR ligands and IFN-γ) or alternative M2 activation (stimulated by IL-4/IL-13 cytokines); these states would correspond to the Th1–Th2 polarization of T cells [for review, see Ref. (73)]. In this sense, in dendritic cells from mice, it was shown that aldosterone induces the secretion of IL-6 and TGF-β, two pro-inflammatory cytokines necessary for the polarization of the adaptive immune response toward a Th17 phenotype, proning the system to autoimmunity (74). In peritoneal macrophages, aldosterone treatment promoted the activation of M1 macrophages, inducing TNFα, MCP-1, and IL12 gene expression, all those prevented by MR antagonism (75).
Regarding molecular mechanisms, it has been suggested that aldosterone, through MR, could regulate the expression of several genes. Indeed, cytokine promoters contain HREs, which can be modulated by GCs and potentially by mineralocorticoids (20). Despite it was suggested that ligand–receptor binding to simple HRE is enough to induce gene expression, many other proteins are able to modulate these interactions, adding specificity to gene transcription induced by MR. Also, this interaction could be more complex once the HRE also contains binding sites for non-receptor factors, the composite HREs (76).
In the brain, MR activation is important to maintain many functions of this tissue [for review, see Ref. (77)]. Under pathological conditions, such as cerebral stroke, MR antagonism or ablation has been associated with reduction of ischemic area, lower markers of remodeling process in cerebral vessels, and reduction of microglial/macrophages infiltration and activation, with decreased expression of cytokines and chemokines, such as IL-1β, IL-6, TNF-α, MCP-1, and MIP-1. It was also reported that the MR activation in myeloid cells exacerbates inflammation and alters the M1/M2 inflammatory response to stroke (78). Finally, a study using microglial cells BV-2 reported that the stimulation with aldosterone resulted in NFκB activation and the nuclear translocation of its p65 subunit, further upregulating the expression of IL-6 and TNFr2, reinforcing the evidence of pro-inflammatory actions of mineralocorticoids in the brain (79).
Together, these findings suggest that exposure to steroid hormones in special conditions can shift the (neuro)immune microenvironment toward a pro-inflammatory state, predisposing certain regions of the CNS to a stronger pro-inflammatory response, if the organism is exposed to a subsequent challenge. Given the clinical implications of the pro-inflammatory steroid hormones actions, it is important to emphasize the need for continued basic investigations to understand the unexpected capacity of these hormones to increase CNS inflammation. Future research must be directed at determining how steroid hormones act on different cell types and regions to produce such markedly different immunomodulatory outcomes.
ED made substantial intellectual contributions to the conception, design, interpretation, drafting, and revising of the work, critically. CM made substantial contributions to conception, design, interpretation; revision critically for important intellectual content; and final approval of the version to be published.
Conflict of Interest Statement
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
The authors gratefully thank Leonardo Santana Novaes, Nilton Barreto dos Santos, Eduardo Listik, and Marília B. Malta for helpful discussions.
This work was supported by research grants to CM from Fundação de Amparo à Pesquia do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP: 2008/55178-0 and 2012/24727-4) and Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq: 479153/2009-4). ED was supported by FAPESP (2010/13932-0). ED and CM are research fellows from CNPq.
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43. Sundahl N, Bridelance J, Libert C, De Bosscher K, Beck IM. Selective glucocorticoid receptor modulation: new directions with non-steroidal scaffolds. Pharmacol Ther (2015) 152:28–41. doi:10.1016/j.pharmthera.2015.05.001
45. Munhoz CD, Lepsch LB, Kawamoto EM, Malta MB, Lima Lde S, Avellar MC, et al. Chronic unpredictable stress exacerbates lipopolysaccharide-induced activation of nuclear factor-kappaB in the frontal cortex and hippocampus via glucocorticoid secretion. J Neurosci (2006) 26(14):3813–20. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4398-05.2006
46. Munhoz CD, Sorrells SF, Caso JR, Scavone C, Sapolsky RM. Glucocorticoids exacerbate lipopolysaccharide-induced signaling in the frontal cortex and hippocampus in a dose-dependent manner. J Neurosci (2010) 30(41):13690–8. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0303-09.2010
47. Sorrells SF, Munhoz CD, Manley NC, Yen S, Sapolsky RM. Glucocorticoids increase excitotoxic injury and inflammation in the hippocampus of adult male rats. Neuroendocrinology (2014) 100(2–3):129–40. doi:10.1159/000367849
48. Sorrells SF, Caso JR, Munhoz CD, Hu CK, Tran KV, Miguel ZD, et al. Glucocorticoid signaling in myeloid cells worsens acute CNS injury and inflammation. J Neurosci (2013) 33(18):7877–89. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4705-12.2013
49. Frank MG, Baratta MV, Sprunger DB, Watkins LR, Maier SF. Microglia serve as a neuroimmune substrate for stress-induced potentiation of CNS pro-inflammatory cytokine responses. Brain Behav Immun (2007) 21(1):47–59. doi:10.1016/j.bbi.2006.03.005
50. Frank MG, Miguel ZD, Watkins LR, Maier SF. Prior exposure to glucocorticoids sensitizes the neuroinflammatory and peripheral inflammatory responses to E. coli lipopolysaccharide. Brain Behav Immun (2010) 24(1):19–30. doi:10.1016/j.bbi.2009.07.008
51. Frank MG, Thompson BM, Watkins LR, Maier SF. Glucocorticoids mediate stress-induced priming of microglial pro-inflammatory responses. Brain Behav Immun (2012) 26(2):337–45. doi:10.1016/j.bbi.2011.10.005
52. Lehnardt S, Massillon L, Follett P, Jensen FE, Ratan R, Rosenberg PA, et al. Activation of innate immunity in the CNS triggers neurodegeneration through a toll-like receptor 4-dependent pathway. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A (2003) 100(14):8514–9. doi:10.1073/pnas.1432609100
54. Juedes AE, Ruddle NH. Resident and infiltrating central nervous system APCs regulate the emergence and resolution of experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis. J Immunol (2001) 166(8):5168–75. doi:10.4049/jimmunol.166.8.5168
56. Johnson JD, O’Connor KA, Deak T, Stark M, Watkins LR, Maier SF. Prior stressor exposure sensitizes LPS-induced cytokine production. Brain Behav Immun (2002) 16(4):461–76. doi:10.1006/brbi.2001.0638
58. Chapman TR, Barrientos RM, Ahrendsen JT, Maier SF, Patterson SL. Synaptic correlates of increased cognitive vulnerability with aging: peripheral immune challenge and aging interact to disrupt theta-burst late-phase long-term potentiation in hippocampal area CA1. J Neurosci (2010) 30(22):7598–603. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.5172-09.2010
59. Barrientos RM, Thompson VM, Kitt MM, Amat J, Hale MW, Frank MG, et al. Greater glucocorticoid receptor activation in hippocampus of aged rats sensitizes microglia. Neurobiol Aging (2015) 36(3):1483–95. doi:10.1016/j.neurobiolaging.2014.12.003
60. Weber MD, Frank MG, Sobesky JL, Watkins LR, Maier SF. Blocking toll-like receptor 2 and 4 signaling during a stressor prevents stress-induced priming of neuroinflammatory responses to a subsequent immune challenge. Brain Behav Immun (2013) 32:112–21. doi:10.1016/j.bbi.2013.03.004
61. Hermoso MA, Matsuguchi T, Smoak K, Cidlowski JA. Glucocorticoids and tumor necrosis factor alpha cooperatively regulate toll-like receptor 2 gene expression. Mol Cell Biol (2004) 24(11):4743–56. doi:10.1128/MCB.24.11.4743-4756.2004
62. Wohleb ES, Hanke ML, Corona AW, Powell ND, Stiner LM, Bailey MT, et al. beta-Adrenergic receptor antagonism prevents anxiety-like behavior and microglial reactivity induced by repeated social defeat. J Neurosci (2011) 31(17):6277–88. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0450-11.2011
65. Busillo JM, Azzam KM, Cidlowski JA. Glucocorticoids sensitize the innate immune system through regulation of the NLRP3 inflammasome. J Biol Chem (2011) 286(44):38703–13. doi:10.1074/jbc.M111.275370
67. Weber MD, Frank MG, Tracey KJ, Watkins LR, Maier SF. Stress induces the danger-associated molecular pattern HMGB-1 in the hippocampus of male Sprague Dawley rats: a priming stimulus of microglia and the NLRP3 inflammasome. J Neurosci (2015) 35(1):316–24. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3561-14.2015
69. van Zoelen MA, Yang H, Florquin S, Meijers JC, Akira S, Arnold B, et al. Role of toll-like receptors 2 and 4, and the receptor for advanced glycation end products in high-mobility group box 1-induced inflammation in vivo. Shock (2009) 31(3):280–4. doi:10.1097/SHK.0b013e318186262d
71. Azibani F, Fazal L, Chatziantoniou C, Samuel JL, Delcayre C. Aldosterone mediates cardiac fibrosis in the setting of hypertension. Curr Hypertens Rep (2013) 15(4):395–400. doi:10.1007/s11906-013-0354-3
72. Rossignol P, Menard J, Fay R, Gustafsson F, Pitt B, Zannad F. Eplerenone survival benefits in heart failure patients post-myocardial infarction are independent from its diuretic and potassium-sparing effects. Insights from an EPHESUS (eplerenone post-acute myocardial infarction heart failure efficacy and survival study) substudy. J Am Coll Cardiol (2011) 58(19):1958–66. doi:10.1016/j.jacc.2011.04.049
74. Herrada AA, Contreras FJ, Marini NP, Amador CA, Gonzalez PA, Cortes CM, et al. Aldosterone promotes autoimmune damage by enhancing Th17-mediated immunity. J Immunol (2010) 184(1):191–202. doi:10.4049/jimmunol.0802886jimmunol.0802886
75. Usher MG, Duan SZ, Ivaschenko CY, Frieler RA, Berger S, Schutz G, et al. Myeloid mineralocorticoid receptor controls macrophage polarization and cardiovascular hypertrophy and remodeling in mice. J Clin Invest (2010) 120(9):3350–64. doi:10.1172/JCI41080
77. Reul JM, Gesing A, Droste S, Stec IS, Weber A, Bachmann C, et al. The brain mineralocorticoid receptor: greedy for ligand, mysterious in function. Eur J Pharmacol (2000) 405(1–3):235–49. doi:10.1016/S0014-2999(00)00677-4
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79. Chantong B, Kratschmar DV, Nashev LG, Balazs Z, Odermatt A. Mineralocorticoid and glucocorticoid receptors differentially regulate NF-kappaB activity and pro-inflammatory cytokine production in murine BV-2 microglial cells. J Neuroinflammation (2012) 9:260. doi:10.1186/1742-2094-9-260
Keywords: glucocorticoids, glucocorticoids receptors, brain, steroid hormones, inflammation, cytokines, pro-inflammatory
Citation: Duque EA and Munhoz CD (2016) The Pro-inflammatory Effects of Glucocorticoids in the Brain. Front. Endocrinol. 7:78. doi: 10.3389/fendo.2016.00078
Received: 15 December 2015; Accepted: 17 June 2016;
Published: 28 June 2016
Edited by:Ralf Jockers, Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale (Inserm), France
Reviewed by:Yves Combarnous, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), France
Sylvie Babajko, Hôpital Saint Antoine, France
Copyright: © 2016 Duque and Munhoz. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Carolina Demarchi Munhoz, firstname.lastname@example.org | <urn:uuid:cdb10dfe-cbfb-4e10-83d2-cdcba919646a> | CC-MAIN-2019-04 | https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fendo.2016.00078/full | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-04/segments/1547583884996.76/warc/CC-MAIN-20190123023710-20190123045710-00264.warc.gz | en | 0.835462 | 9,540 | 2.546875 | 3 |
Being able to spell efficiently is a very important skill that you will use in many aspects of you life. Use some of the resources here to help you master the main spelling rules and build your vocabulary.
This is a great site that lets you creat your own spelling lists then you can test yourself in a variety of ways both oral and written.
CleverBee Spelling website
For wordlists like the ones illustrated here go to this site.
Info Please Spelling Check
This combines a dictionary as well as a spelling checker. Very useful to help you with your spelling
VocabularySpellingCity is an educational game website that helps you learn vocabulary and spelling through 25 interactive learning games and activities.
Custom Word Lists
This program lets you creat your own custom word list.
Ten Tips for Better Spelling
Here are some of the Golden Rules of spelling.
Guide to Spelling
Some great information to help you improve your spelling.
A list of tricky and hard to spell words.
Do you need help with spelling?
Games to help you build your vocabulary and improve your spelling.
Spelling Help - How to spell any word
Spelling Word Lists
Here are some pre-made spelling list you can use to practice yur spelling.
Ayers Spelling List (1000 words)
BigIQ Kids Word Lists
Use these list to challenge yourself
SAT Vocab Spelling Lists and Tests
These will really test you. | <urn:uuid:5e5da141-13cb-4186-90de-a433c23c8a9c> | CC-MAIN-2018-34 | https://www.studyvibe.com.au/spelling.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-34/segments/1534221218391.84/warc/CC-MAIN-20180821171406-20180821191406-00151.warc.gz | en | 0.876549 | 299 | 2.546875 | 3 |
World Health Organization (WHO) officials warned on Friday that the Amazon forest fires are posing a particular threat to the well-being of children in the area. Breathing in all that smoke, which is full of particulate matter that can lodge itself in people’s lungs, can pose respiratory danger, especially to sensitive individuals like children.
“We have some anecdotal reports of increase of certain respiratory diseases in children but nothing that we can report from a systematic monitoring,” Maria Neira, WHO’s director of public health, environmental, and social determinants of health, said in an interview with Reuters announcing the risks.
The fires are not natural fires due, they’re a result of ranchers illegally logging trees and setting the brush on fire to make room for cattle pastures. Eventually, that land is sold to soy farmers. These fires happens every year, but this year the number of fires have reached levels not seen for a decade.
Many communities close to the fires have been evacuated as the Brazilian army attempts to put out some of the flames, but there is still a risk for those who remain, including the indigenous people who live in the rainforest. According to Survival International, locals have reported armed loggers entering the lands of uncontacted tribes. These communities are facing both the threat of violence from the loggers and ranchers, and now they face the threat of air pollution as well. WHO hasn’t confirmed any deaths, but the BBC reports that a couple in a rural village in the northwestern state of Rondonia has died due to the fires.
The worst part of these fires is the season is only getting started. The dry season, which is when people usually use fires to clear land, usually stretches into February. | <urn:uuid:fa437473-4410-485f-b8e4-6dc2e2057f65> | CC-MAIN-2019-47 | https://earther.gizmodo.com/amazon-forest-fires-pose-a-health-threat-to-children-w-1837741649 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-47/segments/1573496668782.15/warc/CC-MAIN-20191117014405-20191117042405-00313.warc.gz | en | 0.965995 | 359 | 3.140625 | 3 |
It has been estimated that 70 percent of the earth’s fresh water is tied up in the Antarctic ice cap. When you realize that near the south pole the surface of the ice is 15,000 feet above sea level, you start to understand how Antarctica can act as a temperature buffer to help stabilize global temperature swings. The weight of the ice is so great that it is estimated that it has pushed some of the bedrock down more than 8,000 feet below sea level.
What would Antarctica look like without the ice? It’s hard to say. The molten ice would raise the level of the oceans by some 200 feet, but the land mass, relieved of its burden would spring back up over time. This image from Wikipedia gives some idea of how much of the underlying bedrock would be above water.
But from the moment we saw our first small iceberg float out of the mist as we neared the South Shetland Islands ’til we entered the Drake Passage for our return to civilization, we were never out of sight of ice.
There were glaciers of ice sliding down the mountains, chunks of ice floating in the sea, icebergs that dwarfed our little ship, and caps of ice concealing the islands beneath them. You could wake up in the middle of the night, peer out the porthole, and see sheets of ice glistening in the moonlight.
How Old is this Ice?
Antarctica has been under its ice cap for the past five million years. The central area gets around two inches of precipitation a year (similar to the Mojave Desert). It probably takes tens of thousands of years for those snowflakes to work their way out to the edge of the continent and break off as part of an iceberg. Deeper ice has been dated to 400,000 years ago. Snowfall in the Peninsula, where we were, is much heavier, and the glaciers move faster, taking a thousand years or so to make their way to the sea.
The ice cap extends out over the ocean in ice shelves. Recent research has shown that some of these ice shelves are retreating at an unexpected rate due to global warming. | <urn:uuid:84a65a6a-60e7-4ba2-9bc8-d63a8c2f4448> | CC-MAIN-2018-51 | http://wealthygreenliving.com/most-of-the-worlds-fresh-water/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-51/segments/1544376826715.45/warc/CC-MAIN-20181215035757-20181215061757-00528.warc.gz | en | 0.961109 | 440 | 4.40625 | 4 |
Groundbreaking plastic pollution act hits congress
The law would overhaul recycling and shift the responsibility to companies
A new bill has been introduced which is designed to phase out single-use plastics.
The Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act of 2020 will also overhaul corporate recycling, and hold packaging manufacturers more responsible for reducing waste.
The bill was introduced by Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) and Rep. Alan Lowenthal (D-Calif.), along with Sen. Jeff Merkey (D-Ore.) and Rep. Katherine Clark (D-Mass.).
It has no Republican co-sponsors, meaning it is unlikely to pass in the Senate.
The bill would reform recycling and waste collection, effectively shifting the onus from consumers to corporations to help solve the plastic problem.
Currently, states are responsible for recycling and cutting plastic use. They put plastic bans and bottle deposit programs in place. This law would move the burden of responsibility to the federal government.
The bill also acts as an incentive for companies to make reusable and recyclable products.
Senator Udall said in a statement: “The plastic pollution crisis is past the tipping point: our communities, our waterways, and even our bodies are at risk. We are already bearing the cleanup costs of mountains of plastic waste, and it will only get worse for future generations. We have a responsibility to act now before the overwhelming public health, environmental, climate and economic effects of plastic pollution reach the point of no return. Our solutions are not only possible—they are practical and are already being implemented in cities and states across the country, including in my home state of New Mexico.”
It’s estimated that around 92% of plastic waste is never recycled. | <urn:uuid:782ff439-87da-40da-b0b2-8de2f1d91043> | CC-MAIN-2020-40 | https://foodtribe.com/p/groundbreaking-plastic-pollution-TMjORSRrS2mEW438Yd1zpQ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-40/segments/1600400198887.3/warc/CC-MAIN-20200921014923-20200921044923-00357.warc.gz | en | 0.962871 | 355 | 3.078125 | 3 |
California Invasive Species Action Week began Saturday, June 5 and runs through Sunday, June 13, 2021. Increasing public awareness of invasive species and their impacts helps protect our natural resources, waterways, native species, agriculture, and health.
- Author: Elaine Lander
Brooms are shrubs which were originally planted in California as ornamentals and for erosion control, but are now considered to be invasive weeds since they are highly competitive. They crowd out native plants and form impenetrable barriers to wildlife. There are four common species of broom in California: Scotch broom, French broom, Spanish broom and Portuguese broom.
In the newly revised Pest Notes: Brooms, UCCE advisor Scott Oneto and UC Davis weed scientists Joe DiTomaso and Guy Kyser explain the issues with planting these invasive species. The publication includes expanded sections on biology and management and updated herbicide...
Stink bugs are common pests in gardens but the brown marmorated stink bug, or BMSB, is of particular concern. BMSB (Halyomorpha halys) was first detected in Los Angeles County in 2006 and has since been detected in many other parts of California with large populations in some counties.
What does BMSB look like?
The adult BMSB is similar in shape to other stink bugs can be distinguished by the following characteristics:
- Two white bands on the antennae
- Forward edge of head is blunt
- Margin of the shoulder is smooth
- Legs are marbled brown with faint white bands
- Membranous parts of...
In California, P. ramorum is primarily a leaf pathogen and thrives in coastal tanoak/redwood forests and oak woodlands. There are two categories of hosts for P. ramorum....
Invasive species are non-native plants, animals, or pathogens that can cause economic or environmental harm. This year, we will be spotlighting several different invasive species that are established in California to raise awareness and help reduce their spread. Stay tuned—we will be showcasing a different invasive species each day and where you can find more information.
Want to learn more about California Invasive Species Action Week? Check out the full schedule of... | <urn:uuid:f73c9e93-0bcd-4a61-a449-d913f6d1a451> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://ucanr.edu/blogs/UCIPMurbanpests/index.cfm?tagname=invasive%20species%20action%20week | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337537.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20221005042446-20221005072446-00479.warc.gz | en | 0.943764 | 457 | 3.53125 | 4 |
Rationale: In order to become more fluent readers and writers, students need to develop automaticity of recognizing letters. If they have something memorable that they can connect the letter to when they see it, they will recognize that letter easier. This lesson will help students recognize short o, /o/, in written words and spoken words and be able to remember the sound short o makes.
· Primary paper and pencil.
· Poster with "Oliver had an operation in October so Oscar gave him a pet otter."
· Doc in the Fog (Educational Insights)
· Picture of choir singer singing a note with mouth open wide on poster
· On same poster as choir singer, words and pictures of: hot, October, otter, pond, mop, net, cat index cards
Procedures: 1. First I will tell the students that we will be learning the sound for and writing a new letter today. I will review /a/, /e/, /i/ so they don't get them confused and tell or remind them that it is important to learn these letters and sounds so they can become better readers and writers. "The letter for today is o and we are going to find it in different words and make our own words with the o in it.
2. Ask students: Have you ever heard a singer sing a note for a long time that sounds like /o/? Well that /o/ sound that choir singers make is how the letter o sounds when you read it. Let's all say /o/ together and pretend we are choir singers. ' /o/'. Now say hot. Let's say it slowly... h..h-o-o-o-t. Did you hear that singing note that sounded like /o/?
3. Now let's look at this poster board and
we are going to try a silly tongue twister. First I'll say it and
then you can say it with me. "Oliver had an operation in October
so Oscar gave him an otter." Okay now everybody repeat it with me.
Now we're going to listen really hard for the singing sound while we say
the words slowly and stretch them out. /o/liver had an /o/peration in /o/ctober
so /o/scar gave him an /o/tter. Way to go!"
4. "Now we are going to work on how to make the letter o. Take out your paper and pencil and follow me. First start at the fence (dotted line) and curve your pencil down to the floor (bottom line) and back up to the fence. You should have made a circle without picking up your pencil. I'm going to walk around while you practice writing o's. Write a line of o's for me so I can see how well you're doing.
5. Now we're going to see which words we hear our choral singer in. Sing the word like a choral singer when you hear a word that has the /o/ sound in it. Fix? Fox? Lock? Tack? Job? Cat? Hop? On? Land?
6. I will introduce the book, Doc in the Fog, and then read it. The students can sing /o/ when they hear /o/ in words in the story. Then the students will take turns reading Doc in the Fog with a partner. They can point out the words to each other that they hear /o/ in. Then they can write a message about Doc and his adventures.
7. Now I will show the students the poster with the pictures on it and tell them to number their paper from one to ten. I will point to a picture and if they hear the /o/ sound in the name of the picture, and then they will put an o next to that number. If they don't hear /o/ then they will put a minus sign. We will do this for each of the ten pictures.
O'Neal, Leslie Sidwell. "Hop on Pop". Emergent Literacy: Openings.
Naylor, Katie. "Say /o/". Emergent Literacy: Inroads.
Click here to return to Discoveries. | <urn:uuid:f32283ae-ff76-446a-9ee0-b6297a178e81> | CC-MAIN-2017-51 | http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/discov/boydel.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-51/segments/1512948527279.33/warc/CC-MAIN-20171213143307-20171213163307-00528.warc.gz | en | 0.959765 | 871 | 4.4375 | 4 |
Navigating Health & Wellness
Learn how to optimize your wellness & minimize stress levels
Wellness is the active process of becoming aware of and making choices toward a healthy and fulfilling life, and is a critical aspect of your overall wellbeing as students. There are SO many things that influence your health!
The topics below will help you to:
- Learn how to be AWARE of your wellness
- Provide you with strategies to OPTIMIZE your wellness
- Equip you with resources to MANAGE and overcome difficulties
8 Dimensions of Wellness
The 8 Dimensions of Wellness is a model that will help you understand how different forms of wellness play a role in your everyday health. Watch the video below to learn more!
Wellness Resources for each dimension
How do I optimize my Wellness?
Get your body moving! Physical activity has SO many benefits, spanning your physical health, attention, mood, and even your academic performance! The best part is that there are options to incorporate movement into your daily schedule that matches your interests.
For existing medical conditions...what’s your plan at GVSU to get the care you need?
What do I do if I am sick or have an unanticipated emergency (i.e. chipped tooth, broken bone)...where can I go?
What planning should I do?
- Email your professors ASAP! Given the situation, you may not need to offer full disclosure. Inquire if there are opportunities to make up missed work (office hours are great to help get caught up).
- Identify Dr. offices/clinics ahead of time. Better to be prepared and not wondering and panicking about what to do when a situation arises!
How can I practice safety on campus? What resources are available to me?
Laker Guardian is a service to have the Department of Public Safety check in on you when walking to/from class or car.
Safewalk is a program where the Department of Public Safety will accompany you when walking across campus. There are also emergency phones placed throughout campus. They have a blue light to easily identify them. | <urn:uuid:fc929ff1-e35e-416f-83e6-31067d270316> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.gvsu.edu/mylakersuccess/navigating-health-wellness-5.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571538.36/warc/CC-MAIN-20220812014923-20220812044923-00166.warc.gz | en | 0.936736 | 432 | 2.515625 | 3 |
The nation’s electric grid is working just fine despite big shifts in the sources providing that power, but this could change in the future, concludes a highly anticipated new Energy Department report.
Energy Secretary Rick Perry launched this controversial study in April, with the aim of measuring the reliability and vulnerabilities of the US electricity grid — the massive, interconnected network that delivers power from energy producers to consumers. Perry raised concerns about the declining number of coal and nuclear power plants and suggested that subsidies for wind and solar energy were primarily to blame.
Many energy and environmental groups balked, viewing this study as an attempt to justify new policies prioritizing power plants over solar, wind, and other forms of renewable energy. On the defensive, academics, energy experts, and advocates released study after study this summer highlighting the benefits of renewable technologies.
Meanwhile, President Trump has repeatedly criticized or ignored wind and solar power projects, and touted the notion that environmental regulations have created a “war on coal.” He’s also moved to revive the flagging nuclear industry.
The Energy Department’s 187-page analysis, released late on Wednesday night after weeks of delays, is not the overt attack on renewable energy many worried it would be.
“There have been many analysts worried that the study would be used as a hatchet against renewables and shameless promotion of coal. The study is neither,” David Victor, a professor of international relations at the University of California, San Diego, wrote in an email to BuzzFeed News. “Most strikingly, perhaps, is that the report offers zero evidence for the ‘war on coal’ that President Trump believes is affecting that industry.”
The report concluded the rise of cheap natural gas is “the biggest contributor” to the closing of a string of coal and nuclear power plants over the last decade. The officials also found other factors contributed, albeit to a lesser extent, to the decline in power plants — such as a flattening of electricity demand, environmental regulations, and more power coming from renewable energy.
Despite massive changes in the electricity markets, the grid has not suffered major reliability problems, according to the report. (This was also the key takeaway of a draft version of this report, leaked in July.) But it’s an open question as to what will happen in the future as the nation’s electricity mix continues to change, with more renewables coming online and power plants shutting down.
To this end, the report contends that energy sources that can be generated around the clock — notably coal, nuclear, hydropower, and natural gas power plants — are necessary for the vitality of the grid in the long term.
But critics say this idea is wrong because reliance on these big power plants, which are difficult to dial down or turn off quickly, would actually jeopardize the future grid’s stability in a warming world. “Coal and nuclear power plants aren't flexible in terms of being able to provide output,” Steve Clemmer, a director of energy research at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told BuzzFeed News. The report does not mention climate change, he added.
To make the grid more reliable and resilient going forward, the report also recommends: changing how prices are calculated in electricity markets, rolling back environmental and climate regulations, and streamlining the licensing and permitting for different energy sources, among other policies.
Coal and nuclear groups have largely praised the report. “The U.S. Department of Energy’s electric grid study reaffirms our view that nuclear energy is a key and necessary contributor to a clean, reliable and resilient electric grid, which is now more important than ever,” Nuclear Energy Institute President Maria Korsnick said in a statement.
“We are pleased that this report acknowledges the importance of coal-fired baseload electricity generation” in the US, Gary Broadbent, a spokesperson for Murray Energy Corporation, said in a statement emailed to BuzzFeed News. To boost coal generation, Broadbent recommended declaring a federal emergency on the grid and banning any new closures of coal plants. The coal miner group has repeatedly asked the Trump administration to take this extreme step and was recently rebuffed, according to the Associated Press.
But reactions from renewable energy experts and advocates have been mixed. Some told BuzzFeed News that although they agree with many of the report’s key market-trend findings, they have concerns and questions about the policy recommendations.
“I think most of what was discussed in the document was fairly factual,” Christopher Clack, founder of grid-modeling and software firm Vibrant Clean Energy, LLC, wrote in an email to BuzzFeed News. “My big question is how, if at all, it will be used as spin by the administration for certain priorities,” such as backing coal jobs, natural gas pipelines, and economic growth.
“We look forward to reviewing the full report in greater detail, and welcome the focus on the resilience and security of our electricity supply,” Gregory Wetstone, president and CEO of the American Council on Renewable Energy, said in a statement.
“Certainly, we would be concerned by any effort to use resiliency as an excuse for propping up uneconomic sources of electrical power, and denying consumers free market access to clean, cost-effective renewable energy from, for example, wind and solar power,” Wetstone added. | <urn:uuid:5cf19f11-1905-433f-b472-99d144d5daf6> | CC-MAIN-2020-24 | https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/zahrahirji/doe-report-grid-nuclear-coal-power | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-24/segments/1590347392142.20/warc/CC-MAIN-20200527075559-20200527105559-00364.warc.gz | en | 0.95401 | 1,113 | 2.75 | 3 |
⎨Through the Projected Perception of Spacial Harmonics⎬
Sense and the Sensor;
The world around us: the world we design and build to experience. All around us we have created stuff. Stimuli, candy for the modern imagination, stimulation for the conglomeration. We are amidst a trans-connected threshold, whereby everything is networked, plugged in, online, and in real-time. Computer chips now out number humans and questions of embodiment through architecture are not being questioned, ‘Digital networks are no longer separate from architecture and pervasive computing is being inscribed into the everyday social, political and environmental complexity of the existing physical environment’ (McCullough, 2005). Everyday the world is becoming increasingly clearer that it is one of individual interconnected self-expression.
Who is to be responsible for these new endeavors, designs and spaces? McCullough States, “Human life is interactive life, in which architecture has long set the stage,”(McCullough, 2005) It is architecture’s responsibility to illuminate the way. But if architecture is at all interested in creating experience in this information age then it must be rigorously responsible at incorporating this realm, its constructs, and infrastructure. In this new space ‘The Architecture becomes the information editor’ (Plottegg & Trapp).
‘The real is already virtual’ (Novak, 2001), and “The virtual connects body and perspective in new ways” (Queau, 1995). But the last thing we need is more meaningless connectivity in the vein of virtual reality. Attempting to simulate reality by symbolizing it. Rather a new capacity needs to be investigated, alternative to that which is known. “Existing notions of body and space need to be re‐programmed to stay meaningful” (Hoog, 2005). So it is through our architecture that “Alternity” originates. Alternity employs informed dimensions of space and time. Superseding virtuality by attempting to avoid symbolism, existing between the physical & metaphysical, material & immaterial, real & unreal, it exists within this current blurred threshold. The threshold, which society is beginning to get comfortable in and the threshold which architecture, is in need of a defense. Defending its necessity and responsibility in these new realms of world making.
The goal of this thesis is to explore the concept and practice of world making by designing an environment that allows for the experimentation of spatial and temporal harmonic possibilities using information as material. Geometry (numbers in space), sound (numbers in time), and sense (coherence of numbers) are constructs containing forces and velocities which are translated by their inherent relationship to frequency, and periodicity, thus creating potential harmonies. This feedback loop through projection, both spatial (geometric) and temporal (sonic) are informed by mapping perception (EEG data). This allows a unique relationship to be reprogrammed, and is experienced through the TranSection; an evolved threshold paradigm, projecting space by perceiving our sense of it. An experiment in the evolution and transformation of the visceral infinite spaceScape of possibilities.
Welcome to Alternity. ∞
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Hmm…it looks like things are taking a while to load. Try again? | <urn:uuid:b7f3821e-d80f-470a-85d5-17a922d78e06> | CC-MAIN-2013-48 | http://vimeo.com/6884556 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-48/segments/1386163988740/warc/CC-MAIN-20131204133308-00015-ip-10-33-133-15.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.926342 | 673 | 2.546875 | 3 |
Q: Why do owls turn and bob their heads so much?
A: Owl eyes are very large. They are so large that they cannot move in their sockets. Imagine having a pair of binoculars up to your eyes and looking straight ahead. If you hear a sound to the side, you can’t see what made it unless you turn your whole head so the binoculars are pointed toward the sound. That’s how an owl sees all of the time.
Without binoculars, you can roll your eyes up or down and move your eyes left or right without moving your head, but an owl can’t. And even when looking forward, owls have a smaller field of vision than people do.
To see what your visual field looks like try this experiment. Hold your arms out with both of your index fingers in front of your nose. While you stare straight ahead, move your arms in an arc toward your sides, still staring forward. When you can no longer see your fingers
stop moving your arms. The arc that your arms made is your visual field and measures approximately 180 degrees.
An owl’s visual field is only about 110 degrees. For an owl to focus well, it must turn its head to get an object into its visual field. In addition, owls often bob their heads up and down to judge distance.
By Dick Brewer | <urn:uuid:29136dea-08ac-4ab5-9822-c332a8404f74> | CC-MAIN-2021-39 | https://crewtrust.org/wild-file-q-a-why-do-owls-turn-and-bob-their-heads-so-much/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-39/segments/1631780060882.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20210928184203-20210928214203-00435.warc.gz | en | 0.949863 | 286 | 3.671875 | 4 |
When you visit a Shinto shrine in Japan, you'll see lots of wooden plaques hanging all over the place. These are called "ema" (絵馬) and are pieces of wood which visitors of the shrine can write down their prayers and wishes for the "kami" (deity) of the shrine to receive.
Historically, people brought animals (mostly horses) to the shrines as donations to gain good luck, but over time this was replaced with pictures of horses and other animals on the Ema. During the early 1600s the Ema also became a vehicle for artists to display their design, and "ema halls" were established to showcase their work.
Ema are sold at nearly every Shinto shrine for about $5-10. Japanese people typically buy these plaques to pray for success in work, school exams, good health, and marital bliss. You'll see lots of students visit the shrines and write down their prayers on the plaques during school exam season.
Some shrines specialize in certain types of plaques. The ones you see above and below are from Fushimi-Inari in Kyoto. Fushimi-Inari (my favorite Shinto shrine) is known for having thousands of "tori" gates and their deity is a fox (more about Fushimi in future posts).
To write down your wishes on an Ema, all you have to do purchase one at the shrine and write your wish and name on the blank side.
Ema are typically hung up where they can easily be spotted or around a sacred location on the shrine grounds. The picture above is taken at Meiji-Jingu (a shrine in Tokyo) and all the ema are hung up around a large sacred cedar tree.
The Shinto shrine can also prepare special Ema for you (picture above) which have your name written on the front. Next time you go to Japan, make sure to write your wishes on an Ema!
Comments will be approved before showing up. | <urn:uuid:9364eb82-b1e7-4aa0-8603-7d623a7a57a5> | CC-MAIN-2023-06 | https://www.snakku.com/blogs/news/15576468-ema-write-down-your-wishes | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-06/segments/1674764499831.97/warc/CC-MAIN-20230130232547-20230131022547-00805.warc.gz | en | 0.977075 | 419 | 2.53125 | 3 |
Hygienist services are available offering general cleaning and monitoring of your oral health and gums. The effectiveness of your own cleaning can also be monitored and modified if necessary to achieve optimum results. We also carry a range of oral hygiene products to assist you.
Dental hygiene at the dental practice also forms part of treating gum disease and bad breath. If you have a bridge, denture, orthodontic treatment or a dental implant you will have specific hygiene needs that the hygienist will be able to assist you with.
It is recommend that you come in for regular hygiene appointments to ensure your mouth stays clean and healthy.
We encourage our patients to bring their children to the practice from an early age. Regular check-ups from a young age will ensure children won’t suffer from untreated dental decay.
Studies have shown that the younger you take your child to a dentist, even if just for a check-up, the more likely they are to have a positive experience and grow up not to be afraid of the dentist.
Prevention is always better than cure so call the practice today to make an appointment for your child.
Your gums are the cushions for your teeth: and they surround the teeth in the jaws and help to support them. Looking after your gums is just as important as looking after your teeth. Red and swollen gums that bleed when you brush them could be a sign of gum disease, also known as gingivitis.
When gingivitis is left untreated it can develop further into a type of infection known as periodontitis, which affects the entire area surrounding the tooth. A result of this could be losing your tooth so it’s vital to avoid.
To keep your mouth in tip-top shape come in for regular hygiene appointments and dental check-ups.
Sensitive teeth can be a pain for many people and can be caused by several things. It is always important to seek advice from a dentist so the problem can be identified and treated.
One cause of sensitivity is the loss of tooth enamel. Enamel is the hard outer coating of a tooth. If the enamel is worn away or eroded, the dentine is exposed which can lead to pain and sensitivity.
Erosion can be caused by your diet (frequent consumption of high sugar or high acid food or drink), tooth brushing habits (brushing too hard) and tooth grinding, for example. To protect your enamel and for effective treatment of tooth sensitivity book an appointment and we can create an individualised plan for you.
Bad breath is a very common problem and there are many different causes. Some people find that they have bad breath all the time and there may be an underlying medical cause for that, such as throat, nose or lung infections and sinusitis, bronchitis or diabetes.
You can also suffer from bad breath if you have poor dental hygiene. Without regular brushing and flossing, bacteria and bits of food can get trapped in between your teeth, which release an unpleasant odour after some time. Another cause of bad breath is smoking. Bad breath is also caused or made worse by strong foods like garlic, onions and coffee.
Bad breath can be prevented by following a daily oral hygiene regime and cutting down on sugary foods and drinks. Regular trips to the hygienist will also ensure your plaque levels are kept under control. | <urn:uuid:bfbc64f9-d1dd-4cd5-96ab-b8f8a694a1ea> | CC-MAIN-2018-09 | http://northhuytondental.co.uk/treatments/preventive-dentistry/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-09/segments/1518891813622.87/warc/CC-MAIN-20180221123439-20180221143439-00214.warc.gz | en | 0.954924 | 696 | 2.828125 | 3 |
Originally published in Taos News
Art was present in Taos Pueblo painter Eva Mirabal’s life from her early years. Her father was a model for Nicolai Fechin and Joseph Imhof, and she often accompanied him to the artists’ studios. He was such a popular model that a wooden bust of him was once exhibited outside Mabel Dodge Luhan’s house and today is part of the University of New Mexico collection.
“Eva Mirabal first began attracting attention for her artwork while she was a teenager, in the late 1930s,” said Jina Brenneman, Curator of Collections and Exhibitions at the Harwood Museum of Art. “She had been watching, learning and studying with the founders.”
Mirabal, who was born in 1920, went to Taos Day School and later attended the Santa Fe Indian School under the guidance of Dorothy Dunn, who made great efforts to promote painting instruction for Native American students.
“Dorothy was a great influence on my mother,” said Mirabal’s son, Jonathan Warm Day, a painter and a writer himself. “She encouraged her students to reflect their traditions and daily life in their works. My mother learned to paint murals with her and that can be seen in her later work, when she joined the Women’s Army Corps in 1943. She helped paint a mural, A Bridge of Wings, for the Air Service Command at Patterson Field, Ohio.”
While still in the Women’s Army Corps Mirabal became a cartoonist. “Her ‘G.I. Gertie’ series appeared in Corps publications, distinguishing her as the first published Native American female cartoonist and one of the earliest Native American women to have her own cartoon strip,” said writer and artist Liz Cunningham, who has researched and written about Mirabal in her profiles on the Town of Taos’ Remarkable Women of Taos website.
In 1946 Mirabal went to Southern Illinois University in Carbondale and spent one year there as a student and artist-in-residence. “My mother had a very versatile style,” said Warm Day. “She was like a sponge. Whenever she went to a place, she took elements of it that later on became part of her paintings, like the cartoons in the military, a more academic style at Illinois and a somewhat abstract touch in her animal figures when she attended the Taos Valley Art School run by Louis Ribak and Beatrice Mandelman, once she returned to Taos. She had her own artistic voice, but she was also eager to learn from others.”
One of Mirabal’s favorite themes was the Taos Pueblo life. “In some paintings, Eva featured women in their historic traditional everyday dress: a manta (brightly colored shawl), turquoise beads, and over-the-knee white deerskin leggings,” said Cunningham. “She paid close attention to details.”
Cunningham also notes that Eva was the only woman who entered a painting in the First National Exhibition of Indian Painting at the Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa, Oklahoma and then won the Margretta S. Dietrich Award for her painting Picking Wild Berries. “Eva occupies a very well deserved space among the remarkable Women of Taos,” she said.
Mirabal’s works are currently exhibited at the Smithsonian Museum, at Yale University and in other major museums as well as in private collections.
Her sons, Jonathan Warm Day and Christopher Gomez, remember her as a very prolific artist who was constantly busy. “She was always painting,” said Warm Day, adding that she was quite unusual for her time. “A lot of Native people of that era were quiet and reclusive, but my mother was neither,” he said. “She had a strong spirit, and it drove and inspired her. And she worked all the time. When I think of her, I can see her painting, painting… That’s what allowed her to achieve so much in so little time.”
Brenneman agrees with Warm Day. “I don’t think Eva Mirabal thought much of limitations,” she said. “She seems to have had a healthy disregard for the impossible.”
Mirabal died in 1968 after spending her final years at the Pueblo, where she participated actively in the community life and portrayed it in her paintings. She also depicted some ceremonial images in her work, though her son doesn’t favor the inclusion of such details in current Native American art.
“It’s best if people go to visit the Pueblo, ask questions and get a feeling of the dances, or other ceremonies,” he said. “Unfortunately, lots of writers and painters depict our traditions in ways that can be misinterpreted or that are plain wrong. In many cases, if they are not from the Pueblo, their representations of our life are not historically correct. In my mother’s times, some artists did include ceremonial images but that isn’t done now.”
When Warm Day talks about his mother’s time he does it with a tone of longing in his voice. “I think that, for her generation, a lot of the art came from the heart, free of material worries and expectations,” he said. “See, now I print my own artwork to make a living, but in those days a lot of the work they did was just original. They put more care in their art and they didn’t think about the money as much was we do now.”
An exhibit of paintings by Eva Mirabal and Jonathan Warm Day will be hosted in 2013 by the Harwood Museum of Art. “The upcoming Harwood exhibition, as well as current exhibitions, seeks to incorporate the vital stories of the Taos Pueblo artists along with the exciting contemporary work being done by the Hispanic community as well as the Anglo community,” said Brenneman. | <urn:uuid:e0e8956f-d237-42c1-a03d-0497557ff7ca> | CC-MAIN-2020-50 | https://teredovalpage.com/2013/02/24/560/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-50/segments/1606141748276.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20201205165649-20201205195649-00052.warc.gz | en | 0.988081 | 1,284 | 3.03125 | 3 |
5.7 Types of renewable energy
The most widely used fuel in the world is biomass – wood and vegetation. In developing countries, wood is the most widely available fuel, especially in rural areas; but unfortunately in many cases it is not used in a renewable fashion, resulting in deforestation. This has further knock-on effects, such as soil erosion and environmental degradation, which can be a significant problem. Properly managed biomass can be an important source of renewable energy. Several types of fast-growing trees are suitable for short rotation cropping, in which trees are harvested and replanted after about five years, or coppicing, in which the trees are regularly pruned and their branches harvested. Thus, there is no reduction in the number of growing trees. Other crops such as rapeseed and sugar cane are often grown for their oil, which has many uses, including fuel for transport. Sugar cane can also be converted into ethanol for use in motor vehicles.
In 2013, the most widely implemented renewable energy scheme for large-scale power generation was large-scale hydroelectricity, in which stored water is released downhill through generating turbines. Water gets into the high-level reservoir in two ways:
- directly, after falling as rain or snow on higher ground
- as part of a scheme where water is pumped from lower down when 'surplus' energy is available, to be released at times of peak energy demand.
In the latter case, the main purpose of the scheme is short-term energy storage, rather than to be a source of energy. However, most suitable hydroelectric sites have now been developed, and there are significant social and ecological problems associated with forming the reservoirs. Also, suitable sites tend to be remote from areas requiring energy.
Tidal barrage schemes are similar to large-scale hydro schemes, with the twice-daily tide carrying seawater into an adapted natural reservoir, which is drained via generating turbines. One such success, and a major engineering project, was the barrage across the estuary of the Rance just outside St Malo (Figure 92). But the potential for large-scale power generation in this way is not without major consequences for the environment because large areas of land must be flooded for the reservoir.
The smaller scale motion of the sea – wave power – may itself offer a useful way of generating electricity.
Wind mills and water mills have long been used to provide mechanical energy from renewable sources. In the UK and many other countries, wind farms in remote hilltop locations (as well as other, less remote sites) link mechanical energy through turbines to the electrical grid, and large offshore schemes, rated in hundreds of megwatts, are increasingly common. However, wind energy is a highly variable resource, and no wind turbine will ever be able to provide power 100% of the time.
This brings us on to solar power: energy directly from the Sun. Photovoltaics is the key to electricity generation directly from sunlight. As with wind power, though, the availability of solar energy is subject to variation, not just between night and day, but also as the length of day changes with the seasons, particularly at high latitudes. Solar power is also very dependent on the weather, though weather patterns are generally predictable over the longer term.
There are two technologies for harvesting solar energy. Solar thermal energy is used for space heating in passive designs of houses (e.g. just having south-facing windows), and in systems where solar energy is used to heat air in wall cavities, which is then actively circulated around the house (known as Trombe walls). Alternatively, active solar water heating with panels mounted on roofs will feed heated water either directly for use or via a heat exchanger for pre-heating domestic water; see Figure 93.
There are also large-scale applications. In some, an array of steerable mirrors is arranged to focus sunlight on a central tower where the concentrated heat drives steam turbines to generate electricity. In others, parabolic, tilting mirrors direct the light onto a pipe that carries a fluid that is cooled in a steam generator connected to a turbine. These systems, examples of which are shown in Figure 94, have to be big to minimise heat losses. Large solar thermal schemes are usually also able to store heat, either in the form of molten salt, or as superheated steam, to keep the turbines spinning at night or at other times when the solar energy input is less than the desired output of the plant.
Photovoltaic technology generates electricity directly from sunlight and is the main subject here. It is modular, i.e. it can be built up in small sections – and so is just as applicable to small-scale domestic application as to large power stations. Its chief benefits lie in its silent, pollution-free operation with almost zero maintenance and it is well-suited for use in urban environments. (A variant of the technology, thermo-photovoltaics, use a particular type of photovoltaic cells to turn radiant energy from any heat source into electricity. The heat source can be from fossil fuels or biomass as well as from concentrated sunlight.)
Because of its variable nature, renewable energy usually requires integration with so-called power conditioning – electrical engineering aimed at levelling the supply. This may involve energy storage systems, such as batteries, or the hydro-storage mentioned earlier, or the use of the mains network as a store so that power is exported to the grid at times of abundance and imported at leaner times.
Activity 42 (self-assessment)
- a.List four types of renewable energy.
- b.Give two advantages of photovoltaics compared to other renewable sources.
- a.Biomass, wind, solar, geothermal, hydro, tidal and wave are the principal ones. You may also have thought of ocean and thermal.
- b.There are several advantages: it is a modular system, so as many modules as required can be installed at a particular location; it is silent in operation; it is virtually maintenance free. | <urn:uuid:37a7d7ce-af40-4dd6-856f-de1cbda3b1fc> | CC-MAIN-2021-39 | https://www.open.edu/openlearn/science-maths-technology/introducing-engineering/content-section-5.7 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-39/segments/1631780057496.18/warc/CC-MAIN-20210924020020-20210924050020-00584.warc.gz | en | 0.953871 | 1,240 | 3.8125 | 4 |
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Bureau of Reclamation have published a report, "Addressing Climate Change in Long-Term Water Resources Planning and Management: User Needs for Improving Tools and Information," that identifies the needs of local, state, and federal water management agencies for climate change information and tools to support long-term planning.
"Climate change impacts to water and water-dependent resources challenge water management agencies throughout the country," said Reclamation Commissioner Michael Connor. "Close collaboration by water resource managers and scientists will improve the tools and information needed to help make future decisions that support the sustainable use of water."
The report seeks to focus research and technology efforts to address information and tool gaps needed for longer-term water resources planning and management. It found there were gaps in the information and tools to help water managers in how to use climate change information to make decisions, how to assess the responses of natural systems to climate change, and how to communicate the results and uncertainties of climate change to decision-makers.
"This document takes a step toward communicating a collective expression of needs from the water resources community to the science community," added U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Director of Civil Works Steve Stockton. "We hope the science community will rally around these needs with collaborative research and fill the gaps that have been identified."
Climate change data may be incorporated into longer-term water resources using various methods. This report uses eight technical steps to categorize the information and tool gaps:
1. Summarize Relevant Literature
2. Obtain Climate Change Information
3. Make Decisions About How to Use the Climate Change Information
4. Assess Natural Systems Response
5. Assess Socioeconomic and Institutional Response
6. Assess System Risks and Evaluate Alternatives
7. Assess and Characterize Uncertainties
8. Communicating Results and Uncertainties to Decision-makers
This report was prepared by technical specialists from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation as part of the Climate Change and Water Working Group, comprised of the two water management agencies plus the two major science agencies: the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the United States Geological Survey. Other members of the interagency working group include the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The report is available online at www.usbr.gov/climatechange/userneeds. | <urn:uuid:cef915f1-b6bf-40ac-a98c-a605bfb7d111> | CC-MAIN-2014-42 | http://www.usace.army.mil/Media/NewsReleases/tabid/203/Article/475418/report-published-identifying-climate-change-research-needs-for-long-term-water.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-42/segments/1414119648891.34/warc/CC-MAIN-20141024030048-00030-ip-10-16-133-185.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.91389 | 498 | 3.109375 | 3 |
Colonel Fremont had married the daughter of Missouri’s illustrious Senator, Hon. Thomas H. Benton. Mr. Carson, upon his arrival at St. Louis, was taken immediately to Mr. Benton’s home, where he was treated with every attention, and where he enjoyed the pleasure of an introduction to the most distinguished men of the city. As in the continuance of his journey he stepped upon the platform of the depot in Washington, Mrs. Fremont was there, with her carriage, to convey him as a guest to her residence.
In the crowd landing from the cars, Mrs. Fremont recognized him at once, from the description which her husband had given. Mr. Carson remained in Washington for several weeks, greatly interested in the entirely new world which was open to him there. His reputation had gone before him, and the very best men in our land honored themselves in honoring Christopher Carson. President Polk appointed him Lieutenant in the United States Rifle Corps. He was then directed to return immediately across the continent as bearer of important dispatches.
Arriving at Fort Leavenworth, in Kansas, he was there furnished with an escort of fifty soldiers to accompany him across the plain. He reached the eastern declivity of the Rocky mountains without important adventure. Here, at a place called Point of Rocks, he overtook a party of United States Volunteers, under command of Lieutenant Mulony. They were escorting a large train of wagons to New Mexico. They encamped not far from each other. Just before the break of day a band of Comanche Indians made an attack upon the cattle of Mulony’s party, and got possession of all the oxen and of twenty-six horses.
Mr. Carson, ever on the alert, heard the tumult, and made a sudden and impetuous charge upon the savages. He recovered all the oxen, but the horses were effectually stampeded and lost. But for Mr. Carson, the cattle also would have fallen into the hands of the Indians, which would have been a great calamity. The next day Mr. Carson resumed his rapid march and reached Santa Fe in safety. Here he left his escort in accordance with orders, and hiring sixteen mountaineers, he proceeded on his journey.
Travelling rapidly, he came to Muddy Creek, a tributary of Virgin river. Here he suddenly encountered a camp of three hundred Indians. He knew their reputation as treacherous in the extreme. He threw up a little rampart, forbidding the Indians to draw too near, and then held a parley under the protection of his men. Thoroughly acquainted with the Indian character, he seemed always to know the tone which it was best to assume. Sternly addressing the chiefs, he said: | <urn:uuid:617e8dba-e5eb-434b-a7cf-1698727135ac> | CC-MAIN-2018-09 | http://www.bookrags.com/ebooks/14243/109.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-09/segments/1518891812556.20/warc/CC-MAIN-20180219072328-20180219092328-00762.warc.gz | en | 0.986092 | 570 | 2.546875 | 3 |
History, tourist information, and nearby accommodation
Beginning in 1571 the castle was transformed into a luxurious mansion by William Arnold, on behalf of George Luttrell. Arnold's patron was not happy with the result, and accused Arnold of poor workmanship. Poor or not, it was certainly an expensive project, costing £1200 rather than the original £462 estimate. One feature surviving from Arnold's work at Dunster is the plasterwork ceiling of the inner hall.
The medieval defences were slighted by Cromwell in 1650, but the Jacobean mansion was left untouched. In 1680 Francis and Mary Luttrell added the wonderful staircase panels that are a highlight of a visit today, as well as a new plasterwork ceiling in the dining room. In the 1860s architect Anthony Salvin was called in to transform the house yet again, this time into a picturesque country home. Salvin built towers for the dining room and drawing room, and created a comfortable residence for a Victorian gentleman and his family - all at a cut-rate budget of £20,000.
Of the medieval castle only the outer gatehouse remains, approached through a Tudor stables. The gatehouse was built in 1420 by Sir Hugh Luttrell, and guards an inner gate built in 1278 by Reginald de Mohun. Reginald was also responsible for the curtain wall that surrounds the bailey, but only fragments of this wall remain.
One of the highlights at Dunster is the wonderful carved staircase, made of oak and elm and beautifully decorated with hunting scenes. Each panel of the staircase was carved from a single piece of elm, and the effect is simply stunning.
The sloping hillside to the south of the castle has been been transformed into a sub-tropical garden, arranged on terraces. Here you will find the 'Dunster lemon', a direct descendent of the first lemon grown at Dunster during the Victorian period.
If you really want to arrive in style at Dunster, you can board the Dunster Express steam train on the West Somerset Railway, which runs between Bishops Lydeard and Minehead. The train runs daily from April-November, and there is a special shuttle bus between Dunster station and the castle.
I've visted Dunster on 3 occasions, and its just about the prettiest village you'll ever find. There is so much to see, from an ancient packhorse bridge to a medieval preaching cross and picturesque yarn market. But the castle dominates Dunster, and it truly is one of the most impressive sights in the south west of England. I can't wait to go back!
Garden: Dunster, home to the National Collection of arbutus, may also be noted for its terraced gardens with subtropical plantings including palms and citrus specimens. Dunster Castle has original 13th century gatehouse and fine interiors.
About Dunster Castle
Address: Dunster, Minehead, Somerset, England, TA24 6SL
Attraction Type: Castle
Location: 3 miles south east of Minehead, on the A39
Website: Dunster Castle
Phone: 01643 821 314
National Trust - see also: National Trust memberships (official website link)
Photo Credit: David Ross and Britain Express
We've 'tagged' this attraction information to help you find related historic attractions and learn more about major time periods mentioned.
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NEARBY HISTORIC ATTRACTIONS
Heritage Rated from 1- 5 (low-exceptional) on historic interest
Dunster Working Watermill - 0.1 miles (Historic Building)
Gallox Bridge - 0.2 miles (Historic Building)
Dunster Yarn Market - 0.3 miles (Historic Building)
Dunster Butter Cross - 0.4 miles (Historic Building)
Somerset and Dorset Railway Museum - 3.6 miles (Museum)
Cleeve Abbey - 3.9 miles (Abbey)
Holnicote Estate - 5.4 miles (Countryside)
Combe Sydenham Hall - 6.7 miles (Historic House)
Nearest Accommodation to Dunster Castle:
Nearest Self Catering Cottages
Nearest Bed and Breakfasts | <urn:uuid:99454d6d-65d8-4ac5-bf63-6ec7ce583ef3> | CC-MAIN-2017-26 | http://www.britainexpress.com/attractions.htm?attraction=2015 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-26/segments/1498128320545.67/warc/CC-MAIN-20170625170634-20170625190634-00521.warc.gz | en | 0.936462 | 891 | 2.5625 | 3 |
I approach a group of students discussing a problem in my class. I listen. I watch. I interpret their thinking. I sense a misconception. I ask a question to clarify what and how they are thinking. Hopefully, in the end, they reach a higher level of understanding of the problem and I reach a higher level of understanding of their comprehension.
Just like other teachers, I often do this sort of complex analysis of my students in under 10 seconds. I’ve been trained to.
That said, what if I could improve this skill I have learned over the course of my career? What if I could somehow train myself to be more attuned to student thinking?
That brings me to my next project. I’m partnering with MfA this year to bring some exciting, new PD to my school. It involves using video to record student discussion and interaction around a specific task (with no focus on the teacher). Afterwards, a group of teachers gather to watch the video, brainstorm about critical moments that occurred, interpret student thinking, and formulating questions that could be asked to clarify the thought process of the students.
The idea is to slow down student thinking to the point where deep analysis can happen. My hope is that teachers at my school, along with myself, are able to use this process to improve our abilities to interpret student thinking and how we address it during our lessons.
Here are some of the challenges I foresee.
- Introducing it to teachers. You can only introduce something once and first impressions have impacts that can last until June. I must make it good.
- Teachers accepting the idea that interprepting student thinking often contains loads of uncertainty, and that this is okay. Not everything needs a final answer.
- Developing engaging prompts for the group when the conversation is lagging. This may depend on the quality of my preparation beforehand.
- I don’t see overall engagement being an issue, but you never know.
- Being able to record and edit video clips in a timely manner. Luckily, at least in the beginning, MfA will be helping with this. But how sustainable is this type of PD in the long term?
Here are a few other unrelated thoughts.
- How will teacher analysis differ if the focus is on student understanding versus misunderstanding, if at all? Does this impact “next steps” after the session?
- Speaking of next steps, how will those look?
- Can I channel teachers to certain moments in the clip based on my preparation beforehand? Would this be useful?
- I may facilitate the initial sessions, but I want to learn perspective from my colleagues about how a student may be thinking. My MfA experiences have been scintillating in this regard. There were things mentioned that I would have never thought of.
- This PD involves using video in the classroom. When most teachers think of video, they think of the teacher being recorded as s/he teaches with best practices as the center of attention. This is not that. It should be interesting to see this dynamic play out.
- Each session I’ve attended with MfA has focused on one group of students discussing a task. How would the session change if we examined multiple groups of students from different classes – all discussing the same task? How would this affect the analysis?
- This type of PD hinges on teachers understanding the content, in my case math. That notwithstanding, is there a way to run something similar that focuses on student discussion, but has a more interdisciplinary approach? Perhaps CRE/advisory? | <urn:uuid:4c016b1a-410e-4693-8eb4-a45a40cacffe> | CC-MAIN-2020-40 | https://lazyocho.com/2015/08/12/slowing-down-student-thinking-learning-to-notice/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-40/segments/1600401582033.88/warc/CC-MAIN-20200927215009-20200928005009-00017.warc.gz | en | 0.956144 | 735 | 2.84375 | 3 |
Jefferson, T.A., S. Leatherwood and M.A. Webber. 1993. (Ref. 1394)
References | Biblio | Coordinator | Collaborators
Pelagic; oceanodromous (Ref. 75906)
Climate / Range
Temperate; 90°N - 90°S, 180°W - 180°E
North Atlantic: Balaena glacialis glacialis: Davis Strait, Denmark Strait, Norwegian Sea south to Massachusetts and the Bay of Biscay, south to Florida and the Golfo de Cintra, Western Sahara, Gulf of Mexico, Sea of Okhotsk, southern Bering Sea, northern Gulf of Alaska, south to the Sea of Japan, Pacific coast of northern Honshu and the coast of central California, Taiwan, Baja California Sur, Hawaiian Islands; Balaena glacialis australis: Subantarctic zone, between 35° to 40°S and 55° to 60°S, southern Brazil to northern Argentina, Tristan da Cunha, Namibia, southern Mozambique to Cape Province, St Paul Island, Southwest and southeast Australia, Kermadec Island, central Chile (Ref. 1522). Temperate, subpolar.
Countries | FAO areas | Ecosystems | Occurrences | Introductions
The northern right whale is one of the stockiest of all whales. It has a massive head that can be up to nearly one-third of its body length. The jaw line is arched and the upper jaw is very narrow in dorsal view. The flippers are broad and tend to be more fan-shaped than the pointed flippers of most other cetaceans. There is no dorsal fin or dorsal ridge on the broad back. The flukes are very wide and smoothly tapered, with a smooth trailing edge and a deep notch. Most right whales are predominantly black, but there may be large white splotches of varying extent on the belly and chin. The head is covered with callosities, areas of roughened skin to which whale lice and sometimes barnacles attach. The largest of these callosities, on the top of the rostrum, is called the bonnet. The widely separated blowholes produce a Vshaped blow up to 5 m high. Inside the mouth are 200 to 270 long thin baleen plates. Which may reach nearly 3 m in length. They are brownish grey to black in colour. The fringes of these plates are very fine, reflecting the small prey taken by this species.
BHL | BOLD Systems | Check for other websites | Check FishWatcher | CISTI | DiscoverLife | FAO(fisheries: species profile; publication : search) | GenBank (genome, nucleotide) | GOBASE | Google Books | Google Scholar | Google | ispecies | National databases | PubMed | Scirus | Sea Around Us | FishBase | Tree of Life | uBio | uBio RSS | Wikipedia (Go, Search) | Zoological Record
Estimation of some characteristics with mathematical models | <urn:uuid:6d76ca08-c787-428e-9741-fd7a53c3dce6> | CC-MAIN-2015-27 | http://www.sealifebase.org/summary/SpeciesSummary.php?genusname=Eubalaena&speciesname=glacialis | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-27/segments/1435375098071.98/warc/CC-MAIN-20150627031818-00190-ip-10-179-60-89.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.858621 | 647 | 2.890625 | 3 |
NIOSH Study Points to Significant Health Risks for Long-Haul Drivers
January 14, 2014
Long-haul drivers are plagued by significant health risks, according to a new study by the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health.
Almost 70% of these drivers are obese, compared to 31% of other workers, and the prevalence of morbid obesity is twice as high, 17% versus 7%.
Adding to their challenges, more than half of these drivers (51%) are cigarette smokers, compared to 19% of other workers.
And a significant percentage of them do not have health insurance or a health care plan: 38% versus 17% of others.
Karl Sieber of NIOSH laid out these details Tuesday in a presentation at the Transportation Research Board meeting in Washington, D.C.
NIOSH is the federal agency responsible for research and recommendations to prevent work-related injury.
The information was gathered in interviews with 1,670 long-haul drivers at 32 truck stops in 20 states.
The drivers were selected on the basis of four considerations. Truck driving had to be their main occupation. Their vehicle had to have three or more axles. They had to have at least a year of experience. And they had to take at least one mandatory 10-hour rest period away from home during each run.
The results of these interviews were compared to a statistical sample of working adults collected annually by the National Center for Health Statistics.
Besides the propensity toward obesity and smoking, the survey found a high incidence of self-reported diabetes, 14% versus 7% among other workers. And fewer long-haul drivers described themselves as healthy: 84% said their health was excellent, very good or good, compared to 94% of other workers.
The drivers offered varying reports on the amount of sleep they get.
- 27% said they get 6 or less hours in a day, compared to 30% of others.
- 51% said they get 6-8 hours, compared to 64%.
- 22% said they get more than 8 hours, compared to 5%.
In a preliminary look at sleepiness, the study found 15% of the drivers showed signs of sleep apnea, and 59% probably had some respiratory disturbance.
The study also looked at the effect of sleepiness, finding that 34% of drivers either nod off or fall asleep while driving. Seven percent of the drivers said they feel very drowsy almost every day.
Eighty-eight percent of the drivers had one or more of the three risk factors of hypertension, smoking or obesity, compared to 54% of other workers.
Nine percent of the drivers had all three factors, compared to 2% of others.
Fewer drivers, 4% compared to 7%, reported having heart disease. But twice as many, 14% compared to 7%, reported having diabetes. That may have something to do with truck drivers with diabetes having to obtain medical clearance to work, Sieber said.
Almost twice as many truck drivers, 18% compared to 10%, reported delaying or not getting health care in the previous year.
The drivers work long: 61 hours a week is the mean. Most, 78%, drive alone. Eighteen percent had not slept at home in the last month. Forty-five percent had slept 1 to 6 times at home in the month, and 37% had slept at home 7 or more days. | <urn:uuid:eb72d63a-9f87-4c4a-b795-8c9585bd6098> | CC-MAIN-2016-50 | http://www.truckinginfo.com/channel/fleet-management/news/story/2014/01/niosh-study-points-to-significant-health-risks-for-long-haul-drivers.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-50/segments/1480698542693.41/warc/CC-MAIN-20161202170902-00165-ip-10-31-129-80.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976863 | 693 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Category:Architectural models of the chōnin areas around Nihonbashi
From Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository
English: This 1/30 model of the chōnin (townspeople) area north of Nihonbashi Bridge during the early Edo period mid-17th century. The surface area represented by this model is roughly equivalent to that occupied by Matsudaira Tadamasa's "upper residence". A comparison of the two models shows that daimyo compounds were spacious and contained many buildings, while townspeople lived in cramped quarters. This model is based on the Edo-zu byōbu ("Screens of Edo") in the collection of the National Museum of Japanese History, the Edo meisho-zu byōbu ("Screens of famous sites in Edo") in the possession of the Idemitsu Museum of Art, and the Bushū Toshima-no-gōri Edo no shōzu, in the National Diet Library.
Media in category "Architectural models of the chōnin areas around Nihonbashi"
The following 5 files are in this category, out of 5 total. | <urn:uuid:9bf08a11-d2af-430a-963e-13492795bcc2> | CC-MAIN-2016-50 | https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Architectural_models_of_the_ch%C5%8Dnin_areas_around_Nihonbashi | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-50/segments/1480698541170.58/warc/CC-MAIN-20161202170901-00188-ip-10-31-129-80.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942934 | 246 | 3.21875 | 3 |
Please note: Kids Helpline does not take responsibility for the accuracy of any information accessed outside our website.
- Buddy Bear and the Better Buddies Program
Teaches children to care about other children around them. It delivers a positive and effective anti-bullying, anti-violence message.
- Bullying No Way
Information on bullying for parents, teachers and young people, including fact sheets, classroom ideas and activities and a Chill Out area for young people.
- Bullying and Mobile Phones - Teen Tips (pdf, 380kb)
Information to help young people deal with bullying via mobile phone.
- Cybersmart - Cyberbullying
Cybersmart is a national cybersafety and cybersecurity education program managed by the Australian Communications and Media Authority. It provides cybersafety information and advice for kids and teens.
- Digizen - Cyberbullying
Advice and guidance for schools on preventing and responding to cyberbullying. Includes classroom resources, background information and indepth guidance.
- Dr Ken Rigby's Bullying Pages
Provides information to help people understand more about bullying in schools, and how it can be stopped. It is of special interest to educators, children and parents.
- Friendly Schools and Families Program
Offers an extensive toolkit for teachers, schools administrators, parents and students to effectively reduce bullying.
- Lawstuff - Find out about bullying at school
An overview of young people's legal rights in relation to bullying.
- National Coalition Against Bullying (NCAB)
Provides information about the NCAB, as well as resources and research on bullying.
If any of these links are broken, please email us and let us know. | <urn:uuid:7f8f58ee-954b-4462-a877-09d472b640a9> | CC-MAIN-2014-41 | http://www.kidshelp.com.au/grownups/getting-help/who-else-can-help/helpful-links/bullying.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-41/segments/1410657119965.46/warc/CC-MAIN-20140914011159-00293-ip-10-196-40-205.us-west-1.compute.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.910321 | 348 | 3.390625 | 3 |
Coffee is one of the world's most valuable commodities, and global annual sales reach up to $70bn (£43bn). The small green bean that has its origins in Ethiopia has long been the brew of choice throughout Europe. Across the pond, office workers clutching towering cups of coffee are a routine morning sight throughout the US.
Even in places known for their tea culture, coffee has transformed social life. Coffee requires only two ingredients – ground roasted coffee beans and water – but in the coming years, the latter ingredient will vex companies that source and market the product.
Coffee is both a labour – and resource-intensive crop to grow. The Dutch NGO Water Footprint Network estimates that a standard European cup of coffee or espresso (125 ml) requires 140 litres of water – which is to say that one part of coffee consumes 1100 parts of water. Meanwhile, droughts in Brazil and Colombia, two of the world's largest coffee producers, could spark price increases that, in the short term, may contribute to profits, but in the long term will force companies to develop programmes that ensure water conservation throughout their supply chains and especially at the source: farms.
Much of coffee's water footprint results from the beans' cultivation. To that end, NGOs such as Rainforest Alliance and Fair Trade USA engage farmers across the globe to work together on reforestation projects. While "shade grown" coffee makes for fancy labelling, Rainforest Alliance's work both preserves the watersheds that provide drinking water while preventing erosion. These programmes provide farmers modest financial returns that encourage them to plant more trees – and reverse the deforestation that resulted in part from the expansion of massive coffee plantations. Companies, like Kraft Foods, with its brands of coffee that includes Kenco, Gevalia, and Maxwell House, have promised to source more sustainable coffee certified by Rainforest Alliance and other third-party certification groups.
Companies that rely on coffee sales to boost their bottom line have responded in kind by becoming engaged at the source. Nestlé UK, for example, funds responsible farming practices in Ethiopia. Coffee farmers in the village of Hama, 310 miles south of Addis Ababa, for years struggled financially and faced declining yields even though the quality of their coffee beans was high. A Nestlé team realised one issue was a wasteful process that separated coffee beans from their pulp. The pulp was a potentially valuable source of compost for the farmers, but instead the farmers discharged it into the local river – where the pulp became a toxin that polluted local water supplies. A pulping machine from South America separated the lucrative bean from the pulp and provided farmers a source of compost, while slashing the ratio of litres of water to kilogram of coffee from 60-1 to 3-1.
Meanwhile, the global giant coffee retailer Starbucks has focused on its water performance within its stores. Three years ago the Seattle-based chain committed to a 25% reduction in water use throughout its stores by 2015. So far the company has reported a decrease in stores' water consumption by 22%. Much of that decrease has resulted from discontinuing the use of dipper wells, fixtures that constantly stream water to clean utensils and eliminate food residues. That move alone cut Starbucks' water consumption by about 100 gallons (378 litres) of water per day, per store.
Despite Starbucks' success, however, companies must work on more efficient coffee sourcing processes throughout their supply chains. Pilot projects like those of Nestlé's and of Rainforest Alliance's are templates from which companies can learn if they want their future coffee businesses to not only be sustainable and profitable, but also survive as the global demand for water surges.
Leon Kaye is founder and editor of GreenGoPost.com | <urn:uuid:b0393336-0390-4974-8eb1-b8f99d7ea0b8> | CC-MAIN-2017-13 | https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/water-use-coffee-sustainable-profitable | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-13/segments/1490218191444.45/warc/CC-MAIN-20170322212951-00150-ip-10-233-31-227.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958298 | 752 | 3.078125 | 3 |
Date of this Version
The detailed cross-sectional shape of stress induced well bore breakouts has been studied using specially processed ultrasonic borehole televiewer data. We show breakout shapes for a variety of rock types and introduce a simple elastic failure model which explains many features of the observations. Both the observations and calculations indicate that the breakouts define relatively broad and flat curvilinear surfaces which enlarge the borehole in the direction of minimum horizontal compression. This work supports the hypothesis that breakouts result from shear failure of the rock where the compressive stress concentration around the well bore is greatest and that breakouts can be used to determine the orientation of the horizontal principal stresses in situ. | <urn:uuid:04e5ad3c-ae28-4a7b-b1c2-ab1cb241935f> | CC-MAIN-2020-40 | https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/usgsstaffpub/458/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-40/segments/1600400201699.38/warc/CC-MAIN-20200921112601-20200921142601-00190.warc.gz | en | 0.896996 | 138 | 2.65625 | 3 |
This page includes photos of bulletin boards that are used to teach physical education and promote physical activity and health outside of the classroom.
Short video clips with teaching cues.
This page has pr.ofessional development sites for teachers
This page has free crossword puzzles, word searches and other activities that are good for medically excused and unprepared students.
This is a listing of practical common core ideas that have been used in elementary physical education classrooms. Contact LEPE if you would like your ideas added to this page.
2 + 2 = 4
This page contains individual resources.
This page contains downloadable posters that teach skills, strategies and academic vocabulary.
These downloadable question and answer cards can be used will students are waiting their turn or for medically excused students.
These dance cards are used for student developed choreography.
This page has links to websites, Youtube channles, podcasts, paper.li, blogs, social media and people to follow.
This page has teaching videos that are appropriate for elementary school students and physical education teachers.
This site has websites that students can access for physical education and health information. | <urn:uuid:7cb8b4b9-6b5e-4be8-8285-aba11060f8d3> | CC-MAIN-2018-26 | http://www.lepeinc.com/teacher-resources.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-26/segments/1529267863206.9/warc/CC-MAIN-20180619212507-20180619232507-00275.warc.gz | en | 0.941726 | 230 | 2.765625 | 3 |
Travel can be enormously beneficial to mental health. Seeing the world can teach important skills for adapting to new circumstances and make you more open-minded. Engaging with different cultures can boost creativity and just planning a vacation can be enough to improve someone’s mood. But despite the benefits, there are risks involved. Travel and mental disorders can make for a potent cocktail.
No matter how long you’re traveling for, or how you’re getting there, or how far you’re going, you should be taking precautionary measures to protect your health. This is especially critical if you are coping with issues of addiction and mental illness.
Mental health issues are cited as one of the most common medical problems experienced by travelers. About 11 percent of travelers are assumed to experience some sort of mental health problem. The numbers are higher in long-term travelers such as migrants and expatriates. This correlates with the different levels of stress these groups face. Short-term travel causes the least amount of stress while expatriates and frequent travelers experience the highest levels of stress. Up to 20 percent of repatriations are due to mental illness.
Travel, in and of itself, can bring on symptomatic behaviors and even acute episodes of mental illness. For example, jetlag has been cited as a cause of psychotic episodes in travelers. Jetlag is a real, albeit temporary, medical disorder with symptoms that range from the emotional to the physical. The most common of these include insomnia, fatigue, irritability, poor concentration, headaches, and digestive issues. Sleep deprivation and the interruption of normal biological rhythms are thought to be largely responsible for jetlag’s stronghold on mental disorders. People with mood disorders are especially vulnerable when subjected to disruptions in the circadian clock.
Jetlag is most commonly experienced when a person travels more than two time zones by airplane. However, there are people who can be affected by a single time zone change. A related condition, travel fatigue, can affect mental health even though it does not usually affect the circadian rhythms. Travel fatigue is not as long lasting as jetlag, but it is still concerning for those who are vulnerable. The symptoms of travel fatigue vary from disorientation to headaches.
It isn’t unusual for people to experience new symptoms or even to have their first major episode of mental illness while traveling. Pre-existing mood disorders may become aggravated. Even people without diagnosed conditions can have a mental health disorder emerge during travel, such as psychosis manifesting in people who don’t have a history of it. Acute psychotic attacks make up an estimated 20 percent of “travel-related psychiatric problems” and psychiatric emergencies rank among the top reasons for air evacuation.
In an emergency call 911
Find more resources here
Child abuse hotline (USA based)
Original published 30 August 2017
Posted here 24 October 2017
By Kristance Harlow | <urn:uuid:c99816e0-0872-4ef7-a190-500f3b31f63f> | CC-MAIN-2019-09 | http://www.diggingtoroam.com/take-care-of-mental-health-while-traveling/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-09/segments/1550247490107.12/warc/CC-MAIN-20190219122312-20190219144312-00493.warc.gz | en | 0.946253 | 588 | 3.09375 | 3 |
by Matthieu Giroux
Everything is created in a finite way. On the other hand, it is not possible to determine everything that has been created. Even better, life has in it an infinity’s notion, because nothing can be organized randomly, because discovering something new and real is a matter of the divine. Indeed, how is it that so much can be done with inert ? How is it that life is born from inert ? We have asked ourselves this question, often lying to ourselves. Now we know, with Einstein, that there is another universe that creates life in ours, through gravity. Gravity, which is about one body going to another, wherever they were, needs another universe to function. So there is an infinity’s notion in life, life which has born randomly, but life creating life. Leibniz and Vernadsky explain this infinity’s notion of life in the universe very well.
Read the Monadology of Leibniz. Write next. | <urn:uuid:1b34cb54-7259-440e-967e-d765e938effe> | CC-MAIN-2023-50 | https://economyinfant.com/?Can-we-Produce-Infinitly | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-50/segments/1700679100575.30/warc/CC-MAIN-20231206000253-20231206030253-00022.warc.gz | en | 0.968215 | 204 | 3.015625 | 3 |
With contributions from Dr Edward Roberts (MEMS, University of Kent)
This list contains resources of various types for the study of the history and literature of the early medieval world (c.300 - c.1100). For language resources and dictionaries, please see the relevant sections of the Medieval Languages page. There will necessarily be some overlap with this page and others, such as Manuscript Studies and Late Medieval History.
Historical Calendar - A multi-country calendar which spans the years 1000 to 2100, allowing for simple movement between the Julian (pre-September 1582) and Gregorian calendars.
Anglo-Saxon Canon Law - editions, transcriptions and resources for the study of early English church law.
ARTEM - database of charters preserved in their original form in France from before 1121, including images of many.
Carolingian Canon Law Project - sources and transcriptions of early medieval canon law.
Cartae Cluniacenses Electronicae (CCE) - digital edition of the 5500 charters of the monastery of Cluny.
Cathalaunia - database of early medieval Catalan charters.
Codice diplomatico della Lombardia medievale - electronic editions of charters from Lombardy, 8th to 12th centuries.
Corpus Burgundiae Medii Aevi (CBMA) - full-text editions of sources for the study of medieval Burgundy.
Corpus of Electronic Texts (CELT) - sources for medieval Irish literature and history.
Documents of Early England Data Set (DEEDS) - database of English charters, mostly 9th-13th centuries, including full texts.
Digital Monumenta Germaniae Historica (dMGH) - digitised, searchable version of the MGH, a long-running series of critical editions of sources for medieval European (especially German) history.
Early English Laws - new editions and resources for English legal sources up to Magna Carta (1215).
Epistolae - letters to and from women within the early medieval era, from the 4th to the 13th centuries. Letters appear in both Latin and English translation, and may be searched by both author and recipient.
The Electronic Sawyer - texts and summaries of all charters from England before 1066, including many translations.
Exon: The Domesday Survey of South-West England - An edition, translation, facsimile, description and resource for the study of Exeter Cathedral Library MS 3500 (Exon Domesday), the earliest extant manuscript of William the Conqueror's survey
Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medioevo - vast repository of sources for the history of medieval Italy.
The Languages of Anglo-Saxon Charters - catalogue of Latin and Old English interactions in Anglo-Saxon documents.
Medieval Disabilities Glossary - An in-progress project which provides short descriptions of medieval European perceptions of disabilities with some further reading.
Matthew Paris' Clickable Map - an annotated, fully interactive copy of Matthew Paris’s c. 1250 map of Britain (BL Cotton MS Claudius D VI). This is an ongoing project managed by Dr John Wyatt Greenlee
Open Domesday - Electronic resource for studying The Domesday Book.
Sources of Lombard History - electronic versions of early medieval Italian sources.
Databases and repositories
After Empire - HERA-funded project which ran 2016-19 and studied the development of post-Carolingian Europe in c.900-c.1050. Includes maps, images, translations and more.
Chartae Latinae Antiquiores Datenbank - database of basic info for charters in the ChLA series, which provides facsimile and textual editions of all original charters in European archives up to the year 900.
Clavis Canonum - database of canon law collections from before 1140, whereby one can track the presence of particular canons by searching for the canon's incipit or explicit.
Cult of Saints in Late Antiquity (CSLA) - database covering the development of the cult of saints up to c.700.
Geschichtsquellen des deutschen Mittelalters - database of information and bibliography on medieval sources, with a focus on 'Germany' (interpreted broadly).
Kornbluth Photography - images archive of objects, coins, art and more from the Carolingian period.
The Making of Charlemagne's Europe - database of charters issued in the Frankish realm during the reign of Charlemagne (768-814). Includes an introductory guide to the study of early medieval charters.
Medieval Monastic Project - resources and manuscripts for the study of early medieval monasticism.
Monasterium.net - database of medieval charters, focusing on Austrian archives, and including many images.
Nomen et Gens - prosopographical and etymological database of names from across continental Europe in the 4th-8th centuries.
Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England (PASE) - database of all identifiable individuals from Anglo-Saxon sources.
Prosopography of the Byzantine Empire - database of identifiable individuals from early Byzantine sources.
Race 101 for Early Medieval Studies - an ongoing bibliography compiled by Dr. Erik Wade and Dr. M. Rambaran-Olm for the teaching and study of medieval perceptions and depictions of race, with a particular focus on early literature. The resource also contains a separate list of studies by foundational Critical Race scholars.
Regesta Imperii - database of 'registers' of Frankish and German rulers as well as popes from 751-1519, recording their movements and activities as attested by charters and other sources.
RI-Opac - bibliographic database covering medieval studies in all major European languages.
Volterra - resource list for the study of late antique and early medieval law.
Carleton Medieval Primary Sources - various early and central medieval source translations.
Carolingian Polyptyques - translations and Latin editions of polyptyques, sources for early medieval social and economic history.
Early Christian Texts - text and translations of various early church councils, letters and treatises.
Global Medieval Sourcebook - The Global Medieval Sourcebook spans one thousand years (600-1600) of literary production around the world. It contains short texts of broad interdisciplinary interest in a variety of genres, almost all of which have not previously been translated into English.
Historian on the Edge's handlist of primary source translations - guide to published English translations of sources from Britain and Europe c.300-800.
The Historian's Sketchpad - translations and commentaries for 9th-11th-century France and its neighbours on Fraser McNair's blog.
Internet Medieval Sourcebook - translated sources (many in extract) on a variety of topics from across the Middle Ages.
Turbulent Priests - translations and commentaries mostly pertaining to Carolingian and post-Carolingian Europe on Charles West's blog.
Manuscript collections and resources
Abbildungsverzeichnis der europäischen Kaiser- und Königsurkunden - collection of images of royal and imperial charters issued by Frankish rulers and their successors up to c.1200.
Bamberg Staatsbibliothek - digitised manuscripts from the Bamberg State Library.
Bayerische Landesbibliothek Online - digitised manuscripts from Bavarian archives and libraries.
British Library Digitised Manuscripts - searchable digitised collection of the BL.
DigiPal - database resource for Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman palaeography in c.1000-1100.
DigiVatLib - digitised manuscript archive of the Vatican Library.
e-chartae - digitised charters from the abbey of St Gall, the best preserved early medieval monastic archive north of the Alps.
e-codices - digitised collections of Swiss archives, including the abbey of St Gall.
Gallica - vast collection of digitised manuscripts and books from the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris.
Marburg Lichtbildarchiv - bank of images of original medieval charters.
Medieval Libraries of Great Britain - reconstructions of medieval libraries, bringing together the evidence of surviving books and surviving medieval catalogues.
Münchener DigitalisierungsZentrum (MDZ) - digitised manuscripts and books from the Bavarian State Library in Munich.
Polonsky Foundation: Medieval England and France 700-1200 - collaborative digitisation project of the British Library and the Bibliothèque nationale de France.
EThOS - provides a national aggregated record of all doctoral theses awarded by UK Higher Education institutions, and free access to the full text of as many theses as possible.
Open Access Theses and Dissertations (OATD) - indexes records of theses from institutions across the world and provides a simple search interface.
American doctoral Dissertations (EBSCOhost) - access a comprehensive record of dissertations accepted by American universities during that time period, the print index Doctoral Dissertations Accepted by American Universities. Contains more than 172,000 theses and dissertations in total from 1902 to the present.
Last updated by Anna-Nadine Pike - 21/09/20 | <urn:uuid:c700a96a-baca-4679-9700-b1f4d270651a> | CC-MAIN-2021-10 | https://www.memslib.co.uk/early-medieval-studies | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-10/segments/1614178369553.75/warc/CC-MAIN-20210304235759-20210305025759-00418.warc.gz | en | 0.832035 | 1,971 | 2.828125 | 3 |
Men Without Hats
Here is a very fun and surprising result which is not really new, but if you haven’t seen it, you really should. The problem looks like this:
One-hundred men throw their hats into a closet. Each one randomly selects one of the hats until all of them have a hat again. At the end of the process, how many men do we expect to have their own hat?
I had a professor who gave us the answer to this question, and put it on every test he gave, but never actually proved it, so today I’m going to do it. I’m actually going to solve this problem (and the more general one, with men and hats) in two different ways, but let’s start with a brute force approach.
If you don’t feel like reading the details, skip to the end now for the answer.
Counting Every Case
First, consider the trivial case of one man and one hat. Well, obviously he gets his hat back so we expect, and in fact it has been uniquely determined as the singular outcome, that one man will end up with his own hat.
The case of two men is the first interesting one. Here, there are two outcomes:
- Each man gets the other’s hat, and hence no men get their hat back.
- Each man gets his own hat.
Both events are equally likely, so they occur with probability , and we now have enough information to calculate the expected value:
If is the number of men who get their own hat back,
This is a neat result, but still doesn’t give us enough info to establish a pattern. Let’s give three men a try and see what develops.
This will require a small amount of bookkeeping, but essentially, there are three things that could happen:
- Everyone gets his hat back: This only happens in one of the possible hat permutations.
- One man gets his hat back: Here, the other two trade. This can happen three ways, one way for each man.
- No man gets his own hat back: This can happen two ways, either each man passes his hat to the right, or each man passes his hat to the left.
- Notice that there is no way for exactly two men to get their own hat, because this would leave the third man with his hat as well, which is already covered by case 1 above.
We’re now in a position to calculate the expected value:
. Interesting! Perhaps a pattern is forming after all, though not what we might have expected. Let’s brute force one more case and then try to generalize:
For four men, there are permutations. We’ll consider five sub-cases corresponding to zero, one, two, three, and four men who get their own hat. Each configuration has two groups of men – those who got their hat back, and those who didn’t. Let’s examine the possible outcomes through this lens. My approach here will be to answer the following two questions for each case:
- How many ways can we select a unique group who get their hats back?
- Once that group is chosen, how many ways can we rearrange the hats in the other group so that none of them get their own hat back?
The number of arrangements for each of the five configurations will be the product of the answers to these two questions. And the probability of each configuration is this product divided by twenty-four, the total number of permutations. Let’s look at some hard numbers for clarity:
- All four men get their hat back: The number of ways this can happen is simply or . Obviously there are no men who don’t get their hat back, so that can only happen in one way. That gives us configuration in this category.
- Three men get their hat back: This can happen ways, but this should leave one man in the group of men who don’t get their hat back. This can’t happen (or we could say it can happen in zero ways). That means there are configurations in this case.
- Two men get their hats back: Of course, this can happen in ways, but we must also be sure the other two don’t get their hats back, which can only happen one way – if they trade. So, in total, we have configurations in this category.
- Only one man gets his hat back: This can happen in ways, but again, we must guarantee that the other three each get someone else’s hat. We’ve already seen that for three men, there are two ways in which none of them get their hat back (passing to the left and to the right). That gives total cases in this category
- None get their hat back: Since we’ve already accounted for of the cases, that leaves only in this group.
Again, we can calculate the expected value:
This should give us the strong suspicion that the answer is always going to be one. Think about that. No matter how many people randomly shuffle their hats, can it really be true that, on average, one person gets their hat back? Well, without a general formula, we’ll never know, so let’s build that.
Derangement is your friend – no, really
The groundwork has already been laid, but we’re missing one piece, a function to represent the answer to that second question, how many ways can we rearrange the hats so that no one gets his own back? For one, two, three, and four men, the number is zero, one, two, and nine. Is there a function that follows this pattern? As it turns out, there is! It’s called the subfactorial and it measures the number of something called derangements of a set. How can that fail to be awesome? It can’t.
A derangement of an ordered set is a permutation that leaves no element in the same position in which it started. But that’s exactly what we’re trying to measure! The number of derangements of a set of elements is represented by the subfactorial function, . The formula for this function can be represented in many ways, but probably the simplest is:
Where is the rounding function and is Euler’s constant.
Now, we can write a general formula for men:
I won’t go about proving that this always equals one because it’s sort of hard to type it all out and I’d much rather play video games than do that. I will give you a place to get started, though. Try running the following query at wolfram alpha:
That’s as far down that path as I’ll walk today, but before ending the conversation let me show you a much easier way to solve the problem, even if it doesn’t include any funny mathematical terms.
The Easy Way Out
For this proof, let’s define as the event that the man gets his own hat back. Let’s also introduce a fairly boring function, called the indicator function, , which evaluates to if the event is true, and otherwise. Now, let’s find the expectation value of . Assuming that we are dealing with hats and men:
Now, let’s see why I did all that. Finally, define , the total number of men who get their own hat back, and calculate its expected value:
I’ve actually done a lot of things here that need justification, but I’m skipping them because they’re not fun and I’m not in school any more so I don’t have to. At the very least, though, you now have a good idea why I could get away with mindlessly scrawling on the page every time I was asked this question. Have fun quizzing your friends with this one.
For those who skipped: The answer is no matter how many men are involved! If you don’t believe me, I know a great blog you should read…
Edit – 06/14/2013: A previous version of this post contained a unappealing mess of images created by the author with MS Paint. They have been graciously upgraded by Seth Johnson | <urn:uuid:638a05a7-e585-425c-999e-b2acdcb786e9> | CC-MAIN-2017-51 | http://www.divergentblue.com/2012/10/22/derangement-can-solve-your-problems/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-51/segments/1512948515165.6/warc/CC-MAIN-20171212041010-20171212061010-00678.warc.gz | en | 0.958815 | 1,754 | 3.109375 | 3 |
English Language Arts
Teacher's computer and smartboard, if teacher does not have a copy of THE QUIET NOISY BOOK.
THE QUIET NOISY BOOK, by Margaret Wise Book
8x11 or larger drawing paper
pencils for sketching
2 colored pieces construction paper , 8x11, for the front & back cover of "class book"
As a follow-up to being inspired by this author, also read GOODNIGHT MOON, and also THE RUNAWAY BUNNY. It might be interesting to see how many 2nd graders own he book GOODNIGHT MOON and remember having it read to them....maybe even still! :)
SIMILES...as interesting as A QUIET NOISY BOOK!
After reading a class "simile-loaded" favorite by legendary author Margaret Wise Brown [THE QUIET NOISY BOOK], the class will share reactions to the book. The teacher will POINT OUT the literary device of "simile" that is featured throughout the book, and the class will attempt to create some NEW similes linked to DIFFERENT adjectives [ex. HOT or COLD, etc.]. After discussing and understanding the concept of similes, the class will create a simile book, with 1 simile written and illustrated by each student, to be added to the class book [See lesson progression for full directions.] Once the simile papers are collected, the teacher will help the class GENERATE an idea to BEGIN the classroom book/story, the way the author did about Muffin the dog hearing noises at night, and wondering what they were.
Students begin to fully understand certain "literary devices" by being shown understandable examples in a context that is simple, interesting, and creative. Following up the reading of THE QUIET NOISY BOOK with a discussion of the similes, and then an immediate "classroom project" in which the students have authorship w/illustrations, the literary device becomes a tool at their command as they continue creative writing in other ELA assignments and projects. | <urn:uuid:7a7fabe5-ca6c-4fad-89f5-1599abb79002> | CC-MAIN-2019-22 | https://www.learningwhy.org/lessons/similesas-interesting-quiet-noisy-book | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-22/segments/1558232256546.11/warc/CC-MAIN-20190521182616-20190521204616-00323.warc.gz | en | 0.939923 | 438 | 3.625 | 4 |
Diagnosing Autism Through A Series of Tests: Claimed Accurate Results By 9 Months of Age
What if an easy and inexpensive test could predict the likelihood of your child developing Autism when performed at well-child appointments starting at the age of 3 months? What if this test performed with 100 percent accuracy? What if I tell you this may be a reality?
As early intervention is key to treating an Autistic child it would almost be a dream to be able to diagnose, with accuracy, before the age of 3 years. Being able to start early treatments before the age of 2 would be a game changer. It seems that a study from Boston Children's Hospital and Boston University seems to have made a major breakthrough in the early diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in children. In other words, they may have just made this dream a reality... Per reports, their new study suggests that simply measuring a baby's brain activity through an electroencephalogram (EEG) from as early as three months of age could accurately predict the likelihood of the child developing ASD. Before you become an instant skeptic, read a little into it.
The Autism Study
This wasn’t a short-term study as it took place over the course of 36 months, starting at age 3 months. Researches took 188 infants and had EEG measurements taken at 3, 6, 9, 12, 18, 24 and 36 months of age. Just over half the group had a sibling that was diagnosed prior to the study and were therefore considered to be high-risk of developing ASD, while 89 acted as low-risk controls. The researchers developed computer algorithms to deeply analyze the six different wave components of the EEG measurements and the results were incredibly promising. In the end they were able to predict Autism with almost 100 percent accuracy by 9 months of age using this method.
‘"The results were stunning," explains William Bosl, from the Computational Health Informatics Program (CHIP) at Boston Children's. "Our predictive accuracy by nine months of age was nearly 100 percent. We were also able to predict ASD severity, as indicated by the ADOS Calibrated Severity Score, with quite high reliability, also by nine months of age."’
This kind of neural connectivity study is vitally important in the search for an early diagnosis measure for ASD. Researchers are continuously looking for better diagnostic measures for ASD as it is notoriously hard to accurately diagnose, as the condition is incredibly complex. It is believed that its onset is most likely due to an abstract combination of environmental conditions and genetics. Per reports, “this means that a simple biological biomarker found in blood, saliva or urine may not be an accurate or reliable measure of the condition at very early ages.”
Other measures that researchers are looking into are “blood tests to eye-tracking” Researchers are currently working hard to find ways to objectively detect the condition as early as possible. One of the most promising recent research avenues came in a study last year from the University of North Carolina, which revealed a potentially accurate way to use fMRI scans to predict ASD in babies as young as six months. Despite the research still being at an early stage, fMRI scans are “expensive, time-consuming and difficult to undertake on young babies, so not the most ideal diagnostic tool to easily roll out widely. Now the Boston-based team has revealed that successful diagnostic results could be obtained from a simple EEG, something already often used in developmental pediatric settings.”
"EEGs are low-cost, non-invasive and relatively easy to incorporate into well-baby checkups," says Charles Nelson, director of the Laboratories of Cognitive Neuroscience at Boston Children’s Hospital and a co-author of the study. Making them more reasonable to use to detect Autism than MRIs. "We believe that infants who have an older sibling with Autism may carry a genetic liability for developing Autism," says Nelson. "This increased risk, perhaps interacting with another genetic or environmental factor, leads some infants to develop Autism – although clearly not all, since we know that four of five 'infant sibs' do not develop Autism." The ability to track a baby's neurodevelopment through simple EEG measures could offer physicians an accurate way to monitor the growing brain and allow for early interventions in cases of potential ASD diagnoses.
Until This Technology is Applied in Everyday Life… How Do You Tell If Your Child Has Autism?
There are early warning signs for Autism that you can be looking for as a parent. With babies and toddlers, the symptoms of Autism are about what the child “does NOT do at a typical age.” The symptoms listed below happen at a variety of ages, but they are all things that child with potential Autism may NOT do.
These symptoms include:
-Child does not make eye contact (e.g. look at you when being fed);
-Child does not smile when smiled at;
-Child does not respond to his or her name, or to the sound of a familiar voice;
-Child does not follow objects visually;
-Child does not point or wave goodbye, or use other gestures to communicate;
-Child does not follow your finger when you point at things;
-Child does not make noises to get your attention;
-Child does not initiate or respond to cuddling;
-Child does not reach out to be picked up.
If your child is not doing a number of these things by the age that they should be please contact a doctor and ask for a referral to a doctor that specializes in Autism. Do not let your family doctor treat your child’s Autism. You need a specialist or psychiatrist that knows about Autism. If you walk into the office and the therapist has never treated an Autistic child- I’d rethink the office that I am using. This is a complex disorder that carries with it complex needs, in most cases. It really is best to have a doctor that knows about this field. The wait lists to get into the doctors are sometimes very long though, a warning. It is worth the wait though.
Always research your options before you agree to any test or medication though. Know what you are getting yourself and your child into before you start any treatment. Research and ask around about anything that your doctor wants to start doing or stop doing with your child. Hit the support groups and world wide web with gusto to get the information you need to make an informed decision about care. Being rather noninvasive and having the ability to be incorporated into well-baby check-ups is incredibly promising though. I think an EEG would be a wonderful tool to be able to start using to diagnose Autism, especially if they claim they can do it with almost 100 percent accuracy by 9 months of age. This study is life changing (if the claims prove true.) | <urn:uuid:82a805ab-ce01-4239-ba5e-aba444304260> | CC-MAIN-2021-49 | https://www.emaxhealth.com/12577/diagnosing-autism-through-series-tests-claimed-accurate-results-9-months-age | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-49/segments/1637964363226.68/warc/CC-MAIN-20211205221915-20211206011915-00330.warc.gz | en | 0.970884 | 1,405 | 3.25 | 3 |
In the years after the War of 1812, the U.S. military constructed a chain of permanent fortifications to defend its harbors and ports against the threat of foreign invasion. One of the forts was built between 1826 and 1834 on the eastern point of Bogue Banks to guard Old Topsail Inlet (Beaufort Inlet), the entrance to Beaufort Harbor. It was named in honor of Nathaniel Macon (1758-1837), a U.S. congressman, senator, and leading Republican statesman of North Carolina.
Active garrisons occupied Fort Macon in 1834-36, 1842-44, and 1848-49. During the period 1841-46 engineers made structural improvements to the fort's defenses. On 14 Apr. 1861, at the beginning of the Civil War, local militia forces from Morehead City and Beaufort, commanded by Capt. Josiah Pender, occupied Fort Macon in the name of the state without bloodshed. Throughout that year the fort was armed and occupied by North Carolina Confederate soldiers in preparation for an eventual Union attack.
In 1862 the Union army of Maj. Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside launched a campaign on the North Carolina coast, intending to capture Fort Macon and Beaufort Harbor. Forces under Brig. Gen. John G. Parke took possession of Morehead City on 23 March and captured Beaufort three days later without resistance. Five artillery companies of North Carolina troops were garrisoned at Fort Macon. On 23 March, the fort's commander, Col. Moses J. White, who possessed 450 men and 54 heavy guns, refused a demand to surrender.
On 28 March Parke established siege positions within a half mile of the fort. He made a final demand for the fort's surrender, which White rejected on 24 April. Early the next morning Parke's batteries opened fire on Fort Macon, a bombardment that lasted 11 hours. The Union rifled cannons carried the day. This was only the second time in history that rifled artillery had bombarded a masonry fort, and it graphically demonstrated the growing obsolescence of forts as a means of defense. Parke's rifled cannons required only a few hours to crack Fort Macon's walls and threaten one of its gunpowder magazines.
Colonel White had no choice but to capitulate, which he did at 4:30 p.m. on 25 April. Arrangements for the surrender were completed the following morning, and Union forces formally occupied the badly damaged fort. The Confederates lost 7 killed and 18 wounded; Union losses were 1 killed and 3 wounded. The soldiers in the Confederate garrison were paroled and released.
Union forces repaired the damage to Fort Macon and used it for the remainder of the Civil War. During Reconstruction, the U.S. Army occupied the fort continuously until 1877, using it as a prison. In 1898 the fort was regarrisoned for the Spanish-American War, and in 1903 the U.S. Army abandoned it in the belief that it would never again be needed. It was not used in World War I, and in 1923 the Fort Macon Military Reservation was among several other abandoned forts and military posts that the War Department sold off as surplus property. But as a result of public and political pressure within North Carolina, the reservation was deeded to the state by a congressional act in June 1924 for use as a public park.
Fort Macon was the second area acquired by North Carolina for public use in what has grown into the present system of state parks. During the Great Depression, a Civilian Conservation Corps camp restored the fort and constructed recreational facilities. On 1 May 1936 Fort Macon State Park officially opened as the first developed, functioning park in North Carolina. The park was instantly popular, and the Works Progress Administration established a public beach at the site in the early 1940s.
When the United States entered World War II, the old fort went to war once again. On 21 Dec. 1941 Coast Artillery troops occupied the park for military defense purposes. By November 1944, when German U-boat activities off the North Carolina coast had subsided, the fort was deactivated. The army terminated its lease on 1 Oct. 1946, and the property was once again returned to North Carolina and resumed its former role as a state park.
Paul Branch, Fort Macon: A History (1999).
Branch, The Siege of Fort Macon (1982).
Emanuel R. Lewis, Seacoast Fortifications of the United States: An Introductory History (1970).
1 January 2006 | Branch, Paul | <urn:uuid:81fb75d9-f23d-4f67-b4be-680b35eb7550> | CC-MAIN-2021-10 | https://dev.ncpedia.org/fort-macon | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-10/segments/1614178363072.47/warc/CC-MAIN-20210301212939-20210302002939-00604.warc.gz | en | 0.963767 | 947 | 3.890625 | 4 |
The Holy Martyrs Valerian, Eugene, Candidus, and Aquila suffered for their faith in Christ during the reign of Diocletian (284-305) and Maximian (305-311), under the regimental commander Lycius. Valerian, Candidus and Aquila had hidden themselves in the hills near Trebizond, preferring life among the wild beasts to living with the pagans. They were soon found, however, and brought to Trebizond.
For their bold and steadfast confession of faith in Christ the holy martyrs were whipped with ox thongs, scraped with iron claws, then were burned with fire. Several days later Saint Eugene was also arrested, and subjected to the same tortures. Later, they poured vinegar laced with salt into his wounds. After these torments, they threw the four martyrs into a red-hot oven. When they emerged from it unharmed, they were beheaded, receiving their incorruptible crowns from God. | <urn:uuid:a1ff3aac-2786-44c1-b952-b7ae4d63a206> | CC-MAIN-2017-22 | https://oca.org/saints/lives/2013/01/21/100253-martyr-valerian-at-trebizond | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-22/segments/1495463612327.8/warc/CC-MAIN-20170529130450-20170529150450-00332.warc.gz | en | 0.980931 | 205 | 2.953125 | 3 |
Lesson 1: 15th May 2019, 12.30-1.15 (Y5 x 14)
To contextualise Ancient Greece and its language
To learn the letters mu, sigma and upsilon
1. Welcome, settle, introductions
I made sure the pupils were all in pairs for pair work, and groups for collaborative group work.
2. TASK: What do you know about Ancient Greece?
DETAILS: To gauge the level of knowledge in an unfamiliar classroom, I split the class into table teams. After three minutes of talking time, someone from each team had to fill their team’s box on the whiteboard with as many facts about Ancient Greece as possible. As the facts were being written down, I read them out to the class, who then had a chance to comment and add further knowledge.
OUTCOME: As well as establishing collaborative working in new teams, I was able to discover that the students in general had a very good background knowledge. Facts written on the board spanned mythology, epic, philosophers and language.
REFLECTION: This worked well as an ice breaker, and got the pupils talking, writing and moving.
3. ACTIVITY: ‘curiosity time’ with new books
DETAILS: The text books were given out (each pair sharing one book), and three minutes were given for the class to flick through the book, look at the layout and format. After spending this time ‘getting to know’ the book, I asked each table group to come up with one thing they’d noticed about the book.
OUTCOME: The pupils noticed that the alphabet was set out at the bottom of every page, that each chapter was colour coded, and that some words contained both Greek and Roman alphabet letters.
REFLECTION: The children engaged enthusiastically with the books, and could have been left even longer to pore through them. I was very happy that they’d picked up on some of the key navigational/structural elements of the book, as this will help them as they progress through the course.
4. ACTIVITY: Story read-through pp.3-5
DETAILS: I asked for volunteers to read (each took a paragraph). I gave them all some time to ready through the text in their heads, and gave them an opportunity to ask about any uncertain pronunciation. When we reached the Greek scroll on p.4, I read out the visible text (with dramatic emphasis!). The students then picked up the reading on p.5. I pointed out that by the end of the book, where the scroll appears in full, they’d be able to both read and understand the Greek. This seemed to cause excitement!
OUTCOME: Nearly all the students were keen to read, and had no issue with the pronunciation of ‘Taurica’ and ‘batrakhos’. They listened very intently when I read out the scroll, even though it made no sense to them. There was a great deal of ‘table talk’, already trying to decode the scroll from the incidental pictures. The students instantly understood the use of Greek and transliteration into familiar Roman characters introduced on p.5. One student spontaneously worked out that ‘mikro’ means ‘small’ and ‘mega’ means big. I pointed out that we’d be looking at English derivatives from these words very shortly.
REFLECTION: The students are engaging actively with the text. I think it was important that they heard the letter being read out as they could start to engage with Ancient Greek as a (once, at least!) living language. Hearing the letter also fed nicely into section 6 of the lesson.
5. ACTIVITY: Crack the alphabet code (mu, upsilon, sigma) – read through and practice writing on whiteboards
DETAILS: After reading the Crack The Alphabet Code panel on p.5 to the class, they practiced writing the letters on whiteboards. I walked the room, making sure the students understood the difference between the upper case and the lower case, and between the usage of the two different sigmas. Once they were all comfortable, I pointed out that the students could now wrte their first Ancient Greek word. I gave them a countdown from ten to write the Greek word μυς on their boards, holding up when we got to zero.
OUTCOME: All students could write μυς (one pupil wrote it in capitals).
REFLECTION: It was good to use whiteboard and marker here, rather than pen and paper, as it allowed for corrections and rubbing out, as well as holding up.
6. ACTIVITY: Story read-through pp.6-7
DETAILS: I asked for volunteers (who hadn’t already read) to be the characters and a narrator, and we read through the story out loud. Students were asked to see if they could work out/find out what οιμοι means. Once we’d established what it meant, we all had a good go at saying it out loud (dramatically!).
OUTCOME: I had to step in at ‘oimoi’ (p.7) as this hadn’t been covered and wasn’t glossed, so the student hesitated before reading it out loud.
REFLECTION: The text should contain a transliteration of oimoi, or else the teacher needs to flag this word (but not necessarily its meaning) before embarking on the read-through. The pupils had no issue in finding the clue for oimoi, or for simply inferring it from the context.
7. PLENARY: Exit tickets
DETAILS: Each pupil had to complete an exit ticket asking for their response to the lesson and to recall one thing they’d learned.
OUTCOME: All tickets were completed, with most chosing ‘oimoi!’ and some ‘mus’ for their recall task. | <urn:uuid:2769ed80-ff0b-42d6-9be3-f71c73ddf02d> | CC-MAIN-2021-43 | https://basilbatrakhos.com/lesson-1/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-43/segments/1634323585201.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20211018093606-20211018123606-00597.warc.gz | en | 0.975976 | 1,278 | 3.6875 | 4 |
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