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As COVID-19 continues to disrupt our daily lives and businesses, people's attention has shifted to the symptoms of the novel virus.
If you're thinking one of them involves sneezing, you're wrong. Turns out, that is not the case. So stop sneeze shaming.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO) the symptoms are slightly different when compared with the common cold, flu, and allergies.
Know the difference.
The novel coronavirus primarily infect the lungs and causes several symptoms such as a dry cough, fever, and shortness of breath.
We've got you covered when comparing the COVID-19 virus with other contagious respiratory illnesses and allergies through this handy chart by Urgent Care Kids.
While runny nose is at times attributed to the COVID-19 as a symptom, it's not likely to be a cause of concern.
Having diarrhea is a rare symptom, but it can be a hint that you've probably been infected according to several preliminary findings. Furthermore, COVID-19 is also known to transmit through poop.
That said, if you feel that you could possibly infected after visiting areas where the pandemic was severe, it's important to get yourself checked.
When do the symptoms show?
According to a study conducted and published on Annals of Internal Medicine, the symptoms of COVID-19 typically begin to show five days after a person has contracted the virus.
98 percent of patients started showing signs of the virus between 11 to 12 days while only one percent began developing the symptoms after two-weeks.
40 percent of the 181 individuals studied began developing fluids in their lungs.
How severe are the COVID-19 cases?
According to China's Center for Disease Control and Prevention, some 80 percent of the cases have been reported as mild.
Yet, those who've reported to have contracted the virus said it's different than suffering from the common cold or flu.
"COVID-19 causes more severe disease than seasonal influenza," World Health Organization's director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on March 3, 2020.
Should you be worried?
As of the date of writing this post, March 13, the number of cases worldwide is at 128,343 while 4,720 deaths have been reported. A huge chunk of deaths occurred in China itself.
The number of people who've recovered continues to rise to 68,324. If you were to do the math, the global death rate of the virus is at 3.6 percent.
However, if we were to exclude China, the epicentre of the virus, the death rate drops to 1.5 percent.
Here's how to stay safe.
So long as you practise these safety measures below, the chances of you contracting COVID-19 drops significantly.
- Avoid close contact with people who are sick.
- Avoid touching your eyes, nose, and mouth.
- Stay home when you are sick.
- Cover your cough or sneeze with a tissue, then throw the tissue in the trash.
- Clean and disinfect frequently touched objects and surfaces using a regular household cleaning spray or wipe.
- Wear a face mask if you're not feeling well to prevent spreading diseases to others.
- Wash your hands often with soap and water for at least 20 seconds, especially after going to the bathroom; before eating; and after blowing your nose, coughing, or sneezing.
- Use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer with at least 60% alcohol. Always wash hands with soap and water if hands are visibly dirty.
By the way, here's a handy COVID-19 tracker which reports the cases in real-time.
Cover image sourced and modified from iStock. | <urn:uuid:8d091539-bd8e-485e-9c84-602d6bf9a212> | CC-MAIN-2023-06 | https://sea.mashable.com/science/9552/worried-that-youve-got-covid-19-look-out-for-these-symptoms | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-06/segments/1674764500904.44/warc/CC-MAIN-20230208191211-20230208221211-00240.warc.gz | en | 0.965521 | 777 | 3.609375 | 4 |
s you approach Coventry Cathedral, you are overlooked by the rather imposing bronze statues of St. Michael and the Devil on the southern end of the east wall. (Ecclesiastically speaking, the west end of the south wall.) It was sculpted by Sir Jacob Epstein, who, sadly, died in 1959, and therefore didn't live to see his masterpiece mounted on the cathedral wall a year later.
The choice of Epstein for the work initially troubled various members of the cathedral's Reconstruction Committee. The phrase "But he is a Jew", plus the controversial nature of some of his previous work, were among the reasons put forward against his selection for the sculpting of St. Michael, the cathedral's patron saint. "So was Jesus Christ" was the simple retort from Basil Spence to the first accusation!
A visit to see Jacob Epstein by Spence and the Provost soon set things in motion - Howard was won over immediately by Epstein's charm and spiritual awareness - and by the time the head and shoulders had been sensitively moulded in clay some months later, all doubts had melted away, and soon, Epstein, whom Spence regarded as the greatest sculptor of the 20th century, had won over all who set eyes upon the huge group of St. Michael and the Devil.
Entrance to the cathedral is through the "Screen of Saints and Angels" directly opposite the steps that lead up to the old cathedral ruins, which are clearly visible in the reflection from the window. My photograph hardly does this magnificent creation justice.... it is actually 70 feet high and 45 feet wide and is supported by a bronze framework hung by wires from the roof for added strength.
This unique screen formed part of Sir Basil Spence's first 'vision' for the new cathedral. As he stared out from the ruins of the bombed cathedral, he saw the shape for the new church through a screen of saints. This transparent wall would link the old and new - making each mutually visible from within each other. Provost Howard set out to draw up a scheme consisting of all the saints who were responsible for the bringing of Christianity to Britain. As John Hutton began to make initial designs, he soon realised that row upon row of saints would need to be "broken up in some way", and suggested that angels be inserted between the saints. A short discussion with Bishop Gorton solidified this idea, and so the work began.
As with most great works, the design of Coventry's new cathedral evolved slightly as it moved towards completion. One such example of change is this giant screen, the original plan for which being a smaller screen that could be lowered into a slot in the ground, thereby enabling direct contact between the altar and the people of Coventry. Eventually, the present screen was decided upon, giving more space for Hutton's magnificent engravings.
Something which isn't necessarily apparent as you stare at this screen is the vivid reflection of the old ruins in the glass, especially on a sunny day.
The photo on the left demonstrates just how remarkable and clear the ruins are reflected in the new cathedral west window, echoing Sir Basil Spence's thoughts that the new building should be incomplete without the old. | <urn:uuid:4acfe593-ba4c-4837-95a8-cb65c1306502> | CC-MAIN-2017-51 | http://www.historiccoventry.co.uk/cathedrals/newcathedral.php?pg=st-michael-devil | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-51/segments/1512948563083.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20171215021156-20171215041156-00277.warc.gz | en | 0.974814 | 649 | 2.625 | 3 |
Administered by the Division of Environmental Health & Risk Management, School of Geography, Earth & Environmental Sciences
The last four decades has seen tremendous growth in public, scientific and governmental interest in the environmental effects of persistent organic pollutants (POPs). Owing to health concerns (inter alia Food Standards Agency, 2001; Huisman et al, 1995; Jacobson and Jacobson, 1996), and in recognition of the global nature of POPs contamination, in July 1998, an international initiative to take action on POPs was agreed by 92 countries (including the UK) under the auspices of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP).
This initiative took a significant step forward on 17th May 2004, when the Stockholm Convention on POPs came into force. Twelve POPs (or groups of POPs) were targeted for action. These were: aldrin, chlordane, DDT, dieldrin, polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins (PCDDs), polychlorinated dibenzofurans (PCDFs), endrin, heptachlor, hexachlorobenzene, mirex, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and toxaphene. The criteria for inclusion of the above so-called “dirty dozen” – which are being used to evaluate the case for adding other compounds (such as the flame retardants polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs)) to the list in future – were that they demonstrate:
Potential for long range environmental transport
Article 10 of the convention addresses “Public information, awareness and education”. Specifically, it requires that “each Party shall, within its capabilities, promote and facilitate” inter alia “training of workers, scientists, educators, and technical and managerial personnel”. The UK national focal point for the convention is DEFRA, hence their core membership of the network. On a regional scale, the network is relevant to the EU SCALE initiative, embodied as the European Environment and Health Strategy 2003.
A cornerstone of the strategy – which specifically addresses POPs – is its recognition that the best science will result from “drawing together knowledge from a wide range of networks of stakeholders…”. The strategy also recognises the need for integration of and close co-operation between stakeholders identified as inter alia national, local, and regional authorities, the public, industry, and academia.
In addition to these twelve, a further four (viz: Chlordecone (Kepone), Hexabromobiphenyl, Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), and Lindane (g-Hexachlorocyclohexane)) have been targeted for action under a POPs Protocol to the UN/ECE Convention on Long Range Transboundary Air Pollution (LRTAP).
So-called as the initiative is based on Science, focuses on Children, aims at Raising Awareness, uses Legal instruments and includes constant Evaluation | <urn:uuid:b4c344ab-3ca1-4f43-8d99-f049f08aa90a> | CC-MAIN-2014-23 | http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/schools/gees/research/projects/nercpops/index.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-23/segments/1406510274866.27/warc/CC-MAIN-20140728011754-00437-ip-10-146-231-18.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.912105 | 626 | 3.171875 | 3 |
Trees and Forests
Students learn about trees as individual plants and as part of a forest ecosystem. By examining local species, they learn to recognize the characteristics of different trees and develop skill in describing and interpreting the structural features of trees. As part of their studies, students learn about a broad range of living things found on, under and around trees and study the complex interaction between trees and the larger environment. In examining human use of forests, they become aware of a broad range of environmental issues and develop an awareness of the need for responsible use.
The Forest Ecosystem
In this lesson we talk about the forest ecosystem and introduce the terms biotic, abiotic, organisms, producers, consumers, and decomposers.
Levels of the Forests
Students explore the four levels of the forest (canopy, understory, underbrush and forests floor) found in Alberta Canada.
The Energy Cycle
Students learn about the energy cycle in a ecosystem and how producers, consumers and decomposers interact.
Students explore what photosynthesis is and how it helps producers create energy.
Ecomon Battle Cards
Students use their knowledge of ecosystems to develop a card game.
Parts of a Tree
Students explore the different parts of a tree, focusing on the tree trunk.
Students learn how to interpret tree cookie or cross-sections of a tree trunk in order to
Types of Trees
Students learn about the different types of trees in the Albertan ecosystem.
Types of Leaves
Students learn about the types of leaves that each different tree can produce, their benefits and decrements.
Shapes of Trees
Students explore the different shapes of trees and why they grow a specific way.
How We Use the Forest
Students learn how we use the forest and why it is important to preserve it for future generations.
Trees & Forests Review Projects
Student lead videos and activities to help you study or brush up on the Trees and Forest unit.
Students learn about objects in the day and night sky. Through direct observation and research, students learn about the motions and characteristics of stars, moons and planets. Using simple materials, such as balls and beads, students create models and diagrams which they use to explore the relative position and motion of objects in space. As a result of these studies, students move from a simple view of land and sky, to one that recognizes Earth as a sphere in motion within a larger universe. With new understanding, students revisit the topics of seasonal cycles, phases of the Moon and the apparent motion of stars.
Scale of the Universe
Students explore a short video explaining the scale of the Universe and how we, as humans, fit into it.
The Sun Emits Light
Students look at the difference between emitting and reflecting light. Then explore which objects in the sky are emitting or reflecting light.
Our Solar System
Students explore the different planets in our Solar System. Researching a planet of choice for a later project.
Rotation and Revolution
Students explore how the Earth translates through space, as well as why constellation move throughout the year.
Why Seasons Change
Students investigate why seasons change on Earth, looking at the axis of the Earth in relation to the Sun.
Students look into the Moon, its phases and orbit, and the relationship it has with the Earth.
Evidence and Investigation
Students sharpen their skills in observing and interpreting what they see by investigating evidence of human and animal activity. They explore and analyze indoor and outdoor environments as they look for footprints, markings, evidence of disturbance and things that are left behind. Through these studies, students learn to pose questions, devise investigations, recognize patterns and discrepancies, and think logically about what they have observed.
Air and Aerodynamics
Students explore the characteristics of air and the interaction between moving air and solids. They learn that air is a compressible fluid, that it is composed of many gases, and that moving air can support solid materials in sustained flight. By studying birds and airplanes, they learn a variety of adaptations and designs that make flight possible and that provide for propulsion and control.
Students apply their knowledge of aerodynamics to design, build and test a variety of flying devices. In constructing models, students develop a basic design, then build it, test it, and solve the problems that inevitably arise. Through teamwork they learn that planning, communication, cooperation and flexibility are important to the overall result, even though parts of a task can be worked on individually. In the process, students learn about the parts of an aircraft, their role in controlled flight and the differences between aircraft and spacecraft. | <urn:uuid:0ed6cdcc-7feb-4333-80dd-8c610b30c71a> | CC-MAIN-2019-51 | https://themrmackay.com/discipline/science-6/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-51/segments/1575540497022.38/warc/CC-MAIN-20191207082632-20191207110632-00239.warc.gz | en | 0.927828 | 932 | 4.03125 | 4 |
Anandi Gopal Joshi as icon of Beti Bachao Beti Padhao
The Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao scheme is a unique scheme of the NDA govt. for the empowerment and education of the girl children in India. And Dr. Anandi Gopal Joshi was the first Indian female who got a degree in medicine and started practicing in India. She is considered an icon and the source of motivation for the Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao scheme. At the time when the female education was not given any sort of importance in the Indian society, she broke all barriers and got a physician degree from the United States and returned to India for practicing.
Anandi Gopal Joshi- First Indian woman to get degree in medicine
Dr. Anandi Gopal Joshi went to United States to get medical degree at times when the women of this nation were dealing with social issues regarding Sati system, dowry system, female infanticide, etc. At that time, there was no place for women education in the Indian society. Women were deprived of education and other basic rights as compared to men. But she broke all stereotypes and went for her dream. She is an icon for every girl student and is a source of inspiration for the young generation of women to focus on education and empowerment.
|Sl. No.||Dr. Anandi Gopal Joshi details||Related information|
|1||Date of Birth||31st March 1865|
|2||State belongs to||Maharashtra|
|3||Year of joining degree in medicine||1883|
|4||Year of completion of degree||1886|
|5||Name of college||Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania|
Present literacy ratio in India
At present the literacy ratios of our country is not very balanced. The condition of female literacy in our country has become better that before but there is a big gender inequality in terms of male literacy rate and female literacy rate. As per the last census reports, 65.46 % of women are literate in India where as the literacy rate of the males is nearly 74 %. This gap in the literacy rate is a matter of concern and needs to be abolished as soon as possible. Also the save girl initiative is to be promoted in the country, especially in the backward and rural areas.
Focus on the gender critical districts
The central govt. has started to locate the districts where the female education needs to be improved on emergency basics. Most of the backward districts where the female literacy ratio is very poor are being targeted and the Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao scheme will be enacted in those districts as soon as possible. So far, 262 districts have been targeted and the work has already been started for improving the education facilities of the girl students.
Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao scheme promises
Under this women education and empowerment scheme, the govt. wants to decrease the rate of school dropouts in the primary and secondary levels for the female candidates. Also the female students belonging to the backward categories and economically poor sections will be provided scholarships and other facilities so that they can continue their study. So Anandi Gopal Joshi is considered as icon for this. | <urn:uuid:7b688cb7-bbfc-41bc-b348-edb21e5f2b74> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://www.betibachaobetipadhao.co.in/anandi-gopal-joshi-as-icon/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501172000.93/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104612-00396-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960863 | 665 | 3.09375 | 3 |
While polygamy is practiced all over the world, polyandry, on the other hand, is almost extinct and only a handful of tribes still practice it.
Many cases of polyandry have been recorded in the past in several tribes. Women were allowed to marry several men and even brothers of the same family.
Here are 5 countries where polyandry was practiced:
The Irigwe people occupying the west of the Plateau, Jos, are unique people of about 17,000 population. This small group of people is known to be devoted to polyandry and this is not a surprise as their language and social traditions distinguish them from neighboring tribes.
The Irigwe people of Nigeria practiced polyandry for many decades until it was banned in 1968. Previously, women had the right to have “co-husbands” and to move freely from one house to another, and the paternity of their children was attributed to the husband with whom the woman spent more time.
The Maasai are a Nilotic ethnic group that inhabits northern, central and southern Kenya and Northern Tanzania. Several cases of polyandry have been recorded in the past. However, this practice is no longer common.
Polyandry was practiced in Jaunsar-Bawar, Uttarakhand. It was also common in the Kinnaur region, part of Himachal in India.
Outside Kinnaur, polyandry was practiced in the south of India among the Todas tribes of Nilgiris and Nanjanad Vellala of Travancore. Although the polyandrous unions have disappeared from the traditions of many groups and tribes, they are still practiced by some Paharis, especially in the Jaunsar-Bawar region of northern India.
The Tibetan people in the Nepali parts of China practiced polyandry until 1960 after being annexed by the People’s Republic of China. They practiced the “fraternal polyandry” which consisted of marrying the brothers of the same family.
5. South America
The Bororos are an indigenous people of Brazil, living in the state of Mato Grosso, which practiced polyandry. The Bororos associate body odor with the vital force of the person and the smell of breath with the soul of the person. The Tupi people, who also practiced polyandry, were one of the most numerous indigenous peoples in Brazil before colonization. | <urn:uuid:033ccbce-0920-42d1-ba13-206373c39d8f> | CC-MAIN-2023-06 | https://afrinik.com/countries-where-women-were-allowed-many-husbands/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-06/segments/1674764500368.7/warc/CC-MAIN-20230207004322-20230207034322-00004.warc.gz | en | 0.971045 | 516 | 3.078125 | 3 |
|n.||1.||A wood or a collection of trees, shrubs, etc., closely set; |
|Noun||1.||thicket - a dense growth of bushes|
|(jargon)||thicket - Multiple files output from some operation.|
The term has been heard in use at Microsoft to describe the set of files output when Microsoft Word does "Save As a Web Page" or "Save as HTML". The process can result in a main XML or HTML file, a graphic file for each image in the original, a CSS file, etc.
This can be an issue as XML can be used as the default format in Office 2000, and document management systems can't yet cope with the relationship between the files in a thicket when checking in and out. | <urn:uuid:3484207c-47df-475a-9e94-67d0624cadfc> | CC-MAIN-2021-10 | https://www.webster-dictionary.org/definition/thicket | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-10/segments/1614178362899.14/warc/CC-MAIN-20210301182445-20210301212445-00481.warc.gz | en | 0.909587 | 164 | 2.828125 | 3 |
Proteins are molecular machines that perform the majority of the biochemical processes within cells. They also serve as the building blocks for many structural components. Their ubiquitous use as builders and building materials alike makes it easy to see why proteins are indeed the material that makes life happen.
Proteins are assembled as part of a complex series of biochemical reactions known as gene expression. Genes are basically the instructions or blueprints that tell the cell how to make proteins. They are found on chromosomes, which are made of DNA. Genes are transcribed by RNA polymerases into messenger RNA (mRNA). Ribosomes then use the mRNA as instructions for linking amino acids together to form a long chain called a polypeptide. After further modification, the polypeptide becomes a protein.
Proteins are composed of twenty different types of amino acids. Amino acids have many structures, but the general formula is NH2-C-COOH. Each contains an amine group (NH2) and a carboxylic acid (COOH). The amino acid residues in a protein are linked together by peptide bonds.
Most proteins form globular structures, but others are chain-like. Proteins have two distinctive types of functions: structural and biological activity. However, some proteins serve both functions. Important structural proteins in animals include collagen, which is the component of the bones, muscles and skin, and keratin, which is the component of the hair, feather, and finger nail.
Proteins have many functions. The most common functions are as structural components of cells and enzymes. Important structural proteins include kertain, actin, myosin, and collagen. Keratin covers skin, hair, and nails. Actin and myosin form muscles. Collagen is a component of ligaments. Enzymes speed up chemical reactions but are not used up by the reaction.
Proteins have other functions as well.
Antibodies are proteins that are part of the immune response. They recognize pathogens by binding to antigens, which are proteins and polysaccharides. This process can either prevent the pathogen from entering cells or mark the pathogen for destruction by phagocytic cells.
Some hormones are proteins, and some neurotransmitters have protein or amino acid components. Protein hormones are produced by multicellular organisms in one part of the body, are transported to another part of the body, and have an effect in the new location. Neurotransmitters transmit signals between adjacent neurons.
Proteins are used to transport molecules from one part of the body to another. In vertebrates, hemoglobin and myoglobin can carry oxygen molecules. Hemoglobin can transport up to four oxygen molecules at one time, but myoglobin can only carry one molecule.
Membrane transport proteins are embedded in plasma membranes and allow the movement of certain molecules across the membrane. They can do this by providing a channel for the molecule to flow according to its concentration or by using energy to actively transport a molecule against its concentration gradient.
- Main article: Protein synthesis
Protein synthesis is the process during which the chemical instructions on genes are used by a living cell to make proteins. It is a highly complex procedure that involves a great number of chemical reactions, both inside and outside the nucleus, which are catalyzed by a host of enzymes and cofactors.
In brief, protein synthesis begins in the nucleus, where the protein-coding instructions from the genes are transmitted indirectly through messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA), a transient intermediary molecule similar to a single strand of DNA. This mRNA is moved from the nucleus to the cellular cytoplasm, where it serves as the template for protein synthesis. The cells protein-synthesizing machinery (ribosomes) then translates the codons into a string of amino acids that will eventually constitute the protein molecule.
|Examples of nucleotide codons|
and their corresponding amino acid:
Codon - Amino Acid TGC = Cysteine CTG = Leucine AGT = Serine GCA = Alanine
The product of a single gene is a string of amino acids known as a peptide or polypeptide. This is known as the primary structure of a protein. This peptide is folded into a particular subunit, and then joined together with other peptides to make a functional protein. Protein structures are known by 4 levels of organization: primary, secondary, tertiary, and quaternary protein structures.
The first structure of protein is primary protein structure or primary protein stage. The primary structure consists the repeating sequence of three atoms: N-C-C. N is alpha helix, and C is carboxyl group. The structure of proteins is bonded by the covalent bonds. From the primary stage, the translation is occurring; the amino acids form to bond into the special order of them. (Polypeptide, group of amino acids, is the sequence of amino acids in the primary stage.) Proteins can be distinguished by the stable structures.
Secondary structure is occurring after the primary structure. It consists of the regular repeating patterns in the polypeptide chains. Hydrogen bonding plays an important role in stabilizing these folding patterns. In the secondary structures, there are two different types of the structures: alpha helix and beta pleated sheet. Each of the structures work differently, even though they are occurring in the secondary structure. The formation of these structures are determined by the primary structure.
- Alpha helix: Alpha is a right handed coil. The alpha helical secondary structure is common in keratins, which is the fibrous structural protein: hair, feather, and toe nails.
- Beta pleated sheet: Beta pleated sheet is formed from two or more polypeptide chains. It is stabilized by the hydrogen bonds between N-H and C-O groups.
Of course, tertiary structure occurs after the secondary structure. The tertiary structure is the polypeptide and proteins are composing it as the secondary structure of protein. Polypeptides in tertiary structure can be bent and be folded back and forth. Many of the interactions between atoms are occurred in tertiary structure.
- Covalent disulfide bridges: They can hold the folded polypeptides
- Hydrophobic: Side chains are gathered together in protein to fold the polypeptides that the process occurs away from water
- Van der Waals force: It stabilize the interactions between the hydrophobic residues.
- Ionic bonds: They form between positive and negative charges.
The quaternary structure describes the interaction of proteinaceous subunits with other subunits or different molecules. The quaternary stricture is specifically the result of binding of the subunits together and their interactions. The protein subunits are the short tertiary polypeptide chains. The tetrameric metalloprotein hemoglobin is a good illustration of the quaternary structure. Hydrogen bonds, ionic bonds, Van der Waals forces, and hydrophobic bonds hold four different subunits together (2 α subunits and 2β subunits) along with an Fe(II) ion. The presence of the iron allows oxygen binding and transportation in the form of oxyhemoglobin during cellular respiration. When oxyhemoglobin releases O2 in the cells of the body, the quaternary structure undergoes a change.
- Some Protein History. Associated Content.
- Bender, Hal. Structural Proteins. Clackamas Community College. 2003. Accessed 20 May 2016.
- Janeway CA Jr, Travers P, Walport M, et al. The Humoral Immune Response. In Immunobiology: The Immune System in Health and Disease. 5th edition. New York: Garland Science; 2001.
- Primer on Molecular Genetics: Introduction by the U.S. Department of Energy, Accessed January 22, 2011.
- Protein and Polypeptide Structure: Four Conformation Levels of Protein Structure By Anne Marie Helmenstine, Ph.D., About.com Guide, Accessed January 22, 2011.
- Mark McDowall and Neil Cameron. Protein: Primary Structure. Chemsoc. The Royal Society of Chemistry.
- Protein & Polypeptide Structure. About Chemistry. | <urn:uuid:a4654e94-25d9-44a2-b946-f33417efe0e2> | CC-MAIN-2016-30 | http://creationwiki.org/Proteins | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-30/segments/1469257823670.44/warc/CC-MAIN-20160723071023-00321-ip-10-185-27-174.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.924096 | 1,719 | 4.125 | 4 |
Are you sure about that?
The word fascism may too often get thrown around as a simple derogatory term, but it does have a specific meaning. Fascism is a political/economic system for organizing society. Fascism has specific, discernible traits. One of which is corporatism (business-government alliance). Let's take a look at the defining characteristics of fascism to see how far down that road America has traveled.
Remember, if it look like a duck and quacks like a duck. It's a duck!
Are we there yet? Here's the explanations Britt offered for each point:
1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism - Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.
This one is obvious...check.Patriotism and nationalism represent 2 very different things.
In brief, patriotism is a love for one's country, its people, communities, history and traditions. A patriot wants his country to be a blessing to God. Nationalism on the other hand, is a devotion to one's government. Nationalism puts the collective over the individual, the State over the community, and power above liberty. A nationalist expects God to bless his country.
2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights - Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.
Bush gave us both Patriot Acts, and Obama affirmed them and even added the power to assassinate American citizens abroad. Check.
3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause - The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.
There's a difference nowadays, as many of the communists, socialists and liberals in this country are every bit the fascists of today. Perhaps Dr. Britt is another one of those who believes that Fascism is a right-wing ideology. Fascist regime use the left-right dialectic to maintain it's control over a divided populace. The Democrat liberals, communists and socialists in America today are just as fascist as the neo-cons, fundamentalist, capitalist Republicans.
4. Supremacy of the Military - Even when there are widespread
domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.
Check.“War and the military are, without question, among the very worst of the earth’s afflictions,” an American conservative of distinction [Robert Nisbet] once wrote, “responsible for the majority of the torments, oppressions, tyrannies, and suffocations of thought the West has for long been exposed to. In military or war society anything resembling true freedom of thought, true individual initiative in the intellectual and cultural and economic areas, is made impossible—not only cut off when they threaten to appear but, worse, extinguished more or less at root. Between military and civil values there is, and always has been, relentless opposition. Nothing has proved more destructive of kinship, religion, and local patriotisms than has war and the accompanying military mind.”
6. Controlled Mass Media - Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.
7. Obsession with National Security - Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.
Have you had the opportunity yet to make your latest choice in the name of National Security? Did you choose radiation or sex assault?As former Reagan-man Paul Craig Roberts says, "It Is Official: The US Is a Police State."
9. Corporate Power is Protected - The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.
In my opinion, this is the most significant characteristic of a fascist regime. It actually works in precise conjunction with no. 13, Rampant Cronyism and Corruption. Corporate power is protected, because the corporate interest are the very power that is behind the cronyism and corruption.See Obama’s Corporatism.
12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment - Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.
Under the guise of wars on terror and wars on drugs, we've now almost completely militarized our nation's police forces and have allowed them to violate the Constitutional rights of the citizenry at will.
13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption - Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.
This one and number 9 need to be numbers one and number two on this list. Check. | <urn:uuid:0ba0c0ec-764e-4fa9-a22b-8f85c498054d> | CC-MAIN-2016-22 | http://www.spaulforrest.com/2010/12/american-fascism.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-22/segments/1464051165777.47/warc/CC-MAIN-20160524005245-00211-ip-10-185-217-139.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947986 | 1,151 | 2.546875 | 3 |
What keeps kids healthy? Health coach Antonia Nyberg answers this for you.
Kids often get sick. Colds, fever, ear ache, diarrhea… but is there a way to make your children less prone to getting sick? Something that actually keeps them healthy?
A strong immune system can easily fight off viruses and bacteria that your child is exposed to, that's why eating healthy is a must when trying not to get sick.
Give your children enough skin contact!
Hug them every day and hold hands as much as possible. This will keep the immune system of the little ones in good shape.
Also, don't let them spend too much time indoors being inactive...
They need fresh air and exercise to stay as healthy as possible.
And make sure they have friends and things to look forward to. This makes them less likely to catch nasty stuff that's going around, because studies have now confirmed that being lonely and unhappy actually weakens the immune system.
Apart from what we have already discussed, if you are worried your child might catch something, up their intake of vitamin C.
Try to make sure they have a few fruits every day and some vegetables/greens too.
Something that has worked very well with my own son, who rarely is sick, is to always give him a fruit (or a few fruits) in the morning.
And then I make a green smoothie or some fresh juice a few times a week also. I often give him a fruit that he takes to school, but he doesn't always remember to eat it. But that's okay, because the times he does remember counts.
One health expert I know says that adults should eat 1-2 pounds of vegetables or greens a day (to stay healthy) and children could have the same amount, but less is totally fine because of their size.
But for me personally I feel that it's enough to have one salad a day only, and sometimes it's not even that big. See, I'm more of a fruit person.
But if you are wondering how much 1 pound of veggies is, check out this chart:
By the way, broccoli and spinach are examples of veggies that are good to steam a little. But of course they can be eaten raw too - it is just that broccoli is hard to chew and it is easier to eat more of if it is steamed.
What about milk?
Does it help our kids stay healthy?
Letting children drink cow's milk is not a very wise thing to do, because that has been linked to respiratory infections, digestive problems, allergies and even to diabetes later in life.
Cow's milk hinders also the absorption of important nutrients (like iron) in the food we eat with it.
And oh, want to know how much sugar there is in something like chocolate milk?
In only one glass you find 5 1/2 sugar cubes!
I wanted to share this video with you:
Hope you now know what keeps kids healthy and what doesn't.
Have a great day! | <urn:uuid:432413ea-8219-41e3-ba6f-809fe516a963> | CC-MAIN-2017-30 | http://www.antonianyberg.com/what-keeps-kids-healthy.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-30/segments/1500549424889.43/warc/CC-MAIN-20170724162257-20170724182257-00359.warc.gz | en | 0.979205 | 625 | 2.859375 | 3 |
The first fossil salmonfly (Insecta: Plecoptera: Pteronarcyidae), back to the Middle Jurassic
© The Author(s). 2016
Received: 13 May 2016
Accepted: 4 October 2016
Published: 18 October 2016
The fossil record of Plecoptera (stoneflies) is considered relatively complete, with stem-groups of each of the three major lineages, viz. Antarctoperlaria, Euholognatha and Systellognatha (and some of their families) represented in the Mesozoic. However, the family Pteronarcyidae (the salmonflies; including two genera, Pteronarcys and Pteronarcella) has no fossil record to date, and the family has been suggested to have diverged recently.
In this paper, we report on a set of specimens belonging to a new fossil species of stonefly, discovered from the Middle Jurassic Daohugou locality (China). Our comparative analysis of wing venation and body characters demonstrates that the new species belongs to the Pteronarcyidae, and is more closely related to Pteronarcys than to Pteronarcella. However, it differs from all known species of the former genus. It is therefore assigned to a new genus and named Pteroliriope sinitshenkovae gen. et sp. nov. under the traditional nomenclatural procedure. The cladotypic nomenclatural procedure is also employed, with the resulting combination Pteroliriope nec Pteronarcys sinitshenkovae sp. nov.
The first discovery of a fossil member of the Pteronarcyidae demonstrates that the corresponding lineage is not a very recent offshoot but was already present ca. 165 million years ago. This discovery concurs with the view that divergence of most stonefly families took place very early, probably in the Triassic, or even in the Permian. This contribution demonstrates the need for (re-)investigations of the systematics of fossil stoneflies to refine divergence date estimates for Plecoptera lineages.
The insect order Plecoptera (stoneflies) diverged as early as in the early Late Carboniferous , and stem-relatives of most of its constituent families have been recovered from Mesozoic strata [2–9]. However the Pteronarcyidae (salmonflies; including two extant genera, Pteronarcys Newman, 1838 and Pteronarcella Banks, 1900 ), a prominent family as far as the size of individuals is concerned, has never been recovered in the fossil record. As a consequence it is generally assumed that the family diverged very recently (Cenozoic [2, 4]).
In this paper, we report on a large set of specimens belonging to a new fossil species of stonefly, unearthed from the Middle Jurassic Daohugou locality (China). Our comparative analysis of wing venation and body characters unambiguously demonstrates that the new species is a Pteronarcyidae. Its affinities within this family are elucidated and the implications of this new occurrence on divergence date estimates for stonefly lineages are addressed.
In order to assess the affinities of a newly discovered fossil species, we conducted a comparative analysis of characters of the external morphology. Firstly we complemented the available data on the wing venation of Pteronarcella badia (Hagen 1874) , a close relative of the new species. Then we address systematics aspects above the species level (divided into the traditional and the cladotypic approaches), followed by species-level aspects.
Wing venation variability in Pteronarcella badia
Unusual morphologies were documented: one individual exhibited a short rp-ma cross-vein in both forewings (Fig. 1i.1,2); one individual exhibited a CuA forked distally in both forewings (only left forewing represented on Fig. 1i); one individual exhibited a long stem of AA2 (Fig. 1j); another one, not illustrated, has also such a distal fork in one of the forewings (Fig. 1k.1,2); one individual has CuP fused for some distance with CuA (Fig. 1l); one individual has a branched MA (Fig. 1m); one unusual individual has an incomplete cross-vein in the area between R/RP and M basal to the fork of M in the right forewing, and MP fused with CuA in the right hind wing, among other aspects (not illustrated).
Systematics above species level
Plecoptera Burmeister, 1839
Systellognatha Zwick, 2000
Pteronarcyidae Newman, 1853
Pteroliriope Cui, Béthoux, Kondratieff, Shih & Ren, gen. nov.
Diagnosis: By monotypy, that of its constituent species.
Etymology: Based on ‘Pteron’ (‘wing’ in ancient Greek), and ‘Liriope’, a nymph considered the mother of Narcissus in Greek mythology (the name of a related genus, Pteronarcys, is based on ‘Narcissus’).
Composition: Pteroliriope sinitshenkovae gen. et sp. nov.
Discussion: The type-species of the proposed new genus exhibits a unique combination of character states (see below, main Discussion), justifying the described new genus.
Taxon Pteroliriope Cui, Béthoux, Kondratieff, Shih & Ren, tax. nov.
Definition: Species that evolved from the hypothetical ancestral species in which the character state ‘in forewing, AA2 with more than three branches (as opposed to ‘in forewing, AA2 with three branches, or less’), as exhibited by californica Newport, 1851 and princeps Banks, 1907, has been acquired (venation designations as herein).
Etymology: See above.
Paracladotypes: Specimens MNHN-EP664 to -EP666 (belonging to californica Newport, 1851 , two males, one female), and specimens MNHN-EP668 to -EP670 (belonging to princeps Banks, 1907 , two males, one female).
Composition: All recent species currently assigned to the genus Pteronarcys (see ) and sinitshenkovae sp. nov.
Discussion: Wings of both cladotypic species have been illustrated in a former publication . Systematic aspects are treated under the traditional heading (see above). As for a possible earlier association of the proposed defining character state alone with a taxon (named, or not), we found none.
Taxon Pteronarcys nom. Newman, 1838, Cui, Béthoux & Kondratieff dis.-typ. nov.
Definition: Species that evolved from the hypothetical ancestral species in which the character state ‘in forewing, area between R/RP and M basal to the fork of M broad, with cross-veins’ (as opposed to ‘in forewing, area between R/RP and M basal to the fork of M of regular width, without cross-veins’), as exhibited by californica Newport, 1851 and princeps Banks, 1907, has been acquired (venation designations as herein).
Paracladotypes: Specimens MNHN-EP664 to -EP666 (belonging to californica Newport, 1851 , two males, one female), and specimens MNHN-EP668 to -EP670 (belonging to princeps Banks, 1907 , two males, one female).
Composition: All recent species currently assigned to the genus Pteronarcys (see ). The species sinitshenkovae sp. nov. can be conclusively excluded from this taxon (see below).
Discussion: Wings of both cladotypic species have been illustrated in an earlier publication . The character state defining the taxon Pteronarcys (name first erected in Newman, 1837 ) can be seen as composed of two characters regarding the area between R/RP and M, and basal to the fork of M, viz. its width (regular vs. broad), and the occurrence of cross-veins (absent vs. present). However, to our knowledge, the state ‘area of regular width’ always co-occurs with the state ‘cross-veins absent’, and the state ‘area broad’ always co-occurs with the state ‘cross-veins present’. Indeed a broadening of the space between two veins is likely to decrease the repression of cross-veins formation. In other words, the two conditions are most likely correlated.
Our literature survey revealed no earlier association of the proposed defining character state along with a taxon (named or not, we found no mention of the defining character state). Because the composition of the taxon herein defined matches that of the genus Pteronarcys, we propose to adapt this name under cladotypic nomenclature.
Diagnosis: Forewing: area between R/RP and M basal to the fork of M of regular width, without cross-veins (shared with Pteronarcella spp.; opposite condition in Pteronarcys spp.); MA distinct from RP (shared with Pteronarcella spp., fusion occasionally present in Pteronarcys spp.); AA2 with more than 3 branches (shared with Pteronarcys spp.; less than 3 branches in Pteronarcella spp.); except for the aa1-aa2 cross-vein, no cross-vein between AA2 branches (cross-veins present in both Pteronarcella spp. and Pteronarcys spp.). Hind wing: CuA branched (simple in Pteronarcella spp., branched in Pteronarcys spp.).
Etymology: The specific eptithet honours Dr. N. Sinitshenkova, for her important contributions to the study of fossil stoneflies.
Material: Holotype specimen: CNU-PLE-NN-2015001; paratype specimens: CNU-PLE-NN-2013001, CNU-PLE-NN-2013005; other specimens: CNU-PLE-NN-2013002 – CNU-PLE-NN-2013004, CNU-PLE-NN-2013006 – CNU-PLE-NN-2013008, CNU-PLE-NN-2013011, CNU-PLE-NN-2013019 – CNU-PLE-NN-2013021, CNU-PLE-NN-2013024, CNU-PLE-NN-2013026, CNU-PLE-NN-2013027, CNU-PLE-NN-2013032, CNU-PLE-NN-2013036.
General description: Body: total length (excluding antennae and cerci) ca. 25 mm; head narrower than prothorax, with basal part broader than distal part; antennae filiform; three ocelli; eyes round, dark-coloured; prothorax, mesothorax and metathorax of similar rectangular shape, width about 1.5 times long as length; forelegs shortest, hind legs longest; femur robust; tibia slender; tarsus with three segments, second one shortest, third one (pretarsus) longest; pretarsus with a pair of simple claws; cerci multi-segmented. Forewings: average length 28.1 mm (longest 31.4 mm in specimen CNU-PLE-NN-2013011, shortest 24.1 mm in specimen CNU-PLE-NN-2013035), average width 7.5 mm (widest 8.8 mm in specimen CNU-PLE-NN-2013029, narrowest (5.7 mm) in specimen CNU-PLE-NN-2013015) (dimensions based on 18 specimens preserving almost-complete forewings); occurrence of a strong oblique cross-vein present in area between the anterior wing margin and ScP close to wing base (Fig. 5c–e); more distally, area between anterior margin and ScP filled with strong cross-veins; ScP reaches RA at second third of wing length; several cross-veins (branches from ScP + RA?) occurring between ScP + RA and anterior margin; RA-RP fork in second fifth of wing length; area between RA and RP with a constriction opposite ra-rp cross-vein; RP with 4–8 branches (including distalmost one or two); in area between RA and RP, first cross-vein slightly basal to the end of ScP on RA, stronger than other following cross-veins; M bent downward slightly before its fork; fork located near wing mid-length; MA mostly simple; MP simple or forked; a strong cross-vein (arculus) between base of M and CuA; CuA forked distally, slightly basal to the fork of M; CuA with 4(3?)-8 branches; CuP straight, simple; AA1 simple; AA2 normally with 4 branches, with varying branching pattern; dark pigmentation along most of venation, especially obvious along ra-rp cross-vein, cross-veins in area between anterior wing margin and ScP, and RP at its fork. Hind wings: visible parts very similar to forewings except: area between anterior wing margin and ScP + RA, slightly wider; and CuA with 3 (2?) branches.
Specimen descriptions: Specimen CNU-PLE-NN-2015001 (holotype; Fig. 2): complete individual, male, positive and negative imprints, wings partly overlapping. Body: posterior margin of head 4.5 mm long; outline of mouthpart visible; antennae with 28 segments preserved; prothorax 3.0 mm long, 4.9 mm wide; mesothorax 3.5 mm long, 5.0 mm wide; metathorax 3.5 mm long, 5.5 mm wide; femur of foreleg about 4.0 mm long, 1.0 mm wide; tibia not completely preserved, 0.6 mm wide; femur of right mid-leg 3.5 mm long, 1.7 mm wide; tibia of left mid-leg 7.0 mm long, 0.5 mm wide; femur of left hind leg about 5.0 mm long, 1.0 mm wide; tibia of right hind leg 7.0 mm long, 0.7 mm wide; tarsus 3-segmented; first segment 1.0 mm long, second segment 0.5 mm long, third segment (pretarsus) 1.1 mm long; abdomen completely preserved; ninth sternite, posterior edge of tergum with two hook-like structures consisting of three lobes; anterior hemitergal lobe (ahl) comparatively long and narrow, well separated from median lobe (mhl); mhl and posterior (phl) hemitergal lobes processes; tenth tergum divided mid-dorsally into two hemitergites; each hemitergite not clearly separated from each other, with posterior lobe small and pointed; inner part (ip) of supra-anal process visible; two lateral braces (lb) at the apex of ip, very broad; paragenital plate (pgp) with anterior lateral edged terminating close to lateral braces (lb); apical region of dorsal section of supra-anal process (ads) partly visible; eleventh segment divided into two hook-like sub-anal lobes (sbl). Left forewing: 30.0 mm long and 7.9 mm wide; base of Cu and most part of anal area not visible. Right forewing: 25.4 mm long and 10.0 mm wide as preserved; anterior-distal area not preserved; posterior-basal area not visible except CuP and AA1. Left hind wing: 28.5 mm long, 8.9 mm wide as preserved; CuA mostly not visible; AA2 with 4 branches reaching posterior margin visible. Right hind wing: 20.0 mm long, 9.0 mm wide as preserved; distal part of wing not preserved; area between anterior branch of M and three posterior branches of AA2 not identifiable.
Specimen CNU-PLE-NN-2013001 (paratype; Fig. 3a–c): four wings overlapping. Left forewing: 29.6 mm long and 6.9 mm wide as preserved; base of Cu not visible. Right forewing: 27.1 mm long and 7.9 mm wide as preserved, with very basal and posterio-distal part not visible; arculus, branches of CuA, and basal forks of AA2 not visible. Hind wings: CuA with 3 branches. Left hind wing: 24.0 mm long and 8.5 mm wide as preserved; fork of R and M not visible; distal part of CuP and AA1 visible. Right hind wing: 22.1 mm long, 8.5 mm wide as preserved.
Specimen CNU-PLE-NN-2013004 (Fig. 3d–f): Head and thorax preserved with all three pairs of legs; fore- and hind wing overlapping on both sides. Left forewing: 24.9 mm long, 7.0 mm wide preserved, with distal part, posterior margin and anal area not visible. Right forewing: 23.5 mm long, 7.7 mm wide as preserved; MP forked. Left hind wing: basal part and posterior margin not visible; 22.6 mm long and about 8.0 mm wide as preserved. Right hind wing: veins partly visible, basal and distal part missing; 19.8 mm long and 8.6 mm wide as preserved.
Specimen CNU-PLE-NN-2013003 (Fig. 4a–c): Head, thorax and hind legs preserved, four wings overlapping, in resting position. Left forewing: about 32.0 mm long, and 10.6 mm wide, as preserved; basal part uninterpretable. Right forewing: 27.0 mm long and 9.7 mm wide as preserved; mid-anterior part visible. Left hind wing: 29.3 mm long, 10.9 mm wide. Right hind wing: 24.6 mm long, 11.6 mm wide; MP forked.
Specimen CNU-PLE-NN-2013002 (Fig. 4d–f): a pair of wings in resting position, with a few veins of left hind wing visible. Left forewing: nearly complete, 26.4 mm long, 6.9 mm wide; MP forked. Right forewing: incompletely preserved, with distal part missing; 22.7 mm long, 7.0 mm wide; as preserved, MP simple.
Specimen CNU-PLE-NN-2013024 (Fig. 5a–b): positive imprint of right forewing; 27.6 mm long and 7.5 mm wide; CuA with 5 branches, all distinct from M.
Specimen CNU-PLE-NN-2013021 (Fig. 5c–e): negative imprint of left forewing; 26.6 mm long and 7.6 mm wide as preserved; CuA with 5 branches, all distinct from M.
Specimen CNU-PLE-NN-2013020 (Fig. 5f–g): positive and negative imprint of right forewing; 30.3 mm long and 7.8 mm wide as preserved; coloration well preserved; CuA with 6 branches, all distinct from M; cross-veins in the area between CuA and CuP reticulated.
Specimen CNU-PLE-NN-2013006 (Fig. 5h–i): positive imprint of a nearly complete right forewing; 29.4 mm long, 6.0 mm wide; MP forked; CuA with 5 branches, one fused with MP.
Specimen CNU-PLE-NN-2013032 (Fig. 5j–l): positive imprint of left forewing and negative imprint of right forewing, with scattered legs. Left forewing: 26.5 mm long and 8.6 mm wide as preserved; MP forked; CuA with 8 branches, one fused with MP; Right forewing: 23.2 mm long, 8.6 mm wide as preserved.
Specimen CNU-PLE-NN-2013019 (Fig. 5m–o): positive imprint of left forewing; 19.4 mm long and 6.9 mm wide as preserved; CuA with a branch fused with MP; base very well preserved, with 4 distinct branches of AA2.
Specimen CNU-PLE-NN-2013005 (paratype; Fig. 6a–d): nearly complete body and both forewings preserved, female. Body: basal part of head 2.3 mm long; antennae with 8 segments preserved; prothorax 3.2 mm long, 4.7 mm wide; mesothorax 2.9 mm long, 4.6 mm wide; metathorax largest, 3.6 mm long, 5.4 mm wide; forelegs well preserved; femur about 4.3 mm long, 1.0 mm wide; tibia about 4.6 mm long, 0.6 mm wide; femur of mid-leg about 3.9 mm long, 0.9 mm wide; tibia of mid-leg 5.0 mm long, 0.6 mm wide; femur of hind leg about 4.9 mm long, 0.9 mm wide; tibia of hind leg 7.0 mm long, 0.7 mm wide; eight sternite with two round vaginal projections (vp, in Fig. 6c). Left forewing: 26.9 mm long, 8.0 mm wide; MP probably forked; Right forewing: 29.3 mm long, 7.4 mm wide.
Specimen CNU-PLE-NN-2013036 (Fig. 7a–c): half body and both forewings preserved; head 3.5 mm wide between compound eyes; prothorax 3.1 mm long, 4.6 mm wide; mesothorax 3.9 mm long, 5.2 mm wide; metathorax 3.4 mm long, 6.1 mm wide; three abdominal segments visible. Left forewing: 26.1 mm long, 8.3 mm wide as preserved; Right forewing: preserved 22.4 mm long, 8.2 mm wide.
Discussion: The interpretation of the genitalia of specimen CNU-PLE-NN-2015001 is based on a comparison with the description of extant taxa of the Pteronarcyidae by Nelson and Hanson (1971; ) on extant Pteronarcyidae, and is included in the main Discussion section.
The distinction between the conditions ‘branched MP’ and ‘fusion of a branch of CuA with MP’ proved difficult to confirm in several cases. For example, in the case of the specimen CNU-PLE-NN-2013002, the left forewing is interpreted to have a branch of CuA fused with MP (Fig. 4f), but a branched MP remains a plausible interpretation, given that the presumed MP fork is located in a very basal position. However, the branching pattern of CuA in the forewing shows variation in the number of branches, usually with four to five branches, rarely with three (Fig. 3f) or six or more (Figs. 4c, 5g, k and 6g).
We found no reason to distinguish different species within the fossils we examined. Data on extant species of Pteronarcys (; below considered as closely related to the new fossil species) show that the observed size variation, and the occurrence of a branched MP, is subjected to intra-specific variation. The branching pattern of AA2 in forewing of Pteronarcyidae (with which the new species is closely related, see below) also shows a certain degree of variation, in particular in Pteronarcys spp. (see Figs. 23, 24 in ), which can also be observed in the fossil specimens: the first branch of AA2 can be simple or forked (Fig. 4f, compare LFW and RFW); and the first branch of AA2α branched distally or proximally (compare Fig. 5b and g). Therefore, the assignment of all the specimens listed above to a single species is well supported.
Before proceeding with the evolutionary implications of our discovery, a note on nomenclatural aspects is necessary. Under the cladotypic nomenclature all taxon names are written in italics with a capital letter. Traditional genus names and cladotypic names can therefore be confused. However, the name of the newly erected genus (viz., ‘Pteroliriope’) is also used in association with a cladotypic definition. Consequently the combination ‘Pteroliriope sinitshenkovae’ is valid under both procedures. In addition the adaptation of the pre-existing genus name ‘Pteronarcys’ under cladotypic nomenclature leaves the association of this name with the specific epithets of its constituent species unchanged (e.g., ‘Pteronarcys californica’). In such cases both procedures reach a similar outcome . However the cladotypic procedure has that advantage that the exclusion of sinitshenkovae from the taxon Pteronarcys can be made explicit with the minimal combination ‘Pteroliriope nec Pteronarcys sinitshenkovae’ (this cannot be achieved under the traditional procedure without inflating ranks and a good knowledge of the corresponding group systematics). Unless mentioned, this section will be further continued under the cladotypic framework. In other words, all taxon names written in italics are to be understood as cladotypic names. Species are referred to by their specific epithet associated with authorship data (also known as Lanham species names).
Systematic affinities of Pteroliriope sinitshenkovae tax. et sp. nov.
The occurrence of a short, oblique strong first cross-vein in the area between the anterior wing margin and ScP (arrow on Fig. 5c–e) allows the assignment of sinitshenkovae sp. nov. to the Systellognatha, as this state is unique to the group (orange on Fig. 8b). The character state ‘in hind wing, CuA branched’ (as opposed to ‘simple’) is congruent with the previous one: indeed this state occurs only in some Diamphipnoidae and in Systellognatha (with the exception of species of the genus Pteronarcella; state distribution not represented on Fig. 8). The assignment of sinitshenkovae tax. et sp. nov. to the Systellognatha, and, more specifically to the Pteronarcyidae, is well corroborated.
The character state ‘in forewing, AA2 with more than three branches’ (as opposed to ‘with three or fewer branches’; orange on Fig. 8c) confirms this statement: among Plecoptera it is known only in carpenteri, the Styloperlidae (see below), and Pteronarcys spp. It is noted that AA1 is seemingly forked in Styloperlidae (Fig. 6 in ; unpubl. data). However, given that AA1 is simple in all other Plecoptera, we assume that a fusion of the anterior-most branch of AA2 with AA1 occurs in the Styloperlidae. This interpretation implies an AA2 with more than 3 branches in the family.
Another useful character state is ‘in fore- and hind wing, M occasionally with more than two branches’ (as opposed to ‘with two branches only’; orange on Fig. 8d). Among Plecoptera, this state occurs only in carpenteri and Pteronarcys spp. (pers. obs. as for the hind wing). Affinities of the new species with Pteronarcys spp. are further confirmed by its large size. According to Stewart & Stark (2008; ), among the Pteronarcyidae, a body length above 23 mm is diagnostic of the genus Pteronarcys (less than 20 mm in species of the genus Pteronarcella). The species sinitshenkovae sp. nov., with a body length of 25 mm, is then likely to be closely related to this genus (although body size is perhaps not an ideal diagnostic character state). Also, both sinitshenkovae sp. nov. and Pteronarcys spp. have an area between RA and RP in the forewing with a constriction opposite the ra-rp cross-vein, a trait absent in Pteronarcella badia (Fig. 1a, b, e, f).
Finally sinitshenkovae sp. nov. lacks a character state shared by all Pteronarcys spp., namely ‘in forewing, area between R/RP and M basal to the fork of M broad, with cross-veins’ (as opposed to ‘without cross-veins’; orange on Fig. 8e; cross-veins present in Diamphipnoidae and some other large-sized Antarctoperlaria). It can then be excluded from this genus. The proposed new genus (and species) is therefore supported.
We have examined the relevance of additional characters. The occurrence of cross-veins between branches of AA2 has been indicated as diagnostic of the Pteronarcyidae . However this state is not present in sinitshenkovae sp. nov. (Fig. 8f). Given the number of character states supporting the close affinities of this species with Pteronarcys spp., we assume that the occurrence of cross-veins in the anal area is homoplasic within Pteronarcyidae.
Regarding characters of external morphology other than wing venation, Stewart & Harper (1996; ) list the occurrence of three ocelli as diagnostic of the Pteronarcyidae (this character is later abandoned ). Three ocelli are present in sinitshenkovae sp. nov. but its phylogenetic relevance is unclear as this condition is widespread among Plecoptera.
We have also attempted to interpret the male terminalia of sinitshenkovae sp. nov. based on the very well-preserved specimen CNU-PLE-NN-2015001 (Fig. 2d,d’) and on data on terminalia of extant species . We need to emphasize here that the interpretation of terminalia in fossil insect imprints is made difficult by the overlap of elements initially located at different levels. Inconclusive attempts have been made on material from the same locality .
In order to explain the occurrence of two lobes in badia and three in Pteronarcys scotti, one possibility is that the posterior-most lobe in the former divides into two (which then are mhl and phl). Under this scenario (Fig. 9b) sinitshenkovae sp. nov. can be interpreted as exhibiting an intermediate condition, with the pointed, posterior process being a weakly individualized phl. In summary the development of phl would compose an apomorphy shared by sinitshenkovae sp. nov. and Pteronarcys spp. This hypothesis suggests that a long and narrow ahl is a plesiomorphy (it is present in badia, sinitshenkovae sp. nov., and most species of Pteronarcys). This investigation supports the view that Pteroliriope sinitshenkovae tax. et sp. nov. is more closely related to Pteronarcys spp. than to species of the genus Pteronarcella, a hypothesis already supported by characters evaluated above.
Most contributions on the systematics of fossil stoneflies make extensive use of paraphyletic taxa. This approach is an impediment for current approaches focusing on divergence date estimates, because the support for the placement of particular fossil species cannot be easily evaluated. Also, the positive identification of fossil Antarctoperlaria is hindered by the lack of data on putative derived character states in the wing venation. Yet the fossil record indicates that by the Jurassic, crown-Plecoptera had already experienced a sequence of divergence events. Among the Euholognatha, both lineages Leuctrida and Capniida were already present [5, 6, 30] (the earliest known Leuctrida, culonga Sinitshenkova, 2011 , is Triassic). The discovery of Pteroliriope nec Pteronarcys sinitshenkovae complements this approach for the Systellognatha, for which divergence dates have been difficult to estimate. It demonstrates that the Pteronarcyoidea and the Perloidea (sensu Zwick, 2000 ) had already diverged ca. 165 million years ago, and that divergence events within the Pteronarcyoidea had already occurred.
Given that the earliest members of a given lineage are unlikely to be recovered from the fossil record, the recently proposed 170 million years divergence date estimate between the two major lineages of Plecoptera (viz. Antarctoperlaria, and Euholognatha & Systellognatha) proposed by Misof et al. (2014; ) clearly is an underestimate, given that sinitshenkovae is nested well within the Systellognatha Therefore, this deep divergence event very probably took place in the Triassic, or even in the Permian.
The abundant data on Pteroliriope sinitshenkovae tax. et sp. nov. allowed us to demonstrate that this species belongs to the Pteronarcyidae, hence the group had already diverged ca. 165 mya. Our studies demonstrate the need for (re-)investigations of the systematics of fossil stoneflies to further refine divergence date estimates for plecopteran lineages. In that endeavour the positive exclusion of fossil species from particular taxa, formalized with combinations such as ‘Pteroliriope nec Pteronarcys sinitshenkovae’, will be a useful methodological improvement.
Wing venation homologies, and abbreviations
We follow the serial insect wing venation groundplan [34, 35]), and homologies proposed by Béthoux (2005, ) regarding Plecoptera wing venation. The corresponding wing venation nomenclature is repeated for convenience: ScP, posterior Subcosta; RA, anterior Radius; RP, posterior Radius; M, Media; MA, anterior Media; MP, posterior Media; Cu, Cubitus; CuA, anterior Cubitus; CuP, posterior Cubitus; AA: anterior Analis; AA1: first anterior Analis; AA2, second anterior Analis. The strong and oblique cross-vein occurring between M and CuA near the wing base is referred to as the ‘arculus’. Stoneflies commonly possess additional specialized cross-veins. They are usually referred to according to the veins they connect. For example, the rp-ma cross-vein connects RP and MA (and see ). For figures, right and left forewings are indicated as RFW and LFW respectively, and right and left hind wings as RHW and LHW, respectively. Folds are indicated as ‘f’ when necessary.
Terminologies and abbreviations for postabdominal elements follow a previous contribution : ahl, anterior hemitergal lobe; mhl, median hemitergal lobe; mhp, mesal hemitergal lobe; phl, posterior hemitergal lobe; ip, inner part of supra-anal process; lb, lateral brace; pgp, paragenital plate; sbl, sub-anal lobe; abs, apical region of dorsal section of supra-anal process; sa, supra-anal process; vp, vaginal projections.
The fossil material is deposited in the Capital Normal University (CNU; Dong Ren, Curator), was examined using a Leica MZ12.5 or a Zeiss SteREO Discovery V8 dissecting microscope and illustrated with the aid of a drawing tube, under dry and ethanol conditions. The resulting draft drawings were complemented during the inking process (itself performed using Adobe Illustrator CC).
Specimens belonging to Pteronarcella badia (Hagen, 1874) were prepared to complement available data on the wing venation of this species. Specimens were collected (11.vi.2010, Colorado) and determined by BK. Wings were cut off and mounted in white Euparal medium (Asco Laboratories, Manchester, UK). Specimens are deposited at the Entomology Laboratory of Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris (France). Specimen numbers are as follows: MNHN.EP654 – MNHN.EP662.
Cladotypes and paracladotypes (belonging to californica Newport, 1851 and princeps Banks, 1907) were collected and determined by BK (2.vi.2010, Colorado; 23.v.2007, California; respectively). Specimens are deposited at the Entomology Laboratory of Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris (France).
Photographs were taken using a digital camera Canon EOS 550D or EOS 5D Mark III, coupled to a Canon 50 mm macro lens, or to a MP-E 65 mm macro lens, both equipped with polarizing filters. Resulting photographs were optimized using Adobe Photoshop CS6. Unless specified, reproduced photographs of fossil specimens are dry-ethanol composites.
We use both the traditional, Linnaean nomenclatural procedure, governed by the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature ), and the cladotypic one ([6, 23, 37, 38] for taxa; [39, 40] for species). The traditional approach was used to warrant the validity of the newly described species. The cladotypic approach was used for its assumed higher optimality .
Character states distribution
We refrained from engaging in a formal, cladistics analysis because important data on several fossil and extant Plecoptera remain to be published. Yet, in order to assess the systematic affinities of the new species, we mapped morphological character states onto a phylogenetic backbone (Fig. 8). The phylogenetic backbone is derived from a former analysis complemented by data from further publications [1, 41]. Morphological data was obtained from several contributions (mainly [1, 3, 13, 14, 21, 25–27]). As for Diamphipnoidae, a very peculiar family of Antarctoperlaria, we relied on Illies (1960; ) and on new, unpublished data.
We thank Kevin Arbuckle, an anonymous reviewer and the editorial board of the journal for constructive comments. This work was supported by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD; stay of the first author in Germany from April 2013 to April 2014); this work was supported by a grant from Agence Nationale de la Recherche under the LabEx ANR-10-LABX-0003-BCDiv, in the program “Investissements d’avenir” n ANR-11-IDEX-0004-02; this work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 31230065, 41272006, 31672323), Program for Changjiang Scholars and Innovative Research Team in University (IRT13081).
Availability of data and materials
The fossil material is deposited in the Capital Normal University (CNU, China; Dong Ren, Curator), extant specimens are deposited at the Entomology Laboratory of Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris (France).
BK collected and determined extant material; OB and YC prepared and documented it. YC, CS and DR assembled the fossil material; YC documented it. YC, OB, BK, CS and DR drafted the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
The authors declare that they have no competing interests (political, personal, religious, ideological, academic, intellectual, commercial or any other), nor are there competing interests in the manuscript.
Consent for publication
Ethics approval and consent to participate
Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
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Speaking about “The Secret Powers of Time”, Stanford professor emeritus Philip Zimbardo (famous for the Stanford Prison Experiment) explains how various perspectives of time – past, present and future – influence our actions and relationships. There are six main orientation time zones:
- Past: Past positive (nostalgic), or past negative (regretful)
- Present: hedonistic (seeking pleasure, knowledge), or fatalistic (“It doesn’t pay to plan”)
- Future: resist temptation for future benefit, or geared to reward after death (both build on trust or expectation)
Catholic nations are more present and past oriented, while Protestant nations are more future orientated.
He says we are going through a time revolution. Children are naturally and essentially hedonistic and present-oriented. What schools around the globe do is to give them a past or future orientation (depending on the predominant culture). Now computer games are increasingly keeping children in their present-hedonistic state, rewiring their brains, so they will be bored in the analogue classroom. Games are indeed addictive, and “all addictions are addictions of present hedonism.” School and education is all about delaying gratification, but present oriented kids will not relate the messages to themselves and their future. I hear echos of my father talking about “instant gratification” as a key element of hedonistic pop culture back when I was a teen in the 1970s.
Philip Zimbardo (2008): The Time Paradox: The New Psychology of Time That Will Change Your Life. Free Press.
Sherry Turkle, professor of Social Studies of Science and Technology at MIT, writes that mobile devices are becoming the vehicle for intimate relationships, as robots take on responsibilities previously born by friends and family. The instantaneous, engineered response is in fact allowing us to flee from conversation, which takes effort in terms of time and patience, and hence requires us to build those essential skills.
“Most of all, we need to remember — in between texts and e-mails and Facebook posts — to listen to one another, even to the boring bits, because it is often in unedited moments, moments in which we hesitate and stutter and go silent, that we reveal ourselves to one another.”
Sherry Turkle: The Flight From Conversation, NYT April 21, 2012
Sherry Turkle (2011): Alone Together. Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. Basic Books. | <urn:uuid:d9b688ea-660a-4409-a3c8-162759369764> | CC-MAIN-2019-51 | https://annehodgson.de/2012/04/25/what-psychologists-are-saying-about-how-technology-affects-us/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-51/segments/1575540514475.44/warc/CC-MAIN-20191208174645-20191208202645-00555.warc.gz | en | 0.940515 | 520 | 2.953125 | 3 |
Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
- (transitive) To restore to a former place, position, condition, or the like.
- When you've finished using the telephone, please replace the handset.
- The earl...was replaced in his government. — Francis Bacon.
- (transitive) To refund; to repay; to restore; as, to replace a sum of money borrowed.
- You can take what you need from the petty cash, but you must replace it tomorrow morning.
- (transitive) To supply or substitute an equivalent for.
- I replaced my car with a newer model.
- The batteries were dead so I replaced them
2012 September 20, Andrew Brown, “Archbishop of Canterbury succession race begins in earnest”, The Guardian (online):
- Next Wednesday, four women and 15 men on the Crown Nominations Commission will gather for two days of prayer and horsetrading to replace Rowan Williams as archbishop of Canterbury.
- (transitive) To take the place of; to supply the want of; to fulfill the end or office of.
- This security pass replaces the one you were given earlier.
- This duty of right intention does not replace or supersede the duty of consideration. — William Whewell.
- (transitive) To demolish a building and build an updated form of that building in its place.
- (transitive, rare) To place again.
- (transitive, rare) To put in a new or different place.
The propriety of the use of "replace" instead of "displace", "supersede", or "take the place of", as in the fourth definition, has been disputed on account of etymological discrepancy, but is standard English and universally accepted. | <urn:uuid:dcea8cc6-cd9e-4065-b2a5-5cfd992a0e6c> | CC-MAIN-2015-06 | http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/replace | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-06/segments/1422115865430.52/warc/CC-MAIN-20150124161105-00033-ip-10-180-212-252.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.886542 | 421 | 2.71875 | 3 |
One of the biggies, here: fewer or less? Many people, including a good friend of mine, get absolutely incensed when these are used incorrectly (leading to the spectacle of several well-educated, intelligent ladies self-correcting nervously when they make a slip in front of her: she probably doesn’t warrant this fear any more than I warrant the fear people apparently have of making a typo in a response to this blog!)
Anyway, it’s quite simple …
Fewer is used for countables. Less is used for mass nouns denoting things that can’t be counted – uncountables.
So – it should be “5 items or fewer” on that supermarket checkout sign. Less coinage has been produced this year, but there are fewer coins. Less hair has been cut off this time, but I have fewer grey hairs than he does.
The Concise Oxford English Dictionary is reassuringly stern on this one: “The use of less with a count noun (“less people”) is incorrect in standard English.” That’s told you!
You can find more troublesome pairs here. | <urn:uuid:6a19ebef-dc9b-462c-8c62-0849aebbb366> | CC-MAIN-2019-22 | https://libroediting.com/2011/07/11/fewer-or-less/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-22/segments/1558232258453.85/warc/CC-MAIN-20190525224929-20190526010929-00534.warc.gz | en | 0.952876 | 242 | 2.84375 | 3 |
Stop Motion Animation
- Published: Friday, 09 February 2018 16:18
- Written by Year Three
Year 3 have been animators this week! They planned their animations carefully on a storyboard and then created characters and models out of plasticine and playdough. They had to show resilience and teamwork when creating the animations, just like the makers of films such as, Wallace & Gromit and Early Man. Each movement had to be very slow and precise - the children had to be very patient!
Below are photographs of the planning process and the animations by 3 Rennie Mackintosh. You can have a go at making your own animation at home by downloading the app on your iPad - "Stop Motion Studio"
Comment below with what you enjoyed. | <urn:uuid:6c72c4ff-4813-47ee-aabc-acef6ae141ee> | CC-MAIN-2018-09 | http://bridgewaterprimary.net/index.php/our-blogs/year-3-blog/255-stop-motion-animation | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-09/segments/1518891812665.41/warc/CC-MAIN-20180219131951-20180219151951-00045.warc.gz | en | 0.957485 | 155 | 3.359375 | 3 |
Welcome to the Parkside Arts Council Blog page! In the coming weeks and months, we will use this page to communicate the importance of art in our community, share ideas and also many upcoming classes and events!
What is art? Art is made by people to help communicate ideas, to express feelings and to give us products and objects that are well designed. As humans, it is a primal need to be able to celebrate, show personal expression and to communicate. These basic needs are satisfied through art. So why do kids need art?? Art education is about much more than just putting paint on a canvas. Art helps a child with perception and reflection, both sensory and emotional, it also prepares them to be aware, curious and critical observers of what is around them. A child may not grow up to become an artist as an adult, but the skills that they develop through creating art will be used in many ways in their adult lives! Setting goals, productive work habits and just pure imagination will go a long way in what ever career choice they do make! Art is our first language~before the written word, pictorial hieroglyphics were created to communicate to one another. And it is through these traditions of artistic expression that children learn that we humans have a lot in common with one another, here and through out the world. When a child is exposed to these traditions of artistic expression, they begin to develop different ways of seeing and responding to their surroundings and to the world. The skills that art teaches are essential if we want our children to grow up to be responsible and caring, careful, creative thinkers, sensitive and tolerant adults! | <urn:uuid:bd4b8541-2a8a-4c95-9bb3-3cf1fa158618> | CC-MAIN-2019-39 | http://parksidearts.blogspot.com/2012/02/why-do-kids-need-art.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-39/segments/1568514573331.86/warc/CC-MAIN-20190918193432-20190918215432-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.969196 | 329 | 3.140625 | 3 |
New experiments on mice show, that mouse mothers can protect their pups from developing type 1 diabetes by eating a gluten-free diet. According to preliminary studies by reseachers at the University of Copenhagen, the findings may apply to humans.
More than 1% of the Danish population has type 1 diabetes, one of the highest incidence rates in the world.
The mouse study adds more knowledge to a field that has been object for research many years.
New experiments on mice now show a correlation between the health of the pups and their mothers eating a gluten-free diet. Our hope is that the disease may be prevented through simple dietary changes, the researchers say.
"Preliminary tests show that a gluten-free diet in humans has a positive effect on children with newly diagnosed type 1 diabetes. We therefore hope that a gluten-free diet during pregnancy and lactation may be enough to protect high-risk children from developing diabetes later in life," says assistant professor Camilla Hartmann Friis Hansen from the Department of Veterinary Disease Biology, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences.
The findings have recently been published in the recognised journal Diabetes.
Findings from experiments on mice are not necessarily applicable to humans, but in this case we have grounds for optimism, says co-writer on the study professor Axel Kornerup from the Department of Veterinary Disease Biology, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences.
"Early intervention makes a lot of sense because type 1 diabetes develops early in life. We also know from existing experiments that a gluten-free diet has a beneficial effect on type 1 diabetes," he says.
Experiments of this type have been going on since 1999, originally initiated by Professor Karsten Buschard from the Bartholin Institute at Rigshospitalet in Copenhagen, another co-writer on the study.
"This new study beautifully substantiates our research into a gluten-free diet as an effective weapon against type 1 diabetes," Karsten Buschard explains.
The experiment showed that the diet changed the intestinal bacteria in both the mother and the pups. The intestinal flora plays an important role for the development of the immune system as well as the development of type 1 diabetes, and the study suggests that the protective effect of a gluten-free diet can be ascribed to certain intestinal bacteria. The advantage of the gluten-free diet is that the only side-effect seems to be the inconvenience of having to avoid gluten, but there is no certain evidence of the effect or side-effects.
"We have not been able to start a large-scale clinical test to either prove or disprove our hypothesis about the gluten-free diet," says Karsten Buschard.
Assistant Professor Camilla Hartmann Friis Hansen is hoping that it will be possible to continue the work.
"If we find out how gluten or certain intestinal bacteria modify the immune system and the beta-cell physiology, this knowledge can be used to develop new treatments," she says.
Professor Axel Kornerup Hansen
Cell: 30 66 34 86
Axel Kornerup Hansen | Eurek Alert!
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23.10.2017 | Physics and Astronomy
23.10.2017 | Health and Medicine | <urn:uuid:c08a36df-6745-4d10-9004-fb0d95c9fe9a> | CC-MAIN-2017-43 | http://www.innovations-report.com/html/reports/life-sciences/gluten-free-diet-reduces-risk-of-type-1-diabetes-in-mice.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-43/segments/1508187826283.88/warc/CC-MAIN-20171023183146-20171023203146-00812.warc.gz | en | 0.922185 | 729 | 3.3125 | 3 |
It is difficult to generalise on the notion of an Arabian ‘economy’, since the internal economic situation in the peninsula varied from place to place and depended on whether a community was settled or nomadic. As noted above, the south had a lively village economy based on terraced farming and irrigation; but even here, production was primarily limited to foodstuffs and use-value goods. South Arabian spices and incense were much soughtafter items for centuries, and undoubtedly fortunes were made from trade in them,57 but overland trade in such goods appears to have collapsed by the first or second century ad.58 In the rest of the peninsula the economy was far more rudimentary. The interior of the peninsula consists of various types of steppe lands where lack of water makes major cultivation unsustainable in most years. Reliable water supplies come from wells and oasis springs, and it was around these that Arabia’s towns developed. The date palm dominated agriculture in many places, and this and other crops were often cultivated in large walled gardens (h. aw¯a’i.t) scattered over whatever patches of arable land there were in or around a settlement. Goats and sheep were kept, and items produced for sale included hides and leather, wool, cloth, dairy products, raisins, dates, wine, and utensils and weapons of various kinds. Gold and silver were mined, but often figured as a replacement for currency rather than as an export item; perfume was produced, especially in Aden and Najran, but beyond the Arabian and Syrian markets it could not compete with the cheaper products of Byzantine centres such as Alexandria.59 Arabian traders in late antiquity were thus known to their neighbours – in Palestine, for example – as bearers not of costly luxury items, but rather of animals, wool, hides, oil and grains.60 Bedouins, on the other hand, were largely herders and pastoralists, though members of many tribes settled for varying periods of time and others engaged in opportunistic agriculture – for example by sowing on a fertile watered plot on their way somewhere else, and then reaping when they returned. Tenting groups travelled in recognised tribal territories, their schedules and movements (and willingness to encroach on the lands of other tribes) largely dictated by the needs of their animals. Those who lived along the desert fringes tended sheep and goats, as well as the singlehumped dromedary camel; groups venturing into the depths of the Arabian steppe lands did best with camels, but on occasion are known to have taken goats and sheep as well. For barter or sale, nomads could offer such animal products as hides, leather, wool and dairy products. The symbiosis between village-dwellers and nomads was important to the whole economic structure of Arabia. Leather, for example, was an extremely important product and was the plastic of its day; everything was made from it, from buckets to items of clothing, and agriculture could not have been maintained without huge supplies of leather for ropes, irrigation equipment, harness and so forth. Apart from often quite complex exchanges of goods and services, bedouins played a major role in economic development. There is evidence, for example, that parts of different tribes concluded share-cropping agreements and worked together to promote and protect agriculture.61 Certain villages also specialised in serving the needs of nomads, and oases and springs where herds could be watered attracted settlements that thrived on trade with the nomads. Relations were further dictated by the need of settled merchants to move their goods through lands controlled by nomads, and hence to remain on good terms with the tribes.62 Arabian domestic trade thus consisted of caravans of camels organised by settled merchants and protected and guided by bedouins who controlled the lands through which the caravans passed. Seasonal fairs were often held, especially around religious shrines, and security at such important times was guaranteed by the declaration of sacred periods during which no raiding or fighting was to occur.63 The goods being traded were for the most part not costly items, but rather the basic goods and commodities that people needed to live. This in turn limited the distance and duration that the caravans could travel, since the longer the journey, the more expensive the goods would be at their destination;64 that is, the longer the contemplated journey was in both distance and time, the more precious the goods being carried would have to be in order to generate sufficient income to make the journey economically feasible. The internal trade of Arabia thus seems to have involved the transport of goods on short or medium-length journeys, and it is probably this factor that accounts for the proliferation of market centres. The sources present a picture of lively markets dotting the steppe landscape of the peninsula; wells, springs and small villages were all attractive sites for established market activities, though the scale of such operations was probably small.65 In some cases, commerce was encouraged by banning private land ownership within the market precinct, thus preventing dominance by a few successful merchants, and suspending taxes and fees on traders and visitors. | <urn:uuid:d300fff8-3056-4830-abb2-9e86a83fd8db> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://www.worldhistory.biz/middle-ages/history_byzantine_empire/94153-economic-life-in-arabia.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627999218.7/warc/CC-MAIN-20190620125520-20190620151520-00114.warc.gz | en | 0.983954 | 1,038 | 3.5625 | 4 |
One of the most valuable long-term pieces of information you can gather is resting heart rate. When you wake up each morning, take a minute to get an accurate resting heart rate and keep a log. You’ll find this an invaluable tool, providing feedback on injury, illness, overtraining, stress, incomplete recovery, and so on. It is also a very simple gauge of improvements in fitness. We know athletes who have gathered resting heart rate data for years and in a day or two can identify a 1 or 2 bpm elevation that precedes an illness or a bonk session. Some newer heart rate monitors have the capacity for 24-hour monitoring.
Several factors affect heart rate at rest and during exercise. In general, the main factors affecting heart rate at rest are fitness and state of recovery. Gender also is suggested to play a role, albeit inconsistently (more about this later). In general, fitter people tend to have lower resting heart rates. Some great athletes of the past have recorded remarkably low resting heart rates. For example, Miguel Indurain, five-time winner of the Tour de France, reported a resting heart rate of only 28 bpm. The reason for this is that, with appropriate training, the heart muscle increases in both size and strength. The stronger heart moves more blood with each beat (this is called stroke volume) and therefore can do the same amount of work with fewer beats. As you get fitter, your resting heart rate should get lower.
The second main factor affecting resting heart rate is state of recovery. After exercise, particularly after a long run or bike ride, several things happen in the body. Fuel sources are depleted, temperature increases, and muscles are damaged. All of these factors must be addressed and corrected. The body has to work harder, and this increased work results in a higher heart rate. Even though you might feel okay at rest, your body is working harder to repair itself, and you’ll notice an elevated heart rate. Monitoring your resting heart rate and your exercise heart rate will allow you to make appropriate adjustments such as eating more or taking a day off when your rate is elevated.
These same factors of recovery and injury also affect heart rate during exercise. The factors that elevate resting heart rate also elevate exercise heart rate. If you’re not fully recovered from a previous workout, you might notice, for example, at your usual steady-state pace, an exercise heart rate that is 5 to 10 bpm higher than normal. This is usually accompanied by a rapidly increasing heart rate throughout the exercise session.
An extremely important factor affecting exercise heart rate is temperature. Warmer temperatures cause the heart to beat faster and place considerable strain on the body. Simply put, when it is hot, the body must move more blood to the skin to cool it while also maintaining blood flow to the muscles. The only way to do both of these things is to increase overall blood flow, which means that the heart must beat faster. Depending on how fit you are and how hot it is, this might mean a heart rate that is 20 to 40 bpm higher than normal. Fluid intake is very important under these conditions. Sweating changes blood volume, which eventually can cause cardiac problems. The simplest and most effective intervention to address high temperature and heart rate is regular fluid intake. This helps to preserve the blood volume and prevent the heart from beating faster and faster.
Another important factor affecting exercise heart rate is age. In general, MHR will decline by about 1 beat per year starting at around 20 years old. Interestingly, resting heart rate is not affected. This is why the basic prediction equation of 220 – age has an age correction factor. As a side note, this decrease in MHR often is used to explain decreases in .VO2max and endurance performance with increasing age, because the number of times the heart beats in a minute affects how much blood is moved and available to the muscles. We have coached and tested thousands of athletes, and the general trend is that athletes of the same age who produce higher heart rates often have higher fitness scores. However, your MHR is what it is, and you cannot change it. Don’t obsess over it.
A final factor is gender. Recent studies have suggested a variation in MHR between males and females. However, the data are inconclusive with the calculations resulting in lower MHRs for males versus females of the same age, while anecdotal reports suggest that the MHRs are actually higher in males. In general, females have smaller hearts and smaller muscles overall than males. Both of these factors would support the conclusion of a higher MHR in females, certainly at the same workload. We have to conclude that the jury is still out on the gender effect. | <urn:uuid:61b733f7-5e92-4aab-942a-c74d46889fa3> | CC-MAIN-2016-22 | http://www.humankinetics.com/all-sports-conditioning-articles/all-sports-conditioning-articles/knowing-what-affects-your-heart-rate-provides-valuable-information?ActionType=2_SetCurrency&CurrencyCode=3 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-22/segments/1464049275412.55/warc/CC-MAIN-20160524002115-00050-ip-10-185-217-139.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945452 | 969 | 3.234375 | 3 |
Rules, Active Databases, and Distributing Logic
Discussions about system architecture often reveal a dichotomy of belief about the best use of a database.
The minimalist approach is to use a database as a passive container or simply a persistent store for data. The minimalist does not use a database to apply schemas, type checking, or data integrity constraints when storing data. If there are rules about data (for example, who can change it), they are enforced in application code.
In the minimalist context, database design is a byproduct of the design of an application (or service) and its specific data requirements, objects, and classes. The design is application-specific and not driven by requirements to integrate data across disparate applications, services, and web clients.
A different school of thought is that a database should provide more functionality than simply being a passive data store. These designers believe that a database should be extensible, adaptive to application requirements, and an enforcer of restrictions on data. In this context, the intent of a database design is to create a repository of data and related logic for use by multiple clients, including scripts, applications, and services.
Unlike a passive data store, an active database exhibits behavior and an extensible database embeds logic. The embedded logic can be in the form of triggers, stored procedures, user-defined functions, and plug-in code. Fully featured database platforms exploit plug-ins for custom handling of data, just as a web browser is extensible with Adobe Flash Player for playing video. Browser plug-ins are usually for data presentation purposes, such as playing video. Database plug-ins are usually for data manipulation and analysis.
The embedded logic enables an active database to play a role in event-driven architecture. An active database provides centralized reactive semantics for behavior that's shared across applications, services, and disparate programs and scripts.
Capabilities built into the database engine alleviate having to implement comparable logic in application code and scripts, such as enforcing constraints and rules about data.
Enterprise Modeling, Application Modeling
Enterprise data architecture has become a topic of great interest, with architects looking at the overall data structure of an organization. Enterprise data architecture can be expressed as a set of rules that describe an organization's data and validation requirements. This permits cross-system mapping from an enterprise data model to various data sources.
Data architects, data modelers, and developers responsible for multiple systems prefer the strategy of disparate programs and scripts using a shared database; having uniform rules and mappings for data being a primary reason.
Because the minimalist approach takes a narrower view, it typically results in applications, services, and scripts using disparate data sources. When new systems require data from multiple sources, this can require an added investment in integration software — either application integration, data integration, or both.
We build software using algorithms and rules, such as business rules and rules about data. The active database can play a role as a rule enforcer.
When developers talk about business rules, they are talking about processing rules in computer systems. The focus is automation — encoding policy, legal restriction, and other rules to guide the execution of programs and scripts.
"Employees must wash hands before returning to work" is not an example of a business rule that lends itself to automation. Others do, such as:
- Platinum-level customers receive free shipping.
- Purchase orders for more than $500,000 require approval of the CFO or CEO.
- All sensors in test cells must be operational and online before testing turbines.
- All workers must complete training before their names are added to the access list for the red badge zone.
Distributing Logic with Active Databases
Deciding where to place logic in distributed applications is not always a slam-dunk for a system architect. When embarking on service-oriented architecture (SOA) projects, it's not uncommon for organizations to invest in rules engines that operate on middle-tier servers. A fully featured database is an effective complement to middle-tier rules engines, giving the system architect complete flexibility about the implementation of data and business rules.
When using an adaptive, active database, rules and restrictions on data can take several forms. If you are using an SQL platform, you can use SQL DDL statements to define constraints, such as referential integrity constraints and permissible ranges for data values.
SQL statements such as
CREATE TRIGGER, CREATE RULE, CREATE TYPE, CREATE FUNCTION and
CREATE PROCEDURE provide the capability to adapt a database to both data and processing requirements.
CREATE RULE statement, for example, provides the capability of specifying alternative actions to take when inserting, updating, or deleting from tables. One use might be to specify an alternative update for a salary when the employee is a resident of California:
create rule cal-pay-1 as on update to EMP.salary where EMP.state = "CA" do update CAEMP ( ... ) where ...
SQL platforms, such as Oracle Database, IBM DB2, IBM Informix, and Sybase ASE, support different types of plug-ins, including Java in the database. Microsoft SQL Server offers a Common Language Runtime (CLR) that supports the installation of plug-ins. This enables database developers to program .NET assemblies using a variety of languages. Stay tuned for a future look at database plug-ins. | <urn:uuid:5ed40646-0a59-416d-a155-b75443af06fc> | CC-MAIN-2015-18 | http://www.drdobbs.com/database/rules-active-databases-and-distributing/231900871 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-18/segments/1429246637364.20/warc/CC-MAIN-20150417045717-00266-ip-10-235-10-82.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.887336 | 1,108 | 3.109375 | 3 |
An eye condition affecting roughly 50 percent of individuals who need glasses, hyperopia (commonly called farsightedness) is characterized by difficulty focusing on nearby objects while being able to see objects at a distance properly. Hyperopia occurs when your eyeball is too short or when your cornea is flatter or less round than normal. This causes light entering the eye to come to focus at a spot located behind the retina, rather than being properly focused at the retina (the back of the eye where photoreceptor cells are located).
Farsighted individuals experience difficulty maintaining concentration or focus on close objects. If you have hyperopia, you may unknowingly exert extra effort to bring images of close objects into focus. This additional effort leads to eye strain, headaches, and sometimes fatigue after periods of going work such as reading or writing.
Farsightedness in children often goes undiagnosed during eye exams performed at school because these children can easily read the letters on an eye chart. Children are usually diagnosed with farsightedness after complaining of headaches or experiencing difficulties with tasks in school such as reading. An eye care professional diagnoses hyperopia in patients of all ages with a comprehensive eye exam.
Depending on the severity of hyperopia, farsightedness can be treated in several ways or, in extremely mild instances, might require no treatment at all. Most cases of hyperopia are treated with corrective lenses (either glasses or contacts), which adjust the way light is bent when entering the eye, allowing it to focus at the retina.
Most farsighted individuals adjust well to wearing glasses or contact lenses. As an alternative, corrective surgeries such as LASIK or conductive keratoplasty have been developed to provide permanent treatment solutions, eliminating or reducing the need to wear corrective lenses. After a comprehensive eye exam, an eye care professional will help patients with hyperopia decide which treatment options are right for them. | <urn:uuid:4244b737-6c96-48a4-b2c4-1ffe630dea56> | CC-MAIN-2017-26 | http://eyecareclinicgrandrapids.com/articles/default/418129-hyperopia-farsightedness | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-26/segments/1498128320679.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20170626050425-20170626070425-00678.warc.gz | en | 0.939857 | 394 | 3.90625 | 4 |
Assessment denotes the continuing process of collecting, recording, reflecting and utilizing information to portray children as students in a bid to support and boost their studies in the future. Adults, who facilitate learning and development of students in educational institutions, assess for various purposes.
The primary purpose of assessment is to afford a gauge to quantify the student’s progress. Carrying out of evaluation is at different times in the learning process. These include during class, after the completion of courses, in evaluating the need for a course and determining the educative purpose. Therefore, to ascertain that learning has taken place, assessment is valuable in enabling a learner to view their development in terms of knowledge and skills gained. Consequently, empowering them to ask questions on topics they failed to comprehend, as they have to justify this knowledge. Moreover, it furnishes an instructor with valuable feedback that they can give the learner when necessary.
Assessment measures students’ understanding of a subject against the expected outcome in a course. Assessment through testing, providing tasks, observation, communicating with learners provides a concise way by which an instructor can evaluate and record the strides by a student towards understanding the course they are learning, as well as, the gaps in learning that they face. As a result, students receive feedback on various subjects and areas they should improve, by building on their strengths and improving previous mistakes to ensure better performance in the future. Moreover, for instructors, it enables them to identify the priority areas to intervene to boost the students’ learning.
It helps to motivate learners to improve their performance. In the learning process, to ascertain that students receive and understand knowledge provided during learning, assessment necessitates. Students receive constant reviews comprising of criticism, congratulations, and recommendations that are relevant. Consequently, through this, a learner receives incentives to demonstrate their understanding and the attainment of various skills that enhances continued improvement of their competencies by attaining higher marks.
In the process of learning, assessment functions in providing a wide array of valuable information necessary for optimum learning. One, it helps adults identify potential difficulties a learner may be grappling with, by bringing to light difficulties in reading, writing, or understanding by a student that may be as a result of a disability or learning difficulties. Such information enables parents to understand their children better and empowers instructors to adopt and employ measures that accentuate learning while limiting the impact on future learning and development. For instance, assessment enables an instructor to identify a dyslexic learner. Two, it furnishes parents with information about the progress made by children in learning and giving recommendations of how they can further accentuate it.
The assessment provides fairness and objectivity in learning and development. It does so by outlining the standards and evaluation criteria, which acts as measurable evidence of a given course to benchmark performance. Moreover, assessment ensures fairness during the determination of judgment on whether students have achieved the required measurable standards of passing various classes. The realization comes about through the provision to instructors an equal judgment ground for all learners thereby, eliminating instances of favoritism of some students over others. Thus, creating an equal competing field for all students.
In conclusion, assessment in learning and development is vital in the daily interaction between learners and instructors. Its utilization enables the making of judgment about students’ progress thus, working to empower instructors to motivate and assist them towards success. Also, through it, students identify their strengths, weakness and their favorite aspects of learning and work towards improving them. | <urn:uuid:f2f179e4-d656-437c-9aea-f4272f7fea9a> | CC-MAIN-2018-05 | https://essaybasics.com/functions-of-assessment-in-learning-and-development-essay-sample/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-05/segments/1516084886436.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20180116125134-20180116145134-00693.warc.gz | en | 0.956906 | 700 | 4.0625 | 4 |
Sleep. Ahhhhh. Wonderful, restful, sleep. Something we all crave and often don’t get enough of. For centuries scientists have pondered what sleep does for us, except to cure sleepiness and make us feel better. But in recent years neuroscientists have discovered significant benefits that sleep brings, especially to our brains. We leaders need our brains to function at their peak and sleep can help them do that. I highlight below how sleep benefits a leader’s brain with these three metaphors: a garbage truck, a wet painting, and a librarian.
When we sleep (almost a third of our lives) our brains don’t actually shut off. In fact, they remain quite active. The neurons fire almost as often as in our waking hours.
First, when we sleep the fluid that circulates in our brain and our spinal cord acts like a garbage truck, hauling away toxins that have collected between our brain cells. When we sleep, our brain performs this housekeeping task. During the day, damaging molecules associated with normal neuronal degeneration collect in the spaces between the cells, called synapses. And when we sleep, the spaces open up a bit, thus allowing the fluid to ‘take the trash out.’
Second, our memories get strengthened. The process is called consolidation when our brain sends memories lying in our shorter term memory banks into the rest of the brain to solidify them into long term memories. It’s like a painting that that an artist paints. She will paint the picture, but for it to become permanent, she must allow time for the paint to harden. Likewise, sleep helps the brain ‘harden’ our memories.
Third, sleep acts like a librarian who re-shelves books from a disheveled library return cart found in every library. She makes order out of chaos when she puts them back on the shelves in their proper order. Sleep acts in the same way. It takes the chaotic, disconnected thoughts we’ve experienced during the day and makes order out of them, even helping form associations with various unrelated thoughts which enhances creativity.
So, sleep offers many benefits. Get some extra zzz’s tonight. Your brain will be glad you did.
And as King David wrote…
At day’s end I’m ready for sound sleep…. (Ps 4.8, The Message) | <urn:uuid:b3a88720-dbac-4693-98a3-b4594bbc1801> | CC-MAIN-2019-04 | https://charlesstone.com/how-sleep-benefits-a-leaders-brain/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-04/segments/1547583660818.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20190118213433-20190118235433-00571.warc.gz | en | 0.944607 | 497 | 2.890625 | 3 |
needed for nuclear physics, detectors of greatly varying characteristics have been and continue to be developed for a spectrum of experimental observables. These range from the high-resolution detection of optical radiation at eV energies in studies of nuclear hyperfine structures, to sophisticated multidetector arrays needed to disentangle thousands of reaction products in high-energy nuclear collisions, and to scintillation detectors of thousands of tons buried deep underground to register the most elusive particles in nature, the neutrinos coming from the cosmos, the Sun, or from accelerators. Detectors are used in stand-alone mode, as in the underground neutrino experiments; as single detectors and small arrays at low-energy facilities; and in vast assemblies of complex particle detection systems at the facilities with the highest-energy beams.
The continuous advancement of accelerators, detectors, and data acquisition techniques provides a rich milieu for training and innovation over a wide spectrum of technical areas, including electronics, vacuum technology, large-scale data acquisition and computer systems with corresponding software development, novel detector materials and sensors, automated high-level control systems, ion-beam and accelerator technology, and superconductivity.
The experimental work in nuclear physics goes hand in hand with the development of theoretical understanding. The theoretical effort is undertaken by a number of researchers at universities and laboratories. An important part of the infrastructure of the field is the Institute of Nuclear Theory, described in Box 7.1.
Nuclear physics needs primary beams of electrons, protons, and heavy ions over a wide energy range. Each serves a complementary class of experiments. Secondary beams of other particles, such as neutrons, pions, muons, neutrinos, and radioactive ions, can be derived principally from intense proton and heavy-ion beams. Accelerator facilities for nuclear science fall into two major categories: larger facilities that operate for substantial outside-user communities, and smaller facilities that mainly serve local groups of scientists.
A variety of accelerators was invented, built, and used in the 1930s to begin the exploration of nuclei. During the 1950s and 1960s, needs from nuclear physics experiments led to major improvements in these technologies and a number of accelerators, cyclotrons, and Van de Graaffs (now considered small) were constructed and used for research at university laboratories. As the requirements for beam energies, intensities, and especially beam species grew, larger dedicated facilities were built at universities and at the national laboratories. It was also during this period that high-energy physics started, and the accelerator developments of nuclear physics formed the basis of the first high-energy facilities—greatly | <urn:uuid:4f94aec5-3506-4bef-978f-29d6685b9468> | CC-MAIN-2014-35 | http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=6288&page=151 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-35/segments/1408500830074.72/warc/CC-MAIN-20140820021350-00421-ip-10-180-136-8.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934686 | 533 | 3.71875 | 4 |
by Brian Dunning
Filed under General Science, Logic & Persuasion
July 19, 2011
Podcast transcript | Listen | Subscribe
|Parmenides of Elea
(Public domain photo)
Even if you think you haven't heard of them by name, you'll recognize them. The most familiar of Zeno's paradoxes states that I can't walk over to you because I first have to get halfway there, and once I do, I still have to cover half the remaining distance, and once I get there I have to cover half of that remaining distance, ad infinitum. There are an infinite number of halfway points, and so according to logic, I'll never be able to get there. But it's easy to prove this false by simply doing it, which we can all do. So we have a paradox, a contradiction, something that must be true but which, clearly, is not. Does there exist a solution which adequately addresses the contradicting phenomena? Some say there is; some say there is not.
Zeno of Elea was a Greek philosopher, born about 490 BCE, and was a devotee of Parmenides, founder of the Eleatic school of thought in what is now southern Italy. Zeno survives as a character in Plato's dialog titled Parmenides, and from this we know what the Eleatic school was about and where Zeno was coming from with his paradoxes. Parmenides taught (in part) that the physical world as we perceive it is an illusion, and that the only thing that actually exists is a perpeutal, unchanging whole that he called "One Being". What we perceive as movement is not physical movement at all, just different interpretations or appearances of the One Being. Personally, I think they smoked a lot of weed at the Eleatic school, but Zeno was into this and came up with his paradoxes in order to support Parmenides' view of the world. Zeno's paradoxes were intended to prove that movement must be impossible, therefore Parmenides must be right.
He is believed to have developed a total of about nine such paradoxes, but they were never published. The most famous and interesting are his three paradoxes of motion:
First is the paradox of Achilles and the tortoise, who contrived to have a footrace. Achilles, knowing he was the swifter, gave the tortoise a hundred-meter head start. In the time that it took Achilles to travel the hundred meters, the tortoise moved ten, so that when Achilles got there he found the tortoise still had a lead. In the time it took Achilles to run those ten, the tortoise moved another meter. No matter how many times Achilles advanced to the tortoise's last position, the tortoise had crept forward a bit more by the time he got there. Even though Achilles would seem to be the faster runner, it was impossible for him to ever catch the tortoise.
Second and most famous is the so-called dichotomy paradox, in which we repeatedly rend in twain every distance to be traveled. For Homer to walk to the bus stop, he must get halfway there. Once arrived, he must travel half of the remaining distance, and so on and so on, with 1/8 the distance remaining, then 1/16, then 1/32, then 1/64; he will have an infinite supply of remaining distances to travel, and thus can never arrive at the stop.
The third is the paradox of the fletcher who finds that all of his arrows are unable to move at all. At any given instant in time, the arrow is motionless in flight. During that frozen moment, the arrow cannot move at all, since it has no time in which to do it. Time consists of an infinite succession of moments, in each of which the arrow is unable to move. Nowhere can we find a given instant in which the arrow has time to move, and so no matter how many such instants we have, the arrow can neither fly nor fall to the ground.
Zeno's paradoxes are often touted by some people as evidence that physics or science are wrong. If an ancient Greek philosopher can describe a simple situation, which our intuition tells us is obviously correct, it's easy for us to assign it more significance than we do the confusing jumble that is modern science. Why should we listen to Einstein, who gives us a lot of unfathomable equations, when Zeno's elegant fables prove that the physical world is not as science tells us it should be? Given this line of reasoning, it's hardly surprising that Zeno has become something of a darling to some New Age supporters of a spiritual, not a physical, universe.
Famously, upon hearing the paradoxes, a fellow philosopher named Diogenes the Cynic simply stood up, walked around, and sat back down again. My kind of guy. His response may have been glib, but it elegantly refuted Zeno's claim. At least, it refuted the physical implications of the claim, it did not address the philosophical aspects; nor did it provide the mathematical solutions.
Zeno's paradoxes are an interesting intersection between mathematics and philosophy. Mathematically, it's trivial to calculate exactly when and where Achilles will overtake the tortoise, but the philosophical argument remains (apparently) intractable. Bertrand Russell described the paradoxes as "immeasurably subtle and profound". So philosophers have come up with some pretty interesting efforts to try and resolve this.
One such tactic concerns the Planck length, which is the smallest possible unit of length within the Planck system. Planck units are all based on universal physical constants, such as the speed of light and the gravitational constant. Philosophically it's reasonably accurate to describe the Planck length as a quantum of distance, the smallest possible unit. This means that there are a finite number of Planck lengths (albeit a staggeringly large number of them) along the racetrack of Achilles and the tortoise, and between Homer and the bus stop. There cannot be an infinite number of points, and so Homer will eventually be able to arrive. However, while this sounds like it might elegantly solve the paradox, it doesn't. It's not possible to force a quantum solution onto a geometric problem. A simple illustration of why this is so is to imagine a very small right triangle with its two equal sides each of one Planck length. The hypotenuse would have to be √2 Planck lengths, which is not possible. Planck doesn't apply here. Despite efforts to conclude otherwise, we are dealing with infinities here. Or... are we?
Intuitively, we understand 0.9 (0.9999999...) to be a value that forever approaches 1 but never quite gets there. This is fine as a concept and a thought experiment, but it is mathematically wrong. 0.9 does in fact equal 1; they are simply two different ways of writing the same value. It's easy to prove this to most people's satisfaction by dividing both values by 3. Both 1 ÷ 3 and 0.9 ÷ 3 equal 0.3, therefore both are equal to each other. Another way of looking at it is to consider the fraction 1/9, which is equal to 0.1. 2/9 is equal to 0.2, and so on, all the way up to 8/9 = 0.8 and 9/9 = 0.9, and we all know that 9/9 = 1. When we divide the number 1 into 9 equal slices, that top slice goes all the way up to exactly 1, a finite and reachable number.
If this spins your brain inside your skull, realize that you already accept many other interpretations of the same idea. Consider any other number whose decimal value is an infinite repeating series, say 3/7. It equals 0.428571 and we all accept that it equals 3/7, not "a number approaching 3/7 but that never quite gets there." It's two ways of writing the same thing.
It's the same concept when Homer takes his final step and places his foot down, completing his journey to the bus stop. He did not take a journey of infinite length. We can write an equation that describes how his final step consists of an infinitely reiterating series of smaller and smaller fractions, just as Zeno said:
We in the brotherhood call this an absolutely converging series, and contrary to Zeno's understanding, it equals 1.
Another popularly proposed solution, particularly for the fletcher's paradox, involves time and speed. Zeno, charges his critics, only considered the distances and geometry involved; and since he left time out of his paradoxes completely, he also excluded speed, since speed is a function of distance and time. When a body is in motion, its position is always changing. Motion is fluid, it is not a ratcheted series of jumping from point to point. Consequently, at any given moment in time, a moving body has no single exact position. Zeno's conjecture, that the arrow is always frozen at some point, cannot be observed, reproduced, or computed, since that's not the way things move. Imagine taking a photograph of a moving object. There will always be some motion blur. No matter how fast is the shutter of your camera, even infinitesimally fast, there will always be some tiny amount of blur. There is no such thing as a moving arrow frozen in time.
Similarly, Zeno's computation that Achilles will never catch the tortoise also omits time. Zeno's premise assumes that each segment of the race, wherein Achilles advances to the tortoise's previous position, takes some amount of time; and since there is an infinite number of such segments, it will take Achilles an infinite amount of time. This is also wrong. As the physical length of each segment decreases exponentially, in a converging series, so does the time it takes Achilles to traverse it. Achilles' time to catch the tortoise is represented by a converging series that equals a finite number.
Achilles will catch the tortoise, because the very succession of segments proposed by Zeno add up to a finite distance that Achilles will cover in a finite amount of time.
Homer will reach the bus stop, because all of those infinitely compounding fractional segments are an absolutely converging series equal to a finite distance.
The fletcher's arrow is always in motion once it is shot, at no instant in time is it ever frozen with a fixed position from which it has no time to move.
So to summarize Zeno's paradoxes, they're basically word games that play upon an easily misunderstood mathematical concept. There is no paradox, because Zeno's math was wrong.
By Brian Dunning
Please contact us with any corrections or feedback.
Cite this article:
Dunning, B. "Zeno's Paradoxes." Skeptoid Podcast. Skeptoid Media,
19 Jul 2011. Web.
26 Nov 2015. <http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4267>
References & Further Reading
Baez, J. "The Planck Length." John Baez. University of California, Riverside, 9 Feb. 2001. Web. 8 Jul. 2011. <http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/planck/node2.html>
Gardner, M. Aha! Aha! Insight. New York: Scientific American, 1978. 143-144.
Huggett, N. "Zeno's Paradoxes." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford University, 30 Apr. 2002. Web. 10 Jul. 2011. <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/paradox-zeno/>
Lynds, P. "Zeno's Paradoxes: A Timely Solution." PhilSci Archive. Univerity of Pittsburgh, 15 Sep. 2003. Web. 9 Jul. 2011. <http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/1197/>
Plato. Parmenides. Dublin: Hodges, Figgis, & Co., 1882.
Russell, B. Our Knowledge of the External World. Chicago: The Open Court Publishing Co., 1914. 165-181.
Whitehead, A., Russell, B. Principia Mathematica. Cambridge: University Press, 1910.
©2015 Skeptoid Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Rights and reuse information | <urn:uuid:601f9b81-dff6-4c04-b6a4-00aa09ac6a25> | CC-MAIN-2015-48 | https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4267 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-48/segments/1448398446997.59/warc/CC-MAIN-20151124205406-00017-ip-10-71-132-137.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953193 | 2,598 | 2.5625 | 3 |
In September California Governor Jerry Brown dared to take the climate change conversation where it really needs to go, call it a “let’s talk turkey” moment, when he issued an executive order that would push the state to net zero carbon emissions by the middle of this century. The order, though not binding, is striking in that it bypasses talk of the symptoms that seem to define public discussion of climate change, notably rising temperatures, crumbling Antarctic ice shelves, and extreme weather of both the dry and wet varieties.
Instead, Brown’s order directly addresses the malignancy at the root of the global climate illness, carbon dioxide emissions and the broader class of greenhouse gasses that includes methane and HFCs.
The semantic distinction is important, because words can provide cover for inaction or, more generously, a lack of action sufficient to address the immediacy with which humanity must accomplish the single, monumental task of stopping more CO2, on net, from entering the atmosphere.
Nowhere is this cover more apparent than in the Paris Climate Accord, mankind’s most ambitious, unified effort to date to address global warming (regardless of U.S. participation). The Paris agreement’s primary stated aim is to limit climate warming to 2 degrees Celsius, and 1.5 degrees if we have the most amazing luck. This threshold is based upon scientific consensus that any greater increase will bring the worst that climate change has to offer.
To keep below the temperature threshold, and do so as cheaply as possible, governments will need to act aggressively and in a coordinated manner to stop global net emissions growth right now, or more precisely by 2020. Of course, we’re nowhere near accomplishing this goal, as global carbon emissions are in fact very much on the rise.
And here is where the focus on temperature targets is of great disservice to our climate.
By emphasizing temperature goals, it's relatively easy for nations to appear to be doing more to address climate change than they really are, and harder for the public to discern the shortfall. The signatories to the Paris agreement (essentially the entire world), by setting the 2 degree temperature limitation as the pact’s marquee ambition, obscure the fact that concrete carbon emissions reductions are, in fact, the real goal. This is why it is possible, today, for nations to support a 2-degree agreement yet, despite Paris, remain track for a 3.5 degree rise in average temperature. Paris does set net zero emissions as an ambition, but a far off and variously timed one to be attained somewhere between 2050 and 2100.
Oliver Geden, a lead author of the next major global climate analysis from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the 6th Assessment Report due in 2022, recently summed up one aspect of the resulting dilemma.
“If you have a temperature target then a country can say, well, I really support that temperature target and I’m doing everything I can, but others will have to do more,” Geden says.
Alternatively, numeric carbon targets are straight forward, and would make it easy for countries to get right down to the job of divvying up the global budget and communicating that budget internationally and to their own citizens. The clear, numeric goal would provide an undeniable benchmark for entire economies to align toward achieving the goal. There would no longer be ambiguity around the extent to which nations, and the globe, are on track.
Of course, this would make it more difficult for politicians to publicly accommodate constituencies with varying priorities when it comes to climate. Which makes Brown’s order, as the leader of the world’s 5thlargest economy, all the more noteworthy. True, the fact that Brown is headed for retirement means that the stark political and economic realities of net zero emissions will be dealt with by his successors. Yet, the reality that Brown’s order comes as he prepares to depart focuses attention on the fact that net zero is the goal that really matters. It just takes courage, or the promise of freedom from public life, to say so, even for someone who has worked as hard on emissions as Brown.
Finally, the focus on net-zero emissions brings the broader climate effort into focus in a way that talk of temperature cannot. When talking about net zero, the reality that we’re talking about an economy-wide emissions reduction effort becomes starkly clear.
A discussion of true net-zero encompasses industry, air travel, and 4.5 billion flatulent cows, pigs and sheep around the world and, quite possibly, our hunger for them. It focuses discussion on forests and offsets while, at the same time, we realize that our preoccupation with electricity sector emissions and car fuel economy is but part of a much broader effort. And, as Brown’s order goes beyond carbon net zero to contemplate mandatory negative emissions, we must seriously contemplate the promise, or falsehood, that holy grails like carbon capture and sequestration, and cooling schemes like solar geoengineering, will make everything all right.
Net zero is an overwhelming conversation. Which is why it’s the conversation that needs to be had. | <urn:uuid:e1fe9c78-6558-4b74-b6b5-193e1da92b51> | CC-MAIN-2020-34 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/andystone/2018/09/30/on-climate-forget-2-degrees-lets-talk-net-zero/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-34/segments/1596439735916.91/warc/CC-MAIN-20200805065524-20200805095524-00023.warc.gz | en | 0.947578 | 1,057 | 2.78125 | 3 |
Although it's a dense, strong material, roofing foam can be damaged by sunlight (UV radiation), moisture, and foot traffic. Protective coatings are necessary to seal roofing from the environment and minimize said damage. When roofing foam is installed to the specified thickness and allowed to cure, an elastomeric coating is then applied over the foam surface (sometimes gravel or greenery is added in lieu of or in conjunction with a coating). The addition of the coating creates a weather-resistant roofing system that can easily be walked on for maintenance purposes.
Elastomeric coatings are almost always white or light-colored, with the most common materials being acrylic, silicone, urethane, butyl rubber, and polyurea. Physical properties, application equipment, installation procedures, and pricing vary from material to material. The coatings can be single-component or plural-component materials that are spray-applied in two stages: basecoat and topcoat. Sometimes, the spray application process involves priming the foam surface and/or embedding (also called broadcasting) granules into the topcoat.
Eventually, every spray foam roofing system requires maintenance. Provided there isn't any significant physical damage, but just normal wear-and-tear, maintenance usually involves cleaning, priming, and recoating the roof surface. It's really that easy, and maintaining an SPF in such a fashion every 10 years or so will keep it performing well for decades.
As with most roofing systems, seasonal changes in temperature will cause SPF roofs to expand and contract throughout the year. So, it’s critical that the protective coating installed over an SPF roof is elastic enough to move with the foam. If the coating is too brittle, it will crack or delaminate, thereby negating any protective qualities it might otherwise have provided. Look for the term "elongation" when consulting a material’s physical properties. Materials suppliers can provide assistance for choosing the proper coating material for a given roofing system and climate. | <urn:uuid:5856cf5c-1e7b-4f45-b94c-f8538b4ccbf5> | CC-MAIN-2017-34 | http://sprayfoamcalifornia.com/spray-foam-roof-coatings.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-34/segments/1502886109670.98/warc/CC-MAIN-20170821211752-20170821231752-00053.warc.gz | en | 0.912812 | 418 | 2.6875 | 3 |
If Artificial Intelligence is a car ...
Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Big Data… We hear these words non-stop nowadays, but the confusion around these topics and the connections between them remains. We want to shed some light on these concepts and, to do this, we are going to use … a car. I know what you are thinking: “Wait! Weren’t we talking about Artificial Intelligence?!” Don’t worry, you’ll understand in a second. For now, just trust us. Think of Artificial Intelligence as a car, fasten your seatbelts and let’s get started!
… Big Data is the oil
It was 2017 when the Economist published a popular article stating that Data is the new oil. The article was referring to the value of data in today’s digital economy, and facts are proving its observations to be right. However, when we talk about Artificial Intelligence, the same metaphor holds. Data is the new oil in the sense that modern Artificial Intelligence applications need data to work as much as a car needs fuel to move. Careful though, oil alone is not enough!
… Smart Data is the fuel
If you put oil in your car’s gas tank, consequences won’t be pleasant. That’s why when we go to a gas station they will sell us gas and not oil. And gas is, simply put, a “purified” version of oil. And there is more, the higher the quality of the gas, the higher your car’s performance will be. Same story for Data. If you want to get useful results from your Artificial Intelligence applications, Big Data is not enough. Smart Data is what you need and Smart Data is what you get when you clean, filter and transform Big Data. (See “Big Data: Using SMART Big Data, Analytics and Metrics To Make Better Decisions and Improve Performance” by Bernard Marr for more on Smart Big Data)
… and Machine Learning is the engine
Any car needs its engine, and here is where Machine Learning comes into play. Nowadays, Machine Learning algorithms are the beating heart of Artificial Intelligence, as much as the engine for a car. And, just like an engine, they need fuel (Data) to work. Machine Learning is a family of algorithms that derives from different branches of statistics and applied mathematics. Machine Learning algorithms learn from data, the more (Smart) data they have to learn, the better and more accurate the results will be.
Finally, a car!
Oil, refineries and engines wouldn’t be so crucial if we didn’t use them for something. In our metaphoric game, we have picked a car as the final use of natural resources and technology. By the same token, Big-Data, Smart-Data and Machine Learning wouldn’t be so useful without their support to the application of Artificial Intelligence.
This doesn’t mean that the fuel is useless alone. Even though cars (both electric or internal combustion ones) cannot merely exist without electricity or gasoline, you can still do pretty useful things with electricity and gasoline alone (e.g. heating). Same for data and, for instance, its applications in business intelligence.
...but an intelligent one.
If you followed us till now, you would feel disappointed if we didn’t make the last mile, which is the intelligent component. So what makes this car (this application) intelligent? Simplifying a bit, we talk about Artificial Intelligence any time a machine does something that we perceive as intelligent or that would have required human intuition to be carried out. So that’s why we pushed our parallel to the intelligent car. It surprises us. It can drive (maybe only for a few seconds for the time being) without our intervention and can alert us if something is going wrong and take action. The same holds for Artificial intelligence; it is meant to improve our productivity, our life experience, and not to substitute us.
How to prepare your company for A.I.
If you have followed us through this “explain like I’m 5” game, now you understand why it’s essential for companies to prepare for A.I. applications. Artificial intelligence doesn’t just happen. It needs Data (the oil) to run. These data have to be cleaned and refined to turn into Smart Data (the gas). Smart Data is fed to Machine Learning algorithms (the engine) to make it work. And only after all the components are in place, the car will move.
The subtle difference between an intelligent car and A.I. application is that the fuel needed for the vehicle is, in most cases, something that you cannot buy at the gas station. It is instead something that you need to source and drill internally to the company. That is why it is so important for companies to invest in data storage, validation and cleaning. If you are not investing now in building your oil reservoir, you will have tough times in applying A.I. in your company.
Click To Know More | <urn:uuid:7b7fcc56-bb03-464d-a997-b650b68c6c98> | CC-MAIN-2020-34 | https://www.quickalgorithm.com/blog/if-artificial-intelligence-is-an-intelligent-car | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-34/segments/1596439738015.38/warc/CC-MAIN-20200808165417-20200808195417-00208.warc.gz | en | 0.947722 | 1,053 | 2.84375 | 3 |
|Location||Central part of the Shire|
|Description||Hill-range, wooded in the eastern part|
The Green Hills was a range of hills that ran west-to-east through the Shire, through three of the Shire's four Farthings, and gave its name to the region known as the Green Hill Country. To the west, in the Tookland, the hills were fairly open and treeless. In contrast, their eastern slopes towards Woody End were densely wooded with trees of all kinds.
At least three rivers and streams had their sources among the Green Hills; the River Shirebourn, the Thistle Brook and the Stock-brook. One of the chief towns of the Shire-hobbits, Tuckborough, lay among the western hills, and other villages were to be found among their slopes, or about their feet, including Tookbank, Woodhall and Pincup.
On 23 September T.A. 3018 Frodo, Pippin, and Sam passed through the Green Hills on the start of their journey. Later, in 3019, when the Ruffians were lodged in the Shire they found the deep holes of the Tooks in the Green Hills defeated their attempts to control that part of the Hobbits homeland.
- ↑ J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring, "A Part of the Shire" map
- ↑ J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, Appendix B, "The Great Years"
- ↑ J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring, "Three is Company"
- ↑ J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, The Return of the King, "The Scouring of the Shire" | <urn:uuid:ee6a671d-f197-4012-976f-20a2d2e777f1> | CC-MAIN-2015-27 | http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Green_Hills | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-27/segments/1435375102712.76/warc/CC-MAIN-20150627031822-00152-ip-10-179-60-89.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955097 | 383 | 3.125 | 3 |
Torque, thrust and power are integral forces in milling, drilling and turning applications. Whether you’re using a carbide end mill or inside-diameter turning tool, the right calculation is a critical step in the planning process.
Find out how to calculate these forces in your specific machining operation and what you can do to improve your process based on these calculations.
Understanding Torque, Thrust and Power
Whether you’re using a drilling or milling tool, it’s essential to understand how thrust and torque calculations are used to determine the resistance of our workpiece as the cutting tool comes in contact with it. The point of contact can create significant tool wear, heat and material damage if the process isn’t carefully controlled.
Understanding the differences between torque, thrust and power can help you troubleshoot a machining issue or maximize the efficiency of a new application. For example, high-speed cutting requires careful control of the thrust force to minimize friction and ensure the materials aren’t heated excessively.
How To Calculate Torque for Machining Applications
How do you arrive at the calculations for torque, thrust and power? There are many formulas you can use to determine the thrust and torque, but one convenient way to find theoretical calculations is to use the Kennametal calculator. Simply input these factors to find the torque of your machining process:
- Workpiece material
- Drill diameter
- Cutting speed
- Depth of hole
These measurements can also help you calculate the machining time of your process. Because the Kennametal calculator is based on theoretical values, the calculations aren’t going to fully match the results of your process due to slight variations in materials and other factors. Use these calculations during your initial planning process, but consider updating them as you have finished products to review.
Why Calculating Torque, Thrust and Power Matters
Are you using the most efficient machining process to achieve the results you want? If you aren’t calculating the torque, thrust and power of your process, then you may be wearing through carbide turning inserts or creating workpieces with machining flaws.
The goal of machining calculations is finding new ways to control conditions throughout the process. From the materials used to the cutting speed, there are a number of ways you can alter the machining process to increase or decrease the torque, power or thrust.
Once you calculate the performance of your end milling machine or turning tool, you may find ways to create more accurate, reliable workpieces with just a few control adjustments. You may also see that you need to update the cutting tool used in the process.
Another common mistake you may be making is failing to take minor alterations into account as you perform a machining process. For example, a slightly larger diameter drill can alter the amount of friction and the heat it causes. Without running new calculations to find the torque, thrust and power, you may overheat your material or quickly wear down your tooling.
Perform Calculations for Your Next Machining Application
Create precision-engineered components with minimal tool wear thanks to the Kennametal calculator. Explore tooling and milling cutters for sale to update your process and tailor your systems to match your manufacturing goals. | <urn:uuid:b086821e-0527-4de2-94d5-816c6f49373c> | CC-MAIN-2021-49 | https://techpages.net/importance-of-calculating-torque-thrust/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-49/segments/1637964358570.48/warc/CC-MAIN-20211128164634-20211128194634-00029.warc.gz | en | 0.893701 | 676 | 3.3125 | 3 |
There's actually several different kinds of fats. You have your unsaturated fats, which are typically heart-healthy fat, which are like olive oil and canola oil. And then you have other fats like saturated fats, which are found in food such as meats, especially any animal product, fatty cuts of meats such as bacon, sausage, butter, lard, high fat dairy products, whole milk, and creams. And saturated fats have actually been linked to increased risk of heart disease. So these are things that you really want to limit in your diet. Learn some healthy tips on avoiding saturated fats in this nutrition how-to video clip.
Most meat products contain saturated fats
Saturated fats can increase chances of heart disease
Remove fat & skin from meat
About this Author
Alice Merritt is currently the Campus Dietitian at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. She has a masters degree from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in public health with a concentration on nutrition. Alice has worked as a registered dietician for four years, and believes that helping people reach their nutritional goals will lead to a long and healthy life.
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- 41% off NetSpot Home Wi-Fi Analyzer: Lifetime Upgrades | <urn:uuid:b5a9d7f3-7369-4ae5-bd8e-5f9553b4e84e> | CC-MAIN-2021-31 | https://nutrition.wonderhowto.com/how-to/avoid-eating-saturated-fats-257083/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-31/segments/1627046154457.66/warc/CC-MAIN-20210803092648-20210803122648-00499.warc.gz | en | 0.926176 | 411 | 2.90625 | 3 |
Good Child Labor Essay Example
Child labor is the use of children in work that interferes with their childhood and regular school attendance (ILO, 2012). Child labor is usually harmful and dangerous to the children. The child can be harmed socially, physically, morally or mentally by the kind of work they are forced to perform. International organizations consider child labor as exploitation of the children. There are many laws that prohibit child labor around the world. All work done by children is not considered as child labor (ILO, 2012). Exceptions to child labor include art, training, and some common activities performed by American children.
My viewpoint about child labor is that it is wrong to use children at workplaces. The children should be provided with an education that is free from interferences. Child labor interferes with the regular school attendance of the child. A child might miss out on some classes because he or she is forced to work. A child may also end up sleeping in class due to exhaustion caused by the work he or she had to perform outside school. Child labor wears out the bodies of the children because they have not fully developed to handle the hard tasks.
The children need to be given time to participate in recreational activities that will enable them to develop and have social interactions with other children. Mental development is important for the well being of the children. Physical development is also important, and this is boosted by allowing children to play. Hard labor, on the other hand, affects the healthy development of the children’s physique. Am against child labor, and I believe that the children should be allowed to live their age. The children should not be denied their childhood by subjecting them to work.
ILO. What is Child Labor. 2012. Web. 25 Feb. 2015. http://www.ilo.org/ipec/facts/lang--en/index.htm | <urn:uuid:0a43a694-6d73-48d0-8a45-173354c40896> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://www.wepapers.com/samples/good-child-labor-essay-example/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233506028.36/warc/CC-MAIN-20230921141907-20230921171907-00889.warc.gz | en | 0.967399 | 411 | 2.734375 | 3 |
I was going over his online articles and especially his seminal work – Second Language Acquisition and Second Language Learning. I kept coming back to the feeling I had as a teacher – that comprehensible input was what students needed – needed to be engaged, on task and effectively learning a language. Not memorizing, not manipulating words, not learning grammar rules, not translating, not x or Y or z but only input, input, input – at a comprehensible level.
This is why extensive reading is so powerful in helping students acquire a language – but extensive listening is just as powerful yet so seldom done effectively. We need more of that – I’m trying my best at EnglishCentral to make this happen through authentic (but leveled/supported) content.
However, input really isn’t all that must happen when a student receives language. They also have to “notice” the language in their conscious mind. That’s when the learning happens and language “sticks”.
Krashen has a nice little article where he calls this “The Din in the head” hypothesis (and yes, yet another hypothesis). It is kind of like the ghost inside the machine. Meaning, when language is received, there is a “din” that goes off which links the input to something “there”. Scaffolding is achieved and the language rooted when the language is put into a context. What is this “din”?
Essentially it is the student’s bell/brain sparking and going off. An involuntary mental rehearsal of the language. Students notice language. They are no longer fish in water but fish that know they are in water! They take the received and convert it to something and somewhere that it can be produced. It may be relating the incoming language to a known form or L1. It may be repeating it. It may be thinking a thought of something it relates to. It may be a lot of things this din – but it is important. Everything isn’t just input – there has to be some ghost in the machine doing its thing.
Here’s what Krashen says,
“The Din in the Head hypothesis claims that the din is the result of stimulation of the language acquisition device, a sign that language acquisition is taking place (Krashen, 1983).I noted that the Din experience correlates with less reluctance to speak the language, but did not make any hypothesis about a sudden “critical stage” that leads to a “sudden and massive restructuring” as de Bos claims (p. 173). ”
So what does this mean for the working Joe teacher?
I think it means that we have to create curriculum that is contextualized strongly and thus offers “comprehensibility”. I think it means we have to think more about the input that happens in our classes and how we can create regularity of it. I think we have to think about how we might get our students to do some metacognitive activities and start practicing “thinking about language”.
I know it is a long shot but maybe we can try to get this “din” activating more often in our students?
To end. Here’s a screencast I made of the new EnglishCentral “hidden task” feature. Basically a listening cloze activity. I think this kind of activity can support our efforts to activate this “din inside the head”. | <urn:uuid:778ef5fa-aef5-44e2-ba85-78d8e46d8a58> | CC-MAIN-2014-52 | http://ddeubel.edublogs.org/2011/03/29/4-keys-to-learning-english-input-input-input-noticing/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-52/segments/1419447544739.15/warc/CC-MAIN-20141224185904-00004-ip-10-231-17-201.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963751 | 718 | 3.3125 | 3 |
The quality of leaf vegetables will depend largely upon growing them rapidly. They are all great nitrogen-consumers and therefore take kindly to liberal supplies of garden manure, which is high in nitrogen. For celery the garden manure is best applied to some preceding crop, such as early cabbage. The others will take it “straight.”
Most of these plants are best started under glass or in the seed-bed and transplanted later to permanent positions. They will all be helped greatly by a top-dressing of nitrogen fertilizer, worked into the soil as soon as they have become established.
Broccoli: The broccoli makes a flower head as does the cauliflower. It has the one advantage of being hardier and thus can be grown where the cauliflower is too uncertain to make its culture worthwhile.
Celery: The seed is very fine and the greatest care must be taken to give the best possible treatment. The seed should be pressed into the soil and barely covered with very light soil. In hot, dry weather, shade the beds; never let them dry out.
Lettuce is grown in larger quantities than all the other salad plants put together. By the use of hotbeds it may be had practically the year round.
The cos type is good for summer growing but should be tied up to blanch well. To be at its best, lettuce should be grown very rapidly, and the use of top-dressings of nitrate are particularly beneficial with this crop. The ground should be light, warm, and very rich, and cultivation shallow but frequent.
Spinach: Leaf vegetables for summer and fall are sown in successive plantings from early spring on. Spinach wants a strong and very rich soil, and dressings of nitrate show good results
Cabbage takes up considerable space, it may often be advisable to omit the late sorts from the home garden if space is very limited. The soil should be of the richest and deepest, and well dressed with lime.
Cauliflower: The cauliflower is easily the queen of the cabbage group: also it is the most difficult to raise. It is the most tender and should not be set out quite so early.
For a perfect white cauliflower, the heads must be protected from the sun. This is accomplished by tying up the points of leaves, so as to form a tent, or breaking them (snap the mid-rib only), and folding them down over the flower. Pick them while the head is still solid and firm, before the little flower tips begin to open out. | <urn:uuid:6114d1fa-8bf1-4174-8154-7e54c131e35a> | CC-MAIN-2019-30 | http://asphaltairbornemodapk.com/home-vegetable-gardening-leaf-vegetables/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-30/segments/1563195526931.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20190721061720-20190721083720-00246.warc.gz | en | 0.964634 | 523 | 3.140625 | 3 |
What Does It Mean?
Your body is fitted with various types of internal organs, which help you to move and lead a healthy life. Just like a four-wheeler, every organ in your body is important. If one fails to function properly, you will face numerous problems in life. For example, if you have a heart problem, then you will have to lead a controlled lifestyle. Excess excitement may lead to a heart attack. Similarly, your kidneys are also very important. It is true that if one stops to work, then you easily lead a normal life with the other kidney. However, if both cease to work at the same time, then life comes to a complete stop.
What Is Acid Ash Diet?
The term acid ash diet is mainly based upon the fact that you can easily change the composition of your daily diet in order to alter the pH level of your urine. If you opt for an acid ash diet, then you actually make your diet more acidic in order to get rid of specific types of kidney stones. The primary components of an acid ash diet are grain based food items and animal proteins. There will also be limited quantities of vegetables and fruits in the diet.
When the minerals from certain foods do not get oxidized during the process of metabolism, it becomes ash as a residue. Basically, acid ash is formed from various minerals such as magnesium, calcium, potassium, and sodium.
Foods Allowed For Acid Ash Diet
Are you planning to go for acid ash diet in order to get rid of kidney stones? There are certain types of foods, which can be a part of such a dietary plan. Usually moderate to high protein foods are included in an acid ash diet. These include shellfish, eggs, meats, cheese, fish, and various types of grains. You may also include roast beef, lamb, pork, ham, chicken, bacon, and veal in your acid ash diet. When it comes to plant based protein, the list includes walnuts, Brazil nuts, lentils, and corn. At the same time, grains to be included in an acid ash diet are whole-wheat flour, cakes, crackers, bread, and pasta. You may also include various types of cereals such as puffed wheat, oatmeal, cornflakes, and farina.
Avoid Certain Foods
Just like you are supposed to avoid several types of fruits during your acid ash diet, there are also several types of vegetables you should avoid. These include beets, dandelion greens, Swiss chard, mustard greens, and kale, to name a few. You are also not supposed to have milk during this diet, since milk is an alkaline product and it will neutralize acid.
If you wish to start an acid ash diet, it is highly recommended that you consult with a doctor first. He will be able to guide you in this process and also give you a list of foods you should take and those which are supposed to be avoided at all costs. If you succeed in this diet, then the problem of kidney stones can be reduced considerably. | <urn:uuid:ef64f7c9-da42-4468-82d6-fdba33378ace> | CC-MAIN-2019-30 | http://www.ahealthyjalapeno.com/acid-ash-diet/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-30/segments/1563195529406.97/warc/CC-MAIN-20190723130306-20190723152306-00282.warc.gz | en | 0.966318 | 629 | 2.578125 | 3 |
Pure Raw Honey- Unpasteurized, Unprocessed, and Unheated. No added artificial flavour,No added sugars, No additives or colours.
The Korku are an Adivasi ethnic group predominantly found in the Melghat Tiger Reserve of Maharashtra and nearby geography of Central India. Wardha based CBEED (Centre For Bee Development) provides training to the Korku youths who collect honey from the Giant Bee Hives in a natural & non-violent way. These Bee hives are created by the wild Bees and are 6 feet and larger at times that’s why called the Giants. This technic of collecting honey at night wearing special protective dresses yields honey volume 3-4 times from the same Bee hive.
This honey is primarily filtered & collected in a large pot, is not cooked at high temperature like all other processed honeys instead its just micro-filtered further and bottled. Its Raw & un-cooked hence as a natural tendency gets crystalises some times particularly the lot collected post winter bloom.
The crystallization of honey is little understood by the consuming public. Many assume that crystallized honey is adulterated or ‘spoiled.’ This is not so.
The crystallization process is natural and spontaneous. Pure, raw and unheated honey has a natural tendency to crystallize over time with no effect on the honey other than color and texture. What’s more, the crystallization of honey actually preserves the flavor and quality characteristics
Some honeys crystallize uniformly; some will be partially crystallized and form two layers, with the crystallized layer on the bottom of the jar and a liquid on top. And crystallized honey tends to set a lighter/paler color than when liquid. This is due to the fact that glucose sugar tends to separate out in dehydrating crystals form, and that glucose crystals are naturally pure white. Darker honeys retain a brownish appearance.
LEARN MORE ABOUT RAW UNCOOKED HONEY
Hungry for more chemistry? Honey is a highly concentrated sugar solution. It contains more than 70% sugars and less than 20% water. This means that the water in honey contains more sugar than it should naturally hold. The overabundance of sugar makes honey unstable. Thus, it is natural for honey to crystallize since it is an over-saturated sugar solution.
The two principal sugars in honey are fructose (fruit sugar) and glucose (grape sugar). The content of fructose and glucose in honey varies from one type of honey to the other. Generally, the fructose ranges from 30- 44% and glucose from 25- 40%. The balance of these two major sugars causes the crystallization of honey, and the relative percentage of each determines whether it crystallizes rapidly or slowly. What crystallizes is the glucose, due to its lower solubility. Fructose is more soluble in water than glucose and will remain fluid.
When glucose crystallizes, it separates from water and takes the form of tiny crystals. As the crystallization progresses and more glucose crystallizes, those crystals spread throughout the honey. The solution changes to a stable saturated form, and ultimately the honey becomes thick or crystallized.
Bottom line? Crystallization of honey is a gift of nature.
Honey is used for cough, asthma, and hay fever. It is also used for diarrhea and stomach ulcers caused by infection with Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) bacteria. Honey is also used as a source of carbohydrate during vigorous exercise.
and diabetic foot ulcers. Topical use of honey has a long history. In fact, it is considered one of the oldest known wound dressings. Honey was used by the ancient Greek physician Dioscorides in 50 A.D. for sunburn and infected wounds. Honey’s healing properties are mentioned in the Bible, Koran, and Torah.
In foods, honey is used as a sweetening agent. | <urn:uuid:be6c57c6-e036-4ec6-bbea-e7f3dd987092> | CC-MAIN-2021-43 | https://farmforestfresh.com/product/natural-pure-raw-honey-uncooked-1kg/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-43/segments/1634323587767.18/warc/CC-MAIN-20211025185311-20211025215311-00280.warc.gz | en | 0.92397 | 812 | 2.953125 | 3 |
Science Fantasy Films is extremely nicely identified in the globe of film, and many men and women believe that the explanation behind this can be that they entertain us with all sorts of surprises.
It has been precisely the same with Science fiction motion pictures at the same time, so the curiosity of children has to be handled appropriately, and you can find a variety of measures one particular has to follow.
In our educational program, special kids’ region is required for particular science experiment and enjoyable movie. Children will be the main target audience and a few facilities research paper writing help like theaters, theaters with films can genuinely be extremely valuable for the understanding.
The children would like to watch the diverse educational institutes on their very own or a minimum of a guide can be useful. Lots of institutes that offer numerous options for the education contain – No cost Online Classes – A variety of labs with unique material.
But, particular facilities for study science is often superior sufficient. At present, the most favored method to learn science is by means of the Virtual Reality (VR) Education. Also, it could be beneficial within the children’s studies.
It is attainable to take advantage of virtual reality education. On line learning programs permit a person to reap the benefits of this sort of mastering facility. With this system, a student can study in the comfort of his home.
The on-line understanding programs for on line education will help several subjects, which contain Chemistry, Physics, Astronomy, Chemistry, Biology, Physics 2 etc. Also, it can offer the participants using the most important ideas about these subjects. It is valuable in offering an option to conventional classes.
This system also offers, distinctive courses which have no college course but might be applied within the academic level, which the students will get a certificate for. visit this site For example, students can go for Biology, Physics and Chemistry as well as many other courses.
Tscience fantasy On the subject of getting enrolled in an internet education system, the student needs to pay a visit to the website of the institute and fill up an application form. The types can be filled on the net, and it is actually adequate to submit it as soon as the course is ready. If you need to understand extra about this subject, you can find quite a few internet websites obtainable for the information and facts, which will help you find the correct on the web education website.
Generally, these courses deliver a specialist study, so the students are presented with a versatile solution to find out, that is necessary in today’s planet. The age of the student is also taken into consideration when going for the education.
As the whole world has changed quite a bit, we are able to say that the field of study has also changed. There are actually several different methods in which this topic is offered, along with the subjects differ from one particular website to one more. So, it can be often useful to avail the ideal option from any website, to ensure that you could get the most effective education for the kid.
Online Education as well as Finding out courses are also getting offered by some corporations, which gives a useful service for the developing youngsters. The future in the young children has been decided by the educational and technological advancement, so this need to be an thrilling time inside the life in the child, which will let him/her develop into a fantastic and prosperous citizen of the world. | <urn:uuid:d2ef7c81-d64b-483b-af45-749124d6b8df> | CC-MAIN-2021-25 | https://tr.becureglobal.com/2020/02/05/what-is-science-fantasy/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-25/segments/1623488517048.78/warc/CC-MAIN-20210622093910-20210622123910-00427.warc.gz | en | 0.961759 | 694 | 2.78125 | 3 |
We’re helping to solve your EFL teaching problems by answering your questions every two weeks. This week’s blog will respond to Pat Mattes Mazzei’s comment on Facebook about the challenge of adult students using cell phones in the classroom.
Although students using cell phones in the classroom can make you feel like you have lost control of the class, it’s important to find out what students are using their cell phones for. Calling or texting friends or family during lessons may not be the best use of class time, but more and more often students are using their cell phones – especially smartphones – for learning and organisational purposes. Being on the cell phone does not necessarily mean the students are ‘off task’.
Establishing phone use guidelines
Adult learners may have valid reasons for leaving their phones on. Business people, for example, may have a mandate to keep in touch even whilst in class, or parents may need to be available for calls related to children. At the beginning of term, it’s a good idea to negotiate rules for phone use with students. Discuss when, if ever, it is OK to use phones for calls or texting and establish cell phone etiquette for the classroom. This should be done with maximum student input so that the rules are agreed rather than imposed.
Some examples of acceptable use of cell phones in the class might include:
- Using the calendar to schedule meetings with other students
- Taking notes using a note app or recording function
- Audio recording the lesson (with teacher’s permission)
- Looking up unknown words
- Adding peers to their contacts list
- Photographing board work or homework assignments
- Sharing photos when related to class content (for example, family photos on a family unit or holiday pictures on a holidays unit)
- Doing web searches
Maximising cell phone use for learning
You also might begin to think of ways to exploit cell phones further. Some ideas are explored below.
1. Educational apps for phones have been developed to help students learn English. Encourage students to replace their digital translators with a good dictionary app. Students can look up new words themselves rather than relying on the teacher all the time. When doing activities in which students must guess the meaning of new words from context, simply ask them not to use dictionaries for the activity. To help with pronunciation, point students in the direction of a pronunciation app that they can use to hear the correct pronunciation and record themselves or each other. The Headway Phrase-a-day app could be an engaging way to begin the lesson with students trying to create a dialogue in which the phrase can be used naturally. (For ideas on how to use apps, see Gareth Davis’ blog ‘Translation Tool or Dictionary’ and Verissimo Toste’s blog ‘Enhanced Learning – Using an App in Class’)
2. If students (or at least one student per group) have smartphones, then they can easily go onto the internet to research questions they have related to course content. Encourage students to look up information to support an argument or to satisfy their curiosity about topics discussed in class. Get them to research a topic to report back on or ask them to find an image to illustrate a difficult vocabulary word. For example, in one of my classes, the word badger came up. Describing a badger is fairly difficult, but a student with a smartphone quickly looked it up and passed the image around to the rest of the class.
3. Students can use their phones to practise speaking and telephoning skills. Speaking to someone without seeing them is more difficult and requires students to use clear pronunciation and phrases for clarification. This adds a layer of authenticity and can help students gain confidence. Give them a speaking or telephoning task to do with someone across the room where eye contact is difficult. Alternatively, ask them to leave a message that their partner has to respond to.
4. Cell phones can themselves be a springboard for discussion and a way to practise new language. Students could compare and contrast the functions of their phones, describe how an app works, argue for or against phone features, or even give instructions for how to play a game.
5. You might be interested in exploring more advanced uses of cell phones by investigating resources such as Wiffiti for sharing brainstorms or Poll Everywhere and SMS Poll for free ways to get immediate class feedback.
Cell phones play an increasing role in everyday life and can be seen as an integral part of students’ learning rather than as an interruption to it. When students do use phones in class, especially smartphones, don’t assume that they are doing something ‘off task’. Students may be using their phones for a number of educational purposes. Cell phones can be seen as a valuable learning tool and an aid to student autonomy.
Invitation to share your ideas
We are interested in hearing your ideas about using cell phones in class, so please comment on this post and take part in our live Facebook chat on Friday 25 October at 12pm GMT. Our next blog will address one of the other issues raised by you on this blog, on Twitter (using hashtag #EFLproblems), and on Facebook. Please keep your ideas coming.
- Solving your difficulties as an EFL teacher – #EFLproblems (oupeltglobalblog.com)
- #EFLproblems – Teaching writing in the age of WhatsApp (oupeltglobalblog.com) | <urn:uuid:ce9fc071-562d-454d-88d1-3a968c2b48a7> | CC-MAIN-2021-17 | https://oupeltglobalblog.com/tag/dictionary-app/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-17/segments/1618039508673.81/warc/CC-MAIN-20210421035139-20210421065139-00396.warc.gz | en | 0.92999 | 1,129 | 3.65625 | 4 |
A-level Physics (Advancing Physics)/Gravitational Forces
The nature of gravity is a deep question. What exactly goes on to give rise to gravitational forces is considered one of the greatest mysteries left to solve in physics. We should all be familiar with the fact that gravity gives objects weight, which is why an apple will fall to the Earth. In fact, any object with mass exerts a gravitational force on any other object with mass. The Earth exerts a pull on an apple, and the apple equally exerts a pull on the Earth.
Gravity does not just allow us to describe the paths of objects that will eventually hit the ground. It describes how planets move, with remarkable precision. It predicts the dates and times of solar eclipses hundreds of years before they happen.
Thus gravitational force of attraction between two objects is given by:
where r is the distance between the spheres, and G is the Gravitational constant. Experiments have shown that G = 6.67 x 10−11 Nm2kg−2.
This equation better describes some facts we already know. We should remember from GCSE science that force is inversely proportional to the distance squared. It explains why as mass increases, weight on the Earth increases.
Note that this formula says nothing about where gravity comes from. It only describes what gravity does. However, it describes it extremely well.
Gravity is not just about objects hitting the Earth. However, it does have a lot to do with falling.
We should also be aware that from circular motion that:
where F is the centripetal force, m is the mass of an object, r is the distance between the objects and v is the velocity of the object, perpendicular to the centripetal force and thus tangential at any point to the orbit.
Gravitational Force Inside an Object
Inside a roughly spherical object (such as the Earth), it can be proved geometrically that the effects of the gravitational force resulting from all the mass outside a radius at which an object is located can be ignored, since it all cancels itself out. So, the only mass we need to consider is the mass inside the radius at which the object is located. The density of an object ρ is given by the following equation:
where M is mass, and V is volume. Therefore:
If we substitute the volume of a sphere for V:
And if we substitute this mass into the formula for gravitational force given above:
In other words, inside a sphere of uniform mass, the gravitational force is directly proportional to the distance of an object from the centre of the sphere. Incidentally, this results in a simple harmonic oscillator such as the one on the right. This means that a graph of gravitational force against distance from the centre of a sphere with uniform density looks like this:
1. Jupiter orbits the Sun at a radius of around 7.8 x 1011m. The mass of Jupiter is 1.9 x 1027kg, and the mass of the Sun is 2.0 x 1030kg. What is the gravitational force acting on Jupiter? What is the gravitational force acting on the Sun?
2. The force exerted by the Sun on an object at a certain distance is 106N. The object travels half the distance to the Sun. What is the force exerted by the Sun on the object now?
3. What is the magnitude of the gravitational force that two 1 kg weights exert on each other when they are 5 cm apart?
4. The radius of the Earth is 6360 km, and its mass is 5.97 x 1024kg. What is the difference between the gravitational force on 1 kg at the top of your body, and on 1 kg at your head, and 1 kg at your feet? (Assume that you are 2m tall.) | <urn:uuid:7d3e4da7-e1f2-45f5-849e-8f6da9717712> | CC-MAIN-2017-47 | https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/A-level_Physics_(Advancing_Physics)/Gravitational_Forces | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-47/segments/1510934805809.59/warc/CC-MAIN-20171119210640-20171119230640-00705.warc.gz | en | 0.929545 | 787 | 4.375 | 4 |
Background: Esophageal bleeding has an estimated mortality rate of at least 25% with the index bleed, an estimated 35% to 42% risk of death within the first six weeks, and up to 75% chance of a rebleed at one year. Prevention of chronic variceal rebleeding is critical and most crucial in the first three months following the index bleed. To address this, several medical and surgical therapies have been studied and used with various levels of success. For several years, esophageal variceal ligation (EVL) has been accepted as the best overall prevention for chronic variceal rebleeding, given the advantages and disadvantages of each treatment method. However, recent trials in pharmacological therapy using beta-blockers, in combination with a nitrate, have shown greater efficacy in preventing recurrent variceal bleeding, studies combining pharmacological and nonpharmacological modalities have been performed, and technological advances have decreased the rebleeding rate after transesophageal intrahepatic portosystemic shunt (TIPS) therapy. This has created the possibility that another treatment may be better than EVL alone. Further study and trials are necessary to determine if esophageal variceal ligation is still the treatment of choice for secondary prevention of variceal rebleeding.
Clinical Question: In patients with proven esophageal hemorrhage, is esophageal ligation still the treatment of choice in secondary prophylaxis of variceal bleeding?
Study Design: Exhaustive search of available medical literature employing CINAHL, MEDLINE, Evidence Based Medicine Reviews Multifile, BIOSIS preview databases. Studies were found in key industry journals, and article reference lists were combed for additional trials meeting inclusion criteria.
Methods: Independent review of data and methodology of published randomized control trials addressing long-term prevention of esophageal variceal bleeding using esophageal variceal ligation as compared to another treatment modality, or as compared to EVL plus another therapy, performed within the last 10 years, and free on internet search.
Results: In reviewing the efficacy of esophageal variceal ligation (EVL) therapy to other modes of treatment for secondary prophylaxis of variceal bleeds, one study showed an improved benefit in variceal rebleeding rate and overall bleeding rate when esophageal variceal ligation was compared to propranolol, a nonselective beta-blocker, plus isosorbide mononitrate (ISMN). In two studies comparing EVL to ISMN plus nadolol, a different nonselective beta-blocker, one study reported no significant difference in rebleeding, overall bleed, or mortality rates and the other trial concluded that EVL was less effective than nadolol plus ISMN and EVL, in isolation, had an associated higher rate of major complications. A fourth trial compared variceal ligation to a combination therapy of EVL plus nadolol and found that nadolol plus EVL reduced the incidence of variceal rebleeding as compared to EVL, but did not reduce the risk of mortality. When evaluated against transesophageal intrahepatic portosystemic shunt (TIPS), EVL proved to be less effective than TIPS, nor did it improve the two-year survival rate or encephalopathy rate. In the final study reviewed, a combination therapy of variceal ligation plus propranolol was found to be nearly as effective as TIPS, and with an equally effective survival rate, but ligation plus propranolol had approximately half the risk of encephalopathy. These randomized controlled trial results showed contradictory evidence for the efficacy of esophageal variceal ligation in the control of secondary variceal rebleeding. Esophageal variceal ligation therapy, alone, did not show a clear benefit in the long-term prevention of variceal rebleeding as compared to beta-blocker plus nitrate, EVL plus beta-blocker, or TIPS. However, when EVL was paired with a beta-blocker, and pitted against variceal ligation alone, the combination comparatively reduced the incidence of variceal rebleeding.
Conclusion: Esophageal variceal ligation, in isolation, shows no superiority to treatment with beta-blocker and nitrate, or TIPS procedure, and is less effective than EVL plus nadolol in the prevention of secondary variceal bleeding.
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What does the ruling mean to me?
The Supreme Court decision upholding President Barack Obama's health-care law affects nearly every American.
The law tells almost everyone they must have health coverage and guarantees it will be available to them even if they are already ill or need hugely expensive care. It helps the poor and many middle-class people afford coverage.
The 2010 health-care law will keep taking effect. It's expected to bring coverage to about 30 million uninsured people. Overall, more than 9 in every 10 eligible Americans will be covered.
Some parts are already in effect: Young adults can stay on their parents' insurance up to age 26. Insurers can't deny coverage to children with health problems. Limits on how much policies will pay out to each person over a lifetime are eliminated. Hundreds of older people already are saving money through improved Medicare prescription benefits. And co-payments for preventive care for all ages have been eliminated.
Starting in 2014, almost everyone will be required to be insured or pay a fine. There are subsidies to help people who can't afford coverage. Most employers will face fines if they don't offer coverage for their workers. Newly created insurance markets will make it easier for individuals and small businesses to buy affordable coverage. And Medicaid will be expanded to cover more low-income people.
Insurers will be prohibited from denying coverage to people with medical problems or charging those people more. They won't be able to charge women more either. During the transition to 2014, a special program for people with pre-existing health problems helps these people get coverage.
An assortment of tax increases, health-industry fees and Medicare cuts will help pay for the changes.
Still, not everyone will be covered.
An estimated 26 million people will remain without coverage once the law is fully implemented, including illegal immigrants, people who don't sign up and choose to face the fines instead, and those who can't afford it even with the subsidies. That number could be higher, depending on whether any states refuse the Medicaid expansion.
The taxing truth
When the law was before Congress, Obama and Democrats avoided calling its penalty for going uninsured a "tax." But the administration argued before the Supreme Court that the law was constitutional as a federal tax.
The court rejected two other Obama administration arguments for the law but accepted the tax one.
In 2016, after the law is fully in place, about 4 million people will pay the penalty to the Internal Revenue Service for being uninsured, the Congressional Budget Office has estimated. They would pay $695 per uninsured adult or 2.5 percent of family income, up to $12,500 per year.
The IRS can't prosecute violators or place liens against them, however. Its only enforcement option might be withholding money from refunds.
About that mandate
Many parts of the law have proved popular. But the insurance mandate is widely disliked. Each time AP has asked in polls, more than 8 in every 10 Americans have said the government should not have the right to require everyone to buy health insurance.
The public also has tilted against the law as a whole over the two years since it was passed. About half opposed it and a third were in favor in an AP-GfK poll shortly before the Supreme Court ruled. | <urn:uuid:338c7426-e890-4d40-b496-b50ddc823a01> | CC-MAIN-2015-14 | http://www.denverpost.com/nationworld/ci_20967175/health-care-ruling-what-it-means-and-how?source=pkg | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-14/segments/1427131299121.41/warc/CC-MAIN-20150323172139-00291-ip-10-168-14-71.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973378 | 666 | 2.640625 | 3 |
Imagine you're out for a routine Space Walk suddenly your Helmet comes loose but instead of suffocating, you breathe in fresh Cosmic Air. How far reaching would this space atmosphere be? Why would space suddenly become so loud? And could this lead to the destruction of the whole solar system?
This is what if and here's what would happen if outer space was breathable. The atmosphere you breathe here on Earth consists of 78 nitrogen, 21 oxygen and Trace Amounts of other gases. It's that molecular oxygen that is essential for life molecular oxygen is rare beyond the 10,000 Kilometers that the atmosphere extends above the Earth's surface.
In space, oxygen atoms bind with space dust, they react with hydrogen atoms and create water ice instead of molecular oxygen. But what if we could find breathable air all the way to the edges of the heliosphere. That's the boundary where the Sun's gravity is no longer as strong as that of other stars.
Would an expansive atmosphere mean you could travel anywhere in space and breathe like you do here on Earth? Wait. You're about to explore this breathable universe.
Besides that surprising breath of fresh air, there would be some other big changes you'd hear of you'd now be able to listen to the sun and the other planets. In the vacuum of space, sound can't travel that's because there are too few molecules between the planets and the stars to carry the vibrating sound waves. But in this new space atmosphere, those sound waves could travel great distances, so you'd not be able to hear everything loud and clear. The sun is constantly vibrating at different frequencies. It would be so loud that it would seem deafening even considering the great distance between our star and the Earth's surface.
It would still reach your ears at a volume of 125 decibels. Imagine going about your daily routine to a soundtrack similar to church bells only it would be as loud as thousands of police sirens. This would be annoying but it wouldn't be your biggest problem in the vacuum of space.
There's no friction. That means all the planets and moons, orbit, the sun, without losing speed or at least losing it very very slowly but now with outer space filled with air. All the planets would be slamming into air particles at very high speeds.
The Earth would experience the same fate as the Asteroids that enter our planet's atmosphere. The friction causes them to heat up and burn so, with the Earth currently orbiting the Sun at a velocity of 30 Kilometers per second, all that friction would leave us with nothing more than scorched surfaces. And this would be far from the end of the chaos.
Eventually the moon would slow to a complete stop. Yeah, then Earth's gravity would pull the Moon closer and that would result in a devastating Collision. If you survived through the scorched Earth, this crash would be the end for the whole planet. It would tear the Earth, apart the rest of the solar system. Wouldn't fare much better with so much air in it.
Our solar system could turn into a black hole. This is because all this air would have mass and with the radius of the heliosphere spanning 90 astronomical units, that's a lot of mass. Yeah, about 5 Billion times more than the sun itself.
So, if the sun's gravitational pull made, all this Mass compressed toward it the solar system would become increasingly dense if all that air compressed into a space. About 80% of the Earth's diameter. Dude witnessed the creation of a Black hole. I mean if you were still alive at that point, that's unlikely.
That Black hole would be about 1200 times more massive than the supermassive, lack hole in the middle of the Milky way. Okay at this point, you and I would be long gone and it might be for the best because it looks like these two gravitational monsters are about to collide but that's a story for another day.
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In the euthanasia debate there are a number of terms used more or less interchangeably – euthanasia, mercy killing, physician-assisted suicide, assisted dying, withdrawal of life-prolonging treatment – but the concepts are not identical and are often not well-understood.
Voluntary Euthanasia is the act of intentionally, knowingly and directly causing the death of a patient, at the request of the patient. If someone other than the person who dies performs the last act, euthanasia has occurred. Euthanasia is involuntary where the person is able to give consent but has not done so, or where a person was euthanised against their will, and non-voluntary where the person lacks capacity to give consent or request to end his or her life.
Assisted Suicide is the act of intentionally and knowingly providing the means of death to another person at that person’s request, in order to facilitate their suicide. If the person who dies performs the last act, assisted suicide has occurred. Physician assisted suicide is where the person providing the means (e.g. lethal drugs) is a medical practitioner.
WHAT IS NOT EUTHANASIA
The administration of pain relief
Everyone has a right to effective pain relief. The administration of drugs in doses sufficient to alleviate pain and suffering rarely causes death and it is permitted and it is ethical. From time to time, a patient may die whilst receiving such drugs. That is not euthanasia, since the death of the patient was not the intended outcome of the medication. The Australian and New Zealand Society of Palliative Medicine (ANZSPM 2013) states: “Treatment that is appropriately titrated to relieve symptoms and has a secondary and unintended consequence of hastening death, is not euthanasia.”
The withdrawal of burdensome and futile life-prolonging treatment
The common practice of withdrawing futile medical assistance from a patient for whom it is not accomplishing anything useful, despite this action being associated potentially with the person’s death, is lawful. There is no legal or ethical requirement that a diseased or injured person must be kept alive ‘at all costs’. The law has drawn a clear and consistent line between withdrawing medical support thereby allowing the patient to die of his or her own medical condition, and intentionally bringing about the patient’s death by a positive act.
WHAT DOES THE LAW CURRENTLY SAY ABOUT SUICIDE?
s 179 of the Crimes Act 1961 (NZ) states that “Everyone is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 14 years who—(a) incites, counsels, or procures any person to commit suicide, if that person commits or attempts to commit suicide in consequence thereof; or (b) aids or abets any person in the commission of suicide.” Furthermore, under s 151 there is a duty to provide “necessaries” of life to those who have the care or charge of a “vulnerable adult” who is unable to provide himself or herself with these essentials.
WHAT ABOUT MY ‘CHOICE’?
It is important to note that a person may refuse medical treatment and may do so even if it results in his or her death. Section 11 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 reinforces this common law right by providing that “everyone has the right to refuse to undergo any medical treatment.” The Australian and New Zealand Society of Palliative Medicine (ANZSPM 2013) states: “Patients have the right to refuse life sustaining treatments including the provision of medically assisted nutrition and/or hydration. Refusing such treatment does not constitute euthanasia.” Complying with such a refusal does not constitute euthanasia.
ABUSE – EVEN WITH ‘SAFEGUARDS’
As a NZ Herald editorial put it – “devising a robust euthanasia regime, complete with adequate safeguards, seems hardly feasible.” The potential for abuse and flouting of procedural safeguards is a strong argument against legalisation. An overseas study found that 32 percent of all assisted deaths in the Flemish region of Belgium are done without explicit request. The legal requirement to report euthanasia has not been fully complied with in countries that allow euthanasia either. The terminally ill and those suffering great pain from incurable illnesses are often vulnerable. And not all families, whose interests are at stake, are wholly unselfish and loving. There is a risk that assisted suicide may be abused in the sense that vulnerable people may be persuaded that they want to die or that they ought to want to die.
Anyone advocating for euthanasia or assisted suicide should have to answer this question: How many wrongful deaths are they prepared to risk if these practices are introduced in New Zealand? What is the number? What is the acceptable error rate, where error means wrongful death?
Many critics emphasise the inevitable extension of euthanasia over time – the so-called ‘mission creep’ or ‘slippery slope’ phenomenon. There is empirical evidence from those countries that have authorised euthanasia that the availability and application of euthanasia expands to situations never initially envisaged as indications for it. So, for example, euthanasia has been extended to enable minors to avail themselves of it (albeit with parental consent) in the Netherlands and Belgium.
Based on overseas experience, it is extremely likely that if legalised in New Zealand, euthanasia will become a mechanism to terminate the lives of those who do not consent to it as well as those who do consent. It will be available to, and thus come to be utilised by, minors. It will be applied to new-born infants with disabilities. Once society accepts one form of euthanasia restricted to a precise set of conditions, it will be difficult or impossible to confine euthanasia to those conditions. For instance, if one allows euthanasia for adults suffering from incurable terminal diseases, then what prevents those with curable diseases from demanding this “treatment”? (Maryan Street’s proposed euthanasia Bill – subsequently withdrawn – already had this extended availability).
When a newly-permitted activity is characterised as a ‘human right’ there is often a constituency who will lobby to extend such a right to a greater number of persons. If some citizens are currently deprived of enjoying this newly-minted right, then ‘equality’ and non-discrimination demands that they be granted it too.
Professor Theo Boer was a member of the Dutch Regional Euthanasia Commission for nine years, during which he was involved in reviewing 4,000 cases. He admitted to being a strong supporter of euthanasia and argued originally that there was no ‘slippery slope’. However, by 2014 he had had a complete change of mind. He testified to UK politicians considering the issue:
“Whereas in the first years after 2002 hardly any patients with psychiatric illnesses or dementia appear in reports, these numbers are now sharply on the rise. Cases have been reported in which a large part of the suffering of those given euthanasia or assisted suicide consisted in being aged, lonely or bereaved. Some of these patients could have lived for years or decades.”
‘RIGHT TO DIE’ OR ‘DUTY TO DIE’
Procedural safeguards that require the patient’s consent look convincing in theory. In practice, such safeguards can only go so far. Coercion is subtle. The everyday reality is that terminally ill persons and those afflicted with non-terminal, but irreversible and unbearable physical or mental conditions, are vulnerable to self-imposed pressure. They will come to feel euthanasia would be ‘the right thing to do’, they have ‘had a good innings’, they do not want to be a ‘burden’ to their nearest and dearest.
Annual reports by Oregon Public Health contain data on the numbers of patients who reported that part of their motivation to request euthanasia was because they felt themselves to be a “burden on family and friends”. Forty percent of patients who requested assisted suicide in 2014 did so out of concern for being a burden on their family; only 13% did so in 1998.
Elderly and ailing patients are all too aware that their increasingly expensive rest home and geriatric care is steadily dissipating the inheritance that awaits their children. Sadly, the more unscrupulous and callous offspring would not be slow in pointing this out either.
It’s not pain but ‘existential distress’ that leads people to assisted suicide, study suggests Washington Post, May 2017
BURDEN PLACED ON PATIENTS
Simply offering the possibility of euthanasia or assisted suicide shifts the burden of proof, so that patients must ask themselves why they are not availing themselves of it. Society’s offer of an easy death communicates the message to certain patients who are struggling, that they may continue to live if they wish, but the rest of us have no strong interest in their survival. Indeed, once the choice of a quick and painless death is officially accepted, resistance to this choice may be seen as being stubborn, eccentric or even selfish.
Emeritus Professor David Richmond contends:
“It is older people (and those with disabilities, of whom older people form a large percentage) who actually have the most to fear from legalising these practices…. Older people are, by and large, very sensitive to being thought to be a burden, and more likely than a young person to accede to more or less subtle suggestions that they have “had a good innings.”… That is why most District Health Boards in the country have an Elder Abuse team. Hence subtle and not so subtle pressure on older people to request euthanasia where it is available as an option for medical “care” is not always because the family has the best interests of their ageing relative at heart.”
The design of a euthanasia or assisted suicide regime is heavily premised on the assumption that persons are clear-minded, rational and free of coercion. But how ‘rational’ a decision can one make when one is suffering from a devastating life event? Research on human decision-making suggests that when a person is suffering, decision-making becomes less rational. Most of the demands for legalising euthanasia and assisted suicide come from exceptional individuals who are intelligent, articulate and who clearly comprehend their predicament. Yet a euthanasia law will have to protect everyone – the inarticulate as well as the articulate, the impaired, gullible or naïve, as well as the intelligent and alert.
CONFLICTING MESSAGES ABOUT SUICIDE PREVENTION
There will always be concerns about conflicting messages being sent regarding suicide if assisted suicide becomes lawful. On the one hand society will offer some individuals assistance to commit suicide, yet on the other hand seek to take a zero-tolerance approach to individual suicides. The arguments put forward for allowing assisted death can also be reasons given for any suicide. Legalising euthanasia could potentially institutionalise suicide as a method of coping with personal problems. The risk of ‘suicide contagion’ associated with a media campaign around promoting euthanasia is also a real concern.
A study published in 2015 found that legalising assisted suicide was associated with a 6.3% increase in total suicides, an effect that was especially pronounced in individuals older than 65.
READ Family First NZ’s Oral Submission to the Inquiry into ending one’s life in NZ “You don’t discourage suicide by assisting suicide”
Many people with depression who request euthanasia revoke that request if their depression and pain are satisfactorily treated. Even very mild depression – of the kind that would not render a person legally incompetent – can have a marked effect on one’s predisposition to live or die. Virtually all patients who are facing death or battling an irreversible debilitating disease are depressed at some point. If euthanasia or assisted suicide is allowed, many patients who would have otherwise traversed this difficult dark phase (and found meaning in continued living) may not get that chance and will die prematurely. The Netherlands has seen a sharp increase in the number of people choosing to end their own lives due to mental health problems such as trauma caused by sexual abuse.
ACT MP David Seymour’s bill allows assisted suicide for those with a grievous and irremediable condition, or in advanced state of irreversible decline, or with unbearable suffering unable to be relieved in a manner the person considers tolerable. The fact that “unbearable suffering” is self-determined means that this bill effectively allows for assisted suicide on demand for any condition – not just the terminally ill. Yet the most common reason for people taking this view of their condition is depression, which is often poorly diagnosed and is potentially treatable.
For example, in the Netherlands:
Netherlands sees sharp increase in people choosing euthanasia due to ‘mental health problems’ Telegraph, May 2016
THE ‘ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM’
A large amount of the public purse is spent on healthcare for the dying, those with dementia and the elderly. Euthanasia is cheap; good palliative care and hospice services expensive. Bureaucrats are always looking for the cheapest ways to spend health care budgets. This harsh argument from economics is seldom, if ever, heard issuing from the lips of advocates for euthanasia, but it is arguably the ‘elephant in the room’ in the debate. The cold, fiscal reality is that end of life care is expensive and having citizens opt for an earlier death is associated with substantial government savings. Another smaller-sized ‘elephant’ is the increasing demand for human organs suitable for transplants.
Insurance companies abusing assisted suicide laws (US) Washington Post, June 2017
WHAT DO THE MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS THINK?
The majority of the medical profession and national medical associations around the world remain resolutely opposed to the introduction of euthanasia or assisted suicide. The role of the doctor would be irrevocably changed from healer to sometime killer, from caring professional who saves lives to one who takes them. “Therapeutic killing” would have arrived. Inevitably, patient trust would be eroded.
“The NZMA is opposed to both the concept and practice of euthanasia and doctor assisted suicide. Euthanasia, that is the act of deliberately ending the life of a patient, even at the patient’s request or at the request of close relatives, is unethical. Doctor-assisted suicide, like euthanasia, is unethical … This NZMA position is not dependent on euthanasia and doctor-assisted suicide remaining unlawful. Even if they were to become legal, or decriminalised, the NZMA would continue to regard them as unethical.”“The NZMA however encourages the concept of death with dignity and comfort, and strongly supports the right of patients to decline treatment, or to request pain relief, and supports the right of access to appropriate palliative care. In supporting patients’ right to request pain relief, the NZMA accepts that the proper provision of such relief, even when it may hasten the death of the patient, is not unethical.
The NZMA is opposed to both the concept and practice of euthanasia and doctor assisted suicide. Euthanasia, that is the act of deliberately ending the life of a patient, even at the patient’s request or at the request of close relatives, is unethical. Doctor-assisted suicide, like euthanasia, is unethical … This NZMA position is not dependent on euthanasia and doctor-assisted suicide remaining unlawful. Even if they were to become legal, or decriminalised, the NZMA would continue to regard them as unethical.”
NZ Medical Association: Position Statement on Euthanasia (approved 2005)
Don’t change euthanasia laws – NZ Medical Association Newshub, Sep 2016
Australian Medical Association rejects assisted suicide The Australian, Nov 2016
POLLS HAVE CONFUSED THE ISSUE
Opinion polls in New Zealand suggest the majority supports the legalisation of euthanasia and/or assisted suicide. But as we showed earlier, many people simply want to ensure that the administration of pain relief and the withdrawal of burdensome treatment are not treated as illegal. The questions have sometimes been misleading in that they conflate actions that are perfectly legal and moral with those that are unlawful. They consistently ask about a patient in insufferable pain, thus playing on peoples’ fears, whilst failing to acknowledge that pain is no longer a good reason for requesting euthanasia. In the 10 years that assisted suicide has been legal in Oregon State, it is doubtful if there has been a single request for it from a person suffering from uncontrolled pain. The continued emphasis on pain suggests a degree of cynicism on the part of those who compile such questions. Support typically drops for euthanasia or assisted suicide when state-funded palliative care is on the table.
Strong Opposition to legalising euthanasia – Inquiry
Parliament’s health select committee received 21,277 submissions as it considered the investigation into ending one’s life in New Zealand over the past year. The majority (77%) opposed the legalisation of euthanasia, according to an analysis of the submissions by the Care Alliance, an umbrella group opposed to law change, which includes Family First, Euthanasia Free NZ, Hospice NZ and Not Dead Yet Aotearoa. Its research concluded that 16,411 of the submissions opposed legalisation, while 4142 supported it. Care Alliance secretary Matthew Jansen said the submissions reflected the depth and breadth of public attitudes about euthanasia.
READ MORE https://www.16000voices.org.nz/
WHAT HAS THE OVERSEAS EXPERIENCE SHOWN US?
- From 1998 to 2014, the number of deaths from assisted suicide has increased from 16 to 105 per year – a 656% rise over 16 years
- No healthcare provider was present in over 80% of assisted suicide deaths in 2014—officials do not know under what conditions these people died
- The state records complications in 2.7% of all assisted suicide deaths between 1998 and 2014, though whether or not complications occurred in nearly 60% of all assisted suicide deaths is unknown
- Studies have found that 1 in 6 patients who receive a prescription for lethal drugs have clinical depression
- Forty percent of patients who requested assisted suicide in 2014 did so out of concern for being a burden on their family; only 13% did so in 1998
- At least 23% of euthanasia deaths are not reported each year as is required by law
- The Dutch have practiced euthanasia on infants since 2005, under guidelines laid out in the Groningen Protocol. One of the authors of the Groningen Protocol, Professor John Griffiths, believes that the legalisation of euthanasia “assuredly changed” the cultural norms in the Netherlands “in the direction of open acceptance of the legitimacy of termination of life of severely defective newborn babies”
- The Netherlands has seen a sharp increase in the number of people choosing to end their own lives due to mental health problems such as trauma caused by sexual abuse.
- Roughly 30% of euthanasia deaths in the Flanders region are performed without patient request or consent (1.8% of all deaths in the region) – those most often euthanised without their request or consent are the elderly, the incompetent, and those dying in hospitals
- Euthanasia deaths increased by over 5000% between legalisation in 2002 and 2011; between 2011 and 2012, the rate of euthanasia deaths increased by a further 25% In 2016, it was reported that euthanasia cases in Belgium had doubled in just five years.
- Only about 50% of euthanasia deaths in the Flanders region are reported to the Federal Control and Evaluation Committee as is required by law
- As of 2014, there is no age limit on who may access euthanasia and assisted suicide
- Among those euthanised in the past few years: deaf 45-year-old twins who were going blind; a 44-year-old woman with chronic anorexia nervosa; a 64-year-old woman with chronic depression without informing her family
(Source: Maxim Institute)
In 2017 alone, assisted suicide bills have been stopped or defeated in Maine, Tasmania, Hawaii, Utah, New Mexico, Nebraska, Minnesota, and Maryland while in several other states, assisted suicide bills were introduced but lacked support to even be debated. Of the roughly 196 countries in the world and 50 US states, only 11 have legalised some form of assisted dying – about 4% of jurisdictions worldwide.
SOME DISTURBING CASES IN THE MEDIA RECENTLY
It’s not pain but ‘existential distress’ that leads people to assisted suicide, study May 2017
Terminal cancer patient told hospital would rather spend money on others (New Zealand!) Mar 2017
Dutch gov’t panel: Doctor who forcibly euthanized elderly woman ‘acted in good faith’ Feb 2017
Netherlands offers euthanasia for alcoholics Dec 2016
Assisted-suicide law prompts insurance company to deny coverage to terminally ill California woman Oct 2016
Dutch may allow assisted suicide for those who feel they have ‘completed life’ Oct 2016
UK woman given 2 months to live survived for nine years Sep 2016
74% of Belgian mental suffering euthanised were women Aug 2016
Belgium man seeks euthanasia to end his sexuality struggle June 2016
Sex abuse victim in her 20s allowed to choose euthanasia May 2016
UNICEF lobbies Canadian Parliament to allow euthanasia for children May 2016
Belgian woman euthanised after heartbreak Feb 2016
Woman, 50, granted right to die after complaining she’s ‘lost her sparkle’ Dec 2015
Belgium experts ask for end to euthanasia based on mental health problems Dec 2015
German Parliament approves assisted suicide for ‘altruistic’ reasons Nov 2015
Young and fit and killing themselves using euthanasia drug (Australia) Oct 2015
Growing number of mentally ill Dutch choosing to be killed at euthanasia clinic Aug 2015
Belgium study Finds Euthanasia Targets Women and People With Depression or Autism July 2015
Deaths among young an unintended consequence of euthanasia movement: Australian mother July 2015
A healthy, 24-year-old woman to be euthanised in Belgium for psychological reasons June 2015
Euthanasia wanted for man in constant pain after having a tumour despite not being terminally ill May 2015
Doctors Killed His Belgian Mom Because She Was Depressed. Now He Speaks Out Against Euthanasia Jan 2015
Elderly Scottish cousins undergo joint euthanasia for fear of being put in separate care homes Feb 2015
Documentary shows Belgian doctor euthanizing a depressed, suicidal woman Jan 2015
Mentally ill patients killed by euthanasia in Holland trebles in a year Oct 2014
Man with same brain cancer as Brittany Maynard (US) has lived 13 years after being given just 6 months Nov 2014
Euthanasia for ‘depressed’ alleged murderer by campaigner Philip Nitschke (Aust) July 2014
Swiss – assisted dying for elderly who are not terminally ill May 2014
THE WAY FORWARD FROM HERE
New Zealand has a well-developed network of hospices, and palliative medicine is widely practiced. There is research on the actual experience of those nearing the end of life indicating that fears of dying tend to dissipate when terminally-ill patients receive good hospice or palliative care.
The key priority must be to improve the provision of high quality palliative care and practical support. This should be available in all areas of New Zealand. The highest quality of pain control and palliative medicine should be given priority in medical training so that every New Zealander can benefit. Patients facing death have a fundamental human right – a right to receive the very best palliative care, love and support that we can give to alleviate the ‘intolerable suffering’ that they fear. This is real death with dignity – surrounded and supported by loved ones, rather than a right to try and preempt the ‘uncertainty’ and timing of the end. Assisting suicide is not the answer.
Voluntary euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide is a complex and challenging subject. Both the advocates and opponents of euthanasia are sincere and committed to what they see as the most humane and prudent policy for society.
Voluntary euthanasia has the allure of being an enlightened and compassionate response to the plight of the suffering, but its practical operation is fraught with risks and there are slippery slopes that are indeed very slippery. Perhaps the most ominous change is one that cannot be proved. There will be an irreversible alteration to the way society and medical professionals view the demise of the elderly, the disabled, the incurably afflicted and the terminally ill. Death will be planned, coordinated and state-sanctioned in a manner hitherto unknown.
We should increase care, support, and funding for the best palliative care regime in the world – but we should not allow euthanasia and assisted suicide.
This information was primarily sourced from the research paper “Killing Me Softly: Should Euthanasia Be Legalised?” by Professor Rex Ahdar (2014). The full paper (including the Executive Summary) can be downloaded for free HERE
Australian and New Zealand Society of Palliative Medicine (ANZSPM 2013). The Double Effect principle was endorsed by the NZ High Court in Seales v Attorney-General NZHC 1239 at -
Nicklinson v A Primary Care Trust EWCA Civ 961 at and
Skegg et al 2006: 230, 534
New Zealand Herald (2004) “Legal mercy killing just not feasible”, 2 April 2004
Chambaere, Kenneth, Johan Bilsen, Joachim Cohen, et al (2010) “Physician-assisted deaths under the euthanasia law in Belgium: a population-based survey” Canadian Medical Association Journal 182(9): 895-901
Pretty v DPP UKHL 61 at
Oregon Public Health Division, Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act—2014 [Annual Report-Year 17] (Salem: Oregon Public Health, 2015
Department of Human Resources, Oregon Health Division, Center for Disease Prevention and Epidemiology, Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act: The First Year’s Experience (Portland: Oregon Health Division, 1999
Apkarian, A Vania, Yamaya Sosa et al (2004) “Chronic pain patients are impaired on an emotional decision-making task” Pain 108: 129-136
Mishara, Brian L and David N Weistubb (2013) “Premises and evidence in the rhetoric of assisted suicide and euthanasia” International Journal of Law and Psychiatry 26: 427-435
Mishara and Wiesstubb 2013: 434
Graham and Prichard 2013: 20
See Seales v Attorney-General NZHC 1239 at -
Oregon Public Health Division, Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act—2014 [Annual Report-Year 17] (Salem: Oregon Public Health, 2015).
Oregon Public Health Division, 2015.
Oregon Public Health Division, 2015.
L Ganzini, E Goy, S Doscha, “Prevalence of depression and anxiety in patients requesting physician’s aid in dying: cross sectional survey,” in British Medical Journal (2008), 337: 1682; Ilana Levene and Michael Parker, “Prevalence of depression in granted and refused requests for euthanasia and assisted suicide: a systematic review,” in Journal of Medical Ethics (2011), 37(4): 205-211.
Oregon Public Health Division, Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act—2014 [Annual Report-Year 17] (Salem: Oregon Public Health, 2015.
Department of Human Resources, Oregon Health Division, Center for Disease Prevention and Epidemiology, Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act: The First Year’s Experience (Portland: Oregon Health Division, 1999).
B Onwuteaka-Philipsen, A Brinkman-Stoppelenburg, C Penning, G Jong-Krul, J van Delden, A van der Heide, “Trends in end-of-life practices before and after the enactment of the euthanasia law in the Netherlands from 1990 to 2010: a repeated cross-sectional survey,” in The Lancet (2012), 908-915.
E Jackson & J Keown, Debating Euthanasia (Portland: Hart Publishing, 2012), 100.
K Chambaere, J Bilsen, J Cohen, B Onwuteaka-Phililpsen, F Mortier, L Deliens, “Physician-assisted deaths under the euthanasia law in Belgium: a population-based study,” in Canadian Medical Association Journal (2010), 182 (9): 895-901.
W D Bondt, W Distelmans, M De Maegd, M Englert, J Herremans, Cinquieme rapport aux Chambres Législatives (Années 2010-2011) (Commission Fédérale de Contrôle et d’Évaluation de l’Euthanasie, 2012).
T Smets, J Bilsen, J Cohen, M Rurup, F Mortier, L Deliens, “Reporting of euthanasia in medical practice in Flanders, Belgium: cross sectional analysis of reported and unreported cases,” in British Medical Journal (2010), 341: 5174.
Kastenbaum, Robert (2006) The Psychology of Death, 3rd ed. New York: Springer; Mishara and Weisstub 2013: 433 | <urn:uuid:057588e1-fadf-46db-acab-e8493c7f9900> | CC-MAIN-2021-39 | https://rejectassistedsuicide.org.nz/qa-briefing-paper/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-39/segments/1631780060908.47/warc/CC-MAIN-20210928214438-20210929004438-00141.warc.gz | en | 0.933448 | 6,226 | 2.890625 | 3 |
Beginning this week, The Dallas Morning News will capitalize Black as a racial description. The word black is already our preferred term; the change to uppercase recognizes Black people as a distinct cultural group and puts Black on equal footing with Latino and Native American.
A few factors drive changes in our stylebook, or guide to usage. One is the extent to which terms and spellings are adopted in the language. In recent days, many publications and organizations have embraced Black as their preferred term. They include The Associated Press, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, McClatchy newspapers and the Columbia Journalism Review.
The tide of history is another factor. News organizations cannot and should not ignore powerful demands that America fully acknowledge Black people’s humanity. Capitalizing the word is a show of respect for their unique status and contributions.
Finally, our style guidelines generally adhere to the preferences of the people and institutions we write about. More and more, we see Black people referring to themselves in writing as Black rather than black, African-American, or outdated terms from the past.
The word white, when referring to race, will remain lowercase in The News. That is because the term evokes skin color, not culture or ethnicity, and because capitalizing white is not common among white Americans and is a tactic often used by white supremacists.
No matter what style we use, The News will use racial identifiers only when they are relevant to a story.
Journalism style is ever-changing. We believe the moment is right for this change. | <urn:uuid:53d42888-ce36-475e-a070-aec97391b0c3> | CC-MAIN-2021-10 | https://www.dallasnews.com/news/2020/06/24/capitalizing-black-a-sign-of-respect-changing-times/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-10/segments/1614178357929.4/warc/CC-MAIN-20210226145416-20210226175416-00428.warc.gz | en | 0.93 | 315 | 2.9375 | 3 |
U.S. Cold War Nuclear Target Lists Declassified for First TimeBreaking News
tags: nuclear weapons, atomic bombs
The SAC [Strategic Air Command] Atomic Weapons Requirements Study for 1959, produced in June 1956 and published today for the first time by the National Security Archive www.nsarchive.org, provides the most comprehensive and detailed list of nuclear targets and target systems that has ever been declassified. As far as can be told, no comparable document has ever been declassified for any period of Cold War history.
The SAC study includes chilling details. According to its authors, their target priorities and nuclear bombing tactics would expose nearby civilians and "friendly forces and people" to high levels of deadly radioactive fallout. Moreover, the authors developed a plan for the "systematic destruction" of Soviet bloc urban-industrial targets that specifically and explicitly targeted "population" in all cities, including Beijing, Moscow, Leningrad, East Berlin, and Warsaw. Purposefully targeting civilian populations as such directly conflicted with the international norms of the day, which prohibited attacks on people per se (as opposed to military installations with civilians nearby).
The National Security Archive, based at The George Washington University, obtained the study, totaling more than 800 pages, through the Mandatory Declassification Review (MDR) process (see sidebar).
The SAC document includes lists of more than 1100 airfields in the Soviet bloc, with a priority number assigned to each base. With the Soviet bomber force as the highest priority for nuclear targeting (this was before the age of ICBMs), SAC assigned priority one and two to Bykhov and Orsha airfields, both located in Belorussia. At both bases, the Soviet Air Force deployed medium-range Badger (TU-16) bombers, which would have posed a threat to NATO allies and U.S. forces in Western Europe.
A second list was of urban-industrial areas identified for "systematic destruction." SAC listed over 1200 cities in the Soviet bloc, from East Germany to China, also with priorities established. Moscow and Leningrad were priority one and two respectively. Moscow included 179 Designated Ground Zeros (DGZs) while Leningrad had 145, including "population" targets. In both cities, SAC identified air power installations, such as Soviet Air Force command centers, which it would have devastated with thermonuclear weapons early in the war.
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Importance of English – Speech 1.
Respected teachers and my dear students. Today the subject of my speech is the Importance of English. Language is a medium through which we communicate with others. Ideas and thoughts are shared by this medium. Language is the tool and way which makes us humans and differentiate us from animals. There are more than thousands of languages in this world. Some languages are understood by millions of people and other are understood by only a few thousand people.
English was basically the language of Europe but with the time it becomes the primary or secondary language of most of the US countries like Australia, Canada and America. Today it is the primary language of most European countries along with the other countries which touched the American state and have attachments with this language. English is the language of Hollywood and also for international banking and business. So, for this reason, it is very necessary to learn this language.
There are many factors which make it compulsory for everyone to learn this English language. Firstly it’s a common language which means that if two persons came from different countries they connect basically through this medium. So for international communication, everyone needs to learn it.
For education, it is essential to learn English. Children are encouraged to learn this language in many countries as a second language. In many countries like Germany and France where it is not a primary language, you will see symbols and signs of different subjects written in English. It’s the main language in sciences so many books are written in English. In all famous universities of the world major courses are taught in the English language so that more students can learn it.
On the internet mostly many sites are in English. Even if it’s not in English there is an option for its translation. So by this point, you can understand the importance of this language. It’s a basic language of press media and newspapers. Most books around the world are written in English no matter where you are living. So if you know English you can study book on every topic. As they are available in this language.
Moreover, many famous movies are in English. So you need to learn it. That is the end of my speech.
Have a nice day!
By Ananda (2019)
Importance of English – Speech 2
English is a language that is spoken by more than 100 countries all over the world. English is one of the most important languages in the world.
English is the most commonly spoken language all over the world and therefore there are so many people with which you can practice the language with.
English is also the language of international business in that it is the default language through which trade amongst people from different countries happens.
English is easy to learn as it has simple vocabulary that is easy to grasp. It is the language of the internet as most content over the internet is in English and this gives access to unlimited information.
It is easy to explain the same thing in more than one way due to the multiple vocabulary available.
English therefore comes out as a unification element for people all over the world. Being able to read and understand English, speak and therefore communicate and in this way, understand each other is perhaps the most crucial role English has played and this is why it is integrated in the curriculum of most countries worldwide.
By Mary (2019)
Importance of English language – Speech 3.
I thank the audience for providing me this opportunity for presenting a speech on importance of english language.
Of all the languages spoken across the globe, English is probably the easiest to communicate for many reasons in-spite of it being the third most spoken language after Chinese and Spanish.
For a large part of the languages spoken in the western world, either Germanic or from Latin, the script remains the same. The script for Chinese is entirely different. So English becomes easy.
The grammar and syntax part of English is easier than many other languages like French, although less organised and more prone to confusion.
Since most of the development started from the West, mostly UK and USA, English being the primary language, spread as the most commonly spoken language.
Even though a larger number of people speak Chinese and Spanish, it is due to the population, but it is localised to those regions as against English speaking population that is spread across the globe.
English language has its variations in accent as you move from region to region but as a medium of communication all rules remain the same.
English has the capacity to absorb words from the local languages and grow richer by an ever growing vocabulary.
As a language it is so pervasive that many of the regional languages have picked up words from English and made them a standard part of their dictionary.
I would like to conclude my speech by stating that English is a versatile language that is used to communicate around the world, making it the universal language.
By Janhavi (2019) – edited.
Last Updated: July 01, 2019. | <urn:uuid:558d0af5-e8c8-4d8c-a184-a292517d43ea> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://importantindia.com/29783/short-speech-on-importance-of-english/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233506686.80/warc/CC-MAIN-20230925051501-20230925081501-00251.warc.gz | en | 0.966878 | 1,025 | 2.90625 | 3 |
Thanks to the Norman Conquest in ad 1066, French was introduced in the British Isles. French is another one of those Romance languages developed from Latin. The British natives had been speaking Old English/Anglo-Saxon which had Germanic roots (as we heard in Beowulf). The two cultures influenced each other. People were zipping back and forth across the English Channel (my British pal John W tells me on clear days he can see France from where he lives). English and French speakers swapped words (like lamb meat is mutton from French mouton). They influenced each other’s written language, too. Soon after 1066, church hymnals and psalters in England were written in French.
Later on mediæval England’s nobility became fascinated with chivalry, the knightly code of honor, and courtly love. They created a demand for literature that featured those themes. The nobility spoke French and Latin, so poetry was written in those languages. As time went on, French became the preferred language.*
* Courtly love is where a gentleman adored a lady from afar and performed brave, glorious deeds in her name. Often the ladies were other people’s wives. The romance between Queen Guinevere and Sir Launcelot is a famous example of courtly love. In theory the lady’s and gentleman’s code of honor forbade any monkey business—it was a strictly chaste relationship. Chivalry’s ideal man was a ‘verray parfit gentil knight.’ Even so, Mark Twain’s Connecticut Yankee observed, “Well, it was touching to see the queen blush and smile, and look embarrassed and happy, and fling furtive glances at Sir Launcelot that would have got him shot in Arkansas, to a dead certainty.”
Back to the beginning of The Western Civ User’s Guide to Reading & Writing.
Don’t forget: I wrote another Western Civ User’s Guide! Back to the beginning of The Western Civ User’s Guide to Time & Space. | <urn:uuid:6401191a-ea92-4c5e-97c5-83121251ef2e> | CC-MAIN-2021-31 | https://johnmanders.wordpress.com/tag/language/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-31/segments/1627046154304.34/warc/CC-MAIN-20210802043814-20210802073814-00162.warc.gz | en | 0.939123 | 436 | 2.859375 | 3 |
Working on Fire plays major role with Herbivory Project in SANParks
The South African National Parks (SANParks) and Working on Fire has partnered for many years in studying and researching fire behaviour, fire management and restoring biodiversity.
By applying specialised knowledge, Working on Fire assisted SANParks and their selected team with a Herbivory Project to study the effects fire has on the grazing of vegetation in National Parks.
A recent paper by scientists from Wits University in South Africa shows how creative fire management can increase habitat for wildebeest and other grazing animals in national parks. The work, published in the Journal of Applied Ecology, shows that small, repeated fires can have a concentrating effect on animals, and create “grazing-lawn ecosystems” where food quality is higher, and herbivores can see predators from further away. SANParks managers within Kruger National Park, which is South Africa’s largest protected area, have been managing fire since as early as 1957, with fires applied to achieve objectives.
Fire experts Bob Connolly, Brick Shield and Chris de Villiers from Working on Fire were part of two teams which were formed to burn various plots that were identified. The Working on Fire teams burnt these plots in the Satara region of the Kruger National Park between the months of April and October.
This area is especially dominated by tall, fire-prone grasses and could pose a risk for runaway veld fires. “Our first burn was in 2013 and we initially started with early and late season fires of three different sizes,” says Connolly, National Project Coordinator for WOF Services. “By 2016 our treatment had been so successful that it was not possible to apply the late season fires at all, and many of the early season fires also did not spread,” Bob explains. “In other words, we had switched fire off on these plots through the combination of small fires and grazing and created short-grass habitats where grazer adapted flora should flourish in an environment which is notorious for tall, fire-prone grasses,” Bob continued.
During the drought of 2016, the team decided not to apply any fires, and published the findings of the results they had achieved thus far. “We would like to partner with Working on Fire again on the possibility of attempting to reburn these plots at some point, to test whether our treatment had persisted through the plots,” says Navashni Govender from SANParks.
The Kruger National Park is exploring the possibility of using this new insight to manage the southern Basalt plains, which are notoriously low in animals despite their high soil fertility. | <urn:uuid:a19a6e0d-5ead-4561-9016-43f24de7290b> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://kishugu.com/working-on-fire-plays-major-role-with-herbivory-project-in-sanparks/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337307.81/warc/CC-MAIN-20221002083954-20221002113954-00470.warc.gz | en | 0.968485 | 547 | 3.0625 | 3 |
The Sustainable Development Goals 2017: Lebanon’s report
On 25 September 2015, world leaders adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, promising to work towards a more sustainable world where no one is left behind, and where our
present way of life supports an equally good or even better life for future generations.
17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are at the core of the 2030 Agenda, setting high expectations for all countries in addressing challenges such as poverty, health, education, women’s empowerment, growth, inequality, environment protection and governance.
In addressing issues that are highly relevant to Lebanon and its residents, including goals on equality, economic growth, governance and the environment, the SDGs are an opportunity for the country to develop an ambitious and shared vision of Lebanon fifteen years from now, The Lebanon We Want. With such a shared vision, the SDGs will provide ways for the Lebanese to work together for a better and more equal future for themselves and the future Lebanese generation. | <urn:uuid:60c24821-6996-4925-9465-7ff0903c8d57> | CC-MAIN-2017-51 | http://www.lb.undp.org/content/lebanon/en/home/library/sdg/the-sustainable-development-goals-2017--lebanons-report-.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-51/segments/1512948588072.75/warc/CC-MAIN-20171216123525-20171216145525-00693.warc.gz | en | 0.920079 | 200 | 3.015625 | 3 |
We have all heard the buzz word “Green!” But do we truly understand what green building is or how green building can benefit you, the home owner? Many green projects viewed on HGTV or other luxury home programs only show how someone with a large bank account can “Live Green”. What about the other 95% of the country? Believe it or not, building green can be completed in an economical way that we can all afford. Frankly with the constant rising cost of energy we simply can’t afford not to build green. So, what does this really mean? We’ve outlined below the steps we take while designing and building your home to make green building affordable.
Site design principles such as home orientation to maximize passive solar heating and cooling, onsite storm water retention and infiltration features, and saving trees are some of the basic processes used in green home design and construction.
The most successful green homes start with considering the environment during the design phase. Most of the materials are selected at this time. Our resource efficient designs maximize function, optimize the use of natural resources, and reduce waste. Small steps like using engineered wood products can help optimize resources by using materials in which more of a tree is converted into structural lumber than conventional lumber. By reducing waste we reduce the cost and impact at the landfill.
Efficient energy consumption is by far the best way to lower the overall cost of operating your home. One of the largest costs of homeownership in our climate is heating and cooling. Our partnership with Mark Utz Heating and Cooling Company has made us a leader in Geo Thermal and efficient radiant heating methods. This is an area of your home where spending more will cost you less in the long run. Not only will a great HVAC system save energy, it will also keep your indoor air quality at the pinnacle of healthy levels. To assure the quality of the systems operation we study the building envelope and leave nothing to chance. Installing the proper insulation where needed, sealing voids and air infiltration points, and controlling humidity and moisture transfers ensure peak performance. Other methods we offer include low voltage lighting, tank-less water heaters, energy star windows and energy star appliances to name a few.
The average water use in today’s homes is slightly over 64 gallons a day. Implementing water conservation measures can reduce consumption to 45 gallons or less per day. Products such as water saving showerheads, duel flush toilets, and motion activated faucets can help to reduce the indoor use without cleaning out your wallet. Storm water management and drought resistant landscape choices will help prevent the waste of valuable water resources.
As we mentioned before the indoor air quality of your home is a major concern of ours. We take the idea further than just the HVAC and exhaust systems. The use of low or no VOC (volatile organic compounds) paint, formaldehyde free insulation, and formaldehyde free plywood are a few ways to improve every breathe you take inside your home.
Improper or inadequate maintenance can stunt our best efforts to create a green home for you. Not using an exhaust fan in a bathroom to remove moist air or not changing an air filter regularly are the most common home owner mistakes. We will provide you with all the operation manuals and suggestions in an easy to read format. We also are known for our extraordinary customer service should you need us again.
All of the methods and practices we use to design and construct your Green Home can benefit not only your health but also your wallet. Green Building will;
- Lower operating cost
- Increase comfort
- Improved environmental quality
- Enhanced durability
- Reduce maintenance | <urn:uuid:3bcbc5e4-bc4c-4006-b192-d31b175babf7> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://lefaivre.com/green/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337490.6/warc/CC-MAIN-20221004085909-20221004115909-00388.warc.gz | en | 0.930767 | 745 | 2.5625 | 3 |
IBS doesn't have to mean
"indefinitely being sick"
With as many as one in five people thought to be affected by irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), experts are now talking about an 'epidemic'.
The disorder, which is characterised by gut pain, bloating and diarrhoea, can be triggered by a spell of food poisoning or antibiotics, but often there may be no obvious culprit.
Some studies suggest a genetic link; IBS is also strongly associated with stress and anxiety resulting (amongst other things) from modern, hectic lifestyles and poor diet.
But there are concerns that the condition is being over-diagnosed and, as a result, either other, more serious conditions are being missed or more likely, wrong treatment is being unnecessarily prescribed.
Sufferers often struggle with miserable, often disabling symptoms like bloating, cramps, diarrhoea, constipation, and pain. There are numerous culprits which contribute to IBS. Your gut lining can break down from different things, such as: stress, too many antibiotics or anti-inflammatory drugs (such as aspirin or Advil and steroids), intestinal infections, a low-fibre/high-sugar diet, alcohol and even C-sections.
These and other causes trigger and activate an immune response, sparking food allergies and aggravating your “second brain” (the enteric nervous system aka the gut), acting like a demolition ball that leads to IBS. It isn’t just your bowel that can become affected, it can also affect your mood, your energy levels, and many other conditions.
Traditionally IBS was thought to be a psychological condition. More recently science proves that’s completely wrong. Unfortunately, conventional healthcare professionals often tell patients there is no cure, it’s a mental condition, or they prescribe antidepressants, sedatives, and other medications that could potentially make things worse.
Obviously, this is not the right answer. To treat IBS, you need to address the underlying causes of why your digestion is on the fritz. That’s where conventional medicine usually flunks and Functional Medicine comes into play.
In Functional Medicine, we take for granted that one disease can have different causes (or that one cause can create many diseases, for example as we know it to be in relation gluten). Basically, different patients suffer from IBS for different reasons, and therefore each individual require that we focus on getting to the root cause of their individual disease. In other words, there is no magical one cure fits all.
Research tells us that two of the biggest causes of irritable bowel are food allergies and overgrowth of bad bacteria in the small intestine. There may be other causes, including a lack of digestive enzymes, parasites living in the gut, zinc or magnesium deficiency, and heavy metal toxicity.
For this reason, personalised treatment is critical and should be based on the unique circumstances of each sufferer. The solution is defiantly not a silver bullet, but it can certainly be found if we look carefully at the underlying causes and treat accordingly.
Let’s start by briefly looking at the two principal causes of IBS and then discuss how they can be treated.
Food allergies or sensitivities
It is a well-established principle that eliminating foods which are identified through delayed food allergy testing (IgG antibodies) resulted in dramatic improvements in IBS symptoms. Therefore, we must respect and recognise the role of food allergies and inflammation in IBS.
Essentially this means that certain foods can irritate your bowel and digestive system. These food sensitivities aren’t a true allergy, like a peanut allergy or shellfish allergy, but rather a milder food sensitivity that can cause awful symptoms.
Of the many common food sensitivities, gluten and yeast are perhaps is most prevalent. Even if your healthcare practitioner tells you that your tests for gluten or yeast antibodies or celiac are normal, you can still have a severe reaction. Dairy products, which contain proteins such as casein and whey that can irritate and inflame your gut, is another common trigger.
There are others, including soy, corn, and eggs. Reactions to these foods can cause more than just gut problems. They can also create obesity, depression, acne and other inflammatory diseases.
Your Functional Medicine practitioner can run tests to assess food sensitivities and reactions. Or you could do an elimination diet, which along with sugary and junky foods, eliminates the most common food sensitivities
The surface area of the small intestine, where food is absorbed, is about the size of a tennis court. 60 percent of our immune system is located in there. This sophisticated gut-immune system is just one cell lining away from a toxic gutter which is the part of the gut that contains all of the bacteria and undigested food particles. If that lining cracks, the immune system will be exposed to foreign particles from food, bacteria, and other microbes.
basically, you can’t be healthy if the gut microbial ecosystem isn’t healthy. When your gut bacteria are out of whack — when you have too many pathogenic bacteria and not enough healthy bacteria —you become ill.
Among all that gut bacteria, there are good bacteria, bad bacteria, and bacteria from hell.
If the bad bacteria take over, or if they move into areas that they shouldn’t be (like the small intestine which is normally neutral), they can start fermenting the food digested, particularly sugar or starch based foods.
Imbalances in your gut ecosystem that can trigger or aggravate IBS include leaky gut, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO), and yeast overgrowth. While conventional approaches to treating these and other gut problems usually becomes condition-specific, the secret to reversing them is based on fixing the guy by getting rid of the bad stuff and putting in the right stuff.
Diagnosis and Testing
You should be assessed for IBS if you have had any of the following symptoms for at least six months:
abdominal (stomach) pain or discomfort
a change in bowel habit – such as passing stools more frequently, diarrhoea and/or constipation
A diagnosis of IBS will then be considered if you have stomach pain or discomfort that is either relieved by passing stools, or is associated with a need to go to the toilet frequently or a change in the consistency of your stools.
This should be accompanied by at least two of the following four symptoms:
a change in how you pass stools – such as needing to strain, feeling a sense of urgency or feeling you have not emptied your bowels properly
bloating, hardness or tension in your stomach
your symptoms get worse after eating
passing mucus from your back passage
Ruling out other conditions
Many cases of IBS can be diagnosed based on your symptoms alone, although sometimes further tests may be needed to check for other possible causes.
For example, your healthcare professional may arrange blood tests to rule out other conditions that cause similar symptoms, such as an infection or celiac disease (a digestive condition where a person has an adverse reaction to gluten).
A sample of your stools will also often be tested for the presence of a substance called calprotectin. This substance is produced by the gut when it is inflamed, and its presence in your stools could mean your symptoms are being caused by inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).
A more advanced test called IBStatus can be done privately (since it’s not offered on the National Health System. This test includes the presence of calprotectin and in addition the following:
Entamoeba histolytica EIA
Giardia lamblia EIA
Pancreatic Elastase 1
IBStatus offers a concise look at the overall health of the gastrointestinal (GI) tract. It is a non-invasive evaluation that uses biotechnology to evaluate digestion, absorption, inflammation, and parasite infection. This test is designed to specifically help identify inflammatory conditions (including subclinical inflammation), Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD), NSAID enteropathy, and post-infectious Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS).
The Biggest Change You Can Make to Treat IBS
If you suffer from IBS, you are most probably looking for quick relief. The biggest change you can make to get remarkable, almost-immediate results is to transform your diet.
This is very easily done and all it take is going on an anti-inflammatory diet which is low in allergens, refined carbohydrates, sugars, and all processed foods. It’s always a good idea to maintain a food journal and note what you eat and how you feel after each meal. You might also want to consider removing foods that are difficult for digestion, such as grains and legumes.
Tactics to Eliminate IBS
Due to the fact that there are likely to be many underlying issues which can contribute to IBS, testing and working with a Functional Medicine practitioner is the best way forward. Having said that, however, simply applying the following ‘tricks’ and other strategies can help reverse or prevent IBS and create a heavenly gut.
Stay away from all processed junk food. Including soft drinks, juices, and diet drinks, which influence sugar and lipid metabolism. Liquid sugar calories (those you get from sugary drinks and alcohol) are the biggest single contributor to obesity, diabetes, and heart disease.
Get lots of protein into your diet. Adding protein to every meal (including breakfast) will help avoiding the blood sugar imbalances that feed the bad gut bacteria, eat protein with every meal, even at breakfast. Best is always to eat fresh and sustainably raised animal protein, such as fish, turkey, chicken, and lean cuts of lamb. Ensure to have plenty of vegetable protein such as nuts, beans, seeds, and tofu.
Eat plenty of high-fibre foods. Whole grains, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and fruit are all great sources of healthy fibre.
Do not shy away from healthy fat. Increase omega-3 fatty acids by eating wild caught salmon, sardines, herring, flaxseeds, and seaweed. Use more grass-fed or organic animal products. Eliminate all hydrogenated fats which are found in margarine, shortening, and processed oils, and in many baked goods and processed foods. Instead use healthy oils, such as coconut oil, olive (especially extra virgin olive oil), cold pressed sesame, red palm oil, and other nut oils.
Eat at least 8 to 10 servings of colourful fruits and vegetables every day. They contain disease fighting vitamins, minerals, fibre, phytonutrients, antioxidants, and anti-inflammatory substances.
Add vitamins and nutrients to your diet. Eradicating IBS requires not only to clean up your gut but also to replenish it with healthy stuff. Zinc, vitamin A, glutamine, omega-3 fats (fish oil), and evening primrose oil are among the nutrients that help fix the gut lining. I also recommend use herbs like quercetin and turmeric to reduce inflammation and restore a leaky gut.
Reintroduce good bacteria to your gut. Take a specialised probiotic a couple of times a day for two to three months. Start gradually and witness how the probiotics affect your gut. In some cases, some people may need to delay probiotics until their gut is in a better condition. Eating fermented foods such as kimchi or kefir are wonderful alternatives to probiotics.
Reduce stress. Stress is a real biggy when it comes to IBS. I cannot stress (pun intended) that enough! Meditation, deep breathing, and yoga are all great ways to reduce stress. I recommend Hearthmath for stress-busting.
Get 7-8 hours’ of shut-eye. Not sleeping enough can make you fat and leads to depression, pain, heart disease, diabetes, and man many other maladies. There are also certain types of food that can prevent a good night sleep.
Exercise regularly. Anything that gets you off your butt is good (excluding walking to the fridge). Even as little as 30 minutes of vigorous walking can help, and if you want something more intense, try high-intensity interval training or weight resistance. Regardless of your current condition, reducing your ab-flab is crucial. | <urn:uuid:a3141b04-03fc-444b-8e82-cf2aa6c96c6d> | CC-MAIN-2022-49 | https://www.wholeiswell.mc/ibs | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-49/segments/1669446710813.48/warc/CC-MAIN-20221201121601-20221201151601-00023.warc.gz | en | 0.945651 | 2,638 | 2.796875 | 3 |
Just like @Peter, I also begin computational complexity when I introduce sorting and searching. I touch back upon it at various times throughout the year.
(Even though the topic is not part of the AP Computer Science A curriculum, I present the concepts within that course.)
It's important to note that we don't go into great depth; my main learning target is to give them an intuitive sense of constant, logarithmic, linear, and quadratic growth.
During my first sorts/searches lecture, I have them figure out the $O$, $\Omega$, and $\Theta$ (where applicable) for every sort I present. We do, in order:
- Linear search
- Binary search
I use these two to introduce the concept of algorithmic efficiency and those three functions, and the shortcuts we can take when we figure them out $O$.
Then they practice on the following sorts:
- Bubble Sort
- Insertion Sort
- Selection Sort
Later on, when we do a maze solver, I touch on algorithmic complexity again, and yet again when we look at mergesort (after we have done recursion). And yet again when we talk about adding and removing elements from the front and back of linked lists and array lists. (There is actually quite a bit of practice in this exercise)
I have found that, with one lecture and a bit of practice spread throughout the year, the students seem to pick up the concept well. | <urn:uuid:82bc39c6-0dbb-4a40-a0d5-586c8ec29ea5> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://cseducators.stackexchange.com/questions/622/how-to-bring-attention-to-computational-complexity | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030338244.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20221007175237-20221007205237-00406.warc.gz | en | 0.932672 | 311 | 3.046875 | 3 |
Iran / Fars Province
The Fars province is located in the south of the country and is considered the cultural capital of Iran. The word 'Persia' is derived from 'Fars' (the Arabised version of 'Pars' in Old Persian) due to the historical importance of the region. The ruins of Persepolis and Pasargadae, two of the four capital of the Achaemenid Empire, are located in Fars, and are monuments of one of the largest empires in the history of the world.
Shiraz is the capital of the Fars province and one of the most populous cities of the country. As a regional trade centre for over a thousand years, Shiraz is regarded as one of the oldest cities of Iran, as well as a cultural, literary and artistic capital. It also used to be the capital of Iran during the Zand dynasty in the 18th century.
The mausoleum of Hafez is located in the Musalla Gardens of Shiraz.
Hafez was a 14th century Persian poet whose collected works are regarded as a 'pinnacle' of Persian literature and are found in the homes of most people in Iran. Hafez has a significant cultural and spiritual importance to Iranians, who learn his poems by heart and use them as proverbs and sayings.
Old Bazaar in Shiraz
The Vakil Bazaar, one of the oldest bazaars in the world, is located in the old city centre of Shiraz. Featuring beautiful courtyards, caravansarais, and bath houses, its shops are offer all kinds of Persian rugs, spices, copper handicrafts and antiques.
A restaurant is now located in the former bathhouse of the bazaar.
On a conference trip in 2002, Fars nomads demonstrated traditional handicraft, cooking and dancing. In the picture below, Qashqai women are weaving a carpet.
Persepolis, situated around 70 kilometres northeast of Shiraz, was the capital of the Achaemenid Empire around 500 BC and exemplifies the architectural style of the Achaemenid era. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Although much of the city was burned down by Alexander of Macedon around 300 BC, the ruins of the city are still breathtaking in their grand architecture and design.
Pasargadae (Kings Tombs)
Another ancient Persian city and UNESCO Heritage Site, Pasargadae is also located near Shiraz within 40 km of Persepolis, and was the first Achaemenid capital and the resting place of Cyrus the Great. | <urn:uuid:eb0fdd36-7463-4bd2-9b91-b5af630a18c2> | CC-MAIN-2017-13 | http://photos.schatten.info/fars.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-13/segments/1490218190295.65/warc/CC-MAIN-20170322212950-00635-ip-10-233-31-227.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96704 | 538 | 2.765625 | 3 |
HEART HEALTH FINDINGS
Can how many babies a woman has determine her later risk of developing heart problems? How about whether we stay married or remain single? In findings presented at last week’s American College of Cardiology meeting, researchers sought answers to such questions.
1. Marriage protects the heart, a little: Researchers from the New York University Langone Medical Center examined medical records from 3.5 million people and found that married couples were 5 percent less likely to develop clogged arteries compared to those who never wed. Widowed and divorced folks, however were 3 to 5 percent more likely than single people to get heart disease.
2. Women should have two or three babies: Having four or more kids moderately increases a woman’s odds of having early signs of heart disease by her early 40s. But so does having no kids or one kid, according to research by University of Texas Southwestern researchers. While it would be silly to draw practical advice from this study, it does highlight the need to further study pregnancy’s effects on the heart.
3. Eat your veggies in your 20s: Women who ate eight to nine daily servings of fruits and vegetables in their 20s were 40 percent less likely to have signs of artery plaque 20 years later compared to those who had three or fewer servings a day, according to a Minneapolis Heart Institute study. The researchers didn’t find the same protective effect in men. | <urn:uuid:267ecb50-3947-4655-82d0-ca0ba7f258df> | CC-MAIN-2015-48 | http://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/health-wellness/2014/03/30/surprising-findings-concerning-heart-disease-risks/ST0px1qAL52wr77wDGQAaJ/story.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-48/segments/1448398459875.44/warc/CC-MAIN-20151124205419-00191-ip-10-71-132-137.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975596 | 294 | 2.578125 | 3 |
Because the electric force can displace charged objects,
it is capable of doing work. The presence of an electric field implies
the potential for work to be done on a charged object. By studying
the electric potential between two points in an electric
field, we can learn a great deal about the work and energy associated
with electric force.
Electric Potential Energy
Because an electric field exerts a force on any charge
in that field, and because that force causes charges to move a certain
distance, we can say that an electric field does work on charges.
Consequently, we can say that a charge in an electric field has
a certain amount of potential energy, U.
Just as we saw in the chapter on work, energy, and power, the potential energy
of a charge decreases as work is done on it:
The work done to move a charge is the force, F
exerted on the charge, multiplied by the displacement, d
of the charge in the direction of the force. As we saw earlier,
the magnitude of the force exerted on a charge q
an electric field E
is = qE
Thus, we can derive the following equation for the work done on
Remember that d is not simply
the displacement; it is the displacement in the direction that the
force is exerted. When thinking about work and electric fields,
keep these three rules in mind:
When the charge moves a distance r parallel
to the electric field lines, the work done is qEr.
the charge moves a distance r perpendicular
to the electric field lines, no work is done.
the charge moves a distance r at an
angle to the electric field lines, the work done
is qEr cos .
an electric field, E,
a positive charge, q, is moved in the circular
path described above, from point A to point B,
and then in a straight line of distance r toward
the source of the electric field, from point B to
point C. How much work is done by the electric
field on the charge? If the charge were then made to return in a straight
line from point C to point A,
how much work would be done?
How much work is done moving the charge from point A to
point B to point C ?
The path from point A to
point B is perpendicular to the radial
electric field throughout, so no work is done. Moving the charge
from point B to point C requires
a certain amount of work to be done against the electric
field, since the positive charge is moving against its natural tendency
to move in the direction of the electric field lines. The amount
of work done is:
The negative sign in the equation reflects the fact that
work was done against the electric field.
How much work is done moving the charge directly
from point C back to point A?
The electric force is a conservative force, meaning that
the path taken from one point in the electric field to another is
irrelevant. The charge could move in a straight line from point C to
point A or in a complex series of
zigzags: either way, the amount of work done by the electric field
on the charge would be the same. The only thing that affects the
amount of work done is the displacement of the charge in the direction
of the electric field lines. Because we are simply moving the charge
back to where it started, the amount of work done is W
Much like gravitational potential energy, there is no
absolute, objective point of reference from which to measure electric
potential energy. Fortunately, we are generally not interested in
an absolute measure, but rather in the electric potential, or potential
difference, V, between two
points. For instance, the voltage reading on a battery tells us
the difference in potential energy between the positive end and
the negative end of the battery, which in turn tells us the amount
of energy that can be generated by allowing electrons to flow from the
negative end to the positive end. We’ll look at batteries in more
detail in the chapter on circuits.
Potential difference is a measure of work per unit charge,
and is measured in units of joules per coulomb, or volts (V).
One volt is equal to one joule per coulomb.
Potential difference plays an important role in electric
circuits, and we will look at it more closely in the next chapter. | <urn:uuid:a16fa383-fa33-49ae-8c18-27c2ccb9702a> | CC-MAIN-2015-40 | http://www.sparknotes.com/testprep/books/sat2/physics/chapter13section4.rhtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-40/segments/1443737929054.69/warc/CC-MAIN-20151001221849-00243-ip-10-137-6-227.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.925011 | 937 | 4.03125 | 4 |
Pelvic floor exercises
What are pelvic floor muscles and why are they important?
The pelvic floor muscles form a broad sling between your legs. They stretch from the pubic bone at the front of your body to the base of your spine at the back. They help to hold your bladder, uterus (womb) and bowel in place. These muscles also give you control over when you empty your bladder or move your bowels.
While you are pregnant, hormones make these muscles stretch. As a result, you may find you leak a little urine (stress incontinence) when you cough or a sneeze. The problem may carry on after your baby is born. Up to a third of new mums are affected by postnatal urine leaks.
Later on, usually after the menopause, a weak or damaged pelvic floor can lead to prolapse. This is where the pelvic organs move down and push against the walls of the vagina. About four out of 10 women who are over 50 have signs and symptoms of prolapse. If this all sounds a bit alarming the good news is that there is plenty you can do now to protect your pelvic floor.
How does pregnancy affect my pelvic floor?
Being pregnant can place a lot of stress on your pelvic floor muscles. Your pelvic floor can become weak and stretched from as early as 12 weeks into your pregnancy. Constipation, which is common in pregnant women, can put even more strain on your pelvic floor.
How do pelvic floor exercises help me?
Pelvic floor exercises, if done properly and often, can help to protect you from leaking urine while you're pregnant and after your baby is born.
You should be told how to do the exercises during your first pregnancy. If you haven't been shown how to do pelvic floor exercises during your antenatal classes, ask your midwife about them at your next visit. You may be able to take a physiotherapist's class at your local hospital.
Good pelvic floor muscles may help to:
- support the extra weight of pregnancy
- shorten the second stage of labour, when you push your baby out
- heal the area between your anus and vagina (perineum) after birth, by increasing the circulation of blood to it
Another benefit is that women with stronger pelvic floor muscles may be more likely to have orgasms during sex. So doing pelvic floor exercises could help you to have a more satisfying sex life.
How do I find my pelvic floor muscles?
Imagine that you are trying to stop yourself from passing wind and trying to stop your flow of urine mid-stream at the same time. The feeling is one of squeeze and lift, pulling up and in around your front and back passages. When you have practised the exercises for a while, you could try this during love-making, asking your partner whether he can feel the effect.
Some women will feel more happening at the front and some will feel more happening around their bottom. Don't worry too much about this. As long as you can feel a tightening in at least one of these areas, you will be exercising your pelvic floor.
Of course, that sounds easy enough. But the catch is that you have to squeeze and lift without:
- pulling in your tummy
- squeezing your legs together
- tightening your buttocks
- holding your breath
When you first try pelvic floor exercises, it is best to start in a comfortable position, for example, lying down in a quiet place. It may help you get a feel for where your muscles are. Once you know how to do the exercises in this position, try doing them when you are sitting down.
How can I perfect the exercise technique?
When you start out exercising your pelvic floor muscles, you may find that you hold your breath as you squeeze. You'll need to learn to breathe normally as you do the exercises. This is because when you cough or sneeze, you breathe out forcefully. If you can only tighten your muscles when you hold your breath, they will relax as you cough and won't stop urine leaks.
To help you get the technique right, try the following exercise:
- Place one hand at the top of your bump and the other on one of your shoulders. Breathe normally for four or five breaths.
- If your breathing is relaxed, you should find that the hand on your tummy moves up and down more than the hand on your shoulder. If this is not happening, try to stop your shoulders moving and let your tummy rise and fall naturally.
- Gently pull up and in "down below" as you breathe out. When you are learning, don't try to pull up so hard that you have to hold your breath. Start with a gentle contraction until you have managed to co-ordinate your contraction with a breath out.
- Try then to hold a contraction for a few seconds while you continue to breathe in and out as normal.
- You may feel your lower tummy muscles tightening, and that's fine. If you are tightening your upper tummy muscles (above your belly button) then you are trying too hard! Go back to the breathing exercise and start again.
- You should aim to be able to hold a pelvic floor contraction for 10 seconds while breathing normally. If you lose your breathing control, stop and start again.
There is a way to help you check if you're doing the exercise properly. Only do this check if you have not been told to avoid sex during pregnancy and do not have any bleeding or infections in your bladder or vagina. Gently insert one or two fingers in your vagina when you are having a bath. Start doing the exercises. You should feel a squeeze and lift inside your vagina if you are exercising your pelvic floor muscles.
Once you have got the basic exercise down to fine art, you can add in fast pull-ups. Begin by making sure you are breathing in a relaxed way and then as you breathe out, pull up your pelvic floor muscles and let go quickly. Then try to pull up and let go quickly up to 10 times in a row without holding your breath.
This exercise helps your pelvic floor muscles to react quickly when you cough, sneeze or laugh. It only works if your pelvic floor muscles are strong enough to support all of your pelvic floor, which is why it is important to start with the slow contractions.
It is much harder to learn how to do these exercises after your baby is born, so practise as much as you can while you're pregnant.
How often do I need to exercise my pelvic floor muscles?
It is recommended you should exercise eight times, three times a day. If you are having problems with leaking urine you may need to do them more often. In fact, it's a good idea to do as many as you can as you go about your daily routine. You should aim to make pelvic floor exercises a part of your life for ever. | <urn:uuid:babdea27-3a91-4a9d-8382-44e982a3847d> | CC-MAIN-2019-13 | https://www.womenshealth.ie/pregnancy-a-to-z/pelvic-floor-exercises/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-13/segments/1552912207146.96/warc/CC-MAIN-20190327000624-20190327022624-00443.warc.gz | en | 0.958219 | 1,418 | 2.53125 | 3 |
The Day of the Lord is a topic which touches so many of the other themes and concepts of scripture that it easily expands to vast proportions. It is not the intention of this paper to do full justice to this topic, but rather to provide an opportunity for me to begin such a study. Because of limitations of time and space I have tried to address only the leading components of this topic.
The Day of the Lord
Like the prophet Elijah during the reign of King Ahab, the Day of the Lord appears out of nowhere in the writing prophets and exerts an abiding influence which continues to the end of the canon. In light of the prominence this theme displays from the prophets onward it is curious that there is no trace of it beforehand, but neither I nor anyone I have encountered can offer an explanation for this. However, it is present, at least obliquely, in all the writing prophets except Jonah and Daniel. Even in Jonah and Daniel, although the term “Day of the Lord” or even “that day” is absent, the essential meaning of the term is present in full force. This study will briefly examine the meaning of the Day of the Lord as it unfolds chronologically.
To accomplish this goal will require a commitment to a chronology of the books, a feat which is certain to invite challenges from all sides. To avoid a prolonged argument about this, we will simply consider the pre-exilic prophets as a group, then the exilic, and the post-exilic each as a group as well. The only difficulty may be with Joel, for which a late date is favored by Dillard and Longman1. While their arguments are weighty, I am not convinced, and so, with other evangelical commentators, will consider Joel with the pre-exilic prophets.
The term “Day of the Lord” only occurs three times in Isaiah2, yet the book is full of references to “that day” and various other formulations denoting the same thing. In chapter 2, verse12 it is a day of terror and the revelation of God’s glory (v. 10), when “the lofty looks of man shall be humbled”3 (v. 11). The Lord shall come upon everything – there will be no escape then – to destroy the idols and the haughtiness of man and to reveal His glory. Chapter 13 is still more graphic. It is a day of wailing, when God shall destroy the whole land (v. 6). “Behold, the day of the Lord comes, Cruel, with both wrath and fierce anger, To lay the land desolate…” (v. 9) In the following verse He introduces the cosmic imagery which often will be part of the description of the Day of the Lord. “For the stars of the heaven and their constellations will not give their light; The sun will be darkened in its going forth, And the moon will not cause its light to shine.” In chapter 34 it is “the day of the Lord’s vengeance” against all the nations. It is a day of God’s fury, when his sword is drenched with blood. The heavens will be destroyed and the earth utterly wasted. But Isaiah is also interwoven with prophecies of the restoration of God’s people. This period is never called “the Day of the Lord,” but the “latter days” (2:2) or “that day” (11:10, 11). So Isaiah’s Day of the Lord is a future event characterized by frightening judgment and destruction, but there is the hope of restoration afterwards.
Amos continues in a similar vein. To a people who were expecting God’s favor he said, “Woe to you who desire the day of the Lord! For what good is the day of the Lord to you? It will be darkness, and not light” (5:18). After Obadiah prophecies the destruction of Edom, he declares, “For the day of the Lord upon all the nations is near….they shall be as though they never had been” (1:15-16). Zephaniah also announces the imminence of the day and he adds the elements of clouds and trumpet. “The great day of the Lord is near; It is near and hastens quickly….That day is a day of wrath, A day of trouble and distress, A day of devastation and desolation, A day of darkness and gloominess, A day of clouds and thick darkness, A day of trumpet and alarm…” (1:14-16). Joel seems to use all the images noted so far, and others to warn of an imminent judgment (2:1-11). Fear, fire, clouds, darkness, war, destruction, and cosmic upheaval are all part of this Day. Joel is unique, however, in using the Day of the Lord to denote a time of blessing (2:28-32). But there is a very significant difference to this Day of the Lord – it is not close at hand, but “afterward,” and as Peter showed, pointed to the New Covenant era.
The pre-exilic prophets, then, foresaw a Day of the Lord which was imminent and terrible, a judgment of total destruction upon Israel and the other nations for their wickedness. The images commonly used: fire, clouds, darkness, war, destruction, and cosmic upheaval, hearken back to God’s appearance on Mt. Sinai and indicate that the Day of the Lord is characterized by the arrival and presence of God. Israel could not approach God at Sinai without perishing (Ex. 19:12-13), and now when God returns in His power and glory she shall perish for her continual sins. The frequent and emphatic statements about the nearness of the Day, especially (as we shall see) in contrast to the absence of any such temporal reference after the exile, require us to see this Day as something that would happen within the current generation or the next. Clearly this Day of the Lord is the invasion of foreign armies, destruction of the nation, deportation, and exile.
Ezekiel also prophecies the Day of the Lord using the same images as the pre-exilic prophets, but only in the first half of his book. After the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple there is no further mention of the Day of the Lord. Instead he focuses on the blessings to come in the restoration.
“The Day of the Lord” occurs only twice in the post-exilic prophets, and then without any reference to a near arrival. Zechariah is full of references to “that day” in the context of future messianic blessings. “‘Sing and rejoice, O daughter of Zion! For behold, I am coming and I will dwell in your midst’, says the Lord of hosts. ‘Many nations shall be joined to the Lord in that day, and they shall become My people.’” (2:10-11a) He prophecies a Day in which the iniquity of the land will be removed (3:9) and there will be peace and prosperity. There will come a Day when God will remember His covenant and restore Israel. “The Lord their God will save them in that day, As the flock of His people.” (9:11-17) Chapter 14 opens with the declaration, “Behold, the day of the Lord is coming…” It is a tumultuous time and Israel will suffer, but “the Lord will go forth and fight against those nations” (v. 3) and make a way of escape for His people. “The Lord shall be King over all the earth” and “Jerusalem shall be safely inhabited.” (vv. 9, 11) Furthermore, God will strike Israel’s enemies with a terrible plague and deliver their booty to His own people (vv. 12-14).
The Old Testament climax of the Day of the Lord theme is found in Malachi. Malachi wrote to a people who had received the blessings promised in the earlier prophecies of restoration, at least some of them, but had become hardened and ungrateful. Like Amos’ audience, they purported to seek the Lord, but in reality their hearts were on the pursuit of personal gain. Apparently they talked much about desiring the Lord to come, but were unaware that they could not “endure the day of his coming.” (3:2) Presumably they sought the Lord to destroy their enemies, but failed to grasp that they had become His enemies by their disobedience. The Old Testament proclamation of the Day of the Lord is delivered with crystal clarity in chapter 3. The previous images are pared down to just one (fire) and the focus is significantly sharpened. The Day of the Lord is when God comes to judge and purify the earth. This was always true. The Babylonian armies were God’s agents to purify Israel and produce a remnant ready to serve Him. When they came, God came. Malachi just drives right to the point. The Lord Himself comes to judge and purify, and to highlight this latter point, he introduces the metaphor of refining and laundering.
Then, in a final blaze of glory, the Day of the Lord is explicitly and comprehensively expounded in chapter four. It will be a “great and dreadful day.” (v. 5) God himself will come (v. 6) as a fire (v. 1) to burn up the wicked and save the righteous. The wicked shall be tormented (v. 3), but the righteous shall be blessed with abundance (v. 2).
It is important to note that many of the passages in the pre-exilic prophets that predict the Day of the Lord emphasize its proximity. Over and over again it is said to be near. However, none of the passages that were written after the fall of Jerusalem say the Day is near. They say it is coming without specifying a time, although Malachi does include the information about the messenger and the return of Elijah as preceding the Day. Clearly, then, the Day of the Lord in view after the exile must further off than before the exile. Before the exile, the Day had been predicted one or two generations before it came. To what does it refer in the post-exilic writings?
Zechariah 14 is more complex than Malachi and it is not possible to consider all the material there. My best judgment is that it refers to the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. The mention of war in Jerusalem (v. 2-3), the Palestinian geography (v. 4-5), the people suffering and fleeing (v. 5), the living waters flowing from Jerusalem to the nations (v. 8), the universal rule of the Lord (v. 9), the destruction of God’s enemies (v. 12-15), the nations coming to worship the King (v. 16), and the holiness of the people (v. 20-21) all seem to indicate Christ’s decisive triumph over apostate Judaism and the permanent opening of the church to the Gentiles that occurred when the temple was destroyed. Malachi, however, is simpler, and benefits from explicit New Testament interpretation. Mark 1:2 identifies John the Baptist as the messenger of Malachi 3:1, which points to Jesus as the Lord coming in judgment. To the dismay of the Jews, Jesus came as the Messenger of the Covenant (Mt. 5:17-20) who convicted them of sin (John 5:45). He came suddenly to the temple and purified it, but the people could not endure His coming. Consequently, He smote them with a curse (Mark 11:12-14, 20-24), yet He saved his own. There can be no doubt; the Day of the Lord in Malachi is the coming of Christ.
The Old Testament prophets predicted two distinct events called the Day of the Lord: the destruction of Jerusalem by Babylon, and the ministry of Christ. The essence of both was the arrival of God in power and glory to judge and purify the earth. Both were terrifying because no man can endure the presence of the Lord. Both involved the destruction of the wicked and the salvation of the righteous. In both cases the righteous emerged as a remnant of Israel and added the nations to their number. The essential difference is the greater glory of the latter Day. In the former God came in ordinary human agents, in the latter He came in His own extraordinary human body. The purifying effects of the first, while real, were far less efficacious than the sanctifying work of Christ. The Jews incorporated proselytes from all over the world, but nothing like the ingrafting of the Gentiles in Christ. The blessings of the first pale in comparison to those of the second.
Moving to the New Testament, the Gospels unfold the fulfilment of the prophecies in Malachi, but it is not until Acts and the day of Pentecost that Joel’s prophecy is fulfilled. This raises the question as to precisely when the Day of the Lord spoken of with regard to Christ took place: the life of Christ, His death, His resurrection, His ascension, or Pentecost. A compelling case could be made for each; indeed, they all are necessary parts of the work of Christ. It seems best, therefore, to consider the Day of the Lord realized by Christ as a package of all these.
But after Pentecost had passed, we still find an expectation of the Day of the Lord. In most instances it is mentioned almost in passing in connection with a comment on the sanctification of Paul’s readers (1 Cor. 1:8, 5:5; 2 Cor. 2: 1:14; Phil. 1:6, 10; 2:16). Even these brief notices make clear, however, that judgment is part of the Day of the Lord, in that the concern for sanctification is in reference to the state of the readers on that Day. Furthermore, since Christ has been revealed as the Lord, this Day just as easily may be designated the Day of Christ. But other passages provide more detail. In Thessalonians the coming of Christ is portrayed with a trumpet and clouds. 2 Peter 3 describes a Day of fire and cosmic collapse, and Revelation 16:14 mentions the Day of God in the context of the battle against his enemies. All three books include judgment, destruction of God’s enemies, and the salvation of His people as components of the Day of the Lord thus exhibiting continuity with the Old Testament Day of the Lord. The actual event must be different, however, for the Day foretold in the Old Testament had already passed. It is also notable that there is no indication that this New Testament Day is near. 2 Thessalonians emphasizes that the Day has not passed yet (thus unambiguously distinguishing it from the Day fulfilled in Christ) and reminds the reader that a great apostasy will occur and the “man of lawlessness” will appear before that Day. 1 Thessalonians urges us to be vigilant and always ready for the coming of Christ, but offers no suggestion as to when he might arrive. Perhaps it is this exhortation to preparedness along with the discussion of our meeting Christ in chapter 4 which has led many to think Paul believed Christ would come within his lifetime, but the text will not bear such a conclusion. These passages (with the possible exception of 2 Peter 3) have to be interpreted in conjunction with others dealing with the final return of Christ at the end of time and the judgment then (e.g. Mt. 25:31-46; Rev. 20:11-15), as the church always has.
But there is another aspect to the Day of the Lord in the New Testament. Having noticed that the essential character of the Day of the Lord is His coming in judgment, we are alerted to the New Testament use of parousia. This word was used for the arrival of ordinary people (e.g. 1 Cor. 16:17, etc.) but had a special application for royalty. “From the Ptolemaic period to the second century A.D. there is clear evidence that the term was used for the arrival of a ruler, king or emperor.”4 “Josephus uses the term parousia for the divine appearances in the Old Testament theophanies.”5 Four specific incidences of the use of parousia stand out: Mt. 24:37; 1 Thess. 4:15; 2 Thess. 2:1; and 2 Peter 3:12; for in these cases parousia is linked with the Day of the Lord. The latter three passages have already been discussed, but Mt. 24 sheds new light on this topic.
The theme of this Olivet Discourse is the parousia of Christ, in response to the question of the disciples about when it would occur. Many of the images of the Day of the Lord are here: warfare, destruction of God’s enemies, the salvation of His people, cosmic upheaval, clouds, and trumpet blast. Then in verse 36 Jesus refers to his coming as a Day. By its character, by the meaning of parousia, and by association of parousia with the Day terminology, we are led to see this as the Day of the Lord even though that term is not used in this passage. Here, however, there is a temporal marker – several, in fact. There will be particularly terrible tribulations and desolations, yet the Gospel will go all over the empire.6 (vv. 6-14) The “abomination of desolation” will stand in the holy place and false christs will arise (vv. 15-28). There will be political and social turmoil (the customary meaning of cosmic upheaval imagery) (vv. 29-30), clouds (v. 30), and a trumpet blast (v. 31), all which will signal the arrival of Christ. But the most striking marker is the assertion that all this will take place within the current generation (v. 34). Here again there are some complex issues which are outside the scope of this paper, as some reasonably interpret the Olivet Discourse as mainly distant future, some as partly distant future and partly close at hand, and others as truly being fulfilled within the current generation.7 My inclination is toward the latter, especially because of the sharp contrast with the lack of temporal markers in the other New Testament passages on the Day of the Lord, and the striking similarity with the Day of the Lord prophesied in the Old Testament as soon to come. If this is the case, we are led to ask what event in the first century would satisfy the specifications of the text. The obvious choice is the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple in A.D. 70.
If the foregoing analysis of the Day of the Lord is correct, we can draw some further conclusions. In both the Old and the New Covenant there was a fairly brief period of time in which the Day of the Lord was prophesied. In both covenants there was an imminent Day in which God came through the agency of human armies, and a distant Day in which God came/will come in his own human body. The first coming was more physically devastating, but the second was by far more radical. The imminent Day raised and broke open dead Israel to live in holiness and to incorporate the nations,8 the distant Day created/will create a new home for God’s people.9 There appears to be a symmetry as God unfolds His redemptive plan in the Old and New Covenants.
What shall we conclude about the Day of the Lord? First, it is evidently not a single day, and not even a single event, but an action of God. VanGemeren says it is “an era of judgment and liberation, condemnation and justification, vindication and salvation, destruction and renewal.”10 It is the personal arrival and presence of God to judge and purify the earth, destroy His enemies, and save His people. Four specific instances in redemptive history can be identified as the Day of the Lord: the exile under Nebuchadnezzar, the ministry of Christ, the destruction of the temple in A.D. 70, and the final coming of Christ at the consummation of all things. The Day of the Lord thus is not just any exercise of His providential power, but is generally linked to an epochal shift in the administration of His covenant.
1. Raymond B. Dillard and Tremper Longman III, An Introduction to the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1994) p. 367.
2. Isaiah 58:13 does not contain yom in the Masoretic text.
3. All scripture quotes are from the New King James Bible unless otherwise indicated.
4. Ben Witherington III, Jesus, Paul and the End of the World (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1992) p. 150.
5. Ibid. p. 151.
6. Empire seems to me a better translation of oikoumene than world. Allowed but not selected by B.A.G., p. 561.
7. Russell is one of several scholars who take this view. J. Stuart Russell, The Parousia (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1990) pp 66-114.
8. I.e. the exile and restoration period saw an increase in proselytes, and the destruction of the temple put an end to the Judaising tendency in the early church.
9. I.e. the distant Day prophesied in the Old Covenant provided the church as a new home for God’s people, while the distant Day prophesied in the New Covenant will provide the new earth for us to inhabit.
10. Willem VanGemeren, The Progress of Redemption (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1988), p. 451.
Bauer, Walter, William F. Arndt, and F. Wilbur Gingrich. A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979.
Bavinck, Herman. The Last Things: Hope for this World and the Next. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1996.
Dillard, Raymond B. and Tremper Longman III. An Introduction to the Old Testament. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1994.
Hoekema, Anthony A. The Bible and the Future. Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1979.
Longman, Tremper III and Daniel G. Reid. God is a Warrior. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1995.
Russell, J. Stuart. The Parousia. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1990.
VanGemeren, Willem. The Progress of Redemption. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1988.
Vos, Geerhardus. Biblical Theology; Old and New Testaments. Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1975.
Witherington, Ben III. Jesus, Paul and the End of the World. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1992.
Submitted to Philadelphia Presbytery
February 13, 1999 | <urn:uuid:e33eda46-8996-48d3-bed9-763fe772b65a> | CC-MAIN-2022-05 | https://cdavidgreen.org/day-of-the-lord/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-05/segments/1642320303729.69/warc/CC-MAIN-20220122012907-20220122042907-00064.warc.gz | en | 0.944637 | 4,938 | 2.578125 | 3 |
Argumentation and Debate
Have you ever sat in a meeting, knowing that the decision that was surely to be made was a poor one? There were several issues that no one had addressed, and you knew it. You left the meeting wishing you had the nerve, the gall, the knowledge, the skill, the confidence, whatever it took to be able to get your important points across. There’s a course just waiting for you: Argumentation and Debate.
A person does not have to be argumentative to argue a good point. You just have to know how to structure the argument and support it with evidence. It really isn’t that complicated. Argumentation and debate is one of the most offered speech courses in the country and it is the workhorse of the “application in real life” perspective of higher education. We really use the skills that we work on in this class.
Each student should be able to analyze a problem, come up with a solution, develop a working proposition and argue in favor of that proposition with appropriate and convincing evidence. Sounds like a winning situation.
Learn how to win your point—it could be fun to argue without fighting. Give it a try. | <urn:uuid:5a2c4e12-47be-44da-831d-f57241cd3acc> | CC-MAIN-2015-48 | http://www.shsu.edu/academics/communication-studies/undergraduate/com-284.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-48/segments/1448398447266.73/warc/CC-MAIN-20151124205407-00162-ip-10-71-132-137.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975223 | 247 | 2.609375 | 3 |
Most people will call 9-1-1 only once or twice during their lifetimes. Having the necessary information will help the 9-1-1 operator in sending you the appropriate help quickly. It can be a frightening experience, but there are several precautions that you can take to make the process run smoothly for you and the operator.
Take A Few Deep Breaths To Calm Yourself
Obviously, when you are making a call to emergency services, you are in an emergency, and have a lot of adrenaline flowing through your veins. However, this will impede your speech and may cause you to start talking too fast, too slow, begin stuttering, etc.
Pick up the receiver. Press 9. Press 1. Press 1 again. Hit the "Call" button (if there is one). Be aware that, sometimes, it takes time for the phone to route to the correct answering point; you must be patient!
Do NOT hang up if you do not connect immediately!!
This is easier said than done. Measure and pace your breathing to slow down your heart rate, and begin to plan what you will say to the dispatcher (see below). Remember: Panic is the enemy, in this race against time.
Know What You Will Be Asked
Make sure that you are aware of each of the following:
Where is the emergency?: The emergency is not always located where you are calling from. Always be aware of your surroundings and where you are. Try to keep a watch out for the road signs, business names and intersections whenever you may travel.
Nature of the emergency: Do you require assistance from law enforcement, medical professionals, and/or fire fighters? In certain areas, the dispatcher or a computer will tell you to dial certain numbers to help them know which department to connect you with and whom you should talk to.
A detailed, yet concise, description: What happened? How many details do you know? What should have the most importance? In general, the most important thing is why you need assistance (a gunshot wound, for example), followed by what caused you to need assistance (say, a school shooting).
The phone number of your phone. The dispatcher will need instructions on how to get to where you are, and may need to call back for more information. Know the phone number of your phone. Location. Know the address of the emergency and the nearest intersection (cross street), or be able to provide directions for the dispatcher to relay to the emergency responders.
Listen To The Dispatcher. Follow Orders
The better and faster you follow orders, the higher everyone's rate of survival will be. Even in a non-lethal situation (broken bones, etc.) this is of vital importance. Have strict, unwavering faith in the dispatcher. And remember that even if the dispatcher is still asking questions or giving instructions, help is on the way.
Do Not Hang Up Until Instructed To
Anything can happen, and the emergency services need to know your situation at all times. If the building is on fire for example, the dispatcher will need for the other people in the building if and where any safe exits are. | <urn:uuid:9b371252-985c-4c5c-a81d-4d2651062700> | CC-MAIN-2017-17 | http://www.jcfire.org/emergency-preparedness/calling-911 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-17/segments/1492917121528.59/warc/CC-MAIN-20170423031201-00473-ip-10-145-167-34.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943173 | 638 | 2.8125 | 3 |
My family recently went through a scare: My daughter and some of her friends were in our local mall when a shooting occurred. It was, as you can imagine, a terrifying experience for all and we are grateful that we were able to get to the girls as quickly as we did and the impact on them was frightening but minimal. I bring this up only to illustrate a point.
When the event happened, all of us immediately turned to our phones to get the news to find out what had actually taken place. My husband and I jumped on Facebook, the girls jumped on Instagram, and our family in other states turned to Google for information.
As a result, the information we were gleaning about a single event had a very different feel and unique content depending on where we accessed it.
My information came almost entirely from local news stations, my daughter and her friends were seeing a lot of “first hand” videos and testimonies, and my out-of-state family was getting Associate Press updates.
The result? We all had bits and pieces of information about the incident but none of us had the whole story.
It was as if we all had pieces to a puzzle, some more than others, but none of us had the entire picture. It took coming together, talking to each other, and giving enough time and space for information to be made public for the puzzle to come together.
Not surprisingly, this example of information gathering is a characteristic of the generation gap we experience in America. The advancement of technology has impacted how and with whom we communicate.
Information is distributed through a variety of means from digital to print, radio to television, word of mouth to public speaking. However, more and more, the move from traditional print materials, radio news, and face-to-face conversations towards digital, video and public voices is changing the landscape of information distribution and consumption.
Due simply to a lack of access or lack of ability to use digital constructs, older adults can be unintentionally excluded from certain forms of digital communication (Source). Conversely, due to a lack of lack of access or lack of knowledge to use non-digital constructs, younger generations are unexposed to things like print media and in-person interactions. These technological and communication differences act to perpetuate the digital divide between generations.
- Sprout Social reports that 72% of 13-17 year olds and 64% of 18-29 year olds use Instagram while only 21% of 50-64 year olds and 10% of 65+ year olds use Instagram.
- Of 271,000,000 Twitter users who are active every month the number of users between 51 and 60 years was roughly 2,981,000 or about 1% of the users.
- Princeton and New York University researchers found that eleven percent of users older than 65 shared an article consistent with the study’s definition of fake news. Just 3% of users ages 18 to 29 did the same.
Changes in technology and communication have consequently exacerbated the gap between the youngest and oldest generations leading to a continued growth in age segregation and generational divide.
Rather than create an inclusive space that leads to more conversation, the lack of intergenerational connectivity has caused more isolation.
Churches can fall into this same pattern of generational hit-or-miss communication by choosing avenues that appeal to certain age groups while neglecting others. In her book Faith Formation 2.0, Julie Anne Lytle looks at the different generations that are typically represented in an average church and how they tend to communicate. She offers the thought that if we are not communicating an event or offering communication in at least seven unique formats, we are missing someone in our audience.
How does that play out?
Let’s say that the church is hosting a Combined Worship services where all church members, regardless of age or preferred worship style, will attend. In order to ensure that this is communicated to the entire audience a church will want to:
- Announce the service from the pulpit
- Place an announcement with date, time, and description in the bulletin
- Send an email (or two) to the entire congregation
- Place all pertinent information on the website in more than one location
- Include information on social media platforms
- Send a text message to members who have indicated text as a preferred method of communication
- Offer a personal invitation to members (visit the youth group, drop by a Sunday School class, phone call, etc.)
That may feel like overkill but each generation will tend to access the information in different ways and if one avenue is overlooked, there is a potential that someone may never know the event is happening.
There is a tee shirt that is frequently worn in KidMin circles that simply says, “It was in the bulletin!” Often, children’s pastor and youth ministers express frustration that members will tell them that they didn’t know an event was happening. But that truly could be because the information wasn’t offered in a format that is normally accessed by that person or group of people so, in their mind, the event was never announced.
Fortunately, once we realize the importance of communication platforms and how to access generations, we have a much better chance of bridging the gap and finding ways to bring generations together.
In fact, just as was highlighted above, each generation likely brings an important piece to the puzzle and together we can see the whole picture. Creating space in our churches for this to happen is one way we can begin to integrate the ages in our faith communities and move forward in serving the Lord and each other together.
Ready to Start, Not Sure Where?
ReFocus Ministry is pleased to present a four-part webinar series on generational discipleship and connection for churches interested in exploring intergenerational ministry both in their church and in their homes. Each session will focus on a unique aspect of gathering generations together, both the challenges and opportunities, as well as practical tips to begin implementing now during this time away from regular church gatherings.
Sessions can be attended individually or all four can be attended as a series.
Session 1 – ReConnect. This first session of the webinar focuses on defining generations, generation gap, and the need for generational discipleship in your church. This is the “What” behind generational discipleship.
Session 2 – ReGenerate. This session focuses on the the research, the reasons, and the heart behind connecting generations from both a secular and spiritual viewpoint. This is the “Why” behind generational discipleship.
Session 3 – ReProduce. This session offers practical tips, strategies, and ideas to being connecting generations in your faith community and in homes in meaningful, lasting, life-changing ways. This is the “How” behind generational discipleship.
Session 4 – ReLease. It’s time to go and do! This session will provide a discussion and debrief around the questions, “What? So What? Now What?” and give you an starting point for incorporating generational discipleship as a meaningful part of your faith community. This is the “Who” behind generational discipleship at your church and in your home!
Anyone registered for all four sessions will receive a FREE half-hour coaching session/follow-up specific to your ministry needs.
To register, go to https://www.eventbrite.com/e/reconnect-a-webinar-for-generational-connections-tickets-116093734485. Questions? Feel free to email me at firstname.lastname@example.org. Can’t wait to journey with you!
For more information about
- Kids in Worship
- Determining which Type of Family Ministry model works best for your church
- Discipleship in Intergenerational community
- Encouraging the continued conversation through Practical Discipleship at Home
- Seminars, Workshops, Coaching
About this Blog
Refocus Ministry was started by Christina Embree, wife to Pastor Luke, mom to three wonderful kids, and church planter at Plowshares BIC. She also serves as the Minister of Generational Discipleship with the Great Lakes Conference of the Brethren in Christ.
With years of experience in family ministry and children’s ministry, she is passionate about seeing churches partnering with families to encourage faith formation at home and equipping parents to disciple their kids in the faith. She recently graduated with a Masters of Arts in Ministry focusing on Family, Youth and Children’s Ministry at Wesley Seminary, she also blogs at www.refocusministry.org and is a contributing blogger at D6 Family, ChurchLeaders.com, and Seedbed. | <urn:uuid:f418d851-5000-496f-a522-1404b3d8934e> | CC-MAIN-2020-40 | https://refocusministry.org/tag/social-media/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-40/segments/1600400191160.14/warc/CC-MAIN-20200919075646-20200919105646-00049.warc.gz | en | 0.956324 | 1,797 | 2.96875 | 3 |
The Ohio Sky Surveys
After construction in 1962 and following observations of various smaller regions, such as M31 (Andromeda Galaxy), a thorough survey was conducted from 1965 to 1971. The results were published in The Astronomical Journal in a series of articles, charts and source catalogs known collectively as "the Ohio Survey".
The survey was primarily at a radio frequency of 1415 MHz, but data was also collected and evaluated at 2650 MHz and 612 MHz. Only one "channel" or band of frequencies was sampled for each frequency. The antenna was oriented to one declination at a time, and as the sky drifted past the meridian field of view, radio energy from that area was received and detected. Signal power was plotted on an analog chart recorder and also digitized and recorded on magnetic tape for later processing. (Note: Punched paper tape was used in the early days of the surveys.) A given declination was observed for a number of days before the telescope was moved to another declination in a systematic fashion.
The area surveyed was from declinations 63 degrees north to 36 degrees south, with a resolution at 1415 MHz of roughly 40 arc minutes in declination by 10 arc minutes in right ascension (RA). Over the course of the Survey, 19,620 sources at 1415 MHz were identified, of which 60% were previously uncataloged.
Some of the objects first identified by the Ohio Survey included quasars, objects of intense radiation and power at the edge of the then-known universe. The archived data subsequently permitted these and other sources to be reviewed over several years of observations. Later, the LOBES survey used most of the same apparatus as the Ohio Survey, and was able to automatically determine and verify the sources first charted by the Ohio Survey.
The 1415 MHz receiver used a parametric amplifier, cooled with liquid nitrogen. System noise temperature was 120 Kelvin, the bandwidth was 8 MHz, and the integration time was typically 12 seconds, with an RMS noise of .025 Kelvin. Antenna efficiency was 40% to 50%. Sources were identified down to .25 Janskys (a measure of radio power). Beam resolution at 1415 MHz was 8 to 10 arc minutes in right ascension by 40 arc minutes in declination.
The 612 MHz receiver had a noise temperature of 650 Kelvin, and RMS noise of 0.15 Kelvin. Antenna efficiency was about 60% The beam resolution at 612 MHz was 23 arc minutes in right ascension by 85 arc minutes in declination.
In the early days of the surveys, punched paper tape was read off-line and archived onto magnetic tape on a day-to-day basis. Later, the data was recorded directly to magnetic tape. A number of days' data at each declination was processed to remove or average out noise. Radio sources were identified and cataloged largely by human observation, and their locations and values cataloged. Additional software took the processed data and produced stellar contour charts which were published with the list of identified sources. Magnetic tapes and punched cards of processed data were archived, many of them to 1996.
Paper chart recorders preserved the "raw" data for all three frequencies and these charts were manually reviewed. Additional reports and some survey results were directly derived manually from these charts. Almost all of these original paper charts are still archived as of 1996.
"The Large Radio Telescope of Ohio State University" by Kraus; Sky and Telescope, July 1963. A detailed description of the construction and operation of the telescope.
"Maps of the Perseus Region at 600 and 1415 Mc/s", Dixon, Meng, Kraus; Nature, vol 206 no. 4973; Feb 20 1965. A description of the receivers.
"A new High-Sensitivity Study of the M31 Region at 1415 MC/S" by Kraus, Dixon, and Fisher; Astrophysics Journal Vol 144, No 2; 1966. This contains a detailed and complete description of processing methods for the subsequent Ohio Survey.
"Ohio Survey 2 supplement" by Rinsland, Dixon, Kraus; Astrophysics Journal volume 80, number 10, October 1975. A list of all the Ohio Surveys. | <urn:uuid:aa76a837-3369-4cc0-b5d2-264ef70f0b2e> | CC-MAIN-2017-39 | http://www.bigear.org/ohiosurv.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-39/segments/1505818689615.28/warc/CC-MAIN-20170923085617-20170923105617-00307.warc.gz | en | 0.966167 | 863 | 3.53125 | 4 |
Heavy and Light Cavalry Cloaked, 1812
Aquatint by J C Stadler after Charles Hamilton Smith, 1812.
The heavy cavalry (left) were trained to deliver shock attacks on the battlefield. They rode large heavy horses, were armed with swords and wore a back and breastplate known as a cuirass, from which their French name cuirassier is derived. In the British Army, the cuirassier role was performed by the Life Guards and the Royal Horse Guards.
The light cavalry (right) were mounted on fast horses. They were used to fight skirmish battles and for reconnoitring. British light cavalry units included light dragoons, hussars and lancers.
From Charles Hamilton Smith's 'Costumes of the Army of the British Empire, according to the last regulations 1812', published by Colnaghi and Company, 1812-1815.
NAM Accession Number
National Army Museum, Out of Copyright
National Army Museum, Study Collection
Browse related themes | <urn:uuid:f15497ce-e266-450d-8be2-112ff727f2d0> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://collection.nam.ac.uk/detail.php?q=searchType%3Dsimple%26resultsDisplay%3Dlist%26acc%3D1950-11-33&pos=18&total=52&acc=1950-11-33-19 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335254.72/warc/CC-MAIN-20220928113848-20220928143848-00257.warc.gz | en | 0.95893 | 261 | 3.5 | 4 |
The many contributions of aviation pioneer Glenn Curtiss receive top billing in an upstate New York museum.
One of aviation’s meccas is Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, site of the first successful powered, fixed-wing flights by the Wright brothers. And then there is Hammondsport, N.Y., where Glenn Curtiss, another of America’s aviation trailblazers, experimented. Interesting and well-kept museums are found at both locations. Increased public interest in Curtiss and his contributions to aviation have led to a new museum in Curtiss’ hometown that is growing rapidly in popularity.
The Wright brothers made bicycles. So did Glenn Hammond Curtiss, their chief competitor, who was born in Hammondsport, at the southern tip of Keuka Lake, on May 21, 1878. His first name is derived from “the Glen,” a picturesque cleft in the hills north of the village that his mother enjoyed very much; she added an n, probably to make the name more masculine. His middle name came from town founder Lazarus Hammond.
The Wrights continued in the bike business in Dayton, Ohio, while experimenting with their planes, but Curtiss started manufacturing motorcycles. The taciturn, unsmiling Curtiss was called “the fastest man on earth” when he was clocked at 136.6 mph during a motorcycle race at Ormond Beach, Fla., in 1904. Curtiss’ entrance into flying began that same year when Thomas Scott Baldwin, famous lighter-than-air devotee, asked Curtiss to make him a two-cylinder, air-cooled engine to power his airship. The first plane Curtiss had anything to do with was Red Wing, which Casey Baldwin lofted from the ice at Keuka Lake on March 12, 1908, before a small crowd. The flight was hailed by the local press as “the first public flight by an airplane in the United States.” The Wrights contended this was untrue, as they had been flying in plain view from a field beside the trolley line linking Dayton and Springfield, Ohio, since 1904. This statement was the beginning of a feud and eventual litigation between the Wrights and Curtiss.
That the Wrights made the first powered flights has generally been accepted, but the achievements of Curtiss spanned several decades and took the airplane from its wood, fabric and wire beginnings to the forerunners of modern transport aircraft. The new museum documents his life and unique accomplishments.
Curtiss made his first flight on his 30th birthday–May 21, 1908–in White Wing, a design of the Aerial Experiment Association, a group led by Alexander Graham Bell. White Wing was the first plane in America to be controlled by ailerons instead of the wing-warping used by the Wrights. It was also the first plane on wheels this side of the Atlantic.
The first plane Curtiss built and flew was June Bug. In 1908, Curtiss won the first leg of the three-legged Scientific American magazine competition for being first to fly in a straight line for more than a kilometer. He won the next leg of the competition in 1909, for establishing a distance record. He then won the Gordon Bennett Trophy, plus the $5,000 prize, in the world’s first international air meet at Reims, France, in 1909. When the New York World newspaper offered $10,000 for the first successful flight between Albany and New York City, Curtiss won the prize money and nationwide recognition. He also won the third leg of the competition and permanent possession of the Scientific American trophy in 1910.
One of the major contributions to flight progress during this period was the invention of ailerons, which was the basis for the litigious rift between the Wrights and Curtiss. But Curtiss had more significant “firsts.” He deserves credit for pioneering the design of the floatplane and the flying boat. It was a Curtiss plane flown by Eugene Ely, a company exhibition pilot, that made the first successful takeoff from a Navy ship in 1910. Another Curtiss plane, the NC-4, made the first crossing of the Atlantic in 1919. Curtiss built the first U.S. Navy aircraft, called the Triad, and also trained the first two naval pilots. He received the Collier Trophy and the Aero Club Gold Medal for the greatest accomplishment in aviation during 1911.
The success of the first flights of many new aircraft in those beginning days is also associated with the OX series of engines that Curtiss designed. About 12,600 of the series were built–most were installed in British, Canadian and American aircraft during World War I. It is the last of the series, the OX-5, that is best known. There was such a surplus of engines after World War I that they were sold at bargain prices by the government to many postwar aircraft manufacturers. Among those using OX-5 engines were the Laird Swallow, Travel Air 2000, Waco 9 and 10, the American Eagle, and some models of the ubiquitous Curtiss JN-4 Jenny.
In addition to a Jenny, other major aircraft on view in the Curtiss museum include precise replicas of the June Bug and Curtiss Pusher, plus an original 1919 Curtiss Oriole and 1927 Curtiss Robin. A 1907 glider is on display, as are OX engines. Also on hand is an Ohm Special, a racing plane built in 1949 by Dick Ohm and Jamie Kraph; a 1929 Mercury Chic; and a 1931 Mercury S-1 Racer.
One of the “firsts” by Curtiss that is relatively unknown was his invention of the travel trailer. An avid outdoorsman, he developed a folding tent-type trailer in 1917. A very streamlined fifth-wheel trailer was developed from this in 1919, called the Aerocar. The Curtiss four-wheeled Aerocar Motor Bungalow, or Land Yacht, evolved, which was 19 feet long, 12 feet wide and more than 7 feet high. One of these, in excellent condition, is on view and represents the forerunner of today’s house trailers.
Some of the museum space is devoted to early Hammondsport history as it relates to the inventive times in which Curtiss lived. There are collections of china dolls, cameras, radios, woodworking tools and many other antiques from the turn of the century. For restless children, there is a half-scale model of a Curtiss Pusher that they can “fly” and sit in to have their pictures taken.
The village of Hammondsport, which today still boasts a population of only about 1,000, is about five miles northeast of Bath, N.Y., and just west of the two largest Finger Lakes–Seneca and Cayuga. The town site is where Keuka Lake meets what the original settlers called Pleasant Valley. Helping to keep things pleasant today are a dozen wineries and the Greyton H. Taylor Wine Museum.
Curtiss made his last flight as a pilot in May 1930, when he flew a Curtiss Condor over the AlbanyNew York route. He died two months later and is buried in the Pleasant Valley Cemetery, near the scene of his first aviation triumphs.
It was not until 1928 that anyone suggested a museum be established to honor the area’s most famous resident. A local newspaper was first to suggest it; then, when Curtiss died in 1930, the idea again emerged, only to fade once more.
In 1958, local resident Otto Kohl began collecting Curtiss memorabilia. Kohl, who had been an employee of the Curtiss Aeroplane & Motor Co. in Hammondsport, began to look for a place to house the collection and was instrumental in establishing a museum in an old school building downtown. Although financial support was slow in coming, Curtiss memorabilia began to accumulate.
The Glenn H. Curtiss Museum was formally dedicated on May 18, 1963. A library and archives were established, and a request for donations of authentic Curtiss artifacts led to the acquisition of additional items for display.
Before the national bicentennial celebration in 1976, the museum underwent many changes and improvements. Exhibits were cleaned and many items in the collection were restored. A replica of the 1908 June Bug was built by volunteers and flown. When the U.S. Navy celebrated the 75th anniversary of naval aviation in 1986, a half-scale model of the A-1 Triad was dedicated, and a full-size model of a Curtiss hydro-floatplane was flown from Keuka Lake. An original 1919 Curtiss Oriole and Curtiss motorcycles (manufactured under the name Hercules) were acquired, as well as many items of local history. It was clear that new quarters had to be found to house the growing collection.
Various plans were formulated for expansion of the museum between 1978 and 1991. In 1991, a former winery was purchased, and on July 4, 1992, the new Glenn H. Curtiss Museum was opened to the public. The new facility devotes 34,000 square feet to permanent exhibits, and 2,400 square feet to temporary exhibits. The building also contains a 100-seat theater, library, archives, photographic lab, catering kitchen, a restoration shop and gift shop–all on one floor.
A $1 million fund drive was launched and completed in 1993 to fund improvements and additional display space for the museum’s growing collection of memorabilia. The number of visitors continues to grow, and it can now be said that aviation buffs have a new mecca in Hammondsport that is certainly worth the trip. Elizabeth Dann, the museum’s director, says the ultimate goal is to create the finest possible repository of Curtiss artifacts and information, and to make that part of aviation history come alive. The museum staff is well on the way to achieving that goal.
The museum is open all year except Thanksgiving and Christmas. For museum hours, admission charges, and other information, telephone (607) 569-2160.
This article originally appeared in the May 1996 issue of Aviation History magazine. | <urn:uuid:8563a4d3-8b8c-4618-8a9f-9e3e678109d0> | CC-MAIN-2016-22 | http://www.historynet.com/aviation-pioneer-glenn-curtiss-may-96-aviation-history-feature.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-22/segments/1464049274324.89/warc/CC-MAIN-20160524002114-00076-ip-10-185-217-139.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975461 | 2,096 | 2.96875 | 3 |
First Graders' Acts Of Kindness Catch On
From tying a friend's shoes to sharpening a student's pencil, no act of kindness is too small to go on the wall. The first graders of a Terra Haute, Ind classroom were prompted by a group called SPPRAK (Special People Performing Acts of Kindness) to post a note on a wall whenever someone did a good deed. Before long, other local schools, including the town's high school, began adding their own notes as well.
First grade teacher, Deborah Smudde told NBC Nightly News that, "[S]ometimes the smallest means so much at just the right point in time for that person," which is likely why the project spread to other classrooms and grades so quickly.
We're all too familiar with the spread of chaos and fear, and stories like this remind us that kindness spreads just as fast. SPPRAK and Smudde fostered the potential ubiquity of good deeds by giving them a visual presence in the halls. Something as simple as making someone smile now has a brightly colored space where plenty people will see it. When you give attention to good deeds, kindness spreads like a fire of smiles. Now that's a barbecue I want to go to.
Check out HooplaHa's collection of good deeds at the Giving Vine, and help spread the good! | <urn:uuid:9a9b16ce-0ae9-4f77-8335-62fb961b5884> | CC-MAIN-2020-34 | https://www.onlygood.tv/first-graders-acts-of-kindness-catch-on-2078298091.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-34/segments/1596439735990.92/warc/CC-MAIN-20200806001745-20200806031745-00014.warc.gz | en | 0.965455 | 281 | 3.09375 | 3 |
Palm Tree pruning is a specific process requiring skill and expertise. Arborists caution palms are delicate should not be over pruned.
Reasons to prune palm trees:
- Prune to remove dead or dying fronds that may become a home to pests
- Dead fronds are a potential fire hazards, especially near buildings or homes
- Increase visibility and safety near driveways or sidewalk
- Prevent damage to buildings or homes during high winds
- Aesthetic appeal to remove dead fronds, boots, fruit, seeds and flowers
Start by determining if your palms need to be pruned.
- Inspect the tree for broken, dead, brown or yellow fronds.
- Look for loose petioles or boots on the trunk.
- Assess the seed pods or flowers as they take strength away from the palm. Look for large clusters of these pods. | <urn:uuid:b6c46b8a-14d0-4fab-bb14-80dcc79b1a12> | CC-MAIN-2019-35 | http://www.absolutetreecompany.com/our-services-tree-service-charleston/palm-care-palm-tree-pruning/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-35/segments/1566027313259.30/warc/CC-MAIN-20190817123129-20190817145129-00344.warc.gz | en | 0.911313 | 179 | 2.84375 | 3 |
One method for dating the core is tephrochronolog, that is, locating fallout from known volcanic eruptions.
. Electrical conductivity measurements are made along the entire length of the core. Increases in celectrical onductivity indicate the presence of volcanic eruption fallout. Sections of the ice are melted and filtered through a capillary-pore membrane filter. An automated scanning electron microscope equipped for x-ray microanalysis is used to determine the size, shape and elemental composition of hundreds of particles on the filter
Cluster analysis, a multivariate statistical routine, of the elemental compositions of sodium, magnesium, aluminum, silicon, potassium, calcium, titanium and iron is done to identify the volcanic glass particles in the sample. Representative glass particles are re-located for photomicrography and more detailed chemical analysis.
Tephra collected from near the volcanic eruption that may have produced the fallout in the core is ground to a fine powder, dispersed in liquid and filtered through a capillary-pore membrane. Automated SEM analysis is used on the tephra sample to obtain representative elemental composition for the volcanic glass for compariuson with the glass particles found in the ice core. Fallout from several know volcanic eruptions have been found in Greenland.
|Zdanowicz, C. M., Zielinski, G.A. and M. S. Germani, Mount Mazama eruption: Calendrical age verified and atmospheric impact assessed, Geology, 27(7), 621-624, 1999.|
|Zielinski, G. A. and M. S. Germani, New ice-core evidence challenges the 1620s BC age for the Santorini (Minoan) eruption, J. Archaeological Sci., 25, 279 - 289, 1998.|
|Zielinski, G. A., Dibb, J. E., Yang, Q., Mayewski P. A., Germani, M. S., Whitlow, S. and M. S. Twickler, Assessment of the record of the 1982 El Chichon eruption as preserved in Greenland snow, J. Geophys. Res. 102(D25), 30045 - 26640, 1997.|
|Zielinski, G. A., Mayewski, P. A., Meeker, L. D., Gronvold, K., Germani, M. S., Whitlow, S., Twickler, M. S. and K. Taylor, Volcanic aerosol records and tephrochronology of the Summit, Greenland, ice cores, J. Geophys. Res. 102(C12), 26625 - 26640, 1996.|
|Zielinski, G. A., Germani, M. S., Larsen, G., Baillie, M. G. L., Whitlow, S., Twickler, M. S., and K. Taylor, Evidence of the Eldgja (Iceland) eruption in the GISP2 Greenland ice core: relationship to eruption processes and climatic conditions in the tenth century, The Holocene 5(2), 129-140, 1995.|
|Fiacco, R. J., Thordarson, T., Germani, M. S., Self, S., Palais, J. M., Whitlow, S. and P. Grootes, Atmospheric loading and transport due to 1783/1784 Laki eruption interpreted from ash particles and acidity in the GISP2 ice core, Quaternary Research 42(3), 231-240, 1994.|
|Zielinski, G. A., Fiacco, R. J., Mayewski, P. A., Meeker, L. D., Whitlow, S., Twickler, M. S., Germani, M. S., Endo, E. and M. Yasui, Climatic impact of the AD 1783 Asama (Japan) eruption was minimal: Evidence from the GISP2 ice core, Geophysical Research Letters 21(22), 2365-2368, 1994.|
|Fiacco, R. J., Palais, J. M., Germani, M. S., Zielinski, G. A. and P. A. Mayewski, Characteristics and possible source of 1479 AD volcanic ash layer in a Greenland ice core, Quaternary Research 39, 267-273, 1993.| | <urn:uuid:50675717-3455-4977-be6d-a0845bb7b5c9> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://www.micromaterialsresearch.com/GISP2.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501172077.66/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104612-00495-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.796581 | 917 | 3.5 | 4 |
What is particularly striking is the fact that the stellar birth rate is higher in the cluster's center than at its edges -- the exact opposite of what happens in our local portion of the universe, where the cores of galaxy clusters are known to be galactic graveyards.
The discovery, made by an international team of researchers led by Kim-Vy Tran of Texas A&M University, College Station, could ultimately reveal more about how such massive galaxies form.
Tran and her team spent the past four months analyzing images taken by Spitzer, essentially looking back in time nearly 10 billion years at a distant galaxy cluster known as CLG J02182-05102. Mere months after first discovering the cluster and the fact that it is shockingly "modern" in its appearance and size for its age, the team was able to determine that the galaxy cluster produces hundreds to thousands of new stars every year. That is a far higher birth rate than that of galaxies relatively near to us. | <urn:uuid:81285f95-da89-4be4-b371-ce96224f5580> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://nonsense-verse.blogspot.com/2010/08/galaxies-glory-days-revealed.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00069-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96861 | 199 | 3.421875 | 3 |
Viewers: in countries Watching now:
Gain a deeper understanding of HTML5 and learn how to create richer, more meaningful web pages with structural tags and descriptive attributes. In this course, author James Williamson presents an overview of HTML5 and its development, defines the new tags and attributes, and discusses how browsers parse and display HTML5 content. The course also includes step-by-step instructions for constructing an HTML5 document with a header and footer, navigation, content groups, and formatting.
If you are a Premium subscriber to lynda.com, you have access to the exercise files accompanying this course. To use the exercise files, download them and place them in a central location on your local computer. I recommend copying the files to the Desktop, as this makes them easy to find and easy to clean up after you're done with the title. The exercise files are organized in folders representing chapters and movie numbers. At the beginning of each movie, I'll call out location of the exercise files and you should see an overlay on the screen showing you the location of files for that particular exercise.
Each folder also contains a folder titled 'finished files'. If you want to check your work against the finished version of the file, you can find them in this folder. I also want to mention that this title doesn't require the use of one HTML editor over another, so you're welcome to use any authoring tool that you are comfortable with. I'll be using Dreamweaver CS5 for my coding, but which editor you use doesn't really matter. All of our exercises are hand coded and I don't use any of Dreamweaver's tools outside of taking advantage of its HTML5 code-hinting capabilities. You can easily reproduce these exercises using any HTML or text editor that you're familiar with.
I also recommend testing your files on the most recent versions of available browsers. For this title I'll be using Firefox 4.01, Chrome 11, Safari 5.03, Opera 10.63, and Internet Explorer 9. Obviously, new versions of these browsers are released frequently, so your versions may differ and you should be aware that differences in implementations are possible.
There are currently no FAQs about HTML5: Structure, Syntax, and Semantics (2011).
Access exercise files from a button right under the course name.
Search within course videos and transcripts, and jump right to the results.
Remove icons showing you already watched videos if you want to start over.
Make the video wide, narrow, full-screen, or pop the player out of the page into its own window.
Click on text in the transcript to jump to that spot in the video. As the video plays, the relevant spot in the transcript will be highlighted. | <urn:uuid:773fe533-e48b-46c6-ba5b-0f2908292592> | CC-MAIN-2015-11 | http://www.lynda.com/HTML-tutorials/Using-exercise-files/77585/84849-4.html?w=0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-11/segments/1424936468546.71/warc/CC-MAIN-20150226074108-00061-ip-10-28-5-156.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.920199 | 564 | 2.859375 | 3 |
“To suggest is to create; to describe is to destroy.” Robert Doisneau
“The mystery of love is more mysterious than the mystery of death.” Oscar Wilde
The photographer Robert Doisneau's and the poet and playwright Oscar Wilde's words adequately convey the attitude of the Symbolist painters of 1900. Between the Belle Epoque and World War I, groups of artists in several European countries took the suggestive themes of love, death, and mysterious mythology as their subjects for works of art. The Symbolism exhibition visited by 25 TASIS art history students at Palazzo Reale in Milan on Saturday featured 180 works of art, among which 150 paintings, many large-scale, and many by well know artists such as Hodler, Segantini, Redon, Moreau, and Böcklin. But there were also masterpieces by much less well known Italian painters such as Gaetano Previati, Giulio Aristide Sartorio, and Vittorio Emanuele Bressanin. One part of the exhibition was a recreation of the "Room of the Art of the Dream" from the 1907 Venice Biennale the 1907, which elevated Symbolism to the status of an important style in Italy.
We also visited Leonardo's Last Supper at Santa Maria delle Grazie. Students preparing for the IB exam in art history on April 29th were able to see for themselves what Leonardo meant by "the motions of the soul."
- Mark Aeschliman, TASIS Faculty | <urn:uuid:766cb3fd-d59b-4d9f-b755-577378757c3f> | CC-MAIN-2019-22 | https://tasisvisualarts.com/whats-happening/2016/3/16/tg3omzf0rdy81edxqrt1nfvmcsol0u | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-22/segments/1558232256571.66/warc/CC-MAIN-20190521202736-20190521224736-00233.warc.gz | en | 0.970044 | 323 | 2.65625 | 3 |
Mosquito borne diseases are most common during summer and fall months.
Mosquito borne diseases are flourishing day by day despite different control efforts in action. Mosquitoes are more active during summer and fall months and that increases the risk of mosquito borne diseases during these months. According to West Virginia Vector borne Disease Surveillance report (Vectorborne Disease Report), there were nine human cases of mosquito borne diseases reported in West Virginia from January 1 to July 18, 2016. Among the cases, eight were travel associated Zika virus disease and one travel associated Malaria. The Zika virus has not been found in any mosquitos in West Virginia yet.
Mosquitoes belong to the family Culicidae; some transmit extremely harmful diseases such as Malaria, Yellow fever, Chikungunya, West Nile virus, La Crosse Encephalitis, St. Louis Encephalitis, Western Equine Encephalitis, Dengue fever and Zika virus disease. The West Virginia Division of Infectious Disease Epidemiology states that La Crosse Encephalitis is the most commonly reported mosquito borne disease in West Virginia, 10-20 cases per year (Preventing La Crosse Encephalitis in West Virginia Pamphlet). Other travel associated mosquito borne disease (Dengue fever, malaria and now Zika virus disease) have also been reported.
People get malaria from the bite of mosquito infected with a malarial parasite. Symptoms of malaria are high fevers, shaking chills and flue like illness. It could be fatal in some cases. CDC states that about 1,500 malaria cases are diagnosed every year in the United States. Most of the cases are in travelers coming back from the places where Malaria occurs. According to West Virginia Division of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, 1-2 travel associated cases of Malaria are reported every year in West Virginia. Taking an antimalarial drug and preventing mosquito bites are the prevention measures for Malaria.
Yellow fever is an acute viral disease caused by Flavivirus, transmitted to humans by the bites of an infected aedes and homogenous mosquitos. Symptoms of Yellow fever include fever, headache, jaundice, muscle pain, nausea, vomiting and fatigue. Serious cases may cause fatal heart, liver and kidney conditions. Yellow fever is most common in tropical and subtropical areas in Africa and South America. Recent updates from CDC states that the cases of Yellow fever illness in US travelers is rare. Vaccination can prevent the disease.
West Nile Virus (WNV) is transmitted to human by infected mosquitos. People infected normally do not develop symptoms, only 1 in 5 infected has fever. There is no vaccination to prevent WNV. Cases of WNV are regularly reported in United States. According to West Virginia Division of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, WNV is not commonly reported in West Virginia however mosquitoes infected with WNV are regularly reported in a few counties.
Chikungunya, Zika virus and Dengue fever have many things in common. These are commonly transmitted to people from the bite of an infected mosquito commonly, Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus. Aedes albopictus are common mosquito species in United Sates and also found in many counties in West Virginia. No vaccine is available for any of these three mosquito borne diseases. Chikungunya and Dengue fever have similar symptoms which include sudden onset of fever, joint pain, muscle pain, headache, nausea, fatigue and rash.
If you do have any symptoms of any mosquito borne diseases, visit your health care provider as soon as possible. If you notice any mosquito breeding site around your area notify your local health department. Sanitarians with the Monongalia County Health Department investigate the mosquito complaints and help with controlling mosquito breeding sites. The can be contacted at 304-598-5131 or file a complaint on the website at http://www.monchd.org/contact-environmental.html
You can prevent yourself from getting mosquito borne infections by using the Mosquito Bite Prevention Checklist. | <urn:uuid:cfd5254b-d375-4586-b170-008b8328f9b8> | CC-MAIN-2018-43 | https://www.monchd.org/mchd-blog/mosquito-borne-diseases-are-most-common-during-summer-and-fall-months | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-43/segments/1539583514443.85/warc/CC-MAIN-20181022005000-20181022030500-00308.warc.gz | en | 0.925721 | 830 | 3.953125 | 4 |
Futuristic Space Habitat Solves Problems With Human Space Travel
Fifty years ago, the first humans landed on the moon. Many engineers and scientists have been thinking about what the next 50 years might bring in space travel. That’s what NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Program is all about. It provides funds to foster ideas that could revolutionize future space missions. One NASA funded idea is a space habitat that solves the problems that occur with long term space travel. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee reports.
Originally published at – https://morigin.voanews.eu/a/futuristic-space-habitat-solves-problems-with-human-space-travel/5013097.html | <urn:uuid:fd3e034f-444d-4a04-8db6-fce992946c9e> | CC-MAIN-2021-49 | https://americasvoice.news/futuristic-space-habitat-solves-problems-with-human-space-travel/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-49/segments/1637964358966.62/warc/CC-MAIN-20211130080511-20211130110511-00468.warc.gz | en | 0.835986 | 159 | 3.328125 | 3 |
Part 4 of 4, Dessau Törten Estate.
2019 marks the 100th anniversary of Bauhaus. The Bauhaus art school began life first in Weimar between 1919 and 1925, moved to Dessau between 1925 and 1932, and ended in Berlin from 1932 and 1933 before the Nazis forced the school to close for good.
After Hannes Meyer took over as Bauhaus Director in 1928 after Walter Gropius’ departure, Meyer recognized the need for “verticality” to address the continuing housing shortage in Dessau. Meyer and the staff within Bauhaus’ architectural department quickly set out to design and construct Laubenganghäuser apartment buildings. The results in 1930 were five multiple-storey brick buildings, projected stairwells, open communal balcony on each floor, standard-sized apartments with standardized furnishings and large windows. The picture shows a Laubenganghaus at address Peterholzstrasse 40, which looks pretty much the same now as it did decades ago. The Laubenganghäuser were added in 2017 as an extension to the 1996 listing for Dessau Bauhaus as UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Thanks to IMG- and Sachsen-Anhalt-Tourismus and the city of Dessau-Rosslau for their patronage and access to facilities, and the City-Pension Dessau-Rosslau for their hospitality. IMG- and Sachsen-Anhalt-Tourismus supported my visit to the German federal state of Saxony-Anhalt from 25 October to 3 November 2016 inclusive. I made the photo above on 28 October 2016 with a Canon EOS6D and the following settings: 1/500-sec, f/8, ISO1000, and 24mm focal length. This post appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins.com as https://wp.me/p1BIdT-dHw. | <urn:uuid:df4fb01f-b553-4580-9705-0f444a3f23f8> | CC-MAIN-2021-21 | https://fotoeins.com/2019/04/26/fotoeins-friday-dessau-balconyapts-toerten-estate/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-21/segments/1620243991514.63/warc/CC-MAIN-20210518191530-20210518221530-00048.warc.gz | en | 0.939434 | 412 | 2.609375 | 3 |
Nomophobia is a proposed name for the phobia of being out of cellular phone contact. It is, however, arguable that the word “phobia” is misused and that in the majority of cases it is another form of anxiety disorder.[not in citation given]
Technology can be a blessing but also a curse. These days, most of us are constantly connected through high speed Internet on SmartPhones and/or mobile or tablets devices. Often, when these are taken away from us, we are left feeling a bit lost. Technology can thus also cause a lot of stress. Nomophobia is one such mental illness caused by technology, or lack of it. It is described, simply, as the extreme phobia or fear of being without a mobile phone or without a signal on one’s phone.
his relatively new phobia is known to affect nearly 53% of British men, women and teenagers owning a mobile. The word Nomophobia originates from British urban dictionary and was first used by British experts (My phone ‘no work no mo’) studying a group of test subjects that experienced anxiety attacks at the mere thought of losing their cell phone, or experiencing a weak signal or being kept away (for some reason) from their mobile device.
Causes of Nomophobia
The fear of being without a mobile phone stems from addiction. When a person feels physically or mentally dependent on anything, s/he cannot find a way of stopping that addiction.
People tend to experience this phobia when they are insecure, or have lack of self control and discipline, get easily bored or impatient, or have no other recreational hobbies and outlets etc.
Humans are social animals needing constant companionship and having the desire to talk and connect with others. Therefore, this phobia is not all that unnatural given the fact that cell phones are readily available everywhere and used by people of all ages today.
A person having had a negative experience upon being left without a cell phone could develop life-long Nomophobia.
Symptoms when you fear being without a mobile device
Like all other phobias, the fear of being without a cell phone can also cause various mental and physical symptoms including:
Having elevated heart rate, sweaty palms, shallow breathing.
Most phobics will go to great lengths to protect their phone. They will also keep checking the device every now and then for battery life and/or messages.
They will never unplug and disconnect. They will ensure charging the battery so as to never be left without a phone. Many are even known to keep multiple phones.
Majority of phobics experience a full-fledged panic attack when separated from their phone for long periods.
They might use the phone in any place they deem fit, no matter how inappropriate.
Their usage of phone often affects their relationships or even gets in the way of their work at school or office. Many Nomophobes are known to be loners or experience problems dating or maintaining relationships.
Most sufferers of this phobia realize that their fears are irrational and uncalled for; yet they are unable to control themselves. As a result, their health and mental well being also suffers.
Treating the fear of being without a mobile phone phobia
Overcoming this phobia can be challenging and while, medical intervention is not always needed, there are many options available. Gradual exposure therapy and systematic desensitization are known to be the best remedies for this phobia. Other options include hypnotherapy which can get to the bottom of the phobia and eradicate it completely. For worst cases of this phobia, anxiety medication may be required.
The patient must also take steps to overcome his/her fear. This includes developing or practicing self help coping techniques like yoga, positive visualizations, guided meditation, listening to soothing music and /or attending support group therapy sessions. One can learn to overcome panic attacks by practicing deep breathing or indulging in physical activities like aerobic exercise, swimming, dancing etc.
Another study found that out of 547 male, undergraduate students in Health Services, 23% of the students were classified as nomophobic, while an additional 64% were at risk of developing nomophobia. Of these students, approximately 77% checked their mobile phones 35 or more times a day.
More than one in two nomophobes never switch off their mobile phones. The study and subsequent coverage of the phobia resulted in two editorial columns authored by individuals who minimized their mobile phone use or chose not to own one at all. These authors appeared to treat the condition with light undertones of mockery, or outright disbelief and amusement.
Language classicists do not like this word or approve of it, because of its inherent confusion with the existing, though rare, nomophobia, a fear of laws, rules or regulations. The latter derives from the Greek nomos (a law, rule or regulation) seen in such other words as astronomy (rules about the stars), gastronomy (rules about food and eating), autonomy (ruling oneself), economy (rules governing the finances of the state or household), antinomy (a law contrary to another law), metronome (a device to regulate metre or beat), nomocracy (the rule of law in society), nomography (the law in written form), nomology (the study or science of law), nomothete (a lawgiver), and the archaic anomy (lawlessness). The neologistic meaning referred to in this article, relating to mobile phones, seems to have been adopted by the younger generations, and by those without a deeper understanding of the Oxford guidelines on word construction, in which typically Greek words are attached to Greek words (and Latin to Latin, etc.).
With the changes of technologies, new challenges are coming up on a daily basis. New kinds of phobias have emerged (the so-called techno-phobias). Since the first mobile phone was introduced to the consumer market in 1983, these devices have become significantly mainstream in the majority of societies.
Shambare, Rugimbana & Zhowa (2012) claimed that cell phones are “possibly the biggest non-drug addiction of the 21st century”, and that colleges students may spend up to nine hours every day on their phones, which can lead to dependence on such technologies as a driver of modern life and an example of “a paradox of technology”. that is both freeing and enslaving.
A survey conducted by SecurEnvoy showed that young adults and adolescents are more likely to suffer from nomophobia. The same survey reported that 77% of the teens reported anxiety and worries when they were without their mobile phones, followed by the 25-34 age group and people over 55 years old. Some psychological predictors to look for in a person who might be suffering of this phobia are “self negative views, younger age, low esteem and self-efficacy, high extroversion or introversion, impulsiveness and sense of urgency and sensation seeking”.
Among students, frequent cell phone usage has been correlated with decreases in grade point average (GPA) and increased anxiety that negatively impacts self-reported life satisfaction (well-being and happiness) in comparison to students with less frequent usage. GPA decreases may be due to the over-use of cell phone or computer usage consuming time and focus during studying, attending class, working on assignments, and the distraction of cell phones during class. Over-usage of cell phones may increase anxiety due to the pressure to be continually connected to social networks and could rob chances of perceived solitude, relieving daily stress, that has been linked as a component of well-being | <urn:uuid:82c428fe-486b-4001-80d6-ecbe367454ad> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.65tes-habeshamusic.com/the-fear-of-being-without-a-mobile-phone-stems-from-addiction/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573760.75/warc/CC-MAIN-20220819191655-20220819221655-00704.warc.gz | en | 0.956558 | 1,568 | 2.65625 | 3 |
SAN JUAN COUNTY, Utah — State are officials are warning Utahns after elevated levels of mercury were found in fish taken from Ken’s Lake in San Juan County.
Wildlife, health and environmental agencies issued a joint press release Tuesday, saying Ken’s Lake has been added to Utah’s Mercury Fish Consumption Advisory list.
“There is no health risk associated with mercury in the water for other uses of the waterways, such as swimming, boating, and waterskiing,” the press release states.
The advisory warns residents about consuming large mouth bass taken from the lake and says pregnant women and children under six should not eat any such specimens.
Women who may become pregnant and children ages 6-16 can eat up to two 8 oz. portions each month while all other adults can consume six 8 oz meals in a month, according to the advisory. The release states 8 oz. of fish is roughly the size of two decks of playing cards.
The release notes that mercury is a naturally occurring element found in some bodies of water, and that it can transform into methyl mercury—which is toxic.
“Chronic exposure to low concentrations of methyl mercury may result in neurological effects in the developing fetus and children,” the release states.
Health risks associated with mercury are based on long-term consumption rather than occasionally eating fish.
The release indicates that fewer than 10% of the bodies of water tested in Utah show elevated levels of mercury within their fish, but notes that not all waters have been tested. | <urn:uuid:e9ee25a5-76d3-4bb8-9c44-a17e339a6bf2> | CC-MAIN-2021-39 | https://www.fox13now.com/2018/12/18/lake-in-san-juan-county-added-to-advisory-list-after-elevated-mercury-levels-found-in-fish | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-39/segments/1631780056348.59/warc/CC-MAIN-20210918062845-20210918092845-00364.warc.gz | en | 0.96878 | 317 | 2.65625 | 3 |
For years, we were told that a password had to be a complex blend of numbers, lower- and upper-case letters and special characters. They had to be changed frequently, too. Maybe even once a month. Turns out, all of that’s wrong — or, at least, obsolete. Welcome to our December Newsletter!
U.S. Government Updates Password Security Recommendations
Over the past few years, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has been revising its guidelines for password security. The result has been a phasing out of “algorithmic complexity” in favor of a more “reasonable standard” of security.
What to Know About the Latest Password Guidelines
So, just what are the newest NIST password guidelines? How are they different from last year’s updates, exactly, and what’s the rationale for changing them? And what can IT departments do to comply?
Mandatory Password Updates ‘obsolete,’ says Microsoft
Consider Microsoft among those who agree with NIST’s new direction. The company recently called the practice of regular password updates “ancient and obsolete,” largely because it encourages habits that are easy to hack.
The Biggest Problems with Passwords Are…
Because password changes are required so frequently, people tend to use and re-use phrases for different systems and apps. And that’s just one of the factors that’s made the current system incredibly vulnerable to security breaches.
What Should Replace Password Expiration?
The online security community spent a large share of 2019 discussing — and mostly agreeing with — the idea of doing away with password expiration. Here are a few common-sense “basic rules” that people should embrace instead.
Why MFA is More Essential Than Ever
As we move toward an environment of simpler, less frequently changed passwords, the use of multi-factor authentication (MFA) is becoming more important to ensure that your organization is not “wide open to attacks.” | <urn:uuid:4398b54d-90d5-41df-b6ea-15e1293b0bea> | CC-MAIN-2022-49 | https://omnistruct.com/cybersecurity-news-rethinking-password-security/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-49/segments/1669446710968.29/warc/CC-MAIN-20221204072040-20221204102040-00335.warc.gz | en | 0.94792 | 421 | 2.515625 | 3 |
The correct answer is basic truth.
B. basic truth
C. wood shank
The correct answer is (B) Basic truth; a self-evident and universally accepted truth; a maxim; a universally accepted principle, proposition, or rule; a self-evident or proverbial truth. Also, a proposition, which is assumed in mathematics, in order to examine the results that flow from it.
Axiom comes from French axiome, Latin axiõma, Greek axios (worthy).
Examples of use:
- From time to time, someone would write an axiom on the blackboard.
- "It takes money to make money," is an often-repeated axiom. | <urn:uuid:87529efd-a210-4c39-972b-290435bf36a8> | CC-MAIN-2018-13 | http://www.writingenglish.com/nouns/axioma.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-13/segments/1521257648404.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20180323161421-20180323181421-00026.warc.gz | en | 0.937022 | 148 | 2.71875 | 3 |
Every summer, the island's roads are sprayed against mosquitoes. Warnings, if any, are minimal. In the past, the impending spraying was announced in the local paper, Slobodna Dalmacija, and on at least one local website, that of Stari Grad. Over many years, I have never yet met a beekeeper on Hvar who knew exactly when the sprayings were taking place, so how could they know when to shut their hives, as recommended in the general instructions which used to be part of the advance warning? We took the trouble to find out which poisons were being used for the spraying. The information gives great cause for concern.
The substances used are dangerous to humans, especially those with chest problems. They are fatal to bees and fish, some also to cats, and no doubt to much else. Insecticides are far from solving the problem. Mosquitoes are an ever-increasing nuisance.
in August 2014, Eco Hvar warned the local council about the products used that summer:
Permethrin comes in different formulations, some more toxic than others. It is highly toxic to bees, aquatic life, fish and other wildlife. It is also toxic to cats. Its possible effects on humans are considered less dramatic than those of Cypermethrin, but it can affect the immune and endocrine systems. The EPA rates it as possibly carcinogenic. In view of their damaging effects on aquatic life, pyrethroids should not be applied near water sources - which are of course the breeding grounds for mosquitoes. Permethrin is not supposed to be sprayed where animals might forage. The EPA re-registration document for Tetramethrin (2009, revised 2010) classified the poison as a possible human carcinogen, and identified it as highly toxic to bees and aquatic organisms including fish and aquatic invertebrates. It can cause dizziness, breathing difficulties, coughing, eye irritation, gastrointestinal upset, blisters and skin rashes. The EPA document stated that: "Tetramethrin is used by individual homeowners or industrial / commercial property owners, in individual, isolated areas, and in small amounts as opposed to wide scale uses (i.e., for agriculture or mosquito abatement by public authorities)." For this reason, they did not test the effect of Tetramethrin on drinking water. Tetramethrin is not supposed to be used on or near foodstuffs.”
Clearly Tetramethrin is not intended for the kind of spraying which it was used for in 2014 on Hvar. In August 2015, the poisons were changed. Permex 22E was used again, plus two other toxins, Microfly and 'Twenty One'. 'Twenty One' (Azamethiphos) is a fly killer which is normally used as a paint-on paste in confined areas, not as a spray over unlimited outdoor areas. It is not clear how this substance was chosen for use as an outdoor spray, especially as it is known to be highly toxic to birds. Microfly was another product in the toxic mix. The product instructions state specifically that it should be sprayed on to target surfaces and NOT INTO THE AIR.
Synthetic pyrethroids have quite different effects from the pyrethrum plant which they were designed to mimic. Pyrethrum is a natural insecticide which was at one time a major commercial crop on Hvar, when other crops were failing for various reasons. There was a pyrethrum processing plant in Jelsa which provided jobs for local people. I am told it was sited where the open-air cinema is today. Nowadays insecitcides such as Biopy for home use are still available, but although they are based on Dalmatian pyrethrum (buhač), they no longer come from Hvar.
Spraying the roads in the middle of the summer with dangerous poisons is a curious tactic, to say the least. It is not clear how the decisions are made as to when the spraying will be done, and which substances will be used. Who is responsible? Why are proper warnings not given? Public health and the environment are suffering under the present system (if one can call it that). The situation needs to be rectified as a matter of urgency.
© Vivian Grisogono 2016 | <urn:uuid:b6967e19-bdae-40eb-aa84-6209255dc0e8> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://www.eco-hvar.com/en/poisons-be-aware/162-insecticides-in-the-air | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501171162.4/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104611-00088-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971926 | 882 | 2.96875 | 3 |
There are three aspects to this coin, and the sector of the market to which it belongs that are critical to our statement that this is “an outstanding investment opportunity”.
Australia’s half sovereign history began in 1855 with the introduction of the Sydney Mint design. It was a style that imparted a uniquely Australian flavour into the nation’s first official gold coinage.
The reverse design of Australia’s first half sovereign has fascinated historians and collectors alike. The full name of the mint, Sydney Mint, was incorporated into the legend: going against all known protocols at the time. Furthermore the coins were inscribed with the national name, Australia, even though the country was at that stage operating as separate colonies. Australia did not operate under a single Government until Federation in 1901.
In 1857 the obverse design of Queen Victoria’s portrait was altered to impart an even stronger Australian feel: a sprig of native flora, the Banksia, added to her hair. It is referred to as the Type 2 or Banksia design.
The Sydney Mint design continued until 1870. In 1871 Australia’s gold coinage took on the more traditional English designs of St George and the Dragon and the Shield. | <urn:uuid:537baac4-c3f7-4241-a786-6226a30b54c9> | CC-MAIN-2018-39 | https://coinworks.com.au/1857-Sydney-Mint-Proof-Half-Sovereign~4543 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-39/segments/1537267156096.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20180919083126-20180919103126-00536.warc.gz | en | 0.970332 | 252 | 2.75 | 3 |
While the debate over whether or not esports players are athletes in their own right rages, one of the caveats in that debate is the difference in the physicality on display between traditional sports and esports. Couple the sedentary aspect of esports with a lack of funding and the expectation of eating or drinking products supplied by sponsors, and you’ll see that a lot of players struggle with eating a healthy diet. And while some esports organizations are hiring nutritionists and even chefs for their players, that is the exception, not the rule. And that means there are hundreds if not thousands of players who are facing health risks because of poor diets.
Dr. Lindsey Migliore, an esports medicine physician known as “GamerDoc,” has consulted and worked with some of the top teams in the world, and believes there is a large gap between health and wellness and how a lot of esports organizations are addressing the subject.
“I think that esports definitely has a nutrition problem,” Migliore said. “It’s part of a larger lack of health and wellness that can be partially attributed to how new esports is.”
The International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health posted a peer-reviewed study on the health behavior of video game and esports players in Germany noting the following: “Prolonged screen time, accompanied by long periods of sedentary behavior are recognized as risk factors for numerous chronic diseases and all-cause mortality. Since gaming and esports, by their very nature, require long periods of sedentary screen time, it stands to reason that such players pose a high-risk group in exceptional need of health promotion.”
Taylor Johnson, chief performance engineer at Statespace, who has a Masters of Science degree in Exercise Science, Rehabilitation Science from California University of Pennsylvania, sees esports at a tipping point with regards to how serious organizations are about talking to players about health and nutrition while helping them live a healthy lifestyle.
“We’re kind of coming up on this tipping point where the conversations are being had more frequently around health and wellness,” Johnson said. “In terms of esports, the overall health and wellness of players, those conversations are starting to happen more frequently. A lot of the professional teams are doing a better job of thinking about holistic models for their players and offering resources and education.”
As conversations start to take place between organizations and players around health and nutrition , some see hurdles to overcome to create and maintain best practices. While some larger organizations can flex the power of their large budget and hire chefs and nutritionists, there are a lot of successful mid-tier organizations that simply don’t have the money for that level of attention. Migliore believes that there are available options for every esports organization that wants more information. And if organizations do not have a staff member to consult with players on good health practices there is one person who should wear that hat–the coach.
“In traditional sports, you have the athletic trainer who is really the quarterback for a player’s care,” Migliore said. “For esports, it’s the coach. But in esports, coaches are usually just players who have aged out at the age of 23, so they don’t have any background in this or a lot of things. So just giving coaches a basic understanding of here’s a simple carb, here’s a complex carb. Here’s what your players should be eating the day of competition. Here’s what your players should be eating on a training day. You don’t need to necessarily hire a nutritionist to evaluate each individual player’s diet. All you need to do is have one talk to your coach for a couple of hours.”
Understanding the reality that for most organizations the coach is the person who is closest to players personally and is able to constantly observe player habits, Johnson would also like to see more time being spent teaching coaches how to help players develop a healthier lifestyle when it comes to what they put in their bodies.
“We need a better educational framework for coaches,” Johnson said. “We need to help the career and coaching development track and really build out a more methodical and comprehensive approach to build out a well-rounded coach. I speak with a lot of coaches from time to time and they’ll call me and say, ‘Hey, like I’m having this issue with the player.‘ I’d like to see more of that when it comes to player lifestyle, eating, and nutritional habits.”
The next area of concern that both Migliore and Johnson point out that isn’t immediately apparent is the fact that many players who are sponsored by companies that supply “performance” drinks and other types of energy or focus related products are probably not drinking enough water. And while they do admit they aren’t inside every player’s practice facility or stream, they have come across players that have come very close to replacing water with energy drinks, something that could lead to long-term health problems if not taken in moderation.
“Yeah, it’s, it’s not sustainable to be honest [replacing water with energy drinks]. It’s no wonder considering the habits we are seeing in regards to how long people can play,” said Dr. Migliore. “Energy drinks are full of sugar and caffeine and additives. You don’t need more caffeine that is in a cup of coffee. If you want a caffeine boost have some coffee and cut out all that other junk.”
Migliore went on to say that drinking too many energy drinks will actually dehydrate instead of hydrate and that it can be very stressful on the kidneys. In fact, she likens some esports players to those medical interns who work upwards of 80 hours a week while constantly drinking energy drinks.
“A study on medical interns who were working 80, 90, a 100 hours a week found that a significant portion of them qualified as being in renal failure because they weren’t drinking water,” Migliore said. “They were drinking coffee and energy drinks all day. Unfortunately, we don’t have the data behind the long-term effects of that on esports athletes. But, I can only imagine that it’s not going to be good for your kidneys.”
Johnson has seen this type of habit up close as he was one the VPs of performance for Infinite Esports and Entertainment working with numerous teams. He has seen what happens when players continue to consume a large number of energy drinks while maintaining a poor diet.
“Players will have an energy drink and then they’ll have like a hot pocket or they’ll have like a bowl of cereal, which depending on the level of training may not be bad, but let’s be honest. Chances are they’re not going to get [nutritional balance]. They’re the core nutrient needs and nutrient-dense food.”
What both Migliore and Johnson can agree on is that while having a good understanding of nutritional science in regards to players can be time-consuming and difficult at times, there is one thing everyone can do in order to start living a healthier lifestyle. Stop the bad habits first and make sure you are adding an exercise program to your life. Then you can start to implement a more complex regiment.
“Anyone who’s ever tried to lose weight or maintain a healthy lifestyle knows that diet is a huge component,” Migliore said. “And I would argue more than exercise is needed in being healthy. Because of that sedentary lifestyle, gamers have less lean body mass and they have more body fat content, which sets you up for aging out of esports. There is now published data that the lifestyles … and the diet come with supreme health risks for gamers. So yeah, I think diet and nutrition can be supremely beneficial to counteracting that lifestyle.”
Courtesy of Esports Observer | <urn:uuid:31276a42-99c4-47fa-bedd-35eb6d753046> | CC-MAIN-2021-21 | https://www.gamershub.me/esports/esports-players-putting-health-on-the-line-with-unhealthy-eating-and-exercise-habits/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-21/segments/1620243991269.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20210516105746-20210516135746-00225.warc.gz | en | 0.973076 | 1,674 | 2.609375 | 3 |
Glacier fluctuations are sensitive indicators of past climate change, yet little is known about glacier activity in Pacific North America during the first millennium A.D. Alberto Reyes, a PhD student in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, and his research team have found evidence for a regionally-extensive glacier expansion in the first millennium AD, suggesting that climate during the last several thousand years may have been even more variable than previously thought. The research appears in the journal Geology.
Reyes and his collaborators--the main ones were Dr. Dan Smith from the University of Victoria and Dr. Greg Wiles from the College of Wooster in Ohio--looked for a variety of clues in the field to help figure out the timing of past glacier fluctuations. At almost all of the glaciers studied, surface evidence prior to the "Little Ice Age" had been destroyed because glacial advance during that time had been so dramatic. Most of the evidence they found was in the form of buried soils and logs covered by glacial sediments. "In some cases, entire forest stands were buried by sediments and their trunks sheared off by advancing ice," said Reyes, who initiated the work while a master's student at Simon Fraser University.
Samples were then sent off for radiocarbon dating and when the results came back, the researchers were able to tell a story about when each individual glacier was expanding. Reyes had earlier noted the first millennium AD glacier advance at the glacier he was studying for his master's thesis, which jumped out because it was not thought that glaciers in the region were expanding at that time. After pouring over old data and early results of new research, the team found that many other glaciers had advanced during that period. "If only one or two glaciers are advancing at any particular time it is not really significant," said Reyes. "But when many glaciers across a wide region are advancing with some degree of synchronicity, there is likely something going on with regional climate that causes the glaciers to advance."
Reyes was surprised that the regional nature of this first millennium AD glacier advance remained unrecognized for so long. He suspects some of the earlier reports that hinted at the existence of an advance stayed under the radar because they did not fit into the established chronology of past glacier activity.
The glacier data reported by Reyes and colleagues, together with other clues of past climate, support an emerging idea that climate in the North Pacific region has cycled from warmer to colder intervals several times over the last 10,000 years. | <urn:uuid:65a8463f-ad48-44c4-8502-b759ee58d3e7> | CC-MAIN-2022-21 | https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/879080 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-21/segments/1652662545090.44/warc/CC-MAIN-20220522063657-20220522093657-00085.warc.gz | en | 0.985223 | 516 | 3.46875 | 3 |
Was wondering what an excitation system is and what role it plays in the start up of a prime mover like a gas turbine.
I'm not an electrical engineer so I would appreciate it if you could use tech jargon along with maybe a dumbed down explanation.
Don't be afraid of google and the almighty wikipedia!
Here's the skinny. Excitation establishes the field, so that when the turbine rotates the rotor through the field you have generator action. Without an established magnetic field, you have no generator action.
Any synchronous generator requires some means of "exciting" (powering) the field of the generator, and the field is generally the part that is rotated by the prime mover. The field, when excited and rotated past the stationary conductors of the stator of the synchronous generator, causes voltage to be generated at the synchronous generator terminals.
The amount of voltage generated at the generator terminals is a function of speed and the amount of excitation supplied to the rotor (usually through slip rings, sometimes through a "brushless" or rotating exciter). Since most synchronous generators run at a fairly constant speed (in most parts of the world) the amount of generator terminal voltage is a function of the amount of excitation supplied to the rotor. More excitation equals more terminal voltage.
As for the part the excitation system plays in the start-up of a gas turbine, well, that kind of depends on the type of gas turbine and the starting means used to start and accelerate the gas turbine.
For the majority of gas turbines which use an electric motor (480 VAC or 6 KV, etc.) or diesel engine through a torque converter to start and accelerate the turbine, the excitation system does nothing to assist with or enable the starting of the gas turbine. The excitation system must be enabled at some point during the start-up to produce generator terminal voltage so that the unit can be synchronized to the grid to supply power to the grid.
Some gas turbines have the ability to be started independently of the electric grid and use power from the generator terminals during acceleration to drive cooling fans and pumps. These machines enable the excitation system early in the acceleration (at approximately 50%, sometimes less, sometimes more) and special transformers and connections to drive the fans and pumps. Most units do not have this capability.
Newer, very large gas turbines use the synchronous generator as a large motor for starting and accelerating the unit. In this application, the excitation system is used to produce the power for the rotor to allow the "motorizing" of the generator.
So, the role played by the excitation system in the start-up of a gas turbine can vary depending on the type of gas turbine and how it might be started.
That's a general description for GE-design heavy duty gas turbine-generators. I'm sure other manufacturers have different but similar applications.
If you wonder about how spinning a magnetic field can produce voltage, by all means, use Google and www.wikipedia.org to research electricity and electrical power generation. Another good source is canteach.candu.org (no www. prefix) which has some excellent information on basic power generation.
Let us know if you need more information.
i want to know that what type of controller use in excitation system of synchronous generator in hydropower plant. how to work this controller? example. PLC, PI, PID, Fuzzy
what may be the cause of power factor fluctuation of generator?
In our plant, 2 generators (2MW + 3MW) are paralleled in Island mode with power factor regulator in manual mode. problem is, normally power factor remains 0.8lag but suddenly PF of both generators goes down to 0.7 lag and after few moments it comes back at 0.8 lag again. This repeats intermittently. why does it happen?
What else happens at the same time?
If by "island mode" you mean that your plant is powered by only the two generators described, with no other connections to any external supplies, then there must be a balance between the VArs produced by the generators and those consumed by the connected load. So if the power factor goes from 0.8 to 0.7, you are producing ( on a 5 MW base) 0.57 MVAr more. Something in the load will be taking the extra reactive power while the pf is low - this could be some switching operation such as a motor starting. Is there an increase in power shortly after the drop in pf for instance?
Dear Bruce Durdle,
No, there is no increment of power. Active power remains same at the time of pf fluctuation as before.
Bruce, May I answer?
If there is absolutely no load change during power factor fluctuation, the PF control is malfunctioning. Try keeping PF control in auto for better results.
The Power Factor is a function of the MVar. If your unit or turbine is connected to the grid, importation of Mvar leads to a negative MVar and thus power factor tending to negative and by so doing, your machine tends to act like an inductive motor.
At unitary Power factor, i.e if the power factor is equal to 1, it means your machine is very efficient even as it can't be 100% efficient due to losses (iron core and hysteresis loses). So by this, it implies that what you are generating is exactly what you giving out. To make the Mvar, PF to tend to 1, excitation is reduced and thus reducing load. | <urn:uuid:4e72ff89-ce16-419b-b2b7-8923c476f102> | CC-MAIN-2017-13 | http://control.com/thread/1241974236 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-13/segments/1490218189313.82/warc/CC-MAIN-20170322212949-00442-ip-10-233-31-227.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.924462 | 1,162 | 3.234375 | 3 |
Dedicated in 1948, the 200-inch Hale Telescope was the largest effective telescope in the world until 1993. Credit: Caltech/Palomar
Take a front-row seat as scientists test a powerful new tool in the search for planets beyond our solar system.
Before astronomers use a new tool or technology, they must test every aspect of it to make sure it is ready to turn starlight into tantalizing information about the cosmos.
On Feb. 2, 2018, a handful of researchers began testing an instrument called the New Mexico Exoplanet Spectroscopic Survey Instrument, or NESSI, at the historic 200-inch Hale Telescope at Palomar Observatory in Southern California. NESSI is designed to look at the atmospheres of exoplanets, or planets beyond our solar system.
Here's what that first night of testing was like:
4:00 p.m. The NESSI team united for an early dinner at the dormitory called "the monastery" before driving to the telescope. Principal investigator Michelle Creech-Eakman, who grew up under the clear skies of North Dakota, has spent hundreds of nights at Palomar, so she's familiar with the overnight-astronomy lifestyle. Working there as a Caltech postdoctoral researcher, she once accidentally scared a herd of cows in her quests to tame the mysteries of stars and planets.
5:20 p.m. Sunset. The telescope dome, with proportions similar to Rome's Pantheon, opened, synchronized with the theme from "2001: A Space Odyssey," which Rob Zellem, an astrophysicist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, jokingly played on his phone. Afterward, he climbed up to the outdoor catwalk to admire the fiery sky for a few minutes.
5:36 p.m. The team convened in the observing room, adjacent to the dome, taking images called "sky flats" to calibrate NESSI using the light of the sky itself. This is so the team can understand how each pixel of NESSI's detector responds to incoming light. If astronomers spot inconsistencies from pixel to pixel, they can adjust for them and subtract out "noise" when making real observations.
Around 5:49 p.m. NESSI's detectors were exposed to the sky at Palomar for the first time. To the untrained eye it looked like black-and-white static with lines through it on an old TV.
Around 6:10 p.m. NESSI saw its first star, Alpha Perseus. A round of applause resounded in the observation room. Zellem's excitement was palpable. "It's one thing to see it in a lab; it's another to see a real star," he said.
But the team was just getting started. NESSI's many components needed to be calibrated and examined - so many that Creech-Eakman didn't expect to get actual data from a star tonight. Zellem opened a bag of turkey jerky for the long night ahead.
NESSI at first delivered a strange pattern of pixels on Zellem's computer screen. The researchers examined a star called Eta Aurigae to compare its appearance to Alpha Perseus in NESSI's field of view and tried to figure out whether the changes in brightness were due to NESSI's detector or to the thin clouds rolling in.
8:50 p.m. The team got an error message when they tried to get a stellar spectrum, the array of lines corresponding to different wavelengths of light a star produces. When they took the image again, it worked - but not as expected. With clouds coming in and out of view, getting a clear image would prove difficult.
The troubleshooting continued through the next hour. "I think we're missing something fundamental," Creech-Eakman said.
Just before 11 p.m. Creech-Eakman and Zellem decided on a new target: a star called Capella. It's here they realized that the star needed to be in a different part of NESSI's field of view. With a 10-second exposure, they were at last able to see part of a spectrum. And as they adjusted the positioning of the star with respect to NESSI, the full spectrum came into view. The team exploded in applause.
Around 2 a.m. Because of clouds, they stopped and ceded the rest of the time to another group of astronomers. By then, the NESSI team had noted a variety of unexpected behavior from the instrument that they would need to investigate in the light of day.
As with all new technologies, NESSI presented its researchers with challenges that had no immediate solutions, and there's no manual to follow or help line to call. But the evening was a tremendous success in taking stock of NESSI's components and functions. After an additional year-and-a-half of tweaking, testing and observing, NESSI observed its first exoplanet signatures on Sept. 11, 2019, proving its readiness for further studies.
Between the picturesque mountaintop setting and the engineering marvel of the "Big Eye" Hale Telescope itself, Creech-Eakman doesn't mind making more trips to Palomar Observatory. It's been a special place for her since her Caltech days, when she worked there on someone else's experiment.
"My father had a small telescope that he had built, and I got to use that when I was little. He had made the mirrors himself - all of it," she said. "To bring my own instrument to a place like this is - I really don't have words." | <urn:uuid:4660c409-f767-4ea5-8b31-64cf7a217f41> | CC-MAIN-2020-29 | https://www.hjkc.de/_blog/2020/01/25/14512-astronomie-up-all-night-nessi-comes-to-life-at-palomar-observatory/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-29/segments/1593655911092.63/warc/CC-MAIN-20200710144305-20200710174305-00119.warc.gz | en | 0.958673 | 1,168 | 3.65625 | 4 |
Vegetarian Diet for Children:
Right from the Start
Eating habits are set in early childhood. Vegetarian diets give your child the chance to learn to enjoy a variety of wonderful, nutritious foods. They provide excellent nutrition for all stages of childhood, from birth through adolescence.
The best food for newborns is breast milk, and the longer your baby is breastfed, the better. If your baby is not being breast-fed, soy formulas are a good alternative and are widely available. Do not use commercial soymilk. Babies have special needs and require a soy formula that is developed especially for those needs.
Infants do not need any nourishment other than breast milk or soy formula for the first several months of life. Breast-fed infants need about two hours a week of sun exposure to make vitamin D. Some infants, especially those who live in cloudy climates, may not make adequate amounts of vitamin D. In that case, vitamin D supplements may be necessary.
Vegetarian women who are breastfeeding should also be certain to include good sources of vitamin B12 in their diets, as intake can affect levels in breast milk. Foods fortified with cyanocobalamin, the active form of vitamin B12, can provide adequate amounts of this nutrient. A multivitamin may also be taken as directed by your doctor."
Breast milk or infant formula should be used for at least the first year of your baby’s life.
At about four to five months of age, or when your baby’s weight has doubled, other foods can be added to the diet.
Add one new food at a time, at one- to two- week intervals. The following guidelines provide a flexible plan for adding foods to your baby’s diet.
Four to Five Months
Introduce iron-fortified infant cereal. Try rice cereal first since it is the least likely to cause allergies. Mix it with a little breast milk or soy formula. Then offer oat or barley cereals to your baby.
Six to Eight Months
Introduce vegetables. They should be thoroughly cooked and mashed. Potatoes, green beans, carrots, and peas are all good first choices.
Introduce fruits next. Try mashed bananas, avocados, strained peaches, or applesauce.
By eight months of age, most babies can eat crackers, bread, and dry cereal.
Also, by about eight months, infants can begin to eat higher protein foods like tofu or beans that have been cooked well and mashed.
Children have a high calorie and nutrient need, but their stomachs are small. Offer your child frequent snacks, and include some less “bulky” foods like refined grains and fruit juices. Limit juices, however, since children may fill up on them, preferring their sweetness to other foods.
Some foods, such as veggie hotdogs, carrot sticks, peanuts, and grapes, may present a choking hazard. Be sure to cut foods into small pieces and encourage children to chew their food well before swallowing.
Calorie needs vary from child to child. The following guidelines are general ones.
Food Groups for Children
Breads, Cereals, Grains
Includes all breads, rolls, flatbreads, hot and cold cereals, pasta, cooked grains such as rice and barley, and crackers.
Legumes, Nuts, Seeds
Includes any cooked bean such as pinto, kidney, lentil, split pea, black-eyed pea, navy bean, and chickpea; tofu, tempeh, meat analogues, textured vegetable protein (TVP); all nuts and nut butters, seeds, and tahini (sesame butter).
Includes all fortified soymilks and infant formula or breastmilk for toddlers.
Includes all raw or cooked vegetables which may be purchased fresh, canned, or frozen. Also includes vegetable juices.
Includes all fruits and 100 percent fruit juices. Fruit may be purchased fresh or canned, preferably in a light or natural syrup, or water.
Ages 1 to 3 (Preschoolers)
Breads, Cereals, Grains: 6 or more servings; a serving is 1/2 to 1 slice of bread; 1/4 to 1/2 cup of cooked cereal, grain, or pasta; 1/2 to 1 cup ready-to-eat cereal
Legumes, Nuts, Seeds: 2 or more servings; a serving is 1/4 to 1/2 cup cooked beans, tofu, tempeh, TVP; 1-1/2 to 3 ounces meat analogue; 1 to 2 tablespoons nuts, seeds, nut or seed butter
Fortified Soymilk, etc.: 3 servings; a serving equals 1 cup fortified soymilk, infant formula, or breast milk
Vegetables: 2 or more servings; a serving is 1/4 to 1/2 cup cooked or 1/2 to 1 cup raw vegetables
Fruits: 3 or more servings; a serving equals 1/4 to 1/2 cup canned fruit; 1/2 cup juice; 1 medium fruit
Fats: 3 servings; a serving equals 1 teaspoon margarine or oil
Ages 4 to 6
Breads, Cereals, Grains: 6 or more servings; a serving equals 1 slice of bread; 1/2 cup cooked cereal, grain, or pasta; 3/4 to 1 cup ready-to-eat cereal
Legumes, Nuts and Seeds: 1-1/2 to 3 servings; a serving equals 1/2 cup cooked beans, tofu, tempeh or TVP; 3 ounces meat analogue; 2 tablespoons nuts, seeds, nut or seed butter
Fortified Soymilk: 3 servings; a serving is 1 cup of fortified soymilk
Vegetables: 1 to 1-1/2 servings; a serving is 1/2 cup cooked or 1 cup raw vegetables
Fruits: 2 to 4 servings; a serving is 1/2 cup canned fruit; 3/4 cup juice; 1 medium fruit
Fats: 4 servings; a serving equals 1 teaspoon margarine or oil
Ages 7 to 12
Breads, Cereals, Grains: 7 or more servings; a serving equals 1 slice of bread; 1/2 cup cooked cereal, grain, or pasta; 3/4 to 1 cup ready-to-eat cereal
Legumes, Nuts, Seeds: 3 or more servings; a serving equals 1/2 cup cooked beans, tofu, tempeh or TVP; 3 ounces meat analogue; 2 tablespoons nuts, seeds, nut or seed butter
Vegetables: 4 or more servings; a serving is 1/2 cup cooked or 1 cup raw vegetables
Fruits: 4 or more servings; a serving is 1/2 cup canned fruit; 3/4 cup juice; 1 medium fruit
Fats: 5 servings; a serving equals 1 teaspoon margarine or oil
Note: Serving sizes may vary depending on the child’s age.
To add more calories to the diet, include more servings of nut butters, dried fruits, soy products, and other high calorie foods.
Be sure to include a reliable source of vitamin B12 on a regular basis. Good sources include Vegetarian Support Formula nutritional yeast, vitamin B12-fortified foods, such as soymilk, breakfast cereals, meat analogues, and vitamin B12 supplements.
If children do not get regular sun exposure (exposing hands and face to 20 to 30 minutes of summer sun two to three times per week), which promotes vitamin D synthesis, fortified foods and supplements are available.
Adapted from Simply Vegan, 3rd ed, 1999, p. 194-195. The Vegetarian Resource Group, P.O. Box 1463, Baltimore, MD 21203; 410-366-8343.
Ages 1 to 4 years
Cheerios with soymilk
Hummus (chickpea and sesame seed butter spread) on crackers
Ages 4 to 6 years
Tofu-egg salad on bread
Baked beans with blackstrap molasses
Ages 7 to 12 years
Raisin Bran with soymilk and sliced banana
Toast with almond butter
Macaroni and blended tofu with nutritional yeast
Green beans with almonds
Salad with greens and broccoli | <urn:uuid:5a92d1d1-a236-48ee-91d6-853306e7ddd2> | CC-MAIN-2018-22 | https://www.veganlifestylecoach.com/children-vegetarian-diets | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-22/segments/1526794864558.8/warc/CC-MAIN-20180521220041-20180522000041-00325.warc.gz | en | 0.889056 | 1,726 | 3.3125 | 3 |
Adventures In Learning Preschool – Tustin
(714)730-5458 | 1111 El Camino Real | Tustin 92780
Yellow Sunshines October News
Look what we learned last month!
September was filled with lots of fun activities! We explored our classroom and new surroundings. We made so many new friends. We also learned to recognize and name our body parts through song. Our class thoroughly enjoyed Apple Day by tasting all different types of apples.
What we will learn in this month…
We are excited about exploring or Feelings, Emotions and our Five Senses in the month of October. Our class will be welcoming Fall by decorating the classroom with pumpkins, spiders, cats, bats and autumn leaves.
· Feelings, Emotions & My Five Senses
· Pumpkins, Spiders, Cats & Bats
Language & Letters:
· Letters A, B, C & D
Practice saying / knowing first and last name
· Recognize 1st letter in first name
· Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater
· Recognize Colors
· Recognize Shapes
Science & Sensory:
· Dumping & Pouring
· Textures & Touch
Social & Emotional Skills:
· Self awareness
Great job on your potty training Jakob!!!!
A BIG HIGH FIVE to Jack for recognizing his shapes.
A special THANK YOU to all the parents that help us celebrate Apple Day.
Please ready your child's highlights daily.
Remember to sign in and out
We are looking for parent volunteers to bring in items and help out, in the classroom on Friday October 31, for our Holiday Party. A party list will be posted soon.
Please make sure your child’s name is written on all their belongings.
Please remember to bring a crib size sheet & blanket inside a pillow case for naptime.
Dates to Remember
Picture day – October 8th.
The Great Shake Out – October 17th
Read for the record – October 20th
Halloween party – October 31st | <urn:uuid:7d00c747-04a9-41ec-b9a1-c461326b385d> | CC-MAIN-2018-17 | http://www.adventuresinlearning.com/yellow-sunshines-october-news-tustin-preschool/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-17/segments/1524125947795.46/warc/CC-MAIN-20180425100306-20180425120306-00213.warc.gz | en | 0.894473 | 431 | 2.578125 | 3 |
|Yardlong bean Quick Facts|
|Scientific Name:||Vigna unguiculata subsp. sesquipedalis|
|Origin||Southern Asia and is widely grown in Southeastern Asia, Southern China and Thailand|
|Colors||Light green-dark green or purple|
|Shapes||Pendulous; Length: 30–100 cm|
|Major nutrients||Vitamin C (19.00%)
Vitamin B9 (14.00%)
|Health benefits||Skin health, Cancer prevention, Healthy heart , Sound sleep, Healthy pregnancy|
Yardlong bean was originated in Southern Asia but now it is widely cultivated in Southeastern Asia, Southern China and Thailand. It grows in warm climates. Leaves are consumed as vegetables, young pods are cooked or consumed fresh and seeds are cooked as a pulse. The pods are picked before it gets matured and cooked as vegetables.
The Yardlong bean plant grows as an annual, glaborous climber which reaches 2–4 m in height. It bears bright green, trifoliolate leaves each 12–15 cm long and 4–7 cm wide. The plant yields white, yellow or light purple flowers. The flower turns into pendulous pods which is typically 30–100 cm long. The pod color varies from light green to dark green or purple having smooth, rugose or crinkled skin. Each pod possesses 20-25 seeds. The seeds are elongated, cylindrical or round upto 8–12 mm long which ranges from black, brown, red, striped, white or mottled colors. The pods are harvested from mid to late summer.
In a serving size of 100 grams of yard-long beans there are 47 calories, 0 grams of total fat, 0 mg cholesterol, 4 mg sodium (0% daily value), 8 grams of total carbohydrates (2% daily value), and 3 grams of protein (5% daily value).
Health Benefits of Yardlong beans
Yardlong beans are loaded with antioxidant, antibacterial, antiviral and anticancer properties. It contains beta-carotene, Vitamin B1 and B2, chlorophyll, riboflavin, protein, phosphorus, thiamine, fiber, iron, and pectin. It is low in calories. It provides an adequate of minerals such as copper, calcium, iron, manganese and magnesium.
- Skin health
The study shows that those who intake high amount of Vitamin C, it reduce the appearance of wrinkles, skin dryness and slows down the aging process. Vitamin C is essential for the skin, ligaments, blood vessels and tendons. It speeds up the healing process.
Some evidences shows that the skin cream which is high in Vitamin C reduces the skin redness. The diet which is rich in antioxidants helps to prevent the skin cancer as well.
- Lowers risk of Gout
As Yardlong are rich in Vitamin C, it also lowers the risk of gout which is painful condition that afflicts big toe. It is caused due to the high uric acid that forms crystals in joints. In the study, those who intake 1000-1499 mg of Vitamin C, their chances of gout was decreased by 31%.
- Eliminates free radicals
Vitamin C is an antioxidant that prevents the damage of free radicals, pollutants and toxic chemicals. The buildup of free radicals results the health ailments such as heart disease, cancer and arthritis. The free radicals are created during the breaking down of food or when exposed to tobacco, smoke or radiation.
- Cancer prevention
The deficiency of folate increase the chances of colon, breast, cervical, lung and brain cancer. The evidences show that the intake of foods rich in folate prevents the cancer development.
The study shows that those who intake 900 micrograms of folate daily, their chances of colorectal cancer was reduced by 30%.
- Healthy heart
Folate assist to lower the homocysteine which is the protein build up that increase the chances of stroke and heart attacks. Those who intake high amount of folate, it helps to reduce the chances of cardiovascular disease. It reduces the risk of heart disease by improving the cardiovascular health.
- Sound sleep
The magnesium deficiency is the cause for the sleep disorders such as hyperactivity, anxiety and restlessness. Magnesium is essential for the GABA function that soothes brain and enhances relaxation. Yardlong provides an adequate amount of magnesium which treats the sleep disorders effectively.
- Healthy pregnancy
During pregnancy, an adequate amount of food rich in folate helps to lower the chances of neural tube defects such as anencephaly and spina bifida. The birth defects such as limb and heart malformations are the result of folate deficiency. Folate is vital for the replication of DNA and the proper growth of fetus cells. It is essential in order to have a healthy pregnancy. The foods rich in folate reduce the chances of neural tube defects by 26%.
- Enhance immunity
Thiamine tones the wall muscles of the digestive tract. Thiamine assists in hydrochloric acid secretion that is required for the food particle digestion and nutrient absorption. The healthy digestion assist to absorb the nutrients properly.
- Eye health
Some research has shown that thiamine can help to defend against vision problems such as cataracts and glaucoma. This is due to its ability to influence nerve and muscle signaling, which is important in relaying information from the eyes to the brain.
Yardlong bean – Vigna unguiculata subsp. sesquipedalis Facts
Yardlong Bean is a vigorous climbing plant which produces long pods of about 14-30 inches within 60 days of sowing. The pods are picked before it is matured for vegetable uses. The pods are tender crisp and delicious. It is cooked like other green beans by cutting it into shorter sections.
|Scientific Name||Vigna unguiculata subsp. sesquipedalis|
|Native||Yardlong bean was originated in Southern Asia and is widely grown in Southeastern Asia, Southern China and Thailand.|
|Common/English Name||Asparagus Bean, Chinese Long Bean, Bodi Bean, Green Asparagus Bean, Green Podded Cow Pea, Garter Bean, Long Horn Bean, Long Bean, Long Podded Kidney Bean, Long Podded Cowpea, String Bean, Snake Bean, Yard-Long Cowpea, Yard Long Bean|
|Name in Other Languages||Arabic: Lûbyâ’ Baladî;
Chinese: Cai Dou;
French: Dolique Asperge;
Italian: Fagiolo Asparago;
Indonesia: Kacang Belut;
Japanese: Furou Mame;
Khmer: Sândaèk Troeung;
Malaysia: Kacang Panjang;
Portugal: Dólico Gigante;
Russian: Boby Sparzhevye;
Spanish: Dólico Gigante;
Thai: Tua Fak Yaow;
Vietnamese: Dâu Dûa;
West Indies: Bora;
|Plant Growth Habit||Annual, glabrous climber, fast growing|
|Growing Climate||Warm climate|
|Plant Size||2–4 m|
|Root||Strong tap root system|
|Leaf color||Bright green|
|Leaf shape and size||Trifoliolate; Length: 12–15 cm; Width: 4–7 cm|
|Edible parts of the plants||Young pods: The young pods are consumed fresh or cooked.
Young tender shoots and leaves: The young shoot and leaves are eaten as vegetables after it is steamed or boiled.
Seeds: The seeds are stored, dried and cooked as a pulse. It is also soaked and used as bean sprouts.
|Flower||White, yellow or light purple|
|Pod shape & size||Pendulous; Length: 30–100 cm|
|Pod color||Light green-dark green or purple|
|Pod peel||Smooth, rugose, crinkled|
|Seed shape & size||Elongated, cylindrical or round, Length: 8–12 mm|
|Seed color||Black, brown, red, striped, white, mottled|
|Flavor/aroma||Delicate, intense, sweet|
|Harvest Season||Mid-late summer|
|Major Nutritions (Raw pods)||Vitamin C (Ascorbic acid) 17.1 mg (19.00%)
Vitamin B9 (Folate) 56 µg (14.00%)
Magnesium, Mg 40 mg (9.52%)
Isoleucine 0.136 g (8.13%)
Manganese, Mn 0.187 mg (8.13%)
Vitamin B1 (Thiamin) 0.097 mg (8.08%)
Phosphorus, P 54 mg (7.71%)
Vitamin B2 (Riboflavin) 0.1 mg (7.69%)
Valine 0.147 g (6.96%)
Histidine 0.082 g (6.66%)
|Calories in 1 cup (91 gm) Raw pods||43 Kcal.|
|Precautions||The people with favism and immune allergy to legumes should avoid the consumption of Yardlong beans.|
|How to Eat||
|Scientific name||Vigna unguiculata subsp. sesquipedalis|
|Family||Fabaceae ⁄ Leguminosae|
|Species||Vigna unguiculata (L.) Walp.| | <urn:uuid:2dd370ee-bc61-45c7-9b31-8f056979d586> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.healthbenefitstimes.com/yardlong-bean/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279915.8/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00370-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.863308 | 2,067 | 2.890625 | 3 |
Business & Policy Environmental Policy European Union Pledges to Fight Plastic Pollution By Katherine Martinko Senior Writer University of Toronto Katherine Martinko is a writer and expert in sustainable living. She holds a degree in English Literature and History from the University of Toronto. our editorial process Twitter Twitter Katherine Martinko Updated October 11, 2018 CC BY 2.0. Kate Ter Haar -- A sad sight we've all seen too often Share Twitter Pinterest Email Business & Policy Corporate Responsibility Environmental Policy Economics Food Issues But its strategy would be far more effective if it focused on reusables, not recycling. The European Union announced today that it will take aggressive action on plastic. This is happy news to those who have long been concerned about the serious effects of plastic on the environment. The topic is finally hitting mainstream discourse, triggered by events such as China's new ban on plastic imports and BBC's Blue Planet II getting people talking in ways they never have before. Even UK prime minister Theresa May released a plastic plan last week that, despite lacking teeth, indicated awareness of an enormous problem. Regarding the EU's new promise to take action: The EU commission met in Brussels to put together its own plastic strategy that will "change minds in Europe, potentially tax damaging behaviour, and modernise plastics production and collection by investing €350m (£310m) in research." Frans Timmerman, a former Dutch diplomat and vice-president of the commission, told The Guardian that the plan will clamp down on "single-use plastics that take five seconds to produce, you use it for five minutes and it takes 500 years to break down again." The main targets will be items such as single-use straws, colored plastic bottles, coffee cups, lids, disposable cutlery, stirrers, and takeout packaging. Timmerman said: "We are going to choke on plastic if we don’t do anything about this. How many millions of straws do we use every day across Europe?It’s urgent because of the change in the Chinese position. We can’t export these plastics any more to China. The knee-jerk reaction is that we will have to burn or bury it here. Let’s use this opportunity to show we can also recycle it here." While it's a wonderful move in the right direction, I do feel concern about Timmerman's repeated emphasis on recycling being a solution. One of the commission's main goals is to increase the current plastics recycling rate from 30 percent to 55 percent by 2030; but anyone who's familiar with the plastic problem will know that won't help much. No matter how dedicated people are to recycling, neither the infrastructure nor the economic value exists for recyclers to recycle everything they get, especially now that China's out of the picture. Even if plastic is recycled, it can only be down-cycled, always reformed into a lesser version of itself, until eventually it goes to landfill. What we need is a focus on instituting reusables and banning single-use plastics -- not just telling people to recycle. We need a full-on elimination of unnecessary, superfluous plastics from our lives, together with investment in innovative, safely biodegradable packaging alternatives. If only the EU would take that on as its project. | <urn:uuid:7d374221-ad30-4247-8b7e-c6b8311cf0b6> | CC-MAIN-2020-29 | https://www.treehugger.com/european-union-pledges-fight-plastic-pollution-4848398 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-29/segments/1593655887360.60/warc/CC-MAIN-20200705121829-20200705151829-00555.warc.gz | en | 0.933702 | 669 | 2.71875 | 3 |
Friday, January 11, 2013
Comet C/2012 F6 Lemmon Passes Through the Heart of the Southern Cross
Comet C/2012 F6 Lemmon is quite bright at the moment, being much brighter than predicted.
It is currently magnitude 8 and will brighten over the remaining month to around magnitude 6.5. At magnitude 8 the comet will be tricky to observe in 10x50 or smaller binoculars under light polluted suburban skies. But as the weeks go on it will become quite easy to see in binoculars as it brightens.
It is a reasonably easy target with a small telescope under most skies. Unfortunately, towards the end of the month the waxing Moon will make observing more difficult (Full Moon 27 January).
In February it will brighten up to magnitude 3, easily observable with the unaided eye.
The comet is well placed for observation from around midnight, but the comet is highest early in the morning. It is in a rich area of the sky, and from the 16th the comet is within binocular distance many open clusters. Between the 18th and the 22nd the comet crosses the iconic constellation of Southern Cross and the star clusters that lie at the heart of this constellation.
Many of these are quite dim, and not observable in binoculars, but reasonably easy in even small telescopes. The brighter encounters are listed below (magnitudes in brackets).
On the 20th it the comet close to the open clusters NGC 4755 (4.2, the iconic Jewel Box Cluster) and NGC 4349 (7.4). On the 21st it's near another open cluster, NGC 4609 (6.9). On the 22nd two more open clusters are nearby, NGC 4463 (7.2) and NGC 4815 (8.6, a bit too dim for binoculars).
On the 26th, after it has the comet is close to the globular cluster NGC 4833 (7.4) and on the 27th the globular NGC 4372 (7.8).
Locating the comet is reasonably easy with 10x50 binoculars, from the 11th to the 16th, sweep down along the axis of the Southern Cross, looking for a fuzzy star. At the moment the tail is small and dim. You may need to watch over a couple of nights to see it move and make sure it is not a star cluster. From the 18th to 22nd the brightening comet should be easy to observe in the heart of the Cross.
In the later part of the month, when the Moon has set, even simple digital cameras with a timer function should be able to image the comet with 15 seconds or more exposure time (you will need a tripod).
While not spectacular, this will be a good comet, and a good opening act for the potentially spectacular comet 2011 L4 PANSTARRS in late February. | <urn:uuid:a4ea73b1-40ba-4b59-b53f-74c711df66d2> | CC-MAIN-2018-34 | http://astroblogger.blogspot.com/2013/01/comet-c2012-lemmon-passes-through-heart.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-34/segments/1534221211126.22/warc/CC-MAIN-20180816152341-20180816172341-00249.warc.gz | en | 0.931081 | 605 | 2.6875 | 3 |
Rational Expectations—Fresh Ideas that Challenge Some Established Views of Policy Making
Published January 1, 1978
“Monetary policy cannot systematically stimulate the economy to lower unemployment rates”
That startling claim is one of the consequences of a new view of economic policy that has been termed, “rational expectations.” This new view attacks widely held beliefs about how the economy works and challenges many prevailing theories about what economic policy can achieve.
These new ideas are so fundamentally important to the current predicament facing our nation's economy and to the future course of national economic policy that policy makers and the general public affected by policy makers' choices need to understand the logic and evidence that support the rational expectations view.
But most recent work in the theory and in the analysis of past economic experience—including major contributions made by the Research Department of this Bank—has been too technical to be understood by a more general audience. Hopefully this article will explain the essential ideas of the rational expectations challenge in fairly simple language. By doing that, we hope to encourage discussion of rational expectations among elected officials, policy makers, and a wider public.
We'll begin by briefly defining what we mean by “rational expectations” and by identifying the kind of policy to which it applies. Our discussion will then address the following points:
- Why traditional views about how economic policy works are
- Why rational expectations is a valid view of the world,
- What happens when current methods of policy making are used
in a rational expectations world, and
- in the light of rational expectations ideas, what can macroeconomic policy really hope to achieve?
“Rational expectations”: what it means.
When the term “rational expectations” first appeared in an economic journal article in 1961, it was given a specific technical meaning connected with economic models. In an everyday, practical sense rational expectations is simply an assumption about people's behavior. The assumption claims that people make economic decisions in a way that tends to take into account all available information bearing significantly on the future consequences of their decisions. And they tend to use that information in a way so as not to repeat their past mistakes. The information we're talking about can include, among other things, knowledge about government policy actions already taken and about strategies or approaches government policy makers regularly take when economic signals begin to change. So, rational expectations attributes to people a reasonably thorough, broad view approach to appraising the future on matters that are going to make a big dollars-and-cents difference to them.
Put that way, there's certainly nothing startling about the rational expectations idea. Most of us have believed all along that rationality in that sense is a reasonable thing to attribute to economic decision makersbusiness people, labor leaders, workers, investors, or consumers. What is startling is that the ideas underlying current policy views deny such rationality. Current views about how policy achieves its effects depend on people jailing to act in their own best interests. When we recast the decision-making process to allow people to act with "rational expectations," policy no longer has the same effects. And that's the heart of the problem we're examining in this article.
The importance of expectations in decision making.
All economists agree that people's beliefs about the future affect their decisions today. Employers and employees negotiate wage contracts with some picture in mind about what will happen to the cost of living or to other related wage rates over the life of a contract. Consumers deciding whether to purchase a car have expectations about future income, job prospects, future cash outlays, and perhaps sources of credit in an emergencyif only to judge whether the automobile installment payments can be met. Similarly, a business firm deciding whether to invest in new factories must form expectations about such things as future sales, future labor and other input costs, and future tax rates.
According to the rational expectations view, people use in the best way possible whatever information they have; and they do not tend to repeat previous errors. People are forward looking, and prospective government actions play an important part in their picture of the future. The myriad of commercially available newsletters, analytical reports, and forecasting services reminds us that forecasting government actions has become big business. And even though people must make plans in an environment of considerable uncertainty (and, therefore, are likely to make some mistakes), they do learn to avoid repeatedly misusing information that will bear on their future. That's because the economic process rewards those who make good forecasts and penalizes those who don't.
Types of policies under question.
We should emphasize that the kind of policy making we're looking at embraces attempts to manage, or influence, demand for goods and services in order to smooth out the business cycle. Sometimes these kinds of policies are called demand management policies, aggregate demand policies, or simply countercyclical policies. (We'll use these terms interchangeably.)
Virtually everyone who reads the newspapers is aware of the continuing public discussion of these policies. Government choices regarding how much it will spend in relation to how much it will tax, when used as deliberate countercyclical measures, are called fiscal policies. Decisions by the Federal Reserve to increase or decrease bank reserves, directed similarly, are called monetary policies. When the federal government deliberately takes action to spend more than it taxes away from businesses and individuals, fiscal policy is said to be expansionary. When the Federal Reserve acts to increase bank reservesa kind of starter kit for expanded money and credit growth in the private economymonetary policy is said to be expansionary and is viewed to be either a complement to expansionary fiscal policy or a stimulus in its own right. Both of these types of economic policy are commonly thought to be potent ways to help get a weak economy moving again.
I. What's wrong with traditional views of the policy process?
Since rational expectations ideas have developed as criticism of some prevailing ways of viewing the economy and the role of policy, the case for rational expectations is, to a large extent, the case against these current views. The traditional views we're talking about are those claiming that routinely applied fiscal and monetary stimulus in times of recession, and restraint in times of boom, will improve the general performance of the economy over the longer term and make people, on the whole, better off. What we want to show in the next few sections is that people's expectations, when formed "rationally," will generally frustrate government's attempts to successfully pursue activist demand management policies.
We'll do this by outlining the process through which activist policies are widely believed to get results and show how they depend on people behaving in ways inconsistent with their own best interests. Next we'll offer a rational expectations version of the policy process as a more realistic representation of people's decision making and indicate how that representation seems consistent with some evidence from recent experience. We think the rational expectations view is persuasive.
Two stories of how activist countercyclical fiscal and monetary policies are believed to work will be traced out. In the first story policy has its effect through the labor market and hinges on the way labor reacts to changes in wages and prices. The other story has policy working via financial markets and hinges on the way changes in interest rates induce (or discourage) new investment. These two perceptions of the channels connecting policy with the economic outcome aren't mutually exclusive; they could easily be combined into a single, more general story. The stories, though, are often told separately, and since some of our readers will be more familiar with one or the other it will be useful to consider each of them in turn. The two perceived policy channels we are about to consider probably contain the essence of what most legislator's and policy maker's views depend on in order for activist policies to get results.
Story one: policy that takes effect through wage decisions.
Central to some widely held views of the policy process are wage- setting decisions in the labor market. This story, a rather standard Keynesian one, depends very much on labor not rationally forming expectations about future conditions at the time wage contracts are set.
We start with an economy in recession. Government policy makers want to stimulate hiring and producing by private business firms. They know the way to get business firms to expand more than already planned is to take policy actions that will cause business to see additional profit opportunities. So government increases the amount of money it spends for goods and services relative to the amount of money it draws in from the private economy in the form of taxes. And it creates money to pay for the difference. Prices move up as business experiences the effects of added spending for its products. All this time labor is not supposed to look ahead to the end of the story with its promise of rising prices, and so it continues to work at very nearly the same old wage. That's what creates new profit opportunities for business prices for business output go up, but its major input cost, wage rates for labor, does not. The outcome: business expands, and as it does it hires more labor.
In this scenario, workers go along with unchanged wage rates in the face of prospectively higher prices. They find themselves in the peculiar situation of offering more labor at lower "real-wage rates," that is, wage rates measured in terms of the amount of goods they'll buy. That shortsightedness on the part of labor is crucial if this channel for policy action is to work as claimed. For if workers bargained for their wages in full anticipation that prices would rise, or if wages were "indexed" to automatically follow general price level increases, then that perceived policy channel would fail to work.
This simplified Keynesian story does no particular violence to the mechanism many policy activists believe enables government to start the economic ball rolling. It requires that workers in the labor market be oblivious to (or largely tolerant of) the prospect that an unchanging wage along with a rising general price level will progressively erode the amount of real goods and services their wages will buy. Since that kind of decision making hardly seems rational, it's easy to guess the forthcoming rational expectations criticism.
First, the process will work only if labor does not, in the course of its wage-bargaining and job-seeking behavior, anticipate the consequent general rise in prices. It's clear that fiscal and monetary policies deliberately attempting to stimulate total dollar spending in the economy would not be able to operate through this price and wage-setting disparity if those policies were fully predicted or expected. That's because labor wouldn't willingly or knowingly enter into a contract that dooms workers to a shrinking real income when no changes in technology or productivity have occurred that force upon the whole of the economyowners and managers of business as well such a real loss in living standards. And in the absence of that kind of self-diminishing agreement, business would have no net expansion in profit opportunities to exploit.
Second, any policy process that operates by fooling people as this Keynesian mechanism certainly requires may work the first time, but cannot be expected to go on fooling people repeatedly. That's axiomatic from the rationalists' point of view. Any logical story of the policy process must grant labor in general and workers in particular at least reasonable acumen when it comes to making commitments affecting their personal economic interests. That much is granted to other actors in the story, of course. Our conclusion then is that the activist policy process we've been describing will not bring about any overall real expansion in the private economyunless it catches people by surprise.
Some indications of labor market response to prospective inflation. One of the arguments supporters of activist countercyclical policy make against the rational expectations view starts with the observation that labor frequently locks itself into contracts by fixing the course of wages for as much as three years into the future. That fact, plus perhaps some slowness on the part of workers in recognizing what's happening to prices in general, means there's a built-in delay in wage adjustments. But, so the story goes, product prices can respond quickly to a policy stimulus, and therefore temporary profit opportunities, at least, can be created by policy action. That provides incentive for business to expand, if only temporarily, and thus some potency is retained by activist policy.
That fragile loophole cannot be relied on in the pursuit of any systematic countercyclical policy. Contracts are periodically rewritten and can certainly take into account any earlier misreading of government policy strategy on the practical principle of "once burned, twice cautious." One possible response by labor to being caught short in midcontract because of unpredictable policy moves by government is simply to shorten the contract period the next time. That course was pointed out in 1971 by United Auto Workers President Leonard Woodcock when he said,". . . if labor contracts can be torn up based upon the stroke of a pen [a reference to the Wage- Price Freeze on August 15, 1971], then obviously we can no longer in the future negotiate contracts for any longer than one year.
An alternative response by labor is to stay with longer-term contracts but base them on a better forecast of inflation. In fact, the closer labor can come to having wages fully adjusted for changes in cost-of-living indexes, the closer it comes to making a "perfect" forecast. That situation, from labor's point of view, would be the ultimate in rational expectations and would obviously frustrate the Keynesian policy mechanism described earlier.
A telling illustration of the way labor has moved to protect its real earnings in the recent environment of high price inflation is the data on the percentage of workers covered by cost-of-living clauses in their contracts. We've plotted that data in Figure 1. It suggests that labor is in fact responding in a “rational” way to government's continuing failure to deliver on its announced policy goals for containment of inflation.
Rational Expectations Background to Our Involvement at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis
While “rational expectations” had appeared as a technical term in economics literature as early as 1961, the rational expectations challenge to activist macroeconomic policy theory is much more recent. And a key element of the challenge was developed at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
The Bank had, in 1970, launched a major research program exploring how best the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) should make monetary policy. In 1970 and 1971, respectively, Neil Wallace and Thomas Sargent, professors of economics at the University of Minnesota, joined the Bank's research department as economic advisors to assist in that program. While the program was underway, a seminal result appeared in a 1972 paper by economist Robert E. Lucas. Lucas, then at Carnegie Mellon University, had developed a rational expectations model of the business cycle. The theoretical importance of his work can hardly be overstated: for the first time, business cycles could be explained using a model consistent with the core of standard economic theory.
Rational expectations was quickly seen by Sargent and Wallace to be of great importance to the research program being carried on at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, particularly as they began to flesh out the policy implications of Lucas' model. They found that rational expectations could deprive activist macroeconomic policy of any systematic real effects. Their findings meant that activist monetary policy by the Federal Reservetightening the money supply to cool an overheated economy or expanding the money supply to stimulate a lagging economymight not work in the way it had long been believed to be effective. Subsequent research by Sargent and Wallace has established them, with Lucas, as the leading theorists of the new view.
To extend discussion of the rational expectations view, the Bank has sponsored a number of conferences and seminars, publishing papers and proceedings from those conferences and seminars. In 1974, the Bank sponsored a conference on the rational expectations challenge to current policymaking procedures, inviting several of the leading scholars on both sides of the emerging debate. In June of 1975 we published Sargent and Wallace's paper, Rational Expectations and the Theory of Economic Policy, from the 1974 conference as the second edition in our Studies in Monetary Economics (SME) Series. The third publication in our SME Series, Rational Expectations and Theory of Economic Policy: Arguments and Evidence by Sargent and Wallace, came out of a series of seminars on FOMC policymaking conducted in 1975 by the Bank's research staff. Further work by various research staff members on the rational expectations challenge was published in 1976 as A Prescription for Monetary Policy. In 1977, the Bank published proceedings of a 1975 conference on business cycle research, New Methods in Business Cycle Research, that related to our rational expectations work.
The Bank is continuing its program of fundamental studies of requirements for optimal monetary policy, with current emphasis on clarifying the foundations of money in rational expectations models. A conference of leading scholars dealing with that topic has been planned for the fall of 1978.
Story two: countercyclical policy that takes effect by way of interest rate channels.
Now let's look at another commonly held notion of how monetary-fiscal stimulus makes things move. This one operates through a different market, the market for investment funds, and seems to depend on a kind of shortsightedness by suppliers of funds regarding their prospective “real” interest earnings. The earnings-versus-inflation discrepancy that policy appears to exploit here parallels labor's “illusion” about its wage in the first story. According to this policy story, policy makers' actions to expand the rate of money growth will influence business expansion decisions and consumer spending decisions through interest rates.
The story goes as follows.
Start with the perception that the economy is in, or going into, a recession. Policy authorities act to expand the money supply growth rate. The Federal Reserve does this by stepping up its buying of securities from the public (through a network of dealers in New York). By that deliberate action the public ends up with a flow of new cash, and banks end up with a flow of new reserves that enable them to expand loans to businesses, if they can find customers, by several times the amount of the new reserves.
Other things being equal, the buying action of the Fed drives securities prices up, and that means interest rates are driven down on those securities. The subsequent action by banks seeking to make loans at a faster pace than they would have done otherwise, or to buy bonds in greater volumes than they would have done otherwise, helps move still other interest rates down.
In the next step, business firms expand investment in new production facilities. One way to imagine why they would do so is to consider interest on borrowed business funds as simply another cost of doing business, just as wages for labor inputs are a cost of doing business. As expectations adjust to the prospect of lower interest costs, some investment possibilities not previously viewed as profitable will suddenly appear profitableexpected revenues don't change, but expected costs go down because the interest cost component has gone down. Thus, plant and equipment investments are undertaken, new workers are hired, and new output is produced.
The last step in the story simply recognizes that the added new workers start some new spending of their own, which further raises demand, causing additional businesses to expand their output, and so on. Thus, national product expands by some multiple of the initial investment stimulus, and we've succeeded in bringing about large real effects on the economy through small changes in monetary policy.
Once this process gets underway (plant expansion, new hiring, and all that), the increased private spending would, just as in the first story, likely bring forth some mixture of price increases and real quantity increases in the flow of goods and services. This story seems even to allow wage rates to be bid up approximately in line with prices as expansion moves along. The prospect of wage rate increases can be a part of business firms' expectationsas long as the necessary capital funds have been or can be acquired through borrowing at bargain interest rates.
Interest rate responses to monetary-fiscal actions appear to be the crucial link in the story we've just told. Interest rate responses also seem to provide the main channel through which monetary policy actions affect employment and output in the large macroeconometric models of the United States economy currently used by government to assist in determining policies and by business to assist in determining its strategies. The large multi-equation “MPS” model developed by the Federal Reserve, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Pennsylvania, and the Social Sciences Research Council has five directly defined channels that depend on interest rate movements. Some dozen different interest rates appear in the equations to help generate quarter-by-quarter predictions of total spending for such categories as consumer durables, automobiles, producers' durable equipment, and residential construction. The interest rate linkage seems also to be a key part of the looser and more generalized anecdotal story that you might get if you asked some policy makers how their decisions affect the economy.
In the rational expectations view, however, those stories are wrong. The interest-rate-link story doesn't take a broad enough perspective and doesn't adequately accommodate the way people rationally form their expectations. While it's undeniable that Federal Reserve action to buy securities and expand bank reserves results in bidding interest rates down, that response is temporary and fleeting. The point is that rational lenders and investors, who look ahead to later chapters of the story, see that any Federal Reserve push to expand money growth rates will ultimately raise the growth in the general price level. Foreseeing that outcome, lenders won't want to tie up funds in long-term loans at rates of interest which they had calculated to be acceptable under an outdated view of future inflation. If they were to commit their funds with no upward adjustment of their lending rate, they would be agreeing to accept a lower rate of return in terms of the goods and services they would subsequently be able to buy. And nothing in the outlook has changed that should lead them to want to do that.
Instead, they would add an “inflation premium” to the interest rates they are willing to settle fora little insurance policy against the heightened prospects for inflation. And interest rate levels finally settled on in the financial markets have got to reflect that premium. Finally, if the long-term interest rates relevant for business capital expansion go up by the full amount of expected inflation, as the rationalists argue would occur with any foreseen inflation, all costsincluding interest as a costwill go up proportionately to the expected price rise so that nothing will have changed in terms of exploitable profit opportunities. In short, when policy moves are anticipated or quickly sensed in market signals, this financial market channel to policy results we've been describing won't work either.
So what's the evidence that interest rates don't behave as the conventional policy view would argue they should? Any simple look at the relationship between money growth and interest rate levels in the historical record is bound to ignore a lot of other factors also influencing how those two things behave. Yet the fact that economic data just don't show high rates of money growth regularly associated with low levels of interest rates must, at the very least, raise doubts about the dependability of that perceived route for policy actions.
You can look at experience across countries [Figure 2a] or over a period of time within the United States [Figure 2b] and see that higher interest rates, not lower, appear, if anything, to go along with higher rates of money expansionprobably reflecting higher actual and expected inflation rates.
To sum up, the rational expectations view argues that conventionally perceived policy channelswhether operating through wage costs, interest costs, or any other market-responsible variableare wrong because they depend on having people behave contrary to their own clear best interests, repeatedly neglecting important information they have or can have about any systematically applied policy.
II. How valid is rational expectations as a representation of people's behavior?
Some critics argue that rational expectations demands too much wisdom and perceptiveness of people to be believable. But the validity of rational expectations does not require that every consumer or worker or business manager be the “complete seer” of future prices and other economic events. For example, in the case of wage bargaining by organized labor, only the union leadership actually engaged in the bargaining process not each and every rank-and-file memberneed have an informed view about what government policy is and what its consequences for future price levels are likely to be. Today's union leadership, as we pointed out in our review of policy channels in the previous section, does, in fact, acknowledge its concern about prospective “real” earnings. Small agricultural enterprises or commodity dealers need not have specialized resources of their own to forecast supply and demand movements and toe effects of government policies. All they need do to learn what the experts are expecting in future market situations is pick up the newspaper, or the phone, and check on quoted futures prices or subscribe at modest price to one of many private newsletters. In the case of small borrowers and investors, the information possessed by large and sophisticated borrowers and suppliers of funds becomes very quickly and widely reflected in publicized interest rates. Studies have shown that financial markets, including the stock markets, are efficient users of information in the sense that prices quickly adjust to reflect expert information on all the factorsgovernment policy included bearing on future profitability.
Clearly the major industrial and commercial firms in the economy have a crucial financial stake in correctly forecasting how they will be affected by changes in government policy. Any actions they take, because of changed expectations, in product or resource markets will quickly carry the message of their reappraisal to other participants, large and small, on both sides of the market.
Finally, when wage rates of a particular firm get out of line with other firms competing for the same labor pool, reaction by only a few workers is necessary, in general, in order to cause the firm to adjust its wage rates to the prevailing market. Perhaps none of the workers need take direct action if the firm monitors the market and adjusts its salary structure, as many firms do, using projections based on market surveys. Such surveys will reflect what's happening at the more responsive firms, including the effects of escalator provisions and other union bargaining results. In sum, the rational expectations argument is that information about the likely future is transmitted in the marketplace in the same way as information about the present. A given individual or firm need not be the “complete seer” of the future any more than of the present.
Some evidence from economic data.
The rational expectations view argues that existing economic models and theories that have dominated activist policy thinking for years fail to properly capture the true responsiveness of real-life decision makers to government policy actions. If that's true, then the forecasts generated by such models ought to betray that defect during a period in which policy abruptly changes. Although traditional models have not been subject to this test directly, they have been found to be unstable outside the sample period over which they were estimated.4
The fact that standard models fail in this way suggests that something is seriously wrong with them. In particular, that “something” may well be the way in which the economic actors are represented as forming the expectations on which economic decision making is based. Traditional models seem to limit too rigidly the capacity granted to their implicit decision makers to judge and react to new information.
But what does the test of recent history have to say about how well rational expectations performs as a model of people's real-life decision process for the economy as a whole? The technical definition of rational expectations can be viewed as a very strict assumption extreme, as some critics contendabout the knowledge and perceptiveness people have regarding what's happening in the economy. Yet, in another study, Thomas Sargent 6 has shown that a rational expectations version of a macroeconomic model, even though built upon extreme assumptions about the way people see through policy actions, was not at all inconsistent with data from the United States economy. The data used reflected, of course, expectations people actually held and decisions people actually made. From a scientific point of view, passing such a test doesn't prove that the rational expectations view is the correct one. The strict form of rational expectations model used by Sargent merely survives as one legitimate candidate in a contest that may never be fully decided from the historical data.
But other new research has extended in a broader framework the basic rational expectations insights into economic policy making and the policy-neutralizing effect of people's economic decision-making behavior.
Support from developments in theory: the new view and the Phillips curve.
Significant support for the credibility of rational expectations comes from new work incorporating rational individual agents into a more broadly integrated economic model that exhibits business cycles and explains the so-called Phillips curve. No previous theory in economics has managed to perform that job satisfactorily. Since the Phillips curve is part of activist policy lore, we want to briefly sketch what the new view has to say about it.
In the long historical record, high rates of inflation have tended to go with high rates of employment, and low rates of inflation have tended to go with low rates of employment. That kind of relationship is often referred to as a Phillips curve after economist A. W. Phillips, who in 1958 first described a connection between unemployment rates and wage-inflation rates in British data.
To many policy activists the Phillips relationship offers some hard empirical data tracing out various combinations of labor market conditions and inflation pressures that correspond to and support the Keynesian policy stories we've discussed. In a famous 1960 article, economists Paul Samuelson and Robert Solow 5 described the observed relationship in the United States data as a “menu of choice” available to the policy maker. Until recently the Phillips curve has been widely accepted and defended as a practical measure of the “trade-off” between national employment objectives and inflation objectives.
But the Phillips curve relationship is no longer regarded as a stable or dependable one. If a regular trade-off can even be deciphered in recent unemployment inflation data, the inflation “price” for buying lower unemployment appears to have gone up substantially: high unemployment rates now go hand in hand with high inflation rates. Proponents of “rational expectations” interpret the broad pattern of these resultsthe historical Phillips relationship (such as it has been) and the recent deterioration of the supposed trade-offas evidence supporting a model of the economy in which rational expectations operates.
The new theory being built around rational expectations and some related ideas does in fact account for historical Phillips curve-like relationships. And those relationships, as pointed out by Robert Lucas,3 turn out simply to be the observed facts of the business cycle. The general price level, output, and employment tend to move up together as people respond to a rather general misreading of unanticipated price and demand changes. In the inherently uncertain environment in which decisions are made, people at first take these as signals of expanded profit opportunities. Subsequently, the same three quantities tend to move down together when expansion is discovered to have overstretched the real level of economic demand. But even though these economic variables do move together in a more or less regular wayhence the Phillips curve in the historical datathe rational expectations view says this relationship can not be regularly exploited for government policy purposes. For if government tries to raise employment rates by adding to aggregate demand and expanding the flow of money, people will quickly incorporate into their expectations the fact that a more rapidly rising level of prices and wages will surely follow. Business firms will not then be likely to mistake the price and demand pressures that soon occur as signals of profit opportunities (a la the channels described earlier) beckoning them to expand output and employment.
Although actual data from the economy is very “noisy”meaning it jumps around a lot from one month or quarter to another in ways that seem to defy explanationit's possible to see that longer-term movements in inflation rates and employment rates do conform in a loose way. Data in Figure 3, taken from the period 1965 to 1977, show three major upward swings, each of several quarters, that, loosely speaking, trace a kind of Phillips curve expansionary relationship. The chart also indicates the deteriorating nature of that relationship. Each successive upswing seems on average to require higher rates of general inflation to recapture the same level of the employment rate as observed in the previous swing. That, according to the rationalists, may be evidence that people have incorporated into their expectations the government's inflationary bias of the past decade or longer.
III. What happens to activist macro policy in a rational expectations world?
In earlier sections we reviewed arguments for disbelieving that macro policy actions can work the way conventional perceptions say they do, and we presented reasons for thinking that the kind of world policy makers must deal with is something very close to a rational expectations world.
The serious problem, then, is the following: If people really do behave as rational expectations models their behavior, then many existing beliefs about the results policy can achieve are incorrect. As we've abundantly stressed already, macro policy initiatives that people anticipate will be frustrated by the changes people will then make in their plans. More particularly, any policy move to stimulate aggregate spending will be largely dissipated by price rises.
We will graphically illustrate what rational expectations does to conventional macro policy actions through some comparative simulations produced by a well-known, small econometric model.
An illustration of the effects of rational expectations on economic policy.
Econometric models are constructed of mathematical equations, often designed to be solved on computers in a way capable of simulating the future course of an economy. Results can then be cranked out quarter- by-quarter to produce numerical forecasts of employment, prices, or whatever economic variables are contained in the model. It's now a commonplace that models of this sortsome with as many as several hundred equationshave since the mid-1960s become increasingly important information bases for business decision making and for government policy decision making.
Conventional policy transmission channels, such as the wage illusion described in section I, are also built into traditional econometric models often used as a basis for evaluating alternative policy actions. Those models, of course, were not designed to reflect rational expectations, but there generally is a way to impose on them a form of rational expectations. When that's done, the revised macro model reveals that activist economic policy does not have much of an impact on the economic outcomeapart from what it does to prices. We'll illustrate that important result in this section.
Getting a handle on expectations.
Structural econometric models are essentially compact ways of summarizing a particular view of the way people behave. Some of the equations in a model will therefore attempt to represent the things people take into account in making decisions to produce, to work, or to buy and that means their expectations. Interest rates, for example, are presumably a factor in business decisions to build new production plants. So an equation designed to predict how much new plant will be built next quarter or next year will include variables representing expectations of business managers and others about future interest rates as one of the quantities that must be fed into it.
Finding a measure to reflect people's expectations in a model poses a problem. We know the model will eventually generate its own results for the path of future values of its economic variablesincluding, in particular, those variables for which expectations need to be formed.
One very simple way to program the model to form expectations for, say, future interest rates is to have the model use its own most recent quarterly value as the expectation for values in all future quarters. A less simple approach is to use some average of several recent quarters as a proxy expectation for future interest rates. That's exactly what most currently used models, including the large macro models, dosometimes explicitly but often implicitly. That procedure is termed “adaptive expectations” because of the way the expectation slowly adjusts after an abrupt change occurs in the level of actual rates being generated.
One of the consequences of using adaptive expectations is that values produced for use as the model's expectations about each successive quarter's interest rate are usually not equal to the interest rates eventually produced by the model when it has been run.
Economist John Muth had this discrepancy between adaptive expectations and model results in mind when he used the term rational expectations in 1961. He chose to set the expectations values for variables needed as inputs to various equations so as to be equal to the final predictions eventually coming out of the model. And, from a technical standpoint, that's what the strict form of rational expectations means. Literally, that definition of rational expectations credited the model's implicit decision makers with knowing as much about the way the economy works as is captured in the model itself and with having full current information about all other economic variables as well as settings of the policy instruments (government deficit, size of the money stock, etc.) under policy makers' control. As we pointed out in section II, that may seem to be asking a lot, but subsequent ways of incorporating rational expectations into models have preserved the essential policy consequences of rational expectations while requiring agents to be less completely knowing and informed than outlined above.
Now that we've described what rational expectations does technically in economic models, we'll look at some indicated results of policy that come from simulations of a version of the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank modelwith and without rational expectations.
In the diagrams [Figures 4a and 4b] we show what the original model says will happen to the unemployment rate and the inflation rate as two alternative choices for monetary policy are pursued. The period spanned is first-quarter 1960 through third-quarter 1963, and the common starting observations (unemployment at 5.8 percent and inflation at 2 percent) were approximate values for early 1960. To obtain the sequence plotted in Figure 4a, we imposed a 6 percent annual growth rate for money as an expansionary policy measure and let the model generate the things it determines internally, including the unemployment rate and inflation rate. The model then traced out the quarter-by-quarter path for the two variables as shown in the diagram. That path is suggestive of a standard Phillips curve policy "trade-off" that associates lower unemployment rates with higher rates of inflation.
The curve in Figure 4b was similarly obtained, the only difference being that we used a less expansionary monetary policy assumption by setting the annual money growth rate at 4 percent.
A policy activist who accepted this standard version of the St. Louis model as a good representation of the economy might feel encouraged at the outset of the simulation period that the unemployment rate could be "engineered" to a lower level by pursuing expansionary money growth. Moreover, that result apparently could be achieved fairly quickly at minimal cost in terms of extra inflation. With a 6 percent money growth rate, for example, we'd get the unemployment rate down very close to 4 percent in about five quarters, and that would add only about half a percentage point to the inflation rate. Using a 4 percent money growth rate over the same five quarters as depicted in Figure 4b, we would not do quite as well for the unemployment rate (cutting it only to the 5 percent level), but the inflation rate would even decline a little. Thus the "menu of choice" open to the policy maker would be a menu of alternative paths through time for the economy, and two of the selections are illustrated in Figures 4a and 4b. A policy maker considering just these two options might well decide that it's better to take the faster route toward a 4 percent unemployment objective given the small additional inflation that would be caused. (Of course, the policy authority might then need to be prepared to shift gears to lower money growth rates as the economy neared the chosen unemployment objective in order to avoid much higher inflation rates later on.)
Unfortunately, in a world of rational expectations that attractive kind of policy menu doesn't exist, as we illustrate in Figure 4c.
The last panel in Figure 4 repeats the same Policy simulation as in the first panelmoney growth rate at 6 percentbut with the model adjusted 50 that price expectations are rational." (These simulations are taken from a study prepared by Paul Anderson 1 of this Bank's staff.) The resulting path, traced out by the simulation, shows dramatically accelerating inflation as the main achievement of expansionary policy. After five quarters, unemployment is still in the neighborhood of 5 percent, but the inflation rate has soared to 8.5 percent, and that seems clearly an unacceptable “trade-off” for public policy.
While this illustration is constructed through the use of one specific, small econometric model, the same general outcome would occur using other well-known macroeconomic models, large and small. These results vividly portray that rational expectations has a dramatic effect on what economists' models predict the impact of policy decisions to be on the economy. In a rational expectations world, economic policy actions simply don't work the way many people have believed them to work.
Let's be clear about what has been ruled out by the results we've shown: They rule out any net gains in employment and output from routine countercyclical policy. That's because people, on average, can recognize the incipient stages of recession as well as government policy makers can, and so people will anticipate the government's stimulative actions as long as those actions are applied consistently and systematically from one business cycle to the next.
But not only is that kind of consistent, orderly application of countercyclical policy ruled out as incapable of improving levels of real activity in the economy overall, so also are any aggregate stimulative policy measures that are readily predictable or are publicly announced. For they, too, will become a part of people's expectations.
Surprise moves in policy can of course get people to do things they hadn't otherwise planned to do. Therefore, activist demand management policy can, if the magnitude of the policy stimulus exceeds people's expectations, cause an addition to employment beyond what would have occurred without policy action. But that qualification should offer no particular encouragement to supporters of activist policy. For even the theoretical possibility of repeated escalations of government stimulus must be limited: First, because people will catch on that escalation has been adopted as a strategy and build that strategy into their expectations; and second, because escalating inflation rates and loss of confidence in government would pose increasingly troublesome problems to the continuity of government and its policies. The rationalists see no constructive role for policies that depend on “surprising” or “fooling” people into doing things. We'll consider that issue a bit more in the last section.
Conventional policy stimulus in a slack economy.
There is a widely held view that says, if the economy is operating with a great deal of slack, or “excess capacity,” any policy-spending stimulus will have little effect on prices and will mainly result in an increased real quantity of output. Only when the economy nears “capacity” output, claims that view, will extra stimulus spending fail to bring forth much new physical output and instead be largely dissipated on price increases. Neither economic theory nor empirical evidence supports that view.
There is no compelling theoretical reason to believe that some kind of critical point exists in the economy's overall scale of operation that abruptly distinguishes price-quantity responses taking place above that point from those taking place below. That doesn't mean that physical constraints or bottlenecks might not occur at the individual plant or industry level to temporarily block output increases from occurring in response to stronger demand. But for the economy as a whole, substitution possibilities are enormous, so spending can shift to other lines or services where bottlenecks or constraints will not, in general, be reached at the same time. Thus, the economic concept of aggregate production suggests only gradual transition of cost, price, and profitability relationships over the full range of operating levels for the economy as a whole.
The observed Phillips relationship (see, for example, Figure 3), which does not in general exhibit a sharp bend, provides a rough, practical verification that such is the case. And that ought to indicate, to those who still believe in an exploitable Phillips curve, that the policy maker gets no “free ride” as the economy expands from its low points in relative operating levels.
There is further empirical evidence to that point: one of our studies,2 using data for the United States economy, has shown that the reported capacity utilization rate does not help explain inflation rates when the effects of other factors bearing on price changes are analytically separated out. That is, whatever the cause of price level changes, that cause doesn't appear to act any differently when excess capacity is high than when it is low.
It's true that a government monetary or spending stimulus sometimes will be dissipated nearly totally in price increases. At other times it will bring forth greater physical quantities of goods and services but only when accompanied by an increase in prices. The determining factor between these two alternatives has nothing to do with “capacity utilization,” but instead depends on whether or not the stimulus has been anticipated by people who make buy-and-sell decisions in the economy.
In summary, there is no activist policy at any level of excess capacity that does not bring forth price increases at the same time it causes output expansion, and nowhere does the relative amount of output vs. price response change greatly as “excess capacity” is used up.
IV. Some conclusions: given the new viewwhat can macroeconomic policy really do?
The policy view built around rational expectations ideas does not argue that monetary actions by the Federal Reserve and fiscal actions by Congress and the Administration can't have an effect on production and employment. They can and do, but only when they surprise people.
As we've repeatedly emphasized, a crucial distinction required by the new view is that between policy actions that are expected and policy actions that are surprisesonly the latter cause people to alter their expectations about opportunities for gain and hence to adjust their planned behavior.
In the case of policy actions that are expected, the new view argues there is neither an empirical nor theoretical basis for believing they can be exploited by policy makers for any beneficial real effect. Included in this category are predictable policies such as the Federal Reserve's traditional "leaning against the wind" (which is to say being "extra" restrictive in supplying reserves when the economy approaches high operating rates and being “extra” liberal when the economy has begun to slump), as long as that leaning is done consistently. The only economic effect of expected policy actions, if on the stimulus side, would be to boost general inflation.
Policy actions that come as a surprise to people, on the other hand, will, in general, have some real effects. Policy surprises cause people to change their plans, because the expectations on which they based those plans have been jolted. In the technical literature, much of the defense of activist policy against the rational expectations attack has hinged on preserving ways in which surprise could continue to provide workable leverage for the policy maker, even though decision agents are granted rational expectations. We've already discussed a few of these argumentsfor one, the idea that people lock themselves into contracts on prices or wages. This, activists argue, enables policy makers to use surprise when needed, by catching people in midcontract, to foster a particular policy objective. We pointed out in section Il why that argument is faulty. Another activist idea is that government policy makers have better information or superior knowledge about how the economy works, and so they can take an action that people won't catch on to, at least for a long enough time to enable some policy results. The premise about superior knowledge in the government sector is clearly faulty, and section II talked a bit about the efficiency of private sector information.
These arguments are at best attempts to patch up questionable policy theory by finding special conditions under which the policy of “surprise” can be routinely used by government to smooth out swings in the business cycle. Rationalists doubt, at one level of questioning, that stabilization efforts based on surprise really give the policy maker much to work with. To the extent surprise policy involves a deliberate strategy of fooling people (in the sense that had the people only known the truth they wouldn't have done what the government's action got them to do) it may easily work the first time, but then fail to be effective the second or third time because people have escalated their awareness of what government is likely to do in any given situation. And unless the “surprise-that-works” is later repeated, under similar conditions and in a consistent and logical way, it is not possible to distinguish government policy making from a random, or even perverse, game.
At a deeper level, rationalists doubt that it would be wise, or fair, for the government to attempt “policy by surprise” even if policy makers were sufficiently resourceful to invent unendingly new surprise ways to boost the money supply and government spending.
One of the most important ideas emerging from the new view, as we pointed out in section III, is that the “business cycle” might at last be adequately explained as a property of a properly working market economy. In such a view, individuals are thought to react to profit incentives and to imperfectly extract information about those incentives from changes in price signals that are in part useful information and in part meaningless “noise.” An economic system doing the most efficient possible job of reading the information being reflected in price signals will still experience some irreducible business cycle swings. That's because the economic process contains inherent mechanisms that convert random shocks on prices into a more persistent, short-term misreading of changing profit opportunities. When misread by enough people, that action can stimulate a cumulative swing in output that will continue until the misreading is realized and retrenchment sets in. Random shocks to prices and markets are always with us. Some arise from natural catastrophes or man-made embargos, but Lucas 3 argues that an important source of shocks to prices may have been erratic “surprise” actions by policy makers themselves.
The new view conjectures that some amount of cyclical swing in production and employment is inherent in the micro level processes of the economy that no government micro policies can, or should attempt to, smooth out. Expected additions to money growth certainly won't smooth out cycles, if the arguments in this paper are correct. Surprise additions to money growth have the potential to make matters worse. That's because surprise policies, and the prospect of other future surprise policies, lead to greater uncertainty in people's expectations about future prices, wages, and interest ratesand those are prime ingredients in people's ongoing decision making. These new theories say the information value of price signals is eroded by erratic and unpredictable government policy action. Given the importance to an efficiently working market economy of information conveyed by prices, the potential of activist general demand policy to do costly mischief must be considered a serious one. Government's potential to systematically exploit surprise shocks is drastically limited in a rational expectations world.
The road ahead. . .
If it's true that traditionally perceived activist policy goals are unattainable through macroeconomic policy channels, what goals should guide monetary and fiscal policy? What should monetary policy try to do?
One strategy that seems consistent with the significant, though largely negative, findings of rational expectations would have monetary policy focus its attention on inflation and announce, and stick to, a policy that would bring the rate of increase in the general price level to some specified low figure. To be sure, merely to announce such a policy at this point in time would be a “surprise” perhaps a rather large one given the past history of policyand is therefore likely to have, for a period of time, some effects on the planned level of output and employment. But there's no way to avoid some lurching when a trajectory is changed. After a period of adjustment, so we've argued here, a steady and consistent pursuit of some publicly known, modest growth for the money supply would not have detrimental effects on employment levels because the general price level impact of monetary policy would be built into people's expectations.
Given that sort of primary dedication to a lower inflation path, the general objective of monetary policy suggested by rational expectations ought to be elimination or reduction of uncertainty about the future general price levelto make it as predictable and dependable as possible around some low average rate of growth. That course, rationalists argue, would do more than any alternative macro policy posture to contribute to long-term steady economic growth and high employment rates.
While we might have reasonable confidence in the wisdom of that general strategy, the rational expectations view can offer little on the question of how best to implement such a policy operationally. That's one of the unfinished tasks for research. In the meantime, the broader issues we've raised are topics for deep reflection and debate by those responsible for designing and controlling the economic policies of this nation. That's a responsibility that ought also to concern informed citizens who, after all, will reap the benefits of good policies and pay the costs of poor ones.
3 Lucas, Robert E., Jr. “Understanding Business Cycles,” Carnegie- Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Volume 5, supplement to Journal of Monetary Economics. North Holland Publishing Company, 1977.
4 Muench, Thomas J., Arthur J. Rolnick, Neil Wallace, and William Weiler. “Tests for Structural Change and Prediction Intervals for the Reduced Forms of Two Structural Models of the U.S.: The FRB-MIT and Michigan Quarterly Models.” Annals of Economic and Social Measurement, Vol. 3, No. 3 (July 1974):491-519. | <urn:uuid:483bf4be-49b4-4a0e-8e14-d63f45067aa8> | CC-MAIN-2019-09 | https://mobile.minneapolisfed.org/publications/annual-reports/rational-expectationsfresh-ideas-that-challenge-some-established-views-of-policy-making | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-09/segments/1550247496855.63/warc/CC-MAIN-20190220230820-20190221012820-00262.warc.gz | en | 0.959037 | 10,930 | 2.78125 | 3 |
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Excellent course led from first course right into this course perfectly. Level is perfect assignments perfect. Already told 5 people about it.
關於 Infectious Disease Modelling 專項課程
Mathematical modelling is increasingly being used to support public health decision-making in the control of infectious diseases. This specialisation aims to introduce some fundamental concepts of mathematical modelling with all modelling conducted in the programming language R - a widely used application today. | <urn:uuid:a71160e4-d8a6-4e19-bf58-ce7cc92fbe2e> | CC-MAIN-2021-10 | https://zh-tw.coursera.org/learn/interventions-and-calibration | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-10/segments/1614178368608.66/warc/CC-MAIN-20210304051942-20210304081942-00197.warc.gz | en | 0.918964 | 482 | 2.890625 | 3 |
posted on Jul, 24 2013 @ 04:13 AM
Originally posted by qmantoo
Dont bother shouting "ROCK". Of course they are rocks. I never said they were NOT rocks, did I? I am sure you can see what is unusual, but in case
you cannot, it is the fact that there is one triangle on top of another larger one and they are both the same orientation and angle and artistically
placed with the same size border on both sides. Thats what is odd about it.
Show me the same kind of thing on earth if you think this is commonplace - but it has to be similar with one smaller shape on top of another similar
larger shape and positioned the same orientation.
Probably won't be able to find exactly the same, as weathering won't produce identical formations. The others have provided you examples of
artificial looking but naturally formed rock formations, which honestly are more impressive than yours.
Which is just what this looks like. I can't dig up any pictures, but as something of a rock hound I've seen similar formations in sandstone around
rivers . If you look up sedimentary rocks and cleavage (and are really careful with Google) you'll probably find some examples eventually.
I mean, looking at it as someone who looks at a lot of rocks... I just see a naturally formed rock. | <urn:uuid:8f7357ab-359d-414f-a241-42d0738dfa49> | CC-MAIN-2015-18 | http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread961082/pg1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-18/segments/1430458398357.2/warc/CC-MAIN-20150501053318-00001-ip-10-235-10-82.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974469 | 285 | 2.625 | 3 |
Ofcom finds 79% of parents try to keep kids safe online
Four-fifths of parents with a home broadband connection have taken steps to protect their children online, according to Ofcom.
The communications regulator found parental concerns about the content being accessed via TV and the web are decreasing, but 79 per cent of mums and dads with kids aged between five and 15 have rules in place for their children's internet usage.
Measures taken to protect youngsters online include setting limits on the amount of time they are allowed to spend browsing and keeping an eye on their activity.
Some 46 per cent of parents with five to 15-year-olds who go online at home have installed some form of safety controls on their computer.
However, ten per cent of respondents admitted they have not adopted online parental controls as they either do not know how to do so, or are unaware it is possible. This proportion rose to 21 and 25 per cent for fixed and mobile games consoles respectively.
"Children are not just using more media, they are also adopting some forms at a very young age," said Claudio Pollack, Ofcom's consumer director.
"This highlights the challenge that some parents face in keeping up with their children when it comes to technology." | <urn:uuid:9c25c0d5-ddcf-4164-9361-88a607097a81> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cable.co.uk/news/ofcom-finds-79-of-parents-try-to-keep-kids-safe-online-801475175/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702185502/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110305-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969015 | 254 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Are Whites Still "Fleeing"? Racial Patterns and Enrollment Shifts in Urban Public Schools, 1987-1996
NBER Working Paper No. 7290
The effect of interracial contact in public schools on the enrollment of whites has been an important concern in assessments of desegregation since the 1970s. It has been feared that 'white flight' -- meaning exit from or avoidance of racially mixed public schools -- could undermine the racial contact that desegregation policy seeks to enhance. This study examines this question using recent data. It also expands coverage from large urban districts to entire metropolitan areas, paying attention to the spatial context within which enrollment decisions are made. To do so, it examines data for 1987 and 1996 on racial composition and enrollment in all schools and school districts in 238 metropolitan areas. The study finds that white losses appear to be spurred both by interracial contact in districts where their children attend school and by the opportunities available in metropolitan areas for reducing that contact. Implications for metropolitan segregation are examined.
Document Object Identifier (DOI): 10.3386/w7290
Published: Clotfelter, Charles T. "Are Whites Still Fleeing? Racial Patterns And Enrollment Shifts In Urban Public Schools, 1987-1996," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 2001, v20(2,Spring), 199-221.
Users who downloaded this paper also downloaded these: | <urn:uuid:de8c844e-8ca7-4e52-9da8-365b2c8a2ef1> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.nber.org/papers/w7290 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279169.4/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00077-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.929256 | 286 | 3 | 3 |
Original art by @modográfico
As Venezuela settles into the first hyperinflation worldwide in the last decade, I’d like to share some broad thoughts on this subject. To be clear, I am not a Venezuela expert; my research stems from analysis of historical episodes of hyperinflation. Nonetheless, I am contributing this to ensure there can be no confusion arising from my body of research showing that, in normal macro-economic circumstances, rapid money supply growth does not cause inflation.
Hyperinflation is a very specific economic malady, with defining characteristics beyond simple inflation. In 2012, Steve Hanke and Nicholas Krus of Johns Hopkins compiled a table of all 56 identifiable instances of hyperinflation to that point, including what they consider the first such instance, France in 1796. In their compilation, they used a strict definition of hyperinflation: a price-level increase of at least 50% per month.
A preponderance of these instances occurred in countries in and just after World War I and World War II, countries in South America in the 1980s, and, especially, the countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union in the early 1990s as they were transitioning to market economies.
Two prevalent factors across these occurrences were the collapse in productive capacity (through war, commodity price collapse or other factors), and an overdependence on imports.
But the defining factor was the inability or severely diminished ability to borrow or sell debt to any third party, especially foreign banks or investors, coupled with very large and recurring government budget deficits, usually on the order of 10% to 20% – or in some cases, much more.
Given this large, recurring deficit, and the inability to obtain funding through a third party, a country will resort to one of two things. The first is to sell debt to its own central bank, which that central bank pays for by giving it fiat currency or by making a fiat credit to the government’s account that can be used to make payments. Both are in effect the creation or “printing” of new money. The second is simply printing new, currency that is unbacked by such things as gold, reserves, or debt.
With the proper antidote, hyperinflation can be stopped in a very short period of time, often just days or weeks.
When a country resorts to this strategy, the value of its currency plummets in relation to external currencies such as the dollar. When this happens, the people and institutions that hold its currency scramble to try and sell the currency in exchange for gold of some more stable external currency before the value of that currency tumbles further. This mass selling only weakens the currency further, creating a rapid downward spiral in the value of the currency. Prices can literally increase exponentially. In Germany in the early 1920s prices increased by ten to the power of fifteen.
A large portion of the inflation comes not just from the large increase in currency but from the fact that, with a depreciated currency, the price of imported goods skyrockets. (Imports are often a significant factor in regular inflation as well).
The experience of these 56 countries has shown one other very important thing. With the proper antidote, hyperinflation can be stopped in a very short period of time, often just days or weeks.
The proper antidote is to stop the deficit spending. Jeffrey Sachs, in his book The End of Poverty, reports that Bolivia’s hyperinflation of 1985 was stopped in weeks by the following strategy. The following is an excerpt from that book:
We looked for a package of fiscal measures that could quickly wean the government away from its dependence on Central Bank financing of the deficit. We soon realized in discussions with our Bolivian colleagues and in looking through the books that the budgetary key lay in the price of oil. Government revenues depended heavily on taxes on hydrocarbons, mainly paid by the state petroleum company, YFPB. The YFPB set the price of oil and gasoline (in pesos). Generally, the oil price was changed every few months, so the price of oil fell sharply in comparison with other prices and in terms of the U.S. dollar during the period in which the peso price was held constant. The low price of oil was, in turn, destroying the budget. … Since the government budget depends on oil taxes, the tax base had collapsed. … Whole truckloads of gasoline were being smuggled over the border to Peru. …
We calculated that if the price of gasoline (and other fuels) was raised around tenfold, back to the world price of around $0.28 per liter, this increase itself would close most of the budget deficit. A package of other measures on the spending and revenue side could close the rest. …
The program was initiated on August twenty-ninth, starting with a sharp rise in oil prices. … The sudden end to the budget deficit led to an immediate stabilization of the exchange rate. … Within a week, the hyperinflation was over. …
Additional steps were required to consolidate the victory over hyperinflation, especially the restructuring of its foreign debt.
So the antidote formula is this:
- Close the budget deficit through whatever means required: tax reform, debt restructuring, expense reduction, or even, as in Bolivia, a technical adjustment of commodity prices.
- Discontinue printing new money through either means described above. In some cases, this has been achieved by the issuance of a second currency where the commitment not to print additional currency is more credible.
- Or make a commitment to do #1 and 2 above that is believed by the market and the citizenry, and then followed up appropriately.
Interestingly, as noted by Thomas Sargent of the Minneapolis Fed in his 1981 paper “The Ends of Four Big Inflations’,” the money supply often rises rapidly in the months and years after hyperinflation. This lends support to the idea that inflation is not simply a function of an expanding money supply, but also or instead a function of other factors.Caracas Chronicles is 100% reader-supported. Support independent Venezuelan journalism by making a donation. | <urn:uuid:579ef005-8253-47ac-9691-d4e3289d76af> | CC-MAIN-2018-22 | https://www.caracaschronicles.com/2018/01/29/taming-hyperinflation-perspective-skeptic-monetarism/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-22/segments/1526794865863.76/warc/CC-MAIN-20180523235059-20180524015059-00548.warc.gz | en | 0.957153 | 1,265 | 2.625 | 3 |
Teacher Preparation Program Effectiveness
Our Candidates Know How to Teach
All initial teacher preparation program candidates must pass a state mandated teacher performance assessment, the edTPA®, at the end of their programs in order to become certified in Georgia. The teacher performance assessment is designed to measure a candidate’s ability to help all students learn. Teacher candidates are required to demonstrate knowledge and skills in planning, teaching, assessing and analyzing student learning.
The edTPA was developed by the Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning and Equity (SCALE) in collaboration with the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education. For two consecutive years of edTPA implementation (2015-2017), Georgia State University initial preparation teacher candidates successfully submitted and passed edTPA with an aggregate pass rate of 99% each year (272/274 year one and 242/245 year two). For additional information on the edTPA, please visit: www.edtpa.com.
|Early Childhood Education: Birth – Kindergarten||14/14||7/7|
|Elementary Education: PreK – 5th Grades||99/100||90/92|
|English as Additional Language (ESOL)||4/4||11/11|
|K-12 Performing Arts (Music Education)||20/20||11/11|
|K-12 Physical Education||5/5||9/9|
|Middle Level English Language Arts||18/18||18/18|
|Middle Level History/Social Studies||9/9||8/8|
|Middle Level Mathematics||21/21||10/10|
|Middle Level Science||7/8||9/9|
|Secondary English Language Arts||18/18||6/6|
|Secondary History/Social Studies||20/20||10/10|
|Visual Arts (Art Education)||8/8||5/5|
|World Languages (Foreign Language Education)||8/8||6/6|
Our Candidates Know Their Content
Our educator preparation programs are held to high standards. Our teacher preparation programs demonstrate that we prepare teachers who have a positive impact on children’s learning and development and who are committed to staying in the profession.
All of our candidates take a state-wide assessment focusing on their knowledge of the content areas (for example, math, science, social studies and early childhood education subject areas) they will be teaching. The purpose of the Georgia Assessments for the Certification of Educators (GACE) is to ensure candidates have the knowledge and skills needed to teach in Georgia’s public schools. In 2016, our programs had an overall pass rate of 100% on the GACE content knowledge assessments.
View a summary of Georgia State’s pass rates over the last 10 years.
How Effective are Georgia State University's Teacher Preparation Programs?
At Georgia State University, we believe educator preparation programs should be held to high standards. Our teacher preparation programs demonstrate that we prepare teachers who have a positive impact on children’s learning and development and who are committed to staying in the profession. We focus on collection and analysis of performance-based data to help us understand the answers to questions such as: What do our candidates know? Do their students learn? Are they employed and do they stay? Do their employers feel they are well prepared? By analyzing data at both the program level and for our entire preparation unit, we are able to document the effectiveness of our programs and continuously improve the way we prepare teachers to meet the needs of students.
Professional Education Faculty
Each year, our Professional Education Faculty analyze data related to our effectiveness at preparing teachers, educational leaders, school counselors and psychologists, and other education specialists.
The Professional Education Faculty is a multidisciplinary team committed to teaching, research, and service in partnership with school and community agencies. It is comprised of faculty from the College of Education & Human Development and from the College of Arts and Sciences and representatives of P-16 Partner Schools who are responsible for the preparing of educators at the initial and advanced levels. Its mission is to prepare educators as leaders, thinkers, and change agents who are grounded in theory, content, and practice.
Programs are proposed, provided, and evaluated in accordance with the PEF's Conceptual Framework.
The National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) accredits the Professional Education Faculty, and the State of Georgia Professional Standards Commission approves its programs. | <urn:uuid:54e0ea2d-1af9-4ed1-b3a0-d6bcc507bfe5> | CC-MAIN-2018-26 | https://education.gsu.edu/teacher-preparation-program-effectiveness/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-26/segments/1529267865438.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20180623225824-20180624005824-00367.warc.gz | en | 0.921451 | 927 | 2.53125 | 3 |
A gutter has one main purpose, to protect a building by channeling water away from its foundation. The gutter also helps to reduce erosion, prevents leaks in basements and crawlspaces, protects painted or stained surfaces by reducing exposure to water, and provides a means to collect rainwater for later use.
Gutters are also very effective at keeping building egress areas clear of falling water. Going into a house entrance below water running straight off the roof in a heavy down pour is literally like taking a shower. This major reduction in moisture also helps to keep entrance surfaces dry and free of moss, slime, algae and other growths likely to cause slips.
Rain gutters can be made from a variety of materials such as cast iron, lead, zinc, galvanised steel, painted steel, copper, painted aluminium, PVC (and other plastics), concrete, stone, and wood.
Water collected by a rain gutter is fed, usually via a downspout (traditionally called a leader or conductor), from the roof edge to the base of the building where it is either discharged or collected. Water from rain gutters may be collected in a rain barrel or a cistern.
Your home will last longer and have less leaks with gutters, and with gutter protection from Yes! you won't have to climb a ladder to clean them every year. | <urn:uuid:dde3afd4-5223-4890-bc2f-417162764e00> | CC-MAIN-2018-43 | http://yesenergysolutions.com/gutters/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-43/segments/1539583512693.40/warc/CC-MAIN-20181020101001-20181020122501-00455.warc.gz | en | 0.959519 | 278 | 3.03125 | 3 |
This is a selection of courses offered by History of Medicine faculty. Click on a course title to see the syllabus.
A seminar for graduate students and advanced undergraduates. We explore the notion of the individual in medicine over twenty-five centuries, from the Hippocratics to the invention of the case study during the Renaissance to the genetic, biochemical, and immunological individual in recent biomedicine.
Provides an introduction to current topics in the history of science, medicine, and technology, the history of these discipline(s), and historical research and writing methods.
A comparative and historical overview of the ways in which people have been enumerated, investigated and monitored. We examine the long-term trajectory of state and non-state observation, emphasizing the collection and uses of data in European, colonial and post-colonial polities.
The focus of this course is popular knowledge -- both that which is ‘popularized’ and that which is popular in the sense of ‘of the people’. In putting these two meanings together, I am asking questions rather than setting out a tidy body of secondary literature. Historians of science have developed sophisticated ways of thinking about what knowledge is; historians of culture have debated and re-debated the meanings and utility of the category ‘popular culture’. Our readings focus on a variety of ways in which these two fields might intersect in explorations of vernacular knowledge.
We review the social, intellectual and cultural history of Western medicine from ancient times to the seventeenth century, addressing issues such as: the social definition of the physician's role; cultural perceptions of the body and definitions of health and illness; shifting patterns of treatment; the epistemology of medicine; and the varying relationship between medicine and religious belief.
This course reviews the social, intellectual, and cultural history of Western medicine from the eighteenth century to the present. The emphasis is on Western medicine as the result of Western political-economic and institutional structures, cultural values, and the rise and complexities of ‘scientific medicine’.
How do metaphors in science, technology, and medicine originate and how do they influence human thought? The course explores such examples as William Harvey's analogy between the heart and a pump; Charles Darwin's concepts of the struggle for existence and natural selection; military metaphors in the history of public health; the use of metaphors of production in medicine; and the comparison of the brain to a computer.
The modern term for public health ‘weisheng’ in China has changed in the past two centuries from the ‘safeguarding life’ practices of individuals to the state's responsibility for the health of its citizens. This course examines the history of public health from the earliest evidence of a state medical bureaucracy in Chinese antiquity to the modern problems of STDs, HIV/AIDS, and SARS.
This graduate course acquaints students with the range of approaches and techniques of using oral source material in historical research. We survey the history of the field and investigate a variety of approaches to conducting and interpreting interviews, including African history, anthropology, the history of science, folklore, and journalism. Students will produce a thoroughly researched, professionally conducted and transcribed oral-history interview, with an interpretive companion essay.
This seminar-style course is intended for students in the basic sciences and in the history of science and medicine. We study classic experiments in twentieth-century physiology, immunology, genetics, and neuroscience using both original research papers and historians' accounts. Themes under discussion include theory and experiment, styles of research, ethics of experimental work and scientific publishing, and the impact of social interactions on laboratory work.
This course examines the impact of colonial and post-colonial development on patterns of sickness, health, and health care in Africa. It also focuses on African responses to changing patterns of health care and disease. Topics include: patterns of disease and therapeutic responses in pre-colonial Africa; colonial epidemics; industrialization, urbanization, and disease; agrarian transformations, malnutrition, and the political economy of famine; sexuality, colonial control, and disease; western medicine and the social construction of African identities; African reproductive health and family planning; recession, debt, and Africa's health care crises; histories of AIDS in Africa.
150.716 History of Chinese Medicine (Hanson)
How did the Chinese conceptualize the human body, health and disease over the past 2,000 years? What were the range of responses from religious to therapeutic to disease in China? What are Chinese acupuncture, moxibustion, and herbal medicine? Who practiced medicine in China; what did they practice; and how do we know what we know about them? Students engage these and other questions by discussing the latest historical, anthropological, and philosophical scholarship on the history of medicine in China. Students are expected to attend the lectures of AS140.346, read relevant primary sources in Chinese, and write a research paper using Chinese sources.
Our seminar explores the various forms of knowledge production, consumption, and circulation that characterize Europe’s colonial expansion. We examine various forms of knowledge production and use within European colonial settings in different parts of the globe. Among the topics covered: the interplay between local knowledges and global or imperial ones; museums and botanical gardens as expressions of imperial power; the connections between imperial power and ideas and practices of the body; the role of colonial science in the formulation of ideas about race and difference; the concept of the subaltern and its use for historians; how natural objects get re-framed in changing cultural contexts; the development of global networks of scientific knowledge and expertise; and finally, more recent forms of colonial knowledge production, including the collection and commoditization of Indigenous Technical Knowledge (ITK).
Consistently popular with the reading public, Biography has long provoked thoughtful reflection and controversy among literati and scholars. We will explore the history of biography, various approaches to it, and its nature as a scholarly genre.
This course explores the long history of disease and disease control from the fourteenth-century plague to the twentieth-century campaign for smallpox eradication, drawing on historical materials from Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin American. The emphasis is on the ways in which political, social, and economic institutions and practices influence the history of disease, its understanding, and its control.
Discussion of historiographical developments in, and various approaches to History of Medicine based on readings of important secondary works.
The course explores the history of western efforts to promote health and nutrition in the ‘developing world’ from the beginnings of tropical medicine and colonial health services to more recent efforts at disease eradication; the development of alternative health delivery systems (basic health services, primary health care and selective primary health care); population programs; to child survival and global immunization programs. It will also examine the history of various international health and development organizations, including the Rockefeller Foundation, WHO, UNICEF and the World Bank.
Provides a broad outline of the historical context and development of public health, with a main focus on the industrialized west. The course grounds itself in a critical overview of public health theory, ideology and practice in the present. We then step back to consider thematic issues that move from broadly environmental approaches such as quarantine and sanitation; through interventons in spaces such as workplaces, schools and homes; to the ways that public health inscribes itself onto the human body through vaccination and immunization. Finally, we trace the process of professionalization in public health, especially over the last 150 years. As well as providing an opportunity to understand the historical development of important public health disciplines such as epidemiology, we also reflect on how the history of public health can help us think through issues that are fundamental to the human condition and body politic, such as citizenship, freedom and coercion, individuality and collectivity.
550.609 Life and Death in Charm City: Histories of Public Health in Baltimore, 1750 to the Present (Mooney)
This course critically explores a range of important topics in the history of public health in Baltimore from the mid-eighteenth century to the present, including: migration and health; sewers and water supply; infectious disease control (for example, tuberculosis and STDs); housing and lead poisoning; and rodent control. Recurrent themes are racial inequality, the geography of poverty and the multiple challenges of urban government. The focus is on the city of Baltimore, but the issues discussed are placed in their wider national and international contexts and take into account broad historical developments in the theory and practice of public health. | <urn:uuid:1de2079c-c1da-47ec-9438-d1651eb12d91> | CC-MAIN-2018-51 | http://hopkinshistoryofmedicine.org/content/course-descriptions | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-51/segments/1544376827097.43/warc/CC-MAIN-20181215200626-20181215222626-00356.warc.gz | en | 0.927332 | 1,753 | 2.71875 | 3 |
There’s a burgeoning environmental disaster playing out in Southern California — but unlike the widespread media coverage on the Deepwater Horizon, this leak has been invisible until quite recently. In late October, the Southern California Gas Company detected an underground methane leak spewing an estimated 110,000 lbs of gas per hour into Aliso Canyon. Since it discovered the problem, the company has evacuated an estimated 1,700 people and closed two schools.
The leak is normally invisible, but an infrared video taken by the Environmental Defense Fund captured the massive leak and the methane escaping from it at multiple points.
Several of the problems associated with a leak this size are purely practical. The methane reeks of rotting eggs, because we add a chemical called tert-Butylthiol to the normally odorless gas to make certain people can smell a leak.
Reeking like an unventilated football stadium on $1 steak and free draft beer night ought to be punishment enough for anyone in one lifetime, but methane is also explosive, an asphyxiant, and a potent greenhouse gas.
CO2 vs. methane
Most of the conversation around greenhouse gas emissions revolves around carbon dioxide, or CO2. According to the EPA, CO2 emissions account for about 82% of anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change. Methane, in contrast, only accounts for about 10% of total warming. Pound-for-pound, methane is about 21x more potent than CO2 over a 100-year cycle, and as much as 72x more potent within shorter timeframes.
The potency discrepancy reflects the different environmental persistence between the two gases. Methane persists in the environment for 10-12 years after it’s released, but ultimately reacts with water vapor in the upper atmosphere and is converted into carbon dioxide and water. The fact that methane still takes a decade or more to dissipate out of the atmosphere, however, means that a massive leak like this one is still capable of having an impact for a significant period of time.
Current estimate of the total gas leak is around 800,000 metric tons. That’s enough methane gas to boost California’s estimated methane emissions by 25% for the year — and bear in mind, this leak is thought to have begun on October 23.
Why can’t we plug the leak?
There’s another parallel between the Deepwater Horizon leak and the current methane problem in Aliso Canyon — in both cases, the depth and ferocity of the leak made it extremely difficult to plug. In this case, the methane is pouring out of a massive underground containment facility more than 8,000 feet below the surface. Traditional methods of sealing the broken pipe have already failed, so SoCalGas has drilled a second well to intersect the broken pipe.
Once the new well intersects the old one, fluid and eventually concrete will be injected to seal the pipe, rather than attempting to perform the injections at the surface. As of this past weekend, the drillers had located the broken pipe responsible for the leak. That’s no small feat, considering that the second well must be drilled far enough away to prevent any risk of explosion, and the broken line is just seven inches in diameter.
Unfortunately, we’re still months away from actually sealing off the problem. The relief well is currently at 3,800 feet, but the rest of the operation is expected to take until February or March. By that point, enough methane will have been released into the atmosphere to make an impact on the United States’ total yearly emissions — to say nothing of the costs and upheaval residents of Aliso Canyon have endured, or the financial cost of repairing the broken line. Residents of the area have already filed suits against the company, and it’s not clear what penalties or lawsuits it might face from the government of California. | <urn:uuid:0e1c6a9c-2b3b-4259-b12a-ac8df14eab38> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/220073-why-we-cant-plug-southern-californias-massive-methane-leak | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783402746.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155002-00192-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945246 | 787 | 3.59375 | 4 |
TULUVU’S AIR WAR
Chapter II: The Battle of the Bismarck Sea
(click images to enlarge)
| The Japanese were forced to abandon the Buna bridgehead at the end of
January 1943. The remnants of the Buna force slowly withdrew along New Guinea’s
coastline toward Lae. After suffering heavy losses at Wau the Japanese in
the Lae-Salamaua-Mubo area were greatly weakened and over-extended. Large-scale
reinforcement was needed quickly. The Japanese decided to risk yet another
reinforcement convoy to Lae despite predictions that losses up to 50% might
This convoy operation, designated Operation No. 81, would end disastrously and become known as the Battle of the Bismarck Sea. Part of the plan of this operation called for reinforcement of Tuluvu with aviation material and personnel so that it could be used as a refueling base by the Japanese Army Air Force.
The 617-ton transport No. 9 Fukuei Maru set sail from Rabaul on the morning of February 17th loaded with 600 drums of aviation fuel and other material. In addition to its cargo the little ship was crowded with 120 troops including a small detachment from the 4th Air Intelligence Unit and a platoon from the 21st Airfield Battalion (Ab). Type 1 fighters of the 11th FR flew cover.
On the morning of the 18th the ship was attacked by a B-24 northeast of Cape Gloucester. Bombs landed close and machine gun fire hit the ship causing two fires to break out. The ship took refuge east of Cape Gloucester. Later it continued its voyage and landed its passengers and cargo at the village of Kalingi near Cape Gloucester on the 19th. After the attack on the 18th six fighters of the 11th FR intercepted the B-24 within sight of the airfield but the B-24 escaped into the clouds and returned to its base claiming one fighter destroyed. The fighters landed at Tuluvu at around 1500 on the 18th. They flew air patrols over Tuluvu the following morning and gave chase to yet another B-24. The B-24 claimed one fighter damaged and it also escaped. During four days of operations over Tuluvu and covering the transport during its transit to and from Rabaul the 11th FR had several encounters during which it lost two fighters destroyed and three damaged. One of the fighters reportedly crash-landed a short distance east of Cape Gloucester.
The attacks on Fukuei Maru followed a month (16 January-15 February) during which the Tuluvu Detachment recorded attacks or patrols by 42 B-24s, 17 B-17s, and 11 unidentified aircraft. Principal damage was to the runway but anti-aircraft guns were also hit. In one instance a B-24 flew just 500 meters over the airfield to drop its bombs on the runway.
Operation No. 81 got underway late on February 28th when a convoy of eight transport ships and eight destroyers left Rabaul. Forewarned by radio intelligence the Allied fighters and bombers had been rested and were waiting. Since the earlier Lae operation bomber and attack units had practiced the technique of low altitude skip bombing. A number of A-20s and B-25s had been modified with increased forward firing armament.
The convoy took the route around New Britain’s north coast. March 1st was its first full day at sea. Shortly after 1000 hours that morning an “assault plane” (this was undoubtedly a Type 99 assault plane, Ki 51, of which the 6th FD possessed a single example at this time) landed at Tuluvu with a staff officer from Rabaul on board. He stayed only a half hour and then returned to Rabaul. The exact purpose of the liaison is not known but it seems likely it was to ascertain that the airfield was fit for use as intended. During this visit fighters patrolled overhead but did not land.
That afternoon a B-24D of the 321st BS flying at 10,000 feet sighted the convoy in a position roughly 100 miles due west of Rabaul. Clouds and rain were prevalent and the convoy proceeded safely that day. The B-24 sighted three Japanese fighters in the area but was not attacked.
On March 2nd the weather continued less than favorable but several attack missions were launched. Some were supported by long-range P-38 fighters. Attacks that day took place north and west of Cape Gloucester.
In several waves 32 P-38s, 28 B-17s and two B-24s operated close to Cape Gloucester in carrying out their attacks during the late morning and early afternoon. Fifteen Japanese army fighters intercepted these aircraft. P-38s jumped three fighters and claimed two OSCARS destroyed south of Cape Gloucester. The bombing attacks sank one cargo ship. The air combats were fought among layers of clouds and were generally inconclusive. The Japanese claimed two B-17s shot down (available Japanese reports conflict as to whether these were claimed as certain or uncertain victories) but in fact inflicted only minor damage on four of the bombers. In addition to the claims by P-38s the bombers claimed several sure and probable victories. The Japanese admitted no losses in combat. The loss of one fighter that day was attributed to accident. During the day three Japanese fighters landed at Tuluvu, refueled, and took off again. Forces from Tuluvu were later detailed to engage in rescue operations for survivors of the ship lost.
The morning of March 3rd found the convoy in the Huon Gulf sailing in beautiful weather with several hours steaming separating it from its goal. Nearly three-dozen navy Zero fighters were over the convoy or about to arrive on station when trouble began. About a hundred American and Australian aircraft were marshalling to carry out a carefully coordinated and well-practiced attack using both new low altitude tactics and conventional medium altitude attacks. In a matter of minutes all the transports were hit and left sinking or disabled, as were four destroyers. Follow-up attacks completed their destruction. Land-based Zero fighters from the aircraft carrier Zuiho and Air Groups 204 and 253 blunted the attack by escorted B-17s shooting down one B-17 and three P-38s. By the time they turned their attention to the low level attackers the convoy had been decimated. In small formations and individually Zeros attacked some of the B-25s, A-20s and Beaufighters and their escorting fighters. They damaged a few but their attacks were largely ineffectual. Eight of the thirty-three intercepting Zeros were lost. Three were shot down out-right with pilots killed and five crashed.
Many additional combats took place later that day and the next as Allied planes returned to deliver the coup de gras to disabled ships and to strafe survivors in life-boats or clinging to floating wreckage. Several Japanese army fighters were lost or damaged that afternoon and additional losses were suffered on the 4th including Maj. Mitsugu Sawada newly appointed commander of the 1st FR.
After the disaster in the Battle of the Bismarck Sea the strategic importance of Tuluvu and western New Britain greatly increased. Following a final destroyer transport mission to Finschhafen at the end of March, Tuluvu became the point closest to Lae that Japanese destroyers would operate. MLCs and other small boats took on an increased importance in Japanese reinforcement and re-supply efforts. Western New Britain became important as a barge staging area and hideout for small boats prior to crossing the straights to New Guinea (usually between Busching on New Britain and Cape Arndt on New Guinea). The number of landing barges engaged in Lae re-supply runs was eventually built up to over forty but it was never sufficient even when supplemented by the efforts of submarines (plans to increase the Lae MLCs to 60 in June, 90 in July and 210 in August 1943 never materialized). In June about ninety fishing boats with civilian crews from Japan arrived in the Southeast Area to aid local transportation. These small ships made a number of runs to Tuluvu but MLCs remained the primary mode of coastal transportation.
In the weeks surrounding the Battle of the Bismarck Sea (16 February-15 March) 50 B-17s, 27 B-24s, and 9 unidentified aircraft reportedly over-flew Tuluvu. One man was killed and one cannon damaged in their attacks.
Despite gradual improvements, including completion of a hanger and extension of dispersal tracks, the runway at Tuluvu was a constant source of trouble. In addition to suffering repeated bomb damage it was poorly drained and at times was unserviceable due to flooding. Eventually the decision was made to build an entirely new runway east of the original one. The first airstrip would be available to house a fighter squadron and as an emergency field for other types. The second was to be a more ambitious project capable of supporting a larger number of aircraft including medium bombers and transports.
Many ground units transited through Tuluvu after spending a brief sojourn lasting days or weeks. There was a slow build up of permanent ground units and air service units in the region. Successful reinforcement operations by two destroyers each arrived on March 19th, April 11th, and April 13th. On June 4th the single destroyer Amagiri made a successful run to Cape Gloucester. Army fighters covered these runs. Barges and small boats generally operated without fighter cover relying on darkness and coastal hideouts to avoid air attack.
After the Bismarck Sea action little reliable information about Japanese air operations at Tuluvu is available in March and April. Allied reconnaissance sighted a single fighter there in mid-March. On April 14th two aircraft identified as fighters were seen on the west side of the airfield and strafed by an Allied bomber. More than thirty barrels of aviation fuel were dispensed during each of these months, enough to refuel several aircraft and this probably occurred, but it is possible some of it was provided for boat or motor transport purposes. | <urn:uuid:0197f280-d68d-465d-a7cf-9e197d624259> | CC-MAIN-2021-43 | https://j-aircraft.com/research/rdunn/tuluvu/tuluvu_3.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-43/segments/1634323585196.73/warc/CC-MAIN-20211018031901-20211018061901-00681.warc.gz | en | 0.981058 | 2,101 | 2.5625 | 3 |
available at: http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/coffs00/papers/ron_oliver_keynote.pdf
It has been a while since my last update on these readings. And I know people have been reading and checking these articles. Hope the suggestions for further reading are helpful to those who embark in the journey of planning, designing and delivering online learning experiences.
This article, although slightly older in nature, bases its suggestions on the true understanding of constructivism for learning. It states with interest, passion and great literary support, how the change in delivery between F2F learning, and even Distance Learning to online learning is much more than just the use of accurate tools to store, manage and organize content. The telling of the story for learning of the more traditional approaches, the ones that both teachers and students have so nicely become accustomed to, is a different "story".
From the set sequence of activities and decontextualized access to definitions and pre-set, often abstract assessment tasks, which relied heavily on the presence of the teachers as the guiding hand all along the journey, students are led to embrace the more constructivist mode of learning, where they build their way through the new information until it is knowledge they have owned all along.
The table on page 3 of the article, between the old and the new assumptions for the different delivery methods is also an important contribution and reason for reflection that the article mentions. It is stated, once again, that constructivism focuses on the learning as a process not a product. And processes are hard to define and often do not match even amongst similar content areas delivered in similar fashion.
The article states that not only instructors find it difficult to adjust to these new assumptions in the online learning environment, but also students. The delivery of lectures and set of step-by-step instructions is much easier to abide by and follow, than open-ended questions and ill-designed problems, that are subject to interpretations and need to take ownership of responses with highly and more sophisticated ways of thinking. Amongst the suggested characteristics of effective online courses the following are proposed:
- the ability through devices and structures of the course for students to feel and perceive the teacher presence even though learner-control is elicited and supported at all times
- plenty of meaningful resources - setting up pathways to discover reliable resources while providing strategies to discern important information from irrelevant content
- select and construct meaningful contexts for learning - this is probably one of the hardest steps of teaching and learning online
- select learning activities ahead of content and make them connect deeply with the goals of the learning
- use ill-structured tasks - open-ended responses should be present throughout the course
- provide support - remember that most often support comes from peers and peer-directed activities
- use authentic tasks
The article concludes by stressing the fact that there cannot be a one-way prescriptive fashion to set up online learning environments, as this would contradict the very nature of the constructivist assumptions on which online learning is based upon. | <urn:uuid:56a3679f-fef1-416d-adb8-a5ac3b83dc14> | CC-MAIN-2018-26 | http://esladaptationreadings.blogspot.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-26/segments/1529267864848.47/warc/CC-MAIN-20180623000334-20180623020334-00593.warc.gz | en | 0.956625 | 626 | 2.75 | 3 |
Valuation of ecosystem services is used to visualize and enhance understanding of human dependence on healthy ecosystems. Together with Anthesis Enveco and Belyazid Consulting & Communication, AquaBiota has identified, mapped and valued both marine and terrestrial ecosystem services in the coastal zone of Blekinge.
The report’s main objective is to enhance understanding of those challenges and possibilities Blekinge needs to address for long-term sustainable development along the coast. This requires input from a variety of actors and trade-offs between different sectors and interests, including the values of ecosystem services. Ecosystem services are valued based on their benefits to society, although the valuation process is more concerned with relative values than exact monetary assessments.
In the report we discuss options for Blekinge to develop its coastal ecosystem services, and describe current threats. We also suggest measures to ensure and strengthen ecosystem services in Blekinge.
Linc to report (in Swedish):
Linus Hasselström, Jenny Wallström och Antonia Nyström Sandman 2017: Kartläggning av Blekingekustens ekosystemtjänster. Länsstyrelsen Blekinge län Rapport: 2017:23. In Swedish. | <urn:uuid:4d70cdd3-de34-4c9f-bbf9-39a5c6febf4e> | CC-MAIN-2023-14 | https://www.aquabiota.se/en/coastal-ecosystem-services-in-blekinge/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-14/segments/1679296949107.48/warc/CC-MAIN-20230330070451-20230330100451-00485.warc.gz | en | 0.859719 | 259 | 2.515625 | 3 |
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