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Born in Kolkata on May 8, 1861, to a highly educated family of reformers, thinkers and educationists, Rabindranath Tagore’s father Maharishi Devendranath and mother Sharda Devi supported him in his endeavours from his early childhood. Becoming the voice of new India, Tagore was in the forefront to improve the educational standard in the country. Later Tagore was enrolled at the University College London where he was to study Law, but he was determined to follow his passion and he chose to study the works of Shakespeare on his own. The profound social and cultural involvement of his family would later play a strong role in the formulation of Rabindranath’s educational priorities. Koramangala, Bengaluru, Karnataka 560034, Leverage Edu Mumbai, Rabindranath Tagore Jayanti is celebrated to mark his birth day. Art would be studied for its role in furthering the aesthetic imagination and expressing universal themes. In teaching also he believed in presenting difficult levels of literature, which the students might not fully grasp, but which would stimulate them. Unkept hair and bushy beard and altruistic behaviour are characteristic to the scholar who has influenced Indian society as greatly as Mahatma Gandhi did. Thus the greatest of educations for which we came prepared is neglected, and we are made to lose our world to find a bagful of information instead. To seek to realise in a common fellowship of study the meeting of East and West and thus ultimately to strengthen the fundamental conditions of world peace through the free communication of ideas between the two hemispheres. Rabindranath did not write a central educational treatise, and his ideas must be gleaned through his various writings and educational experiments at Santiniketan In general, he envisioned an education that was deeply rooted in one’s immediate surroundings but connected to the cultures of the wider world, predicated upon pleasurable learning and individualized to the personality of the child. The youngest of 13 surviving children, Tagore (nicknamed "Rabi") was born Robindronath Thakur on 7 May 1861 in the Jorasanko mansion in Calcutta, the son of Debendranath Tagore (1817–1905) and Sarada Devi (1830–1875). He also supported modern dance and was one of the first to recognize the talents of Uday Sankar, who was invited to perform at Santiniketan. I try to assert in my words and works that education has its only meaning and object in freedom–freedom from ignorance about the laws of the universe, and freedom from passion and prejudice in our communication with the human world. Tagore, Rabindranath. It should be noted that Rabindranath in his own person was a living icon of the type of mutuality and creative exchange that he advocated. Seen as the equivalent of Plato’s Academy in India, the school combined Upanishadic principles of teaching with modern education. Andheri East, Mumbai, Maharashtra 400069, Leverage Edu Bangalore, Tagore was one of the first to support and bring together different forms of Indian dance. His hunger is for the Epic, but he is supplied with chronicles of facts and dates…Child-nature protests against such calamity with all its power of suffering, subdued at last into silence by punishment. He also realized in a profound manner the importance of the arts for developing empathy and sensitivity, and the necessity for an intimate relationship with one’s cultural and natural environment. Tagore’s educational efforts were ground-breaking in many areas. Leverage Edu helps students make career choice & university admission decisions, using simplified In a poem that expresses Tagore’s goals for international education, he writes: Where the mind is without fear The students were allowed access to the room where he read his new writings to teachers and critics, and they were encouraged to read out their own writings in special literary evenings. His vision of culture was not a static one, but one that advocated new cultural fusions, and he fought for a world where multiple voices were encouraged to interact with one another and to reconcile differences within an overriding commitment to peace and mutual interconnectedness. D-5 Road No. Being the iconic figure in the educational history of India, Rabindranath Tagore was not satisfied with the education system prevalent at that time in the country, which made him isolate himself from it. To study the mind of Man in its realisation of different aspects of truth from diverse points of view. A-258, Bhishma Pitamah Marg, The tremendous excitement and cultural richness of his extended family permitted young Rabindranath to absorb and learn subconsciously at his own pace, giving him a dynamic open model of education, which he later tried to recreate in his school at Santiniketan. ‘something’ and helping you leverage it! Rabindranath Tagore: Birth, Early Life, Family and Education. Defence Colony New Delhi, Delhi 110024, Leverage Edu Bangalore, Translated by William Radice. From our very childhood habits are formed and knowledge is imparted in such a manner that our life is weaned away from nature and our mind and the world are set in opposition from the beginning of our days. Rabindranath Tagore, by his efforts and achievements, is part of a global network of pioneering educators, such as Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Froebel, Montessori and Dewey–and in the contemporary context, Malcolm Knowles–who have striven to create non-authoritarian learning systems appropriate to their respective surroundings. Unfortunately, the Indian education system at present is jay-walking. Nature walks and excursions were a part of the curriculum and students were encouraged to follow the life cycles of insects, birds and plants. In keeping with his theory of subconscious learning, Rabindranath never talked or wrote down to the students, but rather involved them with whatever he was writing or composing. Most of Rabindranath’s dramas were written at Santiniketan and the students took part in both the performing and production sides. New York: Asia Publishing House. Tagore's aesthetic ideals of education as manifested in the school at Santiniketan are discussed. Plot No. In my institution I have attempted to create an atmosphere of naturalness in our relationship with strangers, and the spirit of hospitality which is the first virtue in men that made civilization possible. His cousins, who shared the family mansion, were leaders in theatre, science and a new art movement. Referring to religion, Rabindranath Tagore likens an educational institution to ‘a wide meeting place where all sects may gather together and forget their differences’. Despite being born in an educated family, Tagore did not attend school and rather received the education at home. In the 1890s, he was put in charge of the family’s rural properties in East Bengal. The writing and publishing of periodicals had always been an important aspect of Jorasanko life, and students at Santiniketan were encouraged to create their own publications and put out several illustrated magazines. We may become powerful by knowledge, but we attain fullness by sympathy. (RM) At the age of 16, he started publishing his poems under the pseudonym ‘Bhanusimha’. O’Connell, Kathleen(2002) Rabindranath Tagore: The Poet as Educator, Calcutta:Visva-Bharati, 2002. Rabindranath composed his first poem at age eight which demonstrates the exceptional creativity that he had. my Father, In an essay entitled “A Poet’s School,” he emphasizes the importance of an empathetic sense of interconnectedness with the surrounding world: We have come to this world to accept it, not merely to know it. Rabindranath Tagore’s Philosophy on Indian Education. Drawing on his home life at Jorasanko, Rabindranath tried to create an atmosphere in which the arts would become instinctive. Leverage Edu is a one-stop-shop for all your career-related needs - right from finding the best-fit college His first experiments in adult education were carried out there as he gradually became aware of the acute material and cultural poverty that permeated the villages, as well as the great divide between the uneducated rural areas and the city elites. Boston: Beacon Press. His elder brother was a poet and his sister a renowned novelist, which influenced him to read the works of various poets and philosophers including Kalidasa. 91 Springboard, Lotus Building The book is a part of the UNESCO Collection of Representative Works. Tagore, Rabindranath (1961) The Religion of Man. how to cite this article. One of the first areas to be emphasized was music. This was particularly so after the first decade of the school. (Rabindranath Tagore, Personality,1917: 116-17), In Tagore’s philosophy of education, the aesthetic development of the senses was as important as the intellectual–if not more so–and music, literature, art, dance and drama were given great prominence in the daily life of the school.
Imagenes De Caperucita Roja Para Colorear Faciles, Yamaha R-n303 Caracteristicas, Imagenes De Hércules, Blusas Nike Deportivas, Baterias Para Carro Baratas, Los Charros Ingrata, Que Significa Chef, Bodega Aurrera Lourdes Saltillo Telefono, | <urn:uuid:1350c94e-3e9c-4742-a64c-e296ecd6313c> | CC-MAIN-2021-04 | https://www.puromotor.com/tags/5a5831-rabindranath-tagore-education | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-04/segments/1610703530835.37/warc/CC-MAIN-20210122144404-20210122174404-00468.warc.gz | en | 0.972588 | 1,987 | 2.90625 | 3 |
A team from the Fraunhofer IOF Institute in Germany is working on a project called facetVISION Camera. Their objective is to build ultra-thin cameras and microscopes. The current technology, inspired by the mammalian eye, has reached its limits in terms of size, the best example being the bulge in your smartphone camera.
In order to miniaturize cameras, the research team at Fraunhofer IOF needed to develop another technology and found inspiration looking at the eyes of the male Xenos peckii, a parasite of the Northern Paper Wasp. Insects usually have compound eyes, which consist of tiny lenses, called facets, and a few receptor cells. They are very compact, but have low resolution. Mammalian eyes have a single lense to focus light onto a sheet of receptor cells, the retina. That is how we get higher resolution, but at the cost of bulkiness.
However, the eyes of male X. peckii are a compromise between these two extremes. The other advantage of this technology is the possibility to have a wider field of view at a low cost. So far, the project’s researchers have succeeded in making a camera with 135 facets that is only 2mm thick, but that has a resolution of one megapixel. Now the team is aiming to achieve a four megapixel resolution, which is enough for many applications, including medical probes, smartphones, or cameras in cars.
The project website (http://www.facetvision.de/) is highly interesting and offers a detailed explanations. | <urn:uuid:b112b154-f17a-4248-b103-9ef86894f90f> | CC-MAIN-2020-29 | https://gccirblog.wordpress.com/2017/03/23/compound-eyes-inspire-camera-technology/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-29/segments/1593655899931.31/warc/CC-MAIN-20200709100539-20200709130539-00477.warc.gz | en | 0.959732 | 317 | 3.609375 | 4 |
Birchbark items are made of pure birch or can be decorated by cutting through birch and stamping. Stamping on birch is one of the oldest handicrafts.
Birch bark has always been a traditional material for Russian masters. We can compare it with Egyptian papyruses. Due to its remarkable quality (durability, flexibility, rot resistance) birch bark has been for a long time an ideal material for utensils such as buckets, jars for dry products, and liquids.
Since the 18th-century birch bark has been used for decorative purposes. The material for production is the birch bark stored in May-June. Apart from items decorated with cutting or stamping, there are items made of interlaced birch stripes. The new line of birch bark decoration is different stones: amber, jasper, malachite, lapis lazuli. | <urn:uuid:a6276de7-f766-45cc-b699-16b6e22f68aa> | CC-MAIN-2021-39 | https://www.visitrussia.com/birchboxes.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-39/segments/1631780057857.27/warc/CC-MAIN-20210926083818-20210926113818-00617.warc.gz | en | 0.951069 | 185 | 2.5625 | 3 |
There’s no doubt you need to know the equipment and the software you’ll be working on when you enter a technical field. Operations, mechanics, maintenance, installation and training of the computer hardware and associated programs are essential skills you’ll need for your job – and skills you’ll most likely learn in school or on-the-job. But it’s those soft skills, like the ones that help you work with people, which often aren’t taught in the classroom. Many of the job skills you need to succeed as a technical professional are innate or learned through trial and error.
Companies often take a team approach to technical projects, especially when they tackle a project with in-house resources. You need to be able to listen to input from other team members, follow directions, maintain deadlines and communicate the results of your own work when you’re involved with a team. Everything you do affects the roles and work of your fellow team members. Additionally, leaders often emerge in team environments, so if you are interested in moving up in your company, your leadership skills will be useful for project-oriented work.
Communicating with your team members may not be too difficult because you most likely all understand the lingo and tech-speak that go along with your assignment. But communicating the results of your work to upper management or to a client requires an entirely different language, one that lay people can grasp. In addition to being able to effectively communicate complicated technical information to management, you’ll need to rely on your translation abilities to teach others how to use the software programs you develop or how to integrate a new computer system into the day-to-day affairs of your company.
You’ll have to figure out how to resolve technical conflicts when you encounter bugs in your new programs or glitches in the operations of new equipment. You’ll also face conflicts with team members, management and clients that you will need to resolve. According to the Association for Career and Technical Education, effective social skills will help you work out differences with colleagues to come up with acceptable solutions when differences arise. Knowing how to manage conflicts and maintain good working relationships with others are skills that successful tech professionals must develop.
You’ll need to be able to employ critical thinking skills to pursue a career in technology. With enough coursework, most everyone can learn the basic functions required to run a software program, move around inside a database and fix a broken computer, but it's those basic skills of being able to view a situation from all sides, determine the best approach to solving it and then applying the solutions in a logical order, that often confound a technical workforce. Critical thinking skills are vital for both entry-level and advanced tech professionals.
- Ryan McVay/Digital Vision/Getty Images | <urn:uuid:aadaf786-48c9-4e1d-9c3b-20a13b67ace4> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://work.chron.com/job-skills-required-technical-professionals-13283.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501171070.80/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104611-00338-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950113 | 573 | 2.78125 | 3 |
snacking on junk food while watching TV+ START A PARENT TALK
snacking on junk food while watching TV encourages unhealthy eating habits in kids The more TV kids watched, the more unhealthy food they ate. The problem is deeper than kids over-snacking out of boredom while sitting in front of the TV or computer. TV watching can set kids up for a deeper pattern of poor eating habits. When combined with lack of physical activity, this can cause obesity and serious health issues including type 2 diabetes, heart problems and sleep disorders.
| Nov 06, 2012
So true. We see our kids developing some habits but only when they become habits do we take notice.. by that time they have become conditioned. Great input by Ms. Sodhi. I do that even while we are going out. I have him eat something at home before we leave, so this cuts down on one serving of junk food - if we are going out for long. Otherwise they simply want to grab a pack of wafers and parents end up obliging. And then we can guiltlessly enjoy the pizza party.
| Aug 24, 2012
Kids eat mindlessly while watching TV & this becomes a pattern hard to break if we as parents don't intervene in time because the child gets conditioned to reach out for junk the moment she/he puts on TV everyday.... What worked in my child's case was- firstly, I cleared my kitchen cabinet of all junk and secondly, started giving him a healthy snack just before his TV time so that he lost the craving for junk at that particular time....
| Jun 19, 2012
| Jun 19, 2012
I definitely agree with this ...all it takes is a little bit of discipline on the parents part and the kids end up getting the right impression on what is good for them and what is not ... we need to lead by example ..... | <urn:uuid:f2b94fba-d844-44b1-b8e7-0f4f90df0cc5> | CC-MAIN-2017-22 | https://www.parentune.com/parent-talk/snacking-on-junk-food-while-watching-tv/96 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-22/segments/1495463609409.62/warc/CC-MAIN-20170528024152-20170528044152-00428.warc.gz | en | 0.954158 | 380 | 2.53125 | 3 |
Liability Insurance from an expert of Financial Services
Channel: TEDx Talks
Tags: TEDxTalks, English, Business, Finance, Money
Liability insurance is a form of auto insurance that pays for damages caused by an accident. This type of insurance is broken up into two main categories: bodily injury liability and property damage liability. Bodily injury liability covers any person who is injured as a result of the accident. The limit for each category is usually set at the per-occurrence limit, and the maximum amount an insurer will pay for each individual incident is the aggregate limit. General liability covers most common third-party risks, including advertising injuries, product defects, and copyright infringement. Professional liability insurance, also known as errors and omissions or malpractice insurance, pays for any professional mistakes that are made during a business transaction.
Liability insurance can be expensive, but it can provide important coverage if you have an accident. It can protect you financially from lawsuits by providing a means for the recovery of medical costs. Most liability insurance policies work on an occurrence basis, meaning that they pay out only for incidents that occur during the policy period. The coverage limits are typically set by the type of policy you purchase. For example, you may be able to buy a liability policy that covers only bodily injury.
In the event of an accident, your liability insurance will cover your legal costs and cover your expenses. In addition to covering your legal costs, liability insurance will also cover medical malpractice. It is a great way to protect yourself and your business. It is easy to buy a liability policy for your business and enjoy the peace of mind it gives you. It is a good idea to have an umbrella policy that includes both types of coverage, as this will protect you against financial catastrophes.
In general, liability insurance pays for damages that you cause to people or property. This is particularly important for businesses that deal with customers. It is important to keep in mind that if someone files a lawsuit, they must be able to prove fault. If they slip and fall at home, they can’t claim it was the business’s fault. This is why you should carry General Liability Insurance if you want to stay protected.
A comprehensive general liability policy is an essential part of any business. It covers everything from bodily injury and property damage to personal and advertising injury. Unlike other types of insurance, it also covers any damage you may cause to the reputation of the company. It also offers protection for your employees and the public. Generally, it is important to have this kind of insurance. If you are not sure what type of liability insurance to get, contact your local business association and find out what your options are.
The amount you pay for liability insurance depends on how much money you have. If you own a property, you need to purchase enough coverage to cover your property and your assets. You can buy liability insurance for both types. Purchasing both types of insurance is a good idea. When it comes to personal liability, a plan that covers both of these can protect you against expensive damages. When an accident happens, you don’t want to lose everything.
It is important to note that liability insurance is not a policy that covers every type of injury. It is a type of insurance that covers damages to other people and property. It is essential for all businesses and is required in most states. If you have an injury, your liability insurance will cover that amount. However, if you don’t have insurance, you could end up in a situation where you are financially responsible for the damages.
Business liability insurance is essential for anyone who is legally liable for harm. It is also known as third-party insurance. This type of insurance protects you against any lawsuits resulting from intentional or criminal acts. You can buy an umbrella liability policy that will cover any damages you incur. It also protects the interests of the insured. It is not just limited to property damage and bodily injury. It is an insurance policy that covers both. | <urn:uuid:0e2c0a98-3414-42ba-a6cd-4b9ff7675df9> | CC-MAIN-2022-49 | https://insurancevideos.org/insurance/liability-insurance/liability-insurance-from-an-expert-of-financial-services/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-49/segments/1669446710734.75/warc/CC-MAIN-20221130092453-20221130122453-00649.warc.gz | en | 0.967545 | 854 | 2.734375 | 3 |
Republican Senator Ted Cruz has announced his candidacy for President, again raising the issue of how people born in other countries qualify for office under the Constitution.
In the case of Cruz, he was born in Canada in 1970, and his father was born in Cuba and his mother was born as a United States citizen in Delaware).
The Constitution’s Natural Born Citizenship Clause states that “no person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President.”
The scholarly consensus about Cruz is that he’s most likely eligible to run for the office of President and serve in the White House for several reasons.
Sarah Helene Duggin from Catholic University, who is an expert on this topic, wrote at length for us about a potential Cruz candidacy back in October 2013, and she explained why scholars believe Cruz is eligible.
Duggin said that the “consensus rests on firm foundations” based on the intent of the naturalization clause, as stated in a letter in 1787 from John Jay to George Washington; the language of the 1790 Naturalization Act; and the 14-year residency requirement in the Constitution’s Article II.
So why is there even a debate about a Cruz candidacy? Two significant factors that allow for some doubt are the facts that constitutional convention didn’t discuss the exact meaning of the words “natural born citizen” and the Supreme Court has never ruled on that issue.
“For Senator Cruz—who was born in Calgary, Alberta, to an American mother and a Cuban father—the question is more complicated,” Duggin said back in October 2013. “There is a strong argument that anyone who acquires United States citizenship at birth, whether by virtue of the 14th Amendment or by operation of federal statute, qualifies as natural born. The Supreme Court, however, has never ruled on the meaning of the natural-born citizenship requirement. In the absence of a definitive Supreme Court ruling—or a constitutional amendment—the parameters of the clause remain uncertain.”
Cruz isn’t the first person to run for President who wasn’t born in the United States. In 2008, John McCain faced questions since he was born in the Panama Canal Zone. And Mitt Romney’s father, George Romney, was born in Mexico, and he faced questions during his 1968 presidential campaign.
In February, Cruz again addressed questions about his qualifications for office at the CPAC political meetings.
“I was born in Calgary. My mother was an American citizen by birth,” Cruz said. “Under federal law, that made me an American citizen by birth. The Constitution requires that you be a natural-born citizen.”
Two prominent legal authorities, Neal Katyal and Paul Clement, said in a Harvard Law Review article that “there is no question that Senator Cruz has been a citizen from birth and is thus a ‘natural born Citizen’ within the meaning of the Constitution.”
“As Congress has recognized since the Founding, a person born abroad to a U.S. citizen parent is generally a U.S. citizen from birth with no need for naturalization. And the phrase “natural born Citizen” in the Constitution encompasses all such citizens from birth,” they added. “Thus, an individual born to a U.S. citizen parent — whether in California or Canada or the Canal Zone — is a U.S. citizen from birth and is fully eligible to serve as President if the people so choose.”
In the long run, the debate would be settled by a constitutional change.
“The best solution would be to amend the Constitution, as many legislators on both sides of the aisle have proposed over the years. In the absence of an amendment, the clause should be narrowly interpreted,” Duggin said back in 2013.
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A salute to the four Founding Fathers born in Ireland | <urn:uuid:b39b62d8-e842-4604-b763-5f2a379769f7> | CC-MAIN-2018-47 | https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/can-ted-cruz-serve-as-president-if-he-was-born-in-canada/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-47/segments/1542039746061.83/warc/CC-MAIN-20181119171420-20181119193420-00301.warc.gz | en | 0.976361 | 872 | 2.6875 | 3 |
DO YOU WANT QUALIFICATIONS THAT ARE ACCEPTED BY UNIVERSITIES AND EMPLOYERS AROUND THE WORLD?
A-levels are internationally recognised qualifications that are required for entry into many university courses and professional training opportunities. Students typically study A-levels between the ages of 17 and 18. A-levels can help you:
- get a place at college or university at home or abroad
- start the career you want
- explore the subjects you love.
Every year, the British Council helps more than two million people take international exams. We are here to help you at every stage of your education – from choosing subjects to registering for exams. | <urn:uuid:46d199d5-e2f2-46fa-89d2-1fe18c924d37> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://www.britishcouncil.co.ke/en/exam/igcse-school/choosing/why-a-as-levels | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233506421.14/warc/CC-MAIN-20230922170343-20230922200343-00021.warc.gz | en | 0.932122 | 134 | 2.65625 | 3 |
The HTML <!DOCTYPE> tag is used for specifying which version of HTML the document is using. This is referred to as the document type declaration (DTD).
The <!DOCTYPE> declaration must be the very first thing in your HTML document, before the <html> tag.
HTML 4.01 has 3 possible doctypes: HTML 4 Strict, HTML 4 Transitional, and HTML 4 Frameset. Every HTML document you create should have one of these three DTDs. The DTD you use will depend on how strict you want your HTML to be and whether you are using frames or not.
HTML 4 Strict
This document type includes all HTML elements except those that have been deprecated, and those that appear in frameset documents.
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
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This document type includes all HTML elements including those that have been deprecated.
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
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This document type includes all HTML elements in the transitional DTD as well as those in framed document.
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Frameset//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/frameset.dtd">
HTML 5 <!DOCTYPE>
The <!DOCTYPE> declaration must go right at the top of the page, before any other HTML code.
<!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> </head> <body> <p>Page content...</p> </body> </html> | <urn:uuid:1493d097-c35b-4450-b3a1-8f27c9afdb8e> | CC-MAIN-2017-26 | http://www.w3schools.in/html/DOCTYPE/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-26/segments/1498128320206.44/warc/CC-MAIN-20170623235306-20170624015306-00058.warc.gz | en | 0.715076 | 417 | 3.625 | 4 |
Uta is in the Campidano, in the south-west of the Sardinian chief town, exactly at 20 Km. It has a territory of 134,33 Km2 and it confines at north with Villaspeciosa, and, clockwise, with Decimomannu, Assemini, Capoterra and Siliqua.
Uta is on a fertile plain crossed by two rivers (Rio Cixerri and Rio Mannu) that flow into the pond of Santa Gilla. It is at 6 metres above the sea level, but in its district there is also a wide mountainous zone, formed by the Arcosu Mountain (948 m), the Lattias Mountain (1086 m) and in part by the tops of Guttureddu and Gutturu Mannu.
The south-west part of the territory, beginning by the Rio Cixerri, includes some small hills with an average height of about 100 metres where there are the ruins of two ancient Christian Churches (Santa Maria Magramixi and San Nicola) and a Romanic temple, everyone of them faces the Rio Cixerri; there is also a giants’ grave with thirty Menhirs, but it has been destroyed by men’s ignorance through mechanical means.
A recent frontier, in the direction of Siliqua, is the artificial lake obtained from the dam on the Cixerri that, together with the railway and the state road 130, closes the town at North/North-West.
The weather of Uta is typically Mediterranean: the influence of the sea and of other streams makes mild the low temperatures caused by the mistral coming from North-West during autumn and appeases the sultriness caused by the hot winds coming from Africa at the beginning of spring.
The inhabited centre is located in the North part of the territory and the population reached over 8000 inhabitants. Because of past inundations and floods, the ancient part of the town has been destroyed and the urban structure of the built-up area has been subjected to several reconstructions using different materials and renewing the home typologies.
In ancient times Uta was divided into two villages: Uta Susu and Uta Jossu. The Church of Santa Maria and few houses located in the surrounding area belonged to the first village, while at about 1 Km there was Uta Jossu (where was situated the Church of San Cromazio), that is to say the actual Uta. It stood because of a natural transfer of the population towards a healthier zone and towards a zone less hit by the usual inundations of the Rio Cixerri and Rio Mannu. These rivers, together with their affluents, came together in the final part of their course, at South of the town. There, they created a marsh and, because of the lack of adequate embankments, they frequently overflowed causing many damages to the countryside and to the houses and the death of livestock and sometimes of some persons.
It seems, for some reasons, that the name Uta derived from the Latin word UDUS that means marshy and damp.
According to other sources, in particular according to a research done visualizing some Ptolemaic papers of the book “Sardegna Antiqua” , it emerges that the name Uta has had different changes according to the visitors that arrived there or according to the language that he spoke:
- Yra y Ity: ancient greek
- Villanova: with reference to new village
- Itta-Utta-Ura and finally Uta, and after it returned as Utasusu and Utajossu.
Another alternative about the origin of the name Uta comes from the “Sistema Linguistico della civiltà Nuragica” of the professor Raffaele Sardella, in which it is written:
- From the Sumero Uta-She : towards the Sun God Utu (so Uta = Utu = God of the sun Utu)
- From the Sumero Uta-She : seat of the Sun God
- From the Sumero Uta-She: seat, foundation of the sky
Short historic report
Our town has ancient origins, as it is testified by the findings of several times found in our territory and by the documents about Uta.
The zone was already inhabited in the nuragic period. Actually, in the slope of Monte Arcosu there are the ruins of numerous nuraghes. Among them, the biggest is “Su niu de su Pilloni” that includes also the ruins of a nuragic village and of a furnace; everything appears not very visible because of the decay and the wear of the time, and, moreover, a lot of them are probably still underground.
The Romanic period too has left its mark. Actually, the ancient road that led from Caralis to Nora crossed the whole territory of Uta. Several findings (a colossal statue of a Romanic priestess, ruins of granite columns, a big marble slab dedicated to three Christian boys buried in Uta, ruins of suburban Romanic houses and the supposed bridge on the Rio Cixerri called “ponte de is aramigus”) confirm the presence of Romanic population.
During this period Sardinia was divided into giudicati (singular giudicato), among them there was the giudicato of Cagliari. In its turn each giudicato was divided into districts called curatorie. Among the curatorie of the giudicato of Cagliari there was the one of Decimomannu that controlled some small settlings called Ville (singular villa). These were Siliqua, Villaspeciosa, Uta, San Sperate, etc.
In this period, the giudicati granted lands and gave Churches to the monks, so that the inhabitants could take advantage from their presence. Exactly in this period the Benedictine monks of Saint Victor (Marseille) arrived in Uta’s territory.
One of the most important events, probably the most important, was the concession of two Churches (one in Uta’s territory) done to them by the judge Torchitorio of Cagliari in 1089.
These monks contributed to the reclaim the marsh areas of the village (ancient zone of Uta Susu) and here they erected the Shrine of Santa Maria.
Around 1258, Uta became a possession of the Pisan lords Gherardesca Gherardini.
Afterwards , in 1324, it became a town of the Catalan Aragonese kingdom of Sardinia and was object of contests between the Gherardescas and the Acens. Actually, it was, together with Uta Jossu, granted to Pietro Acen.
In 1328 the two villages were occupied with force by Berengario Carroz and so included into the Baronia of San Michele, in spite of the request the Sardinia’s King so that they were given back to the legitimate owner.
From 1365 to 1409, after a war between the Arborea’s Kingdom and the Sardinia’s Kingdom, the village took again the arborense aspect.
When Uta was again part of the Sardinia’s Kingdom, it became again a possession of the Carrozs in the baronia of San Michele. The construction of the Church of Santa Giusta probably goes back to this period . The coat of arms of that family is engraved on the presbytery’s arc and a date is engraved in the left chapel in front of the high altar.
In 1511, when the last Carrozs’ heir (Violante) died, the Centelles came into possession of Uta.
In 1674, it became a possession of the dukes Borgia of Gandia.
In 1726, after a judicial quarrel, Uta was given to the Catadàs.
Finally, in 1805, the Osorio de la Cueva came into possession of the village and in 1839 redeemed it
In 1849 were found eight bronze figurines: they are small sacred bronze idols that represent eight different scenes and characters in several ages of their life. Now they are kept in the Museo Archeologico of Cagliari.
The economic activities done in Uta regards above all the primary sector; actually, it is fundamentally an agricultural town. Horticultural greenhouses, cultivation of artichokes and corn, orchards and olive graves are very spread, but it is present also sheep farming.
Until not long ago, an addition activity and profitable economic resource of the town was fishing; it was practised above all during the free time.
As regards the secondary and tertiary sectors, in the east part of Uta, in the zone called Macchiareddu, there are the industrial plans and the service centre CASIC. Also the commercial activities appear well launched. | <urn:uuid:71f82d85-6713-4bf0-92b7-7b1d2f5a63ce> | CC-MAIN-2024-10 | https://www.prolocouta.it/en/the-village/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2024-10/segments/1707947473370.18/warc/CC-MAIN-20240221034447-20240221064447-00030.warc.gz | en | 0.960025 | 1,897 | 2.6875 | 3 |
In this ongoing term-based art program, students explore their creativity through drawing, illustration and painting, translating their ideas into visual narratives. Projects are designed to build and expand on the individual student's fundamental art skill and style, with different theme to explore in each term. Discover and experiment using various art techniques such as form, shading, colour and how to effectively set up composition for your narrative scene. All of our classes are structured in a mixed-age grouping with each student being assessed and catered according to their learning abilities in a differentiated curriculum. This method of art learning allows appropriate level of comprehension of each student.
If you’re passionate about drawing and discovering your inner creativity and imagination, then this course is for you.
The course is mentored and facilitated by Tull Suwannakit
Children 8 years old onwards
BOOK NOW for a single session
CONTACT us for more details about our full term enrolment
In this 10-week course for adults, you will be taken on a creative journey on how to write and illustrate your very own picture book for children. The immersive course will cover all areas used in the publishing industry including: How to gather ideas, develop your story through structuring and pacing, character design and storyboarding. Throughout the course, our facilitator will guide you through step-by-step illustration techniques that are catered to individual style and preferred medium of each student. The course is suitable for adults with all skill levels, even beginners.
Topics covered in this course:
Setting up compositions
Lighting and shadows
Story structure, pacing and rhythm
Experimentation of various art medium
Character's expression and movement
How to develop simple and effective ideas for your story
The course is presented and facilitated by children's book author and illustrator Tull Suwannakit | <urn:uuid:ac3297d9-2bf4-495c-9a3a-d636dfb4b144> | CC-MAIN-2023-50 | http://www.malvernschoolofart.com.au/COURSES.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-50/segments/1700679099281.67/warc/CC-MAIN-20231128083443-20231128113443-00061.warc.gz | en | 0.926141 | 372 | 2.84375 | 3 |
Robots may replace UK’s public sector workers as early as 2030
How would you sense to get the whole thing done just the way you desire? It sounds mechanical, but over the years it’s been done in lots of ways. The robot is fundamentally a machine that is operated by computer programs. Robots are accessible in lots of shapes with numerous features. In this current age of technology, people locate the role of a robot to be quite helpful in businesses, research firms and even in educational fields. Robots make the working process earlier and more accurate.
In UK demands of these robots are increasing day by day. Even they are taking place of men in many offices. This happen because they are more accurate in results compare to human. It is predictable that Robots may replace UK’s public sector workers as early as 2030.
Image source: businessinsider.com
There is abundance of such works that are very dangerous and time restrictive but robot completes them easily and on time. In industrial areas, robots carry out particular operations mechanically. Robots are similarly helpful in helping people out of mishap, operation and more. In addition, robots can also be very efficient for providing the walking help those who suffer with serious injuries.
Though these robots cannot directly interact with humans, they have become main helping solution for human beings. So do not get shocked if you find any robotic gear that not only talks to you but also do something for you. The man made humanoid is about to posses the great threat to the working men in UK in near future. | <urn:uuid:dd535be5-5667-4b99-9b95-0d64668050e3> | CC-MAIN-2018-47 | http://www.buzzyoo.com/robots-may-replace-uks-public-sector-workers-as-early-as-2030/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-47/segments/1542039743216.58/warc/CC-MAIN-20181116214920-20181117000920-00092.warc.gz | en | 0.969025 | 316 | 2.765625 | 3 |
Trunk Island, Bermuda
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- This article is for the island in Bermuda. For the island in British Columbia, Canada, see Trunk Island (British Columbia).
Trunk Island is the largest island in Harrington Sound, Bermuda. Its area is 7 acres (2.8 ha), and it contains two properties: a mansion plot (66%) and a cottage plot (33%). The island has been owned by the Tucker/Gardner family since the early 19th century and was used as a summer camp for Bermudian groups such as Sea Scouts and Girl Guides in the 1920s and 1930s. It remains privately owned by descendants of the first owners, although a share of the ownership of the mansion plot has now been donated to the Bermuda Zoological Society, which supports educational programs at the Bermuda Aquarium, Museum and Zoo. The Bermuda Zoological Society purchased th cottag property and has created a living classroom throughout the island.
|This Bermuda location article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.| | <urn:uuid:818d9086-f015-459e-8e8f-faec2aed77f8> | CC-MAIN-2019-09 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trunk_Island,_Bermuda | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-09/segments/1550247513661.77/warc/CC-MAIN-20190222054002-20190222080002-00537.warc.gz | en | 0.952976 | 233 | 2.703125 | 3 |
In 2013, Johns Hopkins University researcher and epidemiologist Dr. Frank Lin led a study that was the first to measure the possible consequence of hearing loss on cognitive function.
Research volunteers with hearing loss took repeated cognitive assessments, used to assess memory and thinking skills, over the course of six years. Hearing tests were also conducted over the same period.
What the investigators discovered was concerning: the cognitive abilities of those with hearing loss diminished 30 to 40 percent faster than those with normal hearing, even after accounting for other contributing factors like age, high blood pressure, and diabetes.
But that wasn’t everything. Not only did those with hearing loss suffer from higher rates of cognitive decline—the decline was directly connected to the severity of the hearing loss. The more serious the hearing loss, the greater impairment to brain functioning. Furthermore, those with hearing loss showed signs of significant cognitive deterioration 3.2 years sooner than those with average hearing.
The research depicts a strong association between hearing loss and cognitive decline, but the question persists as to how hearing loss can generate cognitive decline.
How Hearing Loss Causes Cognitive Decline
Researchers have offered three reasons for the connection between hearing loss and cognitive decline:
- Hearing loss can contribute to social isolation, which is a recognized risk factor for cognitive decline.
- Hearing loss forces the brain to invest too many resources to the processing of sound, at the expense of memory and thinking.
- A common underlying trauma to the brain causes both hearing loss and diminished brain function.
Perhaps it’s a blend of all three. What is evident is that, regardless of the cause, the connection between hearing loss and cognitive decline is powerful.
The question now becomes, what can we do about it? Researchers estimate that 27 million Americans over age 50, including two-thirds of men and women aged 70 years and older, experience some kind of hearing loss. Is there a way those with hearing loss can prevent or overturn cognitive decline?
How Hearing Aids Could Help
Recall the three ways that hearing loss is thought to trigger more rapid cognitive decline. Now, contemplate how hearing aids could resolve or correct those causes:
- Individuals with hearing aids restore their social confidence, become more socially active, and the consequences of social isolation—and its contribution to brain decline—are mitigated or eliminated.
- Hearing aids protect against the overtaxing impact of struggling to hear. Cognitive resources are freed up for memory and thinking.
- Hearing aids yield amplified sound stimulation to the brain, helping to re-establish neural connections.
Admittedly, this is mainly theoretical, and the big question is: does wearing hearing aids, in fact, slow or prevent hastened mental decline, and can we quantify this?
The answer could be discovered in an upcoming study by Dr. Frank Lin, the head researcher of the initial study. Lin is working on the first clinical trial to examine whether hearing aids can be objectively measured to protect against or alleviate brain decline.
Stay tuned for the results of this study, which we’ll cover on our blog once published. | <urn:uuid:14572c04-248b-42bb-a653-e5636e1283d9> | CC-MAIN-2021-04 | https://www.williamsburghears.com/hearing-aids/how-hearing-aids-can-prevent-cognitive-decline/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-04/segments/1610703547475.44/warc/CC-MAIN-20210124075754-20210124105754-00277.warc.gz | en | 0.952678 | 625 | 3.4375 | 3 |
This tip has been written for CorelDRAW® Graphics Suite X3. While similar features might be available in previous releases the tip will be fully applicable to CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X3 and newer versions only.
Whether you are working with a drawing or an imported bitmap, the new Crop tool lets you remove portions of your graphic quickly and easily. You no longer need to ungroup objects, break linked groups apart, or convert objects to curves to remove unwanted areas in a graphic.
The Crop tool is located in the toolbox, on the Crop tool flyout.
To crop objects, you define a rectangular area (cropping area) that you want to keep. Portions of the graphic outside the cropping area will be removed. You can specify the exact position and size of the cropping area, and you can rotate and resize it.
Cropping an imported bitmap
To crop a graphic
- Open the Crop tool flyout , and click the Crop tool .
Important note: If an object or bitmap is selected, only the selected item will be cropped. If no objects are selected, the entire graphic will be cropped.
- Drag to define a cropping area.
The cropping area indicates which portions of the graphic you want to keep.
- If you need to adjust the cropping area, perform any of the following tasks:
- To move the cropping area, click inside the cropping area and drag it to a new position. If you want to specify the exact position of the cropping area, type values in the Position boxes on the property bar.
- To resize the cropping area, drag any of its handles. If you want to specify the exact size of the cropping area, type values in the Size boxes on the property bar.
- To rotate the cropping area, click inside, and drag a rotation handle. You can also type values in the Angle of rotation box on the property bar.
Rotating the cropping area
- Double-click inside the cropping area.
Cropped objects, including text objects, are automatically converted to curves.
A cropped graphic | <urn:uuid:55e73b52-670a-4808-893a-00ae75452d79> | CC-MAIN-2017-17 | https://rumah132.wordpress.com/2011/06/07/cropping-graphics-in-coreldraw%C2%AE/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-17/segments/1492917121665.69/warc/CC-MAIN-20170423031201-00325-ip-10-145-167-34.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.828 | 446 | 2.765625 | 3 |
President-elect Donald Trump will be the 45th president of the United States in an unexpected win over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, who conceded the election Wednesday morning.
Among voters 18 to 29, Clinton earned the majority — 55% — of votes, compared to Trump's 37%. But Clinton's share was still less than the 60% that Obama carried in 2012.
Even if you didn't vote for Trump, he'll be the new president starting in January. What will his presidency mean for you — and your money? For one, if the Affordable Care Act is repealed, you could pay hundreds of dollars more for health insurance. And there's far more Trump could do, including influencing job growth, tax policy, and even interest rates.
Let's drill down.
How will Donald Trump affect my student debt?
There are 40 million Americans collectively carrying $1.3 trillion in outstanding student debt. Young people have said in surveys it was the second most important campaign issue — right after the economy, including worries about jobs, wages and paid leave.
But Trump has addressed the topic of debt in sympathetic — if vague — terms: "We're going to work with all of our students who are drowning in debt to take the pressure off these people just starting out in their adult lives," he said in his GOP convention speech.
And in a campaign speech in Columbus, Ohio, in October, Trump promised student loan payments would not exceed 12.5% of borrowers' income and he would only require borrowers to make payments for 15 years.
"We'll let them get on with their lives," he told the crowd.
This is different from the current program available to borrowers with federal student loans: Currently people can cap their payments at 10% of their income and need to pay off their loans for at least 20 years.
The idea would be to push students to take out loans only if they'll end up in high-paying fields that will enable them to pay back debt. An end effect could be that only wealthier students get to be arts majors, for example.
Finally, early signals suggest the markets believe for-profit colleges and student lenders could benefit under a Trump presidency, thanks to a lightening of rules, regulations — and consumer protections.
Will Donald Trump lower or raise my taxes?
In countless campaign speeches, Donald Trump has promised to cut taxes for the middle class. Indeed, his plan calls for wide tax cuts, including collapsing the income tax brackets and cutting the taxes on investments that were put in place by the current White House.
But Trump's plan disproportionately benefits high earners.
In fact, a new report from the Penn Wharton Budget Model research organization finds that Trump's large proposed tax cuts would likely increase federal debt, which could hinder economic growth and job creation.
Another study found that nearly 8 million low- and middle-income families would actually see their tax bill go up under a Trump presidency.
That said, almost everyone else would see their tax bills go down. Citizens for Tax Justice says that middle-income earners would net a little more than $800 in savings on average under Trump's plan.
For example, if you make $30,600 a year, you'll get a tax discount of 1.4% of your income, amounting to a cut of about $433. That's like a 4% share of the overall U.S. tax cuts.
Still, rich people would do best. The top 1% of earners will receive a bigger share of the tax cut: 44% of it. Someone making $1,723,100 will have their tax bill reduced by $88,410.
What will Donald Trump do to jobs?
Trump has said he would create 25 million jobs over the next decade. That's about 18 million positions more than would be created if he did nothing, at least according to Congressional Budget Office projections that show 7.1 million jobs will be created by 2026 under the current trajectory.
But after Moody's Analytics looked at Trump's jobs projections, it reported his programs would actually result in 3.4 million job losses.
Trump's proposals may help grow the economy in the short term, but researchers found, after about a decade the benefits would wear off.
After that the economy would begin to shrink, University of Pennsylvania economist Kent Smetters told Fortune. By 2040, he said, Trump's plans could cost the economy about 11 million jobs.
The United States has lost factory and manufacturing jobs in recent decades: more than 7 million since 1979, according to Marketwatch.
But analysis suggests any president would have a hard time bringing back those 5 million jobs, because they are gone for good. The U.S. still produces a lot of goods, and more than it did 20 years ago, but it takes fewer workers to make those products thanks to technological advances.
Will interest rates go up under Trump?
Protecting and improving your credit score is up to you alone. But the decisions of the newly-elected president will also affect your life as a borrower, influencing everything from the interest rates you pay on credit cards and mortgages, to credit reporting rules and how hard it is to pay off debt.
The U.S. central bank, or Fed — short for Federal Reserve — is an independent entity overseen by Congress. It's headed by the Board of Governors, which is chaired by Janet Yellen. The Fed's job is to keep as many people employed as possible, without letting the prices of the goods and services get too high.
Trump – like all U.S. presidents – won't have a direct hand in the Fed's decisions. The president gets to pick the chairperson and board and sets the goals, and then steps back: It has been established that the decisions of monetary policy should be free from political influence.
Trump has said he champions low-interest-rates. This is unusual for a Republican, which as conservatives, usually support policies that result in higher interest on investments.
"I'm not a person that thinks Janet Yellen is doing a bad job," Trump told Reuters in May. "I happen to be a low-interest rate person unless inflation rears its ugly head, which can happen at some point." | <urn:uuid:d9df1158-c49d-4112-a3bd-7d03ef518f1e> | CC-MAIN-2018-17 | https://mic.com/articles/159033/what-donald-trump-s-win-means-for-millennial-money-how-taxes-jobs-and-debt-will-change | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-17/segments/1524125947705.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20180425061347-20180425081347-00148.warc.gz | en | 0.975917 | 1,274 | 2.53125 | 3 |
Abnormal vaginal discharge and bleeding is a common symptom of a wide range of conditions. Both discharge and bleeding are normal in many circumstances – bleeding is a natural part of your menstrual cycle and discharge is a way that your body cleans itself – but when these become abnormal, it can be quite disconcerting.
Abnormal vaginal discharge and bleeding may be caused by a number of things, from infections to common conditions like endometriosis.
If you are experiencing any abnormal activity downstairs, you should get in touch with your doctor, as this is likely your body telling you something is not right. Here we take a look at some of the common reasons for abnormal vaginal discharge and bleeding.
Abnormal Vaginal Discharge
Vaginal discharge is a fluid or a semi-solid substance that comes from the vaginal opening. It is very common, and most women will be familiar with some kind of discharge – it is part of the body’s natural cleansing process.
Abnormal vaginal discharge is when the discharge smells or looks odd, or when the amount is noticeably more than usual. There are a number of reasons why vaginal discharge may be abnormal. Some of the most common include:
A vaginal yeast infection – This occurs when the balance of bacteria and yeast changes in the vagina, causing yeast cells to multiply. Whitish-gray and semisolid vaginal discharge is a telltale symptom of a yeast infection.
Vulvovaginitis – This is an inflammation or infection of the vulva and vagina (also known as vulvitis and vaginitis). It may be caused by a number of things, and one of the key symptoms is increased strong-smelling vaginal discharge.
Trichomonas – Trichomoniasis is one of the most common sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and can cause a strong-smelling yellow-green vaginal discharge.
Chlamydia – Chlamydia is another common STI. Although symptoms often do not appear, a yellow or green discharge from the vagina may be a telltale sign of the infection.
Gonorrhoea – Gonorrhea is another common STI, and like chlamydia often does not cause any symptoms. However, a yellowish vaginal discharge is a common symptom.
Bacterial vaginosis – This is an infection caused by an overgrowth of atypical bacteria in the vagina. This typically produces a thin and greyish-white discharge.
Pelvic inflammatory disease – Pelvic inflammatory disease (PID) is an infection or inflammation of the cervix, endometrium, fallopian tubes, or ovaries. Abnormal/foul-smelling vaginal discharge is a common symptom.
Abnormal Vaginal Bleeding
Vaginal bleeding is, of course, a completely normal part of menstruation. Excessive or prolonged vaginal bleeding within the menstrual period is known as menorrhagia, whereas uterine bleeding outside the expected menstrual periods is known as metrorrhagia. A combination of the two is known as menometrorrhagia. This may be caused by:
Polycystic ovary syndrome – Women with polycystic ovary syndrome experience an abnormal production of hormones, which can cause ovulation to become inconsistent. These infrequent periods can be very heavy.
Fibroids – Fibroids are benign tumours that can appear on the uterus during a woman’s childbearing years. However, they can cause heavy periods.
Endometriosis – Endometriosis is a condition where the endometrium begins growing outside the lining of the uterus, causing painful adhesions on the uterus, ovaries, fallopian tubes and bowel. It can cause painful periods and infertility.
Endometrial cancer – Cancer of the uterus can cause heavy bleeding. It is rare among women who have not passed through menopause. Bleeding after menopause always needs to be investigated to rule this out.
Endometrial polyps – These are growths in the endometrium that can cause heavy bleeding.
Endometrial hyperplasia – This is when women develop an abnormally thick lining of the inside surface of their uterus. It can cause heavy bleeding.
Adenomyosis – This is where the when the endometrial glands grow in small pockets in the muscle of the uterus. They can cause abnormal vaginal bleeding.
Hormonal changes and disorders – An overactive thyroid can cause irregular periods. Heavy bleeding is also more common in older women, so is thought to be linked to hormonal changes that occur in the later stages of a woman’s childbearing years.
If you have any questions regarding abnormal vaginal discharge or bleeding and would like to book an appointment, please don’t hesitate to give us a call. We will strive to offer advice and compassionate care in every way possible. | <urn:uuid:0fdff3b6-f90b-4bee-a778-ef98a76a074c> | CC-MAIN-2020-05 | http://drbevanbrown.com.au/abnormal-vaginal-discharge-bleeding-need-know/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-05/segments/1579251694908.82/warc/CC-MAIN-20200127051112-20200127081112-00422.warc.gz | en | 0.91814 | 993 | 2.921875 | 3 |
The American Way of Life
Images of the United States in nineteenth-century Europe and Latin-America
The American Way of Life: Images of the United States in nineteenth-century Europe and Latin-America. The idea of America in the imagination of many people throughout the world is a key issue in modern history. Most existing work on this subject focuses on the twentieth- century era of US hegemony, but the purpose of this project is to explore the origins of the widespread perception that the United States is the epitome not only of modern power but of modernity itself.
By the mid-nineteenth century much of the utopian promise of the Americas had become identified with the United States. The project examines the crucial decades in the development of US power from the Civil War to the Spanish-American War (two key moments in the United States' own process of self-definition). The project adopts a comparative approach -- analysing Europe and Latin America as the two regions most closely linked to the United States by history, culture and way of life -- in order a) to interpret the distinctive experiences of each of the seven countries that comprise our case studies; and b) to develop a generally applicable model to reassess the impact of images of America in this period.
We approach the images -- ranging from the textual to the
visual, through a wide variety of sources -- in terms of discourse
analysis, working within a theoretical framework which integrates the
socio-economics of production with the aesthetics of reception.
The project is directed by Axel Körner, Nicola Miller and Adam Smith, in collaboration with Kate Ferris, Natalia Bas and Maike Thier.
Page last modified on 05 aug 13 15:26 by Sonja Van Praag
If you would like to join our mailing list please contact Professor Axel Körner - firstname.lastname@example.org | <urn:uuid:998bbe61-05d7-4d14-8dec-00251e0343be> | CC-MAIN-2014-49 | http://www.ucl.ac.uk/cth/research-projects/american-way-of-life | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-49/segments/1416931009515.14/warc/CC-MAIN-20141125155649-00143-ip-10-235-23-156.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.91147 | 383 | 3.078125 | 3 |
Have you ever tried to find a cemetery where ancestors were probably buried, but it's not on any map you can find? The road may have changed. The cemetery may be in a field somewhere, hopefully fenced in somehow, probably overgrown with weeds and brush. But where is it?
Let's use this as an example. After you've entered what you know into the form, you'll get something like this:
PLOT THE MAP:
Likewise, along the top and/or bottom are the tiny Longitude numbers, 88W and 89W in our example. Our cemetery is farther west than 88 degrees, but not as far west as 89 degrees.
And now you have a little imaginary square and the cemetery is right in there somewhere.
For our purposes, we don't really need to be as precise as the data given. It's enough to know that the cemetery is a little over half way between Latitude 32 and 33 (5917 is roughly 60% of the way). So with the Longitude, 4107 is only about 40% of the distance from Longitude 88 toward Longitude 89. Get the idea?
People who live in that neighborhood can probably help you find the exact spot. Maybe the County Agent could help or one of the local Pastors. And of course, there are always our friends at the local Historical and Genealogical Society. | <urn:uuid:3f716a05-4bbe-4b1f-b5d0-0eaab415a172> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~msalhn/cemetery.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501169776.21/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104609-00279-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965658 | 282 | 3.078125 | 3 |
SpaceX (News - Alert) and OneWeb engaged in a symbolic tit-for-tat last week in their respective quests to build large scale, low-flying broadband satellite networks. Word leaked out that SpaceX has filed with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC (News - Alert)) to fly three demonstration satellites while OneWeb made a big splash announcement with Airbus on a paper commitment to build over 900 satellites. But there's still holes in OneWeb's bigger plan.
SpaceX is seeking permission to fly six to eight test and demonstration satellites, with the first two satellites "MicroSat-1a" and "MicroSat-1b" to be put into orbit in 2016 on a company Falcon 9 rocket. The satellites will fly around 388 miles above the Earth—a stone's throw away compared to most current geosynchronous communications satellites parked at around 22,500 miles away, and one free from lag. Three broadband array test ground stations—Tesla HQ, SpaceX HQ, and SpaceX's new satellite factory in Redmond, Washington—will get a crack once a day or so for about 10 minutes to send and receive Ku-band data.
The initial demonstration satellites are laying the ground work for a massive low-orbiting network of over 4,000 satellites to provide broadband services. Part of the offering will be to underserved/not-served areas, but Elon Musk has suggested the network could offer speeds and reduced network hops that could compete with terrestrial fiber. Exactly how fast and what spectrum Musk will use for his operational network are open questions at this point.
OneWeb announced it is forming a joint venture with Airbus for the design and manufacture of its satellites. Each OneWeb satellite is expected to weigh less than 150 kilograms (331 pounds). The first 10 satellites would be built at Airbus facilities in Toulouse, France with a dedicated plant in the United States created to handle full series production of the 900 satellites constellation.
Several satellites would be built per day on the production line. Cost per satellite is unknown, as is who will be funding the construction of a satellite plant in the U.S. Airbus, as a French company, may find it difficult to get French export money to build a dedicated facility in America.
Areas where OneWeb appears to be ahead of SpaceX, is in spectrum licensing, hardware prototypes, and partnerships. OneWeb has secured licensing for Ku-band spectrum, but it needs to put up a satellite or two at some point to effectively secure its claim under current international regulatory practices. The company has shown hardware mockups for low-cost ground stations and vehicles, expanding the utility and potential customer base from underserved into public safety and aviation usage.
Investors in OneWeb include Qualcomm (News - Alert) and the Virgin Group. The company has also announced aviation partnerships with Honeywell and Rockwell Collins, putting the company on track to compete with other satellite providers. Honeywell (News - Alert) will be providing "Internet of Things" services, using OneWeb to stream maintenance data from engines and other aircraft equipment to the ground, weather and navigation data to pilots, and supplying broadband services to passengers. Rockwell Collins will be the exclusive provider of satellite communications terminals for OneWeb services. | <urn:uuid:566625e5-d3f9-47fb-a275-b1968cea085c> | CC-MAIN-2018-34 | http://www.techzone360.com/topics/techzone/articles/2015/06/22/405463-advances-questions-spacex-oneweb-big-leo-broadband-satellite.htm/amp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-34/segments/1534221212768.50/warc/CC-MAIN-20180817182657-20180817202657-00450.warc.gz | en | 0.935796 | 652 | 2.734375 | 3 |
The traditional Chinese conceptual framework of Wu Xing (五行), which roughly translates as “Five Elements” and is rooted in Taoist philosophy, has not only influenced East Asian cultures across China, Japan, Korea and throughout Southeast Asia, but has been applied to seemingly disparate fields of study including, but not limited to, traditional forms of medicine, music, martial arts and even—you guessed it—culinary arts.
Although the specifics of Wu Xing are hardly important (and, frankly, anti-scientific), the critical underlying concept is that each of the five “elements” (fire, earth, metal, water and wood, in this case) influences others in a harmonious cycle of intensification and restraint. Wood feeds or engenders fire, fire melts or restrains metal and so on down the list of elements. It’s kind of like a Chinese-poetic version of rock/paper/scissors. But there are lessons to be learned from the broader philosophy of Wu Xing, indeed, something to be inspired by, especially as applied to the culinary arts.
When searching for a Wu Xing culinary model in all of the Taoist-influenced world, it turns out that the Vietnamese have the most well-developed thought on offer. Their view is that any understanding of Wu Xing implies a respect for balance among the elements. Take, for example, wood, water and earth. According to Wu Xing philosophy, wood is intensified and grows with water, all the while restraining or parting earth as in the roots of a tree.
This view of natural systems, according to Wu Xing, maps directly on to the culinary arts. Each element has a corresponding taste, so wood, water and earth become sourness, saltiness and sweetness. Thus, sourness intensifies saltiness, yet restrains sweetness and balance must be maintained. This respect of balance not only applies to a dish’s flavors, but (relevantly) also to its color, overall sensory experience and nutrients. Although all the details are not similarly exhaustively relevant to a modern, scientific understanding of cooking, there is great wisdom to the general concepts of elemental influence and balance.
Towards a Modern Culinary Wu Xing
Unfortunately for us, real science doesn’t deliver us anything as elegant as Vietnamese Wu Xing culinary philosophy. Reality is, as usual, more complex. But there are inspired truths to be known and discovered here.
On a scientific basis, instead of five elements, we have seven. They are the four conventional tastes of sweet, sour, salty and bitter, plus the umami taste. These five are considered “tastes” because they each have unique taste receptors, mostly concentrated on our tongues. Eat something salty and we taste it as a result of actual ions hitting a taste receptor, the experience of which is then registered with our brains.
The final two are more sensations, namely of peppery heat or picante along with richness or fat. Taken together, we have our completed list of seven. How they interact with each other is best described in two figures. The first, a table, differentiates between three types of associations. To start, there is a primary balancing effect, in which items round out or compliment others (for example, sweet and sour). Next, a secondary balancing effect, in which one item restrains another by obscuring it. The third, a magnifying effect, raises the volume of items.
To further articulate the point, the following is a graphic depiction:
Unfortunately, our understanding of human food perception is not a completed science. Although we know that certain functional associations exist, we don’t exactly know why they exist in all cases. The following is a brief overview of our current understanding of food perception, along with their interactions, presented with all the relevant science, where available.
As I discuss in my umami article, umami isn’t a taste like the four conventional tastes. It’s more nondescript and complex, thought to contribute to the general palatability of certain foods and referred to as an appetitive taste. Although we often hear umami described as synonymous with “meatiness” or “savoriness,” it’s actually much more than that. Early research in the Western World variously described umami as increasing the “amplitude,” “mouth fullness” or “bloom” of a food’s taste. More recent research suggests that these early descriptions were not necessarily far off. Umami not only provides a meaty, savory taste to foods, but also harmonizes, sustains and, yes, amplifies (up to eight times) existing tastes in a dish.
As a result of umami’s unique status among the tastes, it doesn’t so much directly balance any set of other tastes in a primary capacity. Rather, it mostly magnifies the effects of salt and general savoriness. In fact, research has shown that umami actually makes human taste receptors more sensitive to salt.
That said, umami can help obscure sourness and magnify richness. Any obscuring of tastes is likely a result of the processing of the sensations of taste at the level of the brain rather than something happening on the taste receptors themselves. Sourness, which arises from the acid content of food, can help a dish taste more bright or fresh. Umami obscures this by punching up competing savory characteristics, which can be a tool in balancing a dish. Richness, which arises from the fat content of a dish, can be similarly magnified by umami and its inherently richly savory characteristics.
Sourness is basically the sensation you get when your tongue’s proton detectors are triggered. The acid content of food gives rise to their sour tastes and acids are nothing more than a generous molecule capable of donating a proton to another molecule. It’s this generous spirit of proton donation that your tongue detects, in fact.
Sourness is an extremely versatile taste. It tends to universally uplift other flavors, making them seem brighter and crisper. Although alone it may taste rough and harsh, it can be balanced with the aid of richness, sweetness and picante. In each case, however, it’s not entirely clear how or why the balance is achieved. Richness, for example, tends to make foods taste and feel more satisfying but also tends to muddle their flavors by adding a fatty coating on the tongue. Acid feels as though it’s reversing this, removing the feeling of a tongue coating and brightening up flavors enough to unmuddle them, so to speak. All the while, the harshness of sour flavors are rounded out by fat. This is not done by chemistry though. Acids don’t readily dissolve fats, although in the mouth it certainly feels that way. All of this happens, as far as we can tell, at the level of the brain.
Sweetness and sourness tend to have a similar effect on each other, with sweetness rounding out the harshness of sour foods while toning down the level of sweetness, all of which also appears to happen at the level of the brain and not chemistry on the tongue. Interestingly, however, not all sugars react to acid in the same way. For example, according to research on taste perception, while fructose tastes less sweet in the presence of acid, glucose does not. And while fructose and glucose restrain the taste of sourness, sucrose does not.
Picante, or the sensation of heat or burning we get from peppers, is slightly different from the rest, however. Picante and sourness tend to compliment rather than balance one another. Although the harshness of sourness is more or less unmodified by picante, the two together tend to be more palatable. Saltiness tends to have the opposite effect entirely, by contrast. Sourness and saltiness magnify each other such that they taste more intense and harsh together than apart.
It’s thought that humans have three means of perceiving food. The first, via taste receptors is the most obvious. Richness or fat is not commonly understood to have dedicated taste receptors (although that’s far from clear) and, as a result, relies on the other two means of food perception. Those are smell or olfaction and chemesthesis, or the perception of texture, pain or temperature via the trigeminal nerve. In other words, fat tends to have distinct aromas and textures, so despite not being able to taste it directly, we instead detect it via these other means. In addition to balancing sourness, fat also balances saltiness and picante. In the case of salt, fat mostly restrains saltiness while still aromatizing fat flavors, increasing their overall volume. As previously discussed, a similar effect occurs between richness and umami.
Picante, on the other hand, is impacted directly by chemistry. The picante sensation of heat is a result of our reaction to a molecule called capsaicin, which is not water soluble, but rather fat soluble. That is to say, you can’t wash picante away with water, but you can with fat. As a result, richness directly dilutes picante, reducing its intensity. Richness also restrains some forms of fat soluble bitter tastes in a similar manner to picante, although not nearly all bitter tastes are fat soluble.
The presence of sodium ions are primarily responsible for the taste perception of saltiness, however, the ions of other alkali metals such as lithium and potassium can also produce a more mild perception of saltiness. Salt enhances foods by essentially turning up the volume of savory flavors by denaturing proteins and making them more accessible to olfaction or smell.
As previously discussed, salt balances richness but it also is balanced by and can balance bitterness. Since bitterness tends to deepen and extend savory flavors, saltiness finds harmony with bitter, even subduing each other slightly. Saltiness can also obscure the perception of picante although less harmoniously than its interaction with bitterness.
Of all our taste senses, bitterness is by far the most sensitive. We also perceive relatively low concentrations of bitterness as dramatically unpalatable. In the very tiniest amounts, however, bitterness can dramatically deepen and extend savory flavors. The reasons for this curiosity have much to do with the toxicity of alkaloid compounds to humans, which are often found in many innocuous-looking plants. You can imagine how useful it might be to detect these toxic bitter compounds at very low thresholds in the items we might have found and eaten on the ancient savanna.
In addition to balancing saltiness and restraining richness, bitter can also outright obscure sweetness. In a sense, bitterness is the opposite of sweetness, sugar being the most basic, energy-giving nutrient while our taste of bitterness is literally a poison detector.
Mammals alone have a sense of the picante, which arises from the molecule capsaicin, generally present in hot peppers. When capsaicin comes into contact with any mammalian tissues, it produces a sensation of burning that we perceive in the mouth through chemesthesis via the trigeminal nerve. It’s believed that pepper plants evolved to produce capsaicin as a defense against the seed-grinding molar teeth of mammals. Birds, by contrast, have no such perception of heat when they come into contact with capsaicin. Birds, without their seed-grinding molars, also tend to deposit intact pepper seeds far and wide, complete with a helpful dose of fertilizer. It’s clear that peppers are voicing a preference.
As previously discussed, picante balances and is balanced by richness and sourness in addition to restraining the salty. Beyond that, it can also obscure and be obscured by sweetness, all of which happens at the level of the brain and is not well understood.
As you may have guessed, sweetness is produced by the presence of sugars among other substances (for example, artificial sweeteners). Interestingly, sweetness the taste is often confused with sweet flavors, originating from compounds called aldehydes and ketones, which naturally occur in living systems in the presence of sugar. Sweetness is universally regarded as a very pleasant taste, if not the most pleasant, as a result of its high energy content and metabolic usefulness. It is, in fact, the only taste which is a direct energy detector.
By now, I’ve covered all the relationships with sweetness, including its direct balancing of sourness and restraining of both richness and picante. To this, I have nothing to add except to move on to the cooking! You can try out the recipes that directly relate to this article here: Three Soup Recipes: A Practical Education on Balance. Also, check out my guide to hot sauce, which will further help you hone your skills in balancing dishes.
Have a question? Ask me anything! | <urn:uuid:eab12db3-be0a-4c57-b64f-1409287cc943> | CC-MAIN-2019-18 | https://sanjaykeswani.com/2017/01/20/wu-xing-your-guide-to-flavor-balance/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-18/segments/1555578530176.6/warc/CC-MAIN-20190421040427-20190421061341-00073.warc.gz | en | 0.943388 | 2,680 | 2.875 | 3 |
Humans are said to 'learn' and to 'grow'. This is indicated by the old sayings, "Grow up," and "Act your age." And most humans do manage to remember what they've learned so far in their life, add to it whatever they've learned lately. Putting these things together, they adjust their thoughts, their decisions and actions. They learn, grow and mature.
In writing, characters are said to 'evolve', if the writer is any good.
I'm not sure why a different phrase is used for characters, who are created as representatives of human beings.
I mean, let's look at this. Wherever the story opens, the characters have a personality, and to have that, they have a backstory ... basic life events that have formed them into the 'person' they are. The author is supposed to have that all thought out, even if s/he doesn't actually say any of it in the story.
As the story proceeds, the character is challenged, reacts, learns and adjusts. Woops, I mean, he 'evolves'.
I don't know, to me, 'evolve' means 'become something new'. That sounds like a character who starts at Personality A suddenly makes a complete change to become Personality Z. I have trouble believing people do that, even when that person is a story character.
Person or character, I have a much easier time believing someone starts at Personality A and as a result of the challenge, reaction, learning and adjusting, winds up as Personality A1. A character who does that is much more believable to me.
What do you think? | <urn:uuid:a8b7545b-930a-4a64-99d1-06c6b2ceec23> | CC-MAIN-2017-30 | http://trudysuniverse.blogspot.com/2013/08/evolving-characters.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-30/segments/1500549423785.29/warc/CC-MAIN-20170721142410-20170721162410-00107.warc.gz | en | 0.981516 | 338 | 2.71875 | 3 |
Guest Blog: Civil War Project Based Learning
BrainPOP Educator, Sara Crawford, Ed. D., is an Instructional Technology Specialist in the Cartwright School District in Phoenix, Arizona. Check out her related lesson plan here!
Educators seem to have an infinite amount of standards to teach with an extremely limited amount of time. This limits the content being taught and the subjects that we are able to cover. One way to make the most of instructional time is to integrate subjects through the use of Project Based Learning.
Project Based Learning is an instructional approach that is based on authentic learning activities and center around an overarching question or problem. This approach to learning mimics the method that we approach situations outside of the brick and motor of our schools. Project Based Learning teaches our students to utilize 21st Century Skills and also the College and Career Readiness Common Core Standards that will be used in 44 states and territories within the United States in coming years.
On of the cornerstones of Project Based Learning is the students’ own research into a topic. Strong background knowledge needs to be built by the students in order for Project Based Learning to be truly authentic. A method that I often use to help students build a foundation of the topic at hand is the viewing of videos via brainpop.com or brainpopjr.com.
The short informative movies located on BrainPOP and BrainPOP Jr. allows students to investigate a topic. Students are also able to solidify their understanding by doing the activities associated with each video.
Also, oftentimes a topic may have more than one video associated with it. A third grade classroom that I am working with is creating digital projects around these guiding questions: What were some of the issues associated with the Civil War? What were some of the contributions of people during the Civil War era?
To answer these questions the students can view a variety of videos located on BrainPOP ad BrainPOPJr. A few of the movies that the students can watch through BrainPOP are; Civil War: Causes, Civil War: North Verses South, Abraham Lincoln: Honest Abe, and Fredrick Douglas. The movies that students can watch through BrainPOP Jr. are: Harriet Tubman, and Abraham Lincoln.
The key to Project Based Learning is to put the control to research, explore, and create into the students’ hands. We can use BrainPOP to help create student researchers and assist them in developing skills essential for the 21st Century. In turn, we will all reap the benefits of cultivating 21st Century Thinkers.Sara Crawford
Instructional Technology Specialist | <urn:uuid:2ee73241-b228-49ca-8f18-55172ac1701d> | CC-MAIN-2014-49 | http://www.brainpop.com/educators/community/2011/07/25/guest-blog-civil-war-project-based-learning/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-49/segments/1416931008899.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20141125155648-00069-ip-10-235-23-156.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951938 | 532 | 3.5 | 4 |
Moderate alcohol consumption during pregnancy did not appear to harm fetal neurodevelopment as measured by balance testing at age 10, a new study showed.
Most mothers in the study (95.5%) reported consuming no alcohol to moderate levels of alcohol (3 to 7 drinks per week) during pregnancy, according to John Macleod, PhD, and colleagues from the University of Bristol in England. Higher total alcohol consumption was generally associated with better offspring outcomes on specific measures of balance, including heel-to-toe balance on a beam with eyes open; the odds ratio (OR) for moderate alcohol exposure at 18 weeks compared with no alcohol exposure was 1.23 (95% CI 1.01-1.49).
The study is not the first to suggest that moderate prenatal alcohol exposure may have a positive impact on childhood balance, the authors wrote online in BMJ Open. But the researchers noted that moderate drinkers also tended to be more affluent and better educated, and they attributed the perceived beneficial effects of alcohol consumption to these unrelated factors.
"Taken together, these results do not provide strong evidence of a specific effect (either adverse or beneficial) on maternal alcohol use during pregnancy," they wrote. "The beneficial effects apparent in several analyses, although theoretically plausible, were likely to have been the product of residual confounding."
The study included close to 7,000 children who were part of a birth cohort born to residents of the former Avon region of England between April 1991 and December 1992.
All children included in the analysis participated in a 20-minute balance assessment test at age 10 that included measurements of dynamic balance (walking on a beam) and static balance (heel-to-toe balance on a beam, standing on one leg for 20 seconds) with eyes open and with eyes closed. Each child had two attempts at each test.
Alcohol consumption among mothers was measured through self-reported questionnaires administered at 18 weeks' gestation and again at 47 months after giving birth. Fathers were also asked about their drinking habits during these time points.
An alcoholic "drink" was defined as a single pub measure of spirits (25 ml), a half-pint of lager or cider, or a glass of wine. Binge drinking was defined as drinking four or more drinks in one day.
A total of 70% of mothers reported drinking no alcohol during pregnancy, while one in four reported drinking between one and two (low consumption) and three and seven (moderate consumption) alcoholic drinks a week. The rest of the mothers (4.5%) acknowledged drinking more than seven alcoholic beverages a week during pregnancy, and one in seven of these women were classified as binge drinkers.
Four years after giving birth, just over 28% of the women reported that they were nondrinkers, and more than half reported drinking more than three drinks per week.
Higher maternal alcohol use during pregnancy -- excluding binge drinking -- was generally associated with better offspring balance outcomes.
In addition to better performance on the static-balance-eyes-open test, children born to women who reported moderate drinking during pregnancy tested better than children of nondrinkers on the test measuring static balance with eyes closed (OR 1.25, 95% CI 1.06-1.48).
Higher total alcohol consumption before and after pregnancy by mothers, and higher consumption by fathers during pregnancy were associated with better balance outcomes in children, especially static balance.
Mendelian randomization was used to estimate the association between maternal genotype and offspring balance using the nonsynonymous variant rs1229984*A (ADH1B) as a proxy for lower maternal alcohol consumption.
The assumption was that if drinking alcohol truly conveyed a benefit in terms of offspring balance, children born to mothers with the "low alcohol" gene would be expected to have poorer balance than children born to mothers without the gene. But this is not what the study showed.
All balance outcomes were better among offspring of mothers carrying the ADH1B genotype predisposed to lower alcohol consumption, but the difference was small.
Study limitations included self reported parental alcohol consumption, low test-retest reliability of balance measures which may have led to misclassification of 10-year-old subjects, and a sample size that may have been too small to adequately power the genetic analysis.
But despite these limitations, the researchers concluded that their findings do not suggest a true beneficial effect for alcohol consumption on a key neurodevelopmental measure - childhood balance.
"Given the overall pattern of associations found, in particular the lack of any consistent association between binge drinking and better balance and the results of the Mendelian randomization approach, we think a causal explanation for this finding is unlikely and suggest that it was probably due to chance," they wrote.
The study was funded by the Alcohol Education and Research Council.
The researchers reported no competing interests.
- Reviewed by Robert Jasmer, MD Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco and Dorothy Caputo, MA, BSN, RN, Nurse Planner | <urn:uuid:4ebfbf80-c786-4cac-ab7f-20f13316c0b3> | CC-MAIN-2017-22 | http://www.medpagetoday.com/obgyn/pregnancy/39945 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-22/segments/1495463607806.46/warc/CC-MAIN-20170524074252-20170524094252-00075.warc.gz | en | 0.974178 | 1,028 | 2.65625 | 3 |
A Mother Turkey and Her Young - “Their Kind and Careful Parent”
From More Than a Meal: The Turkey in History, Myth, Ritual, and Reality
By Karen Davis, PhD
Young turkeys need their mothers. Unlike baby songbirds and raptors, whose parents are absent for long periods gathering food to take back to their young in the nest, it is unnatural for young groundnesting birds such as turkeys and chickens to be separated from their parent. The mother turkey is the center of the young birds’ universe. During the first month when the young require brooding – being sheltered under the mother bird’s wings at night and periodically gathered beneath her wings for warmth and comfort during the day – the youngsters, called “poults,” will panic if separated from their mother. The terrified baby turkey gives out a “lost call” to which the mother bird responds by running towards her little one, crouching and gathering him comfortingly under her wing.
People have become so used to seeing pictures of turkeys of uniform age and sex crowded miserably in a shed awaiting their death that it’s a shock to learn about the lively poults and their mothers chasing grasshoppers in a meadow, sunning themselves and dustbathing together, leaving, in the words of naturalist Joe Hutto in his book Illumination in the Flatwoods: A Season with the Wild Turkey, “tiny, bowl-shaped impressions the size of small turkey bodies.”
A delightful picture of the wandering hen and her brood appears in A.W. Schorger’s book The Wild Turkey:
They hurry along as if on a march to some particular point, sometimes tripping along in single file, one behind the other, and at other times scattered through the woods for fifty yards or more. When on these scattered marches it is pleasant to note some straggling youngster as he wanders out of sight of the main flock in an attempt to catch a fickle-winged butterfly, or delays by the wayside scratching amid the remains of a decayed log in search of a rich morsel in the shape of a grubworm. When he discovers that he is alone, he raises himself up, looks with his keen eyes in every direction for the flock, and, failing to discover them, gives the well-known coarse cluck. Then he raises his head high in the air, and listens intently for his mother’s call. As soon as it is discovered that one is missing, the whole flock stops, and the young turkeys raise their heads and await the signal from their mother. When she hears the note of the lost youngster, she gives a few anxious “yelps,” which he answers, and then, opening his wings, he gives them a joyous flap or two and with a few sharp, quick “yelps,” he goes on a run to join his companions.
During the first few weeks of life, young turkeys sleep on the ground under their mother’s wings. After a month or so, they leave the ground and fly at night to a large low branch, where they “place themselves under the deeply curved wings of their kind and careful parent, dividing themselves for that purpose into two nearly equal parties.” Thus did Audubon visualize the bond between the mother turkey and her young brood. So far removed are most of us from this scene that the picture on the cover of this magazine and my book, of a turkey hen roosting on a tree limb surrounded by her poults, not infrequently raises the question, “What kind of a bird is that?”
According to wildlife biologist William Healy, the social life of turkeys begins well before hatching, when they are inside the egg, and is well developed by the time the young birds leaves the nest. Vocal communications between the turkey hen and her embryonic chicks “is critical to the survival of the chicks,” whose long association with their mother, for nearly half a year after they hatch, “seems essential,” he writes. By contrast, the process of “hatching eggs in incubators and raising poults in mechanical brooders interrupts the social experiences” that form the foundation for a normal and happy life in turkeys.
– From chapter 8, “The Mind and Behavior of Turkeys,” in More Than a Meal: The Turkey in History, Myth, Ritual, and Reality by Karen Davis, PhD, published by Lantern Books & available from UPC. $20 | <urn:uuid:4493871e-8c97-4c19-9f14-028a364ad5d1> | CC-MAIN-2020-29 | https://www.upc-online.org/winter07/mother.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-29/segments/1593655902496.52/warc/CC-MAIN-20200710015901-20200710045901-00261.warc.gz | en | 0.964221 | 956 | 3.453125 | 3 |
An watercolour of a small Dutch frigate shown, from two angles in a common convention of ship portraiture. She is flying the ensign of the Batavian Republic, dating it between 1796 and 1806.
Prince Frederic of 64 guns late revolution Dutch ship taken at the Cape.
Built in 1777 for the Admiralty of the Maas, Prins Frederik was originally rated as a 60-gun ship; she has only twelve ports a side on the lower deck whereas thirteen was the norm for 64s. Despite the spelling on the draught, with the establishment of the Batavian Republic the ship was renamed Revolutie and reverted to an anglicised version of her original name on capture. Like many Dutch prizes, the ship saw no frontline service in the Royal Navy, being converted to a storeship in 1797 and then hulked as a convalescent ship at Plymouth in 1804 before being transferred to Berehaven in Ireland as a floating hospital. The hulk was sold in 1817.
The largest Dutch 74 captured in this period was the 1565-ton Washington, taken by Admiral Mitchell’s fleet in the Texel in 1799. This dismantling model of the ship is built to the curious scale of I/41, and is assumed to be Dutch-made. The Admiralty Collection also contains a Dutch plan of the ship, and it may be that both items were captured with the ship. Although renamed Princess of Orange, the ship was never commissioned in the Royal Navy but was hulked at Chatham until broken up in 1822.
After about 1714 the Netherlands possessed what its own historian described as ‘a second-rate navy’. The country’s relative economic decline left it without the resources to match its Great Power legacy, but the navy, although no longer an arbiter of the European political balance, was left with significant commitments around the globe. Much of the colonial empire remained, while the Dutch merchant marine was still a major carrier of the world’s trade. To defend both in straitened times became a serious problem for Holland’s naval leaders.
For most of the century the circle was squared by an alliance with Great Britain that effectively absolved the United Provinces from building a battlefleet. The navy therefore concentrated on producing ships for colonial policing and trade protection, which translated into an emphasis on small two-deckers. Of 64 guns and less (the majority in the 50-gun range), these were cheap to build and man, but powerful enough to deal with those like the Barbary states who regularly threatened Dutch commerce, while providing a two-decker ‘presence’ on foreign stations.
The policy fell apart during the American War when the Netherlands found themselves in conflict with their erstwhile allies. In 1780 there were only three ships that could be considered fit for a modern line of battle, and the country’s elders decided on a mammoth construction programme aimed at building a genuine oceanic battlefleet for the first time in nearly a century. Given the meagre and moribund nature of the existing naval administration – still divided into the five traditional autonomous admiralties – the programme of about 75 battleships and 40 frigates was hopelessly optimistic. Large numbers of ships were launched, but post-war political upheavals did not help with regular finance, and the quality of timber employed and the standards of workmanship left much to be desired. As a result many of the ships that were completed had short active lives. The lack of experience was most clearly manifest in the smaller admiralties, the worst example being the two Friesland 74s built at Harlingen which proved too large to get out of the harbour.
It was with the residual ships of this programme that the Netherlands went to war in 1793. An official list, divided by admiralty, gives the following numbers of serviceable ships available at the end of 1792. There was the nucleus of a battle squadron in seven 70/74-gun ships, armed with main battery 36pdrs, but at less than 1600 tons they were very small for their rate. The majority of the fleet (27 ships) still comprised the old 66-gun rate, like the Prins Frederik, most of which carried 24pdrs and did not exceed 1350 tons. The remainder of the ‘line of battle ships’ were made up of seven 56-gun ships, averaging about 1050 tons, which usually carried an 18pdr main battery.
Although the Netherlands began the war on the side of the allies, France invaded the low countries in 1795, and in a famous incident French cavalry captured much of the Dutch fleet, frozen in its ports. A pro-French puppet state called the Batavian Republic was set up, and the country changed sides. Taking on the Royal Navy with this old-fashioned and inefficient force was simply disastrous, and although the Dutch, as always, proved the most obstinate opponents in battle, by the end of 1799 twenty-three of the above ships had been captured or destroyed, plus two more recent vessels. Not that the prizes were of much value to their captors: in general they were too small and poorly built for frontline service, so the more seaworthy were converted to troopships and store carriers; a few became floating batteries, guardships or stationary flagships, but many were simply hulked. They last saw widespread service during the invasion scare of 1803–5 when anything that could float was dragged into the defence of the British coasts. In 1803 Lord Keith’s dispositions for the Thames approaches included: Texel, Vlieter, Leyden, Beschermer and Batavia as floating batteries; Gelykheid was stationary flagship in Yarmouth Roads, with Utrecht serving the same function for Keith himself in the Downs. During the Trafalgar crisis, when the new First Lord instructed Keith to reinforce Cornwallis with five ships, the latter replied unequivocally ‘The Utrecht is not manned, nor fit to leave the Downs…’
Very little new construction was possible in the republican years, so that by 1800 there were only sixteen Dutch battleships available, although ten were now of larger types obviously designed under French influence. Dutch shipbuilding was obstinately conservative for much of the eighteenth century; this has been attributed to the outmoded system of decentralised admiralties or to the restrictive effects of small dimensions, but the navy also missed the acid test of real wan This is most obvious in Dutch cruiser design, which persevered with pre-frigate layouts long after the advantages of the frigate-form had been perceived by virtually every other serious navy. The old two-decker 44 was an economical convoy escort, but its sailing qualities (especially to windward) were poor in comparison with a frigate, yet there were still ships of this type being built in the 1780s. Even when the frigate-form was adopted there was an almost wilful refusal to grasp the benefits of a lower topside: the usual Dutch frigate had more headroom on the lower deck, which was also given more freeboard than conventional frigates, resulting in a height of side not much less than a small two-decker – and the same tendency to sag to leeward.
Along with about seven 40s (presumably two-deckers), the 1792 list includes fourteen 36s (about 700 tons; main armament of twenty-six 12pdrs) and fourteen 20/24s, like the Daphne, of 500–550 tons (twenty or twenty-two 9pdrs). Very similar to British post ships, with full quarterdeck and forecastle, the latter were especially vulnerable in any war with a big navy, since they could neither fight nor escape a proper frigate.
The viability of 12pdr-armed frigates was also being eroded in a world where the 18pdr ship was increasingly seen as the norm. Nevertheless, the Dutch continued to build such ships, albeit rather larger, into the first decade of the nineteenth century, the 850-ton Helder being launched at Amsterdam in 1803. A few of the larger frigates were armed with 18pdrs, but the Tholen, taken in 1796, carried only twenty-four on the main deck instead of the twenty-six or -eight common in other navies. Perhaps under French influence, the Batavian Republic built at least one 24pdr frigate, the Amphitrite at Amsterdam in 1797; at 1181 tons she was a little small for that weight of metal, and after capture she was eventually reduced to 18pdrs. Like the battleships, in general Dutch frigates did not see much active service after capture.
The remainder of the fleet in 1792 comprised: two ship sloops, six brigs, eight cutters, five other small craft rated ‘brigantun’ (12–20 guns), one 10-gun schooner, five advice boats (‘adviesjacht’), five 12-gun ‘hoekers’, three 6-gun gunboats, one 10-gun schooner and a bomb vessel. Some of the cutters were very large, at up to 20 guns, and one, Braak was converted into a brig in British service.
French domination of the low countries increased after Napoleon came to power and in 1806 be appointed his brother Louis King of Holland. The Dutch had already been co-opted into contributing invasion craft to the Boulogne Flotilla, and ship construction became increasingly French in style. Indeed, when Louis quarrelled with his brother and abdicated in 1810, France simply took over the remaining Dutch navy. When the British invaded Walcheren in 1809, among the ships they found building was Fidèle, a typically French-style 40-gun frigate, which was brought to Britain for fitting out. | <urn:uuid:1de8bbde-aa52-4708-81e6-c1c42667dc35> | CC-MAIN-2019-39 | https://weaponsandwarfare.com/2019/06/06/the-dutch-navy-warships-of-the-napoleonic-era/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-39/segments/1568514572556.54/warc/CC-MAIN-20190916120037-20190916142037-00429.warc.gz | en | 0.978976 | 2,064 | 2.984375 | 3 |
Linguist Bonny Sands speaks in clicks. The adjunct faculty member is an expert on click languages, and supports language revitalization efforts through documentation.
Sands began studying click languages in 1988 as a graduate student at UCLA. When fellow linguists have questions about click languages, she gets an email.
But the entire business of language revitalization itself, is endangered, in part because of the difficulty in finding sufficient long-term funding to study the languages: Sands described it as a crisis.
“There are about 2,000 languages in Africa and of those, everybody agrees that about 300 are seriously endangered,” Sands said. “But I argue that the actual number of languages that are in trouble is closer to 600.”
Sands’ work will be published in the book, Africa’s Endangered Languages, Documentary and Theoretical Approaches, which is in production will be released next year by Oxford University Press.
Revitalizing languages is an important step toward preserving the heritage in countries including Namibia, Botswana, South Africa and others.
Read more: Phys.org | <urn:uuid:09b72f94-5fe9-46cf-bdff-def718004bf7> | CC-MAIN-2022-27 | https://novalanguages.com/revitalizing-endangered-languages-for-future-generations/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-27/segments/1656104375714.75/warc/CC-MAIN-20220704111005-20220704141005-00734.warc.gz | en | 0.940811 | 230 | 3.09375 | 3 |
1. The problem statement, all variables and given/known data A 12-kg dog jumps up in the air to catch a ball. The dog's center of mass is normally 0.20 m above the ground, and he is 0.50 m long. The lowest he can get his center of mass is 0.10 m above the ground, and the highest he can get it before he can no longer push against the ground is 0.60m. If the maximum force the dog can exert on the ground in pushing off is 2.1 times the gravitational force Earth exerts on him, how high can he jump? 2. Relevant equations Change in gravitational potential energy = mgΔx Work = Force * Force Displacement 3. The attempt at a solution Dog pushes itself to 0.6 m, then from that point the change in position is given by: 0.5*(2.1mg - mg) = mgΔx 0.55 m = Δx Δx + 0.6 m = 1.15 m I'm not sure if 1.15 m is correct, but I do know that 1.05 m, 0.85 m, 1.5 m, and 0.74 m are incorrect. | <urn:uuid:cab2b8e3-d458-465e-9a11-8dc4575611d5> | CC-MAIN-2017-43 | https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/maxinum-height-question.782106/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-43/segments/1508187826840.85/warc/CC-MAIN-20171023221059-20171024001059-00551.warc.gz | en | 0.920415 | 254 | 3.1875 | 3 |
World Bank Funded Project Registers First CDM Program of Activities in Africa
26 July 2010: The World Bank has supported the launch of a Municipal Waste Compost Program in Uganda, the first African country to successfully register a Program of Activities (POA) under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol.
The Uganda POA is the first of its kind in the world, and promotes solid waste composting in urban areas, a system that, unlike landfills, returns organic matter to the soil, prevents land degradation, and significantly reduces methane emissions. The new program helps Ugandan municipalities set up waste composting facilities that are financially sustainable because of the revenues generated from the sale of both compost and carbon credits. A total of 156,889 Certified Emission Reductions (CERs) and 52,296 Verified Emission Reductions (VERs) will be sold to the World Bank's Community Development Carbon Fund.
The programme also builds on South-South linkages by harnessing expertise and models of simple composting development in South Asia. And it was designed with the involvement of experts from India, who will also offer monitoring and training support. [World Bank Press Release] | <urn:uuid:58cf8514-daaa-4a37-a333-2cc525bdf6ec> | CC-MAIN-2015-48 | http://climate-l.iisd.org/news/world-bank-funded-project-registers-first-cdm-program-of-activities-in-africa/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-48/segments/1448398444139.37/warc/CC-MAIN-20151124205404-00198-ip-10-71-132-137.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.921919 | 246 | 2.734375 | 3 |
Today, the Washington State Hospital Association is releasing hospital-specific surgical infection rate data. This is the first time this information has been made public. The website at www.wahospitalquality.org provides data on infections following three important types of surgeries: cardiac, orthopedic, and hysterectomies. The Washington State Legislature required the data to be collected and made public in House Bill 1106 in 2007 and House Bill 2828 in 2010.
"Washington's hospitals are enthusiastic participants in providing this new information about surgical infection rates," says Carol Wagner, vice president for patient safety at the Washington State Hospital Association. "We believe that public reporting helps hospitals improve, assists consumers in making good decisions about hospital care, and creates collaboration between hospitals and quality experts."
The surgeries included in the new infection rate data are:
Heart bypass surgery
Cardiac surgeries on the valves or septum of the heart
Heart transplant surgery
The website allows users to sort hospitals by county, alphabetically, and from highest to lowest or lowest to highest infection rates.
Washington's hospitals use a series of scientifically proven safeguards against surgical infections and the new data helps hospitals evaluate the effectiveness of their processes. These processes include:
- Ensuring the proper antibiotic is given at the correct time and stopped at the correct time
- Ensuring the patient's blood sugar is under control
- Removing hair safely (not using a razor) in the surgical area
Washington's hospitals are dedicated to stopping the spread of infections. Stopping infections is challenging work: today's hospital patients are sicker and more vulnerable, drug resistant organisms are increasing, and antibiotic overuse has hampered the ability to fight infections.
Hospital patients are an important part of their own care team and have a role to play in preventing infections. Things patients can do to protect themselves include:
- Taking all the recommended pre-hospitalization infection prevention steps, such as pre-surgical chlorhexidine baths, not shaving before surgery, and stopping smoking
- Asking all healthcare providers and visitors to wash or sanitize their hands, especially when they enter or leave a patient's room;
- Taking antibiotics and other medications exactly as directed by their doctor
- Asking their visitors to stay home if they are sick
"Hospitals are dedicated to the care and comfort of our patients. In most cases, the data show good results, though there are also areas for improvement. Our member hospitals are working hard to implement changes to stop surgical infections, and we expect the results to get better and better," Wagner adds.
Washington State's infection reporting program is considered a national leader. The National Conference of State Legislatures highlighted Washington, along with nine other states, in its recent report, "Lessons from the Pioneers: Reporting Healthcare-Associated Infections." http://www.ncsl.org/documents/health/haireport.pdf | <urn:uuid:d731fbb0-3cdc-4f8d-93eb-45acc14b77ec> | CC-MAIN-2018-34 | https://www.infectioncontroltoday.com/ssi/washington-state-hospital-association-releases-hospital-specific-surgical-infection-rate-data | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-34/segments/1534221209165.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20180814150733-20180814170733-00045.warc.gz | en | 0.930987 | 594 | 2.640625 | 3 |
Ninjutsu is one of the most mysterious, subversive, and deadly martial arts in the world.
It is the martial art, strategy, and tactics of unconventional warfare and guerrilla warfare practiced by the shinobi (commonly known outside of Japan as ninja).
A female ninja is called a kunoichi. Ninjutsu was developed by groups of people mainly from the Iga Province and Kōga, Shiga of Japan.
Throughout history the shinobi have been seen as assassins, scouts and spies. They are mainly noted for their use of stealth and deception.
They have been associated in the public imagination with activities that are considered criminal by modern standards.
Throughout history many different schools (ryū) have taught their unique versions of ninjutsu.
While there are several styles of modern ninjutsu, not all can be related to the historic practice of ninjutsu in Japan so as to be considered a koryū (a traditional or ancient martial art).
Creator: Human Weapon
Human Weapon - 15 - Ninjutsu | <urn:uuid:0298264b-af60-42c0-a146-1fcb25ecba37> | CC-MAIN-2019-18 | http://orderofeden.org/index.php/martial-arts-and-self-defence/48-human-weapon-15-ninjutsu-bujinkan | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-18/segments/1555578770163.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20190426113513-20190426135513-00220.warc.gz | en | 0.967792 | 214 | 2.734375 | 3 |
The Political Economy of Rumor in Colonial Kenya
The term political economy has fallen in and out of fashion as a social discipline since the founding of the field in the 18th century. Since the 1980s, the term has seen its rise once again as social scientists try to explain the actions and choices by political actors as seen through a lens focused on the state’s economy and its international relations. The field attempts to answer questions that political science deals with but uses more macro-economic and micro-economic data to back up the field’s theory and hypothesis. What are the causes of state dissolution? How does culture evolve? Where do the origins of political institutions start? These are all important questions because they seek to understand the world as the interconnected society that it truly is. The benefits of this field are the capacities to pull from multiple disciplines and put together models and explanations that take into consideration more of the variables that society encounters in its existence. Other fields are beginning to include this interdisciplinary outlook in their specialty area such as history considering the work of anthropologists, communications considering the world of politics and international relations, as well as political science looking towards history to gain a wider understanding of cycles and waves. This is all critical in a world that is increasingly connected through technology. This fifth Kondratiev wave of expansion of information and communication technologies means that the interconnectedness of the world is brought into the home of every human that can connect to the internet. Thus, social sciences will need to continue their integration of different branches so that they may maintain their legitimacy with an ever more globalized population. Without consideration of other fields, a scholar’s claims and legitimacy will weaken his or her arguments as the audience will see other connections that could explain the phenomena under review.
The field of history has much to offer other disciplines based on its breadth of knowledge of a massive selection of information that is often overlooked by scholars studying the present day. Today it is not controversial to claim that the growing connections that intertwine the citizens of the world has led to a lessening of the appreciation of our history by a larger portion of the population. Thus history will continue to need to be a field that offers timely and well explained interpretations of the past. This will need to be done by considering how other fields would explain the past as well because most fields are for obvious reasons not as backwards looking as history. Thus the intrinsic focus of research by historians, that is studying events and people that existed before the current generation, can be extremely beneficial for citizens, policy makers, and scientists today.
However, those historians that do not offer their analysis through terms and frames of reference that other fields could understand risk having their work tossed to the wayside by those exact people who might benefit the most from the research. Thus, incorporating various disciplines into historical research, or at least considering their academic viability in explaining past events, will be critical for successful scholarship in the 21st Century.
This paper will attempt to add the dynamic of political economy to a study of rumor in Eastern Africa. The study, Speaking with Vampires: Rumor and History in Colonial Africa by Luise White, attempts to give historical legitimacy to rumor in the context of understanding history in Uganda, Tanzania, Northern Rhodesia, Belgium Congo, and Kenya. White documents evidence from the stories that dealt with the extraction of blood by vampires, conducted by or that the behest of colonial officials. The stories detail kidnappings and murders performed by images of the colonial state: firemen, policemen, game rangers, and doctors.
White is very insistent that these stories are not to be evaluated by historians as causes of other political or economic factors. She intends not to dismiss them as fears of colonialism, technology, or health, as this “strips them of their intensity and their detail” (White 1). If historians explained these stories as African attempts to interpret their world, “it would be to argue that these stories simply deformed actual events and procedures. Such an analysis would turn the resulting history away from these stories and back to the events Africans somehow misunderstood” (White 2). White takes these stories at face-value and attempts to write a colonial history despite their contradictions with archival evidence of the history. She says that these stories “offer historians a glimpse of the world as seen by people who saw boundaries and bodies located and penetrated” (White 2). Despite her assertion that these stories are to be taken at face value only, she says that rumor and gossip reveals another world. The evidence in this world that she presents in her book will change the way historical reconstruction is done is her claim.
This type of research and scholarship flies in the face of the factors explained in the beginning of this paper. The desire to set historical evidence in its own vacuum of history does nothing to advance the understanding of events if other fields and factors that could have contributed to the evidence’s creation, dispersion, or content are not considered. Stories and rumors do not evolve without outside stimuli. This is a fact that White acknowledges when she says that the eyewitness accounts that form the basis of her work were explaining what was fearsome and why in the colonial context. Her refusal to consider the Marxist explanation for these stories, that of the capitalist system of colonial extraction of minerals and labor, is confounding because it matches up very well with the evidence that is being presented. She says that the power of these rumors was not based on new and powerful technologies or procedures, but these outside stimuli were actually just ways that reproduced older practices. Despite being a very junior scholar in the field of African history, I have yet to encounter historical evidence that shows similar levels of extraction or the the repositioning of the African into extractive industries in a way that rivaled colonialism. The period between 1885 and the latter part of the 20th century undermined the African way of life and all of the social bonds that had existed before colonialism and remade the African continent in a way that suited its European masters. The redrawing of borders, the mass removal of African men to work in colonial plantations in the new world, the widespread use of African labor to engage in mining activities, and the displacement of rural farmers who were the backbone of many African economies all had debilitating effects on the continent that are still seen in present day. This rearrangement of society has no historical comparison on the same scale on the continent. While White can argue that Africans attempted to understand these new processes through previous understandings and through a lens of their own culture, their reactions are not necessarily unique to the cultures found on the continent. To say that the experiences of Africans under colonialism differed greatly than all others who suffered European domination is to discount humanity’s universal reaction to repression and exploitation. All cultures sought to understand the effects of colonialism, and while the colonial experience had different variations around the world, the experience of subjugation, extraction, and exploitation were near universal. Their unique reactions and explanations to the experience gives us insight into their cultures as well as the social character responded to specific political and economic events. Without understanding what these cultures were reacting to, we as academics only receive half of the story. These reactions in East Africa need to be studied together with the stimuli that precipitated their rise.
This paper will seek to add to White’s evidence through the discipline of political economy. It will consider the timing of rumor and the forces at work during the time frame that may explain their causes and rampancy. This does not completely invalidate White’s findings, as the undercurrent of her work is historically relevant, but it seeks to place a larger framework over her data that can help us understand why rumors surfaced when they did. Specifically this paper will look at economic cycles in Kenya and attempt to see how the proliferation of rumor and gossip syncs with the cyclical nature of the economy. The evidence White presents in her book has been coded and will be paired with economic depressions in Colonial Kenya in the 20th century. It will attempt to tease out a connection between the economy and the rise and propagation of rumor.
Colonial Kenya endured three major economic depressions before the change to majority rule in 1963, the first two of which are relevant to White’s time frame. The first crisis, from 1919 to 1922 was a result of the economic depression that came from the fallout of the Great War in Europe. The second, from 1930 to 1933 saw earnings from exports drop significantly as the entire world entered a depression facilitated by the American stock exchange crash in 1929 (Ochieng and Maxon). As displayed by these crisis, economic events in Kenya were often connected to outside triggers. This is obvious to anyone with knowledge of colonial Africa, as the colonies were financed by the Colonial Offices of their European powers, and were often interconnected in trade and finances. Often times, the interconnection was so strong that the economies of the Colonizer and the colonized were completely in sync. This is attributable to the bans on exports and imports from non-empire colonies and states. Thus in Kenya, as with Uganda, and in Tanzania (post-World War I) their traders could often only send and receive products to and from the United Kingdom and others colonies in the British Empire. When demand fell in the mother country, exporters, businesses, and colonial governments suffered from the loss of trade.
This paper will thus divide into three parts, the first two studying the effects of the two economic depressions in colonial Kenya and examining the historical accounts that White provides in those time frames. The third part will examine rumor and gossip in order to find their meaning for society and when they are used as a tool of socialization. The goal is to observe how the increased use of rumor and gossip link up with economic and political events.
In order to place White’s vampire stories in a comparison against economic and political events in Kenya, there was a need to code these stories by location and by date. Her first two sections proved extremely rich in data about Kenya, while the third part of her book dealt with issues and places less associated with Kenya and the wazimamoto’s that took African’s blood. Each story about vampires in Kenya (as well as those specifically about vampires in surrounding areas) were coded by the year the interviewee mentioned as the event taking place. The difficult part was the references to wide swaths of time, such as the ‘1920s’. Instead of discounting these references because of their temporal anomaly, all years in the time frame mentioned were credited with an ‘event’. Thus a historical timeline of events can be tracked. Both timelines, the ‘Kenya-only’ (Figure 1) and the “Kenya+” (Figure 2) graphs are found at the end of this paper. Additionally, data used from Paul Mosley’s The Settler Economies was entered into a graph that could be compared with the data sets from White (Figure 3). The part of Mosley’s data that was chosen as an economic indicator for Kenya was the ‘African agricultural export per head by export price of bag of maize’. This is not the most ideal indicator, but of the sets that had the most complete data for this timeframe, this indicator can be seen as a quasi-gross domestic product of Africans. With the majority of Africans engaged in agricultural production, whether on their own or under the supervision of white settlers, a representation of the African output during this time would be agricultural produce. Additionally, with the data in relation to the export price, the measure includes the economic atmosphere that would have been present in each year studied. This means how the economy affected Africans’ ‘pocket-books’ can be measured by proxy.
Post World War I
With the effects that World War I had on societal relationships between the Europeans and Africans well established in the literature, an analysis of the political and economic events following the war might add understanding to White’s vampires. Of particular note is the spike in vampire stories after the war’s conclusion. Why might this have occurred at this time? Numerous sources for White’s work point to the start of the ‘time of vampires’ at the start of the 1920s. This period is of much interest to her study because of the reconfigurations, both political and economic, that are happening in this time.
It is following the war that the British Empire is able to retrain is focus on its colonies in the early 1920s and this matches up to White’s spike in vampire reports (Figure 1). It should be of no surprise that stories of vampires surfaced during this time as spacial and labor realignments were occurring between African and European. This realignment was compounded by the world depression of 1920-1922. Kenya’s export earnings dropped sharply during this time (Ochieng 71). Like many colonies, the loss of funds was supported by increased taxes on Africans. The common method was establishing a tax (hut and poll taxes were used in Kenya) on Africans that forced them into the wage labor market and into the welcoming arms of farmers and industry who then had the upper hand when it came to setting wages (Zamani 266). This was disruptive to the export industry as the majority of Kenya’s export revenue before 1920 had come from African produce (Swainson 33). The period of the 1920s thus left less Africans on the land, which was compounded by the fact that commodity prices for African goods remained stagnate between 1922 and 1938.
The decreased earnings for the colony meant contractions on living conditions for all people of the colony, but like most economic hardships, the poorest of society receives the brunt of the burden. This period of moving off the land and into European or urban areas saw an increase in the number of vampire stories, and it is notable that many of those Kenyans that White interviewed said the time of the vampires, or at least the stories of them, began during this period of economy reshuffling and migration off the land.
On the political side, 1920 was the year Kenya transitioned from a protectorate to a Crown colony and thus officially sanctioned the period of settler control in Kenya (Swainson 22). This increase in settler population would have the obvious effects on Kenya: more demand for government resources and more competition for African labor. This expansion of government expenditure to support the settler had the predictable effect of leading to large budget deficits. As a result, the Colonial Office in London advised the colonial government to increase the production of Africans as a means of stimulating the economy. However, the political power of the settlers had increased with their population, and thus a balance had to be struck between the two economies. African peasant production was the method employed, and a strategy that was officially called the Dual Policy was implemented after 1922. While African production was aided, it could not compete with the cash crops (coffee and sisal) that were grown by the settlers (Ochieng 71-71).
It should be noted that as Kenya was able to recover from the economic straits of the early 1920s and enjoy the benefits of the ‘roaring ‘20s’ the number of vampire stories reported by White fell. The themes of the vampire stories, kidnapping and extraction fit well with the actions by the colonial state were taking in response to the economic crisis. With labor needed by settler farms, the ability to capture (in a figurative sense) African laborers was a critical component in maintaining economic viability of the settler farms. Additionally, the increased presence of white settlers through immigration and their power in society was increasing during this time. While I have yet to come across the story of Africans being literally snatched by white settlers to work on their farms, the vampire stories do an excellent job of relating what Africans saw happening in the economy to traditional stories of abductions by vampires or other-worldly creatures. The concept of supply and demand is expressed through these stories even if Africans did not acknowledge the concept directly. This is a key part that White could have incorporated into her understandings of the stories. Not only did they relate to the economic extraction that was colonial policy across Africa, but these stories responded to conditions as they were happening!
The Great Depression and Kenya
The second economic crisis in Kenya followed closely the depression caused by the crash of the American stock exchange in 1929. The far reaching effects of this shock are historical lore, but its African effects are less widely known. On the continent, the external trade of African colonies fell by 42% during the depression (Ochieng 236). In Kenya specifically, imports fell nearly 60% from the peak to the bottoming out. In response, beginning in 1930 a policy of retrenchment was in full swing in the British Colonies (Swainson 23). The addition of price controls and quantity quotas did not allow the cheaper prices of Kenya’s exports to benefit from the crash as most countries would have. Thus Kenya was part of the worldwide increase in economic protectionism that only worsened the depression.
As a result of the increased market protection around the world, in just three years export values dropped by £3.4 million in 1930 to £1.9 million in 1933. Additionally, overall imports and exports saw a notable decrease in 1929 that lasted until the mid 1930s (Swainson 46 and 47). It should be pointed out that the number of White’s vampire stories also increase during the early 1930s (Figure 1 & 2). The connection between the worldwide economic decline in the 1930s, like that in the early 1920s, and the number of vampire stories should be noted as increasingly suspicious in how related they are to one another. The seriousness of this economic crisis resulted in the Dual Policy being implemented again as it was in the 1920s. This time, due to the brink of collapse of the export industry, Africans were allowed to grow coffee for the first time, in addition to better seeds being distributed (Ochieng 72).
The political scene of the crisis mirrored the 1920s in that settlers were able to use the events to strengthen their own power. During the 1930s it was noted by the British Colonial Office that the economy of Kenya was being meddled with by the government to suit the interests of the settlers. The Colonial Office was adopting more free enterprise policies (within the Empire) at this time and commented with dissatisfaction that the settlers had gained political power that was more than what their contribution to the economy would suggest (Swainson 24). Each time the colonial office would make a demand in policy change, the settlers were able to rebuff their advances, in one case by threatening a coup d’état and warning they would establish settler self-government. This strength of settler power would only increase until the coming of independence.
Discussed in the previous section was the link between literal and figurative abductions in the 1920s. It made the point that vampire stories were not necessarily based on actual kidnapping. However, in the early 1930s, a substantial increase (75-100%) in the number of Africans that were convicted under the Native Registration Ordinance occurred. This law was first passed in 1915, but only came into effect in 1920 (Berman 147). It required every African male to register at a colonial administrative office and be finger printed and given a certificate, the kipande, essentially a ‘pass’ in the South African sense. Relevant to my study is the fact that enforcement of the law in urban areas was done by the Kenya Police and in the rural areas by the tribal police, who were under control of the district administrators enforced the law (Berman 148). This lines up with many of the descriptions in White’s book about police and firemen ‘kidnapping’ people. This is likely an explanation of locals who saw other Africans being hauled away by white police or black employees for what would seem to be wandering into the wrong area (in fact it could have been the case that man lacked a kipande). White quoted one of her interviewees:
“There were some Europeans who would come and capture Africans… Any human being except whites could fall victim; it depended on luck. Whites never fell victim because they were the masters….They captured everybody, they did not discriminate against any race…but I never heard that they took Europeans.” (53)
Another example White gives that can be seen through the lens of policy is the co-opting of Africans into the colonial power structure as part of law enforcement. Another would be the way of describing those who left the rural areas to take jobs on settler farms or urban areas. This specific example below, that of the training for the police force, when viewed through the perspective of the enforcement of the Native Registration Ordinance the story seems to be a retelling of the policy but through a vampire narrative:
“When one joined the police force… in those olden days, he would undergo the initial training of bloodsucking.… During the day, we were police recruits. Immediately after sunset, we started the job of manhunting…we would leave the station in a group of four and one white man, who was in charge…When we saw a person, we would lie down and ambush him. We would then take the captured person back to the waiting vehicle” (65).
Here, White concentrates on the method of transportation and the use of the vehicle that is described in further detail, but, as is her method, accepts the story at face value and does not add any explanation to the story. This method of history writing certainly is unique, but what is history if not an understanding of the events that happened before? Understanding cannot be gained without an analysis of the microcosm that is under research. With the two major spikes in the occurrence of vampire stories coinciding with major economic crisis in the Kenya Colony there is a connection that is left unexplored in White’s work.
Gossip and socialization
With all these economic and political changes happening in Kenya and the rest of the continent, members of these political economies were bound to respond to the new policies and technologies through previously understood narratives. Despite the economic and political synchronization with the prevalence of vampire stories, this has not yet explained why rumor and gossip were the outcomes of this political and economic upheaval. However, when rumor and gossip are understood in the context of the society as a whole, we see a greater link between the uncertainty that these socio-economic factors caused and the spread of vampire stories.
The use of gossip in socialization studies is seen as a means of social control (Molvaer 226). It can show the divisions in classes, with the ‘lower class’ gossiping about the ‘higher classes’ and vice versa. With Kenyans moving to the urban areas, a social divide was emerging that had to be explained by those who had not encountered such phenomena before (Zamani 279). Moral views are strengthened by scandal and gossip, which can be passed on to the younger generation. It can be seen as a response to a way of life that was under attack by white settlers and the colonial government. In the telling of gossip, listeners are thus integrated into society and the overall community’s identity is strengthened by the moral shock that is produced by hearing gossip. It can also be used to highlight indiscretions of a individual or group that is envied or seen as committing illicit acts in society. Thus the two pronged nature of gossip, that is to fortify accepted values and denigrate outsiders, can have a profound effect when it is paired with rumor. Rumors have been used by political leaders to disseminate information through ‘approved’ rumors but can also be used to disrupt controlled regimes (Molvaer 227-229). Interestingly for this analysis of White, Molvaer writes that rumor can be used to “build up the common man’s view of his immediate surroundings and perhaps of his nation” (229). Molvaer groups rumor and gossip into his overall category of verbal means of socialization and social control. While his study focused on Ethiopia, the findings are relevant to Kenya. With the society rearranging between urban and rural, those transversing between the two worlds had to explain the new mechanisms that they were encountering.
Africans were the lower class in colonial Kenya, as they were across the continent. They were racially segregated from the Europeans and the Indians in Kenya. Their little knowledge of these ‘others’ was based on their encounters through the economy. In fact, one of White’s sources says that the vampire stories began “in Nairobi when racial segregation was also there.” (White 79).
Both Europeans and Indians were engaged in trade and extraction in the colony and both brought practices and technology that were previously unseen by locals. In the case of Europeans, the state bureaucracy and social services were in a form that differed from how society existed in pre-colonial Kenya. The extraction of minerals and people from the land were inextricable from the state functions. Thus it is not surprising that rumors and gossip in Eastern Africa focused on the extractive process of blood sucking. It clearly represents the new economy that was faced by East Africans. The lack of impetus on the part of the colonist to explain much of any part of the European economy to the locals meant that Africans were left to come up with their own interpretations. We see these rumors paired with an industry already well known to East Africans, that of slavery and the kidnappings that occurred by Arab, African, and European slavers in addition to the mythology of the supernatural that existed in society. This concept of capturing Africans to extract their blood and leave them in a daze or dead seems to be a perfect representation of the political economy that now threatened a traditional way of life.
Loise White’s scholarship in the arena of rumor and gossip is a profound look at the way Africans may have interpreted European contact and technologies. However, rumor and gossip is only one part of the narrative in East Africa. Pairing the stories of vampires, blood sucking, and kidnappings with events occurring in the political economy adds a substantial level of understanding to White’s work. During the interwar period in Kenya two major economic and political crisis took place. They were caused by many factors but the outcomes from these crisis left more power in the hands of white settlers and more displacement and subjugation of the Africans. Power structures were rewritten in this time and Africans needed a framework to explain the changes in ways that had cultural relevance. The explanations for the extraction of wealth from the land and the removal of Africans from their land by economic incentives found their voice in rumors and gossip about vampires and the process of blood sucking. The increase in the recordings of these stories and the localization of these events in time periods that closely correlate with these economic and political changes should encourage historians to take a deeper look at the political economy of the history in question. These correlations appear to be more than spurious, and thus future historians building on White’s scholarship would do well to place these stories of vampires in a framework of political economy in order to give a well-rounded explanation of the history of East Africa.
Berman, Bruce. Control and Crisis in Colonial Kenya. London; James Currey, 1990.
Gatheru, R. Mugo. Kenya: From Colonization to Independence, 1888-1970. London; McFarland & Company Inc Publishers, 2005.
Hill, M.F. The Dual Policy in Kenya. Nakuru, Kenya Colony; The Highland Printing Press, 1944.
Jørgensen, Jan Jelmert. Uganda: A Modern History. London; Croom Helm, 1981.
Lewis, Joanna. Empire State-Building: War and Welfare in Kenya. Athens, Ohio; Ohio University Press, 2000.
Leys, Colin. Underdevelopment in Kenya: The Political Economy of Neo-Colonialism 1964-1971. Berkeley; University of California Press, 1975.
Molvaer, Reidulf Knut. Socialization and social control in Ethiopia. Otto Harrassowitz Verlag; 1995.
Mosley, Paul. The Settler Economies: Studies in the economic history of Kenya and Southern Rhodesia 1900-1963. Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 1983.
Ochieng’, William R., ed. Themes in Kenyan History. London; James Currey, 1990.
Ochieng’, Wiliam Robert and Robert M. Maxon. An Economic History of Kenya. Nairobi; East African Educational Publishers, 1992.
Swainson, Nicola. The Development of Corporate Capitalism in Kenya, 1918-1977. Berkeley; University of California Press, 1980.
Wolff, Richard D. The Economics of Colonialism: Britain and Kenya, 1870-1930. New Haven; Yale University Press, 1974.
Zamani, A Survey of East African History. Ogot, B A, ed.. Kenya; Longman, 1968. | <urn:uuid:68e7004c-00aa-4f5a-b833-c303f4fd35dd> | CC-MAIN-2022-49 | https://theafricanfile.com/politicshistory/the-political-economy-of-rumor-in-colonial-kenya/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-49/segments/1669446711121.31/warc/CC-MAIN-20221206225143-20221207015143-00581.warc.gz | en | 0.971044 | 5,963 | 2.65625 | 3 |
The purpose of war is to alter the behavior of an opponent. The fewer lives lost in doing so the better. One not only should strive to lose as few of one’s own lives as possible, one should strive to kill as few of the enemy as necessary to achieve the goal of altering his behavior, and to ensure a post-war peace. The latter may require killing many more of the enemy than the former, which was why Eisenhower pursued his “Broad Front” strategy rather than just race to Berlin as Patton wanted. Such a “Broad Front” would have been a far better strategy in reducing Iraq than the race to Baghdad, and for the same reasons.
Nuclear weapons – far and away – are the most productive of weapons. Contrary to popular feeling and conventional wisdom – and to Dr. Strangelovian fantasies – these weapons save lives. They always have and always will.
In 1945, President Truman could have accepted the Navy’s estimate of Japanese dead in an invasion (9M), or the Army’s (5M), added that to the estimate of American KIA (1M), and pulled the trigger on an invasion estimated by men who had been fighting this enemy for 3-1/2 years that would cost between 6M and 10M human lives, and last until 1949, the then-current planning estimate.
Instead, Truman dropped two of what would today be considered tactical nukes (15-21KT), and killed an estimated 400,000 Japanese (the immediate estimate + estimated radiation victims over the next four months), and zero (0) Americans. (Full disclosure: my dad fought in the Pacific Theater of WW2.)
The only thing that matters in war is the size of the bang; not what made it. Nuclear weapons are productive; conventional weapons are not. Rather than go with my opinion on the morality of using these weapons, the following is from Quartered Safe Out Here, an excellent battlefield memoir of the China-Burma-India theater of WW2 by a British Private Soldier who became best-selling author, George MacDonald Fraser (of the Flashman series of historical novels).
Fraser published his memoir in 1992, decades removed from the field of battle. In the final chapter he described his feelings regarding Hiroshima and Nagasaki, introducing the topic via a 1990s bar discussion with one his own age who had not fought in the war. As Fraser’s words are the best I have found regarding using these weapons by the men who fought that enemy and who may have died in their absence, I quote him at length.
The dropping of the bombs was a hideous thing, and I do not wonder that some of those who bore a part in it have been haunted by it all their lives. If it was not barbaric, the word has no meaning. …
And so it was not only their lives, as I pointed out to my antibomb disputant. To reduce it to a selfish, personal level… if the bombs had been withheld, and the war had continued on conventional lines, then even if I’d failed my [promotion] board and gone with the battalion into Malaya, the odds that I’d have survived: 4 to 1 actuarially speaking, on the [squad’s] Burma fatalities. But I might have been that one, in which case my three children and six grandchildren would never have been born. And that, I’m afraid, is where all discussion of pros and cons evaporates and becomes meaningless, because for those nine lives I would pull the plug on the whole Japanese nation and never even blink. And so, I dare suggest, would you. And if you wouldn’t, you may be nearer to the divine than I am but you sure as hell aren’t fit to be parents or grandparents.
Since 1945, and for the first time in history, a nation has rejected the use of its most productive weaponry to defend itself and its citizens. This is among the larger moral failures ever undertaken by a Great Power.
Millions have died – unnecessarily – because of the refusal of American presidents to use America’s most productive weapons; their willingness, instead, to trade the lives of their citizens – and of their enemies – for the ego of leaders who want to be seen as strong war presidents, but who refuse to destroy our enemies and win our wars. (A nation’s enemy is the opposing nation. Armies are just policy tools. Killing an army does not win a war: I give you Iraq today.)
Americans killed over 2M Koreans and 54K Americans in that “limited war.” Had America chosen a tactical nuke strike on Pyongyang in 1950, would two-plus million lives have been destroyed? No.
Americans killed about 2M Vietnamese and 58K Americans in that “limited war.” Had America chosen a tactical nuke strike on Hanoi in 1964 (the same time our government was lying to us about the Tonkin Gulf), would two-plus million lives have been destroyed? No.
In the decades since Korea and Vietnam, how many tax dollars from how many nations have been spent dealing with the military and civil repercussions from not having won those wars? How much higher would be regional living standards (and America’s) had trillions not been spent containing those we refused to defeat? That, too, is a cost of not using our most advanced weaponry, to say nothing of the societal and cultural split in America that will long-outlive those who fought in it.
North Koreans are eating grass and starving to death because America refused to use nukes and win the war.
Nor did it ensure a more just and prosperous peace. Who was freer, wealthier, better-educated and a better ally 20 years later? Japan in 1965… or Pyongyang in 1973, or Hanoi in 1995? Does anyone believe Afghanistan or Iraq will be free economic, political and military allies in 2040, 20 years after we leave?
Weapons don’t win wars. Willpower wins wars.
A president who does not want to win a war he fights (and this applies both to Bush43 and Obama, just as it applied to both Truman in Korea and LBJ in Vietnam), has no business sending men to kill and to die. A president choosing to have the men he commands killed mercilessly on a battlefield by an enemy he can annihilate with no Americans killed, wounded or maimed, has no business leading a nation.
Not to choose the most productive weapons is to choose the immorality of sending men to die when alternatives exist.
Let’s look at a specific, current example:
Perhaps as many as 40,000 Yazidi took refuge on Sinjar Mountain, Ninawa, Iraq, surrounded by ISIS. How many did ISIS slaughter? No one knows, but hundreds a day were reported for a time. Women, children, men, shot in the head. Throats slit.
Sinjar Mountain rises 1,480 meters above the surrounding plains, plains in which ISIS encamped for days, first waiting, and then slaughtering thousands of human beings.
What did America do? Almost nothing of consequence to ISIS, or of value to the Yazidi:
“Central Command says the nine airstrikes conducted so far had destroyed or damaged four armored personnel carriers, seven armed vehicles, two Humvees and an armored vehicle.”
We “damaged or destroyed” 14 vehicles. Nine airstrikes. 9.
It would be embarrassing if it weren’t so tragic.
What would the moral alternative have been?
The closest towns or villages to Sinjar Mountain are ten kilometers away. The bottom of the mountain on which the Yazidi sheltered is over 2km away horizontally at its nearest distance from the village of Kursi and the relatively flat areas at the top of the mountain on which the Yazidi were sheltering.
One of American’s current tactical nuclear weapons, the W80, has an adjustable yield as low at 5KT, less than one third that of the Hiroshima weapon (15.2KT).
What is the lethal blast radius for a 5KT warhead detonated at the optimum altitude for a soft target such as the ISIS encampments? We look here and discover the following:
- Radius for 3rddegree burns: 1.3 kilometers
- Air blast radius (widespread destruction): 1.3 kilometers
- Air blast radius (near-total fatalities): 476 meters
- Fireball radius: 40-80 meters.
Striking an enemy encamped 2 km away, 1400 meters lower and behind the shielding mountain shoulder, with a weapon having a blast radius of 500-1300 meters, would have annihilated the enemy and not harmed the Yazidi. And it need not have been an airburst. A surface burst would reduce each of these distances, further protecting the Yazidi.
A tactical strike by an available weapon, centered on the ISIS encampments at the bottom of the mountain, would have done three things:
- Annihilated the ISIS encampment
- Saved the Yazidi
- Made a statement regarding serious of purpose that cannot be made any other way.
It is time, past time, to get serious. To stop getting our guys killed. To stop pretending their people are more important than ours. To stop putting a barbaric and savage society above the lives of our men & women – and the children they will never have, at an unknowable cost in human capital. | <urn:uuid:2a460be6-2794-45e9-bb02-d1f605440547> | CC-MAIN-2017-39 | http://inthisdimension.com/2017/02/08/the-immorality-of-not-using-our-most-productive-weapons-in-war/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-39/segments/1505818689028.2/warc/CC-MAIN-20170922164513-20170922184513-00548.warc.gz | en | 0.966649 | 1,967 | 2.640625 | 3 |
The Greek Underworld
There are several interpretations and descriptions of the Greek Underworld. The most important thing to remember is that with the Greek Underworld, like most Greek Myths, to the Underworld also differs according to context. Below are examples of the Underworld as told by specific people, as well as some excerpts of different aspects of the Greek Underworld that seem to be common among authors.
Homer’s Underworld: A brief Overview
Traveling to the Underworld :
Step 1: Sail to the edge of the world, arriving on the beach of the ocean that encompasses existence.
Step 2: Arrive at the spot where the two rivers of the Underworld, Pyriphlegethon (Fire) and Kokytos (Lamentation) converge into the River Acheron (Groaning).
Step 3: Sacrifice a ram and a ewe. Collect the blood in a vessel to attract the souls of the dead, who upon drinking the blood will gain the ability to speak with living humans.
Homer describes the Underworld in the story of Odysseus. When in the Underworld, Odysseus sees many examples of punishment, most of which are now told as common stories in mythology. Some examples include: Tityos having his liver pecked out by vultures, a punishment for raping the goddess Leto, or Sisyphos who pushes a boulder up a hill for eternity for trying to escape death. One thing that is important about these punishments, is that the crimes are explicitly crimes against the honor of the gods.
Aristophanes’ Underworld: A brief Overview
Aristophanes provides a look into the Underworld in his satirical farce, Frogs. This view of the Underworld starts to provide a look into the geographical landscape of the Underworld. There is an account of Dionysus having to take Charon’s Ferry across a bottomless lake. Charon, being the fisherman of the dead. Another important aspect of Aristophanes’ Underworld is the idea that there are different groups of people in different areas of the Underworld. Also, the dead do not lose their identity in the Underworld, according to this account. In fact, the philosophers in the Underworld are fully capable of debating as if they never died.
Rivers of the Underworld
In Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice, there are many references to ‘the river’. In Greek Myth, there are three common rivers found in the Underworld, however, the River Styx is the river most people associate with the underworld. Plato said that the River Styx flowed into a massive lake. It is a common thought that Charon, the fisherman of the dead, rowed the dead souls over the River Styx to the underworld. Another river, the River Acheron, is also common, and is said by Euripides to be the place where Charon rowed the dead soul of Alkestis. This River, while common, is thought of by less to be Charon’s River of choice. In both cases, the River is something very sacred that shifts within the context of the myth. Both rivers, according to myth, both had locations in the real world. Styx was located in Northern Arcadia, and Acheron was located in the Thesprotian Mountains of Northern Greece. Ideas differ among myths and authors on whether or not one loses their memory and identity when entering the underworld. For example, in The Odyssey, the dead fully retain their identities and memories, in Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice, the dead are supposed to forget their memories when dipped in “the river”. This river is referring to the River Lethe. This was the river that would cause souls to forget their existence if dipped in or drank from. In the overall geography of the underworld, this river was located near the Asphodel Meadows, or the place where the ordinary souls spent eternity.
The Greek Underworld was separated into two major parts. The first part was called Erebus, this is where dead souls first went after death. Charon would ferry the souls across the River Styx to the Gates of Erebus. Then the Souls would proceed to Tartarus. This is also the place where the unburied souls spent eternity, they weren’t allowed to proceed into Tatarus, as the gate was guarded by Cerberus, a three-headed dog.
This is the place in the underworld where the rest of the dead would spend eternity, based upon their judgment. According to myth, there were three judges of the dead, who would sentence the soul upon arrival. Tartarus was divided into three parts, The Fields of Punishment, Asphodel Meadows, and the Elysium.
Fields of Punishment
After judgment, those souls who had committed crimes against the Gods would be sent here. This is the place in Tartarus where people like Sisyphus, Tantulus, and Tityos would be found.
The place where ordinary or indifferent souls went to spend eternity after judgment. These souls did not commit any crimes that would send them to the Fields of Punishment, and they also did not achieve greatness or any other recognition that would set them apart and earn themselves a place in the Elysium.
Odysseus on the Asphodel Meadows
There are Meadows that I can’t describe,
the landscape as level as see in
dreams, or visions where nothing is thought of
but the moment. It is not clear, and
memory exhausts itself, omitting
something. Silence is a part of it,
and distance reaching in a small space.
Since there are few instances in the
world of such a thing, it fills our sleep
with a pattern for Elysium.
Our friend Achilles walked in these same
fields. There in the whiteness of flowers
where we could not go he thought of us,
pained by death beyond our speaking.
Elysium (Or Elysian Fields)
This is part of Tartarus where the virtuous or heroic souls went to rest. It is said that the Ruler of the Elysium is Kronos, Zeus’ Father. Inside the Elysium there is said to be a lake, and in the middle of the lake there was the Isle of the Blest. The Isle of the Blest is where distinguished souls went to spend eternity. Achilles is an example of the type of soul that was destined for the Isle of the Blest. | <urn:uuid:94ae6f25-699c-4d87-a9ca-c585dc069ad9> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://wiki.uiowa.edu/display/theatre/The+Greek+Underworld | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280310.48/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00346-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963893 | 1,346 | 3.359375 | 3 |
Essays on daca deferred action for childhood arrivals (daca), which gives the young immigrants the rights to be protected from immigration as well as give.
introduction deferred action for childhood arrivals (daca) is an executive order signed by president obama in june 2012. Daca is a federal immigration policy that concerns illegal, undocumented immigrants that have that arrived in the united states prior to their 16th birthday,.
The daca essay on june 15, 2012, president barak obama gave a brief speech on a new department of homeland security immigration policy. This new policy will benefit thousands of undocumented students living here in the united states that were brought by their parents since they were young children from their native home.
Essay immigration reform of the united states relief, such as daca, dapa and the extended daca. Some argue that if they pass any form of law to help illegal immigrants they are applauding criminals who decided to come to the united states illegally, they dont want to do that.
whether daca was an appropriate exercise of executive authority is an interesting legal debate, but the plain fact remains that the united states provided a legitimate form of humanitarian relief to dreamers that should not be removed abruptly for political reasons.
Daca was an organization which sheltered illegal immigrantsfrom the law it increased crime rates all over cities all across the united states. It is one of the many failed initiatives of the obama administration.
the analysis presented here draws from a national survey of 1,402 young adults ages 18-31 who were approved for daca through june 2013. While daca eligibility is open to minors, our study focuses on young adult daca recipients. Daca contributes to the economic and social incorporation of young adult immigrants.
the daca program is a policy, which is abbreviated short for the deferred action for childhood arrivals program. Since the daca program is a policy it means that the program can be cut at any point of time. The program daca has caused a lot of controversy to why illegal immigrants deserve the rights for these benefits. | <urn:uuid:e8ed4e6e-f360-4bda-8ae5-9961654103f1> | CC-MAIN-2020-29 | https://qeis.xyz/post/daca-essays | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-29/segments/1593655887046.62/warc/CC-MAIN-20200705055259-20200705085259-00471.warc.gz | en | 0.970782 | 423 | 2.9375 | 3 |
Avian pox is caused by a virus. It causes visible nodules and lesions (warts) on unfeathered parts of birds (such as the head and legs). Hunters sometimes report seeing it on turkeys, but it can occur on many different species of birds. The disease is spread by mosquitoes (and possibly other biting flies), through direct contact with infected birds, and through environmental contamination (such as infection of food or stagnant water sources). It is more common in warm, humid parts of the country.
There are several strains of avipoxviruses that cause avian pox.
Many birds show no clinical signs. When signs do occur, they include vision problems, respiratory distress, difficulty swallowing, emaciation, weakness, and reduced egg production. The most outwardly apparent sign that may be present are the warty-like lesions on unfeathered parts of the body. The lesions may also infect the inside of the beak and respiratory tract, leading to respiratory and swallowing difficulties.
Warty-like lesions that may scab or create a purulent discharge (pus) may occur. There may be skin discolorations (either pink and white or dark brown/black) and blisters.
The obvious characteristic gross lesions are useful for a strong presumptive diagnosis. Definitive diagnosis can be made from samples of the lesions and skin or respiratory tract tissues.
Wildlife Management Significance
Avian pox is a major disease of wild turkeys and may have important population-level effects in localized areas. It is more frequent during the warmer months. Care should be taken when raising and transporting birds to be released to the wild, including sanitizing or discarding all holding and transport containers after use. The virus can last for a long time in the environment (weeks or months), so reuse of transport boxes is discouraged.
Treatment and Control
The best control methods for wild populations are reducing the incidence of mosquitoes (for example, by removing pools of standing water where they breed); eliminating artificial bird feeding and decontaminating bird feeders and waterers, particularly during the warmer months; and removing infected birds from the environment whenever they are noticed.
Public Health Implications
There are no reported incidences of humans infected with avian pox. | <urn:uuid:15878678-c6e4-45cb-8257-48d31e0c062a> | CC-MAIN-2014-52 | http://fw.ky.gov/Wildlife/Pages/Avian-Pox.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-52/segments/1418802769550.123/warc/CC-MAIN-20141217075249-00090-ip-10-231-17-201.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.920853 | 466 | 4.28125 | 4 |
Healing from Autoimmunity
Tired of seeing doctor after doctor, and still not feeling better?
Autoimmune diseases have reached pandemic levels in developed nations. 80 million people suffer from autoimmune disease in the US, and 150 million suffer worldwide. It’s the third leading cause of death — what do we know about it?
Autoimmunity has a mechanism. It is a somewhat predictable progression of events. With the high mortality rates and increasing number of people who are being diagnosed with one or more autoimmune diseases, combined with the preventative nature of autoimmunity, reducing its prevalence seems to come down to education and putting into practice what research reveals is the key to attaining and maintaining good health.
What Is the Mechanism for Autoimmune Diseases?
Step 1: The Birth of Autoimmune Diseases
The birth of autoimmunity starts long before any condition or symptoms appear. It begins at conception. Do you have your mom’s eyes and smile but have more of your dad’s body type? We are not little clones of one of our parents. While your parents pass on traits, your DNA is unique to you. This DNA is your genetic coding that sets you up for life. It is always there, from cradle to grave.
The question is: Which genes are being expressed, and which genes are “turned off” for the moment?
While in the uterus, the fetus lives in amniotic fluid. This fluid helps protect the baby in a number of ways, including acting as a shock absorber, regulating the baby’s temperature, and passing along antibodies to help it fight infections. Yes, even in the womb, the baby is exposed to things it needs to fight off.
Upon birth, babies have leaky guts that need to close and heal to live outside of its protective amniotic sac. This is why the first few days after delivery, a lactating mother produces a thicker type of milk called colostrum, which turns on the gene to heal the gut.
The gut is not actually healed at that time; the colostrum just turns the gene on and lets the body heal.
Mom continues to pass along a little added immune protection, including white blood cells, antibodies, proteins, and minerals over the next week or so through the colostrum. Little by little, the colostrum is replaced with mother’s milk.
Step 2: Environmental Triggers of Autoimmune Diseases
Now you build upon what genetics you have, and you add in environmental triggers, like dietary components, infections, and toxic chemicals. This is where epigenetics enters.
When people ask the question, “Is it nature or nurture?”, it isn’t an either/or answer. They work together. It is often said that genetics load the gun and epigenetics pull the trigger. That’s a great way to explain epigenetics, although not an entirely complete picture of the mechanism of autoimmunity at large.
The term epigenetics refers to the change in the expression of the genes. Environmental triggers vary from person to person. One person may have heavy metal toxicity, mold toxicity or exposure to EMFs. Another person may have a food sensitivity, an infection, or exposure to contaminated air or water. Yet another may be triggered by a traumatic event, a period of high stress, anxiety, or poor lifestyle choices.
Often discerning which (and how many) triggers are negatively influencing your health is the trickiest part. Testing can take a lot of the guesswork out and potentially eliminate years of frustration. As a first step, you can begin by removing gluten, dairy and sugar from your diet. These are common antigens that wreak inflammation. Many people see symptom improvement with the removal of this terrible trio.
Your body is under attack constantly. Our bodies were designed to heal, but they were designed long before plastics and wireless phones and cars. Think of yourself just like an animal found in nature. That’s your environment, too. Anything you can do to reduce the workload your internal system has to fight off will make it easier for your body to support you.
I always recommend cleaning up your food and environment from any known toxins— laundry, health and beauty products, foods with pesticides, plastics, aluminum … If it is toxic and you know it, just say no.
Step 3: A Breakdown of Oral Tolerance Leads to Autoimmunity
At some point we cross the line. Let’s take wheat, for example. Wheat is a minor toxin. It doesn’t incite a big response. Usually the immune system will say “Wheat? No problem. Let it go. Let it go,” until you cross the line. It’s called “loss of oral tolerance.”
When you have a loss of oral tolerance, oral meaning what you eat, you can’t tolerate it anymore. When you lose oral tolerance and your immune system starts making antibodies to wheat, it starts causing problems in your body systemically.
This can happen when you’re 2 years old, 22 years old, 72 years old, or 92 years old. Loss of oral tolerance can occur at any time. You start making antibodies and molecular mimicry and a slew of other problems. The question: “What causes the loss of oral tolerance?”
Where does loss of oral tolerance come from?
The simple answer is that the loss of oral tolerance is due to all of the toxic chemicals we’re exposed to in our life. Our immune system is fighting Bisphenol A (BPA) that’s in plastic. It’s fighting mercury in tuna fish. It’s fighting PCBs in apples. It’s fighting the pesticides that are sprayed on vegetables. The immune system is fighting all of this stuff all day, every day. It becomes so trigger happy fighting all this stuff that it becomes more sensitive to minor irritants like wheat.
A loss of oral tolerance is the “straw that broke the camel’s back” moment. Once it happens, you make antibodies to the wheat. You have Memory B cells, and you’re toast.
When you have a loss of oral tolerance, your body can no longer distinguish the good from the bad, your tissues from foreign invaders. It is when your body begins to betray itself.
Step 4: A Change in Gut Microbiota Sets You Up for Autoimmunity
Over 70% of your immune system resides in your gut. The microbes in your body outnumber cells by 10 to 1! Diversity in your intestinal tract can help lower the occurrence of autoimmune diseases, allergies and skin conditions. Exposing yourself to a rich collection of microbes through diet and getting your hands dirty, as well as limiting exposure to antimicrobial products, pesticides and chlorinated water can fortify your microbiome and calm your immune system.
When the balance of good and bad bacteria gets thrown off from things like antibiotics or poor diet, dysbiosis occurs. The goal is to always have more of the good guys, so you always want the big army around you to protect you. When you lose some of the good guys, some of the bad guys rear up their ugly heads and start causing problems like leaky gut.
Step 5: Pathogenic Intestinal Permeability: The Gateway to Autoimmune Diseases
At this point, you are fanning the flames of inflammation that already exist. Intestinal permeability (better known as leaky gut) is when your intestines allow objects that have not been broken down to enter the bloodstream (before they are able to be of benefit).
Pathogenic intestinal permeability occurs when this happens over and over again to the point that your gut does not reseal itself naturally. This leaky gut allows large macromolecules to exit and trigger an immune response.
At this point, you may see an increase in the number of foods you become sensitive to because your body is attacking a large number of foods exiting your gut before they should.
Step 6: Immune Reactivity
The stage is all set for autoimmunity. You have your weak links in your genetics. Triggers are firing. Your immune system is weakening, and while it is in this fragile state, you launch foreign objects throughout the body via the bloodstream.
Your immune system has two basic strategies for defense: the innate immune system and the adaptive immune system.
Your innate immune system produces cytokines. These are your first responders in a crisis situation. They identify threats and attempt to destroy them. Cytokines get triggered by foreign invaders like infections, viruses, bacteria, or parasites.
If the threat is overwhelming or ongoing, your innate immune system calls for backup. It brings in the heavy artillery, which is your adaptive immune system, which launches antibodies to attack.
Both of these responses are a fight for survival. The production of antibodies activates a molecular mimicry response and other pathways. The autoimmune mechanism is activated, and you begin to not only make antibodies to destroy an object like food, but your own tissues.
Step 7: Welcome to Autoimmunity
Congratulations — You are now on the autoimmune spectrum. So let’s look at what autoimmune diseases look like.
You pulled and pulled at the chain until you found your FIRST weak link. Let’s bypass all the doctors and tests (and time) that it has taken and go straight to the facts — You have a diagnosis. If that diagnosis is a condition stemming from autoimmunity, a typical doctor will go into symptom management for that specific diagnosis. This is where traditional medicine fails us.
Your diagnosis is a symptom, not the actual problem. If you don’t figure out what the source of the problem is, odds are it’s still happening.
Take Ben’s story for example. Ben is a fictional character, but his story will be familiar to many people with celiac disease, one of many overlooked autoimmune diseases. Unbeknownst to Ben, he has a gluten intolerance.
As a small child, Ben had recurring ear infections. He was treated with antibiotics multiple times that affected his microbiome, thereby putting him at risk for autoimmunity.
A year later, Ben gets sick and seems to be having difficulty breathing. His doctor diagnoses him with asthma. He is given a prescription to help ease respiratory distress while having an asthma attack, and another to help preventatively. Ben can breathe again.
A couple of months later, Ben falls into a deep depression. A psychiatrist prescribes antidepressants to Ben. They seem to help, but he’ll need to remain on them daily for life. Ben seems happier on the meds than off, so he remains on the prescription.
Suddenly, Ben begins to experience an excessive thirst, and he is urinating often throughout the day. He seems to be losing weight, so he returns to his family physician. Ben is diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes. His pancreas is shutting down, and for the remainder of his life Ben will need to take insulin.
Yet still, Ben remains undiagnosed as celiac, so he continues to fuel inflammation within his body by eating foods containing gluten. No one ever diagnosed the real problem — just a series of symptoms that were initiated by an unaddressed gluten intolerance problem. Meanwhile, the autoimmune diseases just keep coming.
Why Functional Medicine Is Superior in Tackling Autoimmune Diseases
A study compared functional medicine with traditional family practices. When dealing with chronic conditions, functional medicine patients reported higher quality of life standards and showed greater improvement than those being treated by family physicians rooted in western medicine.
This is why. The functional medicine model drills down to eliminate the original source of the problem, whereas the traditional method often treats the symptoms without addressing the initial cause. The medical model is broken. The end result: autoimmunity is the third leading cause of death with roughly 80 million people suffering from autoimmune diseases in the US, and 150 million suffering worldwide.
The functional medicine model looks at the mechanism autoimmunity follows and traces the path back to find those environmental triggers. It says if a leaky gut precedes autoimmunity, fix the gut. If dysbiosis is occurring, strengthen the immune system by feeding it probiotics and/or fermented foods. To support your immune system, change your diet, your environment, and your lifestyle to support good health. And to turn the genes off, eliminate the triggers that are keeping them turned on.
It’s a practical approach that works when dealing with chronic health conditions. Sometimes you can prevent future autoimmune diseases. Sometimes, you may be reversing or arresting the progression of a current condition. Once you understand how autoimmunity works, you begin to look at healthcare in a whole new light.
Functional medicine looks holistically at the whole person as a unique individual. Each person will have their own set of autoimmune diseases and other health concerns that they need to work with. Triggers will be specific to you. But we have tools to properly assess your situation and an experienced Clinical Services team to guide you to better health should you ever find yourself in need or suspect you may be at risk of autoimmunity.
theDr.com. (n.d.). Healing from autoimmunity. https://thedr.com/Healing-From-Autoimmunity/ | <urn:uuid:58e313ec-cae5-481b-aff4-69d94137bb22> | CC-MAIN-2023-06 | https://www.knowewell.com/written-content/healing-autoimmunity | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-06/segments/1674764500294.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20230205224620-20230206014620-00149.warc.gz | en | 0.941502 | 2,792 | 2.71875 | 3 |
The first Holocaust is the one most people talk about still. Hitler. Germany. The attempted extermination of the Jews. It was, inarguably, one of the greatest horrors in this history of the world. That will never change.
What has changed are the enemy’s methods.
In Rees Howell’s Intercessor, the chronicle of Howells’ fight against Hitler and the Nazis through prayer strikes a familiar chord to those of us fighting the current holocaust attempting to exterminate a generation through abortion.
A common accusation against people like me is that we exaggerate when we use terms like genocide or holocaust. First let’s look at those definitions. According to the Random House Dictionary, holocaust meanings include: “any mass slaughter or reckless destruction of life.” Genocide means “the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group.” | <urn:uuid:ef124b37-64cd-4d35-9ef3-41916748691b> | CC-MAIN-2016-40 | http://bound4life.com/blog/tag/Genocide/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-40/segments/1474738662159.54/warc/CC-MAIN-20160924173742-00208-ip-10-143-35-109.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.91338 | 190 | 2.625 | 3 |
Picture Bride Stories
During the 1885 to 1924 immigration period of plantation laborers from Japan to Hawaii, more than 200,000 Japanese, mostly single men, made the long journey by ship to the Hawaiian Islands. As it became apparent that they would never return to Japan, many of the men sent for brides to join them in their adopted home. More than 20,000 of these “picture brides” immigrated from Japan and Okinawa to Hawaii to marry husbands whom they knew only through photographs exchanged between them or their families.
Based on Barbara Kawakami's first-hand interviews with sixteen of these women, Picture Bride Stories is a poignant collection that recounts the diverse circumstances that led them to marry strangers, their voyages to Hawaii, the surprises and trials that they encountered upon arriving, and the lives they led upon settling in a strange new land. Many found hardship, yet persevered and endured the difficult conditions of the sugarcane and pineapple plantations for the sake of their children. As they acclimated to a foreign place and forged new relationships, they overcame challenges and eventually prospered in a better life. The stories of the issei women exemplify the importance of friendships and familial networks in coping with poverty and economic security. Although these remarkable women are gone, their legacy lives on in their children, grandchildren, and succeeding generations.
In addition to the oral histories—the result of forty years of interviews—the author provides substantial background on marriage customs and labor practices on the plantations.
Published by UH Press | <urn:uuid:971d2c17-9615-4ab4-906e-8cc7c49e318f> | CC-MAIN-2022-05 | https://shop.jcch.com/products/picture-bride-stories | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-05/segments/1642320301264.36/warc/CC-MAIN-20220119064554-20220119094554-00700.warc.gz | en | 0.957062 | 333 | 3.125 | 3 |
SOS Children's Village Gabú
In one of the world's poorest countries, extreme poverty continues to take its toll: child mortality rates are skyrocketing and many children suffer from undernourishment and preventable diseases. Although the government has taken important steps to protect its children, many are still deprived of a secure childhood.
The situation in Gabú has been referred to as a “silent emergency
Gabú, capital of the homonymous region, has a population of roughly 38,000 and is located in easternmost Guinea-Bissau. The city is an important centre for commerce as well as for trade with neighbouring Senegal and Guinea. Gabú is one of the poorest regions in the country, and thus in West Africa. Poverty levels are extremely high in this sparsely populated agricultural region, and thousands of young people leave their villages behind each year to migrate south to the bigger cities in search of a better life.
Healthy, safe and happy at the children’s village (photo: C. Ladavicius)
The lack of educational institutions in the region is another huge problem that severely affects the population, in particular the younger generation who have little hope of improving their living conditions in the future if they do not receive the educational foundation to do so. But illiteracy remains shockingly prominent – up to 70 per cent of the local population cannot read or write at all, and almost 60 per cent of the adult population never attended school. These figures are gradually improving for the current generation of students, but progress is slow. Teachers receive very low wages and do not have sufficient teaching materials at their disposal; hence, motivation is often very low, which in turn leads to high levels of absenteeism amongst students.
Gabú Region also faces a number of serious health issues. Maternal mortality is high in the whole country, but here in the north it is even higher. In part, this is due to the fact that hospitals are far away and the journey there is expensive. Many women therefore do not receive antenatal care and births often aren’t attended by a medical professional. HIV has also been spreading and information is not sufficiently available to the population. Malaria, too, is still a major threat, there are frequent cholera outbreaks during the rainy seasons, and tuberculosis and other infectious diseases are common.
Children are the most vulnerable and urgently need protection
Child trafficking remains a problem that severely affects the region: UNICEF estimates that each and every month 200 children are trafficked from Guinea Bissau to other West African countries. Sometimes parents entrust their young boys to a Koranic teacher, or “marabout”, who deceives them into believing their sons will receive a religious education but then forces the boys to beg in the streets. Others are forced to work in cotton fields in Senegal, and girls often perform domestic work in conditions akin to slavery. If these children manage to escape, they often have no one to turn to and could end up in even more precarious a situation.
What we do in Gabú
SOS Children’s Villages began its work in Gabú in 2001. For children from the region who can no longer live with their parents, twelve SOS families can provide a loving home for up to 120 children. In each family, the children live with their brothers and sisters, affectionately cared for by their SOS mother.
Sisters doing each other’s hair (photo: C. Lesske)
The children attend the SOS Kindergarten together with children from the neighbourhood. This ensures that they make friends and are integrated into the local community from a young age. The kindergarten is very important to the local population as it allows single mothers and working parents to leave their children in safe hands while they are out making a living.
The children then continue their education at the SOS Hermann Gmeiner primary school, which is attended by up to 340 pupils. Due to the scarcity of schools in the region, the presence of the SOS school is very important here. | <urn:uuid:f51486f8-b667-4a64-81bc-5735e89a5a06> | CC-MAIN-2020-16 | https://www.sos-usa.org/where-we-are/africa/guinea-bissau/gabu | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-16/segments/1585371700247.99/warc/CC-MAIN-20200407085717-20200407120217-00471.warc.gz | en | 0.969057 | 823 | 3.03125 | 3 |
India is a vast country, with diverse cultures and ancient civilization. There are a number of religious groups residing in India. In India we find the oldest pilgrimage tradition in the whole world. The practice of pilgrimage in India is so deeply embedded in the cultural psyche and the number of pilgrimage sites is so large that the entire subcontinent may actually be regarded as one grand and continuous sacred place. The earliest sources of information on the matter of sacred space come from the Rig Veda and the Atharva Veda.
Following the Vedic period the practice of pilgrimage seems to have become quite common, as is evident from sections of the great epic, the Mahabharata (350 BC), which mentions more than 300 sacred sites spanning the sub-continent. By the time of the Puranas, the number of sacred sites had grown considerably, reflecting both the ongoing assimilation of aboriginal sacred places and the increased importance of pilgrimage as a customary religious practice.
Hindus call the sacred places tirthas and the action of going on a pilgrimage is called tirtha-yatra. The word tirtha means river ford, steps to a river, or place of pilgrimage. In Vedic times the word may have concerned only those sacred places associated with water, but by the time of the Mahabharata, tirtha had come to denote any holy place, be it a lake, mountain, forest, or cave. Tirthas are more than physical locations, however. Pious Hindus believe them to be spiritual fords, the meeting place of heaven and earth, the locations where one crosses the endless cycle of birth, death and rebirth to reach the shore of liberation.
The Lake city of Ajmer is well known for the Dargah of Sufi saint Khwaja Moin-ud-din Chishti. The 'Dargah Sharif' in Ajmer is held in great esteem by devotees of all communities.
The founder of Buddhism, Gautama Buddha, attained enlightenment under the sacred Bodhi tree at Bodhgaya. Bodhgaya is one of the four most sacred pilgrimage places for the Buddhists.
Char Dham (sacred Hindu shrines of Badrinath, Kedarnath, Gangotri and Yamunotri) are situated in the snow-covered reaches of the lofty Garhwal Himalayas, Uttaranchal.
The Golden Temple or "Darbar Sahib" at Amritsar is the most sacred place for the Sikhs. The Golden temple symbolizes the magnificence of the Sikhs all over the world.
Haridwar is one of the most important Hindu pilgrim places of India. Haridwar has very rich religious and cultural heritage. In the Hindu scriptures, Haridwar is known by the name of Mayapur.
India is the land where Jainism originated. Today, around 3.2 million Jain devotees live in India. Across the length and breadth of India lay the Jain temples and shrines and hold immense attraction
Mount Kailash is a sacred pilgrimage place of Asia and lies in the South-West of Tibetan autonomous region of China-Nagri, towering 6714 meters (22022 ft) above the Tibetan Plateau.
Mathura is an important place of Hindu pilgrimage. Mathura is also known as the Brajbhoomi - the land where Lord Krishna was born and spent his youth. Mathura is located on the banks of River Yamuna.
Nashik is famous as one of the important pilgrimage centers of India. According to mythology Rama, the king of Ayodhya, made Nashik his temporary residence during the 14 years of his exile.
Prayag, where river Ganga and Yamuna meet, is one of the ancient pilgrimage centers of India. Prayag is situated in Allahabad. Prayag is venerated in the hymns of the Rig Veda.
Puri is one of the ancient pilgrimage centers of India. Puri is located on the Orissa coast, 60 km from Bhubaneswar. Puri is among the four sacred "Dhams" (Puri, Dwarka, Rameswaram and Badrinath) of the Hindus.
Rameshwaram is situated at the tip of the Indian peninsula. In the Hindu mythology Rameshwaram is considered a sacred place for the Hindus. Legends have it that Lord Rama built a bridge across the sea
Ujjain is one of the oldest cities of India. It is located in the Malwa region of Madhya Pradesh state. In ancient times Ujjain was known by the names of Ujjayini and Avanti. It is situated on the eastern bank of River Shipra.
Varanasi is the oldest and the most sacred place for the Hindus. Varanasi, also known as the holy city, combines in itself the cultural essence and mysticism of India. Varanasi stands on the banks of river Ganga
Badrinath Temple is located in the state of Uttranchal in India. Nestled between the twin mountains of "Nar" and "Narayan", the holy Badrinath pilgrimage is visited by scores of devotees every year.
Belur was the ancient capital city of the Hoysala Empire. Belur math is a major tourist destination in Karnataka. The exact location of Belur Math is in the Hassan district of Karnataka.
The holy Dwarka temple is located in the state of Gujarat located on the West of India. It is an important pilgrimage for all Hindus and is considered to be the ancient kingdom of Lord Krishna.
The Guruvayoor Temple is one of the most visited temples in South India. Located in Thrissur (Trichur) district of Kerala in India, this temple is dedicated to Lord Krishna, an incarnation of Lord Vishnu of the Hindu trinity.
The capital city of Patna is regarded as very sacred by the Sikhs in India. The tenth Guru of the Sikhs, Guru Gobind Singh was born here. The Patna Sahib Gurudwara is considered to be one of the holiest of the five
Located in the state of Rajasthan in India, Pushkar pilgrimage site is one of the holiest in India. This small town has around 500 temples and is considered to be very sacred by the Hindus.
Puttaparthi is a small dusty village located in Anantapur district in the state of Andhra Pradesh in India. It has now attained international as well as national fame because of the glory of Bhagvan Shri Sathya Sai Baba.
Rajgir was the ancient capital city of the kings of Magadha. The name Rajgir literally means "House of the King". Rajgir pilgrimage is a very important Buddhist site since Lord Buddha spent 12 years over here
Ranakpur is a small village in the state of Rajasthan in India. An otherwise ordinary village to look at, the place is famous for its Ranakpur Temple, which has some splendid carvings and architecture.
There is nothing dandy or gaudy about Shirdi Sai Temple. The small temple is located in a sleepy little town called Shirdi in the state of Maharashtra in India. Don't expect to see commercialization
Regarded as one of the most popular and religious temples in India, Siddhivinayak Temple located in Prabhadevi, Mumbai, is visited by devout believers from all walks of life.
Located in the state of Gujarat in India, the famous Somnath Temple is a very sacred Hindu pilgrimage site. It is dedicated to Lord Shiva and is considered to be one of the twelve "Jyotirlingas" (lighted lingas)
Located in a small district called Chittoor in southern Andhra Pradesh, is the famous Tirupati Balaji Temple of India. This temple is supposed to be the richest temple in India.
A small village in the state of Bihar, Vaishali is a very famous Buddhist pilgrimage in India. The name "Vaishali" means prosperity and the place seems to live upto its name.
Located in the mighty Trikuta Mountains at a distance of 60 kilometers from Jammu, is the famous Vaishno Devi Temple. One of the most visited and worshipped pilgrimages in India | <urn:uuid:882fba4a-eb09-4a64-bc88-419d3128f559> | CC-MAIN-2022-49 | https://www.culturalindia.net/indian-pilgrimage/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-49/segments/1669446706285.92/warc/CC-MAIN-20221126080725-20221126110725-00261.warc.gz | en | 0.958932 | 1,728 | 3.484375 | 3 |
Bone growth restriction (epiphysiodesis) The objective of this surgical procedure is to slow down growth in the longer leg. During surgery, doctors alter the growth plate of the bone in the longer leg by inserting a small plate or staples. This slows down growth, allowing the shorter leg to catch up over time. Your child may spend a night in the hospital after this procedure or go home the same day. Doctors may place a knee brace on the leg for a few days. It typically takes 2 to 3 months for the leg to heal completely. An alternative approach involves lengthening the shorter bone. We are more likely to recommend this approach if your child is on the short side of the height spectrum.
The causes of LLD may be divided into those that shorten a limb versus those that lengthen a limb, or they may be classified as affecting the length versus the rate of growth in a limb. For example, a fracture that heals poorly may shorten a leg slightly, but does not affect its growth rate. Radiation, on the other hand, can affect a leg's long-term ability to expand, but does not acutely affect its length. Causes that shorten the leg are more common than those that lengthen it and include congenital growth deficiencies (seen in hemiatrophy and skeletal dysplasias ), infections that infiltrate the epiphysis (e.g. osteomyelitis ), tumors, fractures that occur through the growth plate or have overriding ends, Legg-Calve-Perthes disease, slipped capital femoral epiphysis (SCFE), and radiation. Lengthening can result from unique conditions, such as hemihypertrophy , in which one or more structures on one side of the body become larger than the other side, vascular malformations or tumors (such as hemangioma ), which cause blood flow on one side to exceed that of the other, Wilm's tumor (of the kidney), septic arthritis, healed fractures, or orthopaedic surgery. Leg length discrepancy may arise from a problem in almost any portion of the femur or tibia. For example, fractures can occur at virtually all levels of the two bones. Fractures or other problems of the fibula do not lead to LLD, as long as the more central, weight-bearing tibia is unaffected. Because many cases of LLD are due to decreased rate of growth, the femoral or tibial epiphyses are commonly affected regions.
The effects of a short leg depend upon the individual and the extent of discrepancy. The most common manifestation if a lateral deviation of the lumbar spine toward the short side with compensatory curves up the spine that can extend into the neck and even impacts the TMJ. Studies have shown that anterior and posterior curve abnormalities also can result.
A systematic and well organized approach should be used in the diagnosis of LLD to ensure all relevant factors are considered and no clues are overlooked which could explain the difference. To determine the asymmetry a patient should be evaluated whilst standing and walking. During the process special care should be used to note the extent of pelvic shift from side to side and deviation along the plane of the front or leading leg as well as the traverse deviation of the back leg and abnormal curvature of the spine. Dynamic gait analysis should be conducted during waling where observation of movement on the sagittal, frontal and transverse planes should be noted. Also observe head, neck and shoulder movements for any tilting.
Non Surgical Treatment
Treatment for an LLD depends on the amount of difference and the cause, if known. The doctor will discuss treatment options carefully with you and your child before any decisions are made. It is important to note that treatment is planned with the child?s final height and leg lengths in mind, not the current leg lengths. Treatment is generally not needed if the child?s final LLD is predicted to be 2 centimeters or less at full height. However, the child should return to an orthopaedic doctor by age 10 for re-evaluation. Treatment is often recommended for LLDs predicted to be more than 2 centimeters at full height. If treatment is done, it usually doesn?t begin until the child starts walking. Possible treatment options include, A ?lift? in one shoe to level the child?s hips. This is often the only treatment needed for small discrepancies.
Leg shortening is employed when LLD is severe and when a patient has already reached skeletal maturity. The actual surgery is called an osteotomy , which entails the removal of a small section of bone in the tibia (shinbone) and sometimes the fibula as well, resulting in the loss of around an inch in total height. Leg lengthening is a difficult third option that has traditionally had a high complication rate. Recently, results have improved somewhat with the emergence of a technique known as callotasis , in which only the outer portion of the bone (the cortex ) is cut, (i.e. a corticotomy ). This allows the bone to be more easily lengthened by an external fixation device that is attached to either side of the cut bone with pins through the skin. The ?ex-fix,' as it is sometimes called, is gradually adjusted by an orthopaedic surgeon, and healing can occur at the same time that the leg is being distracted , or lengthened over time. Unlike epiphysiodesis, leg lengthening procedures can be performed at almost any skeletal or chronological age. | <urn:uuid:dc9bfc10-5536-4a9d-a451-4e4b96fb76a7> | CC-MAIN-2021-31 | https://drucillastarrick.hatenablog.com/entry/2015/04/29/102758 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-31/segments/1627046149929.88/warc/CC-MAIN-20210723143921-20210723173921-00320.warc.gz | en | 0.942618 | 1,126 | 3.46875 | 3 |
Writer: Jane Moorman
Given the war in Iraq and the menace brewing in North Korea and elsewhere, the training soldiers receive to function in extreme environments is becoming a critical element for success.
thinking on such training by the military will "make soldiers safer and better prepared for what they have to face so they can be more effective in their missions," said Douglas Gillan, head of the psychology department at New Mexico State University. He's part of an NMSU research team working with the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory on studies related to fighting a war in extreme conditions. The study, for which NMSU has received a $525,000 grant, will take about a year.
"It's clear through history extreme environments have been one determinant in who wins war," Gillan said.
Scientists and military experts know extreme weather negatively impacts a soldier's cognitive and physical abilities and that can affect his or her effectiveness in a war situation.
A person in an extremely cold environment may dwell on keeping warm, Gillan said, and engage in activities to help relieve the situation. That can be a distraction. Extremes can cause physical illness. That was evident early in the war in Afghanistan as the military saw soldiers becoming ill because of mountain sickness, said Jonathan Benson, another member of the NMSU research team.
"What seems banal or normal to us can be hazardous in a combat situation," he added.
Benson not only is videotaping current training procedures in places such as the Marine Corps' Quantico base in Virginia, but also is researching films, photos and videos from Korea, Vietnam, Lebanon and Grenada.
Jim Holden-Rhodes, currently director of the intelligence studies program at NMSU, is working on the project as a subject matter expert, drawing upon his experiences with U.S. Marine Corps Reconnaissance units.
Besides the known basics, very little research has been conducted on the combined effects of different stresses on an individual, NMSU experts said.
Jim Cowie, director of the Computing Research Laboratory and psychology professor, said the research will show what experts currently know about performance in extreme environments, what training is being done and where there might be gaps that should be filled in that training.
Key is what happens as an individual reacts in multiple extremes and how that impacts a team. The issue of environment includes the stresses of urban warfare and extends to the differences in stresses as duties change from fighting a war to peacekeeping in a region.
If there are gaps in current training procedures and need for additional sites for training, it could have implications for the upcoming Base Realignment and Closure process, Benson noted. NMSU, working with the NRL, will be developing a list of the research efforts needed to fill those gaps.
Preliminary experiments on the effects of stress on team performance will be carried out in the psychology department at NMSU and at the NRL.
Meanwhile an in-depth search of military and news archives as well as research on documents in Chinese, Russian and French will be conducted.
Not only can the military benefit by knowing and understanding how best to train soldiers for combat in all extremes, the research also will be helpful in recruiting the type of infantry personnel needed for advanced urban assault training.
"It's a dangerous world," Gillan said, adding no one wants to see more troops committed to combat anywhere. "But it's smart for the military, for the Department of Defense to think ahead."
A preliminary report is expected by mid December.
© 2013 New Mexico State University Board of Regents
NMSU - All About Discovery! | <urn:uuid:0e9210aa-2870-48a2-bf15-13f6880b379a> | CC-MAIN-2015-18 | http://newscenter.nmsu.edu/Articles/view/2252 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-18/segments/1429246661675.84/warc/CC-MAIN-20150417045741-00216-ip-10-235-10-82.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964171 | 740 | 3.015625 | 3 |
Chip budding is a technique
that may be used whenever mature buds are available. Because the bark does
not have to "slip," the chip-budding season is longer
than the T-budding season. Species whose bark does not slip easily without
tearing - such as some maples - may be propagated more successfully by chip
budding than by T-budding.
Preparing the Stock and the Scion Bud.
Although all the basics in handling budwood and stock are the same for Chip Budding and T Budding, the cuts made in chip budding differ radically. The first cut on both stock and scion is made at a 45o to 60o downward angle to a depth of about 1/8 inch (Figure 15). After making this cut on a smooth part of the rootstock, start the second cut about 3/4 inch higher and draw the knife down to meet the first cut. (The exact spacing between the cuts varies with species and the size of the buds.) Then remove the chip.
Figure 15. Rootstock cut for T budding.
Securing the Bud.
Cuts on both the scion (to remove the bud) and the rootstock (to insert the bud) should be exactly the same (Figure 16). Although the exact location is not essential, the bud is usually positioned one-third of the way down from the beginning of the cut. If the bud shield is significantly narrower than the rootstock cut, line up one side exactly.
Figure 16. Removing chip from budstick.
Wrapping is extremely important in chip budding. If all exposed edges of the cut are not covered, the bud will dry out before it can take. Chip budding has become more popular over the past 5 years because of the availability of thin (2-mil) polyethylene tape as a wrapping material. This tape is wrapped to overlap all of the injury, including the bud (Figure 17), and forms a miniature plastic greenhouse over the healing graft.
Figure 17. Chip bud wrapped with plastic tape.
When irrigation is available, apply water at normal rates for plants that bud before August 1. Ornamental peaches and pears often will break bud and grow the same year they are budded. Dogwoods and most other species budded after August 1 should be irrigated at a normal rate for only two to three weeks after budding except during extreme drought. Following these irrigation practices will enable buds to heal completely with no bud break before frost.
Although budding rubbers and polyethylene tape reportedly decompose and need not be removed, studies show that unless they are taken off, binding or girdling of fast growing plants like Bradford pear may occur within a month. Summer buds should take in two to three weeks.
On species budded in early summer, it may be desirable for the buds to break and grow during the same season. In this case, either remove the stock tops entirely or break them over within a few weeks of budding to encourage the scion buds to break. Once the buds have broken, completely remove the stock above the bud or keep a few leaves intact but remove the terminals, depending upon the species.
For dogwoods and other plants budded in late summer, remove the tops just before growth starts the following spring. A slanting cut away from the bud is preferred (Figure 18). If possible, set up stakes or other devices to insure that straight growth will occur before the buds break. Straight shoots, however, are so essential to the growth of high-quality grafted and budded stock that stakes should be set as they are needed.
To insure a top-quality plant, it is essential to remove unwanted sprouts. These sprouts should be rubbed off as soon as they are visible so that they do not reduce the growth and quality of the budded stock. If they are removed regularly and early, large scars or "doglegs" can be avoided.
Figure 18. Budded plant after pruning.
Collecting Budwood for Shield Budding
I am collecting budwood for shield budding, keep these points in mind:
- The best budwood is from the second flush of growth from the end of a branch.
- Budwood should be rounded with plump buds. Leaves should be trimmed to very small stubs as the budwood is cut from the tree. | <urn:uuid:288df3d3-dce1-4ead-8b02-d34fa5ed0684> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://www.angelfire.com/band2/cisw300/budding_chip.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988719079.39/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183839-00181-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937235 | 893 | 2.828125 | 3 |
Crazy Horse was an influential chief of the Oglala Tribe, who partnered with Sitting Bull to lead a series of successful guerilla attacks on the U.S. troops in the western United States—first at the Battle of Rosebud and then, most famously, at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. In spite of his successes, Crazy Horse’s followers were often on the verge of starvation, and in 1877 he had no choice but to surrender to the U.S. army. A few weeks later, he was stabbed and killed, supposedly because he’d tried to attack an American soldier. Crazy Horse was buried near Wounded Knee Creek, foreshadowing the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890.
Crazy Horse Quotes in Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
The Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee quotes below are all either spoken by Crazy Horse or refer to Crazy Horse. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one: Note: all page numbers and citation info for the quotes below refer to the Picador edition of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee published in 2007.).
Chapter 12 Quotes
At a place known only to them they buried Crazy Horse somewhere near Chankpe Opi Wakpala, the creek called Wounded Knee.
Related Characters: Crazy Horse
Related Symbols: Wounded Knee Massacre
Page Number and Citation: | <urn:uuid:6b80e35e-6c97-480e-8b6c-df5f5360f8a6> | CC-MAIN-2019-22 | https://www.litcharts.com/lit/bury-my-heart-at-wounded-knee/characters/crazy-horse | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-22/segments/1558232258147.95/warc/CC-MAIN-20190525164959-20190525190959-00055.warc.gz | en | 0.963465 | 316 | 2.890625 | 3 |
Our end result of the project is an LED skateboard. We ended up giving up on the bike and moving on to doing a skateboard. I learned a lot about knowing when to stop something from this project. Maybe if we decided on the skateboard sooner, it could’ve been a lot better, but I’m glad we stopped when we did.
The way the project works is that when you push the skateboard forward,
1. What are you going to build (8th grade)?
We are going to build a bike that powers a fan and creates light.
2. Why have you decided to build this object (energy transfer system) a working model (8th grade)?
We decided to build this energy transfer system because it is both practical and clearly shows electricity working. It is practical because the fan could blow away leaves near your bike, and the light can help you pedal through the dark. It shows electrical energy in two ways- the light turning on, and the propeller blowing. It shows kinetic by the person pedalling and turning it into electricity. The bike itself stores potenital energy because it is waiting to use the energy it has.
3. What materials are you going to need to complete your build (8th grade)?
The materials we need to get are:
– 1 bike
– wooden sticks
– 1 LED light
– small gauge wires
– 1 RR DC motor
– 1 QQ DC motor | <urn:uuid:d4345243-5a05-489b-b1af-f840485be4d7> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://blog.hkis.edu.hk/wp/190556/category/science/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233510671.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20230930082033-20230930112033-00374.warc.gz | en | 0.923352 | 366 | 3.265625 | 3 |
Theme: Safe and Healthy Drinking Water
The quality of the drinking water we provide has our highest priority. Clients must be able to rely blindly on the safety and quality of our drinking water. That is why it is our ambition to make the quality integrally measurable, at every step of the process, thus enabling us to ensure top-quality drinking water. And not just that, it is our desire to be transparent about this and to inform our clients and stakeholders accordingly. Within the theme Safe and Healthy Drinking Water, our main concern is integral control of the quality from the source to the client.
Motive for more research
The quality of water at the source
Improved measurement techniques enable us to detect micro-contaminations in groundwater sooner. In the abstracted raw water we increasingly detect drug residues, pesticides, and other substances of which the health risks are insufficiently known. In addition, we have detected that the influence of surface water on groundwater is growing, while activities in the soil (as part of energy transition) are increasing as well. Because of this, it is more difficult to predict the quality of the source, and traditional treatment methods may no longer be sufficient to maintain the desired drinking water quality.
The influence of water treatment
Many of our production sites treat the abstracted groundwater using traditional methods, such as aeration and sand filtration. In line with the European Water Framework Directive and our preference for groundwater we aim to minimize the treatment effort, while understanding optimally how this influences the water quality.
Factors in the pipeline network
After treatment and during the residence time in the pipeline, the drinking water quality can be influenced by chemical, physical and biological processes. The pipeline material (polyethylene, for example) and the growth of microorganisms may have a negative influence on the quality. The degree of understanding of the relevant processes is as yet considered insufficient, however.
Client demands transparency
Clients are demanding a greater say and increasingly require transparency regarding the quality of the drinking water we provide. Preferably at the household (or connection) level, and at any time of the day.
Objectives of this research theme
- A complete picture of the water quality and the actual risks (chemical and microbiological) at every step of the process;
- The ability to monitor and control, with sensors, the water quality at every individual step, from source to tap (and in coherence with each other);
- Gaining insight into the available margins for each individual process step;
- Transparent and clear communication about the water quality with the client and other stakeholders.
The goal of this work package is gaining insight into the performance demands regarding integral water quality, and the way in which this can be presented numerically (per process step). We want to achieve this, taking into account the means available to our clients for monitoring the water quality, as well as new techniques that have become available which allow more accurate measurements.
Measuring and monitoring
The goal of this work package is measuring and monitoring the water quality from source to tap. We want to know which technologies – such as chemical and (micro)biological screening, etc. – and measuring methods to use in determining the water quality.
Anticipating changes in water quality
The goal of this work package is predicting when to expect foreign substances in the abstracted water, what kind of substances these are, and subsequently being able to deal with them appropriately. This requires clear quality parameters to determine when we must take action.
Client interaction and health
The goal of this work package is communicating proactively, clearly and transparently about water quality with clients and stakeholders. We want to know their water quality requirements, as well as their information needs in this respect. We make a step towards our clients by directly involving them in quality-focussed research, whereby we aspire to create a win-win situation. | <urn:uuid:764bec74-61e9-4533-b2d8-0a1a1f704aa1> | CC-MAIN-2021-21 | https://vitensinnovates.com/veilig-en-gezond-drinkwater/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-21/segments/1620243991488.53/warc/CC-MAIN-20210515223209-20210516013209-00311.warc.gz | en | 0.945508 | 793 | 2.890625 | 3 |
Suppose that the owner of a factory employs both skilled and unskilled workers to operate and administer his factory. When it is time to pay their wages, he pays the skilled and qualified workers, whose job is at a higher level, more than the unskilled workers. Now, is this difference in wages just or unjust? Is the factory owner acting equitably or inequitably?
Doubtless there is a difference involved here, but we cannot call it discrimination. Justice does not require the factory owner to pay unskilled workers the same as skilled workers. It means rather that he should give to each category what it deserves. Such a rule will clearly delineate the comparative value of each job and contribute to the welfare of the workplace.
To make distinctions in such cases is an eloquent and practical form of justice; not to do so would be equivalent to oppression, discrimination and injustice; it would be the result of an inadequate appreciation of the relative value of things in their differentiation.
When we look at the world as a whole and analyze its various parts, we see that each part has its own special position and function and is clothed in the qualities that are suitable to it. In the light of this realization, we can understand the necessity of vicissitudes in human life, of light and darkness, of success and failure, for maintaining the general equilibrium of the world.
If the world were to be uniform, without variation or difference, the varied and multiple species of being would not exist. It is precisely in this abundant variety and multiplicity that do exist that we see the splendor and magnificence of the world. Our judgment of things will be logical, correct, and acceptable when we take into consideration the equilibrium prevailing in the universe and the inter relations that beneficially bind its various parts to each other, not when we examine the part in isolation form the whole.
The order of creation is based on equilibrium, on receptivity and capacities; what is firmly established in creation is differentiation, not discrimination. This observation makes it possible for us to examine the matter more objectively and specifically. Discrimination means making a difference among objects possessing the same receptivity and existing under the same circumstances. Differentiation means making a difference among capacities that are unequal and not subject to the same circumstances.
It will be erroneous if we say that it would be better for everything in the world to be uniform and undifferentiated, for all the motion, activity and lively interchange we see in the world is made possible by differentiation.
Man has various ways of perceiving and experiencing beauty, once there is a contrast between ugliness and beauty. The attraction exerted by beauty is, in a sense, the reflection of ugliness and its power to repel.
In the same way, if man were not tested and tried in life, piety and virtue would have no value, and there would be no reason to refine one's soul and nothing from which to restrain one's desires.
If a whole canvas is covered in a uniform way, we cannot speak of it being a picture; it is the variation of color and detail that displays the skill of the artist.
In order for the identity of a thing to be known, it is essential that it be differentiated from other things, for the measure by which things or persons are recognized is the outer or inner differences they have with each other.
One of the wonders of creation is the variation in the capacities and gifts with which beings are endowed. In order to ensure the continuance of social life, creation has given each individual a particular set of tastes and capacities, the interplay of which ensures the order of society; each individual meets some of the needs of society and contributes to solving some of its problems.
The natural difference of individuals with respect to capacity causes them to need each other. Everyone takes on some of the tasks of society according to his own taste and capacity, and the social life secured in that way makes it possible for man to progress and advance.
Let us take a building or an airplane as an example. Each of them has numerous separate parts, complex and detailed components that differ greatly from each other in size and form, this difference deriving from the responsibility that each component has toward the whole.
Were this difference not to exist in the structure of the airplane, it would no longer be an airplane but a compound of assorted metals. If differentiation is a sign of true justice in the airplane, it must also be an indication of divine justice among all the creatures of the world including man.
In addition, we must be aware that differentiation among beings is innate to their essence. God does not create everything with a separate and discrete exercise of His will; His will is not exercised individually. The entire world from beginning to end came into being with a single exercise of His will; it was this that enabled creatures in their infinite multiplicity to come into being.
There is, then, a specific law and order that regulates all the dimensions of creation. Within the framework of causality, it assigns a particular rank and position to everything. God's will to create and regulate the world is equivalent to His willing order in it.
There are definite philosophical proofs in support of this proposition, and it is also expounded in the Qur’an:
"We created everything with a certain quantity and limit; Our act is but one, like the blink of an eye." (54:49-50)
It would be wrong to imagine that the differentiation and relations established by God in His creation are the same as the conventional relations existing in human society. God's connection with His creatures is not a mere convention or perceptual matter; it is a connection deriving from the very act of creation. The order that He has placed in all things is the result of His creating it. Every being receives from God the amount of perfection and beauty it is able to receive.
If there were no particular order regulating the world, any being might, in the course of its motions, give rise to any other being, and cause and effect might switch places. But it must be understood that the essential interrelations among things are fixed and necessary; the station and property bestowed on a thing adheres inseparably to it, whatever rank and degree of existence it may have.
No phenomenon can go beyond the degree that has been fixed for it and occupy the degree of another being. Differentiation is a concomitant of the degrees of being, assigning to them differing amounts of weakness and strength, deficiency and perfection.
It would be discrimination if two phenomena had the same capacity to receive perfection but it was given only to one of them and denied to the other.
The degrees of being that exist in the order of creation cannot be compared with the conventional ranks of human society. They are real, not conventional, and not transferable. For example, men and animals cannot change places with each other in the same way that individuals can change the posts and positions they occupy in the relationship connecting each cause with its effect and each effect with its cause derives from the very essences of the cause and effect respectively.
If something is a cause, it is so because of some property that is inseparable from it, and if something is an effect, it is so because of a quality inherent in it, which is nothing other than the mode of its being.
There is, then, an essential and profound order that links all phenomena, and the degree of each phenomenon within the order is identical with its essence. Insofar as differentiation relates to a deficiency in dwelling in the essence, it is not discrimination, because the effusion of God's bounty is not enough for a reality to come into being; the receptivity of the vessel destined to receive the bounty is also necessary.
It is for this reason that certain beings suffer deprivation and do not attain higher degrees; it is impossible that a thing acquire the capacity for being or some other perfection and that God not grant it to it.
The case of numerals is exactly similar each number has its own fixed place. Two comes after one and cannot change places with it. If we change the place of a number, we will have changed its essence at the same time.
It is clear, then, that all phenomena possess fixed ranks an modalities and are subordinate to a series of stable and immutable laws. Divine law naturally does not form a separate created entity, but an abstract concept deduced from the manner in which things are seen to exist. That which has external existence consists of the levels and degrees of being, on the one hand, and the system of cause and effect. on the other. Nothing occurs outside of this system, which is none other than the divine norm mentioned by the Qur’an:
"You will never find any change in the divine norm." (35:43)
The order of creation is based on a series of laws inherent in its essence. The place of every phenomenon within it is clear defined, and the existence of the various levels and degrees of existence is a necessary consequence of the systematic nature of creation, which inevitably gives rise to variety and differentiation
Variation and differentiation have not themselves been created, they are the inseparable attributes of all phenomena. Every particle in the universe has received whatever it had the potential to receive; no injustice or discrimination has been visited upon it and the perfection of the universe, resembling a multiplication table in its precise and immutable ordering, has thereby been ensured.
Materialists who regard the existence of variation and differentiation in the natural order as evidence of oppression and injustice and imagine that the world is not ruled by justice will inevitably experience life as difficult, unpleasant, and wearying.
The hasty judgment of the materialist confronted by hardship and difficulty is like the verdict of a child watching a gardener pruning the healthy, green branches of a tree in the spring. Unaware of the purpose and significance of the pruning, the child will think the gardener a destructive and ignorant person.
If all the bounties of the world were placed at the disposal of the materialist, he would still not be content. For once the world is seen to be aimless and based on injustice, it is meaningless for man to seek justice, and in a world that is lacking an aim, it is absurd for man to set himself one.
If the origin and destiny of man are as the materialists depict them, such that he is a grass that grows of itself and then disappears then man must be the most wretched of creatures. For he would be living in a world with which he lacks all affinity, compatibility and harmony. Thought, feeling and emotion would cause him distress being nothing more than a cruel joke played on him by nature to increase his misery and wretchedness and augment his suffering.
Were a man of initiative and genius to devote himself to the service of humanity, what benefit would it hold for him? Posthumous commemorations and honorings, ceremonies held at his tomb, would not benefit him in the slightest; they would serve only to maintain a hollow legend, because the person in question would have been nothing more than a form assembled by nature for its amusement as a plaything for a few days before being turned into a handful of dust.
If we look at the fate of the majority of people who are constantly struggling with various kinds of sorrow, anxiety, deprivation and failure, the picture grows still more bleak. With such a view of human life, the only paradise materialism has to offer man is a hell of terror and pain. The materialist position that man lacks freedom and choice makes of him an even more wretched creature.
The mono-dimensional worldview of materialism would have it that man is like an automaton, with the mechanism and dynamism of its cells operated by nature. Can human intelligence and instinct, not to mention the realities of existence accept such a banal and petty interpretation of man, his life and his destiny?
Were this interpretation to be true, man would be as incapable of experiencing happiness as a child's doll. Placed in such a situation, man would be compelled to make of his own passions and inclinations the foundation of morality and the yardstick of value, to judge all things according to personal profit and loss. He would do his utmost to destroy every obstacle in his path and loosen all restraints on his carnal desires. Were he to act otherwise, he would be regarded as backward and ignorant.
Anyone who possesses the slightest amount of insight, and judges the matter in a disinterested and dispassionate way, will regard these short-sighted and fantastic notions as valid, however much they be decked out in philosophical and scientific sophistry.
A man with a religious worldview regards the world as an orderly system possessing consciousness, will, perception and aim. The supreme justice-dispensing intelligence of God rules over the universe and every particle of being and watches over all actions and deeds.
A religious man, therefore, feels a sense of responsibility vis-à-vis the consciousness that rules over the world, and knows that a world created and administered by God is necessarily a world of unity, harmony and good. He understands that contradiction and evil have an epiphenomenal existence and play a fundamental role in the achievement of good and the emergence of unity and harmony.
Furthermore, according to this worldview which sketches out broad horizons for man, life is not restricted to this world, and even the life of this world is not restricted to material well-being or freedom from effort and pain. The believer in religion will see the world as a path that must be traversed, as a place of testing, as an arena of effort. In it, the righteousness of men's deeds is tested.
At the beginning of the next life, the good and the evil in the thoughts, beliefs, and actions of men will be measured in the most accurate of balances. God's justice will be revealed in its true aspect, and what ever deprivation man may have suffered in this world, whether material or otherwise, it will be made up to him.
In the light of his destiny that awaits man, and given the essential nullity of the goods of the material world, man orients his conscious striving exclusively to God. His aim becomes to live for Him and to die for Him.
The vicissitudes of this world no longer claim his attention. He sees ephemeral things for what they are, and he allows nothing to seduce his heart. For he knows that the forces of seduction would cause his humanity to wither and draw him down into the whirlpool of materialistic misguidance.
In conclusion, we would add that even apart from the question of receptivity, the existence of difference in the world does not imply injustice. Oppression and injustice mean that someone is subjected to discrimination although he has a claim equal to that of someone else. But beings do not have any "claim" on God nor did they ever, so if some things imply superiority over others this cannot count as injustice.
We have nothing of ourselves: each breath and each heartbeat, each thought and idea that passes through our mind, are taken from a stock that we do not own and have done nothing to build up. That stock is a gift from God, bestowed on us at the moment of birth.
Once we understand that whatever we have is nothing but a divine gift, it will become apparent that the differences among the gifts He gives men are based on His wisdom but have nothing to do with either justice or injustice, because there was no question of any merit or claim on our part.
This finite and temporary life is a gift to us, a present from the Creator. He has absolute discretion in deciding the type and quantity of the gift that He gives, and we have no claim upon Him.
We have, therefore, no right to object even if the gift given us quite free of charge appears slight and inconsequential. | <urn:uuid:4db5530a-d835-4bb5-a8e5-517a6fd46219> | CC-MAIN-2020-05 | https://www.al-islam.org/god-and-his-attributes-sayyid-mujtaba-musavi-lari/lesson-17-some-aspects-inequality | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-05/segments/1579251684146.65/warc/CC-MAIN-20200126013015-20200126043015-00324.warc.gz | en | 0.968277 | 3,246 | 2.84375 | 3 |
Tooth loss is more common than you might think. In fact, 120 million Americans are missing at least one tooth and more than 36 million people in the United States don’t have any teeth at all. Is it possible that you’re at risk for losing your teeth as well? Here are some factors that might be an influence:
- If you’re over 35 years old… Unfortunately, the likelihood of losing your teeth increases with age. In fact, adults aged 40-64 are half as likely to have all of their teeth (34%) as those between the ages of 20-39 (67%).
- If you’re male… Men are much more likely to lose their teeth than women, though the exact cause of this is still unknown. If you’re male, be aware that your risk is greater for tooth loss.
- If you have gum disease… Gum disease is the leading cause of tooth loss and, unfortunately, this disease is all too common. Plaque that is left on your teeth can lead to tooth decay over time, which can impact your gums if left untreated. Once these supporting tissues are in jeopardy, your teeth are at risk as well.
- If you have a chronic condition… Chronic diseases like diabetes make it much more difficult to fend off infection. The key to avoiding tooth loss is to take extra precautions and preventative measures. By ensuring your mouth stays in good health, your can feel confident that your teeth are safe as well.
- If you don’t have a sufficient dental hygiene routine… A good oral hygiene routine is critical for preventing decay that can lead to tooth loss. Be sure to brush twice a day and floss regularly to keep your teeth and gums healthy.
- If you use tobacco products… Smoking greatly increases your risk for periodontal (gum) disease and, in fact, can make the disease much harder to treat. By harming these supportive tissues, your teeth are at much greater risk for loss.
- If you have high blood pressure… Currently, the link between high blood pressure and tooth loss is still unknown. However, studies have proven that a significant number of patients with high blood pressure also suffer from tooth loss.
- If your teeth have suffered physical trauma… “Trauma” can refer to anything from hitting your teeth on the ground to using your teeth for such things as removing water bottle caps or untying knots. Utilizing your teeth as tools for things other than chewing can absolutely impact your dental health and lead to tooth loss over time.
- If you grind your teeth in your sleep Bruxism (teeth grinding) can severely damage your teeth over time. This can be a result of stress or even a sleep disorder. If you wake up with jaw pain, headaches, or notice wear on your teeth, be sure to visit Caputo Dental right away.
- If you have poor nutrition… Excess sugar in your diet can weaken your tooth enamel and lead to decay. Be sure to eat a balanced diet with fruits and vegetables to keep your mouth in good health, and avoid sugars, highly acidic fruits, sodas, etc. to minimize the damage to your teeth.
- If you avoid the dentist… It is highly recommended that you see your dentist at least twice a year. This will enable you to prevent tooth decay and gum disease, which are leading factors in tooth loss.
If you think you think you may be at risk for tooth loss, call Caputo Dental in Naperville, IL today. We’ll set up an appointment to check for signs of tooth decay, periodontal disease, and more to keep your mouth healthy and your smile looking great! | <urn:uuid:51689c08-5bf2-4d1f-ae37-5fab36553a21> | CC-MAIN-2019-51 | https://paulcaputodds.com/are-you-at-risk-for-tooth-loss/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-51/segments/1575540496492.8/warc/CC-MAIN-20191207055244-20191207083244-00537.warc.gz | en | 0.955435 | 761 | 3.109375 | 3 |
Explore the words cloud of the WARMCOASTS project. It provides you a very rough idea of what is the project "WARMCOASTS" about.
The following table provides information about the project.
|Coordinator Country||Germany [DE]|
|Total cost||1˙499˙965 €|
|EC max contribution||1˙499˙965 € (100%)|
1. H2020-EU.1.1. (EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC))
|Duration (year-month-day)||from 2019-04-01 to 2024-03-31|
Take a look of project's partnership.
|1||UNIVERSITAET BREMEN||DE (BREMEN)||coordinator||1˙499˙965.00|
Past interglacials are periods of the earth’s history when climate was warmer than the pre-industrial, and are often considered as process-analogs for a future warmer climate. During the Last Interglacial (LIG, ~128-116 ka), polar temperatures were few degrees higher than pre-industrial, ice sheets were smaller and sea level was higher than today. Studies also suggest that waves in the North Atlantic might have been more intense in the LIG than today. Understanding sea level changes and extreme wave intensity during the LIG is key to assess the future of the world’s ice sheets and coastlines under warmer climatic conditions. For this reason, the LIG is the most studied among past interglacials, but recent research highlighted that the LIG is far from a ‘solved problem’, especially for which concerns sea level and coastal dynamics. There are in fact three relevant research gaps. First, widely accepted estimates suggest that LIG global mean sea level was 5-10 m higher than today, but recent studies proved that previously unrecognized processes concur to make current LIG sea level estimates very uncertain. Second, it is unclear if LIG sea level was characterized by rapid oscillations that caused sea level to rise abruptly at rates higher than at present (up to 10 mm per year in the LIG, compare with 3 mm per year today). A third research gap is related to the highly controversial notion that the LIG was characterized by ‘superstorms’, producing waves more intense than those observed today. In this project, we want to employ a multidisciplinary combination of methods to study Last Interglacial peak sea level, sea level variations and extreme waves. WARMCOASTS will develop both new datasets and merge methods from geology, earth modeling, surface processes modeling and hydrodynamic modeling to advance the current state-of-the-art. The results of this project will be functional to better understand coastal processes under slightly warmer climate conditions.
Are you the coordinator (or a participant) of this project? Plaese send me more information about the "WARMCOASTS" project.
For instance: the website url (it has not provided by EU-opendata yet), the logo, a more detailed description of the project (in plain text as a rtf file or a word file), some pictures (as picture files, not embedded into any word file), twitter account, linkedin page, etc.
Send me an email (firstname.lastname@example.org) and I put them in your project's page as son as possible.
Thanks. And then put a link of this page into your project's website.
The information about "WARMCOASTS" are provided by the European Opendata Portal: CORDIS opendata.
A Theory-Oriented Real-Time Operating System for Temporally Sound Cyber-Physical SystemsRead More
Towards Realistic Modelling of Nucleosome Organization Inside Functional Chromatin DomainsRead More
Understanding DSB repair from pathway choice to long term effects and their consequences.Read More | <urn:uuid:af943c33-a04e-4c6d-9719-764eb4676351> | CC-MAIN-2022-49 | https://www.fabiodisconzi.com/open-h2020/projects/218358/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-49/segments/1669446710916.40/warc/CC-MAIN-20221202183117-20221202213117-00031.warc.gz | en | 0.911533 | 894 | 2.734375 | 3 |
Africa is eyeing two tremendous economic opportunities.
Market demand for pulses and edible oilseeds has been steadily growing over recent years. In the case of nutritious and versatile pulses (which include beans, lentils and soy) an additional five million tons have been traded annually since 1980. As consumer preferences shift away from saturated fats to healthier alternatives, the oilseed market is expected to see similar growth.
Eastern and Southern Africa have the ideal agro-climatic conditions to grow pulses and oilseeds. The continent is poised therefore to become a major exporter of these crops, to satisfy growing global demand.
Until now, African farmers have been unable to capitalise on this opportunity. They are facing multiple constraints from low productivity, to inability to access markets.
At the recent African Green Revolution Forum in Kigali, a new Alliance was formed to address these constraints, and ensure African smallholders and entrepreneurs can seize this opportunity. The Pan African Bean Research Alliance (PABRA) is eager to take part, and bring the concept of a “corridor approach” to tackling the bottlenecks currently impeding the pulse and oilseed value-chains in Africa.
Trading routes for commodities like pulses and oilseeds already exist in Africa, albeit informally. For example, in Tanzania and Burundi, high demand for the yellow bean drives trade. In Ethiopia, white pea beans are in major demand, driving production there. We need to analyse these trade flows, or “commodity corridors”, to find out where production, distribution and consumption can be supported and intensified.
Tackling production bottlenecks
PABRA has been working in partnership with national breeding organisations to develop better beans seeds for African farmers. In Ethiopia for example, we have worked with the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research (EIAR) to breed white beans that are higher yielding and more tolerant to the drought, pests and diseases that plague Ethiopian farmers. As a result, seed access has risen from 20 to 65 percent for farmers in Ethiopia since 2004. During this time, the nation has boosted its exports of white beans from US$8 million to more than US$90 million, and production has more than doubled from 211,347 tons to 455,115 tons.
Aggregating crops for a distribution revolution
Low tradeable volumes and high transaction costs are often a major stumbling block for farmers hoping to trade internationally in Africa. By creating hubs where farmers can aggregate produce, this can be addressed. In Uganda, for example, companies like Equator Seeds are purchasing large volumes of the fast-maturing, drought-tolerant NABE15 bean seed variety from local farmers. The company is able to guarantee the purchase of a certain volume, and take on the costs of trading this seed internationally. NABE15 is currently being sold to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, for distribution to Sudanese refugees.
Staying ahead of consumer demand
Capitalising on evolving consumer demands relies on market research. As diets shift in Africa, PABRA has been conducting research to understand malnutrition levels, where families source food, and how much they pay for it. This generates a deeper understanding of which nutrients are a priority for consumers, and how to price products. Recently, we have worked with Kenyan food company Azuri Health to determine the answers to these questions before the launch of their brand new “nutri-porridge flour”, a nutritious product made from bean and amaranth. A good grasp of what consumers want not only now, but in the future, will help African entrepreneurs sell to them more successfully.
By taking a corridor approach and pinpointing where production, distribution and consumption hubs of pulses and oilseeds in Africa can be strengthened, we can ensure African farmers and entrepreneurs are able to capitalise on the market boom for these products. The potential is vast, and by working together, we can make this vision a reality.
Dr. Robin Buruchara is the Director of the Pan African Bean Research Alliance (PABRA) | <urn:uuid:f3a99d22-231a-44f3-8a26-bb3650aaab2d> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://allafrica.com/stories/201810030716.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627999946.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20190625192953-20190625214953-00489.warc.gz | en | 0.934625 | 834 | 2.65625 | 3 |
Idiom Stories V1-HSK 4-HSK 6 Intermediate Chinese Reading — Enrich your Language using Chinese Idiom (proverb or set phrase) for HSK 4- HSK 6 -VOLUME 1 中级汉语阅读 – 成语故事 Story 01-25
Chinese Idiom (proverb or set phrase) is the long-established, concise, stereotyped phrase or phrase that people have used. Most of the Chinese idioms consist of four characters and they all have their origins. Some idioms are not difficult to understand in literal terms, such as “小题大做 Literally meaning is: small problem big do; which means: fuss of a trifle” Some idioms must know the sources or allusions to understand their meanings, such as the “朝三暮四 Literally meaning is ” Morning three night four”, What is the real meaning? Let’s we continue our journey.
A Chinese idiom story will not only tell you the meaning of a phrase, but also help you learn more about ancient Chinese culture. This course is perfect for intermediate level learners to peek into Chinese culture, thought and history, in addition to improving language.
The whole set of Chinese Culture Stories includes around 1000 articles, dividing into | <urn:uuid:c3854efd-d488-4358-b349-3435b63a1f61> | CC-MAIN-2021-39 | http://www.coursedee.com/100-off-idiom-stories-v1-hsk-4-hsk-6-intermediate-chinese-reading/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-39/segments/1631780057558.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20210924140738-20210924170738-00411.warc.gz | en | 0.866273 | 284 | 4.09375 | 4 |
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By CP Editorial Staff
January 2008 -
Energy Efficiency Article Use Policy
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has established regulations that require new Federal buildings to achieve at least 30 percent greater energy efficiency over prevailing building codes.
Mandated by the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPAct), the standards apply to new federal commercial and multi-family high-rise residential buildings, as well as new federal low-rise residential buildings designed for construction that began on or after January 3, 2007. These standards are also 40 percent more efficient than the current Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) and carry out portions of President Bush’s executive order, which directed federal agencies to reduce energy intensity and greenhouse gas emissions; substantially increase use and efficiency of renewable energy technologies; and adopt sustainable design practices.
Over the course of the next ten years, these standards are estimated to save $776 million dollars (in 2004 dollars) and more than 40 trillion British thermal units of energy, while reducing emissions by an estimated 2 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. Specifically, these standards replace existing Federal building energy efficiency standards found in 10 CFR Part 434 (for commercial and high-rise multi-family residential buildings) and 10 CFR Part 435 Subpart C (for low-rise residential buildings).
These new standards are based on the American National Standards Institute (ANSI)/ American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE)/ Illuminating Engineering Society of North America (IESNA) Standard 90.1-2004 for commercial and high-rise multi-family residential buildings and the 2004 version of the International Code Council (ICC) International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) for low-rise residential buildings.
“Dramatically elevating building efficiency standards to these unprecedented levels substantially transforms the way the federal government manages and uses energy,” says Andy Karsner, DOE Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. “These standards contribute to sound and stable efficiency policy that will yield real, substantive energy savings and reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.”
There are three key features of these new standards that differentiate them from previous federal building energy efficiency standards. First, new federal standards are based directly on updated prevailing voluntary sector standards in effort to maximize resources and take advantage of improvements in those voluntary sector standards. Second, new federal standards seek improvements above and beyond those of the voluntary sector standards through consideration of and entire building’s performance, rather than on prescriptive requirements for individual building components and systems. This approach aims to provide the maximum amount of flexibility to federal agencies and their design teams as they address the requirements of these new standards. Third, new Federal standards require at least 30 percent energy savings over the prevailing voluntary sector standard. Achieving this level of savings will likely require Federal agencies and their design teams to use an integrated design approach for new buildings. | <urn:uuid:c27cda2b-0cbc-4161-9b52-75122d3c2a4f> | CC-MAIN-2017-13 | http://www.facilitiesnet.com/energyefficiency/article/Energy-Department-Finalizes-Regulations-to-Increase-Energy-Efficiency-in-New-Federal-Buildings--8149 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-13/segments/1490218189239.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20170322212949-00420-ip-10-233-31-227.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.925462 | 622 | 2.75 | 3 |
The eyes are complex organs, with many parts that must work together to produce clear vision. Here is a basic overview of eye anatomy.
The cornea is a layer of clear tissue at the front of the eye that helps focus light.
Located at the corner of each eye, tear ducts drain tears secreted by the lacrimal gland to the surface of the eye. Tears keep the cornea lubricated and clear of debris.
Iris and Pupil
The colored part of the eye is the iris. It is a muscle that controls the pupil, the opening in the middle of the eye that controls the amount of light coming in.
Lens and Retina
The lens is behind the pupil and focuses light onto the retina, the light-sensitive cells on the back of the eyeball. Acting much like the film in a camera, the retina converts images into electrical signals that are sent to the optic nerve.
The optic nerve is a thick bundle of nerve fibers attached to the back of the eye that transmits visual information from the retina to the brain.
When Things Go Wrong
Problems or malfunctions in any of eye parts cause many common eye conditions.
When light is not focused properly, it causes blurry vision. Refractive errors can usually be corrected with glasses, contacts, or surgery. They include:
- myopia (nearsightedness), which is when far-away objects look blurry
- hyperopia (farsightedness), which is when close-up objects look blurry
- astigmatism, which can result in blurry vision because the cornea is not perfectly shaped to direct light into the eye
- presbyopia, which is farsightedness caused by the loss of elasticity of the eye’s lens due to aging
Glaucoma is increased pressure of the fluid inside the eye, which can cause optic nerve damage. Glaucoma is a common cause of blindness, particularly in diabetic patients.
Cataract is a clouding of the lens, causing blurry or color-tinted vision. People with cataracts often report “haloes” surrounding objects that they are looking at, particularly at night. It is most common in older people, and cataracts can be removed by surgery that replaces the lens with an artificial lens.
Age-Related Macular Degeneration
Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is gradual damage to the cells of the macula. This condition is most common in people over 60 years old. It causes blurry vision, especially in the center of the field of view. According to the Foundation Fighting Blindness, AMD is the leading cause of blindness among people over age 55 in the United States.
Commonly referred to a "lazy eye," amblyopia occurs when one eye has worse vision than the other, and the brain begins to favor the better eye. This will occur if one of the eyes is blocked from producing clear images during the critical years from ages 0 to 6. One eye may be inhibited by problems such as a lid droop, tumor, or crossed eyes (strabismus) that are not fixed when a child is young. It is crucial to have young children evaluated by an eye doctor in order to ensure that subtle signs of amblyopia are not present.
Diabetic retinopathy is damage to the blood vessels of the retina caused by diabetes. It causes blurred or dark spots in the field of vision and will eventually lead to blindness. The best way to avoid these vision problems is to keep your blood sugars under control and see your eye doctor every year for a dilated eye exam.
Retinal Detachment or Tear
A tear in or detachment of the retina causes blurry vision or partial loss of vision.
Dry Eye Syndrome
Dry eye is a lack of proper tears, usually due to a problem with the tear ducts or eyelids, or a problem with certain medications. This condition can cause pain and blurry vision. | <urn:uuid:69e910c0-1b4c-4ad8-942b-9e5e49a06788> | CC-MAIN-2014-41 | http://www.healthline.com/health/eye-health | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-41/segments/1412037663762.45/warc/CC-MAIN-20140930004103-00308-ip-10-234-18-248.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931355 | 822 | 3.90625 | 4 |
A year and a half ago, Turkish Finance Minister Naci Agbal voiced reservations about selling off publicly owned sugar plants, which had long been slated for privatization. Speaking in the rural province of Corum in September 2016, Agbal stressed that the chain of production in sugar plants involved local sugar beet suppliers, meaning that whole communities living on agriculture could be affected. “When it comes to privatizing sugar factories, one has to think 40 times,” he said.
Whether the government thought it over 40 times remains unknown, but on Feb. 20, the Prime Ministry Privatization Administration announced its intention to sell off some of the 25 plants of the publicly owned Turkish Sugar Factories Company (Turkseker).
According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, Turkey accounts for 7% of global sugar beet production, which makes it the world’s sixth-largest producer after the United States, France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine. The country produces about 2.6 million tons of sugar from sugar beets annually, half of which comes from Turkseker factories and the other half from the plants of the Pankobirlik cooperative.
The Privatization Administration said it would sell off 14 factories — most of them in relatively poor regions in central and eastern Turkey — and invited bids from April 3-18. The plan triggered harsh objections from a wide range of quarters — factory employees and their trade unions, local communities, sugar beet producers, opposition parties and consumers across the nation. The scale of the protests is likely to grow in the coming days.
The initial decision to privatize the sugar factories dates to 2000, two years before the Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power. In 2008, the AKP government placed the factories on its privatization program. A decade has passed since then, and although public assets worth some $70 billion were privatized in the meantime, the sell-off of the sugar factories was delayed. Why?
First, Ankara was wary of public outcry due to the move’s potential impact on various groups involved in the industrial and agricultural connections of the sector as well as the risks that could arise in terms of consumer issues.
Another problem stemmed from the diverse profile of the plants slated for privatization. A legacy of the early years of the modern Turkish republic, the sugar factories were among the three pillars — “the three whites” — of the First Industry Plan, inaugurated in 1934 to promote import-substituting industrial development, based on raw materials. The plan encouraged sugar beet growing and sugar production, and included similar measures for the two other “whites” — wheat (flour) and cotton (textile).
The first factories built under the program were profitable facilities, located in regions such as Alpullu, Usak, Eskisehir and Turhal, where sugar beet production was thriving. In time, however, sugar factories came to be seen as a vanguard to spread the industrial drive to underdeveloped, impoverished provinces. As a result, the sugar industry acquired a dual character. While some factories operated profitably, others remained inefficient, functioning as a source of employment and social benefits in underdeveloped areas that lacked even adequate sugar beet crops.
The factories in the Pankobirlik cooperative have been operating rather successfully, which shows that, with some effort, Turkseker could also become a profitable public enterprise with no economic burden for the government.
Since 2000, however, the sector has received none of the modernization and automation investments it needs to acquire a sustainable structure, a point highlighted also in a number of official reports. Yet despite the lack of investment, the consolidated balance sheets of the 25 factories speak of an enterprise that is not in the red as a whole, though it is not making big profits either.
In the past two years, the budget deficit troubles of the government have notably worsened, amplifying the need for more revenues from privatization. Having sold numerous public lands and buildings, the government has now turned to the sugar factories.
The privatization of Turkseker will have implications for many actors in the sector and could result in significant changes in terms of nutrition and dietary habits.
One of the biggest concerns is that the privatized sugar factories could end up closed or out of the market, as occurred with other privatized facilities in the past. For example, the cigarette plant in Tokat was shut down in 2009, a year after being privatized, even though the sell-off provisions stipulated it should remain operational for at least five years. The same condition applies for the 14 sugar factories on the line; buyers will be free to claim losses and close the facilities after five years.
The closure fears lie at the core of another concern, namely that the market share of starch-based sugar, whose impact on human health has been controversial, would increase. Gokhan Gunaydin, former head of the Agricultural Engineers Chamber and now a high-ranking member of the main opposition Republican People’s Party, is among critics who see an array of downsides, both in terms of health and economics. In a Feb. 26 interview with an online journal, Gunaydin said, “The factories producing starch-based sugar use corn to make sugar. Corn production in Turkey has notably increased, but still we import about 1.5 million tons of corn per year, and almost all of it is genetically modified corn.”
He said foreign companies control 75% of factories producing starch-based sugar in Turkey, implying they would be among the prime beneficiaries if the Turkseker factories exit the market.
Some critics blame starch-based sugar for the increasing prevalence of obesity in the United States. This is another reason stoking concerns over the future of sugar supplies in Turkey, where obesity affects 30% of the population and is as high as 41% among women, according to the Health Ministry.
In sum, the privatization plan has met nationwide objections, posing risks and uncertainties not only for factory employees and sugar beet producers but also for consumers in general. Earlier privatizations, especially of meat and milk enterprises, have led to serious food supply problems, which continue to profoundly affect consumers. Public pressure is now on the rise to avoid the repetition of similar mistakes in the sugar sector. Time will show whether the AKP will lend an ear to the criticism, but the controversy is not likely to die down soon. | <urn:uuid:44d804d5-1a90-43ad-a2bb-e68faa93d1ec> | CC-MAIN-2019-30 | http://mustafasonmez.net/turkeys-sugar-privatization-faces-bitter-opposition-al-monitor-march-1-2018/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-30/segments/1563195524879.8/warc/CC-MAIN-20190716201412-20190716223412-00040.warc.gz | en | 0.96326 | 1,306 | 2.578125 | 3 |
Barcode vs QR Code | Barcode vs Quick Response Code
Barcode and QR codes are methods of storing data using geometrical figures, which can be read using optical devices.
Barcode refers to a method of storing data using geometrical figures. The basic technology of the barcodes was developed in the 1970`s in United States, and became popular in 1980`s for the purpose of tagging goods with product information that can easily be read and recorded by means of computers.
Initial barcodes were one dimensional barcodes, where the code is a series of black stripes in white background. This particular pattern was inspired by the Morse code, where long and short dashes are used; therefore, it is best described as an optical Morse code. The optical detection methods for the code were based on the optical soundtracks used in movies.
There are numerous ways in which these lines can be arranged to represent a detail; a standard for these arrangements to represent details and figures is known as symbology. Universal Product Code (UPC/EAN), Interleaved 2 of 5 (I of 5), Codabar, Code 39, and Code 128 are examples for the symbologies used in barcodes. Symbology specification documents the standard that contains:
• Definition for the width of the bars and spaces.
• Method for defining each encodable characters (whether numeric only or full ASCII).
• The free space required for undisturbed reading of the code.
• Start and stop characters for the code.
• Check character support for the code
For reading barcodes a barcode scanner is used, where reflected light from the barcode is measured and interpreted inside a computer; computer converts the code into human language using the symbology.
Barcodes are very popular in supermarkets where product information can be stored easily and accessed fast, which help to speed up the processes. Postal services around the world use barcodes. Barcodes are relatively inexpensive, and help businesses enhance speed and efficiency. Therefore shipping lines, couriers and many other industries use it.
Barcode can be developed to use geometrical patterns, such as squares and hexagons, other than stripes. This method is known as two dimensional barcodes, where the heights of the symbols also carry information, not only the width.
QR code is a two dimensional barcode system developed by Denso wave (a subsidiary corporation of Toyota) to track vehicles during the manufacturing. QR code stands for Quick Response Code. It is adopted by ISO and now has become a global standard for storing product information.
They have a square appearance because information is stored both vertically and horizontally. Therefore, the capacity of the QR codes is much higher than the barcodes and can store thousands of alphanumeric codes.
What is the difference between Barcode and QR Code (Quick Response Code)?
• Both barcode and QR code are ways of storing information using geometric figure so they can be retrieved by optical devices.
• Usually barcode refers to a single dimensional barcode while QR code is a type of a 2-dimensional barcode.
• Barcodes store information vertically only, whereas QR codes store information both horizontally and vertically.
• QR code has a larger capacity for storing information than the barcode.
• Barcodes can store only alphanumeric data, whereas QR codes can store alphanumeric characters, other language symbols, pictures, voice, and other binary information.
• QR has no data correction while barcode has data correction.
• Barcode depends on the database while QR code is independent of the database requirements. | <urn:uuid:fd01dadf-02fa-4697-86a5-733b48049f7a> | CC-MAIN-2017-17 | http://www.differencebetween.com/difference-between-barcode-and-vs-qr-code/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-17/segments/1492917123276.44/warc/CC-MAIN-20170423031203-00489-ip-10-145-167-34.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.910748 | 738 | 3.421875 | 3 |
If you need a liver and live in Boston, your chance of getting one in time is about 53 percent. Drive a couple of hours southwest to Connecticut, and your chances jump to 85 percent.
The difference is encapsulated in the national organ transplant map, which divides the U.S. into self-contained districts of organ allocation. Among other factors, areas with lots of highways—and the accompanying traffic fatalities that make healthy organs available for transplant—will generally have a shorter wait time.
With optimization techniques used to draw political districts, a group of researchers from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine has found a potential path to help correct the liver imbalance. The researchers have proposed a redrawn map that levels the odds of receiving a liver throughout the country. A similar approach could possibly help curb inequities for other organs as well.
“By using an optimized map, we would be able to cut geographic disparities in liver allocation in half,” says study author Dorry Segev, a transplant surgeon at Johns Hopkins. In the name of fairness, some areas' chances would improve, whereas others would fall: a 79 percent chance of receiving a liver before a patient dies in Miami would drop to a 72 percent chance under the new proposal, but in New York City a 56 percent chance would improve to 68 percent. (A host of factors, including a region's organ donation rates, help to shape the odds.)
The current donation system, run by the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), offers some recourse to patients in areas with long wait times. Someone in New York City, for instance, can put her name on multiple waiting lists and, if she is healthy enough to travel, can hop on a plane if and when an organ becomes available in Tennessee. Unfortunately, the cost and complexity of long-distance travel, compounded by the logistical obstacles of working with multiple transplant teams, ensure that only 4.4 percent of the almost 16,000 people on the liver transplant list do so.
UNOS says that it is exploring how it could employ Segev's methods, if not his particular map, to tweak its system in the future and better allocate livers throughout the country. The Johns Hopkins team hopes that the liver map will inspire a new distribution system for other vital organs as well. That could truly be some lifesaving technology. | <urn:uuid:bcaba8f2-3d27-48b4-9417-ebfe20ea8e84> | CC-MAIN-2017-34 | https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/researchers-aim-to-level-the-playing-field-for-patients-awaiting-new-livers/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-34/segments/1502886102393.60/warc/CC-MAIN-20170816191044-20170816211044-00181.warc.gz | en | 0.948067 | 477 | 2.8125 | 3 |
The reported prevalence of peanut allergy among children in the United States has increased more than 3-fold in the last 20 years. Medical guidelines on the introduction of peanut as well as other allergenic foods have evolved with the emerging evidence that an early introduction to these foods is more beneficial than a delayed introduction. This review highlights the studies that have led to the evolving guidelines on peanut introduction in infants.
The prevalence of peanut allergy has increased despite the publication of guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics in 2000, which recommended a delayed introduction of peanut. Since the 2000 guidelines, studies have provided evidence to support an earlier rather than delayed introduction. As a result, the American Academy of Pediatrics updated their guidelines in 2008 to promote peanut introduction during infancy. Current evidence continues to support the benefits of an earlier rather than delayed introduction.
Conclusions and Relevance
Over the years, guidelines on the introduction of peanut have evolved, and recent literature suggests that an earlier rather than delayed introduction is beneficial to prevent peanut allergies in infants.
Anvari S, Chokshi NY, Kamili QUA, Davis CM. Evolution of Guidelines on Peanut Allergy and Peanut Introduction in InfantsA Review. JAMA Pediatr. 2017;171(1):77-82. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2016.2552 | <urn:uuid:144efa46-7750-4d1f-9764-96badf7d68b6> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/article-abstract/2580310 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560285337.76/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095125-00196-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.913223 | 270 | 3.28125 | 3 |
Understanding software architecture
While creating software architecture is a very creative activity which I really enjoy, analyzing existing software systems is much harder and happening frequently.
There are several reasons for this observation:
- Often, the designed and the implemented architecture differ dramatically. In these cases, the documents are nothing than fairy tales.
- In some cases, I am encountering a kind of documentation hell. The information surely can be found somewhere, but it is almost impossible to figure out what could be the right document. I am here to find not to search.
- Another “highlight” are insufficient abstraction levels in the documentation. No one can read end even less persons can understand an architecture document that covers 1000 pages. Likewise, the other extreme isn’t helpful. For example, I once received a software architecture document consisting of one page filled with UML diagrams.
- What I really dislike are documents that only show the WHAT but not the WHY. However, I definitely need to know the rationale of all those decisions. All design pears that pop up from the void of the universe are worthless to all those mediocre reviewers who must understand them.
So how you could approach such an endeavor.
- Firstly, get an idea about the domain, the development organization and the business, that is, the ecosystem, in which the software system lives.
- Get an overview of the coarse grained architecture, from the user view and the developer view. I prefer strategic architecture design documents, guidelines, programming conventions, presentation slides, and even marketing material for this purpose.
- Get a knowledge about the tools and technologies of the solution domains that have been used.
- Interview some designers and developers in order to understand the implemented architecture (and the designed architecture) as well as its weaknesses and strengths. The more documents additionally capture the design essence the better. Both information sources will provide you with a good idea about the architecture.
- Use architecture analysis tools to understand the internal quality of the systems (and also its pain points).
- Try to change or implement yourself in the codebase of the system to stay close to the ground and thus to reality.
- At the end, you should yourself be able to explain the architecture to other persons.
Basically, what you need to do to understand an existing software system is similar to conducting the first phases of an architecture review.
Don’t be shy and ask any questions that come to your mind. Often, these Q&A settings help architects figure out potential problems in their design, and help you understand the architecture. So, it can lead to a Win-Win situation. | <urn:uuid:03d30e64-b299-4665-b439-09d76df6d89d> | CC-MAIN-2015-35 | http://stal.blogspot.com/2010/11/understanding-software-architecture.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-35/segments/1440645294817.54/warc/CC-MAIN-20150827031454-00022-ip-10-171-96-226.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936082 | 535 | 2.515625 | 3 |
As these tribes are usually mentioned together they may be treated in the same manner. It is doubtful if they, or at least the Eno and Shoccoree, were of Siouan stock, as they seem to have differed in physique and habit from their neighbors; but as nothing is left of their language, and as their alliances were all with Siouan tribes, they cannot well be discriminated. Little is known of them, for they disappeared as tribal bodies about 1720, having been incorporated either with the Catawba on the south or with the Saponi and their confederates on the north.
The Eno and Shoccoree are first mentioned by Yardley in 1654. Writing from his Virginia plantation he says that a visiting Taskarora had described to him, among other tribes in the interior, “a great nation called Cacores,” of dwarfish stature, not exceeding that of boys of 14 years, yet exceedingly brave and fierce in fight and extremely active in retreat, so that even the powerful Tuskarora were unable to conquer them. Near them was another “great nation” whom the Tuskarora called Haynoke, by whom the northern advance of the Spaniards was valiantly resisted.1 From this it appears that the Eno were then at war with the Tuskarora, and that the Spaniards had advanced from the gold regions of the southern Alleghanies central North Carolina.
The next mention of these two tribes is by Lederer, who found them in 1672 living south of the Occaneechi about the heads of Tar and Neuse rivers. The general locality is still indicated in the names of Eno river and Shocco creek, upper branches of these streams. In the name Shoccoree, the name proper is Shocco, ree or ri being the demonstrative suffix of the Catawba and closely cognate languages, the same that appears in Usheree, Uharee, and Enoree, the last-named river perhaps taking its designation from the Eno tribe.
Lederer found the villages of the two tribes about 14 miles apart, the Eno the farther eastward. The Eno village was surrounded by large fields cleared by the industry of the Indians, and was itself built around a central field or plaza devoted to an athletic game described by the traveler as “slinging of stones,” in which “they exercise with so much labor and violence and in so great numbers that I have seen the ground wet with the sweat that dropped from their bodies.” He agrees with Yardley as to their small size, but not as to their bravery or other good qualities, stating that “they are of mean stature and courage, covetous and thievish, industrious to earn a penny, and therefore hire themselves out to their neighbors who employ them as carryers or porters. They plant abundance of grain, reap three crops in a summer, and out of their granary supply all the adjacent parts.” The character thus outlined accords more with that of the peaceful Pueblos than with that of any of our eastern tribes, and goes far to indicate a different origin. Their house building also was different from that of their neighbors, but resembled that of the mountain Indians. Instead of building their houses of bark, like the Virginia and Carolina Indians generally, they used branches interwoven and covered with mud or plaster. Some huts were built of reeds (canes) and park. They were usually round instead of long as among the coast tribes. Near every house there was a smaller structure, somewhat resembling an oven, in which they stored corn and nuts. This is identical with the unwatali or provision house of the Cherokee. In summer they slept under leafy arbors. The government was democratic and patriarchal, the decisions of their old men being received with unquestioning obedience. The Shoccoree resembled the Eno in their general customs and manners.2)
In 1701 Lawson found the Eno and Shoccoree, now confederated, with the addition of the Adshusheer, in the same location. Their village, which he calls Adshusheer, was on Eno River, about 14 miles east of the Occaneechi village, near the present Hillsboro. This would, place it not far northeast of Durham, in Durham county, North Carolina. Eno Will, a Coree by birth, was the chief of the three tribes. He entertained the party in most hospitable fashion at Adshusheer, singing them to sleep with an Indian lullaby, and afterwards guided them from the Occaneechi to near the white settlements on Albemarle Sound. Lawson describes him as “one of the best and most agreeable temper that ever I met with in an Indian, being always ready to serve the English, not out of gain, but real affection.”
They kept poultry, but, so Lawson thought, largely for the purpose of sacrifice to the devil. They had not forgotten their old game mentioned by Lederer, which may now be recognized as the universal wheel-and-stick game of the eastern and southern tribes; for Lawson says in his narrative that they were ” much addicted to a sport they call Chenco, which is carried on with a staff and a bowl made of stone, which they trundle upon a smooth place like a bowling green, made for that purpose.”
At this tune the Shoccoree seem to have been the principal tribe. They had some trade with the Tuskarora. Later (about 1714), with the Tutelo, Saponi, Occaneechi, and Keyauwee, together numbering only about 750 souls, they moved toward the settlements. Lawson includes Eno in his list of Tuskarora villages at this period, and as the Eno lived on the Neuse adjoining the Tuskarora, it is probable that they were sometimes classed with them.3 In 1716 Governor Spotswood, of Virginia, proposed to settle the Eno, Sara, and Keyauwee at Eno Town, on what was then “the very frontiers” of North Carolina; but the project was defeated by North Carolina on the ground that all three tribes were then at war with South Carolina.4 From the records it cannot be determined clearly whether this was the Eno Town of Lawson in 1714, or a more recent village nearer the Albemarle settlements.
Owing to the objection made to their settlement in the north the Eno moved southward into South Carolina. They probably assisted the other tribes of that region in the Yamasi war of 1715. At least a few of the mixed tribe found their way into Virginia with the Saponi, as Byrd speaks of an old Indian, called Shacco Will, living near Nottoway river in 1733, who offered to guide him to a mine on Eno river near the old country of the Tuskarora.5 The name of Shocco (Shockoe) creek, at Richmond, Virginia, may possibly have been derived from the same tribe. The main body was finally incorporated with the Catawba, among whom the Eno still retained their distinct dialect in 1743.6 The name of Enoree river in South Carolina may have a connection with the name of the tribe.
Eené.-Adair, History of the American Inds., 1775, p. 224.
Enoc.-Lawson (1714), History of Carolina, reprint 1860, p. 97.
Haynokes.-Yardley (1654) in Hawks, North Carolina, 1858, vol. ii, p. 19.
Oenock (or (Enock).-Lederer, Discoveries, 1672, p. 15.
Cacores.-Yardley (1654) in Hawks, North Carolina, 1858, vol. ii, p. 19.
Shahor.-Ibid., map (misprint).
Shacco.-Byrd (1733), Hist. of the Dividing Line, 1866, vol. ii, p. 2.
Shackory.-Ibid., p. 15.
Shakor.-Lederer, Discoveries, 1672, map.
Shoccories.-Lawson (1714), History of Carolina, reprint, 1860, p. 97.
Adshusheer.-Lawson, ibid., p. 95.
Hawks, F. L. History of North Carolina: with maps and illustrations, etc. Third edition, Yardles, 1654, vol. ii, p. 19. Two volumes. Fayetteville, N. C., vol. i, 1859, vol. ii, 1858. ↩
Lederer, John. The discoveries of John Lederer, in three several marches from Virginia to the west of Carolina, and other parts of the continent. Begun in March, 1669, and ended in September, 1670. Together with a general map of the whole territory which he traversed. Collected and translated out of Latin from his discourse and writings, by Sir William Talbot, baronet, etc. London, etc. 1672, p. 15. Map and 33 pages. (Copy in Library of Congress. ↩
Lawson, John. The history of Carolina, containing the exact description and natural history of that country, etc., pp. 95-101, 383-4. (Reprint from the London edition of 1714.) Raleigh, 1860. ↩
North Carolina. The Colonial Records of North Carolina, published under the supervision of the trustees of the public libraries, by order of the general assembly, North Carolina Council (1716) vol. ii, pp. 242-3. Collected and edited by William L. Saunders, secretary of state. 10 vols. Raleigh, 1886-1890. ↩
Byrd, William. History of the dividing line between Virginia and North Carolina, as run in 1728-’29, vol. ii, p. 2. Richmond, 1866. 2 volumes. ↩
Adair, James. The history of the American Indians, particularly those nations adjoining to the Mississippi, east and west Florida, Georgia, South and North Carolina, and Virginia, etc., p. 224. London, 1775. ↩ | <urn:uuid:12622855-d1a0-4bf1-9cbc-00f747b6ce05> | CC-MAIN-2015-11 | http://www.accessgenealogy.com/native/the-eno-shoccoree-and-adshusheer-indians.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-11/segments/1424936464088.46/warc/CC-MAIN-20150226074104-00329-ip-10-28-5-156.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966847 | 2,166 | 3.546875 | 4 |
ASTM International ASTM D Tearing Strength of Fabric by . ASTM International. D Breaking Strength/Elongation Grab Method. ASTM D is a testing standard for determining the breaking strength and elongation of woven, non-woven, and felted fabrics and textiles. ASTM D is a popular testing standard for those needing to determine the breaking strength and elongation of fabrics and textiles.
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Glossary of Materials Testing Terms. Active view current version of standard. They are designed with standard and optional features that increase testing efficiency and improve the testing experience for the operator.
The average results from the two laboratories should be compared using Student’s t -test for unpaired data and an acceptable probability level chosen by the two parties before testing is begun. This standard mainly applies to most woven textile fabrics, but can be applicable to fabrics produced by other techniques. Work Item s – proposed revisions of this standard. Link to Active This link will always route to the current Active version of the standard. Pneumatic side action grips with rubber coated jaw faces are well suited for clamping of the grab specimens.
The values stated in each system may not be exact equivalents; therefore, each system must be used independently of the other, without combining in any way.
ASTM D Breaking Strength and Elongation of Textile Fabrics Grab Test – Instron
The values stated in each system may not be exact equivalents; therefore, each system must be used independently of the other, without combining in any way. Referenced Documents purchase separately The documents listed below are referenced within the subject standard but are not provided as part of the standard. If a bias is found, either its cause must be found and corrected, or the purchaser and the supplier must agree to interpret future test results aztm light of the known bias.
Grab test specimens require much less time to prepare although they require more fabric per specimen. Onsite Training At Your Facility. Discover simpler and smarter testing with features such as pre-loaded test methods, QuickTest in seconds, enhanced data exporting: The breaking force determined by the grab procedure is not a reflection of the strength of the yarns actually gripped between clamps and cannot be used for direct comparison with yarn strength determinations.
This test method is particularly applicable to high-strength fabrics. There ashm no simple relationship between grab tests and strip tests since the awtm of fabric assistance depends on the type of fabric and construction variables. Historical Version s – view previous versions of standard. Even then the data may differ significantly. Inch-pound units is the technically correct asgm for the customary units used in the United States.
Check this box to receive pertinent commercial email from Instron focusing on products, upcoming events, and more! Referenced Documents purchase separately The documents listed below are referenced within the subject standard but are not provided as part of the standard. Zstm LE for Basic Testing. Email addresses must contain the symbol. For this test, it is important to have an increased test data rate to ensure the capture a high number of data points.
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ASTM D5034 Textile Strength and Elongation Grab Test
This is because when individual fibers within the fabric fail, the data rate must be fast enough to catch these peaks. For the determination of the breaking force and elongation of textile fabrics using the raveled strip test procedure and the cut strip test procedure, refer to Test Method D SI units is the technically correct name for the system of metric units known as the International System of Units.
Rapid data capture rate Specimen gripping Instron’s Solution: Bluehill Universal Brochure Bluehill Universal Software is built from the ground-up for touch interaction and an intuitive user experience.
Bluehill Universal Software is built from the ground-up for touch interaction and an intuitive user experience. Provisions are made for wet testing. Note 1—For the determination of the breaking force and elongation of textile fabrics using the raveled strip test procedure and the cut strip test procedure, refer to Test Method D Concrete, Asphalt and Rock.
Please confirm that you agree with our privacy and cookies policy to submit this form. Adjustable grip pressure also allows users to fine-tune the gripping pressure to avoid jaw breaks or slippage.
It is important to review ASTM D in order to fully understand the test setup, procedure, and results requirements. The test specimens should d5304 be randomly assigned in equal numbers to each laboratory for testing.
Rapid data capture rate with Instron’s controller allows data peaks and valleys to be captured accurately at up to 2, points per aastm Instron pneumatic side action grips with rubber faces are well-suited to gripping nearly all types of fabric specimens for this test while maintaining high throughput It is important to review ASTM D in order to fully understand the test setup, procedure, and results requirements. | <urn:uuid:f9d65d90-a421-4710-bfa6-9313deb1f0d4> | CC-MAIN-2023-23 | https://crip-power.com/astm-d5034-87/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-23/segments/1685224645810.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20230530131531-20230530161531-00383.warc.gz | en | 0.891234 | 1,202 | 2.640625 | 3 |
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6 January 2010
I'm Korean and researcher who research about printing technology of Korea.
I found wrong information from your website at http://www.juliantrubin.com/bigten/gutenbergmovable.html
In the The Gutenberg Bible, there is this sentence which contains wrong information: Gutenberg’s name does not appear on any of his work, but he is generally accredited with the world’s first book printed by movable type.
Woodblock painting technique was developed in the 7-8 century China. Currently extant one is “The Mugujeonggwang daedaranigyeong” which was published in 751 AD Korea. With regard to the movable type printing technique, “Movable Type Printing” was invented by a Chinese, Pi Sheng, in 1041 and the movable metal type printing was invented in the 13th century Korea.
You can’t discuss or mention about movable metal type printing without Korean technology and Jikji book. You might not hear about Jikji book. Jikji book was printed by movable metal type in 1377 which is 75 years earlier than Gutenberg’s Bible. And according to many Korean documents, Koreans adopted Chinese movable type technology and finally invented movable metal type printing in early 12C. You can read more about this at Museum of Early Printing in Cheongju at http://www.jikjiworld.net.
I think you should add this sentence in your website : In Korea movable metal type printing was invented in the early 13th century. The oldest extant metal type printing is ‘Baegun Hwasang Chorok Buljo jikji simche yojeol,’ abbreviated to ‘Jikji,’ (the abbreviated title of a Korean Buddhist document) which was published in 1377 Cheongju, Korea, proves this fact.
Jikji book is recognized as the oldest metal type printed book by scholars and it is registered as documentary heritage by UNESCO. You can check that fact at http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/resources/
Jikji is definitely worthy documentary heritage to mention in your webpage. Please check the websites above and update your webpage and provide correct information to your users!
It’s only normal that nationals are willing to promote their county’s cultural and scientific heritage including important contributions to invention history.
I think you didn’t read my article carefully since I clearly mentioned that there is a historical controversy concerning the question “Who invented the movable type?” and there was mentioned Korea’s unique contribution.
The BBC’s article cited, also gives a good answer to this question, emphasizing that not always the first to introduce a technological process is also credited with the full fledged invention stemming from it.
As a matter of fact, that’s the case with the radio invention were Marconi, and not Tesla or others, is credited; the telephone invention where Bell, and not Elisha Gray, is credited and the inventions of the power grid system and light bulb by Edison and many other examples.
In our case the right question must be not “who is the first to print a book by movable type?” but “who is the one that first used movable type to bring books to every home?”
We think that the answer to this is Johannes Gutenberg.
More about this subject: | <urn:uuid:3020148b-d008-4236-a629-b1fd5244d3d9> | CC-MAIN-2018-17 | http://www.juliantrubin.com/letters/movable_type.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-17/segments/1524125946077.4/warc/CC-MAIN-20180423144933-20180423164933-00349.warc.gz | en | 0.9494 | 765 | 2.828125 | 3 |
Employee training and development programs are utilized in nearly every business and industry, although their implementation is much more crucial when positions involve working with hazardous materials or heavy machinery. Power generation training in particular is an important aspect of public safety in the workplace because it can help prevent accidents and injuries among all employees and even the general public.
When all your relevant staff members are properly trained about the basic safety procedures as well as the potential dangers of working with transformers, electricity, and other power systems, your entire operation will run smoothly. Users should learn about the proper maintenance routines that must be completed at regular intervals, as well as the appropriate tools, usage and care.
Substation safety is an important concern for workers throughout the property and these training sessions should include the expertise of a professional training company in the related field. An entire staff can only be fully effective and prepared for the task at hand if they have received the proper training and any necessary credentials related to the industry. Accidents are likely to happen when staff members are multitasking or focused on cross-training efforts before they are fully comfortable with their individual roles.
Other hands-on training positions include power cable splicing or grounding and bonding wires. These sensitive projects require not only a thorough working understanding of the task at hand, but also the correct equipment and supplies to complete each job safely.
Reviewing the federal and local safety codes is vital to any power generation training program that is offered on site or at external facility. A trainer should be able to fully address any questions that employees or foremen have on basic procedures, and should be ready to assess the readiness of a new training class to perform their required duties when work begins.
If your company requires power generator safety training, please don’t hesitate to give us a call! | <urn:uuid:502daa9a-f694-4700-a41c-4c3f35f82e8e> | CC-MAIN-2018-09 | https://www.rlnenergyservices.com/blog/kind-training-needed-effectively-operate-power-systems/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-09/segments/1518891813187.88/warc/CC-MAIN-20180221004620-20180221024620-00591.warc.gz | en | 0.958286 | 362 | 2.515625 | 3 |
France produces over 50% of the world’s lavender - although production has nearly halved in the last 10 years due to climate change. Grahame Martin charts the industry
LAVENDER gives the Provençal countryside its special bloom in summer but beyond its aesthetic charm is a strong industry producing goods from soaps and perfumes to insect repellent, as well as the tourist trade that revolves around it.
It faces two key challenges; a disease striking one of its key flowers and a somewhat frumpy image.
Michel Krausz, director of CPPARM (the quasi-governmental group controlling aromatic plants and herbs) in Manosque said: “France produces more than 50% of the world’s lavender but production has almost halved in the past 10 years, due to the development of a plant disease that has hit badly.”
The disease has targetted lavandin, the most popular species of lavender in the area. “Scientists and botanists are working on a solution in cooperation with counterparts in China and it is thought they are close to succeeding,” he added.
While in nature, fields of lavender are a big tourist draw, some of its final products suffer an image problem.
“Lavender still has the arty, cottage art, or older person image,” said Mr Krausz.
“What is needed is an upgrade with perhaps a pop-star or personality chef, or even a sports person involved in advertising the many uses of lavender.” He would not be drawn on names.
“Modernising and better advertising would be extremely beneficial to all, as well as helping the research and development that we are involved with here.”
There are about 30 species of lavender (botanical name lavandula) with flowers from purple, through pink to white. The French lavender industry is built on four of them – three pure Lavandula and one hybrid – with the king being lavandula augustiflora, which grows between 500 and 1500 metres in the dry, limestone soils of Provence and the Midi.
It is not the most prolific but it is, however, the only one allowed in the appellation d'origine contrôlée lavender, following a governmental decree on December 14, 1981.
The majority variety is lavandin – which was discovered by chance after an accidental crossing of two lavenders with the herb aspic. It can be grown from 200 to 1000 metres altitude.
Alongside lavandin the two other varieties are lavandula latifolia, which is frost resistant and grown mainly in the Midi, and lavandula stoechas – which is only found in the wild in the Maures and Estérel areas and is not cultivated.
The plant is native to north and east Africa, southern Europe, the Mediterranean, Arabia and India and is one of the family of aromatic herbaceous plants.
It was called Nardus in Greece after the Syrian city of Naarda, but the Romans gave it the more romantic or certainly more domestic name of Lavandula. That came from the Latin verb lavare (to wash) as the Roman upper class had a fetish about having scented water to use for their ablutions.
They carried lavender during their conquest of northern Europe and later planted it as far north as Scotland to allow their noble citizens to continue the custom.
Only the noble citizens could afford it as the dried aromatic seeds cost as much as a farm worker’s monthly wage for 500g. Now it is commonplace and has become a major player in agro-tourism, although production has been affected by climate change which has allowed a disease to attack plants – particularly lavandin.
The total area cultivated for lavandin is around 16,000 hectares with “pure” lavender accounting for a further 4,000 hectares.
About 2,000 people are directly involved in the production of lavender in all its forms plus about the same number again in ancillary supporting trades – product marketing, advertising, selling etc.
Manual harvesting of lavender is almost totally a thing of the past; with small and large machines now taking care of the harvest, from one the size of a small sit-on grass cutter, to others resembling large combined hay cutters and bailers.
Recent interest and development of production of essential oils has helped to further lavender production.
Mr Krausz added: “The biggest growth for the industry is, and continues to be, in agro-tourism. Farm visiting and farm holidays in the lavender-producing areas of Provence and southern France are becoming very popular with tourists from all over the world.”
Elsewhere, it has an array of uses in medicine, agriculture, the kitchen and, of course, in perfume.
There are many accounts of the curative powers of lavender and during the Second World War it was widely used as a disinfectant in hospitals and field stations as well as for a number of bacterial diseases, a remedy for bites, and even to help with sleep disorders. Its main use in agriculture is as a deterrent to a number of airborne insects that can decimate a farmer’s crops.
Specialist bee-keepers produce honey from bees living in hives around the fringes of lavender fields. It has a deliciously different smell and taste to that produced from bees taking their pollen from other areas like heathers and flowers.
French chefs, especially those whose speciality is Provence-style dishes, use both flowers and seeds in many preparations – from salads, and main courses, in Herbs de Provence, in gateaux as an ingredient or for decoration, and even in ice cream. There is also lavender tea.
Possibly the oldest use, from the Roman conquest days, is as a scent or perfume.
Believed to be of Arabic origin, the aromatic flowers are distilled in an alembic still and sold as oils and water into the perfume industry. 90% of the oil comes from the lavandin.
If you want to find out more or to visit some production sites you can get the map Routes de Lavande and the brochure (in English) Spirit of Lavender from: Les Routes de Lavende, 2, avenue de Veneterol, BP 36, 26100 Nyons Cedex. Tel 04 75 26 65 91 www.routes-lavande.com
Farms to visit
The best way to find out about lavender farming is to visit a lavender farm and shop and, as Mr Krausz put it “it has an infinitely better aroma than an animal farm, especially if there is a breeding billy goat about.”
Connexion visited two producers, one on the Plateau of Valensole (04), and a small Bio-Cert producer at La Faule (05). Both are family run and independent.
Famille Angelvin, Campagne Neuve, 04210 VALENSOLE
Telephone: 04 92 74 80 53
On the main road from Manosque to Valensole with lavender fields surrounding it, the lavender-coloured boutique is an absolute photo “must”. Mme Angelvin speaks French, English and Italian and offers a huge range of excellent products from their farm and, when working, a tour of the distillery. For groups there is also a film of the four seasons of lavender. The farm only sells “direct” to control quality on what they produce and market.
Famille Corréard, Les Pusteaux
05140 LA FAURIE
Tel 04 92 58 14 19
This 25 hectares farm is off the Sisteron-Grenoble road, near La Faurie. It has six hectares of lavender in bio-certified fields on the hills adjacent to the Buech river. The distillery has two stills, one oil-fired and the other using dried lavender stalks. During harvesting, and by appointment, it is possible to help in the still room. A cellar opposite the farm is used for the boutique. Again, the products are made from their own base material.
1st Century BC: Roman invasion and beginning of use of lavender in hygiene.
Middle Ages: Use of lavender by monasteries in medicine. Glove makers in Grasse also used lavender oil to ward off the Plague.
1939-1945: Lavender used in field hospitals in second world war as a cleansing agent and against insect and snake bites
1950s: Start of agro-tourism in lavender regions
1981: Lavender AOC for L. augustifolia
2000: Peak production, start of climate change problem, boom in agro-tourism.
2010: Tourist market grows, increase in development of specialist holidays | <urn:uuid:b0b29aad-0b64-4cbc-ab33-b581bb7c52d1> | CC-MAIN-2024-10 | https://www.connexionfrance.com/article/Archive/Lavender-s-unique-colour-and-smell | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2024-10/segments/1707947474544.15/warc/CC-MAIN-20240224180245-20240224210245-00877.warc.gz | en | 0.952455 | 1,867 | 2.53125 | 3 |
Presentation on theme: "Exploratory Data Analysis. John Tukey Developed these procedures to help one get a first look at distributions of scores. What is the shape of the distribution?"— Presentation transcript:
Exploratory Data Analysis
John Tukey Developed these procedures to help one get a first look at distributions of scores. What is the shape of the distribution? Are there any suspicious scores. Stem and Leaf Display Box and Whiskers Plot
Stem and Leaf Display See the pulse rate data at Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA).Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA) The scores range from 48 to 104. We probably want to group them into 5 to 15 intervals. I’ll use two intervals for the 40’s, two for the 50’s, etc.
The Stem Consists of a column of leading (aka “most significant” digits, the leftmost digits in the scores. I’ll add to the stem the leaves, the trailing (rightmost, least significant) digits of each score
The Stem With Leaves Next, I’ll arrange the leaves (within each row) from lowest to highest and add a “depth” column.
Leaves Arranged in Order
The Depth Column This column tells you how many scores there are in that row and all rows between it and the closer tail of the distribution. The row that contains the median has the row frequency in parentheses.
Rotated Display It looks like a histogram, but the bars made up of the scores. From this display, can you identify any scores that are odd, compared to most of the other scores?
Box and Whisker Plot Median Location = (N + 1)/2 = 97/2 =48.5. The median will be located between the 48 th and the 49 th scores from either tail.
Are 40 scores from 68 to 48. Count up 8 more scores, starting with the first 70. The 48 th score is a 70, the 49 th score is a 70, the median is 70.
The Hinge Location = (Median Location + 1)/2. Drop any decimal on the median location For our data, hinge location = (48 + 1)/2 = Now, the upper hinge is the 24.5 th score from the upper end of the distribution.
There are 24 scores from 80 up to 104. Go in toward the median one more score. The 25 th score from the highest is a 78. The upper hinge is ( )/2 = 79.
The 26 th score from the lowest score is a 64. Move towards the lower tail by one score and you see the 25 th score is also a 64. One more, the 24 th score is also a 64. The lower hinge is 64.
The H-Spread = the difference between the upper hinge and the lower hinge. For our data, = 15. This is the range of the middle 50% of the scores. You also know this as the interquartile range.
The Inner Fences The upper inner fence = the upper hinge plus 1.5 H ‑ spreads. For our data, (15) = The lower inner fence is the lower hinge minus 1.5 H ‑ spreads, (15) = These are invisible fences, they are not plotted.
Adjacent Values These are scores that are outside of the middle 50% of the scores but within the inner fences. For our data, these will be scores that fall –between 79 and or –between 41.5 and 64
Outliers These are scores that are beyond the inner fences. For our data, these are scores that are –Less than 41.5 or –Greater than 101.5
Outer Fences These invisible fences are 3 H-spreads beyond the hinges. For our data the lower outer fence is at (15) = 34 and the upper outer fence is at (15) = 124 Scores that are beyond the outer fences are called way-outliers.
Drawing the Plot Prepare a numerical scale. Draw a box that extends from the lower hinge to the upper hinge. Draw a line through the box at the median. May also insert a symbol at the mean. Draw whiskers out to the most extreme adjacent values on each side
Whiskers For our data, the lowest adjacent value is the 48, so we draw the whiskers on the lower end out to 48. We do not go all the way out the inner fence unless there is a score there. The highest adjacent value is a 99, so we draw whiskers on the upper end out to 99.
Outliers Every outlier is plotted with a special symbol, often a O for a regular outlier and an * for a way-outliers. Some programs will also print the identification number next to every outlier These days, we use statistical software to make these displays and plots rather than doing them by hand.
Plots Produced by SAS
How tall, in inches, is your ideal mate?
Eight Foot Tall Mate ! That is a WAY-OUTLIER for sure ! Investigation of the original data sheets revealed that the actual response was 69 inches, not 96 inches.
Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA) It is highly recommended that you read the document linked above. It includes additional examples and a bit of silliness that might help you remember key concepts. Do watch the video clip of the Id attempting to cross an outer fence on the Forbidden Planet. | <urn:uuid:ce645557-a531-4d31-a794-06e7b64d8440> | CC-MAIN-2016-50 | http://slideplayer.com/slide/3058245/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-50/segments/1480698542765.40/warc/CC-MAIN-20161202170902-00469-ip-10-31-129-80.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.909632 | 1,137 | 3.25 | 3 |
E.coli GI Infection
Commonly called E.coli, understand this infection of the large intestines.
What is Escherichia coli (E.coli)
Escherichia coli, most commonly called E.coli, refers to rod-shaped bacteria commonly found in the large intestines of humans and animals. Although most strains of E.coli do not cause serious illness, some strains can make people sick, causing severe stomach cramps, diarrhea, and vomiting.
In Canada, about 440 cases of intestinal E.coli infection are reported per year, costing Canadians $440 million in lost productivity and health care.
How can I prevent Escherichia coli (E.coli)?
- Hand washing is one of the best ways to prevent the spread of foodborne infections
- Use warm soapy water to clean knives, cutting boards, utensils, hands and any surfaces that may have come in contact with food – especially raw meats and fish
- Store raw meats in sealable containers on the lower shelf of the refrigerator to help prevent raw juices from contaminating other foods
- Keep raw meats away from other food when shopping
- Wash fresh fruits and vegetables with a dish brush before eating, but do not use soap or detergents
- Read labels for proper cooking and storage instructions
- Always check “best before” dates and discard any foods that have expired
- Refrigerate or freeze perishable food within two hours of cooking
- Freeze or eat leftovers within four days of cooking and be sure to reheat leftovers until steaming hot
- Keep your refrigerator clean and at a temperature below 4 °C
- Keep cold foods at or below 4 °C
- Keep hot foods hot; at or above 60 °C
How do I prevent Traveler’s Diarrhea?
- Discuss prevention and treatment options of traveler’s diarrhea with your healthcare provider 6 weeks before your departure
- Consider medication or an oral vaccine to protect yourself against travelers’ diarrhea prior to departure
- Wash your hands with soap under warm running water for at least 20 seconds before eating, after using the bathroom or interacting with animals
- Use alcohol-based hand sanitizer if soap and water are not available
- Avoid high-risk foods and beverages like undercooked meat or fish, fresh salads, raw vegetables, unpeeled fruits, cold sauces, unpasteurized dairy products and untreated water and ice cubes
- Avoid brushing your teeth with tap water – pour bottled water on your toothbrush
Signs and Symptoms
Some individuals infected with E.coli do not have symptoms and may inadvertently spread the bacteria to others.
E.coli infections typically begin three or four days after exposure.
Typical symptoms of an E.coli infection are:
- Severe stomach cramps;
- Diarrhea (often bloody);
- Vomiting; and fever Diagnosing an E.coli infection can be complicated because there are many other infections that share the same symptoms. Doctors can confirm E.coli by taking a stool sample to identify toxins produced by the bacteria.
Risks Associated with Escherichia coli (E.coli)
Dehydration is a potentially serious risk factor – especially in children, the elderly and those with suppressed immune systems. Symptoms of dehydration include decreased urination, dry mouth, dry throat, pallor and dizziness when standing. Children suffering from dehydration may cry with little to no tears, be lethargic or irritable.
Severe dehydration can be serious and may require re-hydration in a hospital. If you think you or someone under your care is dehydrated, contact your healthcare provider.
About 5 to 10 per cent of those who contract E.coli develop a condition called hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS). HUS is a rare kidney and blood disorder which can be fatal. Symptoms of HUS can include confusion, abnormal bleeding or bruising and seizures. HUS can also result in need for blood transfusion and kidney dialysis. Kidney damage from HUS can be permanent, so timely diagnosis and treatment is extremely important.
Tests and Treatments
Testing for E.coli
Diagnosing traveler’s diarrhea can be complicated because there are many infections that cause similar symptoms.
To confirm a case traveler’s diarrhea, physicians will order a stool sample that will be tested for toxins produced by the bacteria.
There is currently no treatment to cure an E.coli infection, but the infections generally settle on their own within a week or less. For most people, rest and intake of fluids to help prevent fatigue and dehydration are recommended.
Those who are infected are advised to avoid taking anti-diarrheal medication as diarrhea is the body’s mechanism of clearing the infection and associated toxins.
Antibiotics are not recommended because they can increase the risk of HUS by increasing the amount of toxin released from bacteria.
Prevention is your best medicine, especially when considering going on vacation in an area where access to clean water may be an issue.
Traveler’s diarrhea, which can be caused by E.coli, is the most common illness to affect those who travel abroad. Travelers are at higher risk when going to destinations with poor standards of hygiene and sanitation and/or eating at places with poor food handling practices.
Working collaboratively with your health care professional will help you protect your body from digestive diseases and maximize your digestive health. When you report your health status completely, concisely and accurately, your physician can provide you with the best care and treatment plan. Be sure to stay informed on ways to maintain your health and well-being, track and record your symptoms, and write down questions and concerns to discuss at your next appointment.
- There are hundreds of identified E. coli strains, resulting in a spectrum of disease from mild, self-limited gastroenteritis to renal failure and septic shock.1
- Diarrheal illness may come into effect as a result of E. coli, either watery or bloody. 1
- E. coli that causes diarrhea can be transmitted through contaminated food or water. 2
- In most cases, the illness can be resolved without treatment, but it can lead to life-threatening diseases including haemolytic uraemic syndrome (HUS), especially among the elderly and young children. 3
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I die from traveler’s diarrhea?
Traveler’s diarrhea is generally neither life threatening nor severe. Most bouts of the illness begin within the first week of travel and resolve on its their own within 3-5 days. When treating traveler’s diarrhea, the goal is to prevent dehydration, which can be of special concern for children, pregnant women, those with compromised immune systems, and the elderly.
If you are at increased risk for any of the reasons above, you should consult your family physician to discuss whether you should take a course of antibiotics with you to take if you have a bout of traveler’s diarrhea.
Can I take an antimotility drug?
Antimotility drugs, like Imodium or Lomotil, can reduce the amount of diarrhea you experience. If you decide to use this over-the-counter treatment, you should speak with your physician or pharmacist first. Diarrhea is one way the body rids itself of pathogens (microorganisms that cause disease) from the gastrointestinal tract. Taking these antimotility drugs may mean it takes the body longer to clear the pathogen.
Bismuth-containing medicines, such as Pepto-Bismol, may help with the diarrhea as bismuth has antibacterial properties.
Can I use tap water from the hotel to brush my teeth?
Using tap water to brush your teeth is best avoided as the water may be contaminated. To avoid getting sick, use bottled water when brushing your teeth; this is the best way to protect yourself.
How can I avoid Traveler’s Diarrhea when traveling abroad?
Three common ways to contract traveler’s diarrhea are through contaminated water, contaminated food and poor hygiene.
Water safety can be questionable, so it is important to avoid tap water as much as possible. Only drink boiled or bottled water and avoid ice cubes.
The food you eat can be contaminated. When traveling, try to select foods that are served hot and are completely cooked, avoid raw meats, eat fruits you can peel, and avoid raw leafy vegetables.
To avoid infecting yourself, try to clean your hands often, especially before eating. Use soap and water or a hand sanitizer and avoid touching your face and mouth.
I am travelling to a developing country and am afraid of developing traveller’s diarrhea. What can I do to protect myself?
People who visit foreign countries are at risk for traveler’s diarrhea, which is caused by eating food or drinking water contaminated with bacteria, viruses, or parasites. Although there are antibiotic prophylaxis available, they are not recommended in most cases. While you are travelling, wash your hands with warm, soapy water, drink bottled water and eat food that are served warm and cooked thoroughly. Try to avoid tap water (including ice), dairy products, raw vegetables, uncooked meats, and seafood. Foods that are usually safe to drink include hot coffee and tea, beer, wine and carbonated beverages. Fruits and vegetables that can be peeled are generally safe to eat.
If I get traveler’s diarrhea, how long will it last?
Most cases of traveler’s diarrhea are mild and typically last 3-5 days. However, some cases can become severe and may result in dehydration, fatigue and a high-grade fever that may require hospitalization.
When travelling, can I shower in the local water?
Yes you can, just make sure you don’t swallow any water. (And don’t swallow water when swimming).
Where am I most likely to get traveler’s diarrhea?
You can contract traveler’s diarrhea from anywhere in the world, but you are at greater risk of contracting the condition when visiting, Central and South America, Mexico, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Eastern Europe, South Africa and some parts of the Caribbean. The risk of traveler’s diarrhea increases in areas with lower hygiene and sanitation standards and poor food-handling practices. | <urn:uuid:00859f37-1868-483e-938d-0971b789b744> | CC-MAIN-2022-49 | https://cdhf.ca/en/digestive-conditions/e-coli-gastrointestinal-infection/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-49/segments/1669446711017.45/warc/CC-MAIN-20221205132617-20221205162617-00360.warc.gz | en | 0.926365 | 2,182 | 4.1875 | 4 |
The First Canadian Woman in the Northwest: The Story of Marie Anne Gaboury, Wife of John Baptiste Lajimonière, Arrived in the Northwest in 1807, and Died at St. Boniface at the Age of 96 Years
by M. L’Abbe Georges Dugas
MHS Transactions, Series 1, No. 62
Marie Anne Gaboury, the daughter of Marie Tessier and Charles Gaboury, was born at Maskinonge, in the diocese of Three Rivers, on the 6th of November 1782, and was baptised the same day by the Rev. M. Rinfret, who was in charge of the parish. One of her uncles, M. Gaboury, took orders and lived at Saint Sulpice for a long time.
For eleven years young Marie Anne Gaboury lived a quiet and peaceful life serving at the priest's house, without the least suspicion that the years which were to follow would bring such incredible changes in her existence. During the winter of 1806, a young Canadian, named J. Bte. Lajimoniere, who had just spent five years in the North West, came down to Canada to visit his family residing at Maskinonge.
The aged still recall the sensation produced in the parish by the arrival of a voyageur from this far off country. All the world came to see him, to speak with him, and above all to listen to him: he had many wonderful tales to recount! What marvellous facts fell from his lips, they were not always strictly true but what did that matter; they were interesting, what more could one desire?
It is not surprising to learn that Marie Anne Gaboury, then twenty-five years of age, after much persuasion obtained leave from the old housekeeper to be present at the evening entertainments, of which the young voyageur was the hero, given in Maskinonge during the winter of 1807. It was probably at one of these reunions that she became acquainted with the young hunter and allowed herself to be charmed with his tales.
During his stay in Canada M. Lajimoniere had not communicated to anyone his intention of returning to the North West, and in the parish all his friends thought that his five years' adventures amid the savages were sufficient to take away his taste for travelling, and that henceforth he would settle down to the pleasant life of a farmer in the midst of his family.
Marie Anne Gaboury was herself convinced of this when M. Jean Baptiste Lajimoniere asked her hand in marriage. Before consenting she consulted her family and the cure, at whose house she had dwelt for eleven years.
As M. Lajimoniere came of a respectable Maskinonge family, Marie Anne Gaboury's parents made no objection to give him their daughter's hand. The date of the marriage was therefore set for the 2Ist of April.
Up to this time all went well. Nevertheless the spring brought with it a longing to travel which nothing could eradicate. Towards the first days of May M. Lajimoniere made known to his wife that he intended to depart immediately upon a second voyage to the North West. This news was a sharp blow to Madame Lajimoniere; however she did not allow herself to be too much depressed by it, she believed that by force of circumstances and prayers she would finally turn her husband from his purpose, which he had kept a secret before their marriage: but when often having set forth the strongest and most convincing reasons, she saw that his resolution was firm and that he would go at any cost, she felt her position very keenly. It was too late to impose conditions, there was but the one alternative, either she must allow her husband to go by himself without the hope of seeing him again for many long years, perhaps never, or accompany him into a barbarous country to share during the remainder of her days his fatigues, discomforts and dangers.
The missionaries had not then penetrated that land to carry into it the light of faith, and the tribes in these immense territories were still living in darkness; the aspect of things temporal was not much more smiling, she would be obliged to follow a nomadic existence like the Indians during the years to come; she could easily see that civilization would not soon reach this part of America. However, after having examined every point well, without making a flattering picture of it, M. Vinet, her pastor, counselled Madame Lajimoniere that if in spite of all considerations she felt herself courageous and strong enough to go to the North West she should follow her husband rather than let him depart alone.
From Maskinonge M. Lajimoniere, with his wife, went to Lachine, near Montreal, to await the departure of the canoes by which they intended to take their passage.
Each spring as soon as the rivers were navigable canoes loaded with merchandise for fur trading, and provisions for the employees at the forts of the Trading Companies, started en route for the North. These canoes were manned by voyageurs, chiefly Canadians engaged throughout the towns and country for the service of the powerful North-West Trading Company.
Madame Lajimoniere had no companion of her own sex with her. She embarked in the canoe, with her husband, to whom alone she trusted for protection, and began from the first day her apprenticeship to the mode of life which she was henceforth to lead for more than twelve years, for, with the exception of a few times when she was lodged with her children in the forts belonging to the Company, we are told that until 1818 she made her home in a tent.
During the voyage Madame Lajimoniere did not have to handle the oar or to carry heavy burdens on her shoulders like the men, nevertheless she found it very fatiguing to spend the whole day at the bottom of a canoe without being able to change her position, exposed to the rays of the sun, the wind or the rain, then when night came to sleep on the shore of a lake or river with no bed but the hard ground, facts which are much more poetical in a book than in reality. After leaving Lachine the canoes went to Saint Anne, a place about two miles distant from the farthest point of the Island of Montreal. It was here that their first encampment was made and the guides considered that the voyage only really commenced after leaving this place. The next day they bade farewell to Canada, launching the canoes after the arrival of all their men at The Lake of the Two Mountains. These men were engaged to serve from Lachine to Fort William, at the head of Lake Superior. Each canoe, rowed by eighteen men, was under a master and required eight men to carry it. All the merchandise and provisions which formed the cargo of a canoe were put up in bales weighing from eighty to ninety pounds. From Lachine to Lake Huron they were obliged to make at least twenty-six portages. This will give one an idea of the fatigues and difficulties which the voyage offered. In spite of the difficulties of such a journey the entrance to Lake Superior at the head of Sault Ste. Marie was reached without accident. This lake, as everyone knows, is a large inland sea which to-day is navigated like the ocean by vessels of great tonnage; it is subject to frequent tempests and when this great sheet of water is stirred by violent winds navigation becomes dangerous even for a large ship.
This year the canoes encountered two terrible storms, during one of which a part of the expedition perished in the waves. Madame Lajimoniere many years afterwards told her children of the mortal fear which she had felt on this occasion, and with what fervour she had prayed not to go in the frail vessel.
After a month of travelling the voyageurs arrived at Fort William, which is a little more than half way to Red River, but it is the easier half of the route. The passage from Thunder Bay to Lake Winnipeg was made sometimes in canoes, sometimes on land. The portages were more frequent than between Lake Huron and Montreal. The canoes used by the voyageurs for this part of the route were much smaller than the first because the country across which they had to travel presented more obstacles.
From Fort William the route was followed without accident and the canoes arrived at Lake Winnipeg towards the first week in July, and soon ascended the Red River M. and Madame Lajimoniere embarked in canoes for Pembina as they intended to pass the winter at that post. Before his trip to Maskinonge M. Lajimoniere had lived there for four years and had left behind him an Indian woman who had lived with him during his stay at the post. We can well believe what a grief this would be to his wife.
The canoes, going up the river, stopped at Fort Gibraltar, which was built at the mouth of the Assiniboine, where they left their supplies. This post with that of the Hudson's Bay Company, (it is doubtful whether there was a H. B. C. fort here at this time-Ed) built a mile lower down, were the only buildings on the Red River between Lake Winnipeg and Pembina. After four or five days' paddling up the river against the winding current they arrived at Pembina. M. Lajimoniere pitched his tent in the neighborhood of the Fort to be in readiness for the hunting season in the autumn.
There were five or six Canadians hunters living near the Fort who had married Indian women. The lives of these men did not differ from that of the Indians; they lived in wigwams made of skin, encamping near the fort during the summer and passing the winters on the prairies engaged in hunting. These Indian wives of the Canadians were the only women that Madame Lajimoniere had to associate with, and they could not speak French so their conversations had to be carried on by signs.
J. B, Lajimoniere, we have already said, had, like many of the traders of the time, taken a squaw for a wife during the five years which he had passed at Pembina. He had left this woman a year before his voyage to Canada and she remained near the fort with her relations and other Indians; and when after two years’ absence she saw him, whom she regarded as her husband, return with a wife she was jealous and resolved to avenge her injuries upon Madame Lajimoniere.
It is commonly believed that these Indians, who are heathens, have certain potions which they prepare and give to their enemies in order to bewitch them. Invocation is made to their Manitou over the preparation to aid them in bringing evil upon their enemies, and many persons who have lived amongst the Indians for a long time assure us that these beverages, which are poisonous, succeed in producing the desired effect.
The squaw formed the design of poisoning Madame Lajimoniere. She strove to hide her jealousy by a show of friendliness and under the pretext of rendering assistance came every day to visit Madame Lajimoniere in her lodge. Madame Lajimoniere, ignorant of the relations which had existed between her husband and this woman, had no suspicion of any evil intention hidden beneath her kindness and was by no means upon her guard.
Happily the squaw confided her secret to the wife of one of the Canadians who lived near the fort. This woman hastened to acquaint Madame Lajimoniere with the danger which menaced her, advising her at the same time to leave the Fort with her husband and not return for some time. M. Lajimoniere, who knew something of the jealousy and thirst for vengeance which the Indian nurses in his heart, struck his tent immediately and left to pass the winter at the head of the Pembina River. This place was called the Grand Camp and in the autumn nearly all the hunters met there, as it was the most favorable place for the buffalo.
Even much later in 1812 when the first Scotch settlers arrived in Red River they were obliged to go there during three or four winters to procure the necessaries of life as there were no other means of subsistence in the country.
M. and Madame Lajimoniere did not remain at Grand Camp till the spring, but near the beginning of January 1807 returned to the post at Pembina. The King's birthday found them lodged in a house at the Fort and it was there, on the 6th of January, that her first child was born. This day usually so happy and consoling to a mother was a sad and sorrowful one for Madame Lajimoniere. She had to christen her infant herself, being the only person capable of doing it. As it was a girl she called it Reine because it was born on the King's birthday.
Madame Lajimoniere remained at the Company's Fort till the month of July. Her husband spent nearly all his time in hunting. This was the only way in which the trappers could procure nourishment, though it is true that at that epoch game was very abundant and a hunter who was at all active was never obliged to fast.
When the beautiful spring days had come to set the rivers and lakes free from their icy beds M. Lajimoniere announced to his wife that he intended leaving Pembina to go up the Saskatchewan in company with three Canadians who had spent the winter at Pembina. The names of these men were Chalifou, Belgrade and Paquin, and all three were married to Indian women of the Cree tribe.
Having procured two canoes large enough to carry their wives and some provisions for the voyage they commenced their journey towards the end of May, 1807.
The canoes quietly descended the Red River to the entrance of Lake Winnipeg then they skirted the lakeshore till they reached the mouth of the great Saskatchewan River. Madame Lajimoniere's baggage was reduced to the smallest possible amount, her child and provisions for three or four days in advance being all she could take with her. She carried the infant in a moss bag, after the manner of the Indian women-it was more convenient to adopt the usage of the country on this point-nevertheless we might remark that although Madame Lajimoniere lived for seventy years in this country she never herself adopted any of the Indian habits and kept as much as possible to the dress of her native land. After some weeks the canoes arrived at Cumberland House where the voyageurs intended to stay for a short time. A great number of Indians were gathered around the fort heating with the Company. The news had travelled in advance of the party that a white woman from France was to arrive with them and would very soon be at Cumberland House. This excited their curiosity greatly; they had a thousand questions to ask as to whether she was different from the Indian women; if she was good or wicked, and if she would be able to talk to them.
Belgrade, who had reached the Fort ahead of his companions, told these savages that the French woman was good but that she was very learned in medicines and that if any one offended her she had the power to cause their death by merely looking at them. In a few minutes the whole camp had been told of this wonderful peculiarity and they all determined to do their best to gain the French woman's favorable regard. Speeches and presents were prepared and when Madame Lajimoniere arrived at the camp they paid her great homage. Everyone tried to shew themselves at their best before her. "Have pity on us," they said, "we only wish to look at you," and they took an unspeakable pleasure in gazing at her. Madame Lajimoniere was far from being without charms, her features were regular and her skin was very white, the savages who had never seen any person fairer than their own dark companions thought her marvellously beautiful and shewed an extraordinary respect to her.
After a week's rest the travellers continued their journey towards the Fort of the Prairies. One night when they were late in camping they had tied their canoes to the willows on the band and had lighted a large fire near the water's edge, where they found some fallen trees. After supper the men were chatting together around a pile of wood, Belgrade, Chalifou, Paquin and Lajimoniere were sitting between the river and some dry timber which they had gathered together, and a man named Bouvier, who had joined them en route, sat alone on the other side of the fire. At a little distance Madame Lajimoniere and the other women were preparing the tents for the night when all at once Bouvier gave a cry of distress and called to his companions to help him.
At the first shout each hunter seized his gun and prepared to defend himself against the attack of an enemy; they hurried to the other side of the ditch to see what was the matter with Bouvier and what he was struggling with. They had no idea that a wild animal would come near the fire to attack a man even under cover of night for fire usually has the effect of frightening wild beasts. However almost before the four hunters knew what had happened they saw their unfortunate companion dragged into the woods by a bear followed by her two cubs. She held Bouvier in her claws and struck him savagely on the face to stun him. As soon as she saw the four men in pursuit she redoubled her fury against her prey, tearing his face with her claws. M. Lajimoniere, who was an intrepid hunter, bated her with the butt end of his gun to make her let go her hold as he dared not shoot for fear of killing the man while trying to save him, but Bouvier who felt himself being choked cried with all his strength, "Shoot; I would rather be shot than eaten alive."
M. Lajimoniere pulled the trigger as close to the bear as possible, wounding her mortally. She let go Bouvier and before her strength was exhausted made a wild attack upon M. Lajimoniere, who expected this and as his gun had only one barrel loaded he ran towards the canoe where he had a second gun fully charged. He had hardly seized it before the bear reached the shore and tried to climb into the canoe but fearing no longer to wound his friend M. Lajinmoniere aimed full at her breast and this time she was killed instantly.
As soon as the bear was no longer to be feared Madame Lajimoniere, who had been trembling with fear during the tumult, went to raise the unfortunate Bouvier, who was covered with wounds and nearly dead. The bear had torn the skin from his face with her nails from the roots of his hair to the lower part of his chin. His eyes and nose were gone-in fact his features were indiscernible-but he was not mortally injured. His wounds were dressed as well as the circumstances would permit and thus crippled he was carried to the Fort of the Prairies, Madame Lajimoniere taking care of him all through the journey. In time his wounds were successfully healed but he was blind and infirm to the end of his life. He dwelt at the Fort of the Prairies for many years, but when the first missionaries reached Red River in 1818 he persuaded his friends to send him to St. Boniface to meet the priests and ended his days in Mr. Provencher's house. He employed his time during the last years of his life in making crosses and crucifixes blind as he was, but he never made any chefs d'oeuvre.
To return to our travellers, they resumed their journey the following day and arrived at the Fort of the Prairies by the end of August. M. Lajimoniere had spent a winter there two years previous and being acquainted with the factor, Mr. Bird, obtained a place for himself and his wife in the Fort for the autumn and winter.
The Fort of the Prairies, which is now called Edmonton, was the most important fort in the West at that time. Being the great reunion point for the Indians, all the tribes met there, Blackfeet, Assiniboines, Sarcees, Blood and Crees. When these different bands were assembled around the Fort they were often the cause of great uneasiness to the factor and his employees who regarded them with very serious fears. More than one battle took place in which blood was freely spilt and more than one combatant met his death. The men in charge of the Fort had need of invincible courage and muscles of steel to rule these savages who acknowledged no sovereignty but that enforced by courage and strength. They must be ruled by fear just as we tame wild animals by exerting that power.
At one time the factor of a Fort on the Saskatchewan was left alone at the post with only one servant, all the other employees being absent, some on the prairies and others conveying the "pieces" to a neighboring fort. A band of Blackfeet who were camped a short distance from the palisade resolved under cover of the night to make the factor open the gates of the Fort and provide them with whiskey and tobacco. Knowing that the factor had only one man with him they thought it would be very easy to intimidate him by their numbers and never doubted that they would get everything they asked for. They gathered around the principal gate of the Fort and knocked for admittance. The servant aroused by the noise went to see what was wanted, he opened a little shutter through which he could see who was outside without danger and perceiving the band of Indians at such a late hour of the night he at once comprehended that the affair might be serious. The factor was already in bed. The man told the Indians to wait a moment and that he would inform his master of their demands and bring the keys of the gate.
On each side of the gateway there was a tower supplied with a good cannon loaded with balls-they had only to fire them to make the Indians dance. The factor said to his man: "Go into the tower, take the balls out of the cannon, leaving only a charge of powder and I will do the same on this side and when I give the word, "Fire!" do so." All this time the Indians waited patiently at the gate believing that they would bring the keys to let them in. When the factor had mounted the cannon from which the balls had been drawn he cried out to his man "Fire!" The two guns went off at the same moment, the Indians who had never heard a salute fired lost their wits, they were so startled that they bounded about three feet in the air and obeying the impulse of fear rushed in the direction of their camp without looking either to the right or to the left. The factor glad and triumphant put his head out of the opening and cried to them, "Stop! Stop! I have another shot yet." They appeared to be quite satisfied with the one experiment, as they did not return.
But these affairs did not always end so happily.
On another occasion one of the neighboring forts was the scene of a frightful occurrence. The employees had left the fort one morning in the canoes to take provisions to some places higher up at another trading post and the commissioner, named Kite, was left alone. The canoes were conducted by four Canadians, Montour, Millet, Morin and St. Germain. A French half-breed, named Tourangeau, followed the men in a small canoe. During the day the Indians who were camped on the other side of the river opposite the fort sent a young Indian to the shop to buy some powder. When the Commissioner had given him what he asked for he patted him on the head in a friendly manner never thinking that the lad could take umbrage at this familiar demonstration. As soon as the youth returned to the camp he became ill and died before evening. Before drawing his last breath he told his parents that the Commissioner of the Fort had caused his illness, that he had cast an evil spell over him that morning by laying his hand on his head. The Indians are childishly credulous and they immediately decided that the Commissioner was neither more nor less than a Sorcerer and that it was necessary to put an end to him as soon as possible. The occasion was favorable; against one man the struggle would be easy and the pillage without danger. Next morning at break of day the warriors crossed the river in great numbers and gaining entrance into the shop flung themselves upon the Commissioner with their knives and stabbed him to death. Then they robbed the fort. By this time the Canadians who had started the evening before were returning without the least suspicion of danger. An old French half breed woman who lived with the tribe knowing that they would be massacred as soon as they set foot on shore tried to save their lives without endangering her own; she went to a small island two or three miles above the fort to stop the voyageurs on their way home, but unfortunately it was too late to see her and she could not succeed in making them hear her when they passed. As soon as they reached the fort the Indians killed them and took flight.
Tourangeau the half-breed was behind the Canadians and only arrived at the fort the next day. He was surprised on landing not to see anyone about the shore. He went directly towards the gate to see what was the cause of the silence which reigned everywhere. The first object that met his eyes was the corpse of one of his companions who had been stabbed with a knife. By the time he reached the centre of the enclosure he found the others and at last the body of the Commissioner already decomposed. As there was not a living creature left he could get no explanation of this terrible butchery. The thought came to him that perhaps the Indians were in ambush waiting for him and that he would share the same fate as his friends. Even at that moment they might be aiming at him. Wild with fear he ran to his canoe, pushed it free and paddled with all his strength in the direction of the next post. He proposed to paddle all night so as to put the Indians off the pursuit. Towards ten or eleven in the evening he saw on the shore a large fire banked around with earth, but the distance was so great that it was impossible to distinguish whether they were friends or foes. When he came opposite to the camp he spoke a word in French in order to find out if they were not employees from a neighboring fort and great was his joy when they answered in the same language. They were the Company's men carrying provisions to some distant posts. Tourangeau hastened to cross the river and describe to them the frightful scene that he had witnessed. Such were the dangers which the voyageurs had to run at this time in the service of their Company in the immense solitudes of the West. This life offered but little attraction to a woman accustomed to the quiet life of the Canadian country.
Madame Lajimoniere wintered for four consecutive years at the Fort of the Prairies, arriving at that post in the autumn of 1808 she only returned to Red River in the spring of 181 I. During the winters her husband was absent the greater part of the time visiting his snares and getting furs. He was not engaged in the service of the Company but hunted on his own account and like the Indians brought his skins to trade at the Fort. In the spring when the fur season was over he left the Fort to hunt buffalo and his wife accompanied him, mounted on horseback she would ride for a whole day over the prairies and through the woods. When her husband found a favorable spot for the chase the tents would be pitched and they would stay there for some time.
In the summer of 1808 M. Lajimoniere was camping on the border of a little river with his companion, Belgrade, whose wife also was with them on the prairie. One day it was necessary to visit some snares at a distance and the two women were left alone in the tent. All at once a band of Crees passed within sight of their tent and seeing this little isolated lodge around which they could not discern any person the Indians were curious to visit it. As soon as Mrs. Belgrade saw them approaching she caught up Madame Lajimoniere's child in her arms and crept into the woods on her knees, believing that the Indians had come to massacre them. They had surrounded the lodge and the chief of the band dismounted to see if this was a hiding place of some enemy. Madame Lajimoniere was not yet accustomed to these visits and firmly believed that her last hour had come. The Indian chief presented himself at the door of the tent and was not a little surprised to find a young woman - he had never seen a white woman - on her knees. In fact Madame Lajimoniere was on her knees in the centre of the tent saying her chaplet and praying to the Virgin to protect her. A Canadian named Batoche Letendre, who had married into the tribe and been adopted by them, was with the savages. He also approached the tent and upon recognizing her as a Canadian he hastened to set her mind at rest by telling her that she had nothing to fear.
"I have lived in their midst a long time," said he, "and I am certain they will do you no harm." Madame Lajimoniere was a little reassured by these words, but alone on the prairie surrounded by a band of savage warriors in search of an enemy to scalp the hours seemed desperately long. Towards the end of the day her husband returned and was taken aback to find so many visitors around the camp. Some were calmly spread on the grass smoking their pipes, while others were attending to the horses at a little distance.
At first he feared that the women had been murdered and the same fate awaited him. As he could not see her about the tent he went near enough to make her hear him and called: "Marie Ann, are you alive?" "Yes," said she, "I am alive but I am dying of fright." Mr. Lajimoniere was acquainted with the tribe and could speak their language fluently, advancing boldly; therefore, after making and receiving a sign of the hand which signified friendship, he begged them to camp at a little distance, as the women were tired and ill. The Indians after assuring him that they were friendly and wished him no ill, consented to spend the night a little further away.
When they had gone Mrs. Belgrade returned with the child from the woods, where she had spent the day in hiding and the three were very happy to be relieved from their fears. The day following J. B. Lajimoniere and his companions struck their camp and started on the return trip to the Fort. It was then the month of August. Madame Lajimoniere followed her husband on horseback, carrying her child with her in a moss bag which hung from one side of the saddle, while on the other side she carried a bag of provisions which by its weight counterbalanced the child and kept it from falling. Madame Lajimoniere was a good horsewoman and could ride nearly all day without resting when she was returning to take up winter quarters at the Fort. They often spent the summers at long distances from the Fort, and this year they had camped for some time in the neighborhood of Battle River. Two or three days after their adventure with the Indians they found themselves on a large prairie frequented by innumerable herds of buffalo and suddenly a band of these animals crossed their path. The presence of a herd of buffalo produces an astonishing effect on the horses. Without being urged by his rider a horse will often start off in pursuit of them with a fervor that it is impossible to check. A hunter thus carried into the midst of these animals, rushing in a mad race, runs the very greatest danger.
Unfortunately on this occasion Madame Lajimoniere was mounted on a horse accustomed to this mode of procedure and as soon as he caught sight of the animals, without a thought of his burden, he took the bit in his teeth and galloped after the herd. Embarrassed by the two bags which hung on either side of the horse, in one of which was her child, the poor woman every instant expected that she would be thrown to the earth and trampled under foot by the buffalo. She commended herself to God and clung with all her strength to the horse's mane. She could not calculate how long the race lasted, she was only certain that it was horribly long. When her husband by wheeling and cutting across the horse's path succeeded in stopping his flight she was on the point of succumbing to fear and fatigue. This was about three o'clock in the afternoon. They pitched their tents on a rising piece of ground near some trees and it was there, some hours after the race that Madame Lajimoniere gave birth to her second child, who they nicknamed Laprairie because he was born in the middle of the prairie.
The season was not very far advanced and the voyageurs arrived in good time and without accident at the Fort of the Prairies where they remained for the autumn and winter. In the spring Madame Lajimoniere had a strange adventure at this same Fort with a squaw of the Blackfoot tribe. One day she took a kettle to bring some water from the river and her two children were left alone in the house, The distance from the Fort to the river was not very great, but the banks were extremely high, and it took quite ten minutes to go down and return again.
Her youngest child was a pretty little baby with a fresh complexion, blue eyes and fair hair, and he attracted a good deal of attention from the squaws. A Blackfoot woman who often came into the Fort noticed him and cast envious eyes on him. In spite of her affection for her own progeny she thought him much more charming than the little Blackfoot babies and resolved to steal him when an opportunity offered. This morning she profited by Madame Lajimoniere's absence to seize the baby and run away with him. She put him on her back in a sort of hood formed by the blanket which she wore and hastened out of the Fort to join her people who were leaving the camp immediately. Madame Lajimoniere saw the squaw hurrying away and carrying a child, when she was climbing the bank with the kettle of water, but she never supposed for an instant that it was her child.
At the gate of the Fort she met Mr. Bird, the Factor, who asked her why she had left her children alone when the Blackfoot were near. "There is one escaping with a child," said he. "It might very well be yours that she has stolen. Hurry! And see if the children are safe." It only took an instant to see that the baby had disappeared and that without doubt the squaw had carried it off. Without asking help from anyone, urged on by a mother's love, she flew in pursuit of the squaw, who redoubled her effort to escape. She had almost reached her people when Madame Lajimoniere seized her by the shoulder. "Give me my child," said she, stopping her, "Give me my child that you have stolen." The squaw did not understand the words, but she knew what the gesture meant though she made believe not to understand and pretended to be very much astonished, as thieves do when accused. However Madame Lajimoniere opened the hood that the woman had carefully closed and there was her little child smiling quite happily. When the squaw saw that she was discovered she pretended that she was only carrying him away to play with him and made no resistance to restoring him. She could hardly claim him for hers, his complexion would at once betray him, so she let Madame Lajimoniere take the child and for the present renounced her design of bringing up a little Canadian and making him into a Blackfoot.
In the spring of 1809 in spite of the sorrowful adventures of the preceding summer Madame Lajmoniere again went with her husband to the prairies. She was beginning to be inured to hardships and the Indians frightened her less than they did at first. How true it is that we become accustomed to all things and in the end even attached to our misery! But as one lives one learns and Madame Lajimoniere had not yet reached the end of her trials.
Towards the end of June, the longest days of summer, M. Lajimoniere being on the lookout for game, camped one evening on the shore of a little lake where they passed the night. The next day when he went to bring in the horses they had disappeared. Had they been stolen by the Indians, or had they gone a long distance in search of pasture? No one knew. Their tracks would have to be followed without knowing where they would end and his wife would have to be left alone in the tent with the children.
He did not return that day and Madame Lajimoniere was obliged to pass the night alone. The situation was not very reassuring. If she were attacked by wild beasts or by Indians she could not expect help from any quarter. The next day about noon a band of savages of the Sarcee tribe, armed with arrows and knives and their faces painted as if they were on the war path surrounded Madame Lajimoniere's tent. These Indians were on the march to avenge the death of some of their warriors who had been massacred on the previous day by the Crees.
M. Lajimoniere's companions, Belgrade, Chalifou, Caplette and Letendre, who had married women of the Cree tribe, were out on the plain trading with the Indians and the Sarcees who hated the Crees finding that the wives of these Canadians were of that tribe had already cruelly massacred them and the men only escaped death by prompt flight to the fort. It was these same savages, thirsting still for the blood of their enemies who now surrounded Madame Lajimoniere in her lodge.
They knew by her complexion that she could have nothing in common with their foes and that they should not treat her as an enemy. The Chief asked by signs if she had a husband and where he was. She tried to make him understand that he was looking for their horses and that he was a long time in returning. They made signs that they would wait for him and would not leave without speaking to him. They hobbled their horses and spread themselves on the grass to wait. Madame Lajimoniere was very anxious but she put a good face on the matter and determined to treat them as friends. She had some fresh meat in the tent with which she prepared a feast for them. The kettle was filled and put on to boil and while waiting she sacrificed some tobacco which her husband had in reserve for grand occasions.
When the pot boiled she took it from the fire and cutting the meat in pieces served it to the savages as they sat on the grass. The best way to propitiate an Indian is to feed him well. The Sarcees were delighted with their reception and tried their best to prove to Madame Lajimoniere that they meant her no harm.
Towards five o'clock in the afternoon her husband arrived with the horses and he was not very well pleased to find these visitors at the camp. After assuring himself that his wife, except that she was frightened, had suffered no ill he told the Indians that he was going away to camp in another place. "No," said they, "you shall not leave until five of our people who have been sent to the Fort return. If they suffer any harm from the people of the Fort you shall answer for them."
As it was impossible to escape M. Lajimoniere told them that his wife was tired and ill and that she wanted to be alone and that the next day they would return to them. The savages consented to allow him to pass the night with his wife and children a few miles distant near a small thicket of trees. This was in June when the days are longest and the nights clear and bright. The hunter and his wife proceeded to the place where they had told the Indians they intended to camp and in fact stopped there a little while to take refreshment, but as soon as they thought the Indians were sleeping and that it would be safe to leave without being seen they mounted and took the road to the Fort. It was pretty certain that the Indians, angry at being duped, would follow in pursuit so they rode all night and all next day without stopping to rest, fearing at each moment to see the enraged enemy behind them.
At last after travelling for five days they reached the banks of the Saskatchewan opposite the Fort of the Prairie, and called for someone from the Fort to take them across the river. It was quite time, for scarcely had they touched the other bank when they saw the Sarcees in the distance in pursuit of them. The Canadians, Belgrade, Chalifou and Paquin, whose wives and children, as we have already said, had been massacred, were at the Fort. M. Lajimoniere and his wife had hardly entered the enclosure in safety when the Indians crossed the river and presenting themselves at the gate of the Fort demanded that the Canadians should be given up to them. The Trader and all the employees of the post endeavored to pacify them, but it was only by the help of presents that they were finally persuaded to retire without bloodshed.
Madame Lajimoniere did not return to the prairie that summer. Their life was full of danger and without much profit; She longed to persuade her husband to give up this adventurous existence and to see him settled in one of the forts.
In the spring of 1810 she returned to the prairies with him and it was during this trip that her third child was born. She had nicknamed her second child Laprairie because he was born in the midst of a great prairie, so she called this one, who was a girl, Cypress because she came into the world on the Cypress Mountains.
Her second child, who was two years old at this time and who had been almost stolen by the Blackfoot squaw when be was six months old, seemed to attract the envious glances of all the savages, for this summer a new attempt was made by them to get possession of him. This time they did not try to steal him, but they proposed to trade horses for him. One day when Madame Lajimoniere was with her husband in the tent the Assiniboines arrived with some horses and the Chief dismounted to talk to Madame Lajimoniere. She did not understand Indian, but the Chief represented that they desired to have the boy and taking the rope which held the finest horse he put it in her hand making signs that he would give it in exchange for the child. As one can well imagine Madame Lajimoniere refused his offer and made signs that she would never consent to such a trade. The Indians believing that she was not content with one horse drew up a second and put the cord of this one also in her hand as he had done with the first. She said to her husband, "Tell him that I will not sell my child that he would have to tear my heart out before I would part with him."
"Very well!" said the Indian, "take the horses and one of my children." "No!" said she, "You can never make me consent to such a trade," then taking her child in her arms she began to cry.
The Indian apparently was touched by her tears, for he ceased to insist on the change and went on his way with his people and horses.
This was the last adventure in the Saskatchewan district. Towards the end of the summer she reached the Fort of the Prairies to pass the winter and in the spring of 1811 he husband consented to return to Red River where trials of another kind awaited her.
In 1811 the news reached M. Lajimoniere that Lord Selkirk would establish a colony on the banks of the Red River and that the families who were to form the nucleus of this settlement would leave England that spring, therefore instead of returning to the prairies he launched his canoe and took the route for Lake Winnipeg. Madame Lajimoniere did not grieve at leaving the Fort of the Prairies. By returning to Red River she was approaching 400 leagues nearer Canada and she cheated herself into the belief that she was coming to a civilized country. Moreover the time could not be far off when the missionaries would penetrate into this country bringing the benefits of true civilization with them. M. Lajimoniere's intention was to settle permanently in the colony as soon as that place offered a means of subsistence to its inhabitants.
Very late in the summer they arrived at the site of the present City of Winnipeg, but they did not stop long at this post. The colonists had left Scotland but could not reach Red River that year. The vessel which brought them to York arrived so late that the settlers were obliged to pass the winter on the shores of the Hudson Bay. They did not have there until June in 1812, and after enduring much misery and excessive fatigue, from the effects of which many of them died; they arrived at length in Red River about the beginning of September.
M. Lajimoniere spent the winter of 1811-12 at Pembina where he had wintered with his wife in 1807. His family had been increased by two children during his stay in the Saskatchewan district. The eldest child, named Reine, it will be remembered, was born at Pembina in 1807, the two others, a boy and a girl were born on the prairies, Jean Baptiste towards the middle of August, 1808, and Josette in the course of the summer of 1810.
Madame Lajimoniere had a fourth child at Pembina in the winter of 1811-12, who was christened Benjamin. This son was not born in the midst of adventures; unlike Jean Baptiste no attempt was made either to steal or buy him and his mother was allowed to rest in peace. The winter passed without any event of importance to mark it. M. Lajimoniere was only there waiting for the arrival of the colonists upon which it was his intention to repair at once to Fort Douglas. When the river was open in the spring he went down with his wife to Fort Gibraltar, situated at the mouth of the Assiniboine, and ascended this river for about twelve miles stopping at a place which is now called St. Charles.
Up to the present time Madame Lajimoniere had not had a very agreeable life, as one will easily understand, but at least during the winters she had dwelt in the Company's forts and there she had not felt herself completely isolated. For three years from 1812 to 1815 she was alone with her children lodged in a little hut a dozen miles from any habitation. M. Lajimoniere had built this little hut of rough boards without floors or windows and installed himself and family in it. To exist at that time in Red River one had to hunt, and life or death were at the point of the gun. This man had to feed and clothe his wife and four children so he lived much the same kind of life on the Assiniboine as he had done in the Saskatchewan district, only his wife was left at home with her children and he was absent sometimes for months at a time, and on these occasions there was nothing to distract her in her loneliness but the care of her children in a house which was hardly large enough for herself alone.
In the autumn of 1815 M. Lajimoniere announced that he would be away for a longer time than usual. But before telling of his journey and of the hardships that his wife had to endure in his absence we must speak of the events which had taken place in Red River between the Trading Companies. The Great North-West Company founded in 1784 by a society of Montreal merchants had always been, since its incorporation, antagonistic to the Hudson's Bay Company, its rival in the fur trade of the far North.
Whenever one Company built a fort the other hastened to erect another beside it and each tried to secure the most skins. Towards the years 1806 and 1807 the shares of the Hudson's Bay Company were very far inferior to those of the North-West Company which at that time was at the height of its success. At this epoch a Scotch nobleman, Thomas Douglas, Lord Selkirk, came to Montreal to enquire into the state of the commerce of the two Companies. On returning to England he bought almost half the shares in the Hudson's Bay Company, which had fallen as low as 60 after having been at 250 per cent.
The capital of the Hudson's Bay Company was £I00,000 sterling. Lord Selkirk bought shares to the amount of £40,000. One can judge what effect this would have upon the Company.
Encouraged by the success of his first speculations he formed the design of monopolizing the exclusive trade of all the territories of the North West for the Hudson's Bay Company. He knew after the explanations that he had received at Montreal that a Company, having no other to compete with it, would realize a colossal fortune by the fur trade. For this reason he bought shares in the Company and a large tract of land on the banks of the Red River and announced in Europe that he intended to found a Colony there Lord Selkirk's aim in founding this settlement on the Red River was not simply to form an agricultural establishment but also to ensure on the part of the new colonists assistance against the North-West Trading Company to enable him to ruin its commerce.
He pretended that the Hudson's Bay Company under virtue of the charter which had been granted to it by Charles II in 1670 had the exclusive right of fishing and hunting not only on the shores of the Hudson Bay but all over the North West from the Rocky Mountains up to the frozen seas at the far North.
The rivalry between these two Companies became serious upon the arrival of the first colony in 1812 and continued to rage until 1821 at which time they were united under the name of the Hudson's Bay Company. The French Canadians and half-breeds usually embraced the cause of the North-West Company while the Scotch and English as well as some of the Indian tribes were devoted to the Hudson's Bay Company.
M. Lajimoniere had never been in the service of either Company. He hunted on his own account and sold his furs as often to the one as to the other. However after his stay in the Saskatchewan where he lived in the Hudson's Bay Company's forts he always shewed himself in favor of this last named Company.
In March 1815, two of the North-West Company's forts were taken by the Hudson's Bay Company and the provisions; merchandise and furs contained in them were taken to Fort Douglas. The Traders and employees were held prisoners and all their papers confiscated. The couriers bringing letters from Canada for the Company were stopped and their letters intercepted.
The agents of the North- West Company in order to circumvent their enemies stopped the Hudson's Bay Company's couriers and held them prisoners in their forts. It was therefore very difficult to send letters from Red River to Montreal. The distance to be travelled through the woods was 600 miles and to avoid passing the different posts, placed like steps of a ladder along the route it was necessary to take great detours, cut across swamps, cross lakes and rivers passing by any inhabited parts of the country without being seen.
J. Bte. Lajimoniere was engaged by the Governor of Fort Douglas to carry letters to Lord Selkirk, who was then in Montreal. In 1815 a few days before Halloween he requested him to come to the fort and asked if he could go with letters to Lord Selkirk in Montreal without being stopped on the way. M. Lajimoniere, accustomed to a wild life, could defy the cleverest Indian in finding his way on a long voyage; he had a very quick eye which served him in finding his way better than the best compass.
M. Lajimoniere replied that he could go alone to Montreal and that he would make every effort to put the letters confided to his care into Lord Selkirk's hands. The season was already far advanced and the intrepid messenger would need to hasten if he was not to be stopped by the snow. He made his preparations to depart on All Saints' Day. If he arrived without accident he could return in the course of the winter, but he must find a place to shelter his family from want during his absence. The trader told him to bring his wife to the Fort where she would be lodged and fed till his return from Montreal. Madame Lajimoniere therefore left the hut on the bank of the Assiniboine to become an inmate of Fort Douglas.
We will not follow her husband through all the stages of his voyage, which was long and rough. It is only necessary to say that leaving Red River on the 1st of November 1815, he did not return until December 1816.
He was fortunate enough to reach Montreal without falling into the hands of the agents of the North-West Company and to give the letters which he carried to Lord Selkirk himself. He was not as lucky on his return. Perhaps not having important papers on his person he was less careful, anyway, in passing Fort William he was made prisoner and lived at this post until the arrival of the De Meuron Force, in the autumn of 1816, sent up to Red River by Lord Selkirk to retake Fort Douglas.
The forts taken by the employees of the Hudson's Bay Company were Gibraltar, at the mouth of the Assiniboine and Pembina situated at the American boundary. They have long since disappeared. On the evening of the 17th of March the men at Fort Douglas conducted by Mr. Colin Robertson surprised Fort Gibraltar. The Fort was plundered and dismantled and the employees as well as the officer in charge were taken to Fort Douglas. Some days afterwards the same employees surprised the other fort at Pembina and treated if in the same manner. At Fort Qu'Appelle a third attempt was made to seize a fort but it miscarried. War was now openly declared and the Hudson's Bay Company seemed determined to drive its rival out of the country with an armed hand. The North-West Company received all their supplies of provisions and merchants for trading by canoes from Montreal every spring. These goods were transported to the mouth of the Assiniboine at Fort Gibraltar, which was a great distributing point, and from there the forts along the Assiniboine were supplied. The principal aim of the Hudson's Bay Company in seizing Fort Gibraltar was to break the means of communication between the canoes coming from Montreal and the employees who came from Fort Qu'Appelle to meet them. After their forts were taken the North-West Company's people came to the conclusion that they would require to descend in a body in the spring if they desired to force the passage and meet the voyageurs from Fort William with any Rood results. It was not their intention to fight if they could gain a passage without doing so. They were influenced by self-preservation one of the first principles of humanity, if they did not succeed in transporting the food and provisions to their people in the West many would in all probability die of starvation.
The employees of Fort Douglas who expected a troop of armed Metis from Qu'Appelle were on guard day and night. The news having been brought to Governor Semple by two Indians that the North- West Company was assembling all their men to retake the forts.
Madame Lajimoniere, who was at Fort Douglas with her children, was not a little disturbed, as she knew that she would be in great danger if the Fort was attacked by the North-West Company.
About four o'clock in the afternoon of the 19th of June a sentinel at Fort Douglas brought word to Governor Semple that a number of people on horseback were passing in view of the Fort but at a safe distance. This band of horsemen did not appear to be animated by hostile intentions as they had already passed Fort Douglas and were directing their course down the river. Governor Semple suspected that they were Company's people and that their aim was to meet the canoes lower down the river in order to carry off the supplies and as this was what he wished to prevent, orders were immediately given to the men who were armed to start in pursuit and if possible cut off their passage and oblige them to turn back. When the Metis saw the Governor and his men approaching they sent an envoy to ask what was required and why they were being followed. As the deputation came up, either through malice or imprudence a gun went off and one of the half-breeds who was with them was killed. This was the signal for battle. The mounted Metis accustomed to shoot from horseback while hunting the buffalo charged the enemy and in a very few moments twenty of them lay dead, Governor Semple being among the first who fell. The Hudson's Bay Company's employees upon hearing of this disaster, the news of which was almost immediately brought to the Fort, believed that the Metis would attack the post and that they would all be massacred.
A friendly Indian named Peguis came to Madame Lajimoniere in the evening and said, "Listen French woman! Not later than to-morrow the Metis will take the Fort, but I will save you and your children, leave this place to-night and come to my tent on the other side of the river where you can live in safety." Trembling with fear Madame Lajimoniere hastened with her children and what clothing she could carry to the bank of the river where the Indian and his squaw waited for her with the canoe. She was so unnerved by the fright that just as she was stepping into the frail little craft she fainted and upset the canoe, tipping herself and the children into the water. Happily three or four Indians who were helping in the escape rescued them and once more safely in the canoe they crossed the river and took up their abode in the camp with Peguis' family.
The day following the North-West Company people took the fort without further loss of life. The prisoners and a certain number of colonists were embarked in canoes and sent to York* in Upper Canada.
Madame Lajimoniere passed the summer in the lodge of the Indians, sharing their food which consisted chiefly of what fish they could catch. As long as the warm weather lasted she did not suffer as she was accustomed to a camp life, but when the first frost came she had to think of leaving Peguis’ tent for some warmer abode.
On the east side of the river opposite Fort Gibraltar an old Canadian named Bellehumeur had built a wooden hut. This was not a castle by any means, but it would be warmer than the tent. The house was not occupied, tenants being scarce about that time, so in October Madame Lajimoniere took possession of this shelter for her family for the winter. Her husband had now been absent almost a year and as she had no news of him she believed that he must have perished on the road, she feared that he had been killed by the Indians or had fallen a victim to exhaustion and hunger.
This was a very dark and sorrowful autumn for her. The scene of the 19th of June had alarmed the whole country. Every one expected terrible reprisals. Everywhere they suffered from a like state of affairs, no one knew when the news of fresh struggles would reach them. Many a time Madame Lajimoniere sitting in her cabin in the long autumn evenings shed tears while thinking of her situation. If her husband never returned what means of subsistence was left to her? The greater part of the colonists abandoned Red River to return to Canada. Her only consolation in her loneliness was prayer to which she had constant resource. Towards Christmas, three months after taking possession of Bellehumeur's hut, she was surprised to see a voyageur arrive one evening and when she recognized her husband in him her joy was great. For a moment she forgot all her miseries and trials. M. Lajimoniere arrived safe and sound after fourteen months of absence! Day by day he related to his wife the events of his long journey, his imprisonment at Fort William and his delivery on the arrival of the De Meuron Force which ought not to be long in reaching Red River to retake the Colony's Fort, now occupied by the agents of the North-West Company.
The De Meuron Force, guided by Indians, and conducted by Captain d'Orsonnens, did not however arrive until February. The route which they followed was that of Red Lake. Then entered the Red River above Pembina and from there directed their march a little to the west of the river and camped on the Assiniboine about four or five miles from the mouth of that river where the Church of St. James now stands. They remained in this place for some time making ladders to scale the palisades of Fort Douglas, and waiting for a favorable moment to make the attack which was not long in presenting itself.
Favored by a snowstorm they approached the Fort without being seen. The sentinels had not time to give the alarm. In a few moments the soldiers had gained the interior of the Fort and all whom they found there were made prisoners. A week later Madame Lajimoniere found herself lodged anew in the house that she had been obliged to abandon on the 19th of June after the battle with the Metis. Her fate seemed to be ameliorating, for the rest of the winter all her wants were supplied and the forts protected by soldiers no longer dreaded an attack by enemies.
In the spring as M. Lajimoniere was obliged to return to the chase the Fort filled with military men seemed hardly a proper place for a woman living alone, so she asked the trader if he would kindly give her a large tent which she could pitch at some distance and retire to it with her little ones. Her request was willingly granted and she remained during the summer under canvas in the neighborhood. Lord Selkirk spent the summer in regulating the affairs of his colony. He restored Fort Gibraltar to the North-West Trading Company who rebuilt it; granted lands to the military whom he had brought to Red River; concluded a treaty with the Indians, and in October left for England.
M. Lajimoniere with some others conducted him almost to the American territories, returning to Fort Douglas in November. Lord Selkirk recompensed M. Lajimoniere for his devotion to the Company in undertaking the long journey to Montreal by giving him the land on the bank of the Red River opposite Point Douglas. It was apart of this land that one of his sons sold in 1882 for the large sum of one hundred thousand dollars.
After his return from accompanying Lord Selkirk M. Lajinmoniere made preparations for building a living place for his family on his own land. The season was too far advanced to think of building a wooden house so he dug a hole in the ground over which he put a kind of thatch roof and installed his family there for the winter of 1817-18. The reader will see that since 1806 there had not been any great amelioration in comfort as far as lodging was concerned. The camps at Pembina, the tents on the prairies of the Saskatchewan, the hut on the Assiniboine, Bellehumeur's house, none of these were improved very much by the quarters which she occupied through the winter of 1817-18. However, obliged to live in this poor retreat which more resembled a vault than the dwelling of a human being this woman had one hope in which her heart rejoiced.
Lord Selkirk before his departure had made the Catholic colony on the Red River sign a petition asking the Bishop of Quebec to send missionaries to evangelize the country. He presented this petition himself and employed all his influence too have it granted.
Though a Protestant Lord Selkirk knew that to found a permanent colony on the Red River he required the encouragement of religion. Should his application succeed the missionaries would come with the voyageurs in the following spring and would arrive in Red River towards the month of July. This thought alone made Madame Lajimoniere forget her eleven years of loneliness and sorrow. How happy she would be to see the priests again! To go to confession and to receive the Sacrement. She would see her children baptized and instructed in their religion. What joy for her after having been deprived of the sacred services for so long a time to be able to take part in religious service. These consoling thoughts brightened the darkness of her cave-like dwelling. Through the winter M. Lajimoniere turned his thoughts towards a home for his family and his wife had hope of soon seeing herself more commodiously lodged. He cut the logs for the house and made every preparation that he possibly could for its construction that they might be in proper order to receive the missionaries who would not fail to visit them. When the pleasant spring weather came Madame Lajimoniere left her underground lodgings for the tent until her house was ready.
She and her children dug up a small corner of the ground where she intended to plant some corn. This spring all the new colonists had sown little fields which were not slow in promising a good harvest. Before July the news had spread that the missionaries were coming that very summer, but as yet the exact date of their arrival was not known. Telegraphs had not reached this region and moreover the voyageurs were often exposed to delays.
After waiting patiently, one beautiful morning on the 16th of July, the day of Our lady of Mount Carmel, a man came from the foot of the river to warn Fort Douglas and the neighborhood that two canoes bringing the missionaries were coming up the river, and that all the people ought to be at the Fort to receive them on their arrival.
Scarcely was the news made known when men, women and children hurried to the Fort. Those who had never seen the priests were anxious to contemplate these men of God of whom they had heard so much. Madame Lajimoniere was not the last to hasten to the place where the missionaries would land. She took all her little ones with her, the eldest of whom was Reine, then eleven years old.
Towards the hour of noon on a beautiful clear day more than one hundred and fifty persons were gathered on the river bank in front of Fort Douglas. Every eye was on the turn of the river at the point. It was who should first see the voyageurs. Suddenly two canoes bearing the Company's flag came in sight. There was a general shout of joy. The trader of the Fort, Mr. A. McDonald, was a Catholic, and he had everything prepared to give them a solemn reception. Many called to the old Canadians who had left their homes many years before. These old voyageurs who had been constantly called upon to face death had been deprived of all religious succour during the long years but they had not been held by a spirit of impiety. The missionaries were to them the messengers of God.
The canoes landed in front of Fort Douglas, M. Provencher and his companion both invested in their cassocks stepped on shore and were welcomed with outstretched hands by this family, which was henceforth to be theirs.
They were admired for their manly figures as much as for the novelty of their costumes. M. Provencher and his companion, M. Severe Dumoulin, were both men of great stature and both had a majestic carriage. They stood at the top of the bank and after making the women and children sit down around them M. Provencher addressed some words to this multitude gathered about him. He spoke very simply and in a fatherly manner. Madame Lajimoniere who had not listened to the voice of a priest for twelve years could hardly contain herself for joy. She cried with happiness and forgetting all her hardships, fancied herself for a moment in the dear parish of Maskinonge where she had spent such happy peaceful years.
The missionaries arrived on Thursday, July 16th. Provencher having- made known to his new family the aim of his mission wished immediately to begin teaching them the lessons of Christianity and to bring into the fold the sheep which were outside.
While waiting tiI a house could be built for the missionaries, M. Provencher and his companion were hospitably entertained at the Fort of the Colony. A large room in one of the buildings of the Fort had been set apart for them, and it was there that they held divine service. M. Provencher invited all the mothers of families to bring their children who were under six years of age to the Fort on the following Saturday when they would receive the happiness of being baptized. All persons above that age who were not Christians could not receive that sacrament until after being instructed in the truths of Christianity.
When M. Provencher had finished speaking the Governor conducted him with M. Dumoulin into the Fort. Canadians, Metis and Indians feeling very happy retired to return three days afterwards.
There were four children in the Lajimoniere family, but only two of them could be baptized, the others being nine and eleven years of age. On the following Saturday Madame Lajimoniere with all the other women came to the Fort. The number of children, including Indians and Metis, amounted to a hundred and Madame Lajimoniere being the only Christian woman stood Godmother to them all. For a long time all the children in the colony called her "Marriane."
M. Provencher announced that from the next day the missionaries would begin their work and that the settlers ought to begin at the same time to work at the erection of a home for them.
M. Lajimoniere was one of the first to meet at the place selected and to commence preparing the materials for the building. The work progressed so rapidly that the house was ready for occupation by the end of October. Madame Lajimoniere rendered every assistance in her power to the missionaries.
The settlers in the colony were very poor, they had no bread, nor had they any milk, most of the cows brought into the country by the North-West Trading Company were dead and there only remained four in all. The year that the missionaries arrived M. Lajimoniere had been fortunate enough to obtain one of these.
In the month of November M. Provencher left the Fort to take up his quarters in his new dwelling and after service he often took a walk on the banks of the River Seine and usually stopped at Madame Lajimoniere's house where there was always a glass of good milk reserved for the Missionary which she offered to him with a good heart.
During the years 1819 and 1820 those who lived in the colony were almost reduced to extremity. Madame Lajimoniere who well knew the self-sacrificing nature of M. Provencher sent to the Mission, whenever she could, a little bag of meat by the children.
M. Provencher recognized the devotion of this woman and when he had nothing to eat at home, which was very often, he would say to the eldest of Madame Lajimoniere's children as she was going home after her lessons, "Listen, my child, tell your mother that I have nothing at all to eat this evening." The child would hasten with the message and very soon return through the woods carrying a small parcel of dried meat for the good Fathers.
The years 1819 to 1823 were years of want and suffering in the settlement. Up to the time when the missionaries arrived in the country there was not any bread in the place even on the table of the Governor of the Company, but they always hoped to have some soon. They had sown their fields and the grain had a very good appearance. Madame Lajimoniere, who for twelve years had been accustomed to do without bread, living only on meat dried by the sun, looked forward with pleasure to the little piece of land which her husband had planted near the house and from which she was to obtain this luxury.
One does not easily lose the taste for bread even though deprived of it for some time, and its value was increased in her eyes by the fact that she looked upon it as a souvenir of her native land. Unfortunately a devastating plague came and in a few hours destroyed the hope of the colony. On the 3rd of August 1818, a cloud of grasshoppers descended and covered the land, devouring the whole crop. They deposited their eggs in the earth and the next spring these produced a swarm of small grasshoppers not much larger than fleas, which ruined all vegetation. In July, 1819, having become fully developed they rose in the air like a cloud and disappeared so of course there was no harvest at all that year. In 1820 everyone confident of success sowed their land and the grain came up beautifully, but on the 26th of July a swarm of grasshoppers as great as in 1819 once more descended creating the same havoc. They deposited their eggs as before so that in the spring of 1821 the small grasshoppers coming out of the ground spoiled all hope of a crop. The country was only delivered from them in August. During four years neither grain nor root had been reaped.
In the spring of 1822 the settlers used up the last of their seed grain and counted on a good harvest, but mice in great numbers came to ravage the fields and caused as much damage as the grasshoppers had done. After this plague no more seed grain remained in the country so it was necessary to send for some to Dog Plain on the Mississippi. To complete their misfortunes it arrived too late to be sown in 1823 so they were fated to be without a harvest this year again.
All this time the settlers were obliged to live from the products of the chase and by fishing. Most of them passed the winter at Pembina because provisions were more easily procured there than at St. Boniface. However, in spite of the privations which she had to support through these years of want, Madame Lajimoniere did not again follow her husband to the plains but remained in her house on the banks of the Red River near the mouth of the Seine.
The harvests in 1824 and 1825 were very abundant and raised the spirits of the Colony, but Providence had still another trial in store for it before it was permitted to be developed. The winter of 1825-26 was more severe than any that had been experienced in the country. The snow commenced to fall heavily by the 15th of October and it continued steadily and extremely cold throughout the whole season. In the spring the large amount of snow which had fallen and remained on the ground produced a tremendous quantity of water. The river rose thirty feet above the ordinary level. Two or three leagues of country disappeared on either side of the river under this new deluge. All the houses of the inhabitants were carried away by the breaking up of the ice and by the violence of the water, which gradually rose from the end of April till about the 20th of May only returning to its ordinary course by the 10th of June.
All the settlers had to take refuge on a hill about six miles west of Winnipeg. M. Lajimoniere and his family being on the east side of the river could only reach a rising piece of land where they camped having taken with them a small amount of provisions. There, as on an island in the middle of an ocean, without help from any side they had to wait for the end of the flood. More than once Madame Lajimoniere believed that nothing could save them and that they would all perish of hunger.
On the 20th of May the water ceased to rise and two or three days afterwards commenced to abate. At last by the 10th of June the river once more returned to its natural bed but it was too late to think of planting a crop. So the hope of a harvest was renounced until the next year.
A party of settlers left the country, some returning to Canada, and others going to the United States, and Madame Lajimoniere had the grief of seeing one of her daughters who had married a Canadian named Lamere, depart with him for the United States.
Through all her loneliness and trials she had entertained the hope that some day she would be able to return to Canada to see her own people. When she had come to Red River it was not with the intention of always residing there. Her husband had not thus represented it to her when she consented to follow him in 1807. But little by little she was disillusioned on this point. Her husband was quite decided not to abandon his hunting life. She was beginning to be resigned to her fate and her only desire now was to keep her children near her.
It was a very sorrowful time for Madame Lajimoniere when after the scourge of 1826 her eldest daughter Madame Lamere left for the United States. (Note: Madam Lamare after spending 26 years in the United States came back to St. Boniface where she had the happiness of seeing her old mother, then 90 years of age.) She tried once more on this occasion to plead with her husband to return to Canada following the example of others who had renounced the effort of establishing themselves in a land so full of trials. But it was in vain; M. Lajimoniere was determined never to leave Red River.
Encouraged by the Missionaries who in spite of their trials persisted in dwelling in this place and who commenced once more the work which had been destroyed by the inundation, M. Lajimoniere rebuilt his little home at the mouth of the River Seine.
In due time the other children grew up and married in the country establishing themselves on the land about St. Boniface. Both of the boys inherited from their father the taste for a life of travel and adventure.
After the flood of 1826 Madame Lajimoniere did not leave her home, but brought up her family to be good and honest men and women. As to their father he retained, all his life, the habits of a hunter. When Madame Lajimoniere became a widow in 1850 she left her house on the Red River to live with her son Benjamin, two miles from St. Boniface and it was at his house that her life was ended at the advanced age of 96 years, surrounded by all the consolations that religion can offer. She died without ever hearing of her relations whom she had left in Canada.
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Moon, Bob; Leach, Jenny and Stevens, Mary-Priscilla (2005). Designing Open and Distance Learning for Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa: A toolkit for educators and planners. The World Bank, Washington, USA.Full text available as:
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Everyone remembers a good teacher. Good teachers are the key to educational expansion and improvement. In many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, there is an urgent need to expand the number of primary and secondary teachers. In all African countries, there is an equally important need to improve the quality of teaching. To achieve this, it is clear that new approaches to teacher education are essential. Existing institutions of teacher education will continue to play an important role, but, alone, they will not meet the goals of Education for All (EFA) by 2015.
It is fortunate that, just as the twin needs to improve the quantity and quality of teachers become imperative, so new forms of education and training are becoming available. The world is witnessing a revolution in information and communication technologies (ICTs), which can offer training and support of a type and at a cost hitherto impossible to consider, and thus, must be fully explored given the scale and urgency of demand. In doing so, however, it will be necessary to build on existing and well-tested strategies, including the best models of open and distance learning.
This toolkit is the third in a series of recent publications by the Africa Region Human Development Department of the World Bank to share knowledge and experience on how distance education and ICTs can support education in Sub-Saharan Africa. It emphasizes the rigorous process by which new forms of distance-education programs for teacher education can be planned and implemented. The best models of established programs are considered along with the potential for incorporating, as the means become available, new modes of communication. Most forms of teacher education, particularly those concerned with qualification upgrading and ongoing professional development, will have to be based in schools. The authors demonstrate how school-based programs, appropriately resourced and supported, have the potential not only to raise significantly the number and quality of teachers, but also to improve classroom practice and school organization, generally. The guidance and advice, which is drawn from many years of experience in design and implementation, and embraces a range of case studies from across the region, will be of considerable value to those preparing new policies and programs of teacher education and to those seeking to improve existing programs.
|Academic Unit/Department:||Education and Language Studies > Education
Education and Language Studies
|Interdisciplinary Research Centre:||Centre for Research in Education and Educational Technology (CREET)
Innovation, Knowledge & Development research centre (IKD)
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|Date Deposited:||10 Jul 2007|
|Last Modified:||05 Dec 2010 06:56|
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Amniotic fluid embolism
Amniotic fluid embolism is a rare but serious condition that occurs when amniotic fluid — the fluid that surrounds a baby in the uterus during pregnancy — or fetal material, such as fetal cells, enters the mother's bloodstream. Amniotic fluid embolism is most likely to occur during delivery or in the immediate postpartum period.
Amniotic fluid embolism is difficult to diagnose. If your doctor suspects you might have one, you'll need immediate treatment to prevent potentially life-threatening complications.
Amniotic fluid embolism might develop suddenly and rapidly. Signs and symptoms might include:
- Sudden shortness of breath
- Excess fluid in the lungs (pulmonary edema)
- Sudden low blood pressure
- Sudden failure of the heart to effectively pump blood (cardiovascular collapse)
- Life-threatening problems with blood clotting (disseminated intravascular coagulopathy)
- Bleeding from the uterus, cesarean incision or intravenous (IV) sites
- Altered mental status, such as anxiety or a sense of doom
- Rapid heart rate or disturbances in the rhythm of the heart rate
- Fetal distress, such as a slow heart rate, or other fetal heart rate abnormalities
- Loss of consciousness
Amniotic fluid embolism occurs when amniotic fluid or fetal material enters the mother's bloodstream. A likely cause is a breakdown in the placental barrier, such as from trauma.
When this breakdown happens, the immune system responds by releasing products that cause an inflammatory reaction, which activates abnormal clotting in the mother's lungs and blood vessels. This can result in a serious blood-clotting disorder known as disseminated intravascular coagulation.
However, amniotic fluid embolisms are rare — and it's likely that some amniotic fluid commonly enters the mother's bloodstream during delivery without causing problems. It's not clear why in some mothers this leads to amniotic fluid embolism.
It's estimated that there are between one and 12 cases of amniotic fluid embolism for every 100,000 deliveries. Because amniotic fluid embolisms are rare, it's difficult to identify risk factors.
Research suggests that several factors might be linked to an increased risk of amniotic fluid embolism, however, including:
- Advanced maternal age. If you're 35 or older at the time of your child's birth, you might be at increased risk of amniotic fluid embolism.
- Placenta problems. Abnormalities in the placenta — the structure that develops in your uterus during pregnancy — might increase your risk of amniotic fluid embolism. Abnormalities might include the placenta partially or totally covering the cervix (placenta previa) or the placenta peeling away from the inner wall of the uterus before delivery (placental abruption). These conditions can disrupt the physical barriers between you and your baby.
- Preeclampsia. Having high blood pressure and excess protein in your urine after 20 weeks of pregnancy (preeclampsia) can increase your risk.
- Medically induced labor. Limited research suggests that certain labor induction methods are associated with an increased risk of amniotic fluid embolism. Research on this link, however, is conflicting.
- Operative delivery. Having a C-section, a forceps delivery or a vacuum extraction might increase your risk of amniotic fluid embolism. These procedures can disrupt the physical barriers between you and your baby. It's not clear, however, whether operative deliveries are true risk factors for amniotic fluid embolism because they're used after the condition develops to ensure a rapid delivery.
- Polyhydramnios. Having too much amniotic fluid around your baby may put you at risk of amniotic fluid embolism.
Amniotic fluid embolism can cause serious complications for you and your baby, including:
- Brain injury. Low blood oxygen can cause permanent, severe neurological damage or brain death.
- Lengthy hospital stay. Women who survive an amniotic fluid embolism often require treatment in the intensive care unit and — depending on the extent of their complications — might spend weeks or months in the hospital.
- Maternal death. The number of women who die of amniotic fluid embolism (mortality rate) is very high. The numbers vary, but as many as 20 percent of maternal deaths in developed countries may be due to amniotic fluid embolisms.
- Infant death. Your baby is at risk of brain injury or death. Prompt evaluation and delivery of your baby improves survival.
A diagnosis of amniotic fluid embolism is typically made after other conditions have been ruled out.
Your health care provider might order the following lab tests during your evaluation:
- Blood tests, including those that evaluate clotting, heart enzymes, electrolytes and blood type, as well as a complete blood count (CBC)
- Electrocardiogram (ECG or EKG) to evaluate your heart's rhythm
- Pulse oximetry to check the amount of oxygen in your blood
- Chest X-ray to look for fluid around your heart
- Echocardiography to evaluate your heart's function
Amniotic fluid embolism requires rapid treatment to address low blood oxygen and low blood pressure.
Emergency treatments might include:
- Catheter placement. A thin, hollow tube placed into one of your arteries (arterial catheter) might be used to monitor your blood pressure. You might also have another tube placed into a vein in your chest (central venous catheter), which can be used to give fluids, medications or transfusions, as well as draw blood.
- Oxygen. You might need to have a breathing tube inserted into your airway to help you breathe.
- Medications. Your doctor might give you medications to improve and support your heart function. Other medications might be used to decrease the pressure caused by fluid going into your heart and lungs.
- Transfusions. If you have uncontrollable bleeding, you'll need transfusions of blood, blood products and replacement fluids.
If you have amniotic fluid embolism before delivering your baby, your doctor will treat you with the goal of safely delivering your baby as soon as possible. An emergency C-section might be needed.
Coping and support
Experiencing a life-threatening pregnancy condition can be frightening and stressful for you and your family. Afterward, you might relive the experience and have nightmares and flashbacks.
During this challenging time, lean on loved ones for support. Consider joining a survivors' network. Also, work with your health care provider to determine how you can safely manage your recovery and your role as the mother of a newborn.
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In this book Erik Wielenberg offers C.S. Lewis's views on religion and brings in Hume's and Bertrand Russell's ideas in order to set up a problem, to which he gives what he thinks would be Lewis's responses, followed by his own assessment of those responses. For instance, he presents Hume's views on the problem of evil and his view that "it is never reasonable to believe that a miracle has occurred on the basis of religious testimony alone" (p. 146). Wielenberg then considers how Lewis would respond and eventually argues that he has no adequate answer to the most difficult version of the problem of evil. In the case of Russell, Wielenberg presents Russell's view that God can be good only if he conforms his actions to a moral law of which he is not the author (p. 65) and then critically discusses whether Lewis has an adequate response. He concludes that Lewis does not.
Wielenberg starts his book with the problem of evil with a formulation he takes from Philo's remarks in Hume's Dialogues on Natural Religion. A crucial premise in the version of the problem that Wielenberg reconstructs from Philo's remarks says: if God is morally perfect, he wants there to be no suffering in the world. Of course, from this it does not follow that there is no suffering in the world, even if we assume that God is all-knowing, all-powerful, and morally perfect, because God may have a reason for allowing some suffering, perhaps because he must if he is to allow people freedom of the will and action or perhaps he must if he is to "nudge" them to enter freely into a loving relation with Him. A good parent would not want her child to suffer even though she would allow suffering, say, from the effects of chemotherapy if that is the only chance of curing the child's leukemia.
Why, according to Lewis, would God allow his creatures to suffer even though he wants there to be no suffering? Wielenberg lists Lewis's three reasons for pain, by which he means suffering. First, pain can cause us to "recognize our moral shortcomings" (p. 29). Wielenberg quotes Lewis who writes, "God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world" (p. 30). When we do wrong and are caught we suffer the consequences and become aware of our moral shortcomings. Second, Lewis thinks that God allows us to suffer in order to become aware that we are looking for happiness in the wrong places, in earthly things rather than in a relationship with God (cf., p. 30). For some, it is only when the stock market crashes or the banks foreclose on their homes that they come to realize that there are more important things in life. Finally, for Lewis, the best sort of life is one where we freely choose to be in relationship with God. According to Wielenberg, Lewis thinks we freely choose such a relationship only if we choose it for its own sake and know that we do. For Lewis, in order to know that we choose a relationship with God for its own sake, we must choose the relationship in pain, as Abraham does when he chooses to sacrifice Isaac because he believes God commands it (cf., pp. 32-33). If we do not choose the relationship in pain, how can we know that we do not choose it for the pleasure it brings or the pain it relieves?
These reasons can explain why God would allow some suffering, but as Wielenberg points out, "If Lewis's answer to the problem of pain is to be entirely successful, all human natural suffering must be explicable in terms of the three roles described in this section" (p. 35). Natural suffering is suffering that does not result from the free actions of anyone, suffering of the sort that Wielenberg notes at the beginning of his first chapter when he discusses the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 and the more recent tsunami in Indonesia in 2004 (pp. 7-8). Lewis's reasons why God allows suffering boil down to the fact that allowing it is needed to "nudge" people "toward genuine happiness" (p. 40; cf., 45), to freely choose what is really, and not just apparently, good for them, namely, a relationship to an all-knowing, all-powerful, morally perfect, loving God.
Wielenberg presents Lewis's defense against the charge that pain (read "suffering") is not fairly distributed; some bad people experience little and some good people a lot. Bad people do not experience enough pain and good people too much. Lewis thinks that we are in no position to judge this since we do not really know what our, or others', moral character is like (pp. 44-45). In addition, God would not allow pain to be inflicted on really bad people, on "incorrigibles" who cannot be nudged to seek what is truly good for them, since that would be to allow pointless suffering. So some of the people we think are bad but suffer little may be incorrigibles and others may not really be bad. On the other hand, some of the people we think are good but suffer greatly may not really be good. In short, for Lewis we are in no position to judge that suffering is unfairly distributed among good and bad people.
Wielenberg finds it hard to believe that of the hundreds of thousands of people who suffered in the 2004 tsunami in Indonesia, "each person who suffered received precisely the right amount of pain required for the promotion of genuine happiness" (p. 48). However, even if each person did suffer just the right amount, he thinks that Lewis has no solution to the problem posed by the suffering of children. Surely we know that children are innocent and so not bad people, and that in some cases the suffering they experience is horrendous. Could God allow this suffering as a way of nudging other people toward freely choosing a better life for themselves? Wielenberg thinks that it would be unjust to let innocent children suffer for the good of others (p. 51). The same sort of Kantian objection is applied to the Nazi experiments on Jews and the Tuskegee study of syphilis in African-American men.
Wielenberg does not consider the reply that normally it is not morally permissible to allow some to suffer for the benefit of others but here it is permissible because God compensates the children who suffer by bringing them eternal happiness through union with Him in the afterlife. But could a good parent, say, allow his teenage son to hit his little brother with a hammer, then punish him to "nudge" him toward better character, and next compensate the little brother by taking him on a very fun vacation to Disneyland? Wouldn't the good parent instead just stop his son from hitting his little brother and take the little brother on the fun vacation anyway? If so, why wouldn't God prevent innocent children from suffering terribly and instead bring them directly to heaven rather than allowing them to suffer at the hands of monsters or in the wake of natural disasters?
Wielenberg thinks that Lewis does not adequately reply to the problem of evil when properly understood as the problem of God's allowing horrendous natural suffering to befall children who will not be led to embrace genuine happiness as a result. However, whether we should then disbelieve in the God of Christianity is still an open question, for there might be reasons for believing in him that are weightier than the reasons the problem of evil offers for disbelief. This is what leads Wielenberg to consider next "the positive arguments Lewis offers in favor of Christianity" (p. 55).
Lewis offers three arguments for the existence of some sort of Higher Power: from "human morality, our capacity to reason, and a kind of desire he labels 'Joy'" (p. 59). Lewis thinks it is obvious that there are some objective moral truths which we know to be true, truths such as "it is morally wrong to torture innocent children purely for entertainment" (Wielenberg's example, p. 60), and moral claims that are true "regardless of what anyone may think of them" (p. 60). In addition to objective moral obligations and our knowledge of them, Lewis notes that we have a sense of obligation that urges us to do right, and a sense of guilt that manifests itself when we do wrong. According to Wielenberg's reconstruction, Lewis's argument is an inference to the best explanation of these three moral phenomena (moral obligation, moral knowledge, and moral emotions (p. 77; see also, p. 62)) with the conclusion being that "a good, mindful Higher Power that created the universe" is "the ultimate source of rightness and wrongness" (p. 65), our capacity to know objective moral truths a priori, and our sense of obligation and guilt (p. 63).
One problem with Lewis's argument is that it does not consider the totality of evidence. People not only have a sense of obligation and guilt, they also are tempted to do wrong and some seem to aim at evil for its own sake (cf., p. 75 and 72-73). In addition, some people are psychopaths and lack a sense of obligation and feelings of guilt (pp. 80-82). Perhaps the best explanation of the total phenomena is some sort of Dualism, that is, the existence of both a good and an evil Higher Power. Further, Wielenberg argues that evolutionary psychology promises an explanation of our sense of obligation and guilt (pp. 84-87), and our ability to know objective moral truths (pp. 89-92). Our ancestors who had the relevant cognitive and emotional capacities were desirable in cooperative ventures and reaped the attendant benefits. If moral truths are not only objective but necessary, no explanation of their existence is required (cf., we don't need God to explain why 2 + 2 = 4; p. 88 for Wielenberg's discussion).
Lewis has another argument for the existence of a Higher Power that depends on our ability to gain knowledge through reasoning, say, knowledge that I am mortal by reasoning: all humans are mortal; I am a human; therefore, I am mortal (Wielenberg uses this example, p. 95). For me to have knowledge of the conclusion, the premises must not only entail it, but I must also see that they do. Suppose that that sort of "seeing" implies knowing that the premises entail the conclusion. According to Wielenberg, for Lewis, "S knows p only if (i) S believes p and (ii) the complete cause of S's belief that p is the truth of p itself" (p. 98). But how can the fact that the premises of some argument entail its conclusion cause, in a way acceptable to Naturalism, my belief that they do? It can't because a logical relation cannot be the efficient cause of anything. However, if reasons can be causes, and human beings are rational, and not simply natural, beings then it is possible for an entailment to cause (by being a reason for) a belief to exist, and thus knowledge by reasoning would be possible. We know that knowledge by reasoning is possible, that Naturalism cannot explain that possibility, and that it can be explained by assuming that a Higher Power created rational human beings whose nature is not reducible to what it is on Naturalism. Hence, the best explanation of knowledge through reasoning involves the existence of a Higher Power. Thus we are justified in believing in such a Power.
This is not the argument Wielenberg attributes to Lewis. He thinks that Lewis holds that "seeing" that the premises of some argument entail its conclusion is an intentional mental state (one that has as its object a proposition) and that Lewis believes that Naturalism must hold that such intentional mental states cannot evolve from more primitive non-intentional mental states. Wielenberg has no trouble in raising doubts about such a claim. However, perhaps Lewis intended the argument I gave above, and then Wielenberg's objection is irrelevant. To that argument I would respond that it assumes a flawed conception of knowledge. On the basis of induction, I know that I will be dead on January 1, 2100, but the truth of that belief is not the complete cause of my belief that I will then be dead. Future states have no more causal powers in the present than do logical entailments, but that does not prevent me from knowing propositions about the future.
The third argument that Lewis offers for the existence of a Higher Power starts with a desire that Lewis calls Joy and understands as "a desire for union with God" (p. 113; cf., p. 109). No doubt this will strike you as an odd definition of "Joy," which is an emotion and not a desire at all. But set that aside and just assume that Joy is what Lewis says it is. His argument then is: all natural desires can be satisfied, that is, there exist means for satisfying them; Joy is a natural desire; therefore, the means for satisfying it exist; so God exists. The argument for the first premise seems to be inductive: hunger is a natural desire and food exists; the desire for sex is a natural desire and sex exists; the desire for sleep is a natural desire and sleep exists. So, probably the means to satisfy all natural desires exist.
Wielenberg rightly criticizes this inductive argument on the grounds that the object of Joy is a supernatural being while the objects of the other desires are natural. If we cannot know by induction that a swan is white, if that swan is in many ways unlike most swans, how, Wielenberg wonders, can we know via induction that Joy, which is quite unlike other natural desires, is like those desires in that its object exists (p. 114)? At most one should conclude that the objects of natural desires exist insofar as they are natural objects. No one should conclude that a convicted murderer (who is a criminal) will probably get less than ten years because all known convicted burglars (who are also criminals) have gotten less than ten years. Despite similarities, relevant differences make a difference.
An inference to the best explanation that invokes a Higher Power to explain the existence of what Lewis calls Joy fares no better than the inductive argument. Again, evolutionary psychology does as well (pp. 115-19). Wielenberg says that "one of the main effects of Joy is that it prevents a person from deriving lasting contentment from earthly things" (p. 116). He argues that being in this constant state of discontent can motivate us to put an end to it, and the side effects might be beneficial from a reproductive standpoint. As Wielenberg writes, "Dissatisfaction can benefit us in the long run" (p. 116). Hence, Joy, understood as Lewis does, might be given an evolutionary explanation even if its object, God, does not exist. The evolutionary explanation is as good, if not better, than the God hypothesis.
Lewis thinks that the arguments from morality, reason, and joy make it reasonable to believe that some sort of Higher Power exists. He thinks that given that it is reasonable to believe that some Higher Power exists, the historical events surrounding Jesus' life make it reasonable to believe in the Resurrection and thereby that the Higher Power is the God of Christianity. Because the Resurrection would be a miracle if it occurred, Lewis considers Hume's argument that, according to Wielenberg, concludes that, "it is never reasonable to believe that a miracle has occurred on the basis of religious testimony alone" (p. 146; cf., pp. 126-27, 130), where religious testimony is understood to be "testimony by human beings that is intended to support a particular 'system of religion'" (p. 127). In addition to offering Lewis's objections to Hume, Wielenberg gives Lewis's positive argument on behalf of belief in the Resurrection.
According to Wielenberg, Lewis rejects what he calls Hume's Probability Principle which says, roughly, that we should proportion our belief to the experiential evidence and to it alone. Lewis argues that we cannot rely on experience alone. For experience to justify, we must be justified in thinking that the Principle of the Uniformity of Nature (PUN) is true which says, roughly, that the unobserved will almost always be like the observed. But we cannot be justified in believing in PUN on the basis of experience alone. So insofar as Hume's argument against rational belief in miracles on the basis of religious testimony alone depends on the Probability Principle, it is flawed.
Further, if we are justified in believing in PUN, it must be on the basis of reason. But if Lewis's argument from reason were successful, then we would be justified in believing in a Higher Power. And, Lewis thinks, if we are justified in believing in a Higher Power and believing that IF there is a Higher Power and it has certain attributes, THEN it likely would intervene in nature in miraculous ways, then we could not discount religious testimony in the way Hume proposes. Then, contra Hume, it could be that it is rational to believe, on the basis of religious testimony, that a miracle occurred. Lewis apparently held that such is the case when it comes to the Resurrection of Jesus: it is more rational to believe that the Resurrection occurred than that those who reported the surrounding events were either deceived or deceiving.
Wielenberg grants that if it were reasonable to believe that a Higher Power exists and "could and would intervene in nature in a particular way" (p. 148), then Hume's argument would be undercut (pp. 147-48), but he denies that Lewis has given arguments that make it rational to believe that a Higher Power exists (pp. 151-52). One might also question Lewis's assertion that we are justified in believing the Probability Principle only if we are justified in believing PUN. To be justified in believing that all crows are black on the basis of certain experiences with crows, I do not also have to be justified in believing the following conditional: if I have such-and-such experiences of crows, then I will be justified in believing all crows are black. All that is needed is that that conditional be true, that I not be justified in believing it false, and that its antecedent is in fact satisfied. Similarly, I might be justified in believing the Probability Principle, or some claim based on it, even if I'm not justified in believing PUN is true, in so far as it is true, I'm not justified in believing it false, and certain things have been observed. If to be justified in believing the Probability Principle I have to be justified in believing PUN, why don't I have to be justified in believing some other principle before I am justified in believing PUN? And then an infinite regress looms. If we have to stop somewhere to stave off the regress, why not stop with PUN being true without our being justified in believing it's true?
In the first three chapters Wielenberg contrasts Lewis's views with those of Hume and Russell, but in the fourth and final chapter he examines "some areas of agreement among the three" (p. 153). He argues that (1):
Hume, Lewis, and Russell, therefore, are qualified evidentialists. Each maintains that there are properly basic beliefs that need no evidence (though they do not always agree what these beliefs are). But they believe that when it comes to beliefs that are not basic, we should always believe in accordance with the evidence available to us at the time. (p. 168)
On the design argument, Wielenberg argues that, "Lewis, Hume, and Russell all identified a fundamental weakness common to all design arguments. The furthest such arguments can take us is to the existence of some intelligent designer or other" (p. 187). None of the three thinks that the design argument can establish the existence of an all-knowing, all-powerful, wholly good being.
Finally, Wielenberg thinks that Hume, Lewis, and Russell all have a view of what true religion requires. While Wielenberg shows that the views of Russell and Lewis on this topic have something in common in that they both think that true religion requires "the conquest of the finite self by the infinite self" (p. 196), that is, devotion to ideals that go beyond self-interested concerns, he does not show that Hume's view has much in common with Russell's and Lewis's. He argues that Hume's view is that of Philo in the Dialogues on Natural Religion, which Wielenberg takes to be the view that there is a cause of the universe "that is probably something like a human mind" (p. 188), even though we can have no real idea of how specifically it is like, and unlike, our mind. True religion involves that belief and a certain "emotional response" to it that involves astonishment, melancholy, and contempt (p. 188), but it has "no implications for ordinary life" (p. 191). Of course, Russell and Lewis would disagree strongly with the last part of what Wielenberg attributes to Hume on true religion, and Lewis, unlike Russell, thinks true religion involves a belief in the Christian God.
Wielenberg writes very clearly and lays out premise by premise the arguments he considers. For the most part I agree with the objections to the arguments he attributes to Lewis, though I think that he misconstrues Lewis's argument that Naturalism cannot explain knowledge based on reason, and so misses the real objection to that argument. Further, I think there is an additional objection to Lewis's argument from Joy to the existence of a Higher Power. As promised, the last chapter does point out some areas of agreement between Hume, Russell, and Lewis, but it also brings out areas of disagreement that it soft pedals, for example, between Russell and Lewis on the meaning of "faith" and between Hume on one side and Russell and Lewis on the other on the nature of true religion.
God and the Reach of Reason is an enjoyable and informative read. Lewis scholars will have to decide whether it accurately represents his views and arguments. Wielenberg's presentation of what he takes to be the views and arguments is extremely clear, and his criticisms of them fair and charitable. There are not a lot of new ideas offered by Wielenberg on the problem of evil, the argument about miracles, or the three arguments from morality, reason, and Joy. But the objections he offers are sound. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to read a critical interpretation and assessment of C.S. Lewis's views on religion. | <urn:uuid:b25d03a4-a5e9-4bfb-8161-12d5afc33752> | CC-MAIN-2015-22 | http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/23667/?id=13785 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-22/segments/1432207929272.10/warc/CC-MAIN-20150521113209-00109-ip-10-180-206-219.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956973 | 4,658 | 2.703125 | 3 |
It’s really no secret that a lot of young children are fascinated by insects.
There’s just something about those tiny little creatures that they can’t resist.
This, of course, is actually a really good thing as they’re not only diving into the world of science at a young age but they’re also honing their observation skills and truly learning through hands-on exploration!
Now, if they’ve taken this fascination beyond watching those insects outside and want to start learning more about them as they get older, this insect labeling file folder game can help!
From the antennae to the legs, your child will learn the various parts of an ant and then be able to label them using this fun file folder game.
Assembling the Insect Labeling File Folder Game
Putting together this game should take you all of 10 minutes making it not only fun but easy too!
First, you’ll need to gather up a few supplies:
- A manila file folder
- Velcro dots
- Laminator (optional)
- The insect labeling printable (below)
- Clear contact paper
To start, you’ll need to print out the insect labeling printable and cut out the labels. Run these through your laminator for durability.
Next, use some clear contact paper to attach the cover to the front of your folder and the two ant pages to the inside of your folder.
The ant pages may need to be trimmed up just a bit depending on your printer’s margins. Trim to the edge of the ant diagram and line these up to the fold of your folder while making sure that the actual fold stays uncovered. If you cover it with either the printed paper or the contact paper, your folder won’t close correctly.
Finally, add some Velcro dots to the boxes on the ant diagram and the opposite Velcro dots to the backs of your laminated labels.
Using the Insect Labeling File Folder Game
When your game is all put together, give your child the folder and the labels and have them figure out the name of each part of the insect and then label it appropriately.
Use some clear packing tape to attach a plastic baggie to the back of your folder to hold all of your pieces when they’re not in use.
When you’re done with your game, look with your child at different types of insects to see if they can identify the various parts.
If they’re ready to move on and they’re really loving learning about animals and insects, check out our Life Cycle File Folder Games bundle! They’ll have a blast exploring plants, frogs, chickens, and more! | <urn:uuid:202e3abb-6169-4f3a-b786-c06b42722fed> | CC-MAIN-2019-47 | https://fromabcstoacts.com/insect-labeling-file-folder-game/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-47/segments/1573496667260.46/warc/CC-MAIN-20191113113242-20191113141242-00112.warc.gz | en | 0.909749 | 565 | 2.890625 | 3 |
The parts of a hurricane are called the eye, the eye wall and the rain bands. The eye is at the center of the hurricane and usually measures between 20 to 40 miles. The eye wall surrounds the eye, stretching 5 to 30 miles in width. The rain bands form the spiraling portion of the hurricane and can be dozens or hundreds of miles wide.Continue Reading
The strongest winds and rains occur in the eye wall of a hurricane, while the weakest winds and lightest rainfall occur in the eye. The eye of the hurricane may not contain clouds, and the sky can appear clear and peaceful.
In counter-clockwise moving hurricanes formed in the northern hemisphere, the most active part of the eye wall is to the right of the eye in an area called the right-front quadrant. In addition to having heavier wind and rain, this quadrant is the most likely part to form high seas and storm surges during landfall. When the eye wall contracts, the maximum wind speed increases and a new eye wall can form. As the rain bands spiral out, they form a pinwheel shape. Between the pinwheels, the air may be calm with little wind and rain.Learn more about Storms
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a hurricane is an organized thunderstorm that occurs over water and has sustained winds that reach maximum speeds over 74 miles per hour. These storms originate over the Atlantic Basin, which includes the Atlantic Ocean, Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea. When they reach land, they often cause structural damage and flooding.Full Answer >
Hurricanes form when rising warm, moist air displaces colder air high in the atmosphere. The cold air drops down on all sides of the warm spot, swirling slightly as it falls, then becomes warm and moist itself, repeating the process. Over time, the swirling grows into a hurricane.Full Answer >
The Great Hurricane of 1780 killed approximately 22,000 people when it struck several Caribbean islands, making it the worst on record. Although records from the time are poor, it is believed to have first made landfall on October 10 in Barbados before tearing through other islands in the eastern Caribbean.Full Answer >
A hurricane is a tropical cyclone with sustained winds reaching speeds of at least 74 miles per hour, according to The Weather Channel. Hurricanes are classified on a scale of 1 to 5 using the scale Saffir-Simpson hurricane wind scale.Full Answer > | <urn:uuid:ed46cff7-9661-4702-acce-d8a4aa084c58> | CC-MAIN-2016-36 | https://www.reference.com/science/parts-hurricane-4c3c61702bd27c6 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-36/segments/1471982298875.42/warc/CC-MAIN-20160823195818-00195-ip-10-153-172-175.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.929819 | 493 | 3.625 | 4 |
Because valve train timing repairs are becoming a primary part of your professional technician’s engine service market, it’s important to understand the basics of valve train timing. To illustrate, the camshaft controls the opening and closing events of the intake and exhaust valves in most four-cycle gasoline engines. The camshaft drive sprocket contains twice as many teeth as the crankshaft sprocket, which allows the camshaft to rotate at one-half crankshaft speed.
This gearing ratio allows the intake and compression strokes to occur on the first crankshaft rotation and the power and exhaust strokes to occur on the second rotation. A balance shaft might also be included in the valve train timing assembly to dampen engine vibration or an auxiliary shaft to drive the oil pump and distributor. Since the intake or exhaust valves can collide with the pistons when a timing belt or chain fails, it’s important to ensure a professional repair by selling timing gears, chains, or belts as complete replacement sets.
Because of their extreme reliability, meshed timing gears are generally used on push rod-type industrial and truck engine applications. Matching timing marks indicate when the crankshaft and camshaft gears are timed correctly. Some camshaft gears are made of a fibrous composite material designed to reduce gear noise. Many replacement gears are made of aluminum alloy, which normally produces a mild gear whine at idle speeds.
Most domestic push-rod V8 engines manufactured through the 1980s use a short timing chain to couple the camshaft and crankshaft sprockets and the service life on most is approximately 100,000 miles. Timing marks drilled or embossed on the gears allow the camshaft and crankshaft sprockets to be aligned along a vertical line drawn through the camshaft and crankshaft centers. As an exception, some older engines are timed by counting the number of timing chain pins between the timing marks embossed on the two sprockets.
Overhead camshaft engines
With advent of mass-produced overhead camshaft (OHC) engines during the 1970s, longer timing chains are now used to couple the camshafts with the crankshaft. Some engines use a primary timing chain to drive an intermediate shaft located just above the crankshaft. The intermediate shaft then drives a secondary timing chain attached to the driver’s side camshaft and a rear chain attached to the passenger side camshaft.
Many OHC engines use timing chain guides to align the timing chain (or chains) with the camshaft and crankshaft sprockets. A spring or hydraulically loaded tensioner compensates for normal wear in the timing chain links. A hydraulic tensioner uses engine oil pressure to tension the timing chain. In most OHC applications, the first components to fail are the timing chain guides. In any case, the chains, guides, tensioners and sprockets must be replaced as a complete set to ensure maximum reliability. Due to the reduced emissions-related maintenance that’s being mandated in some states, timing chains are once again becoming the preferred method of synchronizing the engine’s crankshaft with its camshafts and balance shafts.
Rubber timing belts have dominated the valve train timing market since they were popularly introduced on domestic vehicles in the 1980s. Due to the use of modern, crack-resistant EPDM rubber, visual inspections aren’t indicative of imminent failure. To ensure reliability, timing belts should be replaced according to the automaker’s recommended service intervals. While recommended replacement intervals on older applications often begin at 60,000 miles, that interval has generally been increased to 100,000 miles unless otherwise stated in the owner’s manual or professional service literature. To increase reliability, timing and balance shaft belts are generally sold as sets, complete with idler pulleys, and (if driven by the timing belt) a new water pump as well. | <urn:uuid:62eaad6f-012b-47d5-bbbe-f83d6e0a440e> | CC-MAIN-2023-14 | https://www.counterman.com/the-valve-train-timing-market/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-14/segments/1679296950030.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20230401125552-20230401155552-00357.warc.gz | en | 0.925556 | 836 | 2.875 | 3 |
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HIV Prevention Knowledge Base
Biomedical Interventions: Microbicides
I. Definition of the Prevention Area
Microbicides are products formulated for individuals to apply topically (vaginally or rectally) to reduce their risk of HIV and possibly other sexually transmitted infections. At present, this approach is experimental, although several broad-spectrum microbicides have been clinically evaluated. Microbicides comprise a subset of approaches to pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP); oral approaches to PrEP are addressed in a separate entry.
II. Epidemiological Justification for the Prevention Area
In generalized epidemics, women are at a disproportionate risk of HIV infection for biological as well as social reasons. Although condoms are highly effective in preventing HIV transmission, it can be difficult for women to negotiate safer sex because the male partner often controls whether a condom is used. Microbicides were initially proposed as a woman-controlled or -initiated prevention method for vaginal application, something a woman could use to protect herself.
The first microbicides studied were broad-spectrum compounds that were expected to inactivate HIV and other microbes by enhancing vaginal pH or by coating cell surfaces, preventing the binding of viruses or the entry of microbes into tissue. None of these approaches proved effective.
However, clinical trial results released in 2010 by the Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA) provided the first proof of concept for microbicide efficacy. This study, CAPRISA 004, found that a topical gel formulation of the antiretroviral drug tenofovir significantly reduced the risk of acquiring HIV and herpes simplex virus 2 (HSV-2) in women who use it regularly around the time of sex. However, in late 2011, the gel arms of another clinical trial evaluating daily use of one percent tenofovir gel were stopped early by the trial's data safety and monitoring board because there was no evidence that the gel was effective in reducing the risk of HIV acquisition. (This trial was also evaluating oral tenofovir and oral Truvada). Further analysis of data from this trial, known as VOICE (Vaginal and Oral Interventions to Control the Epidemic), is needed to explain the discrepancy between the two trial results.
Another trial evaluating vaginal use of one percent tenofovir gel is underway using the same dosing schedule as in CAPRISA 004. This trial, FACTS 001, is being conducted by the Follow-on African Consortium for Tenofovir Studies (FACTS) which expects to have data available in 2014. If FACTS confirms effectiveness of one percent tenofovir gel, additional steps will be needed before it can be licensed and marketed. Two safety and effectiveness trials of a vaginal ring containing dapivirine are scheduled to start in 2012.
Researchers are also evaluating whether these products could be safe and effective when applied rectally, given that anal sex carries an even higher risk of HIV transmission for heterosexuals and men who have sex with men. Developing a rectal microbicide is more challenging because the rectal mucosa is highly susceptible to HIV infection. Also, the colorectal tract has a greater surface area than the vagina, requiring a rectal microbicide to have greater coverage. Trials of a rectal formulation of tenofovir gel are moving forward.
III. Core Programmatic Components
Further studies are needed to confirm the safety and efficacy of tenofovir gel and other products being developed; it will be several years before this or any other microbicide is marketed. In the meantime, policymakers and program directors need to work closely with the community to put this potential prevention tool to best use. The following key activities will be necessary:
- Support of research to assess how the microbicide might be accepted and used in the local setting. What impact will it have on sexual risk-taking?
- Development of educational materials and campaigns to promote adherence and correct use while helping people understand the potential limitations of products that are only partially effective.
- Buildup of a stable supply chain and strategic distribution plan to ensure access to those who need the microbicide.
- Ensuring access to regular and routine HIV testing, especially rapid point-of-care HIV tests, to reduce the risk that people who are HIV-positive and are unaware of their HIV status will use the product.
- Performing surveillance for adverse events and for detection of any increase in HIV transmission or the possibility of individuals not yet on antiretroviral therapy developing drug resistance.
IV. Current Status of Implementation Experience
While an approved microbicide is not yet available, the clinical trials in Africa and India provide insights into how best to introduce microbicides into communities and fuel hope that women-driven prevention technology might further women's empowerment. For instance, one group in Pune, India, has explored how discussion of microbicides among couples could enhance partner communication about sex.
While the success of the CAPRISA trial is promising, additional work will be necessary to complete the critical next phases of research that could lay the groundwork for large-scale rollout. A number of additional trials over the coming years should deliver further results.
Microbicide Trials Network Statement on Decision to Discontinue Use of Tenofovir Gel in VOICE, a Major HIV Prevention Study in Women
Microbicide Trials Network, November 25, 2011.
The Microbicide Trials Network dropped tenofovir gel from its Vaginal and Oral Interventions to Control the Epidemic (VOICE) trial following a routine Data Safety and Monitoring Board review that concluded that tenofovir gel was not effective in preventing HIV in the women enrolled in the trial. VOICE, an HIV prevention trial, has been evaluating two antiretroviral approaches for preventing the sexual transmission of HIV in women—daily use of one of two different antiretroviral tablets (tenofovir or tenofovir emtricitabine) or of a vaginal gel. The trial has enrolled 5,029 women at 15 sites in Uganda, South Africa, and Zimbabwe, and had earlier discontinued the oral tenofovir. The study found no safety concerns with any of the study products. It is not clear why tenofovir gel did not reduce the risk of HIV acquisition among women in this trial when an earlier trial (CAPRISA 004, which followed a different dosing schedule) showed a reduction in risk. Complete analysis of the trial data will take place after the trial is completed and all of the data are analyzed. The trial team expects results to be available in late 2012 or early 2013.
Effectiveness and Safety of Tenofovir Gel, an Antiretroviral Microbicide, for the Prevention of HIV Infection in Women
Abdool Karim, Q., Abdool Karim, S. S., Frolich, J. A., et al. Science (2010), Vol. 329 No. 5996, pp. 1168–1174.
This is the first clinical trial indicating the effectiveness of a vaginal microbicide in reducing HIV infection in women. Nearly 900 sexually active women aged 18 to 40 in Durban and Vulindlela, South Africa, were randomized to receive tenofovir or placebo within 12 hours before having sex and as soon as possible within 12 hours after having sex. Monthly support meetings with participants highlighted the importance of consistent and correct microbicide use, identified ways to overcome obstacles to use, and set goals for perfect adherence for each month. Despite this, 40 percent of the study participants used the gel for less than 50 percent of sex acts. After 12 and 24 months of follow-up, HIV incidence in the tenofovir arm was 50 percent and 40 percent lower than the placebo arm, respectively. HIV incidence among women with the best adherence was 54 percent lower than placebo, indicating that effectiveness was linked to adherence. Furthermore, the study found tenofovir safe. Despite the small sample size, this study provided “proof of concept” for tenofovir microbicide prophylaxis. More studies are needed to corroborate these findings.
Intravaginal Insertion in Kwazulu-Natal: Sexual Practices and Preferences in the Context of Microbicide Gel Use
Gafos, M., Mzimela, M., Sukazi, S., et al. Culture, Health, and Sexuality (2010), Vol. 12 No. 8, pp. 929–942.
Cited preferences for “dry” sex among certain populations in sub-Saharan Africa raise concerns about the acceptability of vaginal gel microbicides. To identify whether such use would be problematic, 118 in-depth interviews and 15 focus group discussions with women participating in a microbicide gel trial in Kwazulu-Natal and their partners collected detailed information on intravaginal insertions. Unexpectedly, 49 of 63 interviewed women and 4 of 8 men said the microbicide enhanced their sexual pleasure; the remainder reported no effect of the microbicide on their sexual experience. Participants stated that the gel increased sexual pleasure by making sex “hot,” “tight,” “smooth,” and “dry.” Women also reported enjoying the lubricating effect of the gel. According to this research, the notion of “dry” sex is not one of complete dryness, just lack of excessive wetness in the vagina. Furthermore, as intravaginal “potions” were commonly used to improve sexual pleasure among this population, a microbicide may be more easily understood in a local context using local terms. The authors conclude that microbicides may be more acceptable for HIV prevention than expected, as previous associations between intravaginal insertions and dry sex were “overstated.”
International Microbicides Conference 2010: Program & Abstracts
Microbicides Trial Network. (2010).
This document contains the abstracts of all oral presentations and poster sessions given at the 2010 International Microbicides Conference. Organized by conference days, readers can browse through the content, search the document for authors or keywords, or scroll to the author index at the back of the document. The theme of this conference was “Building Bridges to HIV Prevention,” which is reflected in the abstracts.
An Acceptability and Safety Study of the Duet® Cervical Barrier and Gel Delivery System in Zimbabwe
Montgomery, E. T., Woodsong, C., Musara, P., et al. Journal of the International AIDS Society (2010), Vol. 13, p. 30.
This study assessed the acceptability of the Duet® cervical barrier together with a gel in 103 primarily married women in peri-urban Zimbabwe. Women were randomized to use the Duet continuously for 14 days, then only use it before having sex; another arm was randomized to the same regimen in reverse sequence. Approximately 90 percent of the women reported adhering to their assigned regimen 80 percent of the time. Overall, acceptability was high. Half of the participants preferred using the barrier during sex, 39 percent preferred continuous use, and the remainder reported no preference. The most positive attribute women assigned Duet was “normal/natural sex.” No serious adverse events were found among the study participants. Of note, 5 percent of women in both arms reported unspecified “fear” related to use. This study was small and only followed women for one month. Longer-term use may affect acceptability; adverse events may also differ with long-term use.
Microbicides in the Prevention of HIV Infection: Current Status and Future Directions
Nuttall, J. Drugs (2010), Vol. 70 No. 10, pp. 1231–1243.
An in-depth review of the history of microbicide development for HIV prevention, this article also presents new microbicides under development. These include antiretroviral drugs and drug combinations that can be administered in different ways, including daily delivery and sustained delivery mechanisms. In addition to specifically targeted HIV replication, new product options related to timing of use can potentially improve product effectiveness. Potential new microbicides, however, come with concerns about toxicity and resistance. Additional challenges to microbicide development, such as need to remain stable in a tropical environment, are also addressed in the article. The author details concerns and further challenges to introducing a microbicide widely in a population, including knowing its safety profile among pregnant women or women who want to become pregnant. Despite recent encouraging news about microbicides, the road to their widespread and effective use for HIV prevention remains long.
In Vitro and Ex Vivo Testing of Tenofovir Shows It Is Effective As an HIV-1 Microbicide
Rohan, L. C., Moncla, B. J., Kunjara Na Ayudhya, R. P., et al. PLoS ONE (2010), Vol. 5 No. 2, p. e9310.
Describing their in vitro and ex vivo testing of tenofovir, the authors make the case that preclinical testing of microbicide products has advanced tremendously over the last decade. Previous microbicides shown to cause cell irritation were not tested so extensively prior to their use in phase II and phase III trials. This study used human ectocervical and colorectal tissue to understand the effects of tenofovir gel on such tissue. In vitro tests found viscosity similar to other commonly-used vaginal and rectal lubricants, constant tenofovir release rates in the gel, and penetration of the drug into mucosal tissue, albeit at varying rates. The gel had no negative effect on vaginal flora, even in the presence of four different bacteria, including gonorrhea. Furthermore, tenofovir reduced the presence of HIV in the tests. Thus the authors conclude that tenofovir is effective and may be a viable candidate for pre-exposure prophylaxis in humans.
HIV “Prevention” Gel PRO 2000 Proven Ineffective
Microbicides Development Programme. (2009).
This press release from the Microbicides Development Program (MDP) summarizes the outcome of the MDP 301 trial that tested the effectiveness of PRO 2000 vaginal microbicide gel against placebo for HIV prevention. Disappointingly, data from over 9,000 women in four countries in Africa over 12 months (24 months in Uganda) found no difference in HIV acquisition rates between microbicide and placebo users. HIV incidence was 4.5 per 100 women years in the PRO 2000 group and 4.3 per 100 in the placebo group. Readers can find links to PDF files after the press release with additional information, including questions and answers about the trial, the results, quick facts, a technical fact sheet, and “Women’s Voices,” a sheet with study participants’ perspectives of the trial.
Complete Protection from Repeated Vaginal Simian-Human Immunodeficiency Virus Exposures in Macaques by a Topical Gel Containing Tenofovir Alone or with Emtricitabine
Parikh, U. M., Dobard, C., Sharma, S., et al. Journal of Virology (2009), Vol. 83 No. 20, pp. 10358–10365.
Safety and efficacy studies are needed before microbicides can be tested in humans. This trial assessed how well tenofovir (TVF) vaginal gel or TVF with emtricitabine (FTC) protected 17 macaques from simian HIV (SIV) infection over a period of 20 weeks. The gel was administered twice weekly; simian-human immunodeficiency virus was administered 30 minutes after the gel. Five of six macaques in the placebo arm and both in the control arm (no intervention) became infected with SIV in an average of 2.5 weeks. None of the six macaques assigned active gel (TVF alone or TVF+FTC) became infected over 20 weeks (40 total SIV exposures). Furthermore, there was no evidence of damage to vaginal mucosa with use of either active microbicide. Despite study limitations, the authors conclude that this study suggests TFV gel can be used before intercourse to protect women from SIV without the need for daily use.
Predictors of Adherent Use of Diaphragms and Microbicide Gel in a Four-Arm, Randomized Pilot Study Among Female Sex Workers in Madagascar
Turner, A. N., Van Damme, K., Jamieson, D. J., et al. Sexually Transmitted Diseases (2009), Vol. 36 No. 4, pp. 249–257.
Researchers undertook this pilot study to identify ways to maximize adherence to diaphragms and microbicide gel ahead of a future study on microbicide effectiveness. Nearly 200 female sex workers (FSWs) in four cities in Madagascar were randomized into four groups: the gel microbicide Acidform plus diaphragm; placebo gel plus diaphragm; placebo gel; and Acidform gel. These were collapsed into two arms for data analysis: diaphragm plus gel or gel alone. Weekly follow-up meetings over one month collected information on product use and sexual practices with clients and regular partners. A statistically significant difference was found in adherence among women randomized to diaphragms (43 percent at first follow-up and 67 percent at last follow-up) compared to gel-only users (28 percent at first follow-up and 45 percent at last follow-up). Compliance improved over time in both groups. The authors believe this was due to the product protocol: diaphragm insertion was a daily event independent of sex, while the gel was to be used prior to coitus. Study findings will help develop counseling messages for future microbicides studies, helping women understand that discreet use is possible, but also indicating that some women choose to disclose product use to their partners.
Prevention of SIV Rectal Transmission and Priming of T Cell Responses in Macaques after Local Pre-exposure Application of Tenofovir Gel
Cranage, M., Sharpe, S., Herrera, C., et al. PLoS Med (2008), Vol. 5 No. 8, p. e157.
HIV transmission during anal sex is higher than with vaginal sex due to physiologic factors. As such, a microbicide that can be safely used with anal intercourse could benefit heterosexual and homosexual couples alike. This study in 16 macaques assessed the effectiveness of a rectal tenofovir microbicide gel in preventing simian HIV (SIV) when administered up to two hours before and 15 minutes after rectal exposure to SIV. All placebo-arm macaques and two of the three receiving tenofovir after HIV exposure became infected with SIV. Eight of nine macaques assigned tenofovir before HIV exposure were completely or partially protected from SIV. The higher the tenofovir concentration in the blood 15 minutes after its administration, the greater the protection against SIV. Activated T-cells were found in the blood of the macaques protected from SIV, indicating that such exposure may be able to “prime and/or boost immune responses elicited with experimental vaccines.” This study’s results suggest that tenofovir rectal microbicide gel may have promise in humans.
Vaginal Microbicides and the Prevention of HIV Transmission
Cutler, B., & Justman, J. The Lancet Infectious Diseases (2008), Vol. 8 No. 11, pp. 685–697.
This review of 118 studies—45 clinical and 73 preclinical—from a biomedical perspective assesses the state of microbicide development for HIV prevention. The authors first discuss the sexual HIV transmission pathways and how microbicides are being developed to address them. The different types of microbicides (e.g., viral entry inhibitors) are described, along with the current state of research for each type. The authors also discuss epidemiological and biological issues that make microbicide research challenging. Epidemiologic issues include HIV incidence, study populations, and discreet use of microbicides. Among biologic challenges are developing combination microbicides when each component must be first tested individually. The authors conclude that while the development of effective microbicides is difficult, the potential benefits are so great that they greatly outweigh any known risks—and possibly unforeseen risks as well.
SAVVY Vaginal Gel (C31G) for Prevention of HIV Infection: A Randomized Controlled Trial in Nigeria
Feldblum, P. J., Adeiga, A., Bakare, R., et al. PLoS ONE (2008), Vol. 3 No. 1, p. e1474.
Over 2,100 women in Lagos and Ibadan, Nigeria participated in a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial to assess the effectiveness of SAVVY vaginal microbicide gel in preventing HIV transmission. Participants filled out monthly questionnaires on sexual behavior, condom use, gel use, and any medical problems and were given 60 condoms and 60 vials of gel every month. Condom and gel use decreased over the 12-month study period over time, but was generally high. Adverse event rates were the same in both study arms, with no significant difference in chlamydia, bacterial vaginosis, candidiasis, or trichomoniasis rates between arms at the six-month follow-up visit. The study ended early due to lack of power to detect a statistically significant difference in HIV rates between study arms. While the ratio of HIV infections was higher in the SAVVY arm than placebo, the difference was not statistically significant. However, because of the study’s low power, the results cannot conclusively support that SAVVY does not increase risk of HIV infection. This study highlights research challenges in measuring microbicide effectiveness.
Rectal Microbicide Development
McGowan, I. Current Opinion in HIV and AIDS (November 2012), Vol. 7 No. 6, pp. 526-33.
This article describes the progress made in recent years to develop microbicides—gels, suppositories, or other topical formulations that prevent HIV—for rectal use. The design and results of early vaginal microbicide trials informed the research direction for evaluating potential rectal microbicide candidates, as did early acceptability studies among men who have sex with men, who are highly vulnerable to HIV because of the common practice of unprotected receptive anal intercourse. Most rectal microbicides in the pipeline have reached only the preclinical study stage. Only two products—UC781, a non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor, and tenofovir, a nucleotide inhibitor—have reached the clinical study stage, although L’644, a promising fusion inhibitor, is now also being evaluated. Qualitative and clinical studies of acceptability for different rectal microbicide formulations have found gels to be most acceptable. Rectal safety became the focus of research soon after researchers found that vaginal microbicide candidates were not optimal for rectal use, causing mucosal damage in the rectum; recent research findings show that reducing the glycerin in the formulation may be less harmful. The author describes the preclinical evaluation of four rectal microbicide candidates that have undergone Phase I trials: HIVNET-008 (N9 gel), RMP-01 (UC781 gel), RMP-02/MTN-006 (tenofovir gel), and MTN-007 (tenofovir gel with reduced glycerin). In his conclusion, the author suggests that Phase I studies on rectal microbicides will continue to produce important data on safety, acceptability, and pharmacokinetics that will contribute to early product development.
Topical Microbicides for Prevention of Sexually Transmitted Infections
Obiero, J., Mwethera, P.G., & Wiysone, C.S. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (June 2012), Vol. 6 No. CD007961.
The authors of this systematic review found that by the end of 2011, nine randomized controlled trials (RCTs) enrolling 31,941 sexually active women in 11 countries, with HIV incidence as the primary outcome, had demonstrated limited evidence that vaginal microbicides reduce acquisition of HIV and herpes simplex virus (HSV-2) infection in women. As a result, the authors do not recommend topical microbicides for HIV or STI prevention, but do suggest that development of new microbicides continue. Of the nine RCTs, the authors found that CAPRISA 004, a small proof-of-concept RCT enrolling 889 women, demonstrated that tenofovir—a nucleotide reverse transcriptase inhibitor—may reduce the risk of acquiring HIV and HSV-2. The authors are currently awaiting data from a second tenofovir trial enrolling 5,000 women, which was stopped early due to futility of results demonstrating a protective effect. According to the authors, other types of topical microbicides did not demonstrate a reduction in the risk of acquiring HIV or sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and none of the trials demonstrated that microbicides reduce the acquisition of other STIs, including gonorrhea, syphilis, genital warts, trichomoniasis, or human papillomavirus infection. The authors stress that if further studies demonstrate the effectiveness of tenofovir-based microbicides, efforts must be made to achieve rapid regulatory approval and create appropriate mechanisms for distribution.
Next Steps 1% Tenofovir Gel: Meeting Report
World Health Organization. (2011).
The excitement among the international microbicide development community resulting from the positive one-percent tenofovir trial results has given way to a sense of urgency—urgency to rapidly make available an approved, affordable, and easily obtainable microbicide to the world’s women. This meeting brought together researchers, advocates, program implementers, funders, and regulatory agencies to identify concrete actions these actors can take to bring the one-percent tenofovir microbicide to women as quickly as possible. The report reviews discussions taking place during the meeting and presents the decisions made on what confirmatory studies should move forward, who will lead licensure efforts, and other necessary steps. Appendix 2 includes a summary of completed, ongoing, and planned microbicide clinical studies of one-percent tenofovir gel.
Sexual Communication Among Married Couples in the Context of a Microbicide Clinical Trial and Acceptability Study in Pune, India
Marlow, H. M., Tolley, E. E., Kohli, R., et al. Culture, Health and Sexuality (2010), Vol. 12 No. 8, pp. 899–912.
Ten married couples in Pune, India, participating in a microbicide clinical trial formed the basis for separate in-depth interviews on spousal communication about sex and sexual matters. Most couples reported nonverbal communication or using code words about sex because they often lived with extended families and usually did not sleep alone. Lack of knowledge about sex and sexuality as well as a lack of privacy limited couple communication. Five couples reported communicating about sex as a “side effect” of being in the clinical trial, despite this not being a part of the intervention. In addition to initiating discussions about HIV, these couples also reported appreciating having a space to talk about sex openly in the interviews. Many couples reported that their improved communication had a positive effect on their overall relationship. While this sample is not representative of Indian couples at large, it does indicate starting a dialogue about sex and sexuality encourages more communication about sex among the couple. Such communication is the crucial first step to reducing one’s risk of HIV.
Standards of Prevention in HIV Prevention Trials: Consultation Report and Recommendation
McGrory, E., Philpott, S., Hankins, C., et al. (2010).
This report of a consultation attempts to clarify 2007 Joint U.N. Programme on HIV/AIDS and World Health Organization guidance on prevention standards in HIV prevention trials. As new research and evidence emerge about what is effective in preventing HIV, studies and trials will have to include these new technologies as standards of care in their work. Thus this report tries to translate ethical guidance into day-to-day research practice, taking into account that the guidelines were intentionally written to be flexible, given vastly differing circumstances, epidemics, and access to care. This report reviews the evidence on “what works,” realities of implementing prevention trials, and the current standard of care for HIV prevention trials. It also presents points of agreement and disagreement among the participants of the consultation, and identifies needs for additional guidelines and criteria for those undertaking HIV prevention research.
Women's Empowerment? Contradictory Reports of Female Autonomy towards Female-Initiated HIV Prevention Methods in Zimbabwe
Montgomery, E., Cheng, H., Woodsong, C., et al. 18th International HIV/AIDS Conference, July 18-23,(2010, Vienna, Austria).
This poster presentation explores women’s attitudes to discreet use (use without their partner’s knowledge) of a cervical barrier together with a microbicide. Among 83 married women in the trial, all had told their primary male partners about their use of the method by the end of the four-week trial. Focus group discussions among 41 women, however, indicated that they would use the barrier/microbicide without telling their primary partner if necessary. The rationale for telling their partners was to facilitate communication between the couple and avoid any problems should the use be found out. When probed about the reasons for discreet use, however, the women stated that they would indeed use a method that would protect them from HIV, given that most men are likely to have partners on the side. They felt it was important to safeguard their health, and therefore, that of their family. Telling partners about microbicide use may be a way to enlist male support for women’s protection from HIV. Furthermore, the trial demonstrated to women that the method can indeed be used without their partners knowing about it.
Towards Microbicide Rollout in Sub-Saharan Africa: Ensuring Microbicides are an Effective Tool for HIV Prevention and Women’s Empowerment
Kunda, R., & Gibbs, A. Health Economics and HIV/AIDS Research Division, University of KwaZulu-Natal, (2010).
This brief focuses on the potential of microbicides to integrate HIV prevention and the empowerment of sub-Saharan African women. The authors argue that empowering women can help offset the social, cultural, and economic factors that place women at disproportionate risk of acquiring HIV. Microbicides, they posit, can help become tools of women’s empowerment if women’s rights are at the forefront of microbicide development, strategy, and roll-out. The authors present four issues that must be addressed if microbicides are to become a tool for both HIV prevention and women’s empowerment: effectiveness, availability, stigma, and partner communication.
The First 55 Steps: A Report of the Microbicide Development Strategy’s Civil Society Working Group
Forbes, A., Sylla, L., & Yassky, R. Global Campaign for Microbicides, (2008).
Full and active engagement of the civil society in microbicide development can benefit everyone from researchers to the women who stand to benefit from microbicide use. A small working group identified seven priority gaps in microbicide research and development that civil society organizations could fill. The gaps were then broken down into concrete, actionable steps, resulting in 55 action steps for civil society, government/policymakers, researchers, and funders/sponsors. These “interlocking” steps show how each group’s work complements and enhances the other groups’ efforts. The report also highlights the importance of having an enabling environment to advance microbicide research, and what can be done to create such an environment.
Identifying Optimal Strategies for Microbicide Distribution in India and South Africa: Modelling and Cost-Effectiveness Analyses
Watts, C., Foss, A., Kumaranayake, L., et al. International Partnership for Microbicides and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, (2008).
Developing an effective microbicide is only the first step in saving women’s lives. To truly be effective for HIV prevention, microbicides must be made widely available—entailing licensing, regulatory, and service delivery considerations—and be affordable and acceptable to all potential users. Researchers considered these factors when modeling how long it would take to see widespread microbicide use in southern India and South Africa. Stakeholder meetings reviewed women’s reproductive health product introduction experiences and identified other key inputs for the models such as approval time and target audience penetration. Fully 120 scenarios were modeled and considered for India, while 156 were considered for South Africa. This paper describes the process and scenarios and juxtaposes the 10 most effective scenarios with the cost-effectiveness of each. While potential exists for microbicides to become another tool for HIV prevention, their widespread use can take significant time and resources.
Awareness and Attitudes Regarding Microbicides and Nonoxynol-9 Use in a Probability Sample of Gay Men
Carballo-Diéguez, A., O’Sullivan, L. F., Lin, P., et al. AIDS and Behavior (2007), Vol. 11 No. 2, pp. 271–276.
Nearly 900 men who have sex with men in San Francisco participated in this random-digit dialing telephone survey about microbicides and Nonoxynol-9 (N-9). Nearly 4 of every 10 respondents sexually active in the last year reported unprotected receptive anal intercourse, while 45 percent reported unprotected insertive anal intercourse. Only 39 percent of the sample knew that N-9 could injure rectal tissue, thus potentially creating an entryway for HIV. N-9 use among these men in the last year was 26 percent. Men reporting recent unprotected anal intercourse were more likely to use N-9, which may indicate risk compensation or that these men are seeking alternatives to condom use for HIV prevention. Only 7 percent believed that N-9 could prevent HIV transmission. Although an effective microbicide was not on the market, 59 percent of the sample understood that a microbicide could reduce the risk of HIV. Interestingly, compared to uninfected men, those with HIV were more willing to use a microbicide that was less effective at preventing HIV than condoms.
Risk Compensation in HIV Prevention: Implications for Vaccines, Microbicides, and other Biomedical HIV Prevention Technologies
Eaton, L. A., & Kalichman, S. Current HIV/AIDS Report (2007), Vol. 4 No. 4, pp. 165–172.
Risk compensation theory posits that individuals will maintain a constant level of risk over time. As risk reduction behaviors are implemented (e.g., condom use), people will adjust other risky behaviors upward to compensate for the safety behaviors (e.g., have more sex partners), thus maintaining the same level of risk as before. This literature review examined whether study participants reported risk compensation behaviors when participating in trials of HIV vaccines, microbicides, male circumcision, and antiretroviral therapy (ART). Evidence was available for ART, HIV vaccines, and circumcision. Although limited, the few studies focusing on risk compensation among HIV vaccine trial participants found evidence of increased risky behaviors. A meta-analysis of highly active ART (HAART) also found more unprotected sex among HAART users who thought that HAART reduced the likelihood of HIV transmission. Similarly, circumcised men had riskier sexual behaviors (more partners and less condom use) compared to men who were not circumcised. The authors conclude that HIV prevention interventions must include risk compensation considerations into their programs.
Hope Against HIV: Microbicide Trials in Your Community
International Partnership for Microbicides. (n.d.).
This video was developed to help with microbicide advocacy efforts, particularly in countries and communities where such research is taking place. It answers basic questions about microbicides (what they are, how they work, how effective they are) as well as addresses HIV prevention and transmission. It also covers essential information about clinical trials. The video is available as a 100-second summary or as the full 20-minute version in English, French, kiSwahili, isiXhosa, and isiZulu.
Population Council. (n.d.).
This webpage contains brief descriptions of the Population Council’s microbicide research projects taking place worldwide, with links to more in-depth information about each study. Older trials also have links to documents containing results, while ongoing trials provide descriptions of the work done to date. The research portfolio includes studies that assess ways to improve adherence to product use, different modes of microbicide delivery such as vaginal rings, and user acceptability research. Some novel approaches include computer-assisted self interviews being used in Malawi, South Africa, Uganda, the United States, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. This technique provides interviewees more privacy and confidentiality than answering aloud in face-to-face interviews.
High Acceptability of a Vaginal Ring Intended as a Microbicide Delivery Method for HIV Prevention in African Women
van der Straten, A., E.T. Montgomery, H. Cheng, H., et al. 2012. AIDS Behavior May 27 [Epub ahead of print].
The study sought to quantitatively and qualitatively explore the acceptability of a vaginal ring (VR) among sexually active women in Tanzania and South Africa. The ring could be used for the delivery of microbicides for HIV prevention if acceptability was high. The VR was provided to 158 women in the randomized trial. The ring had no active ingredient and was, therefore, a placebo. Participants were taught how to insert and remove the VR in the clinic. The women visited the clinic four times throughout the twelve-week trial for an exam and were asked about their comfort levels and experiences with the VR using a questionnaire. Focus group discussions and in-depth interviews were conducted with the women and their male partners, if the women gave the researchers permission. It was found that the majority of the women were able to successfully insert the VR (81 percent), and that retention over the twelve-week study period was high (97 percent). The women reported few concerns or problems about the VR during the study. The most frequently reported concern (20 percent at week 4) was that it would get lost in their body. The three most favorable characteristics of the VR at the 12-week point for the women was that it may be used someday to prevent HIV, does not interfere with sex, and that you can still use a condom with the VR. The three least liked characteristics of the VR were that it may get lost in the body, may come out during sex, and may change the feeling of sex for the partner. The VR was found to be highly acceptable for both the women and their partners in this study.
Microbicides Essentials Online Course
Global Campaign for Microbicides. (2011).
This informative and engaging online course uses various media to teach people about microbicides, including readings, video clips, animated anatomical and biological graphics, and interactive quizzes. Eight modules cover what microbicides are, how they work, how they are developed, issues related to access and use, and how clinical trials test microbicide effectiveness. Users can take quizzes and tests to assess their knowledge and view videos of advocates answering common microbicide questions. The last module provides an overview of the current microbicide landscape, including mobilizing funding and community support for this method of HIV prevention. (Readers must register to access the full course; registration is free.)
Safety and Effectiveness Study of a Candidate Vaginal Microbicide for Prevention of HIV
Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa, Family Health International, United States Agency for International Development, & CONRAD. (2010).
This webpage contains the full study protocol for a clinical trial of tenofovir gel as a vaginal microbicide for preventing HIV. In addition to a detailed description of the study design, population, objectives, and regimens, information on eligibility, principal investigators, study sites, and collaborating institutions is available, including contact information. The page also provides links to publications related to this research and additional information on the study.
Microbicides Messaging: Themes to Emphasise and Avoid
Global Campaign for Microbicides. (2010).
As advocates who have been working with members of civil society throughout the world on microbicides, the Global Campaign for Microbicides has extensive experience in communicating about microbicides to multiple audiences. This short brief clearly states seven talking points the organization follows and urges partners to follow. Among the points are the fact that microbicides are not a “magic bullet” and acknowledging that technological tools cannot replace the need for women’s empowerment.
Ten Steps to Organising a Community Forum on Microbicides
Global Campaign for Microbicides. (2009).
This short brief provides useful and practical information on how to organize a successful community forum on microbicides. Broken down into 10 steps, the following are included: consideration of partners to co-host, deciding on an agenda that the community would find interesting and engaging, logistics, budget, and spreading the word about the event. Readers can find excellent tips on engaging the media and following actionable steps to ensure ample participation from the local community and members of the media alike.
Preparing for Microbicide Access and Use
McGrory, E., & Gupta, G. R. for the Access Working Group, Microbicide Initiative, (n.d.).
This document argues that in addition to the scientific research taking place on microbicide effectiveness, a parallel path must also take place among the international microbicide community: developing plans for microbicide access and use. Focusing on the five primary dimensions of access—acceptability and use; a supportive policy and social environment; availability; affordability; regulatory approval and licensing—each chapter lays out goals, objectives, and proposed activities that can help ensure that once an appropriate microbicide has been identified, structures are in place to rapidly make it affordable, accessible, and useable.
Communications Handbook for Clinical Trials: Strategies, Tips, and Tools to Manage Controversy, Convey Your Message, and Disseminate Results
Robinson, E. T., Baron, D., Heise, L. et al. Family Health International, (2010).
There is much potential for misunderstanding and controversy surrounding clinical trials. This handbook helps researchers, program managers, and others understand these communication challenges and guides readers on how to best share information with local communities and partners. It includes general communication guidelines, lessons learned from other country experiences, and multiple tools, such as risk assessment tools and sample templates that can sharpen staff skills in accurately answering questions about the research taking place. Sample communication plans as well as tips and techniques on communicating effectively in various fora are also included in the handbook.
AVAC, Global Advocacy for HIV Prevention
The website offers the latest news on the past, present, or ongoing status of biomedical HIV prevention research studies. Readers can review summary tables from various HIV prevention clinical trials, search information on prevention trials, see what is new on the site each month, and review the user’s guide for help in using the site. The site offers information about the following biomedical prevention trials: microbicides, pre-exposure prophylaxis, treatment as prevention, and vaccines.
United States Agency for International Development. (2011).
This webpage provides information on U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) activities related to microbicides, including the agenda, presentations, and meeting report of the high-level Microbicides Stakeholders Meeting in late 2010. Readers can find information on the agency's financial support for microbicides development, their stance on the results of the Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa 004 trial, partnerships for microbicide support and development, as well as current USAID activities on microbicides research and development.
Regulatory Issues in Microbicide Development
Stone, A. (2009).
Because microbicides are a relatively new product, little guidance exists on the regulatory requirements needed at different stages of product testing and data necessary for licensure. To address this gap, the World Health Organization held six consultations in Europe, Africa, and Asia from 2002 to 2008. The first consultation drafted the minimal regulatory requirements for microbicide trials and eventual product licensing. Subsequent consultations opened a dialogue among in-country researchers, policymakers, and regulators about microbicide regulatory issues, with an aim to alleviate constraints to microbicide development. This report discusses the role of regulatory authorities in non-clinical and clinical microbicide studies, including safety, effectiveness, epidemiological principals, and pharmacology, as well as issues specific to microbicide use.
View Report (PDF, 578 KB)
This webpage provides an overview of CONRAD's microbicide research activities, starting from some of the first microbicides developed in the 1990s to today's formulations that contain antiretroviral drugs. Readers can click on links to obtain more information on the development process for microbicides, as well as CONRAD's preclinical and clinical microbicide activities. In addition, information is available about their dual-protection microbicides that protect women from pregnancy in addition to sexually transmitted infections and/or HIV.
Global Advocacy for HIV Prevention. (n.d.).
This webpage provides readers with links to microbicide information, including introductory information to those that may not be familiar with the topic. A microbicide fact sheet is available in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Thai for readers to download and disseminate. Readers can also follow a link to a collection of microbicide resources, including question and answer sheets and summaries of ongoing microbicide clinical trials. Readers can also link to a page that provides breakdown of clinical trials: ongoing trials, trial results, and planned trials.
Global Campaign for Microbicides
Global Campaign for Microbicides. (n.d.).
The Global Campaign for Microbicides promotes the rapid yet ethical development of and widespread access to HIV prevention options, especially for women. The organization collaborates with all sectors, from civil society to industry, and does not support any one product. This website includes information on microbicides, clinical trials, other prevention options such as female condoms and male circumcision, and more. Resources are available in English, French, Spanish, and Russian.
How Does It Work? Microbicides
Global Health Council. (n.d.).
This brief fact sheet clearly explains the biology of microbicides and how microbicides may work to help protect users from HIV, complete with references to selected research articles providing more detailed information. A useful graphic shows how a virus enters by disrupting the vaginal skin cell layers and also depicts how microbicides may be able to stop such disruption, and thus, viral entry.
International Partnership for Microbicides
International Partnership for Microbicides. (n.d.).
The International Partnership for Microbicides (IPM) is an organization founded as a product development partnership. Its mission is to speed the development of microbicides and other HIV prevention mechanisms for women in developing countries. Working with partners from academia to biotechnology companies to civil society organizations, IPM has several compounds in development and in various stages of clinical trials. Their website offers information on their work, different HIV prevention products for women, media resources, scientific articles, and other publications about microbicides.
International Rectal Microbicides Advocates
International Rectal Microbicides Advocates. (n.d.).
International Rectal Microbicides Advocates is an organization of individuals worldwide working to advance research and development of safe, effective rectal microbicides for men, women, and transgender individuals to use for HIV prevention. Materials that can be accessed on their website include information on the safety of lubricants for anal use, scientific articles, media stories, fact sheets, and more. This highly interactive site includes blogs and subscription to a moderated listserv. Links are available to sister websites for Nigeria and for Latin America and South America.
The Medium Matters: Applicators are Crucial to Success of Microbicides
Something as simple as what kind of applicator is used in microbicides can have a significant impact on the product—for example, its cost, usability, and safety. PATH provides an interesting perspective on product development by describing the considerations behind applicator design, their choices between using single-use applicators and multiple-use applicators, and user-testing. Through this description, readers can see the balancing act required to be able to meet women's needs while also making a product safe and affordable. PATH is now working to obtain regulatory approval for microbicide applicators so that they can quickly be made available once a microbicide becomes available.
International Microbicide Conference
Sydney, Australia, 15-18 April 2012.
The biennial International Microbicides Conference, held in April 2012 in Sydney, Australia, focused on HIV prevention technologies, including the use of antiretroviral-based microbicides and pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP); adherence in clinical trials; innovative financing; dual prevention technologies; and new methods of preventing rectal transmission of HIV. In the keynote address, Dr. Salim Abdool Karim, co-principal investigator of the CAPRISA 004 trial, discussed implications and lessons learned nearly two years after the trial provided proof of concept for antiretroviral-based microbicides. In the opening plenary, Dr. Connie Celum of the University of Washington discussed the emerging evidence from recent oral and topical tenofovir-based PrEP trials that have demonstrated efficacy ranging from 39 to 75 percent. She emphasized the ongoing challenges of adherence, risk perception, and delivery of PrEP to most-at-risk populations. She urged researchers to continue to explore longer-acting products that are less adherence-dependent. To address the need for rectal microbicides, International Rectal Microbicide Advocates (IRMA) released a strategy document entitled The Map: Ensuring Africa’s Place in Rectal Microbicide Research and Advocacy. Other presenters focused on a variety of topics, including multi-prevention technologies, access to microbicides, and recent findings from PrEP trials. The conference closed with a presentation from Gina Brown, U.S. National Institutes of Health, and Stephen Becker, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, who announced that the biennial microbicide conference will be replaced with a biennial global HIV prevention conference focusing on vaccines, microbicides, and oral PrEP.
Related AIDSTAR-One Publications | <urn:uuid:f4f5b263-85bb-43f5-b393-5ac283e30259> | CC-MAIN-2014-41 | http://www.aidstar-one.com/focus_areas/prevention/pkb/biomedical_interventions/microbicides?tab=learn | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-41/segments/1412037662882.4/warc/CC-MAIN-20140930004102-00294-ip-10-234-18-248.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.921964 | 10,953 | 2.9375 | 3 |
In the US, infant formula is monitored by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which ensures that it meets specific nutritional requirements. Generally, try to stick to a formula that is similar to the one you use, advises pediatrician and senior pediatric nutritionist Dr. Susan E. Smith. If you cannot find your favorite formula or your child needs a special formula, it is safe to switch formulas, but in this case, you should consult your pediatrician first.
There can be no guarantee that the formula found here is safe or contains enough nutrients to help your baby thrive. Your baby’s formula contains some nutrients found in breast milk, but not as much as you would find in breast milk.
This type of baby food works well for the majority of babies, but 80 percent of the formula on the market today is cow’s milk-based. Most non-breastfed infants, such as babies under 12 months of age, are better off with beef feed than breast milk. Milk-based baby formula has been modified so that babies over 12 months should not drink cow’s milk, according to the Food and Drug Administration.
Bhatia stresses that the currently available cattle-based formulations meet the needs of infants in the first 4 to 6 months of life. This formula accounts for 80% of all prescriptions sold and is used until the age of 6 months to supplement the growing variety of foods that are fed to infants of this age.
In line with the AAP’s recommendations, Batiare recommends a formula for infants who are breastfed and another formula for infants who are not breastfed or partially breastfed. They use a combination of iron-fortified formula with a mixture of milk, dairy products, and breast milk.
Normally low iron formulations are not available over the counter, but they may be available online. After a long evaluation, your doctor will take you to the place where you can buy a lower iron option. If he thinks it is best for your baby, he will inform you if you need a prescription.
Breastfeeding is considered the best option for vegetarian families, although some strict vegetarian parents choose soy formula because it contains animal products. The AAP believes there are times in your baby’s life when you should prefer soy recipes to milk – such as in the first weeks of life. While there are also cow’s milk-based dairy products and other dairy products, soy milk is not suitable for babies who cannot digest lactose.
Breast milk should be the primary source of solid food supplements in the first year of life, but it is always helpful to ask your child’s pediatrician for specific recommendations. Both the FDA and AAP warn against using home-made infant formula that may not be safe or meet your baby’s nutritional needs. In general, most infant formulas fit for your baby’s needs, foods and brands that are sold in the United States, are safe. However, it should not be used if you have to make it yourself, as it can be made with ingredients such as dairy products, eggs, soy milk, or animal products.
The formula is regulated by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). It must comply with the requirements of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1934 (FDA), the Dietary Guidelines for Children (DDC), and other federal regulations.
This means that the use of formula is safe and meets your baby’s basic nutritional needs. While the choice of baby food may feel like an important decision requiring a ton of research, all baby foods currently on the market are safe, regulated by the FDA to be safe, and contain all the necessary ingredients and nutrients.
According to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), there are three options and preparation methods to consider when choosing a formula for the baby.
To prevent anemia, AAP recommends choosing an iron-enriched formula for babies who are not fully breastfed from birth until the first year of life. Although your baby’s specific needs will vary, there are a few helpful guidelines to help you narrow down your search. Please contact your pediatrician for more information. | <urn:uuid:24edb2e2-4031-469e-b21d-f3b960789e4b> | CC-MAIN-2021-17 | https://momblogsociety.com/what-formula-do-pediatricians-recommend/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-17/segments/1618039491784.79/warc/CC-MAIN-20210420214346-20210421004346-00583.warc.gz | en | 0.950495 | 861 | 2.75 | 3 |
SSC Section Officer (Commercial Audit) Exam MCQs with answers
SSC Section Officer (Commercial Audit) Exam MCQs with answers
SSC SECTION OFFICER (COMMERCIAL AUDIT) EXAM
1. Article 17 of the constitution of India provides for
(a) Equality before law.
(b) Equality of opportunity in matters of public employment.
(c) Abolition of titles.
(d) Abolition of untouchability.
2. Article 370 of the constitution of India provides for
(a) Temporary provisions for Jammu & Kashmir.
(b) Special provisions in respect of Nagaland.
(c) Special provisions in respect of Manipur.
(d) Provisions in respect of financial emergency.
3. How many permanent members are there in Security Council?
4. The United Kingdom is a classic example of a/an
(b) absolute monarchy
(c) constitutional monarchy
5. Social Contract Theory was advocated by
(a) Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau.
(b) Plato, Aristotle and Hegel.
(c) Mill, Bentham and Plato.
(d) Locke, Mill and Hegel.
6. The Speaker of the Lok Sabha is elected by the
(b) Prime Minister.
(c) Members of both Houses of the Parliament.
(d) Members of the Lok Sabha.
7. Who is called the ‘Father of History’?
8. The Vedas are known as
9. The members of Estimate Committee are
(a) elected from the Lok Sabha only.
(b) elected from the Rajya Sabha only.
(c) elected from both the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha.
(d) nominated by the Speaker of the Lok Sabha.
10. Who is the chief advisor to the Governor?
(a) Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
(b) Chief Minister.
(c) Speaker of the Lok Sabha.
11. Foreign currency which has a tendency of quick migration is called
(a) Scarce currency
(b) Soft currency.
(c) Gold currency
(d) Hot currency.
12. Which of the following is a better measurement of Economic Development?
(b) Disposable income
(d) Per capita income
13. In India, disguised unemployment is generally observed in
(a) the agriculture sector.
(b) the factory sector.
(c) the service sector.
(d) All these sectors.
14. If the commodities manufactured in Surat are sold in Mumbai or Delhi then it is
(a) Territorial trade.
(b) Internal trade.
(c) International trade.
(d) Free trade.
15. The famous slogan “GARIBI HATAO” (Remove Poverty) was launched during the
(a) First Five-Year Plan (1951-56)
(b) Third Five-Year Plan (1961-66)
(c) Fourth Five-Year Plan (1969-74)
(d) Fifth Five-Year Plan (1974-79)
16. Bank Rate refers to the interest rate at which
(a) Commercial banks receive deposits from the public.
(b) Central bank gives loans to Commercial banks.
(c) Government loans are floated.
(d) Commercial banks grant loans to their customers.
17. All the goods which are scare and limited in supply are called
(a) Luxury goods.
(b) Expensive goods.
(c) Capital goods.
(d) Economic goods.
18. The theory of monopolistic competition is developed by
19. Smoke is formed due to
(a) solid dispersed in gas
(b) solid dispersed in liquid.
(c) gas dispersed in solid
(d) gas dispersed in gas.
20. Which of the following chemical is used in photography?
(a) Aluminum hydroxide
(b) Silver bromide
(c) Potassium nitrate
(d) Sodium chloride.
21. Gober gas (Biogas) mainly contains
(a) methane and ethane
(b) methane and butane.
(c) propane and butane
(d) methane, ethane, propane and propylene.
22. Preparation of ‘Dalda or Vanaspati’ ghee from vegetable oil utilises the following process
23. Which colour is the complementary colour of yellow?
24. During washing of cloths, we use indigo due to its
(a) better cleaning action.
(b) proper pigmental composition.
(c) high glorious nature.
(d) very low cost.
25. Of the following Indian satellites, which one is intended for long distance telecommunication and for transmitting TV programmes?
26. What is the full form of ‘AM’ regarding radio broadcasting?
(a) Amplitude Movement
(b) Anywhere Movement
(c) Amplitude Matching
(d) Amplitude Modulation.
27. Who is the author of Gandhi’s favorite Bhajan Vaishnava jana to tene kahiye?
(a) Purandar Das
(b) Shyamal Bhatt
(c) Narsi Mehta
(d) Sant Gyaneshwar
28. Which one of the following is not a mosquito borne disease?
(a) Dengu fever
(c) Sleeping sickness
29. What is the principal one of aluminium?
30. Which country is the facilitator for peace talks between the LTTE and the Sri Lankan Government?
(a) The US
(d) The UK
31. The highest body which approves the Five-Year Plan in India is the
(a) Planning Commission
(b) National Development Council
(c) The Union Cabinet
(d) Finance Ministry
32. Ceteris Paribus is Latin for
(a)” all other things variable “
(b) “other things increasing”
(c) “other things being equal”
(d) “all other things decreasing”
33. Who has been conferred the Dada Saheb Phalke Award (Ratna) for the year 2007?
(a) Dev Anand
(c) Dilip Kumar
(d) Shabana Azmi
34. Purchasing Power Parity theory is related with
(a) Interest Rate.
(b) Bank Rate.
(c) Wage Rate.
(d) Exchange Rate.
35. India’s biggest enterprise today is
(a) the Indian Railways
(b) the Indian Commercial Banking System.
(c) the India Power Sector
(d) the India Telecommunication System.
36. The official agency responsible for estimating National Income in India is
(a) Indian Statistical Institute
(b) Reserve Bank of India.
(c) Central Statistical Organisation.
(d) National Council for Applied Economics and Research.
37. Which of the following has the sole right of issuing currency (except one rupee coins and notes) in India?
(a) The Governor of India
(b) The Planning Commission
(c) The State Bank of India
(d) The Reserve Bank of India
38. In the budget figures of the Government of India the difference between total expenditure and total receipt is called.
(a) Fiscal deficit
(b) Budget deficit
(c) Revenue deficit
(d) Current deficit
39. Excise duty on a commodity is payable with reference to its
(b) production and sale.
(c) Production and transportation.
(d) Production, transportation and sale.
40. In the US, the President is elected by
(a) The Senate
(b) Universal Adult Franchise.
(c) The House of Representatives.
(d) The Congress.
1. (d) 2. (d) 3. (b) 4. (c) 5. (a) 6. (d) 7. (b) 8. (b) 9. (a) 10. (b)
11. (d) 12. (a) 13. (a) 14. (b) 15. (c) 16. (a) 17. (d) 18. (a) 19. (b) 20. (a)
21. (c) 22. (b) 23. (b) 24. (a) 25. (d) 26. (c) 27. (c) 28. (d) 29. (b) 30. (a)
31. (c) 32. (c) 33. (c) 34. (a) 35. (c) 36. (d) 37. (b) 38. (a) 39. (a) 40. (b)
If you want to purchase Assignments, Model papers and Project report please do contact us.
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If you have any kind of information, suggestion related to this post, or want to ask any question please make comment in the below comment box. | <urn:uuid:0a67f33f-5d4f-4055-b4d6-de90a3538eec> | CC-MAIN-2018-47 | https://www.eguardian.co.in/ssc-section-officer-commercial-audit-exam/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-47/segments/1542039744348.50/warc/CC-MAIN-20181118093845-20181118115203-00011.warc.gz | en | 0.75786 | 1,979 | 2.609375 | 3 |
Lombard shield boss (to make spears slide off it)
(Metropolitan Museum, New York)
In 774 AD, Charlemagne conquered northern Italy from the Lombards, and soon after that Charlemagne got the Pope to name him the Holy Roman Emperor. For the next three hundred years, northern Italy was in the hands of the Holy Roman Emperor; that is, it belonged to the sons and grandsons of Charlemagne, and then to the men who took over ruling the Holy Roman Empire. Basically these men ruled Germany and Austria, and they tended to live in Germany, so that northern Italy was being ruled by far-away German kings who only came to Italy once in a while.
In 774 AD, central and southern Italy still belonged to the old Roman Empire. But the emperors in Constantinople were busy trying to protect their kingdom from the Abbasids, and had no time or soldiers to spare for Italy. So the Popes in Rome, with the help of the kings of France, became the main leaders of central and southern Italy.
By 830 AD, however, the Abbasids had conquered Sicily and southern Italy, as part of their general conquest of the Mediterranean Sea. So three different groups of people ruled Italy: the Islamic Empire ruled the south, the Popes ruled the middle, and the Holy Roman Empire ruled the north. | <urn:uuid:4da58e88-b3a7-4db8-b8d2-031114316d1f> | CC-MAIN-2015-22 | http://www.historyforkids.org/learn/medieval/history/highmiddle/italy.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-22/segments/1432207929256.27/warc/CC-MAIN-20150521113209-00172-ip-10-180-206-219.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976008 | 280 | 3.671875 | 4 |
A surface is never perfectly plane. This reality has probably been known for a very long time, maybe several thousands of years. In the eighteenth century, Coulomb attributed the cause of dry friction to the penetration of asperities in the antagonist surface.
Explanation of friction by Coulomb. Asperities interpenetrate so that the upper solid sliding requires asperities of lower solid to jump .
But the direct observation of the non flatness of surfaces is relatively recent. Modern mechanical and optical devices allow to explore surfaces from millimetric to nanometric scales. It can be seen that a surface is like mountains with summits and valleys. The only difference is that usually slopes of peaks are small, commonly about ten to tweenty percents. In the following figure the vertical scale is exaggerated so that it appears like sharp peaks.
Surface of a metallic sample at the micrometric scale.
Now, when two solids are put into contact, we must imagine two moutain chains, one being turned upside down the other. Higher peaks touch the antagonist surfaces but most of valleys do not enter into contact. Two consequences appear as a result. First, the contact is rare. The actual contact area is usually a very small part of the nominal contact area. Second, the contact is multiple. It is composed of numerous spots randomly distributed on the surface.
The actual contact between two solids is achieved by a large number of small spots. Left, asperities in contact between two rough surfaces. Right, view of contact between glass and elastomer, the contact spots are colored in red (full scale ~ 100 micrometers, from F. Deleau's thesis).
C.A. Coulomb, Théorie des machines simples, Librairie Bachelier, Quai des Augustins, Paris, 1821, Reprint Albert Blanchard Paris, 2002.
F. Deleau, D. Mazuyer, A. Koenen, Sliding friction at elastomer/glass contact: Influence of the wetting conditions and instability analysis, Tribology International, vol. 42, p. 149-159, 2009. | <urn:uuid:a343d5ed-5419-4b61-96d1-37700507a8dd> | CC-MAIN-2017-26 | http://alain.le.bot.chez.com/mci.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-26/segments/1498128322320.8/warc/CC-MAIN-20170628032529-20170628052529-00608.warc.gz | en | 0.91042 | 449 | 3.8125 | 4 |
Rubella, also called German measles or 3-day measles, is a disease caused by a virus. It spreads by coughs, sneezes, and close contact. Rubella usually is mild and does not cause long-term problems. But if you are pregnant and get it, you can give the disease to your unborn baby. This can cause serious birth defects.
While you have rubella, you may get a rash and a mild fever, and the lymph glands in your neck may swell. Older children often have a fever, eye pain, a sore throat, and body aches. You can relieve most symptoms with care at home. Avoid being around others, especially pregnant women, until your rash has been gone for at least 4 days. People who have not had this disease before or have not had the vaccine have the greatest chance of getting the virus.
Follow-up care is a key part of your treatment and safety. Be sure to make and go to all appointments, and call your doctor or nurse call line if you are having problems. It's also a good idea to know your test results and keep a list of the medicines you take.
Call your doctor or nurse call line now or seek immediate medical care if:
Watch closely for changes in your health, and be sure to contact your doctor or nurse call line if:
Go to https://www.healthwise.net/patientEd
Enter B812 in the search box to learn more about "Rubella (German Measles): Care Instructions".
Current as of: May 12, 2017
Adam Husney, MD - Family Medicine
& Kathleen Romito, MD - Family Medicine & Christine Hahn, MD - Infectious Disease, Epidemiology
©2006-2018 Healthwise, Incorporated. Healthwise, Healthwise for every health decision, and the Healthwise logo are trademarks of Healthwise, Incorporated.
Care instructions adapted under license by your healthcare professional. If you have questions about a medical condition or this instruction, always ask your healthcare professional. Healthwise, Incorporated disclaims any warranty or liability for your use of this information. | <urn:uuid:881cc39d-c3d6-4088-b448-36ee97b4cd9f> | CC-MAIN-2018-26 | https://myhealth.alberta.ca/health/AfterCareInformation/pages/conditions.aspx?hwid=uh4928 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-26/segments/1529267866932.69/warc/CC-MAIN-20180624102433-20180624122433-00252.warc.gz | en | 0.947757 | 435 | 3.265625 | 3 |
Definition from Wiktionary, the free dictionary
projectile (plural projectiles)
- an object intended to be or having been fired from a weapon.
- (physics) any object propelled through space by the application of a force.
object intended to be or having been fired from a weapon
- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Help:How to check translations.
Translations to be checked
projectile (not comparable)
- Projecting or impelling forward.
- a projectile force; a projectile weapon
- Caused or imparted by impulse or projection; impelled forward.
- projectile motion
- (Can we find and add a quotation of Arbuthnot to this entry?) | <urn:uuid:3f999707-3afb-4834-b19f-ff9aada163fb> | CC-MAIN-2015-32 | https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/projectile | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-32/segments/1438042988930.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20150728002308-00340-ip-10-236-191-2.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.760936 | 173 | 2.890625 | 3 |
Vawdrey, Lynton. (2008) The cause, distribution and economic importance of fruit speckle of banana in north Queensland. Project Report. HAL/HIA.
Full text not currently attached. Access may be available via the Publisher's website or OpenAccess link.
Banana Fruit Speckle.
|Item Type:||Monograph (Project Report)|
|Subjects:||Plant pests and diseases > Pest control and treatment of diseases. Plant protection|
Plant culture > Fruit and fruit culture
|Deposited On:||08 Nov 2011 05:15|
|Last Modified:||18 Feb 2016 07:13|
Repository Staff Only: item control page | <urn:uuid:9a0fdde7-af49-4a03-87fd-3e3f3b50d191> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://era.daf.qld.gov.au/2450/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560284352.26/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095124-00156-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.714579 | 147 | 2.953125 | 3 |
During math class in grade school, we were taught how to factor equations. It is possible you may have forgotten or need a refresher. You may need to factorise if you are going to college or study for a preparation exam. Follow these steps on how to factorise.
To factor numbers, practice is a great way to refresh these math skills. Find a practice problem. Here I will use the example 4x² + 6x.
Break up the equation. You will break up 4x² and 6x into factors, meaning something that goes into 4x² and 6x. 2x goes into both.
You will pull out the common factor. Write 2x outside of brackets.
Add remaining factors inside brackets that multiply by 2x to give you each original term. For instance, 2x multiplied by 2x gives you 4x² and 2x multiplied by 3 gives you 6x. you would then write: 2x(2x+3).
Check your answer. * Pick a number for "x" for both equations and you should get same results. | <urn:uuid:25a9265b-2990-4916-8e89-ebb0a96cfc6e> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://sciencing.com/factorise-in-math-4563524.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501170875.20/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104610-00258-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943964 | 222 | 3.796875 | 4 |
One hundred twenty trials were done for each orientation (Upright: Left or Right and Inverted: Left or Right), that is 120 upright images (60 adult and 60 baby images) and 120 inverted images (60 adult and 60 baby images) were shown to the participants. Group data was analyzed using T - test. Results showed a significant difference (p< 0.05) deviated from the null hypothesis of equal chance at the level of significant 0.05. There is a significant difference between answers of similarity to the stimulus 1 (original image) in the two groups (1st Group: Upright Images; 2nd Group: Inverted Images).
Participant's T-test (two tailed, independent sample) was performed to compare the mean probability of the study group with the null hypothesis (i.e. probability of the participants holding the left-left face as the original face whether the image is upright or inverted is 0.5).
In this study, 120 trials were done. Therefore to analyze the group data N = 60 was considered and to analyze individual data N = 120 was considered. For statistical calculations probability of null hypothesis was taken as 0.05.
To find out if there was any significant difference between the two groups in terms of chimeric face chosen (left-left or right-right) with respect to how the images are positioned (upright or inverted), an Independent T - test was done. Table 2 and 3 shows the results of the T - tests (also the Descriptive Analysis is shown).
Table 2 Descriptive Analysis
The Descriptive Analysis showed that greater than 50 percent of the participants chose a left-left chimeric face. This result is in resemblance of the 'left-side bias' observed by Hsiao and Cottrell (2009).
Table 3 T-test Results
The t-test results revealed a significant difference of participants choosing a left-left chimeric face on both upright and inverted images.
This study was carried out to identify whether the orientation of images upon presentation has a significant effect on the decisions made participants of the facial likeness task. One hundred twenty trials were done for each orientation (Upright: Left or Right and Inverted: Left or Right), that is 120 upright images (60 adult and 60 baby images) and 120 inverted images (60 adult and 60 baby images) were shown to the participants.
Group data was analyzed using T - test. To find out if there was | <urn:uuid:f51d419d-47b5-4edc-8a73-f33ba1c8feb3> | CC-MAIN-2017-51 | https://studentshare.net/miscellaneous/287543-leftside-bias-and-holistic-effect-in-face-recognition | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-51/segments/1512948530668.28/warc/CC-MAIN-20171213182224-20171213202224-00777.warc.gz | en | 0.932965 | 507 | 2.9375 | 3 |
Mapping Multiliteracies, A Professional Development Resource Facilitator Training. RESEARCH PRACTICE. CHILDREN OF THE NEW MILLENNIUM. MAPPING MULTILITERACIES, A PROFESSIONAL LEARNING RESOURCE. MM, APLR The Development.
Mapping Multiliteracies, A Professional Development Resource
THE NEW MILLENNIUM
A PROFESSIONAL LEARNING RESOURCE
MM, APLR The Development
“the lives of young children are saturated with multimedia..DVDs,CD-ROMS, computer games, digital music, email , text messaging, digital photography… this requires new thinking about different forms of literacy”
Dr Susan Hill
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iZ Interactive Animatronic Music Maker-
the ultimate fusion of music and toy!
Twist and turn iZ's ears to create new combinations of rhythm and lead tracks; press his belly to change-up the beat!
Age 5+ years
1 day planning and 1 day facilitation
- after hours - 4x 11/2 hour workshops = 2 TRT days
- two ½ days using EYLP TRT release = 2 TRT days
- one day using EYLP TRT release = 2 TRT days
The Multiliteracies Map
The meaning making dimension involves understanding how different text types and technologies operate in the world and how they are used for our own and others’ purposes. The focus is on the function and the form of texts to
The functional dimension involves technical competence and ‘how-to’ knowledge —how to make it ‘work’, recognise icons, letters, words and other symbols.
The critical dimension involves understanding that there is no one universal truth in any story and that what is told and studied is selective.
The transformative dimension involves using what has been learned in new ways and new situations.
Broadening our sense of LITERACY …… Applying the Multiliteracies Map
What opportunities are there for you to use the Multiliteracies Map in your setting?
Literacy development for particular children?
Use of technology ?
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I am certain that you are aware of the controversy regarding whether sunlight is good or bad for us. There have been reports in the media that sunshine can actually cause cancer, but the motive behind these allegations and propaganda is suspect, to say the least. On the other hand, if sunlight were a mainstream drug. It would probably make the cover of “Time” magazine, and be heralded as the greatest medical breakthrough in the history of modern medicine – it really is that powerful.
Sunlight exposure is well-known to provoke the production of vitamin D in the body and can reduce the risk of many cancers by more than 50 percent. It can even help to reverse certain types of cancers. The question is why has there not being more research on a natural healing source that has been around much before man became known on this planet? Has not only ignored this truly miraculous cure are many types of cancer, that it has actually tried to discredit it as Dr. Michael Holick, who was attacked for speaking out about the truth of sunlight and cancer.
A four-year clinical trial involving 1,200 women found those taking the vitamin had about a 60-per-cent reduction in cancer incidence, compared with those who didn’t take it, a drop so large – twice the impact on cancer attributed to smoking – it almost looks like a typographical error.
WHERE’S THE EVIDENCE BETWEEN VITAMIN D AND CANCER?
Two new vitamin D studies using a sophisticated form of analysis called meta-analysis, in which data from multiple reports is combined, have revealed new prescriptions for possibly preventing up to half of the cases of breast cancer and two-thirds of the cases of colorectal cancer in the United States. The work was conducted by a core team of cancer prevention specialists at the Moores Cancer Center at University of California, San Diego (UCSD), and colleagues from both coasts.
The breast cancer study, published online in the current issue of the Journal of Steroid Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, pooled dose-response data from two earlier studies – the Harvard Nurses Health Study and the St. George’s Hospital Study – and found that individuals with the highest blood levels of 25-hydroxyvitamin D, or 25(OH)D, had the lowest risk of breast cancer.
The researchers divided the 1,760 records of individuals in the two studies into five equal groups, from the lowest blood levels of 25(OH)D (less than 13 nanograms per milliliter, or 13 ng/ml) to the highest (approximately 52 ng/ml). The data also included whether or not the individual had developed cancer.
“The data were very clear, showing that individuals in the group with the lowest blood levels had the highest rates of breast cancer, and the breast cancer rates dropped as the blood levels of 25-hydroxyvitamin D increased,” said study co-author Cedric Garland, Dr.P.H. “The serum level associated with a 50 percent reduction in risk could be maintained by taking 2,000 international units of vitamin D3 daily plus, when the weather permits, spending 10 to 15 minutes a day in the sun.”
The colorectal cancer study, published online February 6 in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, is a meta-analysis of five studies that explored the association of blood levels of 25(OH)D with risk of colon cancer. All of the studies involved blood collected and tested for 25 (OH)D levels from healthy volunteer donors who were then followed for up to 25 years for development of colorectal cancer.
As with the breast cancer study, the dose-response data on a total of 1,448 individuals were put into order by serum 25(OH)D level and then divided into five equal groups, from the lowest blood levels to the highest.
“Through this meta-analysis we found that raising the serum level of 25-hydroxyvitamin D to 34 ng/ml would reduce the incidence rates of colorectal cancer by half,” said co-author Edward D. Gorham, Ph.D. “We project a two-thirds reduction in incidence with serum levels of 46ng/ml, which corresponds to a daily intake of 2,000 IU of vitamin D3. This would be best achieved with a combination of diet, supplements and 10 to 15 minutes per day in the sun.”
WHY ISN’T SUNLIGHT PROMOTED AS A NATURAL CURE?
The $10 million question of course is why aren’t researchers promoting cures that are available for free?
Well, anyone dabbling in medical politics will know that the medical community doesn’t really promote anything that it cannot invent and patent for financial gain. Given the large checkbooks of the pharmaceutical companies, it should not surprise us that they can control what press releases are published, and spend millions of dollars on advertising their drugs. When was the last time you saw a full-page advert for sunlight, being able to prevent or reverse cancer? Instead, the medical community uses the full-page advertisement for high-profit prescription drugs that have negative side effects and actually kill people.
If conventional medicine was not so interested in making profits from the drugs that they patents, then we would probably see much more information on how sunlight is a natural treatments and preventative for breast cancer, colon cancer, lung cancer, and even diseases like osteoporosis and depression. Instead, however, the profiteers actually scare people away from the healing power of sunlight and discredit any person, who dares to talk and publish scientific information on sunlight and vitamin D. it is a sad state of affairs!
VITAMIN D DEFICIENCY IS WIDESPREAD!
So how do we know that vitamin D deficiency is widespread amongst us? Well, statistics tell us the following:
40% of the U.S. population is vitamin D deficient.
Up to 80% of nursing home patients are vitamin D deficient.
42% of African American women of childbearing age are deficient in vitamin D.
48% of young girls (9-11 years old) are vitamin D deficient.
Up to 60% of all hospital patients are vitamin D deficient.
32% of doctors and med school students are vitamin D deficient.
76% of pregnant mothers are severely vitamin D deficient, causing widespread vitamin D deficiencies in their unborn children, which predisposes them to type 1 diabetes, arthritis, multiple sclerosis and schizophrenia later in life. 81% of the children born to these mothers were deficient.
Dr. Michael Hollick has written a book well worth reading entitled: “The UV Advantage.” Amongst other things he say, “In Europe it’s estimated that 25% of women that die of breast cancer may not have died of breast cancer if they would have maintained adequate vitamin D levels throughout their life and have had some sun exposure.”
Amongst other things that Dr Hollick says in his book, here is a summary of other useful facts about sunlight and vitamin D:
1. Natural sunlight stimulates your skin to produce Vitamin D.
2. Glass windows in your home or car can block the ultraviolet rays that help generate vitamin D.
3. It is nearly impossible, without taking large amounts of specific foods, to get adequate amounts of vitamin D from your diet. Sunlight exposure is really the only reliable way to generate vitamin D in your own body.
4. A person would have to drink ten tall glasses of vitamin D fortified milk each day just to get minimum levels of vitamin D into their diet.
5. The further you live from the equator, the longer exposure you need to the sun in order to generate vitamin D. Canada, the UK and most U.S. states are far from the equator.
6. People with dark skin pigmentation may need 20 – 30 times as much exposure to sunlight as fair-skinned people to generate the same amount of vitamin D. That’s why prostate cancer is epidemic among black men – it’s a simple, but widespread, sunlight deficiency.
7. Sufficient levels of vitamin D are crucial for calcium absorption in your intestines. Without sufficient vitamin D, your body cannot absorb calcium, rendering calcium supplements useless.
8. If you are chronically deficient in vitamin D this takes months to reverse.
9. Using sunscreens, even weak ones, can block your body’s ability to produce vitamin D by 95%. Three guesses why the sunscreen industry does not want you to know this?!
10. Additional exposure to sunlight will not generate too much vitamin D in your body as your body will self-regulate and only generate what it needs.
11. If you press firmly on your sternum and it hurts, you may be suffering from chronic vitamin D. deficiency.
12. Given that vitamin D is “activated” in your body by your kidneys and liver before it can be used, kidney and liver disease can greatly impair your body’s ability to activate circulating vitamin D.
HOW MUCH SUN EXPOSURE IS HEALTHY?
People should be careful to avoid excessive sun exposure, especially if it causes reddening of the skin. Only a small amount of sunlight is needed to maintain healthy vitamin D levels. It is produced in ideal quantities when the skin is exposed to ‘suberythemal’ amounts of UVR (i.e. low levels of UVR before the skin goes red). There is no extra benefit from the levels of sun exposure that cause deliberate tanning or sunburn and potentially increase the risk of skin cancer.
Past studies have shown that being outdoors for 5-10 minutes, 2-3 times a week in the summer months is sufficient. However, this will be dependent on skin type, on the age of the person and the amount of UVB radiation present. Once someone has produced enough vitamin D, any extra vitamin D is changed into inactive substances in the body. So prolonged sunlight exposure does not improve vitamin D levels but it does increase the risk of long-term skin damage.
Vitamin D can be stored in the body in fatty tissue, and will prevent most healthy individuals from becoming vitamin D deficient in the winter.
Those studying the vitamin say the hide-from-sunlight advice has amounted to the health equivalent of a foolish poker trade. Anyone practising sun avoidance has traded the benefit of a reduced risk of skin cancer — which is easy to detect and treat and seldom fatal — for an increased risk of the scary, high-body-count cancers, such as breast, prostate and colon, that appear linked to vitamin D shortages. | <urn:uuid:f3af93bc-d94c-4db3-a47d-7d37026955de> | CC-MAIN-2022-27 | https://drhmd.org/health-articles-old/cancer-sunshine-not-mix/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-27/segments/1656103619185.32/warc/CC-MAIN-20220628233925-20220629023925-00525.warc.gz | en | 0.942931 | 2,211 | 2.796875 | 3 |
Info-map orders: PIAG
Myth #1 – Jews and Arabs have always been in conflict in the region.
Although Arabs were a majority in Palestine prior to the creation of the state of Israel, there had always been a Jewish population, as well. For the most part, Jewish Palestinians got along with their Arab neighbors. This began to change with the onset of the Zionist movement, because the Zionists rejected the right of the Palestinians to self-determination and wanted Palestine for their own, to create a “Jewish State” in a region where Arabs were the majority and owned most of the land.
For instance, after a series of riots in Jaffa in 1921 resulting in the deaths of 47 Jews and 48 Arabs, the occupying British held a commission of inquiry, which reported their finding that “there is no inherent anti-Semitism in the country, racial or religious.” Rather, Arab attacks on Jewish communities were the result of Arab fears about the stated goal of the Zionists to take over the land.
After major violence again erupted in 1929, the British Shaw Commission report noted that “In less than 10 years three serious attacks have been made by Arabs on Jews. For 80 years before the first of these attacks there is no recorded instance of any similar incidents.” Representatives from all sides of the emerging conflict testified to the commission that prior to the First World War, “the Jews and Arabs lived side by side if not in amity, at least with tolerance, a quality which today is almost unknown in Palestine.” The problem was that “The Arab people of Palestine are today united in their demand for representative government”, but were being denied that right by the Zionists and their British benefactors.
The British Hope-Simpson report of 1930 similarly noted that Jewish residents of non-Zionist communities in Palestine enjoyed friendship with their Arab neighbors. “It is quite a common sight to see an Arab sitting in the verandah of a Jewish house”, the report noted. “The position is entirely different in the Zionist colonies.”
Myth #2 – The United Nations created Israel.
The U.N. became involved when the British sought to wash its hands of the volatile situation its policies had helped to create, and to extricate itself from Palestine. To that end, they requested that the U.N. take up the matter.
As a result, a U.N. Special Commission on Palestine (UNSCOP) was created to examine the issue and offer its recommendation on how to resolve the conflict. UNSCOP contained no representatives from any Arab country and in the end issued a report that explicitly rejected the right of the Palestinians to self-determination. Rejecting the democratic solution to the conflict, UNSCOP instead proposed that Palestine be partitioned into two states: one Arab and one Jewish.
The U.N. General Assembly endorsed UNSCOP’s in its Resolution 181. It is often claimed that this resolution “partitioned” Palestine, or that it provided Zionist leaders with a legal mandate for their subsequent declaration of the existence of the state of Israel, or some other similar variation on the theme. All such claims are absolutely false.
Resolution 181 merely endorsed UNSCOP’s report and conclusions as a recommendation. Needless to say, for Palestine to have been officially partitioned, this recommendation would have had to have been accepted by both Jews and Arabs, which it was not.
Moreover, General Assembly resolutions are not considered legally binding (only Security Council resolutions are). And, furthermore, the U.N. would have had no authority to take land from one people and hand it over to another, and any such resolution seeking to so partition Palestine would have been null and void, anyway.
Myth #3 – The Arabs missed an opportunity to have their own state in 1947.
The U.N. recommendation to partition Palestine was rejected by the Arabs. Many commentators today point to this rejection as constituting a missed “opportunity” for the Arabs to have had their own state. But characterizing this as an “opportunity” for the Arabs is patently ridiculous. The Partition plan was in no way, shape, or form an “opportunity” for the Arabs.
First of all, as already noted, Arabs were a large majority in Palestine at the time, with Jews making up about a third of the population by then, due to massive immigration of Jews from Europe (in 1922, by contrast, a British census showed that Jews represented only about 11 percent of the population).
Additionally, land ownership statistics from 1945 showed that Arabs owned more land than Jews in every single district of Palestine, including Jaffa, where Arabs owned 47 percent of the land while Jews owned 39 percent – and Jaffa boasted the highest percentage of Jewish-owned land of any district. In other districts, Arabs owned an even larger portion of the land. At the extreme other end, for instance, in Ramallah, Arabs owned 99 percent of the land. In the whole of Palestine, Arabs owned 85 percent of the land, while Jews owned less than 7 percent, which remained the case up until the time of Israel’s creation.
Yet, despite these facts, the U.N. partition recommendation had called for more than half of the land of Palestine to be given to the Zionists for their “Jewish State”. The truth is that no Arab could be reasonably expected to accept such an unjust proposal. For political commentators today to describe the Arabs’ refusal to accept a recommendation that their land be taken away from them, premised upon the explicit rejection of their right to self-determination, as a “missed opportunity” represents either an astounding ignorance of the roots of the conflict or an unwillingness to look honestly at its history.
It should also be noted that the partition plan was also rejected by many Zionist leaders. Among those who supported the idea, which included David Ben-Gurion, their reasoning was that this would be a pragmatic step towards their goal of acquiring the whole of Palestine for a “Jewish State” – something which could be finally accomplished later through force of arms.
When the idea of partition was first raised years earlier, for instance, Ben-Gurion had written that “after we become a strong force, as the result of the creation of a state, we shall abolish partition and expand to the whole of Palestine”. Partition should be accepted, he argued, “to prepare the ground for our expansion into the whole of Palestine”. The Jewish State would then “have to preserve order”, if the Arabs would not acquiesce, “by machine guns, if necessary.”
Myth #4 – Israel has a “right to exist”.
The fact that this term is used exclusively with regard to Israel is instructive as to its legitimacy, as is the fact that the demand is placed upon Palestinians to recognize Israel’s “right to exist”, while no similar demand is placed upon Israelis to recognize the “right to exist” of a Palestinian state.
Nations don’t have rights, people do. The proper framework for discussion is within that of the right of all peoples to self-determination. Seen in this, the proper framework, it is an elementary observation that it is not the Arabs which have denied Jews that right, but the Jews which have denied that right to the Arabs. The terminology of Israel’s “right to exist” is constantly employed to obfuscate that fact.
As already noted, Israel was not created by the U.N., but came into being on May 14, 1948, when the Zionist leadership unilaterally, and with no legal authority, declared Israel’s existence, with no specification as to the extent of the new state’s borders. In a moment, the Zionists had declared that Arabs no longer the owners of their land – it now belonged to the Jews. In an instant, the Zionists had declared that the majority Arabs of Palestine were now second-class citizens in the new “Jewish State”.
The Arabs, needless to say, did not passively accept this development, and neighboring Arab countries declared war on the Zionist regime in order to prevent such a grave injustice against the majority inhabitants of Palestine.
It must be emphasized that the Zionists had no right to most of the land they declared as part of Israel, while the Arabs did. This war, therefore, was not, as is commonly asserted in mainstream commentary, an act of aggression by the Arab states against Israel. Rather, the Arabs were acting in defense of their rights, to prevent the Zionists from illegally and unjustly taking over Arab lands and otherwise disenfranchising the Arab population. The act of aggression was the Zionist leadership’s unilateral declaration of the existence of Israel, and the Zionists’ use of violence to enforce their aims both prior to and subsequent to that declaration.
In the course of the war that ensued, Israel implemented a policy of ethnic cleansing. 700,000 Arab Palestinians were either forced from their homes or fled out of fear of further massacres, such as had occurred in the village of Deir Yassin shortly before the Zionist declaration. These Palestinians have never been allowed to return to their homes and land, despite it being internationally recognized and encoded in international law that such refugees have an inherent “right of return”.
Palestinians will never agree to the demand made of them by Israel and its main benefactor, the U.S., to recognize Israel’s “right to exist”. To do so is effectively to claim that Israel had a “right” to take Arab land, while Arabs had no right to their own land. It is effectively to claim that Israel had a “right” to ethnically cleanse Palestine, while Arabs had no right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in their own homes, on their own land.
The constant use of the term “right to exist” in discourse today serves one specific purpose: It is designed to obfuscate the reality that it is the Jews that have denied the Arab right to self-determination, and not vice versa, and to otherwise attempt to legitimize Israeli crimes against the Palestinians, both historical and contemporary.
Myth #5 – The Arab nations threatened Israel with annihilation in 1967 and 1973
The fact of the matter is that it was Israel that fired the first shot of the “Six Day War”. Early on the morning of June 5, Israel launched fighters in a surprise attack on Egypt (then the United Arab Republic), and successfully decimated the Egyptian air force while most of its planes were still on the ground.
It is virtually obligatory for this attack to be described by commentators today as “preemptive”. But to have been “preemptive”, by definition, there must have been an imminent threat of Egyptian aggression against Israel. Yet there was none.
It is commonly claimed that President Nasser’s bellicose rhetoric, blockade of the Straits of Tiran, movement of troops into the Sinai Peninsula, and expulsion of U.N. peacekeeping forces from its side of the border collectively constituted such an imminent threat.
Yet, both U.S. and Israeli intelligence assessed at the time that the likelihood Nasser would actually attack was low. The CIA assessed that Israel had overwhelming superiority in force of arms, and would, in the event of a war, defeat the Arab forces within two weeks; within a week if Israel attacked first, which is what actually occurred.
It must be kept in mind that Egypt had been the victim of aggression by the British, French, and Israelis in the 1954 “Suez Crisis”, following Egypt’s nationalization of the Suez Canal. In that war, the three aggressor nations conspired to wage war upon Egypt, which resulted in an Israeli occupation of the Sinai Peninsula. Under U.S. pressure, Israel withdrew from the Sinai in 1957, but Egypt had not forgotten the Israeli aggression.
Moreover, Egypt had formed a loose alliance with Syria and Jordan, with each pledging to come to the aid of the others in the event of a war with Israel. Jordan had criticized Nasser for not living up to that pledge after the Israeli attack on West Bank village of Samu the year before, and his rhetoric was a transparent attempt to regain face in the Arab world.
That Nasser’s positioning was defensive, rather than projecting an intention to wage an offensive against Israel, was well recognized among prominent Israelis. As Avraham Sela of the Shalem Center has observed, “The Egyptian buildup in Sinai lacked a clear offensive plan, and Nasser’s defensive instructions explicitly assumed an Israeli first strike.”
Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin acknowledged that “In June 1967, we again had a choice. The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.”
Yitzhak Rabin, who would also later become Prime Minister of Israel, admitted in 1968 that “I do not think Nasser wanted war. The two divisions he sent to the Sinai would not have been sufficient to launch an offensive war. He knew it and we knew it.”
Israelis have also acknowledged that their own rhetoric at the time about the “threat” of “annihilation” from the Arab states was pure propaganda.
General Chaim Herzog, commanding general and first military governor of the occupied West Bank following the war, admitted that “There was no danger of annihilation. Israeli headquarters never believed in this danger.”
General Ezer Weizman similarly said, “There was never a danger of extermination. This hypothesis had never been considered in any serious meeting.”
Chief of Staff Haim Bar-Lev acknowledged, “We were not threatened with genocide on the eve of the Six-Day War, and we had never thought of such possibility.”
Israeli Minister of Housing Mordechai Bentov has also acknowledged that “The entire story of the danger of extermination was invented in every detail, and exaggerated a posteriori to justify the annexation of new Arab territory.”
In 1973, in what Israelis call the “Yom Kippur War”, Egypt and Syria launched a surprise offensive to retake the Sinai and the Golan Heights, respectively. This joint action is popularly described in contemporaneous accounts as an “invasion” of or act of “aggression” against Israel.
Yet, as already noted, following the June ‘67 war, the U.N. Security Council passed resolution 242 calling upon Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories. Israel, needless to say, refused to do so and has remained in perpetual violation of international law ever since.
During the 1973 war, Egypt and Syria thus “invaded” their own territory, then under illegal occupation by Israel. The corollary of the description of this war as an act of Arab aggression implicitly assumes that the Sinai Peninsula, Golan Heights, West Bank, and Gaza Strip were Israeli territory. This is, needless to say, a grossly false assumption that demonstrates the absolutely prejudicial and biased nature of mainstream commentary when it comes to the Israeli-Arab conflict.
This false narrative fits in with the larger overall narrative, equally fallacious, of Israeli as the “victim” of Arab intransigence and aggression. This narrative, largely unquestioned in the West, flips reality on its head.
Myth #6 – U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 called only for a partial Israeli withdrawal.
Resolution 242 was passed in the wake of the June ‘67 war and called for the “Withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict.” While the above argument enjoys widespread popularity, it has no merit whatsoever.
The central thesis of this argument is that the absence of the word “the” before “occupied territories” in that clause means not “all of the occupied territories” were intended. Essentially, this argument rests upon the ridiculous logic that because the word “the” was omitted from the clause, we may therefore understand this to mean that “some of the occupied territories” was the intended meaning.
Grammatically, the absence of the word “the” has no effect on the meaning of this clause, which refers to “territories”, plural. A simple litmus test question is: Is it territory that was occupied by Israel in the ‘67 war? If yes, then, under international law and Resolution 242, Israel is required to withdraw from that territory. Such territories include the Syrian Golan Heights, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip.
The French version of the resolution, equally authentic as the English, contains the definite article, and a majority of the members of the Security Council made clear during deliberations that their understanding of the resolution was that it would require Israel to fully withdraw from all occupied territories.
Additionally, it is impossible to reconcile with the principle of international law cited in the preamble to the resolution, of “the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war”. To say that the U.N. intended that Israel could retain some of the territory it occupied during the war would fly in the face of this cited principle.
One could go on to address various other logical fallacies associated with this frivolous argument, but as it is absurd on its face, it would be superfluous to do so.
Myth #7 – Israeli military action against its neighbors is only taken to defend itself against terrorism.
The facts tell another story. Take, for instance, the devastating 1982 Israeli war on Lebanon. As political analyst Noam Chomsky extensively documents in his epic analysis “The Fateful Triangle”, this military offensive was carried out with barely even the thinnest veil of a pretext.
While one may read contemporary accounts insisting this war was fought in response to a constant shelling of northern Israeli by the PLO, then based in Lebanon, the truth is that, despite continuous Israeli provocations, the PLO had with only a few exceptions abided by a cease-fire that had been in place. Moreover, in each of those instances, it was Israel that had first violated the cease-fire.
Among the Israeli provocations, throughout early 1982, it attacked and sank Lebanese fishing boats and otherwise committed hundreds of violations of Lebanese territorial waters. It committed thousands of violations of Lebanese airspace, yet never did manage to provoke the PLO response it sought to serve as the casus belli for the planned invasion of Lebanon.
On May 9, Israel bombed Lebanon, an act that was finally met with a PLO response when it launched rocket and artillery fire into Israel.
Then a terrorist group headed by Abu Nidal attempted to assassinate Israeli Ambassador Shlomo Argov in London. Although the PLO itself had been at war with Abu Nidal, who had been condemned to death by a Fatah military tribunal in 1973, and despite the fact that Abu Nidal was not based in Lebanon, Israel cited this event as a pretext to bomb the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, killing 200 Palestinians. The PLO responded by shelling settlements in northern Israel. Yet Israel did not manage to provoke the kind of larger-scale response it was looking to use as a casus belli for its planned invasion.
As Israeli scholar Yehoshua Porath has suggested, Israel’s decision to invade Lebanon, far from being a response to PLO attacks, rather “flowed from the very fact that the cease-fire had been observed”. Writing in the Israeli daily Haaretz, Porath assessed that “The government’s hope is that the stricken PLO, lacking a logistic and territorial base, will return to its earlier terrorism…. In this way, the PLO will lose part of the political legitimacy that it has gained … undercutting the danger that elements will develop among the Palestinians that might become a legitimate negotiating partner for future political accommodations.”
As another example, take Israel’s Operation Cast Lead from December 27, 2008 to January 18, 2009. Prior to Israel’s assault on the besieged and defenseless population of the Gaza Strip, Israel had entered into a cease-fire agreement with the governing authority there, Hamas. Contrary to popular myth, it was Israel, not Hamas, who ended the cease-fire.
The pretext for Operation Cast Lead is obligatorily described in Western media accounts as being the “thousands” of rockets that Hamas had been firing into Israel prior to the offensive, in violation of the cease-fire.
The truth is that from the start of the cease-fire in June until November 4, Hamas fired no rockets, despite numerous provocations from Israel, including stepped-up operations in the West Bank and Israeli soldiers taking pop-shots at Gazans across the border, resulting in several injuries and at least one death.
On November 4, it was again Israel who violated the cease-fire, with airstrikes and a ground invasion of Gaza that resulted in further deaths. Hamas finally responded with rocket fire, and from that point on the cease-fire was effectively over, with daily tit-for-tat attacks from both sides.
Despite Israel’s lack of good faith, Hamas offered to renew the cease-fire from the time it was set to officially expire in December. Israel rejected the offer, preferring instead to inflict violent collective punishment on the people of Gaza.
As the Israeli Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center noted, the truce “brought relative quiet to the western Negev population”, with 329 rocket and mortar attacks, “most of them during the month and a half after November 4?, when Israel had violated and effectively ended the truce. This stands in remarkable contrast to the 2,278 rocket and mortar attacks in the six months prior to the truce. Until November 4, the center also observed, “Hamas was careful to maintain the ceasefire.”
If Israel had desired to continue to mitigate the threat of Palestinian militant rocket attacks, it would have simply not ended the cease-fire, which was very highly effective in reducing the number of such attacks, including eliminating all such attacks by Hamas. It would not have instead resorted to violence, predictably resulting in a greatly escalated threat of retaliatory rocket and mortar attacks from Palestinian militant groups.
Moreover, even if Israel could claim that peaceful means had been exhausted and that a resort military force to act in self-defense to defend its civilian population was necessary, that is demonstrably not what occurred. Instead, Israel deliberately targeted the civilian population of Gaza with systematic and deliberate disproportionate and indiscriminate attacks on residential areas, hospitals, schools, and other locations with protected civilian status under international law.
As the respected international jurist who headed up the United Nations investigation into the assault, Richard Goldstone, has observed, the means by which Israel carried out Operation Cast Lead were not consistent with its stated aims, but was rather more indicative of a deliberate act of collective punishment of the civilian population.
Myth #8 – God gave the land to the Jews, so the Arabs are the occupiers.
No amount of discussion of the facts on the ground will ever convince many Jews and Christians that Israel could ever do wrong, because they view its actions as having the hand of God behind it, and that its policies are in fact the will of God. They believe that God gave the land of Palestine, including the West Bank and Gaza Strip, to the Jewish people, and therefore Israel has a “right” to take it by force from the Palestinians, who, in this view, are the wrongful occupiers of the land.
But one may simply turn to the pages of their own holy books to demonstrate the fallaciousness of this or similar beliefs. Christian Zionists are fond of quoting passages from the Bible such as the following to support their Zionist beliefs:
“And Yahweh said to Abram, after Lot had separated from him: ‘Lift your eyes now and look from the place where you are – northward, southward, eastward, and westward; for all the land which you see I give to you and your descendants forever. And I will make your descendants as the dust of the earth; so that if a man could number the dust of the earth, then your descendants could also be numbered. Arise, walk in the land through its length and its width, for I give it to you.” (Genesis 13:14-17)
“Then Yahweh appeared to him and said: ‘Do not go down to Egypt; live in the land of which I shall tell you. Dwell in the land, and I will be with you and bless you; for to you and your descendants I give all these lands, and I will perform the oath which I swore to Abraham your father.” (Genesis 26: 1-3)
“And behold, Yahweh stood above it and said: ‘I am Yahweh, God of Abraham your father, and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and your descendants.” (Genesis 28:13)
Yet Christian Zionists conveniently disregard other passages providing further context for understanding this covenant, such as the following:
“You shall therefore keep all My statutes and all My judgments, and perform them, that the land where I am bringing you to dwell may not vomit you out.” (Leviticus 20:22)
“But if you do not obey Me, and do not observe all these commandments … but break My covenant … I will bring the land to desolation, and your enemies who dwell in it shall be astonished at it. I will scatter you among the nations and draw out a sword after you; your land shall be desolate and your cities waste … You shall perish among the nations, and the land of your enemies shall eat you up.” (Leviticus 26: 14, 15, 32-33, 28)
“Therefore Yahweh was very angry with Israel, and removed them from His sight; there was none left but the tribe of Judah alone…. So Israel was carried away from their own land to Assyria, as it is to this day.” (2 Kings 17:18, 23)
“And I said, after [Israel] had done all these things, ‘Return to Me.’ But she did not return. And her treacherous sister Judah saw it. Then I saw that for all the causes for which backsliding Israel had committed adultery, I had put her away and given her a certificate of divorce; yet her treacherous sister Judah did not fear, but went and played the harlot also.” (Jeremiah 3: 7-8)
Yes, in the Bible, Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, told the Hebrews that the land could be theirs – if they would obey his commandments. Yet, as the Bible tells the story, the Hebrews were rebellious against Yahweh in all their generations.
What Jewish and Christian Zionists omit from their Biblical arguments in favor of continued Israel occupation is that Yahweh also told the Hebrews, including the tribe of Judah (from whom the “Jews” are descended), that he would remove them from the land if they broke the covenant by rebelling against his commandments, which is precisely what occurs in the Bible.
Thus, the theological argument for Zionism is not only bunk from a secular point of view, but is also a wholesale fabrication from a scriptural perspective, representing a continued rebelliousness against Yahweh and his Torah, and the teachings of Yeshua the Messiah (Jesus the Christ) in the New Testament.
Myth #9 – Palestinians reject the two-state solution because they want to destroy Israel.
In an enormous concession to Israel, Palestinians have long accepted the two-state solution. The elected representatives of the Palestinian people in Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) had since the 70s recognized the state of Israel and accepted the two-state solution to the conflict. Despite this, Western media continued through the 90s to report that the PLO rejected this solution and instead wanted to wipe Israel off the map.
The pattern has been repeated since Hamas was voted into power in the 2006 Palestinian elections. Although Hamas has for years accepted the reality of the state of Israel and demonstrated a willingness to accept a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip alongside Israel, it is virtually obligatory for Western mainstream media, even today, to report that Hamas rejects the two-state solution, that it instead seeks “to destroy Israel”.
In fact, in early 2004, shortly before he was assassinated by Israel, Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin said that Hamas could accept a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Hamas has since repeatedly reiterated its willingness to accept a two-state solution.
In early 2005, Hamas issued a document stating its goal of seeking a Palestinian state alongside Israel and recognizing the 1967 borders.
The exiled head of the political bureau of Hamas, Khalid Mish’al, wrote in the London Guardian in January 2006 that Hamas was “ready to make a just peace”. He wrote that “We shall never recognize the right of any power to rob us of our land and deny us our national rights…. But if you are willing to accept the principle of a long-term truce, we are prepared to negotiate the terms.”
During the campaigning for the 2006 elections, the top Hamas official in Gaza, Mahmoud al-Zahar said that Hamas was ready to “accept to establish our independent state on the area occupied [in] ‘67?, a tacit recognition of the state of Israel.
The elected prime minister from Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, said in February 2006 that Hamas accepted “the establishment of a Palestinian state” within the “1967 borders”.
In April 2008, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter met with Hamas officials and afterward stated that Hamas “would accept a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders” and would “accept the right of Israel to live as a neighbor next door in peace”. It was Hamas’ “ultimate goal to see Israel living in their allocated borders, the 1967 borders, and a contiguous, vital Palestinian state alongside.”
That same month Hamas leader Meshal said, “We have offered a truce if Israel withdraws to the 1967 borders, a truce of 10 years as a proof of recognition.”
In 2009, Meshal said that Hamas “has accepted a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders”.
Hamas’ shift in policy away from total rejection of the existence of the state of Israel towards acceptance of the international consensus on a two-state solution to the conflict is in no small part a reflection of the will of the Palestinian public. A public opinion survey from April of last year, for instance, found that three out of four Palestinians were willing to accept a two-state solution.
Myth #10 – The U.S. is an honest broker and has sought to bring about peace in the Middle East.
Rhetoric aside, the U.S. supports Israel’s policies, including its illegal occupation and other violations of international humanitarian law. It supports Israel’s criminal policies financially, militarily, and diplomatically.
The Obama administration, for example, stated publically that it was opposed to Israel’s settlement policy and ostensibly “pressured” Israel to freeze colonization activities. Yet very early on, the administration announced that it would not cut back financial or military aid to Israel, even if it defied international law and continued settlement construction. That message was perfectly well understood by the Netanyahu government in Israel, which continued its colonization policies.
To cite another straightforward example, both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate passed resolutions openly declaring support for Israel’s Operation Cast Lead, despite a constant stream of reports evidencing Israeli war crimes.
On the day the U.S. Senate passed its resolution “reaffirming the United States’ strong support for Israel in its battle with Hamas” (January 8, 2009), the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) issued a statement demanding that Israel allow it to assist victims of the conflict because the Israeli military had blocked access to wounded Palestinians – a war crime under international law.
That same day, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon issued a statement condemning Israel for firing on a U.N. aid convoy delivering humanitarian supplies to Gaza and for the killing of two U.N. staff members – both further war crimes.
On the day that the House passed its own version of the resolution, the U.N. announced that it had had to stop humanitarian work in Gaza because of numerous incidents in which its staff, convoys, and installations, including clinics and schools, had come under Israeli attack.
U.S. financial support for Israel surpasses $3 billion annually. When Israel waged a war to punish the defenseless civilian population of Gaza, its pilots flew U.S.-made F-16 fighter-bombers and Apache helicopter gunships, dropping U.S.-made bombs, including the use of white phosphorus munitions in violation of international law.
U.S. diplomatic support for Israeli crimes includes its use of the veto power in the U.N. Security Council. When Israel was waging a devastating war against the civilian population and infrastructure of Lebanon in the summer of 2006, the U.S. vetoed a cease-fire resolution.
As Israel was waging Operation Cast Lead, the U.S. delayed the passage of a resolution calling for an end to the violence, and then abstained rather than criticize Israel once it finally allowed the resolution to be put to a vote.
When the U.N. Human Rights Council officially adopted the findings and recommendations of its investigation into war crimes during Operation Cast Lead, headed up by Richard Goldstone, the U.S. responded by announcing its intention to block any effort to have the Security Council similarly adopt its conclusions and recommendations. The U.S. Congress passed a resolution rejecting the Goldstone report because it found that Israel had committed war crimes.
Through its virtually unconditional support for Israel, the U.S. has effectively blocked any steps to implement the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The so-called “peace process” has for many decades consisted of U.S. and Israeli rejection Palestinian self-determination and blocking of any viable Palestinian state.
Jeremy R. Hammond is an independent journalist and the Editor of Foreign Policy Journal, an online source for news, critical analysis, and opinion commentary on U.S. foreign policy from outside the standard framework as defined by political officials and the mainstream corporate media. He was among the recipients of the 2010 Project Censored Awards for outstanding investigative journalism, and is the author of “The Rejection of Palestinian Self-Determination”, available from Amazon.com.
Israel-Palestine-Gaza-Occupation (archive of posts) | <urn:uuid:c6adc90c-35c5-488f-ad86-85fd9ae8b225> | CC-MAIN-2017-39 | https://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2010/06/17/top-ten-myths-about-the-israeli-palestinian-conflict-by-jeremy-r-hammond/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-39/segments/1505818687833.62/warc/CC-MAIN-20170921153438-20170921173438-00169.warc.gz | en | 0.969851 | 7,346 | 3.453125 | 3 |
When you enter a command you type its name at the prompt, followed by a space and any parameters for the command. For example, all of these could be valid commands:
copy file1 file2 d:\
"c:\program files\JPSoft\tcmd17\tcc.exe" /LF
The last three commands above include both a command name, and one or more parameters. There are no spaces within the command name (except in quoted file names), but there is a space between the command name and any options or parameters, and there are spaces between the options and parameters.
Some commands may work when options or parameters are entered directly after the command (without an intervening space, e.g. dir/p), or when several options or parameters are entered without spaces between them (e.g. dir /2/p). A very few older programs may even require this approach. However, leaving out spaces this way is usually technically incorrect, and is not recommended as a general practice, as it may not work for all commands.
If the command name includes a path, the elements must be separated with backslashes (e.g. F:\UTIL\MAPMEM). If you are accustomed to Linux syntax where forward slashes are used in command paths, and want TCC to recognize this approach, you can set the Unix/Linux-style Paths option. | <urn:uuid:0fb829be-9b8a-43ce-9048-bfa43ac24ce4> | CC-MAIN-2018-43 | https://jpsoft.com/help/cmdnames.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-43/segments/1539583511897.56/warc/CC-MAIN-20181018173140-20181018194640-00435.warc.gz | en | 0.889517 | 287 | 3.25 | 3 |
This summer, we’ll be exploring new research and best practices within each of our six policy recommendation areas. Last week, we took a look at the need to demand accountability at the state level. This week, let’s talk about how we can foster leadership in our districts and schools.
Let’s start with something we all know—Connecticut needs strong school leaders to help drive improvement statewide and especially in low-income districts. Principals make a significant difference in a student’s educational career, even though they may have limited direct interaction. An analysis published in Education Next noted that an effective principal can raise the achievement of a typical student by two to seven months, while ineffective principals will lower student achievement by an equivalent amount. Other reports show that the principal accounts for 25% of a school’s impact on student achievement. While studies may vary regarding the exact level of influence, the conclusion is ubiquitous: principals have a meaningful impact on student achievement. And the results of these studies are magnified in economically disadvantaged school systems.
Unfortunately, Connecticut’s need for strong administrators is growing drastically. With more than 40% of administrators over the age of 55, Connecticut will likely have to attract 1,500 additional school administrators in the next 5 to 10 years. The real question is: Where will we find school leaders to replace those who are leaving?
Connecticut needs to foster leadership in order to continue to improve education for all students. Here are three best practices to help find the school leaders of tomorrow.
Think Outside the School
School districts across the nation are beginning to look to other professions to find school leaders.
Many of the characteristics that make successful business and civic leaders are the same ones that make good school and district leaders. In any career path, a leader must be able to motivate employees, foster a positive and innovative organizational culture, promote collaboration and ongoing professional development, allocate resources to reach established goals, and act as the public face for the organization. Those who have these skill sets should be given the opportunity to lead in a variety of fields, including education.
In fact, there are already leaders who have come from other sectors to work in education and proven themselves by successfully turning around school districts. The Colorado Department of Education named John Barry Superintendent of the Year in 2010, although he had no prior experience in public education. After 30 years of service in the United States Air Force, Barry spearheaded a strategic plan geared towards increasing student achievement, closing the achievement gap, and reaching out to the community. What is even more telling is that his success is not isolated: the Broad Superintendent Academy, which trains superintendents from non-traditional backgrounds, has actually produced four state “Superintendent of the Year” award recipients and received numerous awards and accolades.
Currently, Connecticut requires “50 months of successful teaching” before a would-be leader can become certified as a principal or superintendent through traditional training programs. Thanks to new laws passed in 2010, the Connecticut State Department of Education is authorized to create Alternative Routes to Administrator Certification. However, Connecticut has yet to reach out to those beyond the education sector.
What’s in a State?
Connecticut needs to look beyond its own borders in order to find the next generation of school leaders. Administrator certification reciprocity is one way to begin addressing the shortage of qualified administrators. It also has the added advantage of increasing competition for administrator positions, which will result in raising the number of high-performing administrators in our schools.
Many states are already finding a balance between providing reciprocity with other states and keeping high standards in place. For example, Georgia accepts out-of-state administrator certifications as long as the applicant has at least five years of satisfactory job performance and meets Georgia’s requirements for licensure with respect to content knowledge, standards of conduct, recency of study, and special education. In this way, the state is able to ensure that administrators meet competitive standards without causing insurmountable bureaucratic hurdles to out-of-state candidates.
Connecticut, on the other hand, is still using bureaucracy to interfere with the talent pool (as evidenced by the goings on with Bridgeport Schools Superintendent Paul Vallas.) Under current law, all of out-of-state administrators who would like to become certified in Connecticut must complete a qualified educational leadership program —regardless of how highly qualified the individual might be.
Today’s Teachers, Tomorrow’s Leaders
In order to foster leadership from within the education sector, superintendents and principals should mentor teachers who have shown strong leadership skills, in order to help them become strong school leaders. Identifying the best candidates will help to deepen the future pool of administrators by encouraging teachers with high potential to pursue administrator certification.
Schools, districts, and even whole states, are encouraging teacher-principals mentorships. The Florida Leadership Academy for Schools of Innovation and Improvement identifies teachers in high needs schools who have demonstrated instructional excellence, leadership, and a passion for working in high poverty areas and certifies them through extensive mentorship programs and weekend seminars. The program focuses on teaching new principals the realities and best practices for turning around schools.
However, it’s important to remember that this method comes at a price; encouraging some of the best teachers to become administrators means that we will have to develop more successful teachers to replace them. Follow CCER over the next week to take a look at how we can develop and support excellent teaching to replenish the teacher talent pool as some of our skilled teachers become administrators. | <urn:uuid:34baf468-8424-43ac-8aa5-b4824f752fdd> | CC-MAIN-2022-27 | https://readyct.org/2013/07/fostering-leadership-connecticut/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-27/segments/1656104240553.67/warc/CC-MAIN-20220703104037-20220703134037-00356.warc.gz | en | 0.954904 | 1,140 | 2.609375 | 3 |
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While millions of Australians have hypertension, (also known as high blood pressure) most are unaware they have a problem. Undiagnosed it can cause seriously damage your health; fortunately it's preventable, easily diagnosed, and treatable.
Hypertension is the medical term for high blood pressure, a silent condition that most people living with the condition don't even know they have.
Over time, hypertension irreversibly damages many of the body's organs, including the heart and kidneys. It can also lead to stroke, heart disease and kidney failure.
When someone has hypertension their heart works harder than it should and the blood is being pumped around the body with more force than is ideal.
The negative impact of this is that there is too much stress on the walls of the arteries and on the heart.
A 2010 Heart Foundation Survey found one in three Australians roughly 3.5 million people aged between 30 and 65 had been told by a doctor that they have high blood pressure.
If you've ever been to a GP it's highly likely they have taken your blood pressure, as it is standard procedure in medical check-ups.
The doctor uses a sphygmomanometer (a machine with an inflatable cuff that wraps around your upper arm) to measure your blood pressure. Having your blood pressure taken is quick and painless.
An example of a healthy blood pressure measurement is 120/80, referred to as 120 over 80. This is a combined measure of the pressure in your arteries when your heart pumps (120) and when your heart relaxes between each beat (80).
Everyone's blood pressure fluctuates normally; for example, it is higher when you exert yourself and lower when you are resting. Hypertension, however, means the blood pressure is high, even at rest.
For example, if your blood pressure is140/90 when you are at rest, that is considered high; if your blood pressure is 180/110 when you are at rest that is considered very high.
Usually three consecutive abnormally high readings taken on different occasions are needed before a diagnosis of hypertension can be made.
Everyone should have their blood pressure checked by a GP at age 45. But if you have a family history of early heart disease or kidney disease, it would be important to know your blood pressure from an earlier age.
If your blood pressure is normal at age 45 and you are low risk, you need not have another test for five years (although many GPs make blood pressure testing a routine part of every visit).
Sometimes a GP will suggest you monitor your blood pressure over a period of time at home. (The Heart Foundation website has information about home blood pressure monitoring, as does UK charity Blood Pressure UK) But it's a good idea to talk to your doctor before you start monitoring your own blood pressure at home.
Hypertension often runs in families, and is more common in older people (as much as 40 to 50 per cent of people aged over 70 have high blood pressure). It is also more common in people who:
Usually there is no underlying disease that causes the hypertension, but a doctor is likely to conduct a physical examination to double check.
For a small number of people with hypertension, hormonal imbalances, tumours or kidney disease are identified as the cause.
The doctor will also look for signs of damage to the body's organs such as absent pulses in the limbs, evidence of artery disease in the retina of the eye, or microscopic traces of blood in the urine (a sign of kidney disease).
Left untreated, high blood pressure can contribute to atherosclerosis, which is a hardening and narrowing of the arteries, often with a build-up of fatty deposits (called plaque). This plaque can thicken, calcify and narrow the arteries, restricting blood flow. It can also result in a blood clot, which blocks the artery completely.
This can happen in any organ, but is more commonly found in the heart, brain, limbs, kidneys and the retina. A clot in the heart is known as a heart attack; a clot in the brain causes a stroke.
Treatments prescribed for hypertension differ depending on the reading and other personal factors.
If your blood pressure is only a little high, you can often manage it by changing certain behaviours. These include:
These are the same life-long habits that doctors recommend to prevent hypertension occurring in the first place. Also making these lifestyle changes helps prevent a range of other chronic diseases.
Your doctor may prescribe medication.
There are four main classes of drugs used to treat hypertension:
Thiazide diuretics or "water pills" (thiazide, hydroclorathiazide, chlorathalidone and indapamide). These are older but still commonly used drugs which work by helping the kidneys to pass accumulated salt and water. This decreases the amount of fluid in the body and so lowers blood pressure. Diuretics also cause blood vessels to dilate, reducing the resistance to blood flow, and therefore its pressure. Some types of diuretics cause the kidneys to excrete potassium so potassium supplements may be needed.
Calcium-channel blockers (nifedipine, nicardipine, verapamil and diltiazem). These work by blocking the flow of calcium in the muscles of the heart and blood vessels, causing the blood vessels to dilate.
Angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors (captopril, enalapril, perindopril, ramipril, quinapril and lisinopril) These block the action of a hormone (angiotensin II) that narrows blood vessels.
Angiotensin receptor blockers (candesartan, irbesartan, telmisartan, eprosartan). These work on the same system as ACE inhibitors.
Most people who require medication (50-70 per cent) won't get to ideal blood pressure levels with one drug alone, so it is common for doctors to try combinations of medication.
Reviewed by the Heart Foundation with approval from the clinical director Professor Robert Grenfell.
First published: 23/10/2006 | <urn:uuid:b34cc77b-1e5e-477b-b6a7-55353bc17ecd> | CC-MAIN-2014-41 | http://www.abc.net.au/health/library/stories/2006/10/23/1831329.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-41/segments/1410657131545.81/warc/CC-MAIN-20140914011211-00144-ip-10-196-40-205.us-west-1.compute.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94501 | 1,283 | 3.65625 | 4 |
Health and Safety Links
American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) – for current policy statements, recommendations, and access to the archives of the journal Pediatrics
Healthy Children – the AAP’s page for parents, with information presented for the lay audience
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) – for information on diseases, vaccines, and safety
CDC’s Life Stages Page – with specific sections on pregnancy, infants and toddlers, children, family, etc.
Vaccine Education Center of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia – one of the best resources I have found for information about safety and efficacy of vaccines.
Organization of Teratology Information Specialists (OTIS) – for information on risk of exposure to drugs and chemicals during pregnancy and breastfeeding. OTIS has a great hotline if you have a specific question (Mine was, “Can I get my wisdom teeth removed without interrupting breastfeeding?”). You will talk to a real-live, knowledgeable person. (866)626-6847.
La Leche League – for breastfeeding support and resources.
kellymom – for more breastfeeding support and resources.
KidsHealth - A comprehensive resource of health information from pregnancy to adolescence
Nutrition.gov Life Stages Page – with specific sections on infants, children, and adolescents
USDA’s MyPlate – follow links for specific information on nutrition during pregnancy and for preschoolers and kids
Pubmed – search the database for abstracts of published scientific research articles (sometimes full text articles)
MedlinePlus – searchable database for general health information | <urn:uuid:37c1afef-4501-45f1-a529-7c35fbcc9a9a> | CC-MAIN-2014-23 | http://scienceofmom.com/parenting-resources/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-23/segments/1406510267876.49/warc/CC-MAIN-20140728011747-00084-ip-10-146-231-18.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.864541 | 330 | 2.640625 | 3 |
Make a difference in the challenge to confront global warming and prevent nuclear war and the development and use of nuclear weapons.
We shouldn’t be exposed to dangerous chemicals from food containers. Tell the Food and Drug Administration to withdraw its approvals of thirty ortho-phthalates as additives in food contact articles.
New Global Warming Factsheets
Heat's Deadly Effects (PDF)
Heat-related illnesses are serious and can lead to death. In fact, extreme heat events are already a significant public health problem in the U.S.
Vector-Borne and Water-Borne Diseases (PDF)
Learn how changes in temperature and precipitation affect the development, reproduction, behavior and geographic range of insects that carry dangerous infectious diseases. Climate change and its effects such as intense storms and flooding are also likely to worsen the spread of water-borne diseases.
Shrinking the Food Supply (PDF)
Global warming will damage crops, increase the risks of secondary impacts such as fires, insect pests and pathogens, and endanger in food security, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia. The U.S. won’t be exempt from the impacts, either.
Vulnerable Populations, Environmental Justice (PDF)
Global warming threatens to harm our health and well-being – but it won’t affect all of us equally. Some groups of people are more likely to be harmed than others. The most vulnerable tend to be the youngest and the oldest among us, the poor, and those who are already sick. The disproportionate and discriminatory impacts that climate change will have on vulnerable populations make climate change one of the most significant environmental justice issues of our time.
Mental Health Implications of Global Warming (PDF)
While the physical threats from global warming are more widely known, a larger number of people are likely to be vulnerable to climate change’s mental health implications. Among the anticipated impacts: increased alcohol abuse, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, grief, and family violence.
In the Spotlight
March 25, 2016
What now, after the Supreme Court stay?
The Supreme Court in February 2016 issued a "stay," or a temporary suspension, of the Clean Power Plan while a lower court reviews this legal challenge. This situation raises many questions. | <urn:uuid:a71fe054-ecc1-4fdb-b8b0-f689cb171bab> | CC-MAIN-2016-30 | http://www.psr.org/resources/new-global-warming-factsheets.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-30/segments/1469257832939.78/warc/CC-MAIN-20160723071032-00256-ip-10-185-27-174.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928466 | 461 | 3.078125 | 3 |
A new NASA mission to the International Space Station involves cargo that is more than a little unorthodox.
Science involves doing some crazy things sometimes, but NASA’s latest mission to the International Space Station involves sending an antibiotic-resistant superbug into orbit. The bug will be launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on Sunday from the Kennedy Space Center launch complex.
NASA is working in conjunction with researcher Dr. Anita Goel to understand more about how superbugs mutate by observing it in a zero-gravity environment. Specifically, they’ll be sending up Methicillian-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, also known as MRSA or staph.
The bug causes health problems like pneumonia and bloodstream infections. The ISS is the perfect place to conduct experiments on it, as it is basically an orbiting lab that already cares out hundreds of experiments each and every day.
“We are excited to put MRSA on the International Space Station and investigate the effects of microgravity on the growth and mutation patterns of these bugs,” Goel said at a NASA news conference recently “I have this hypothesis that microgravity will accelerate the mutation patterns. If we can use microgravity as an accelerator to fast-forward and get a sneak preview of what these mutations will look like, then we can essentially build smarter drugs on Earth.” | <urn:uuid:54d6c624-337c-423b-8653-f994dd2b76ab> | CC-MAIN-2019-09 | http://www.babwnews.com/2017/02/scientists-are-about-to-blast-something-into-space-that-will-shock-you/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-09/segments/1550249495888.71/warc/CC-MAIN-20190223082039-20190223104039-00518.warc.gz | en | 0.917486 | 275 | 3.375 | 3 |
Q: How much has the federal debt gone up under Obama?
A: During his first three years in office, it rose $4.7 trillion, an increase of 45 percent. Partisan graphics circulating via email and Facebook are both incorrect.
Both sides are circulating deceptions about the federal debt, judging by the many queries we get from our readers. So we’ll try to set the record straight here.
There’s no sugar-coating it, as some supporters of President Obama have tried to do. And the rapid rise in the debt is alarming enough without fabricating false statistics, as some Obama critics have done.
It’s not true, for example, that the debt has increased only 16 percent since Obama took office. That erroneous calculation originally came from the office of House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi. And — despite being corrected later — it has continued to circulate via email.
Even the corrected version, currently appearing on the site of the liberal group MoveOn.org and Pelosi’s Flickr site, is many months out of date as of this writing. It shows a 35 percent increase for Obama, which is now far too low.
And it’s also untrue — as claimed in a graphic widely circulated by email and in social media postings — that the debt has increased more under Obama than under all previous 43 presidents combined. In fact, as of Jan. 31, 2012, the rise under Obama had yet to surpass the rise under his predecessor, George W. Bush.
The figures in that graphic are pure fabrications, as anyone can easily confirm by plugging Obama’s inauguration date — Jan. 20, 2009 — in the Treasury Department’s handy “debt to the penny” website. That shows the nation’s total debt stood at $10.6 trillion on the day Obama took office (not $6.3 trillion), and it had increased to nearly $15.4 trillion by the end of January 2012 — a rise of more than $4.7 trillion in just over three years (not $6.5 trillion).
That’s a huge increase to be sure — 44.5 percent. And the Congressional Budget Office now projects that it will grow to more than $16 trillion by the end of the current fiscal year on Sept. 30. At that point, the debt will have increased by more dollars in Obama’s first four years than it did in George W. Bush’s entire eight-year tenure, when it rose by $4.9 trillion. The rise under Obama would then be the biggest dollar increase for any president in U.S. history.
Here is how the nation’s total debt has fared under the past several presidents, as of Jan. 31, 2012, in trillions of dollars. The percentage increases are given in parentheses.
Our chart looks much different from Pelosi’s, because ours shows the actual dollar increase, not just the percentage change. As can be seen here, Obama’s 45 percent rise is nearly equal in dollar terms to his predecessor’s 85 percent increase — because Obama started from a much higher base.
Similarly, had we based our chart on the rate of rise, it would show the debt rising much faster under Obama than it did under Bush, whose increase was spread over eight years. Other adjustments could be made to account for inflation. Indeed, one of the most meaningful ways to look at the debt is to measure it not just in raw dollars but in comparison with the economy — as a percentage of the gross domestic product.
In this chart, which we generated from the most recent historical data and projections (Table 7.1) from the Office of Management and Budget, it can be seen that the total federal debt in relation to the economy is reaching historically high levels — approaching levels not seen since World War II. But it can also be seen that the rise started long before Obama took office.
In fact, the upward trend began with Ronald Reagan’s fiscal 1982 budget, declined somewhat from fiscal 1997 through 2001, and resumed the upward climb with George W. Bush’s first budget in fiscal 2002 (which started Oct. 1, 2001).
And the rise accelerated as the economy slid into the worst recession since the Great Depression, starting in December 2007. As the economy shrank, the debt-to-GDP ratio jumped 5 percentage points in the fiscal year that started Oct. 1, 2007, and another 14.8 percentage points during the following year. Obama took office nearly one-third of the way into that 12-month period. At the time, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office was projecting the deficit for that fiscal year would be $1.2 trillion. It later rose to $1.4 trillion after enactment of Obama’s economic stimulus package, to be followed by back-to-back deficits of nearly $1.3 trillion in fiscal 2010 and $1.3 trillion again in fiscal 2011. CBO just projected the deficit for the current fiscal year, ending Sept. 30, will be $1.1 trillion.
A caution: The chart we’ve shown here is for total debt, including money the government owes to itself, chiefly through the Social Security trust funds. But a chart tracking only the debt owed to the public would show a similar shape. CBO projects that the debt owed to the public was nearly 68 percent of GDP in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, and will reach 73 percent this year and exceed 75 percent at the end of fiscal 2013.
We won’t attempt here to assess which side is more to blame for the mounting debt, or how much of the increase is Obama’s fault. Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein argues that the economic stimulus and other Obama policies account for just under $1 trillion of the debt added since he took office, while Bush added $5.1 trillion in his eight years — mostly due to tax cuts and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. On the other hand, former Washington Post reporter Eric Pianin and others fault Obama for not getting more strongly behind the recommendations of his own deficit-reduction commission more than a year ago. Obama agreed to extend Bush’s tax cuts for two years, even as his commission called for tax reform. And he attacked Republican proposals to hold down the cost of Medicare, despite the commission’s call to move beyond the “phantom savings” in his own health care law, savings the commission said “will never materialize.”
All we can do here is point to the correct figures for how much debt has piled up on Obama’s watch, and note that there is ample blame to go around. When the partisan deceptions on each side are disregarded, the plain fact remains that the debt has increased, for many years, under both Democratic and Republican presidents. And it is currently increasing rapidly, reaching historically high levels, while partisans continue to struggle over what to do about it.
— by Brooks Jackson
U.S. Treasury. “The Debt to the Penny and Who Holds It.” Online database. Accessed 2 Feb 2012.
Congressional Budget Office. “The Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2012 to 2022.” 31 Jan 2012.
Office of Management and Budget. “Historical Tables: Table 7.1—Federal Debt at the End of Year: 1940–2016.” 14 Feb 2011.
National Bureau of Economic Research. “US Business Cycle Expansions and Contractions.” 20 Sep 2010.
Congressional Budget Office. “The Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2009 to 2019.” 8 Jan 2009.
Klein, Ezra. “Doing the math on Obama’s deficits.” Washington Post. 2 Feb. 2012.
Pianin, Eric. “Super Flaw: “If Only Obama Had Upheld Bowles-Simpson.” Fiscal Times. 22 Nov 2011.
Dorning, Mike. “Obama Agrees to Extend Bush Tax Cuts for 2 Years.” Bloomberg News. 6 Dec 2010.
The National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. “The Moment of Truth,” final report. Dec 2010. | <urn:uuid:9c180ca4-e631-47e9-9801-3eb52ef14945> | CC-MAIN-2015-27 | http://www.factcheck.org/2012/02/dueling-debt-deceptions/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-27/segments/1435375096293.72/warc/CC-MAIN-20150627031816-00072-ip-10-179-60-89.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954985 | 1,706 | 2.5625 | 3 |
The Soviet Union developed the Su-25 aircraft in the 1970s to support ground forces. 1975 marked the first flight of the plane. Subsequently, the aircraft underwent numerous modifications and was used in multiple conflicts, such as Afghanistan, Chechnya, and Iraq. More than 30 nations continue to operate the Su-25, making it one of the most popular attack aircraft globally.
The primary features of the Su-25
The attack aircraft’s ammunition is suspended from ten hard points. The aircraft’s combat load is 4.4 tons, its range with a full load is 1250 kilometres, and its top speed is 970 kilometres per hour. The empty weight is about 9,800 kg, the gross weight is approximately 14,440 kg, and the maximum launch weight is roughly 19,300 kg.
Its arsenal includes:
- Air cannons.
- Air explosives of various calibres and purposes.
- Guided and unguided air-to-ground missiles.
- Guided air-to-air missiles.
Thirty-two different types of weaponry can be mounted on the attack aircraft.
The assault aircraft is equipped with a double-barrelled 30-mm Gryazev-Shipunov GSH-30-2 air cannon constructed according to the Gast design (gun designed by Karl Gast of Vorwerk und Companie of Barmen). The gun is designed to defeat armoured vehicles, openly located hostile personnel, and medium- and close-range air targets.
The Su-25 is a highly manoeuvrable aircraft that can rapidly change direction, avoid enemy missiles, and execute pinpoint strikes. The plane has numerous defence systems that enable it to survive combat.
Su-25 Protection System
The Su-25 attack aircraft is equipped with various safety systems that contribute to protecting the plane and the pilot in combat conditions. 7.2% of the typical takeoff weight is comprised of combat survivability systems. The primary security systems include:
- An electronic countermining system that protects aircraft from hostile missiles by emitting electromagnetic signals that interfere with missile guidance systems.
- An infrared protection system that protects against enemy thermal missiles by emitting thermal signals that mask the aircraft’s thermal signature;
- Armouring the cockpit, which protects the pilot from balls and projectiles that can strike the plane;
- An active and passive information processing system that assists in identifying and responding to threats that may arise during hostilities.
Given all of this, the Su-25 attack aircraft is a reasonably well-protected aircraft that can operate in hostile environments with a high threat level.
Key benefits of the Su-25
The Su-25 has excellent manoeuvrability, allowing it to manoeuvre effectively over the battlefield and avoid hostile fire. The Su-25’s speed enables the pilot to arrive swiftly at the battlefield and provide timely support. The Su-25 effectively provides fire support on the ground due to its armament and capacity to carry many weapons.
The Su-25 can operate in various climatic conditions and terrain types, allowing it to conduct missions in different combat zones. The attack aircraft is easily maintainable, allowing repairs and maintenance in combat conditions.
What is known about the Su-25 in Ukrainian service?
The exact quantity of attack aircraft in Ukraine is unknown. Ukraine received approximately 90-95 Su-25 aircraft after achieving independence, of which 76 were in various conditions, and the remainder were mothballed.
According to FlightGlobal’s World Air Forces 2022 guide, the Ukrainian Armed Forces possessed only 17 Su-25 attack aircraft as of 2021. According to the Military Balance directory for 2021, the Ukrainian Air Force had 31 of these aircraft. The Su-25 made its first combat appearance in Ukraine on May 26, 2015, during the assaults on the Donetsk airport.
In 2015, the modernised Su-25M1K attack aircraft was adopted by the Air Force of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. It was developed based on another modernisation, the Su-25M1, which the Ukrainian military received for the first time in 2010, and is distinguished by the implementation of the Adros protection system. This system substantially improves the aircraft’s defence against heat-guided missiles. The modernised attack aircraft received a new sight; instead of the analogue Soviet production, an integrated sighting and navigation system ASP-17BTs-8M2 was mounted on the plane. Additionally, a variety of equipment is installed.
Ukrainians have used this aircraft sparingly and have lost approximately 11 of them, compared to about 38 by the Russians.
What is known about the Su-25 in the Russian service?
Russia had 197 Su-25 assault aircraft before the Ukraine war. The Russian Aerospace Forces are using a significantly modernised variant, the Su-25SM3. The upgraded Su-25SM3 features upgraded avionics, new navigation and control instruments, an enhanced fire control system, and new armament options, among other improvements. Additionally, the Su-25SM3 is equipped with a more powerful engine, allowing it to transport more weight and improving the aircraft’s speed and manoeuvrability. In Russia, it is called Sukhoi Su-25 Grach (NATO name Frog foot).
According to the Russian Federation’s Ministry of Defense, Su-25 pilots fly at exceptionally low altitudes, reducing the likelihood of their detection and destruction by air defence systems. The approach to the combat launch line is conducted at top velocities.
Attack aircraft discharge unguided aircraft rockets (NAR) and immediately engage in an anti-aircraft manoeuvre by firing heat traps. The Su-25s conduct repeated approaches to the target before returning to the airfield.
According to the Ministry of Defense, the aircraft extensively employs the S-13 Tulumbas NAR 122 mm. This ammunition can penetrate fortified and concrete structures, command posts, concentrations of armoured vehicles, and runways.
As per a recent interview with a Su-25 pilot by Ria Novosti, adhering to the requirements that have been defined, attack aircraft in the special operation zone function efficiently and can hit their targets with pinpoint accuracy; the Russian pilots use several missiles, including the S-8, S-13, S-24, and S-25. Subject to all the critical parameters, the rockets land perfectly on target.
The aircraft has remarkable capabilities regarding its ability to survive. The Su-25 that had been shot down was still able to land safely on the airfield, despite having sustained damage from a missile that had been fired by a portable anti-aircraft missile system.
During the course of the special operations, Ukrainian forces made numerous attempts to shoot down the plane using MANPADS and rockets; however, the plane’s engines remained functioning, and its pilots were able to safely return to the ground with their aircraft in working order.
Multiple daily sorties are conducted by ground attack aircraft within the special operation zone.
A pilot told Ria Novosti that he had flown 180 sorties since September 2022. Over 20,000 sorties of attack aircraft have been flown by each of the participating regiments since the commencement of the special military operation. | <urn:uuid:0b990e6a-d998-4fec-80f3-ea3409187363> | CC-MAIN-2023-50 | https://frontierindia.com/how-the-russians-and-ukrainians-use-their-su-25-flying-tanks/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-50/segments/1700679101779.95/warc/CC-MAIN-20231210092457-20231210122457-00106.warc.gz | en | 0.952136 | 1,474 | 3.09375 | 3 |
Freedom History Month
Black history month is a misnomer! The proper name should be "Freedom History Month". While Black history month rightly celebrates blacks, black history is also the history of freedom. It is the courageous and irreversible march of mankind towards freedom with blacks at the tip of the spear of freedom's armies.
While blacks have suffered more from the twin ravages slavery and colonialism than any other race, no race has fought harder and lifted the banner of freedom higher.
Slavery has gone on for millennia and indeed still goes on. It was practiced by the Arabs against the slavic races, southern Europeans and Africans, by some accounts, affecting 9 to 14 million Africans and lasting centuries. Then there was the Atlantic slave trade, affecting 12 to 20 million blacks and also lasting about 4 centuries not counting the native Americans.
The Atlantic trade made up in volume what it lacked in longevity- not that four centuries could ever be described as short. While we rightly focus our opprobrium on the Arabs with their Korans and the Europeans with their Bibles, we should never lose sight of the black collaborators who aided the enemy and helped them enslave us.
Historians mark the American and French revolutions-- with Marquis de Lafayette at the heart of both as epochal in the history of freedom. They were both flawed. The American revolution of 1776, despite its soaring rhetoric about inalienable rights, left slavery intact and counted blacks as 3/5 of persons while excluding women. It would take two centuries, a civil war, the civil war amendments, the civil rights movement and court victories, including Brown vs Board of education to right-- partially, America's birth defect. And this struggle was led by black soldiers who died at Gettysburg and Shiloh and other places and Harriet Tubman, Thurgood Marshall, the Black Panthers, MLK, and countless others - all the way to Obama.
The French revolution had a rallying cry of "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity " and it inspired and freed slaves but within a few years, the forces of oppression, led by Napoleon Bonaparte were back and restoring slavery. That is when the heroes of freedom rose in Haiti in the revolution that led to Haitian independence in 1804 and struck a double blow for freedom and decolonization. The heroes were Louverture, Dessalines, their armies including slaves just off the boats and their mulatto allies who defeated Napoleon's armies and led to his fall.
Indeed, even India's independence in 1947 had an African connection-- Gandhi, who was radicalized in South Africa.
Ironically, while the Haitian uprising in 1801 was epochal in freedom's long march, it had a precedent to build on.
A millennium before then, in 869, the Zanj rebellion against the Abbasid Caliphate, started in Basra, led by Bantu slaves happened. Even though it failed, it served notice that freedom was and is not negotiable.
That yearning for freedom has been joined by freedom fighters in all of history, including the Jews of the Warsaw ghetto, the Americans in 1776, the French of 1789 and all who yearn for freedom.
This month, let's not celebrate just blacks-- let's celebrate their/our contributions to freedom and pledge to fight on till all of mankind is free. God bless mankind's freedom fighters.
Arthur Kobina Kennedy (14th February 2019)
Disclaimer: "The views/contents expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author(s) and do not neccessarily reflect those of Modern Ghana. Modern Ghana will not be responsible or liable for any inaccurate or incorrect statements contained in this article."
Reproduction is authorised provided the author's permission is granted. | <urn:uuid:2fbec099-b3c5-4360-8eb0-66687ccf8394> | CC-MAIN-2019-13 | https://www.modernghana.com/news/915921/freedom-history-month.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-13/segments/1552912202804.80/warc/CC-MAIN-20190323121241-20190323143241-00336.warc.gz | en | 0.959779 | 772 | 3.140625 | 3 |
International Day of Forests, March 21, 2017
India is one of the mega diversity countries in the world with different types of forests. Officially 20 per cent of geographical area in the country is under forest cover. The National Forest Policy (1988) aims to increase the forest cover to one third.
According to India State Forest Report released in 2015, the forest cover has increased by 5081 square kilometres between 2013 – 2015, increasing the carbon sinks by 103 million tonnes.
Though Mizoram has the highest 93 per cent forest cover, many north eastern states have experienced decline in green cover. The country faces numerous challenges in implementing its policies to protect and grow forests.
Protection of forests is done through implementation of Forest Conservation Act (1980) and through establishment of protected areas. The Government of India has established 597 Protected Areas of which 95 are National Parks and 500 Wild Life Sanctuaries. These comprise about 5 per cent of the geographical areas of the country. Different type of forests and scrub jungles are host to the diverse wild life including the tigers, elephants and lions.
Due to the rising population there is enormous pressure on forest land for extraction of forest based industries and encroachment for extension of agriculture. The rising conflicts between conserving forests for generating ecosystem services and diversion for developmental project poses one of the biggest challenges in managing the forest resources.
It is estimated that the demand for timber is growing at a faster speed from 58 million cubic meters in 2005 to 153 million cubic meters in 2020. The annual growth of the forest stock can only supply 70 million cubic meters of timber, forcing us to import hard wood timber from other countries.
In India 67 per cent of the rural household depend on firewood for cooking. About one million deaths are reported annually caused by the fumes of firewood for cooking. In order to address this problem, Pradhan Mantri LPG Scheme ‘Ujjwala Yojana’ is implemented by Ministry of Petrolium and Gas that provides free LPG connections to BPL families in remote rural areas. This has provided access to clean and efficient energy to a large number of families in the countryside.
The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has given the call to celebrate world forestry day for 2017 with the theme of ‘forests and energy’. The emphasis is to develop wood as a major source of renewable energy, to mitigate climate change and fostering sustainable development. By developing community wood lots and delivering clean and energy efficient wood stoves, millions of people in developing economies will have access to cheap and reliable supply of renewable energy.
Green India Mission
The Climate Change Action Plan and the Green India mission attempts to address the issue of development of wood energy by establishing large scale tree plantations with the help of community participation.
According to Shri Anil Madhav Dave, MOS (I/C), M/o Environment, Forest and Climate Change “there are two major afforestation schemes, National Afforestation Programme (NAP) and National Mission for Green India (GIM). Both these schemes are implemented in participatory mode under joint forest management programme”. NAP aims at eco regeneration of degraded forests and GIM aims at increasing the forest cover along with improving the quality of the forests, including the farm and agro forestry.
Under GIM, six million hectares of plantations will be established every year on degraded forest land.
One of the main pillars of afforestation is to regrow the forests in lieu of diversion of the forest land for developmental purposes. Both the houses of Parliament passed the Compensatory Afforesttion Bill in 2016. With a provision of Rs 42000 crores, and annual outlay of Rs 6000 crores will be made available to states to facilitate conservation, improvement and expansion of forest resources in the country. This Act provides institutional framework at both central and state levels to implement the compensatory afforestation programme.
Additionally this will generate 15 crore man days of direct employment in the remote forest areas of the country helping tribal population.
While implementing these green schemes, India faces enormous challenges. The climate change directly impacts the survival of planted saplings. The extension of dry areas and desertification is another big challenge that needs to be tackled with proper interventions. There is need for participatory models of afforestation in which the local knowledge helps to regenerate and manage the forest resources.
Realising the strength of the tribal knowledge systems, the Prime Minister said” if there is someone who saved the forests, it is our tribal communities, and for them saving forests is part of the tribal culture”. He called upon the people to take the pledge to collectively work to conserve forests and increase the tree cover. More forests mean more water that benefits farmers and future generations.
In ancient Indian tradition the Rishis, or those who are the learned and sages get energy form the forests. According to Rabindranath Tagore, life in forest is the highest form of cultural evolution. The sages derived intellectual and spiritual energy from the forests, living near trees and water streams.
Though the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation has laid out ‘wood energy
form the forests’ as the main theme of International Forest Day, Indian tradition assigns much higher status and value to the living energy of the forests to attain spiritual and cultural regeneration of life. This seems to be more holistic in understanding the links between forests and energy.
*Author is an independent journalist and columnist based in Karnataka. | <urn:uuid:1c4272a6-5057-439a-b5e8-d0f69de59b88> | CC-MAIN-2018-05 | https://pibindia.wordpress.com/2017/03/21/challenges-to-protect-forests-in-india/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-05/segments/1516084887535.40/warc/CC-MAIN-20180118171050-20180118191050-00250.warc.gz | en | 0.923855 | 1,122 | 3.34375 | 3 |
Understanding worldwide C.difficile spread
C. difficile epidemics have emerged as a leading cause of worldwide antibiotic- associated diarrhoea in the past ten years. The present study aimed to identify and track the genetic code of C.difficile strains taken from hospital patients, in order to better understand the patterns of worldwide spread and the rapid emergence of this bacteria. 151 samples of patients who died from or contracted C.diff between 1985 and 2012 were analysed, and the study involved specimens from 19 countries.
The research found that two specific antibiotic resistant C. difficile strains known as FQR1 and FQR2, which were first identified in North America, were responsible for hospital outbreaks as far away as the UK, Europe and Australia. FQR1 originated in the United States and was found to spread to Switzerland and South Korea, and FQR2 started in Canada and spread to North America, Europe, the UK and Australia.
Using genetic techniques, researchers were able to identify different strains and created a family tree for C.difficile which made it easier to trace the movements of this bacteria globally. They were also able to test another 145 samples from patients in Britain specifically, in order to more closely understand how the bacteria was able to spread once it arrived in the UK.
The analysis found that the strains became more severe and easily transmitted once the bacteria became resistant to antibiotics. The research also highlighted how interconnected global healthcare services are around the world and how rapidly strains of the bacteria were able to travel between countries.
Strains of C. diff are normally found in some human digestive systems and do not usually cause problems, although if patients which harbour an antibiotic resistant strain are given antibiotics, the bacteria may multiply and cause diarrhoea and sometimes serious disease which can lead to death.
This research will hopefully allow researchers in the future to more closely monitor and understand the spread of diseases such as those caused by C. diff, as well as work to limit the potential spread and outbreak of associated diseases.
You can find out about C. difficile and probiotics here.
Reference: Miao et al 2012, ‘Emergence and global spread of epidemic healthcare associated Clostridium difficile’. Nature Genetics, 9/12/12. | <urn:uuid:e717945b-5348-4d27-b668-5a820d2473a2> | CC-MAIN-2018-26 | https://www.optibacprobiotics.co.uk/blog/2012/12/understanding-worldwide-cdiff-spread | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-26/segments/1529267860089.11/warc/CC-MAIN-20180618051104-20180618071104-00566.warc.gz | en | 0.973752 | 469 | 3.59375 | 4 |
Altruism in animals
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Altruism in animals describes a range of behaviours performed by animals that may be to their own disadvantage but which benefit others. Other definitions place emphasis on the genetic consequences of altruism, e.g. altruism is "Instinctive behavior that is detrimental to the individual but favors the survival or spread of that individual's genes, as by benefiting its relatives." or the biological fitness of the animals, e.g. "Altruism refers to behavior by an individual that increases the fitness of another individual while decreasing the fitness of the actor. Altruism appears most obviously in kin relationships but may also be evident amongst wider social groups.
Altruism in animals is not identical to the everyday concept of altruism in humans. In humans, an action would only be called "altruistic" if it was done with the conscious intention of helping another. But in the animal behaviour sense there is no such requirement. Indeed, some of the most interesting examples of altruism in animals are found among species that are presumably not capable of conscious thought, e.g. insects. For the animal biologist, it is the consequences of an action for reproductive fitness that determine whether the action counts as altruistic, not the intentions, if any, with which the action is performed.
- 1 Overview
- 2 Implications in evolutionary theory
- 3 Reciprocity mechanisms
- 4 Biological Market Theory
- 5 Examples in vertebrates
- 6 Examples in invertebrates
- 7 Examples in protists
- 8 See also
- 9 References
- 10 Further reading
- 11 External links
In the science of ethology (the study of behavior), and more generally in the study of social evolution, on occasion, some animals do behave in ways that reduce their individual fitness but increase the fitness of other individuals in the population; this is a functional definition of altruism. Research in evolutionary theory has been applied to social behaviour, including altruism. Cases of animals helping individuals to whom they are closely related can be explained by kin selection, and are not considered true altruism. Beyond the physical exertions that in some species mothers and in some species fathers undertake to protect their young, extreme examples of sacrifice may occur. One example is matriphagy (the consumption of the mother by her offspring) in the spider Stegodyphus; another example is a male spider allowing a female fertilized by him to eat him. Hamilton's rule describes the benefit of such altruism in terms of Wright's coefficient of relationship to the beneficiary and the benefit granted to the beneficiary minus the cost to the sacrificer. Should this sum be greater than zero a fitness gain will result from the sacrifice.
When apparent altruism is not between kin, it may be based on reciprocity. A monkey will present its back to another monkey, who will pick out parasites; after a time the roles will be reversed. Such reciprocity will pay off, in evolutionary terms, as long as the costs of helping are less than the benefits of being helped and as long as animals will not gain in the long run by "cheating" – that is to say, by receiving favours without returning them. This is elaborated on in evolutionary game theory and specifically the prisoner's dilemma as social theory.
Implications in evolutionary theory
The existence of altruism in nature is at first sight puzzling. The theory of natural selection proposed by Charles Darwin leads us to expect animals to behave in ways that increase their own chances of survival and reproduction, not those of others. But by behaving altruistically, an animal reduces its own fitness, so should be at a selective disadvantage. Researchers on alleged altruistic behaviours among animals have been ideologically opposed to the social Darwinist concept of the "survival of the fittest", under the name of "survival of the nicest" — the latter being globally compatible, however, with the theory of evolution by natural selection. Insistence on such cooperative behaviours between animals was first exposed by the Russian zoologist and anarchist Peter Kropotkin in his 1902 book, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution.
The idea that group selection might explain the evolution of altruism was first broached by Darwin himself in The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, (1871). The concept of group selection has a chequered and controversial history in evolutionary biology but the uncritical ‘good of the species’ tradition came to an abrupt halt in the 1960s, due largely to the work of George C. Williams and John Maynard Smith. In the 1960s and 1970s the rival theory of kin selection emerged, due originally to W. D. Hamilton. Kin selection is an instance of inclusive fitness, which combines the number of offspring produced with the number an individual can produce by supporting others, such as siblings. This theory showed how altruistic behaviour could evolve without the need for group-level selection, and quickly gained prominence among biologists interested in the evolution of social behaviour.
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Recent developments in game theory have provided some explanations for apparent altruism, as have traditional evolutionary analyses. Among the proposed mechanisms are:
- Behavioural manipulation (for example, by certain parasites that can alter the behavior of the host)
- Bounded rationality (for example, Herbert A. Simon)
- Kin selection including eusociality (see also "The Selfish Gene")
- Memes (by influencing behavior to favor their own spread; see religion as a meme)
- Reciprocal altruism, mutual aid
- Sexual selection, in particular, the Handicap principle
Social behavior and altruism share many similarities to the interactions between the many parts (cells, genes) of an organism, but are distinguished by the ability of each individual to reproduce indefinitely without an absolute requirement for its neighbors.
Altruist theories in evolutionary biology were contested by Amotz Zahavi, the inventor of the signalling theory and its correlative, the handicap principle, based mainly on his observations of the Arabian Babbler, a bird commonly known for its surprising (alleged) altruistic behaviours.
Researchers in Switzerland have developed an algorithm based on Hamilton's rule of kin selection. The algorithm shows how altruism in a swarm of entities can, over time, evolve and result in more effective swarm behaviour.
Altruism in animals describes a range of behaviors performed by animals that may be to their own disadvantage but which benefit others. The costs and benefits are measured in terms of reproductive fitness, or expected number of offspring. So by behaving altruistically, an organism reduces the number of offspring it is likely to produce itself, but boosts the likelihood that other organisms are to produce offspring. There are other forms of altruism in nature other than risk-taking behavior, such as reciprocal altruism. This biological notion of altruism is not identical to the everyday human concept. For humans, an action would only be called ‘altruistic’ if it was done with the conscious intention of helping another. Yet in the biological sense there is no such requirement. Instead, until we can communicate directly with other species, an accurate theory to describe altruistic acts between species is Biological Market Theory. Humans and other animals exchange benefits in several ways, known technically as reciprocity mechanism. No matter what the mechanism, the common thread is that benefits find their way back to the original giver.
Also known as the "buddy-system", mutual affection between two parties prompts similar behavior in both directions without need to track of daily give-and-take, so long as the overall relationship remains satisfactory. This is one of the most common mechanism of reciprocity in nature, this kind is present in humans, primates, and many other mammals.
Also known as, "If you're nice, I'll be nice too". This mechanism of reciprocity is similar to the heuristic of the golden rule, "Treat others how you would like to be treated". Parties mirror one another's attitudes, exchanging favors on the spot. Instant attitudinal reciprocity occurs among monkeys, and people often rely on it with strangers and acquaintances.
Also known as, "what have you done for me lately?" Individuals keep track of the benefits they exchange with particular partners, which helps them decide to whom to return favors. This mechanism is typical of chimpanzees and very common among human relationships. Yet some opposing experimental research suggests that calculated or contingent reciprocity does not spontaneously arise in laboratory experimental settings, despite patterns of behavior
Biological Market Theory
Biological market theory is an extension of the idea of reciprocal altruism, as a mechanism to explain altruistic acts between unrelated individuals in a more flexible system of exchanging commodities. The term 'biological market' was first used by Ronald Noe and Hammerstein in 1994 to refer to all the interactions between organisms in which different organisms function as 'traders' that exchange goods and services such as food and water, grooming, warning calls, shelter, etc. Biological market theory consists of five formal characteristics which present a basis for altruism.
1. Commodities are exchanged between individuals that differ in the degree of control over those commodities
2. Trading partners are chosen from a number of potential partners.
3. There is competition among the members of the chosen class to be the most attractive partner. This competition by 'outbidding' causes an increase in the value of the commodity offered.
4. Supply and demand determine the bartering value of commodities exchanged.
5. Commodities on offer can be advertised. As in commercial advertisements there is a potential for false information.
Evidence in Mammals
Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)
Researchers tested whether wild white-handed gibbon males from Khao Yai National Park, Thailand, increased their grooming activity when the female partner was fertile. Adult females and males of our study population are codominant (in terms of aggression), they live in pairs or small multi male groups and mate promiscuously. They found that males groomed females more than vice versa and more grooming was exchanged when females were cycling than during pregnancy or lactation. The number of copulations/day was elevated when females were cycling, and females copulated more frequently with males on days when they received more grooming. When males increased their grooming efforts, females also increased their grooming of males, perhaps to equalize give and take. Although grooming might be reciprocated because of intrinsic benefits of receiving grooming, males also interchange grooming as a commodity for sexual opportunities during a female’s fertile period
Cleaner Wrasse (Labroides dimidiatus)
The applicability of biological market theory with its emphasis on partner choice is evident in the interactions between the cleaner wrasse Labroides dimidiatus and its "client" reef fish. Cleaners have small territories, which the majority of reef fish species actively visit to invite inspection of their surface, gills, and mouth. Clients benefit from the removal of parasites while cleaners benefit from the access to a food source. Some particularly choosy client species have large home ranges that cover several cleaning stations, whereas other clients have small ranges and have access to one cleaning station only (resident clients). Field observations, field manipulations, and laboratory experiments revealed that whether or not a client has choice options influences several aspects of both cleaner and client behavior. Cleaners give choosy clients priority of access. Choosy clients switch partners if cheated by a cleaner by taking a bite of out of the cleaner, whereas resident clients punish cheats. Cleaners and resident clients, but not choosy clients, build up relationships before normal cleaning interactions take place. Cleaners are particularly cooperative if choosy clients are bystanders of an interaction but less so when resident clients are bystanders.
Examples in vertebrates
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- Dogs often adopt orphaned cats, squirrels, ducks, and even tigers.
- Wolves and wild dogs bring meat back to members of the pack not present at the kill.
- Mongooses support elderly, sick, or injured animals
- Meerkats often have one standing guard to warn whilst the rest feed in case of predator attack.
- Raccoons inform conspecifics about feeding grounds by droppings left on commonly shared latrines. A similar information system has been observed to be used by common ravens.
- Male baboons threaten predators and cover the rear as the troop retreats.
- Gibbons and chimpanzees with food will, in response to a gesture, share their food with others of the group. Chimpanzees will help humans and conspecifics without any reward in return.
- Bonobos have been observed aiding injured or handicapped bonobos.
- Vampire bats commonly regurgitate blood to share with unlucky or sick roost mates that have been unable to find a meal, often forming a buddy system.
- Vervet Monkeys give alarm calls to warn fellow monkeys of the presence of predators, even though in doing so they attract attention to themselves, increasing their personal chance of being attacked.
- Lemurs of all ages and of both sexes will take care of infants unrelated to them.
- Dolphins support sick or injured animals, swimming under them for hours at a time and pushing them to the surface so they can breathe.
- Walruses have been seen adopting orphans who lost their parents to predators.
- African buffalo will rescue a member of the herd captured by predators.
- In numerous bird species, a breeding pair receives support in raising its young from other "helper" birds, including help with the feeding of its fledglings. Some will even go as far as protecting an unrelated bird's young from predators
Examples in invertebrates
- Some termites and ants release a sticky secretion by fatally rupturing a specialized gland. This autothysis altruistically aids the colony at the expense of the individual insect. For example, defending against invading ants by creating a tar baby effect. This can be attributed to the fact that ants share their genes with the entire colony, and so this behaviour is evolutionarily beneficial (not necessarily for the individual ant but for the continuation of its specific genetic make-up).
Examples in protists
An interesting example of altruism is found in the cellular slime moulds, such as Dictyostelium mucoroides. These protists live as individual amoebae until starved, at which point they aggregate and form a multicellular fruiting body in which some cells sacrifice themselves to promote the survival of other cells in the fruiting body.
- Cheating (biology)
- Evolutionarily stable strategy
- Gene-centered view of evolution
- Evolution of morality
- Evolutionary ethics
- "Altruism". Dictionary.com. Retrieved July 20, 2013.
- "Altruism". TheFreeDictionary.com. Retrieved July 20, 2013.
- "Altruism". Reference.com. Retrieved July 20, 2013.
- Okasha, S. (2008). "Biological altruism". The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved July 20, 2013.
- Robert L. Trivers (1971). "The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism". The Quarterly Review of Biology 46 (1): 35. doi:10.1086/406755.
- Hamilton, W.D., (1964). The genetical evolution of social behaviour, I and II. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 7: 1-16, 17-32
- Herbert Gintis (September 2000). "Strong Reciprocity and Human Sociality". Journal of Theoretical Biology 206 (2): 169–179. doi:10.1006/jtbi.2000.2111. PMID 10966755.
- Altruism helps swarming robots fly better genevalunch.com, 4 May 2011.
- Waibel M, Floreano1 D and Keller L (2011) "A quantitative test of Hamilton's rule for the evolution of altruism" PLoS Biology, 9(5): e1000615. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1000615
- DeWaal, F. B. M. 2005. How animals do business. ??(?) Scientific American.
- Noë, R., & Voelkl, B. (2013). Cooperation and biological markets: The power of partner choice. In K. Sterelny, R. Joyce, B. Calcott, B. Fraser (Eds.) , Cooperation and its evolution (pp. 131-151). Cambridge, MA US: The MIT Press.
- Brosnan, S., Silk, J. B., Henrich, J., Mareno, M., Lambeth, S. P., & Schapiro, S. J. (2009). Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) do not develop contingent reciprocity in an experimental task. Animal Cognition, 12(4), 587-597. doi:10.1007/s10071-009-0218-z
- Bshary, R., & Noë, R. (2003). Biological markets: The ubiquitous influence of partner choice on the dynamics of cleaner fish-client reef fish interactions. In P. Hammerstein (Ed.) , Genetic and cultural evolution of cooperation (pp. 167-184). Cambridge, MA US: MIT Press.
- Mutt-ernal Instincts - Dachshund adopts kitties, Pitbull adopts kitties, Border Collie adopts... tigers? - 2006-09-29
- Hohmann, Ulf; Bartussek, Ingo; Böer, Bernhard (2001). Der Waschbär (in German). Reutlingen, Germany: Oertel+Spörer. ISBN 978-3-88627-301-0.
- Human-like Altruism Shown In Chimpanzees
- October 7, 2005, Hour Two:
- de Waal, Frans (1996). Good Natured. Harvard University Press. pp. 20–21. ISBN 0-674-35660-8.
- Perry, Julie (April 19, 2002). "Reciprocal Altruism in Vampire Bats". Retrieved October 10, 2009.
- Cheney, D. L. & Seyfarth, R. M. (1990). How monkeys see the world: Inside the mind of another species. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-10246-7.
- Davidson College, biology department (2001) Bottlenose Dolphins - Altruism, article retrieved March 11, 2009.
- "Walrus: Odobenidae - Behavior And Reproduction". Retrieved 2008-08-12.
- Brown, David (August 17, 2007). "Birds' Cooperative Breeding Sheds Light on Altruism". The Washington Post. Retrieved April 23, 2010.
- Fackelmann, Kathy A. (1989). "Avian altruism: African birds sacrifice self-interest to help their kin - white-fronted bee eaters". Science News.
- Bordereau, C., Robert, A., Van Tuyen V. & A. Peppuy (1997). "Suicidal defensive behavior by frontal gland dehiscence in Globitermes sulphureus Haviland soldiers (Isoptera)". Insectes Sociaux 44 (3): 289–297. doi:10.1007/s000400050049.
- Stoel, Amanda (2012) "The meme of altruism and degrees of personhood" Journal of Personal Cyberconsciousness, 7(1): 27–36.
- Biological Altruism
- International Union for the Study of Social Insects
- Quick Guide: Kin Selection (Current Biology)
- Quick Guide: Altruism (Current Biology)
- "Mutt-ernal Instincts" An article about dogs caring for other species' young (cats, tigers, etc.). | <urn:uuid:75f10878-2442-4cc7-8b56-93ba33a92103> | CC-MAIN-2014-23 | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altruism_in_animals | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-23/segments/1404776404630.61/warc/CC-MAIN-20140707234004-00072-ip-10-180-212-248.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.908663 | 4,171 | 3.8125 | 4 |
Eating a healthy breakfast is one of your best weight-loss tools. In fact, eating breakfast is a habit shared by people who lose weight and keep it off, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In addition to the right number of calories, the key elements to include in your breakfast menu are lean protein, fiber and whole grains.
Protein Supports Weight Loss
Protein helps you feel full longer so you’re less tempted to snack, according to the Harvard School of Public Health. It also doesn’t spike blood sugar, which prevents the subsequent drop in sugar that makes you hungry again. Choose low-fat protein, which means foods with 3 grams or less of fat per serving. One cup of low-fat milk contains 8 grams of protein and 102 calories. The same serving of vanilla yogurt has 12 grams of protein and 208 calories. Turkey bacon and sausage have about 60 to 66 calories, but only half the protein per 1-ounce serving. Try less traditional breakfast choices, such as peanut butter, leftover chicken or even white bean paste on a slice of whole-grain toast.
Eggs in Moderation
Eggs are a good source of quality protein, but you may wonder whether they’re a healthy choice for breakfast. Eating up to one egg daily does not increase the risk of coronary heart disease for most people, according to research published in the January 2012 issue of the “British Medical Journal.” However, you should eat only the egg whites if your cholesterol is high, you have cardiovascular disease or you're diabetic. One large, hard-boiled egg has 78 calories and supplies 6.29 grams of protein, which is at least 11 percent of your recommended dietary allowance. Two egg whites have 7 grams of protein and 34 calories.
Fiber and Whole Grains
Besides helping to balance your blood sugar, fiber supports weight loss in several ways. As it absorbs water, it fills your stomach and makes you feel full, and then it slows digestion so you feel full longer. Fiber also delays the release of a substance called ghrelin, according to the June 2012 issue of “Current Obesity Reports.” This release holds off your need to eat because ghrelin tells your brain you're hungry. The best way to get fiber at breakfast is by choosing whole-grain foods, such as whole-wheat toast and English muffins, oats and whole-grain cereals. Look for high fiber, which means products with at least 5 grams of fiber per serving.
Breakfast is not the time to severely restrict calories because you need the energy to get your metabolism running. On the flip side, you don’t want to go overboard on calories either, so Columbia University suggests consuming 350 to 500 calories at breakfast. Whenever possible, add fruits and vegetables: They add bulk so you feel satisfied, and they’re packed with fiber, antioxidants and nutrients. Scramble an egg with your favorite vegetables, but use olive oil instead of butter in the skillet. Make a breakfast wrap by spreading nut butter and fruit on a whole-wheat tortilla. Cut fresh fruit into a bowl and top it with yogurt and walnuts or granola.
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Healthy Weight: It's Not a Diet, It's a Lifestyle!
- Harvard School of Public Health: Protein: Moving Closer to Center Stage
- British Medical Journal: Egg Consumption and Risk of Coronary Heart Disease and Stroke: Dose-Response Meta-analysis of Prospective Cohort Studies
- Current Obesity Reports: Is There a Place for Dietary Fiber Supplements in Weight Management?
- Colorado State University: Ghrelin
- Colorado State University Extension: Understanding the Food Label
- Columbia University, Go Ask Alice: Breakfast: The First Chance to Fill Your Tank
- Institute of Medicine: Dietary Reference Intakes: Macronutrients
- USDA National Nutrient Database: Milk, Lowfat, Fluid, 1 Percent Milkfat, With Added Vitamin A and Vitamin D
- USDA National Nutrient Database: Yogurt, Vanilla, Low Fat, 11 Grams Protein Per 8 Ounce
- Jupiterimages/Stockbyte/Getty Images | <urn:uuid:18687853-38ae-42d5-bfe6-071eb0828bd9> | CC-MAIN-2017-22 | http://livehealthy.chron.com/things-eat-breakfast-jumpstart-weight-loss-9797.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-22/segments/1495463608686.22/warc/CC-MAIN-20170526222659-20170527002659-00222.warc.gz | en | 0.924458 | 863 | 2.671875 | 3 |
09.11.2012 · Education and information about counterfeit and substandard antimalarial drugs.
antimalarial drugsMalaria: Resistance to antimalarial drugs.
Counterfeit and Substandard Antimalarial. Antimalarials and Lupus
Cheap Antimalarial Drugs
Antimalarial medication - Wikipedia, the.
Antimalarial Drugs Definition. Antimalarial drugs are medicines that prevent or treat malaria. Purpose. Antimalarial drugs treat or prevent malaria, a disease that
ANTIMALARIAL DRUG COMBINATION THERAPY Report of a WHO Technical Consultation World Health Organization, Geneva WHO, 2001 2 ANTIMALARIAL DRUG COMBINATION THERAPY Antimalarial Drugs - definition of.
Antimalarial drug resistance hinders malaria control and is therefore a major public health problem. Tracking of evolving antimalarial drug efficacy patterns is
Malaria - Chapter 3 - 2012 Yellow Book.
antimalarial drugsCounterfeit and Substandard Antimalarial.
INFECTIOUS AGENT. Malaria in humans is caused by 1 of 4 protozoan species of the genus Plasmodium: Plasmodium falciparum, P. vivax, P. ovale, or P. malariae.
Coartem, a malaria drug whose potency is derived from a Chinese herb, may soon be approved for sale in the United States.
ANTIMALARIAL DRUG - libdoc.who.int - /
Antimalarial medications, also known as antimalarials, are designed to prevent or cure malaria. Such drugs may be used for some or all of the following: Treatment of | <urn:uuid:ad28fdff-0cc5-457d-bf0d-b21d1bf5f62c> | CC-MAIN-2018-17 | http://ankilsube.pl.tl/antimalarial-drugs.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-17/segments/1524125936981.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20180419150012-20180419170012-00132.warc.gz | en | 0.728785 | 353 | 3.0625 | 3 |
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